[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

[[Page H2144]]

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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