[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 122 (Thursday, July 24, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H7155-H7161]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            AMERICAN ENERGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the honor to be 
recognized on the floor of the United States Congress. I also 
appreciate the presentation that has been delivered by the gentleman 
from Ohio and from the gentlelady of Minnesota, and I appreciate being 
able to listen to the presentation, knowing that they have been to ANWR 
just recently, within the past week or so, and have seen some of the 
things that I had seen there several years ago. What they see today is 
much of what I saw then.
  It's interesting that they flew across that coastal plain for 2 hours 
with everybody on the plane looking and looking for wildlife, and they 
didn't see any. I remember I did see some. I saw four musk oxen. I 
remember the pilots actually spotted them, and they announced back to 
the plane that they had seen four musk oxen, and they were quite 
excited that they had seen wildlife in the Arctic National Wildlife 
Refuge. This was the airplane crew who had flown that coastal plain 
over and over again. I was surprised at that excitement.
  I wouldn't have gotten that excited if I'd have looked down and had 
seen a deer. I might have if I'd seen a buffalo but not a deer.
  In any case, it's quite a thing to see that the people who had made 
the trip to ANWR saw the things that I saw, confirmed the things that I 
confirmed, gave speeches here on the floor of Congress tonight, and 
then let the rest of the world know that the things that I've been 
saying have been true all along, right down to ``there are no trees up 
there, Mr. Speaker, not a single tree.''
  I recall giving a speech at the Iowa State Fair where I made that 
statement. The allegation was made in a very impolite way that that 
wasn't true. So the newspaper that Iowa depends upon decided they would 
go find a contrary view from mine when I said there were no trees in 
ANWR. They found a botanist--I believe he was at Iowa State 
University--who must have gone through and searched the Internet and 
found out that there is, at least allegedly, a tiny, little weed up 
there that grows about 10- to 12-feet high at the most, and it's 
technically a tree. There's not enough wood in that to make a 
toothpick, but it's technically a tree.
  So, if they found a botanist who said there was a tree in ANWR--and 
supposedly that's a rebuttal--I'd just say: Who has seen one? I don't 
think anybody has seen one up there. We know that the Arctic Circle is 
the line north of which trees cannot grow. This is the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge, a frozen tundra coastal plain. When it has had any 
disturbance on the tundra, it has not been from the oil pipeline, and 
it has not been from the drillers in a significant way, but it happens 
sometimes when Native Americans get to moving around up there. They 
tell me they just drag it smooth, and in 5 to 6 years, the tundra has 
all grown back where it was. I've seen it. I know what it looks like. 
What my eyes see confirms for my head and for my heart.
  So I think this point has been made very clear. I don't know how a 
thinking, living, breathing American could listen to the dialogue that 
took place here in the last hour and conclude that we shouldn't drill 
in ANWR. It is an ideal place for there to be oil. It's an ideal place 
for us to extract oil, and we have the transmission system up there. I 
think we'd have to add another 74-mile pipeline.
  There is something on which I might have a little bit of a marginal--
not disagreement, but I'd just say here is the little way I see it 
differently from Mrs. Bachmann's statement, which is that, in 3 years, 
we'd have oil coming out of ANWR and coming down the pipeline. We did 
the entire North Slope and the entire Alaska pipeline and 600 miles of 
right-of-way. We drilled the wells, put it all together, built the 
industry up there, and had oil coming out of the pipeline in 3 years, 
from '72 till '75, marginally a little bit more than 36 months, but 
still, within 3 calendar years, there was oil coming out of that 
pipeline. There was an 800-mile pipeline. There were 600 miles of 
right-of-way. Drill the wells. Pick up the collection. Get it to the 
terminal at Mile Post Zero where the caribou congregate. That was in 3 
years.
  So I believe this, that if America makes up its mind, we can do it, 
if we did a Manhattan Project and started to build an atom bomb after 
the beginning of World War II and, to end the war, we'd had two ready 
and two dropped. We did that. President Kennedy said--and I think the 
year was 1963--we're going to go to the Moon. In 1969, we were on the 
Moon.
  How can a nation that has that technical ability, a nation of smart, 
industrious people who have tamed everything we've decided to tame and 
that we've always done in record time--has something happened to our 
soul? Has something happened to our spirit that we would capitulate to 
the Lilliputian ropes that tie down America's greatness--the ropes of 
regulation? the ropes of environmental extremism? What's wrong with our 
spirit that we would let people like this hold America back? They would 
shut our economy down.
  If somebody shuts down the valve at the Strait of Hormuz, that shuts 
off 42.6 percent of the world's export oil supply. Ahmadinejad has 
threatened to do just that, and he has also threatened to annihilate 
Israel, and he is determined to move forward in building nuclear 
weapons. He has said so even if the CIA in the NIE report some months 
ago said, no, we concluded back in 2003 that they quit trying. Not 
true. They're continually trying to enrich uranium. They are enriching 
uranium. They showed it to us on our own television sets. They're 
developing missiles to deliver a weapon. They showed us that on our 
television sets.
  Why would we argue with the Iranians? Do we think they're 
perpetrating some kind of hoax?

