[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 45 (Friday, April 2, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H2137-H2144]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY AND JOBS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Iowa
[[Page H2138]]
(Mr. King) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to thank my
colleague on my left, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce), who
has pointed out quite accurately and correctly that if one side of the
aisle is down here carrying a message to the American people
relentlessly, if not logically, day by day by day, that is the only
subject matter that Americans have to discuss.
As I sat in here for the last hour preparing, apparently, for this
Special Order hour, and I have considered that I really did not have to
do that, it was great preparation to sit and listen to the rhetoric
that came from the string of Members, I think probably not
coincidentally, from Ohio. So I am just going to start up working
backwards through the list of things that were raised here while they
are freshest in the minds of the people that are listening, the Members
of the other body, and those in this Chamber and the people that are
listening around the country.
The first is with regard to OPEC and the criticism of OPEC for the
position that they have taken to limit the supply of hydrocarbons to
the United States. Certainly that has been a factor in the 1970s. It
was a factor in our Presidential elections after that, and we came out
of that.
Our dependency has increased on foreign oil, and I regret that. But
OPEC has taken a position that is going to be reflected by the Saudi
Arabians who ruled more of the OPEC oil than anyone else.
I have with me a document that I will just read some quotes.
Prince Bandar has made some remarks speaking for the increase in
supplies because he says the President and the Crown Prince have been
in touch on this subject for a while now. Both leaders feel strongly
that higher energy prices have a negative impact on world economy.
So I happen to know that there is a delegation on its way over to
Saudi Arabia right now to thank the leadership in Saudi Arabia for
their efforts to increase supplies as a way of holding down increases
in costs of gasoline in the United States and thank them for the
efforts that they have gone through to help us in the war on terror.
There have been significant improvements in that country over the
last couple of months.
{time} 1430
So these remarks that are made on the floor of Congress are not
conducive to us solving the oil supply problem and I think are not
conducive either for us solving this problem of worldwide terror.
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico.
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I heard the lady that preceded us on the
floor say that we needed to do something about OPEC. I am sorry, what
are we going to do? It is a free nation.
We did something about Iraq, and the accusation from their side of
the aisle was that we went in to take the oil. When that was not proved
correct, when it was absolutely proved false, now then they are here
saying we should do something about OPEC. I am so sorry. What about the
free nations? They can produce what oil they would like to.
I would continue to point out that the reason that the production in
this country is decreasing is exactly the policies that our friends on
the other side of the aisle insist on, that is, the lack of access to
the public lands in this country. It is going to drive the cost of
gasoline and electricity up throughout this country because of their
restrictionist policies that they have put into place, and those
policies live today from the Clinton administration on through this
administration from the field level.
It is a question that I recently took to the BLM head, and have asked
her what is she going to do to increase access to public lands so that
we are not so dependent, she said, frankly, some of the extremists in
our country will block every single attempt to drill more on American
soil. Even the debates on this floor regarding ANWR say that we do not
need that energy, that we do not need the oil; and the other side has
persistently blocked every effort to try to drill in ANWR.
Mr. Speaker, also, the energy policy that currently resides in
Washington, but unfulfilled, is not something that the administration
is blocking. It is not Republicans who are blocking the energy bill in
this town.
Mr. Speaker, the energy bill would not only create access to more
domestic oil and gas, but it would begin to encourage the alternative
sources of solar, wind, hydrogen, biomass, nuclear. If we will begin,
Mr. Speaker, to deal with some of the pressures on the demand cycle for
our energy with some of our alternative resources, then we can begin to
see the prices of gasoline and electricity go down; but I will
guarantee my colleagues, the headlines that I cut out from the Denver
Post of last year telling the people in August of 2003 that they would
be facing 70 percent increases in electrical costs because of the price
of natural gas, those are things that we are going to continue to
experience in this country until we pass an energy bill.
The energy bill by itself will create 100,000 jobs, and we have been
treated by our friends across the aisle to continued talk about the
lack of American jobs. We have seen the dramatic report from March
where 300,000 new jobs were created. That is 600,000 now in the last 6
months since we passed the jobs and tax bill.
Mr. Speaker, the policies that the administration is submitting to us
and that we are carrying out into actual votes and into bills are
dramatically changing the environment for investment in this country.
Education in America
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, when we begin to look at the growth of jobs,
we have to understand the importance of education in this country. No
Child Left Behind is one of the dramatic things, dramatic policies that
have been issued. It is a reform into the education system which
literally says we are not going to leave any child behind. The
President has dramatically increased funding, regardless of what our
friends across the aisle say.
Under President Clinton, the spending on education through the
Federal Education Department was about $27 billion. Under President
Bush, the funding has increased to $60 billion, over a 100 percent
increase, and yet somehow we get on the floor day after day that we are
underfunding education.
Our friends especially like to talk about the way that we are not
funding IDEA, our individuals with disabilities; and that has such a
dramatic difference in previous funding levels under this President,
that it is important to talk about funding levels.
The bill was passed in the 1970s, and historically throughout its
tenure has had about $1 billion funding. It could never get up, and
keep in mind, that was under 40 years of Democrats ruling in this
House. It stayed at the $1 billion level. Finally, under President
Clinton, it went up to $2 billion.