[[Page H7156]]

  It didn't work out so well for Saddam Hussein when he sought to 
perpetrate some kind of a hoax. They thought we were bluffing, and now 
we won't take them at their word, and we will watch in this Congress as 
the San Francisco, Pelosi-led Congress shuts down every avenue of 
energy development that we can create? Well, every one except maybe 
they're okay with wind as long as it isn't out off of Nantucket. As 
long as Teddy Kennedy can't see it from his yacht, we can have some 
wind energy. They aren't so bad with geothermal because they don't see 
it very much, and they don't understand it as much as they see it. Then 
let's see. There must be some other things--solar, wind, geothermal. So 
we can have a little solar, too, but not if it means we've got to put 
solar panels out there across the desert, because that's unsightly.

  So they worship the goddess, Mother Earth, and despise the idea of 
free market capitalism. They shut down the economy. You know, I think 
they're also aware that, as to the energy supplies that we have, as 
soon as we drill a well and we get that well up to production, that's 
the maximum that that well is going to produce for a day, and then its 
production day by day tapers off. That's the case with the energy as we 
develop it, so we constantly have to be out there exploring for new 
energy. That's the point, I think, that maybe wasn't made in the last 
hour that's essential for us in this hour.
  I see that my good friend from California, Mr. Royce, has arrived on 
the floor, and he knows that I have offered an open invitation by my 
very presence here. I'd be so happy to yield so much time as he may 
consume to the astute gentleman from California.
  Mr. ROYCE. Well, perhaps I could engage the gentleman from Iowa in a 
discussion here of the fact that I don't think many were really paying 
attention in this country over the last few years, but today, 80 
percent of oil reserves are owned by nationalized oil companies of 
foreign governments. We don't think a lot about this, but if we 
reflect, we will remember that, in many cases, the property has been 
seized and that OPEC now controls these assets through cartels 
overseas. As a matter of fact, it controls about 80 percent.
  In my view, I think Congress sort of shrugged off the testimony of 
our former CIA Director, who warned of the OPEC cartel spearheaded by 
Saudi Arabia, deliberately lowering production levels in order to drive 
the price of oil up. Now, as it turns out, the price of oil they 
managed to drive up to $140 a barrel. In his view, this was a bid to 
siphon $10 trillion over the next 10 years from our economy here into 
the coffers of the OPEC members.
  So I wanted to just touch briefly on the national security component 
of this. I think Congress watched as the Chairman of the Federal 
Reserve Board explained that our supplies in oil are so tight in the 
United States today that a 1 percent increase in supply could lower 
costs by 10 percent. Just 2 weeks ago, our Federal Reserve Chairman, 
Ben Bernanke, testified to that point.
  So what is the studied indifference as consumers and policymakers lay 
out the case for more supply?
  My concern is that the Democratic leadership has made a commitment to 
maintain the moratoriums against new drilling, new refineries, new 
nuclear power, the opportunity to extract oil from shale. Like my 
colleague from Iowa, I believe that market economics still have 
consequences and that the American Energy Act, which we have 
cosponsored which would lift these prohibitions, would increase supply 
by 33 percent. Now, if a 1 percent increase in supply drives down the 
price in the estimate of the Federal Reserve Chairman by 10 percent, 
what would a 33 percent increase in supply do for the price?
  You know, a majority of the House of Representatives, I now believe, 
is feeling enough heat back home that they would vote for increased 
supply, but the congressional leadership has blocked not only the 
American Energy Act, but the Democratic leadership has also blocked all 
other amendments that might lift any of the prohibitions from coming to 
the House floor.
  Well, under this American Energy Act that the gentleman from Iowa and 
I are supporting, we would open our deep water ocean resources. That 
would provide another 3 million barrels of oil per day to our domestic 
supply. Currently, we use 20 million barrels a day. Now, Cuba and 
Venezuela are already operating in these waters. It would open the 
Arctic coastal plain. That would provide an additional 1 million 
barrels of oil a day. Now the Russian oil exploration is already 
operating in the Arctic today. It would develop our Nation's oil shale 
resources, providing an additional 2.5 million barrels per day. Canada 
is developing its oil shale resources.
  It would cut the red tape that hinders the construction of new 
refineries. None have been built in the last 31 years. It would extend 
the tax credit for alternative energy production, including wind and 
solar and hydrogen, and it would eliminate barriers to the expansion of 
nuclear power production. As we know, France gets 80 percent of its 
energy from nuclear power. My State of California gets 12\1/2\ percent.
  So, today, the OPEC cartel controls more than three-quarters of the 
world's global oil reserves, and it severely restricts both supply and 
access to its oil fields. This is one of the factors that helps cause 
this dramatic spike in the price of oil, which not only hits consumers 
at the pump but which, frankly, harms nearly every aspect of our 
economy, and the moratoriums here maintained by the Democratic 
leadership, in my view, help drive up energy costs and risk further 
sinking this economy.
  This is the reason I've come to the floor, to make the case to have 
our colleagues bring this bill before the floor of the House of 
Representatives.