Now, what would my colleagues estimate that the actual spending on
IDEA, the individuals with disabilities, is actually today under
President Bush? If you were to listen to the rhetoric that is thrown
out day after day, you would say, well, obviously it is much, much
less. Actually, it is much, much greater.
The funding this year under IDEA will exceed $10 billion. That is a
five-time, a 500 percent increase in the 3 years under President Bush;
and yet we hear the shibboleth on the floor of the House that tries to
put a truth out, put a falsehood out in the guise of truth.
The truth is that President Bush understands that if we are going to
have careers for our young people, if our young people are to have
expectations and hope into the future, they need more than jobs. They
need educations. They need careers. They need a progression of learning
throughout their lives.
No Child Left Behind is guaranteed to put those young people in a
position to where they can continue the lifelong learning process.
We have moved from a time in our history when we could just learn one
single task and do that our whole lives. For us to access the
technology, the innovations, the creativity that is at move in the
world today, our young people absolutely must be given every tool
during their 12 years of public schools on into the junior college and
[[Page H2139]]
college years; but then throughout their entire life, we must continue
to have on-the-job training. We must continue to have training when
people are displaced.
Recently, this last week, I went into my district into Belen, New
Mexico, and met with a group of employers there. We met at Cisneros
Machine Shop. The Cisneros brothers really are one of the small
businesses that characterize the desire on the part of our employers
right now to be training their employees every day to a higher level,
understanding that they cannot produce the same things yesterday that
they produce tomorrow. Otherwise they will not continue to fight off
the tremendous international competition that faces us.
I think the recognition of people like the Cisneros brothers will
bring us all, in this Nation, if we will continue these training
programs, no matter what stage of development our employees are in, if
we will recognize that and continue to train, then we are going to be
in good shape. But we have to ask the question, when jobs are moving
offshore, when jobs are moving overseas, we have to ask ourselves why;
and the education system is, at base, a root cause of the problem.
Under No Child Left Behind, one of the most important things we are
striving to do is to put a competent teacher in every single classroom
and especially those classrooms that teach math and reading. Those two
basic skills are the foundations for the education process; and without
them, our students simply do not have the tools to compete when they
graduate.
We have seen dramatic changes even in my district in the education
process. About 2 weeks ago, I recognized Roswell High School on this
floor as being one of the 12 breakthrough schools in the Nation. That
principal believes in No Child Left Behind. He has seen it work in his
classrooms, turning around a population in his high school that is both
high minority and then also lower-income status students, and he has
turned that around into one of the 12 breakthrough schools in the
Nation. It is the kind of example that No Child Left Behind is supposed
to be creating in our schools.
I see the gentleman from Iowa standing.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I would like to give a perspective of
No Child Left Behind that is a little bit different perspective for
some of the other States, those States that may not believe there is a
significant advantage to them.
I have the privilege of being from the State of Iowa, and we rank in
the top three every year in ACT tests; and we have for years put out
Iowa basic skills and Iowa tests of educational development, that
analysis that we do of students every year, comparing them against
their growth from year to year, in a number of different subjects and a
composite score that we do, something that goes back to the time that I
was at least in grade school, and that is some years ago, and before
that actually, and those tests have been given around the world, places
as far away as China.
So the credibility that the Iowa public school system has worldwide
is high, and our competitiveness in our graduates, particularly
measured by ACT test scores and also the success of our young students
as they go off and go on to higher education, is also high.
Arguably, the public school education in K-12 in the State of Iowa
ranks in the top three, maybe as the best in the country; and so
because of that long-standing tradition to education that we have, we
have those kinds of results and standards, and yet we are faced with a
No Child Left Behind policy that is a one-size-fits-all.
Those States that have high excellence in education may not see a
significant marginal improvement, but we really do need to help those
students in those States like Mississippi and Arkansas. We really need
to lift them up and get them back into this educational stream.
I yield to my colleague from New Mexico.
The Shocks to Our Economy
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
In addition to our energy bill, which would create jobs, we begin to
defuse the increasing price of natural gas and fuel at the pump for our
cars. In addition to those two important elements of the legislative
agenda that we have passed in this House last year, this transportation
bill that just was passed out of the House today is poised to create
another 700,000 jobs.
Mr. Speaker, when I look at the continued bills that we are passing
out of the House, I see responsibility. I see a patient attempt to cure
the many problems that we are facing in this country; and keep in mind
that we are facing the problems through no fault of our own, but 9/11
changed everything.
The first thing that happened in our economy that cost us jobs was
the collapse of the dot-com industry. You all remember in the late
1990s that dot-com ramp-up where stocks were selling at an inflated
price, sometimes $200 per share of a stock that really had no product,
had no cash flow, had no sales, no revenue, no net profit; and yet
enthusiasm was that these stocks are going to be great value. Well,
that enthusiasm eventually will have to come home. A corporation either
had to build a product or create a revenue of some sort; and when they
did not and could not, the dot-com stock market price of those stocks
collapsed down, and we found that it shocked our economy pretty
drastically.
The second thing that shocked our economy, of course, was 9/11. The
estimates are as high as a $2 trillion shock in one day, over 2,000
lives lost. I will tell you that businesses are still paying the cost
for 9/11 today, and we cannot forget that the economy and the culture
in this Nation changed so dramatically on that day when the unprovoked
attack of terrorists, who would kill innocent lives in order to
destabilize an economy, in order to destabilize a political system,
after they made their attack, we in this country have got to deal with
the results.