                              {time}  2215

  I don't know of a case where we have gone so long without an 
appropriations bill before this Congress. Article I, section 9, clause 
7 of the Constitution says that, ``No money shall be drawn from the 
Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.''
  Normally, we have the 13 appropriations bills that come out of our 
committees that fund every government agency, but this is being held 
off. And one of the reasons why we are not having these votes on the 
House floor is because of the concern that we might bring up these 
amendments. We might attach this Act to one of the appropriations 
bills.
  And we've gone over 200 years on this House floor, and the House has 
never gone into the August recess without passing a single 
appropriations bill. In fact, the House has always passed at least one 
appropriations bill prior to July 9.
  And I am concerned that the Democrat leadership is so insistent on 
blocking any votes to increase energy production that they are rolling 
over until the end of the year all of the work that this Congress--and 
we will have one omnibus bill in which we cannot bring up any of these 
amendments to increase energy production in the United States.
  I would ask if my colleague from the State of Iowa shares my concern.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from California, and I 
appreciate you bringing this to the floor and laying it out with the 
clarity that you have.
  Supply and demand, as you're speaking, I'm thinking, let's see, if 
there was 32 percent more corn on the market--being from Iowa, I think 
in those terms--that might be, say, 4\1/2\ billion bushels more corn on 
the market, maybe a little more than that. I'm pretty sure if we dump 
4\1/2\ billion bushels of corn supposedly that we found somewhere on 
the market, the price would go down.
  I was also thinking about Adam Smith when he wrote in his famous book 
``Wealth of Nations,'' published in 1776, how it was that the cost of 
everything that we produce is the sum total of the capital and the 
labor required to produce whatever the commodity is. And he wrote about 
how the price of gold plummeted in Europe when the Spanish galleons 
returned from the New World loaded with gold. But he didn't say because 
of supply and demand strictly. He said it was because they had figured 
out how to take the price of labor out of the production of gold. They 
stole the gold, but the effect was the labor got cheap.
  Supply and demand works for gold, it works for corn, and it works for 
oil. It works for everything including labor. They're all commodities. 
And some of the things that can affect that, of course, are the value 
of our dollar. I'd like to see that dollar shored up.
  When I look at these bushels--excuse me, I'm thinking like an Iowan--
when

[[Page H7157]]

I look at these million barrels, 3 million a day off the gulf as 
described by the gentleman from California, 1 million a day out of the 
arctic region up there, 2\1/2\ million in oil shale, those are really 
just for starters. We've always found more oil than we predicted was 
there, and it will be the case this time.
  On the subject matter of what it is that this Imperial Pelosi 
Congress won't let us vote on, this is the production chart for the 
United States of America for energy. And we need to, Mr. Speaker, talk 
about energy from the concept of total Btus of energy. We have to put 
it in one common measurement. So, rather than gallons or cords of wood, 
whatever it might be, we put this into Btus and energy.
  This is all of the energy sources that we have here that we produce 
in the United States. And as we go around the edge here, I'll start 
right in here. Hydroelectric power, nuclear. Coal, 32\1/2\ percent of 
our overall production is coal. Natural gas, 27\1/2\ percent of our 
overall production is natural gas. Then you've got heavy petroleum, 
like asphalt and those kind of oils. Jet fuel, kerosene, diesel fuel's 
in red, and gasoline in blue, biomass, and a lot of that's wood. People 
are burning more wood today because of the cost of energy in pink. Then 
you get down to these tiny little slivers, biodiesel, nine-one 
hundredths of 1 percent. Ethanol fuel, .76 of 1 percent; solar, .11 of 
1 percent; wind, .44; geothermal, .49. This is it.
  Now, I would take you around this chart, and we're going to find that 
the folks that, I will say, worship at the altar of Mother Earth object 
to nearly every kind of energy that we produce in the United States. 
They object to a lot of the biofuels because it is burning wood, and it 
puts carbon dioxide in the air. The biomass, they've objected to.
  Gasoline, we know the objection to that, and we have people in here 
that would rather have you ride your bicycle and they think that if gas 
prices go to $4 or $5 or more a gallon, more people will ride their 
bikes.
  Fewer will get in their car. That will save the environment, and they 
can save Mother Earth. That's what they're thinking. So we can't 
develop anymore gasoline here in the United States or diesel fuel or 
jet fuel or heavy oils. That's all in the same kind of hydrocarbon, 
comes out of the same well, the crude oil well. That's all verboten, 
according to the Speaker's team from San Francisco.
  And you get to natural gas. They have to drill wells to do that, and 
they've got us blocked offshore. They've got us blocked on non-national 
park public lands. Sometimes we can drill there, but we can't get 
access, and we can't lay pipelines, and we know that we can't transport 
natural gas unless we can conduct it through a pipeline or turn it into 
liquefied natural gas.
  By the way, we had a vote on the floor today on a motion to recommit 