Now, the President has been very patient. He has worked very hard at
going and taking away the root causes of terrorism. He has taken the
Taliban out of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is on the run. The training camp
that used to crank out terrorists every month, who would spew hatred
and anger toward the United States and try to sow destruction
throughout our economy and throughout our Nation, that training camp
has been closed down and the terrorists are on the run.
We continue to capture and to kill the terrorists who are here to
kill us. This is not a police action. This is not something we can take
into the courts and deal with there. This is an action where it is
either their ideology or ours.
The insistence of terrorists to destabilize the entire world is one
of the most looming threats that any of us face here.
{time} 1445
It affects our ability to raise our children safely on the streets.
It affects our ability to conduct just everyday commerce throughout our
land. Terrorism seeks to destabilize. The paradigms of security and
stability cannot exist coincidentally with terrorism and instability.
The world is going to make a choice, and the United States is making a
tremendous decision here to take on the fight.
It is like the Prime Minister of Britain said when he spoke on this
House floor: You, as Americans, should ask, why us? Why would we be in
this role? It is a fair question. His answer to us on the floor of this
House, Mr. Speaker, I will remind you, was simply that destiny has
placed the United States in a position where it can act and it must.
That means that we have the resources, we have the will, we have the
leadership, and if we do not respond, the world will suffer for it.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the leadership of our President as he
pushes forward the concept of No Child Left Behind, as he pushes
forward the idea of the tax cuts that are creating this economy which
is growing at a tremendous pace, and the job growth is exactly what we
were hoping for.
Mr. Speaker, as he has encouraged us to pass the energy bill, I would
simply say to our friends, do your part to see that the energy bill is
passed, because it is not the Republican side which is holding it
hostage.
Mr. Speaker, I now yield back to the gentleman from Iowa.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield now to the gentleman from
Colorado (Mr. Beauprez).
[[Page H2140]]
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
It is good to join my colleagues, and I thank the gentleman from Iowa
for taking this special order on a very timely topic.
My colleagues, today in this city, in this Chamber, there are a whole
lot of people saying hallelujah and holy cow, because we have created
some jobs, and there is news out saying just exactly that. Just a short
while ago in this Chamber, we passed a transportation bill, and that
transportation bill is going to put Americans to work, and it is going
to put Americans to work building infrastructure that is critical to
this Nation. Transportation is a jobs bill.
But there are also numbers out from the Department of Labor that are
really encouraging. We have heard that 308,000 jobs were added in the
United States in the month of March. That is 308,000 new payroll jobs.
Now, everybody has a right to say, well, what does that mean? Compared
to what? That is the strongest number in 4 years, the strongest in 4
years.
We have been through a bit of a tough cycle. Four years ago right
now, we were in a recession. So 308,000 new jobs in the month of March
and, in addition to that, numbers that we thought were a little softer
than we expected in January and February have now been revised upward.
So we are increasingly in better and better shape.
Now, that is good news. That is good news. And here is how I
characterize it. Almost anybody can hang onto the wheel of a ship going
through calm waters. But it takes a pretty good captain to guide a ship
through a stormy sea. If we go back to late 2000, we were slipping into
some rough waters. We now know that the recession was upon us in late
2000 when this President was sworn in. He grabbed ahold of a ship that
was going into troubled waters. Then it really got rough, with 9/11
happening and SARS happening and on and on and on. We all know the
litany.
Where are we today? We are in an expanding economy, with job creation
now under way, which, as everybody knows, every economist will tell
you, that is the lagging economic indicator.
So I will say it again, because it is happy news. We have 308,000 new
jobs in the month of March alone. It is astounding. The policies of the
captain of the ship, the Republican leadership in this House, the
Republicans in this Congress, have set us on the right path and are
calming the waters. It is not the time to change captains nor change
course.
I was listening a moment ago to my colleague from New Mexico as he
was talking about energy policy, and I could not agree more. Everybody
is saying jobs, jobs, jobs; and that is why I am so happy right now, is
because we have evidence we have jobs coming back. That is really good
news.
But if you want to know where the jobs went, ask the people who have
got a different policy. Ask the people who have got a different policy
than the one that righted the ship, calmed the waters and set us on
this course, the people that have been talking about raising taxes.
What did this House and this President do to set us on this course?
We provided some tax cuts. We invested right back in the people in the
United States of America who create jobs and who increase consumer
demand. That is how an economy works. We understand that on our side of
the aisle, and the President certainly understands that. So he set us
on the right course. We passed the jobs and growth bill, and here we
are, and it is good news.
Now there are some out there saying, no, we need to rescind those tax
cuts, we need to increase the strong hand of regulation, and, worse
yet, they have fought us on an energy bill, and they are still fighting
us on an energy bill.
Now what have we got? Our own Department of Commerce tells us that
for every $1 billion spent on imported oil that means 12,389 jobs.
Maybe somebody does not think 12,389 jobs is all that much, but I
submit, Mr. Speaker, when taken in the context of the billions that we
are spending on imported oil, it adds up in a big hurry. How big a
hurry? Well, by today's dollars, the amounts we are spending on
imported oil equates to 1.7 million jobs, American jobs that are now
somewhere else.