on a bill that would have opened up a bridge that's blocking tankers 
that are coming into Massachusetts with liquefied natural gas. They 
blocked that. They don't even want liquefied natural gas coming in up 
their little river, even though the Federal taxpayers pay for the 
bridge that's already replaced the one that's keeping the tankers from 
going underneath it.
  That tells you where they are with natural gas, and that's 
Massachusetts mentality that teams up with some of that left coast 
mentality, not all of it by any means.
  And the coal, it's almost to the point now--I happen to know of one 
expansion of a coal-fired generation plant. There may be more. But the 
people that are putting these plants together say we can't meet the 
regulations anymore. They're getting tighter and tighter. So coal-fired 
generating plants are pretty much off the table.
  You kind of see, and I'm going around here, off the table all the way 
around. Nuclear, no, off the table. They're afraid of a Chernobyl, even 
though our technology doesn't melt down that way. It actually cools, 
instead of warms. So the greens are afraid of nuclear.
  Hydroelectric, boy, now there is a superclean, wonderful, natural 
resource that renews itself. It rains, water runs down the river, comes 
through the turbine, spins it, generates electricity. What could be 
better than that? But a strong contingent of environmental extremists 
want to put all of our rivers back to where they were before because 
they don't believe we should even think or attempt to improve upon 
Mother Nature.
  So I've gone all the way around here. Hydroelectric power, that was 
the piece there. And what's left?
  When you add this all up, all of these things are forbidden by one 
entity or another. Even wind has resistance to it because people think 
that birds are going to fly into those windmills. And I can tell you, I 
can see 17 of them from my house. They have hundreds of them in my 
district. There aren't piles of dead birds underneath there. It's more 
dangerous to the birds when you drive your car down the road. They can 
at least see that windmill coming and they tend to avoid it.
  So I can only find three sources of energy that maybe, maybe we could 
expand, and that would be--by the way, ethanol, biodiesel, that's food 
versus fuel, so there's a resistance there. So we end up with wind, 
unless Teddy Kennedy can see it; geothermal, as long as you can't see 
it; and what do they have, solar.
  Now, these tiny little pieces here, if you add up of our overall 
production, that's .49, .44 and .11. Now I haven't done that. That's a 
little bit over 1 percent of our overall energy production is what 
they're going to let us expand to produce 100 percent of the energy 
that we can consume.
  And Mr. Speaker, we're producing only 72 percent of the energy that 
we're consuming. So this energy pie isn't big enough. It's only 72 
percent big enough to provide the energy necessary to fuel the United 
States and keep our economy going.
  By the way, just providing enough energy isn't good enough. We can 
always buy enough energy until we go flat bloke. We have got to have 
enough energy that's economical for our industry to run, that's 
economical for people to engage in travel and enjoy life and be able to 
exercise our freedoms.
  Mr. ROYCE. If the gentleman would yield, what would the gentleman 
think the consequence would be over the next 10 years presuming that 
these moratoriums are kept in place? We can't do anything, presume for 
a moment, to address the issue that the Federal Reserve Chairman 
warned, that the supply of energy is so tight that a 1 percent increase 
in supply would drop prices by 10 percent. Let's say that things remain 
as they are, we don't get any additional sources for production because 
of the moratoriums. What do you think the consequences would be of the 
transfer of $10 trillion out of this economy over the next 10 years 
into OPEC, into the members of the OPEC cartel?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, I think that we already see the heavy signs 
of those consequences, that when dictators become rich, they also 
become belligerent, and they begin to think that--well, actually, 
they're measuring their power. It's their economic power, and a lot of 
them run contrary to our values here in Western civilization. So we 
have more conflicts to face, and we're going to have to do it with less 
resources, and a Nation whose economy could no longer be thriving will 
have transferred our wealth overseas.
  Mr. ROYCE. If the gentleman will yield, I think it's pretty clear at 
this point that high gas prices are hurting the pocketbook of families 
across this country. Family budgets are strained. And the bottom line 
is we are pushing for short- and long-term solutions to lower gas 
prices and to address our future energy needs.
  We're doing that with the American Energy Act, which is going to 
provide tax incentives for businesses and families that purchase more 
fuel-efficient carts. It provides tax incentives to those that improve 
their energy efficiency. It permanently extends the tax credit for 
alternative energy production, including wind and solar and hydrogen. 
Barriers to the expansion of emission-free nuclear power production are 
eliminated in this piece of legislation. It spurs the development of 
alternative fuels.
  It's a balanced piece of legislation, which gives us more energy, and 
frankly, with gas prices increasing, it's vital that we utilize our 
Nation's vast energy supplies, and at the same time, we should continue 
to develop new, clean technology. And this would significantly reduce 
our use of foreign oil.

[[Page H7158]]

  That's what this bill is intended to do, and doing so is an economic 
necessity. It is vital to our national security. So I encourage our 
lawmakers, our colleagues to join us in this effort to bring this 
important piece of legislation to the floor for a vote.
  And I appreciate the gentleman from Iowa yielding to me, and I 
appreciate also his explanation of energy production and energy 
consumption here in the United States so that people can better 
understand just how tight the supply is and how great the need is for 
more energy production, to say nothing of the jobs, by the way, that 
this would create here in this country if we allowed more production.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from California for coming to 
the floor and bringing this issue forward, helping to frame it in the 
fashion that he has.
  And the segue gave me an opportunity to put up these two charts, and 
the chart that I just took down was the energy production chart. That 
was 72 quadrillion Btus of energy. The inside circle is the energy 
production chart, 72 quadrillion total energy production in the United 
States. The outside circle is the energy consumption in the United 
States. That's 101.4 quadrillion Btus.
  Now, those numbers don't mean a lot to anybody, I don't think, until 
you just put it in perspective. We are producing 72 percent of the 
energy that we're consuming, and if we're going to be energy 
independent, if we're going to stop transferring American wealth 
overseas, as the gentleman from California said, then we've got to 
produce as much energy as we consume.
  And I'm not stuck specifically on producing just as much gas as we 
burn or just as much diesel or just as much electricity in whichever 
fashion it is, but I'm insistent upon the idea that we go to full 
energy production, that if we produce enough Btus and natural gas to 
offset something we might use in coal, let the size of the proportion 
of these pie charts change a little bit depending upon what's most 
economical.
  But I do think natural gas needs to remain, as John Peterson of 
Pennsylvania said, the mother's milk of manufacturing and that it 
should not be the kind of energy that we're using to expand our 
electrical generation.