The very people who fought us on that energy bill are the ones
screaming about outsourcing of jobs. They not only got outsourced, they
got outforced, and they were forced out by the very people who fought
us on the energy bill and now are raising their hands in wonder saying,
where did our jobs go? Where did our jobs go?
What has happened since we have not had an energy bill? Gasoline
prices have increased 30 percent; U.S. imports of oil increased another
10 percent. We are about two-thirds import, one-third domestic
production. The price of crude oil has increased 65 percent. Natural
gas has increased 92 percent.
That is especially sensitive for people like my colleague from New
Mexico and me, from Colorado, from the Rocky Mountain States, and my
friend from Iowa. You bet. Because we know where it is. It is right
there underneath our ground, a lot of it Federal ground. And in places
like Iowa, being an old farmer myself, I know how important energy is.
It is not just gas and diesel, it is our commercial fertilizer that is
produced from those same petroleum products.
Mr. Speaker, I have a potato farmer back home who told me that 35
percent of his operating overhead, 35 percent of his entire cost of
production, is energy related, 35 percent. Fire up the electric motors
to run his sprinklers to irrigate the potatoes; the commercial
fertilizers, the diesel and the gasoline he puts in his vehicles, 35
percent.
Now when you have inflation of energy costs like I just cited, you
know what that does to that potato farmer who is operating on a margin
that thin already? Where did the jobs go? They were outforced. That is
where they go when we have wrong-headed Federal policy like we have
right now.
It is not a case of us needing to improve an energy policy that is
already out there. We have none. We are just trying to establish one
that is so woefully needed. Well, it is time. It is time we act. We
need to pass not only an energy bill but continue on this course that
has been charted that has got us finally into some calmer waters and
headed on the right path. We need to continue that course, not alter
that course. We need to stay the course on tax cuts, on deregulation,
on sound policy, and bring American jobs home to Americans.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado
(Mr. Beauprez) for his comments.
Picking up on that theme, I appreciate the gentleman's remarks about
how sensitive natural gas prices are to the Corn Belt and the fact that
the gentleman's background and experience as a dairy farmer and a
banker and someone who has been all involved in this economy
understands that the very foundation for all economies is that all new
wealth comes from the land.
In our State, it is corn and beans and oats and hay and grass in our
pastures, and we value add to that as close to the cornstalk as we can,
as many times as we can; and we need the energy from the gentleman's
State and from the State of New Mexico because we are extraordinarily
susceptible to natural gas. We use it to dry grain with, we use it for
anhydrous ammonia, our nitrogen supply, and we use it for all the other
uses that the rest of the world does as well.
So I am extraordinarily sensitive to that and the significant point
that the natural gas pipeline in the energy bill brings gas down now
that is already discovered and already tapped into from the North Slope
down to the lower 48 States.
The other tax is the outforcing, but I will also declare there is an
``E'' tax on everything we buy. That means there is an energy
component. But the ``E'' does not stand for energy, it stands for
environmental tax. It has become a cult in this Congress, a religion in
this Congress to the extent that we cannot pass drilling in ANWR, as
the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) said earlier, which is the
most logical place in the world to go get oil. It is up there and
identical to deposits on the North Slope.
There has not been a single environmental problem on the North Slope
since 1972 when they finally lifted the environmental embargo, which,
by the way, kept me from going up there and actually actively
participating in real jobs up there. So now today that oil sits under
ANWR and we have gas on the North Slope that we cannot get here to the
United States. We cannot get gas out of the State of Colorado.
[[Page H2141]]
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield for just a
moment.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I would be glad to.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. It is estimated
that if we could construct that gas pipeline that my colleague referred
to from ANWR, 400,000 new jobs, direct and indirect jobs, would be
created from that one action alone, including increasing dramatically
the supply of natural gas to the lower 48. I repeat, 400,000 new jobs
and lower gas prices.
Now, the gas my colleague referred to, and I referred to as well
under the Rocky Mountain States, I held a hearing in my district
recently on this subject, and I learned a lot. I learned, for example,
that under nonpark, nonwilderness Federal land, I repeat, nonpark,
nonwilderness Federal lands, we have enough natural gas to take care of
the demands of 100 million homes for 157 years.
Now what I cited earlier here, natural gas prices up 92 percent, this
is akin to the old biblical tale of the people going through a famine,
the granaries being full and the pharaoh being unwilling to unlock the
doors.
We have natural gas. It is those crazy, environmentally overly-
sensitive policies that have restricted us from going to get it; and
the same people who now restrict us from going to get it were the very
people who told us a few years ago that we need to convert to natural
gas. Why? Because it is affordable, it is clean, and it is abundantly
available.
Well, now they are telling us we ought to go get it somewhere else,
from abroad, and ship it here in tankers as liquified natural gas. We
do not have the storage for it. Somebody says we have a storage
problem. Well, we have a storage problem: The natural gas is stored
under Federal land. That is the storage problem.
The people that are in the way are us, the Federal Government. We
need to change that with an energy policy.
I yield back to the gentleman and thank him.
Mr. KING of Iowa. An environmental tax.
Mr. Speaker, I would now like to yield to the gentleman from New
Mexico (Mr. Pearce).
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, some of our friends on the other side of the
aisle really do, when we are talking off the floor, ask us, can we do
this in an environmentally sensitive manner, this drilling for oil on
American soil? The case on the North Slope of Alaska is a really good
case example.