                              {time}  2230

  And natural gas is also the feedstock for 90 percent of our nitrogen 
fertilizer.
  And so there's two essential uses. And we can't turn over the 
nitrogen fertilizer production to places like Venezuela and Russia, but 
that's where it's going. We've almost lost the entire fertilizer 
industry in the United States because we haven't acted to open up these 
energy supplies. We know that we have 420 trillion cubic feet of 
natural gas, and that's known reserves. That's known reserves, and we 
still can't go offshore in many places and explore.
  So here's our answer: It is, expand all of these forms of energy, 
every single one. And yes, we need to expand--even the energy that 
Teddy Kennedy objects to, let's expand some wind and some geothermal 
and some solar. That's the three that seem to be the least 
objectionable. But let's do all the rest while we're at it.
  And this green one right here, nuclear; when you think we haven't 
built a nuclear plant since the mid-1970s, about 1975, there is a brand 
new one that's under construction in South Carolina today--and boy 
we're on a blitzkrieg to get that built--and it's going to be going 
online in 2017. Can you imagine a nation that--we can put the erector 
set together a lot faster than that, we just can't jump through all the 
regulatory hoops any faster than that. So the master switch gets thrown 
and the lights come on in South Carolina in 2017. And that is then the 
master manual for how to go through all of the regulatory and 
environmental red tape to build the next one after that.
  And there was a vote in South Dakota, a public referendum to build a 
new refinery in Union County, South Dakota, Elk Point area, $10 billion 
investment. The referendum passed in favor of it, 59-41, so they said 
most of us think it's okay to have a refinery in our back yard. That 
refinery is one that I think it has a very good chance of going, but 
even those who are driving this don't have the answer to every question 
on how they jump through all of the regulatory hoops that have been 
created.
  So here's an example: In 1970, when the oil companies wanted to go up 
to the North Slope of Alaska and open up Alaska for drilling, there was 
a court injunction that was slapped on them. That was a new thing then. 
I can remember being shocked that someone could come along and file a 
court case and shut down an entire region from development for energy.
  There used to be a thing called property rights in America, 
constitutional property rights, and that would be a taking of the 
property. They went in there and acquired those leases with all good 
intent and above board, and they were shut down by an environmentalist 
lawsuit that went to court in 1970. In 1972, the final litigation 
hurdle had been leaped and they began the construction of the 600 miles 
of right-a-way and the 800 miles of pipelines and all the wells and 
collector tubes and the terminals on the Alaska Pipeline.
  It took 2 years. And in 1972, I was astonished that anybody could 
hold up an operation like that for 2 years. And yet today, that seems 
like a blink of a litigative eye, 2 years. If we could resolve all the 
litigation that's holding up energy in 2 years, in 4 years we could 
have the energy problem solved. And that's because the trial lawyers, 
the environmentalists, the people that want to make their money off of 
litigation, the same kind of people that held up the Intelligence bill 
and put our Nation at risk, those who see profit in squeezing it out of 
somebody else, that's holding us up on energy, and the 
environmentalists.
  So now I add this up on production. All of these things are off the 
table by environmentalists:
  Can't do biomass, that burns wood, puts greenhouse gas in the air. 
Can't do motor gasoline, same reason. Can't do diesel fuel. Can't do 
jet fuel. None of the crude oil can we do because they're afraid it 
contributes to global warming. And as we come on around the horn, 
kerosene fits in that same category. Natural gas, I spoke to that. 
Coal, can't build any more coal-fire plants, or if we do, we've got 
some new hoops to jump through that no one has jumped through before.
  You get to the nuclear, and the French are producing 78 percent of 
their electricity by nuclear, and we're down here where our overall 
energy consumption is 8.29 percent. The percentage of our overall 
energy production is 11.66 percent. But nuclear is also off the table. 
I spoke about hydroelectric, off the table.
  So we get to add up geothermal and wind and solar. I add up those 
three things. And I happen to know that in our overall consumption, 
those three sources, geothermal, wind and solar, total .74 of 1 percent 
of our overall energy consumption. And if we're going to be 
independent, we're going to only expand those? What's your answer? Do 
you have an answer? I don't think so. I think you worship at the alter 
of mother nature.
  And your default position is to always go back to pre Garden of Eden. 
I don't think you can think beyond that. I'll say this, that I know who 
created this Earth; God created this Earth. And he gave us dominion 
over it, and the animals and the plants in it to be used respectfully. 
And yes, we can improve upon mother nature, we've done it many times. 
That's why we're given the gift of the intellect and free will that we 
have. And we're to be tested in this fashion. And I'm more than happy 
to rise to that occasion and be tested in this fashion. And this side 
of the aisle over there, you all think the default position is, go back 
to pre Garden of Eden, mother nature, whatever the random grab-bag 
thing it was that came out of Darwin's ``survival of the fittest'' 
before man intervened as an intervening species, whatever that was, 
that's the utopian version that you're after because you have no other 
standard. We'll, I just described the standard, look it up in Genesis.
  We can do this. We can produce all the energy that this country 
consumes by expanding all of these sources of energy from the 
production chart. Stretch it out to the outside limits of the 
consumption chart. We can do this, we must do this. And if we fail, the 
other people in the world--whom we are sending money to every day by 
the billions--will own us. And when they