When we first went there, we were building pads out of gravel or rock
or stone. But we have stopped that now, and we build paths to put the
equipment on out of ice. We build the roads into the pads out of ice,
so that the equipment that goes into the location and then when it sits
there to drill the hole in the ground, they are on ice roads and on ice
paths.
{time} 1500
When spring comes, the ice thaws and there is actually just the pipe
sticking out of the hole that is causing the production to come to the
surface. We have showed that we can dramatically change the way that we
do our drilling and our exploration. We have the necessity in this
country to find the balance, to balance our environmental concerns with
our need for jobs and with the need for affordable electricity, with
the need for affordable gasoline to put into our cars.
I think as we see gasoline approaching $3, we are going to find that
the consumers in this Nation demand that we begin to produce in some of
the areas where we can do so without destroying the environment. My
friend from Colorado adequately pointed out that we have got a trillion
cubic feet of natural gas available under his State. That gas, as he
said, is not under national parks. It is not under environmentally
sensitive areas. In fact, much of the gas is located in fields that
have already been drilled. It is not like it is a pristine area there.
Yet we have extremists in this society who are willing to bring
lawsuits. Every time an application for a permit to drill is issued by
the BLM, they bring a lawsuit to stop that production. We must decide
if we are going to have affordable energy in this country, keeping in
mind that affordable energy is what drives this economy. We see that it
is used in the production of fertilizers. Fertilizers are used in
agriculture. Natural gas is used in the production of electricity
because it is the cleanest fuel. We must begin to drill for more fuel,
or we must begin to accept the fact that our utility bills are going to
be double and triple, that our gasoline is going to actually cost three
or more dollars per gallon.
Again on the subject of jobs, I have got friends on the other side of
the aisle who maybe have not run a business. The gentleman from Iowa
and myself and the gentleman from Colorado all come here as previous
business owners. My friends on the other side of the field who maybe
have not had a business, they really do have a curiosity. Why do we
have this growth in our economy, why do we have an economy pushing
upward at 8.2 percent in the third quarter, at 4 percent in the first
quarter of this year? Alan Greenspan said it looks like we are on a
sustained growth period for 4 percent through this year, probably next
year. Why are the jobs not coming around?
If you will simply think about it, Mr. Speaker, in terms of when you
had your first job, many companies are afraid to add people on for fear
that they will have to lay them back off if the economy is still
dipping up and down. We find that, as business owners, we do not hire
immediately when we have a need. We begin to expand our capacity by
increasing overtime hours. Maybe we just stay late and work every
evening and have everybody work on the weekends. But you cannot sustain
that, you cannot wear your people out, you cannot treat people like a
commodity. You cannot do that indefinitely. In my perception, I have
never expected to see the jobs react immediately when the growth in the
economy came because I, as a businessperson, would not hire people
right away.
But now we are seeing that our businesses are sustaining this growth,
they are sustaining increased demand, they cannot continue to take care
of the demand for labor with overtime hours, with temporary workers;
and so it is not surprising that this job growth has lagged behind the
growth in the economy. I would expect, Mr. Speaker, that we have such a
volatility in the world economy that we will probably peak out and we
will stabilize and level off here on job creation, and then we will see
another ramp-up a couple of months down the road. It is just the way
that I think businesses are very careful in these times to not hire too
soon.
When we talk about the number of jobs being created and the number of
jobs lost, a lot of times our friends on the other side of the aisle
are talking about the number of jobs lost in the last couple of years
and they make the numbers sound very good. It is important to remember,
Mr. Speaker, that America has about 138 million jobs. While we hate to
see any worker displaced, we have to keep it in perspective. We have to
understand the balance that is there between 138 million jobs and even
the creation of these 300,000 jobs, no matter how important it is, is
still just a very small change, that most Americans are finding great
stability and they are seeing in their daily lives the stability that
this economy is bringing in.
We have to understand that the changes that occurred on 9/11 really
were systemic changes. For a narrow period of time, people began to
stay home. They did not travel. They did not go to the bowling alley at
night. They did not go out to eat quite as much. The spending in this
economy after 9/11 changed dramatically and shocked our economy into a
recession that we are just now coming out of. It is not possible for an
economy just to change itself and to grow out of its recession.
I think the stimulating effect of the President's tax cut is one of
the most important things that we did. When people on the other side of
the aisle are saying that we should give tax increases back to a
certain piece of the population, we have to keep an element in mind,
that when government spending increases beyond a certain level, and in
general economists think that within the 20 to 24 percent level, if
government spending increases beyond that, then the economy does not
have the capital to reinvest in growth, to reinvest in new jobs and in
new factories and in new equipment. What a tax cut
[[Page H2142]]
does is it lowers the amount that the government is actually spending
as a piece of the gross domestic product.
If we want a good example of what high government spending will do to
an economy, we look at Europe and especially we look at our friends in
Germany. Their government spends approximately 40 to 44 percent of
every dollar spent in Germany. Because of that, they have a sluggish
economy that cannot create jobs, and they have been wrestling with that
for some time. I visited in Germany on my way back from Iraq in early
November. The Germans were telling us that maybe if you get your
economy going in America that we can get our economy going here. They
are unwilling, though, to give the tax cuts or to cut spending. Either
one would cause a lessening of the percent of gross domestic product.
Because of their unwillingness, their economy stays mired and stagnant.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be a part of the Republican Party, which
has cast a pro-growth initiative in this entire 2 years that I have
been in Congress. I am proud as a freshman to have participated in
creating policies that will educate our young people, creating the
opportunities for them for a lifetime, giving them hope and access to
the potential that this great Nation has. I am proud that the President
has created an initiative to continue that lifetime training for those
young people as they prepare for technical careers. I am proud to have
passed this transportation bill which will create many, many new jobs.
I am proud to have voted for an energy bill that will create more
domestic sources of energy, less dependence on international sources of
energy. That bill needs to be passed. There are people in this town who
are blocking it from being passed and it needs to be passed.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from New Mexico, and I would
address some of the cleanup issues here. I would like to point out,
also, that as Republicans, we stand here in this Congress together and
we work toward a common goal. Those who have been listening here will
hear a consistent voice about the progress that we have made, the Jobs
and Growth Act, the transportation bill that just passed here in this
Congress this afternoon, a number of other initiatives that have been
good on balance for all of America. That is not to imply that we think
our work is done. It is not to imply that we think our work is perfect.
In fact, one of the approaches I have to life is I am always looking
back and seeing what should we have done better, the lament I have
about how we had an opportunity that could have been better capitalized
on than the opportunities that we have had; and those are the things
that motivate many of us to go forward into the future and try to
perfect a policy that we always recognize is imperfect.
Some of the pieces hanging around out here that do need to be
addressed is the regulation burden that is on the backs of American
businesses. How do we move to another level? We have the strongest
growth of any industrialized country in the world right now. We heard
that in the President's speech in this city last night. We have the
strongest growth, but that is not good enough. Those who rest on their
laurels will soon be swallowed up by those who do not. It puts me in
mind of a quotation that I recall, I cannot attribute it to an
individual, but someone will know and, that is, that history is the
sound of hobnail boots storming up the stairs and silver slippers
coming down. That is what we are in danger of, is moving into these
silver slippers and being complacent and settling into our easy chairs
while those folks that are a little more hungry and a little more
aggressive, those folks that will get out of bed and go to work a
little earlier, work a little later and will maybe work for a little
bit less are putting pressure on this economy. We need to do a number
of things to improve our economy in the direction we are going.
We talked about energy. I am pleased with the animation that comes
out of my colleagues on energy. It animates me. I was able to go to
Alaska with the gentleman from New Mexico to ANWR. I recall flying over
that 19.5 million acres of ANWR. Of that 19.5 million, 1.5 million is
the area that has oil underneath it. It is the coastal plain. It is an
arctic desert coastal plain. The elevations vary just a little bit from
sea level across there. We flew over 1.5 million acres of that coastal
plain looking for wildlife. ANWR stands for Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge. One would think that place would be teeming with wildlife. In
fact, they told us that the caribou come for about 4 to 6 weeks in the
spring, have their calves and go back to Canada. The rest of the time
they are gone. We looked around for wildlife from that plane ride over
and back along that coastal plain, two different routes, all of us
searching. I saw two white birds and four musk oxen. I did the math on
that. I divided the 4 musk oxen into 1.5 million acres of coastal
plain. It comes out to 375,000 acres per ox. I did not see them all.
There were some more there, but there is plenty of room for people and
for musk oxen and for caribou. In fact, the caribou herd on the north
slope, a different herd that has lived now with the pipeline since 1972
when it began, that herd was 7,000 in 1972, and today it is 28,000.
Caribou do very well in that kind of an environment.
But aside from energy and the policies that we need to promote
ethanol, promote biodiesel. I have got wind in my district. Some of
that wind is getting cost competitive. It is not just some States like
New Mexico or Colorado that are energy States. Iowa and the Fifth
Congressional District of Iowa is an energy export center. All of those
policies we need to do to move forward with our domestic production
puts me in mind of a commercial that I watched on television. I have to
phrase it this way. The apparent Democrat nominee for President of the
United States has a commercial that ran in Iowa for months and months.
It made three points. It said, I blocked the oil drilling in ANWR, and
I will never send your sons and daughters over to the Middle East to
fight for foreign oil, and I will create 500,000 new jobs. That was the
equation.
There are some smart people in this Congress, but I have yet to find
anybody that can put that equation together and reconcile those three
points. Stop domestic production and be proud of that and why, I have
no idea. I want to promote domestic production consistent with sound
environmental science, not religion, but science. And so blocking that
production does not help new jobs except exports them overseas. And
then never sending sons and daughters over to the Middle East to fight
for foreign oil. If you declare it to be a police action, then you can
fight on this country and you will turn this Nation into one huge
Israel where we can only then guard every theater, guard every bus
stop, guard every school and every hospital and every church and still
see our women and children blown to bits. This is not a police action.
This is not a law enforcement problem. This is a war on terror, and we
are not in Iraq fighting for foreign oil. We are in Iraq having freed
25 million people in Iraq. And so that equation does not work.