[[Page H7159]]

own us, then they will tell us what to do and they will be our boss and 
our freedoms will be gone and diminished. And by the way, the people 
we're sending the money to for the most part don't believe much in 
freedom.
  And we're doing our best to encourage others to buy into the freedom 
model that we have. If we besmirch the freedom responsibility to make 
good decisions for the best long-term interests of the American people, 
we trail in the dust of golden hopes of the Founding Fathers.
  So much has been said about energy tonight, Mr. Speaker, and that 
makes my point on energy. I may come back and reiterate it, but I'll 
take up another subject matter that has me significantly concerned. And 
that is, that as we watch the Presidential race unfold, and we're 
watching as one of the Presidential candidates does his photo-op stops 
around the Middle East and Europe, and as that Presidential candidate--
and specifically the junior Senator from Illinois--has said that he 
expects to be in a leadership role for the next 10 years or so, he has 
already anointed himself as President. And so I would submit--and I 
don't hear anybody on the Democrat side say, wait a minute, calm down, 
that Presidential seal was a little bit of an overreach and the 
statement that you're going to be in command for the next 10 years 
means that, even if you win the Presidency this year and get re-elected 
4 years later, it's still not 10 years. So perhaps you can amend the 
Constitution and make such a prediction. Maybe you're such a marvel of 
nature you can do all of that, Mr. Obama.
  But even if you're half of what you say, that makes you the leader of 
the Democrat Party in the United States of America. That means that the 
people over here on this side of the aisle are seeking to accommodate 
the positions that you've taken, trying to make you look good as you 
run for the Presidency, applauding and supporting the globe trotting 
and the speech--that didn't take place at the Brandenburg gate today--
all of that adulation that goes on is surely affecting the agenda here 
on the floor of Congress. It has to be and it has to have been.
  For example, 40 different bills and resolutions brought to the floor 
of this House in the 110th Congress, all designed to underfund, unfund, 
deploy our troops out of Iraq and undermine the spirit and the will of 
our own fighting men and women, while they encourage our enemy. Forty 
bills and resolutions. All of those fit exactly with Obama's foreign 
policy, ``get out and get out now.''
  I'm a little amazed that he can argue that, when asked if the surge 
worked, he couldn't agree that the surge worked. He said it was a 
hypothetical question. What's hypothetical about sending 170,000 troops 
over into a combat zone? What's hypothetical about some of them that 
come back with a flag draped over their coffin? That's not 
hypothetical, Senator Obama. That's real life, it's real death, it's 
real families that gave their son or daughter, lost their husband or 
their wife for our freedom. And you can't answer frivolously and 
flippantly that it's a hypothetical question, did the surge work or 
didn't it work? Obviously it worked.
  And to argue that you have four points out there that the rest of--
the President and John McCain are coming around to, that they're 
agreeing with you because you said we ought to get out of Iraq back in 
2005--I think 2005 was the year that he said my position on Iraq is 
identical with that of President Bush. So I'm not sure when the first 
time was he said I think we should get out, but I know it was when we 
were under combat stress and pressure and things weren't going that 
well over there. And now I see him walking around the tarmac at Baghdad 
International--where I've been five times and I'll be again before this 
election cycle is over. And each time I've been there--hmm, I don't 
know about that. I think maybe the first time I arrived there I didn't 
wear a bullet-proof vest and I didn't wear a helmet. I think I went in 
there in casual khakis because the threat wasn't deemed to be as high 
as it turned out to be. The rest of the time I wore a bullet-proof vest 
and I wore a helmet. And I look there now, Senator Obama gets off of 
the plane or the helicopter, no bullet-proof vest, no helmet. Why is 
that? Senator, it's because the surge worked. The surge worked, and 
it's safe enough for you to walk around at Baghdad International in 
your shirt sleeves.
  A couple or 3 years ago, when I was walking around Baghdad 
International and I had security personnel standing between me and the 
line of fire, the other side of the concrete wall was the Mahdi 
militia, Muqtada-al Sadr's militia. They were controlling the civilian 
side of the airport. And the military side, by some truce--we didn't 
shoot each other much, I guess, through that concrete--held the other 
side. And today, the Mahdi militia is decimated and gone. Muqtada al-
Sadr, the bane of peace in Iraq, has gone from doing something he's not 
very good at. Now he's studying. He's no longer a general. When he 
loses his army, he goings off to be a scholar instead. And for him to 
get ramped back up again and ever be commanding a Mahdi militia looks 
pretty slim to the people I'm talking to.
  The reason, Obama, you can walk around on the tarmac at Baghdad 
International in shirt sleeves is because the surge worked. And the 
reason that we can pull some troops out of Iraq incrementally, as 
situations adjust on the ground, as they have been adjusting and 
continue to adjust on the ground, the reason is because the surge 
worked. And to take credit because some troops can come out of Iraq 
when you said ``pull them all out now, right now,'' and when you said, 
``I will, on my first day in office, order the immediate withdrawal of 
the troops from Iraq,'' the only condition, the only caveat was, I'll 
maintain a rear guard so they don't get shot in the back as they run 
off and get on board the troop ship, that's what's going on. You can't 
fool the American people in that.
  And you say that you want to send a couple of brigades to 
Afghanistan. Do it now, do it before the election. We can't wait until 
January 20--presuming, of course, that John McCain won't make the right 
decision. He's far more likely to make the right decision. And I 
actually think he's actually more likely to be President today. But to 
argue that we should send troops from Iraq to Afghanistan immediately 
is an obscene contradiction to the sacrifice that's been made by our 
military personnel that are there.
  It works like this; here's how the logic in the rational world goes: 
If President Bush has the insight and the courage to empower General 
Petraeus, recognize his leadership, allow him the time to go back and 
write the counter-insurgency manual, appoint him to command the troops 
in Iraq for the purposes of initiating the surge, make sure General 
Petraeus comes here before this Congress, explains it to us, we 
appropriate the money--you didn't have the nerve to shut the funding 
off because you didn't want to say, well, absolutely no to the troops 
because the disgrace of shutting the funding off and watching 3 million 
people die in Southeast Asia in 1975 comes back to haunt.
  The President had the vision to appoint General Petraeus. He had the 
vision to buy into that vision. He made the tough order. He put the 
troops on the line. They went there. The surge worked. The political 
solution flowed behind it and with it and in anticipation of it because 
they knew that we were going to be there for a period of time and would 
give the Iraqis time to get themselves established.
  If the surge worked in Iraq, Obama, tell me why----
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman is reminded that his remarks 
should be referred to the Chair
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge that statement as 
correct. And Mr. Speaker, I will direct my remarks to the Chair. I 
appreciate that.
  So Mr. Speaker, when I speak to you and echo this message across to 
the other Chamber, the idea that a surge didn't work in Iraq but it 
allowed Presidential candidates to walk around on the tarmac without a 
bullet-proof vest or a helmet, but it will work in Afghanistan?