And creating 500,000 new jobs, well, at the rate this economy is
going, in another couple of weeks, we will have that done within the
last 6 weeks. I can do the math on that. I did the math. 308,000 new
jobs in the last month, times 12, that is just one month of growth,
that comes out to be 3,696,000 jobs. That is an annual rate of job
growth. I maybe would take issue with a couple of the gentlemen that
spoke ahead of me. We do want job growth to go on. If it goes on at
this pace, we will soon run out of people willing to do the work at any
price. We will not have enough bodies to do it. This is excellent,
extraordinary economic growth. I do not know that it is sustainable,
but it is awfully good news.
One of the things we need to do to sustain our economy is to reduce
this burden of litigation and regulation that is on us. I sat in on a
presentation by some business executives, it has been about a year ago
now, up in New York City. The presentation came down to this final
number: 3 percent of our gross domestic product is being consumed by
the litigation process, class action lawsuits. If you eat too many
French fries, sue McDonald's, those kinds of ideas. The tobacco
lawsuits which put a price on the cigarettes that goes regressively
against the people that are the greatest users, Mr. Speaker.
And so as you add up the cost of the litigation in this country, and
it adds up to 3 percent of our GDP, and you
[[Page H2143]]
think in terms of about 3.5 percent GDP is required in order for us to
move forward and grow with our economy and sustain the necessities for
the infrastructure that we need to build out, 3.5 percent required for
that, but the trial lawyers get 3 percent off the top.
{time} 1515
That means we have got to grow at 6.5 percent to sustain that, and I
think we need to do some things with regard to tort reform. In the
Committee on the Judiciary, we have passed a number of them. Nothing
broad enough. Nothing broad enough that may have a real impact on this
3 percent.
Plus the burden of regulation in this country, just Federal
regulations that are on the backs of all those businesses, the
gentleman from New Mexico's (Mr. Pearce) business and my construction
business before I sold it to my oldest son, actually less than a year
ago, and the gentleman from Colorado's (Mr. Beauprez) business as well,
the burden of those Federal regulations adding up across this country
to over $850 billion a year. That is wasted money. That is not
productive. It is not things in the productive sector of the economy
where jobs are created.
Where we have jobs created in the productive sector of the economy,
there are contributions that come from taxes that help to fund
government, and when that happens then there is a little money left
over for No Child Left Behind, and that is some cleanup.
The gentleman from Ohio made a statement that they are underfunded on
No Child Left Behind by $1.5 billion. Well, I hope he is sitting over
in his office listening to this, because he needs to take a look at the
real process here, and America needs to understand it as well.
There is authorization, and then there is appropriation. Those two
numbers do not match. Authorization says we can go ahead and
appropriate maybe up to this amount, cap it there, no more, but use
judgment to hold this into fiscal restraint. This number that is being
claimed by the gentleman from Ohio on No Child Left Behind, this $1\1/
2\ billion, I can only assume, if it is anchored on anything, it is
anchored on authorization, not appropriation. There is not a way that
one can calculate that and make that allegation that we owe $1\1/2\
billion to Ohio unless it has been appropriated, and if it is
appropriated the money would be there, and the difference needs to be
understood.
This claim, by the way, if we look back through the records, the last
time the Democrats had a majority in the House and the Senate and the
Presidency and they got a chance to fund education to their will, they
had an authorization number and then they had an appropriation number,
and they did not match. But the folks on the other side of the aisle
were not here saying, ``We are underfunded, Mr. President.'' That is
the issue here, is the credibility aspect between authorization,
appropriation.
I yield to the gentleman from north New Mexico.
Mr. PEARCE. Southern New Mexico, Mr. Speaker, I border on the Mexico
border, and my district is about as large as the State of Iowa.
I would like to go back to the cost of lawsuits to American business
and what it costs each individual. Basically, the frivolous lawsuits in
America cost each one of us 5 percent off of our wages. That is an
approximate cost of $807 per U.S. citizen. That is across the board.
Litigation costs increase insurance premiums, create higher medical
costs. They cause less disposable income in our homes. They raise
prices on goods and services. Businesses have to charge a higher price
in order to cover the cost of litigation. This slows job growth and
expansion of the economy.
The U.S. Chamber last year in my district ran ads. They were telling
the New Mexico citizens that for every new car they buy, they pay over
$500 for the costs of litigation that are acquiring on that car
manufacturer somewhere.
One of my friends from Ohio said that we must stop making policy
based on the contributions to campaigns. I would like to hold him to
that statement. The single largest contributor to our friends on the
other side of the aisle are the personal injury lawyers. They are the
ones who are buying influence, and they are the ones who are blocking
the reforms of lawsuit litigation abuses in this country.
This House has passed medical liability reform, it has passed
asbestos liability reform, it has passed class action lawsuit reform,
and they sit stalled out because of the special interests who are
buying influence here exactly like my friend from Ohio from the other
side of the aisle was talking about. I hope that he will join me with
as much enthusiasm as he was displaying on the floor of the House to
talk about the special interests purchasing the system here in
Washington, and that special interest group being the personal injury
lawyers of America.
Mr. Speaker, if we are going to consider the environmental cost, the
environmental tax on each product in America, we also need to consider
the lawsuit cost, the litigation cost, on every product in America.
Because it comes from each one of us every time a lawsuit is filed. No
one of us would block access to the courts for people who have a
serious, legitimate legal claim, but the frivolous lawsuits are
designed never to go to court but instead to extract a payment from a
company without going to court for a perceived injustice.
Very rarely do the members of the class, those people, the class of
the class action, the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who
are put on the class action lawsuit by the lawyers, very rarely do they
get anything. I have heard payments as low as 25 cents for each
claimant in a class action lawsuit, while the lawyers get millions and
sometimes billions of dollars.
If we are going to improve the business climate in America, if we are
going to stop the outflow of jobs from this country, we will deal with
the frivolous lawsuits that really affect the ability of any company in
this country to continue to produce goods and services and produce jobs
for the people who want to live here and to raise their children in
just a peaceful, quiet neighborhood, knowing that they have the
security of a job for tomorrow. Lawsuit abuse is one of the greatest
penalties in our system, both personal and corporate, that we face.
I yield back to the gentleman to conclude. This is all of my
statement, and I do thank the gentleman for bringing this conversation
to the floor of the House on this day when it is announced that, under
the President's policies, under President Bush's policies, 308,000 new
jobs have been created in March. I thank the gentleman for his
leadership on this issue.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico
(Mr. Pearce) for his comments.
Mr. Speaker, another subject matter I would like to raise is in
rebuttal to the remarks made by the previous speakers from the Ohio
delegation, and that would be with regard to unemployment and the very
strong statements made on why we need to extend and expand unemployment
benefits. We have done that in this Congress, and it has been up for a
vote twice in a little more than a year that I have been here, and I
will tell the Members that I come to the table with a little bit
different viewpoint on that.
That is, first of all, the demand on a minimum wage increase and
possibly the discussion that has to do with a living wage; and I want
to argue that there is hardly a legitimate minimum wage in this country
at all. Most people are working for more than the minimum wage. Our
economy has grown past that, and the minimum wage itself sometimes
keeps people from getting in entry level.
I pointed out that it used to be one could drive into a gas station
anywhere and some young person would come out there, entry-level job,
and wash the windshield, check the oil, check the air in the tires, and
fill the gas tank up and bring them their change and send them along
their way. That was kind of a nice service, and they learned a work
ethic. We do not do that anymore, and one of the reasons is because of
minimum wage.
But labor is an equation just like any other commodity. Labor is a
commodity, and it is like corn and beans or oil, as we talked about
earlier, or gold or shares in the marketplace. The value of labor is
predicated upon two things: the supply and the demand of labor, just
like the supply and demand of gold or oil, controls the price. So
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when we start to interfere with that cost and we raise that cost of
entry level labor up, then we are going to have some people who lose
out on jobs.
If we can legislate, by the way, a minimum wage, then I would
challenge then the next step is legislating a living wage. As I hear
about living wages, then I say, well, if we can raise that price up,
and living wage used to be claimed to be something like $8.56 an hour.
So if we could legislate a living wage, then why in the world could we
not just go ahead and legislate prosperity? If it does not cost jobs,
if people are not going to get unemployed because of raising a minimum
wage or moving up to a living wage, then let us all just be rich and
let us set that level someplace at $20 or $25 or $30 an hour, and then
we can all just share in this prosperity that would be legislated by
the wise people from over here on the other side of the aisle.
That does not work, because it is supply and demand. It is working.
That is why the real minimum wage is substantially higher than the
legislative statutory minimum wage.
Transportation, we passed that today. That puts dollars and jobs out
there. Transportation is the fundamental, foundational first building
block in economic development. Transportation, education, high-speed
telecommunications are those components today. Transportation was the
first component. It is the most essential component. We have now
started down the path of providing for those jobs and building the
American economy, but it can be stronger, and the bill could have been
better.
I cannot leave this closed without addressing some things that need
to be better, and that is the environmental burden on the
transportation cost. Eighteen point four cents of every American's gas,
when they put the nozzle in their tank, goes into this highway fund.
But of that 18.4 cents out of every gallon comes about 28 percent just
to feed the E-tax, the environmental monster, the cult, a religious
type of environmental cultism, rather than a responsible way of dealing
with our environment. We cannot even inventory the offshore natural gas
reserves off the coast of Florida because of the barrier here in this
Congress because of the E-tax that is on us. So there is an
environmental piece to this.
Then there is a wage scale piece to this, the Davis-Bacon wage scale.
That will increase the cost of wages from 8 to 38 percent and actually
some statistics show 5 to 35 percent. But I will just say average that
all out and that comes to about 23 percent of this; this is higher than
it needs to be because of federally mandated wage scales. So we add the
28 percent for environmental, let us say 20 percent for the wage scale.
So we are at 48 percent, and we have not even dealt yet with mass
transit, bike trails, money for scrubbing the graffiti off the walls.
Come on. Do we not have some people in our prisons that we could give
them a wire brush and send them out there? Why are we imposing that
upon the taxpayers of America to clean off the graffiti? Is that not a
local issue?
So when we add all these pieces up, I will argue that we can come to
68 percent, maybe 71 percent of this can go somewhere else to be funded
if, in fact, we believe it should be a priority whatsoever. I want
every dime possible out of those transportation dollars to go into
concrete and earth moving and pipe work and transportation that can be
used to grow our economy, and I pledge here and now to move forward
with this over the next 6 years if they send me back to do so in order
to try to turn those dollars in a more responsible fashion for
transportation.
We are doing a lot of the right things, Mr. Speaker. We need to
continue improving on every single component where we claim credit. We
will get better, and we have got a lot to claim credit for, including
308,000 new jobs just in this past month alone.
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