                              {time}  2245

  That's a rationale that doesn't fit for the people in the Midwest. 
They know better. They've watched this. They stayed up to speed with 
what's going on, and they will not be fooled. And I will not be fooled 
either.
  So what we have is we have a situation where the political climate in 
this

[[Page H7160]]

Chamber, Mr. Speaker, seeks to meld and shape itself to a presidential 
campaign, to adopt those policies, to make it so it increases the odds 
that their candidate will be elected President.
  And part of this, Mr. Speaker, is unfolding tomorrow morning in the 
House Judiciary Committee. I don't know that this is published in the 
news media, but I know what I got in my Judiciary Committee hearing 
notice here within the last hour. This is a notice that says that there 
is going to be, for the first time in this millennia, impeachment 
hearings in the United States House of Representatives in the Judiciary 
Committee, impeachment hearings to consider impeachment of the 
President of the United States and the Vice President of the United 
States, starting at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning in room 2141 of the 
Rayburn House Office Building.
  I can only conclude, Mr. Speaker, that the initiative for this has to 
be approved by the presidential candidate of the party that controls 
the Judiciary Committee and this Chamber. There's no other conclusion 
that can be drawn. It is all politics all the time. There are no 
coincidences in politics. If a presidential candidate didn't want to 
have impeachment hearings going on, he'd make sure that they weren't 
going on. If a Speaker of the House or a chairman of the Judiciary 
Committee was considering such an idea to hold impeachment hearings, 
they would surely run it across the powers that be within their party 
so there wasn't a conflict that rose up to bite them. I have to 
believe, and I do believe, that this is with the full support and 
endorsement of the presidential candidate chosen by the party on the 
other side of the aisle.
  This is what we're up against tomorrow, Mr. Speaker. It's going to be 
an interesting day.
  I was not in this Congress during the impeachment hearings of 1998, 
although I was in this city. I came to this city to do a couple of 
conferences, and I picked up the Washington Post, and on about Page 4, 
there was a little clip in there that said impeachment hearings in the 
House Judiciary Committee, room 2141, open to the public, staring at 10 
o'clock in the morning. I believe the dates were the 7th, 8th, and 9th 
of December, 1998. I looked at that, and I concluded that these were 
historical times and that in spite of whatever the conferences were 
that I'd come out here to attend, attending the impeachment hearings 
would be far more instructive, that I would then be part of history.
  Well, I observed those hearings for 3 days in a row. I was sitting 
behind David Shippers when he delivered the summary of the prosecution. 
I happen to have a copy that was handed to me that day by the Judiciary 
Committee staff. I keep that in my file. It's an historic event. These 
events tomorrow will be historic too, although they are far from as 
serious as what was taking place in 1998 because in 1998 there was an 
impeachment in this House. This House voted to impeach the President of 
the United States, Mr. Speaker. They did so based on solid evidence, 
and they went over to the Senate to bring forth the prosecution.
  And I see things in this notice that goes this way: ``Full Committee 
Hearing, Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations'' being the 
subject, the subject being three resolutions introduced by Congressman 
Dennis Kucinich and different resolutions to either impeach President 
Bush or Vice President Cheney. It says that interest groups have 
advocated for the impeachment of the President and the Vice President. 
Nobody's talking about this where I live, but there are enough radicals 
to bring this thing forward.
  We are going to hear from several Members of Congress, one, two, 
three, four Members of Congress tomorrow. We are going to hear from a 
former Associate Deputy Attorney General from the Reagan 
administration. We are going to hear from the Mayor of Salt Lake City, 
Mr. Speaker, who has said publicly this: ``This President has engaged 
in such incredible abuses of power and breaches of trust with both 
Congress and the American people and misleading us into this tragic and 
unbelievable war, the violation of treaties, other international law, 
our Constitution, our own domestic laws, and then his role in heinous 
human rights abuses, I think all of that together calls for 
impeachment.''
  Well, I would reject all of those allegations as having substance, 
and I don't think that substance is going to come out tomorrow, Mr. 
Speaker, because this is a dog and pony show. This is a political 
exercise.
  Actually, I tried to get the chairman to yield to me the other day, 
and he declined to do so, because I was watching the progression of 
these judicial public lynchings that have been taking place of Bush 
administration officials in the Judiciary Committee over the last month 
or better. We had David Addington, the Chief of Staff of the Vice 
President of the United States, brought before the Judiciary Committee 
under threat of subpoena. And he was told by one of the committee 
members, ``I'm glad al Qaeda can see you now.'' Brought before the 
public, a man who has been a private individual, and whipped up one 
side and down the other with verbal assaults, trying to find to trip 
him up so that he could go the same path as Scooter Libby, whom no one 
can still tell me what it was that Scooter Libby said or did that was 
wrong. All they know is that he's been beaten up on so much, there must 
be something there. Well, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the politics in 
this Chamber, I can tell you there doesn't have to be anything there to 
be beaten up upon.
  But here's what's going to make it a problem for some of the members 
in the Judiciary Committee. They were on the committee in 1998, many of 
them. They are on record as to what they thought was an objective 
constitutional means, reason for which a President should be impeached. 
They said such things as, and this is a quote, ``We are using the most 
powerful institutional tool available to this body, impeachment, in a 
highly partisan manner. Impeachment was designed to rid this Nation of 
traitors and tyrants.'' That's the chairman of the committee.
  Here's another quote from a committee member. This is Maxine Waters, 
California, who believes we should nationalize our oil industry, by the 
way, but, Mr. Speaker, here's the quote: ``How must our American 
soldiers feel to have their Commander in Chief under attack''--this is 
of President Clinton during the impeachment hearings. ``How must our 
American soldiers feel to have their Commander in Chief under attack 
while they are engaged in battle? They have the right to feel betrayed 
and undermined. Today we are here in the People's House debating the 
partisan impeachment of the President of the United States of America 
while the Commander in Chief is managing a crisis and asking world 
leaders for support. This is indeed a Republican coup d'etat.'' Mr. 
Speaker, that's Maxine Waters, 1998, during the impeachment of Bill 
Clinton. I wonder how she is going to conduct herself tomorrow, if she 
is going to be consistent with her words then or if she's going to 
contrive another argument manana.
  Here's another quote from a current Judiciary Committee member 
speaking of the Clinton impeachment in 1998: ``We have been warned 
repeatedly that these allegations are nowhere near what is necessary to 
overturn a national election and to impeachment a President. Despite 
these cautionary flags, this committee has turned a deaf ear to 
hundreds of years of precedent and to the Constitution that has kept 
this country strong and unified.'' That's Congressman Robert C. Scott 
of Virginia, a Judiciary Committee member.
  Here's a statement made by the current Chair of the Immigration 
Subcommittee back in 1998 of the Clinton impeachment: ``The people's 
will must not be overridden by those who claim to know better, by those 
who believe they know what is best for the American people,'' Zoe 
Lofgren.
  You get the idea, Mr. Speaker. Let me just do another one just to put 
some of this on the record, Mr. Speaker. Here's another quote of the 
1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton, Judiciary Committee member 
and Constitution Subcommittee Chair: ``It's an enormous responsibility 
and an extraordinary power. It's not one that should be exercised 
lightly. It certainly is not one which should be exercised in a manner 
which is or would be perceived to be unfair or partisan.''
  Well, get ready for tomorrow, Mr. Speaker. I don't expect it's going 
to be fair, but I don't think there is a single

[[Page H7161]]

pundit in America that could analyze it as anything except partisan. 
Not a witch hunt anymore. They've found their witch. They're bringing 
impeachment hearings before the House Judiciary Committee, all of that 
on the heels of the attempted public lynching of David Addington, the 
Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States; Doug Feith, 
the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, also brought before 
the committee; and then behind that last week, former Attorney General 
John Ashcroft, another attempt made at him yesterday or the day before. 
I guess it was the day before. We had Attorney General Mukasey. All of 
this before the committee, all of this under at least the implication 
that a subpoena can be issued, sometimes the actual vote and threat of 
a subpoena. I don't know if a subpoena has been actually issued under 
any of these cases. But these are honorable men. They'll come testify. 
They have got nothing to hide. But it's a grueling thing to sit there 
and look at the Judiciary Committee panel and know that it's exactly 
what, Mr. Speaker, Jerry Nadler said it should not be. He said, ``It 
certainly is not one which should be exercised in a manner which is or 
would be perceived to be unfair or partisan.''

  Well, I am very convinced that Jerry Nadler thought that it was 
unfair and partisan in 1998. I don't know that a majority of the 
American people think that, but today if you would walk down the 
streets of America, at least inside the coasts in America, and say, 
``What in the world would the Democrats want to impeach President Bush 
and Vice President Cheney for?'' I would be hard pressed to find 
constituents in my part of the country that could give me an informed 
answer. That means to me that it's unfair and it's partisan, and this 
entire exercise is about discrediting the Bush administration so that 
the landing zone is prepped for Election Day in November. That's what I 
see.
  I don't think there are coincidences in politics. I think it's all 
real. And it is not a game. It is hardball. This is the hardest of 
hardball that's unfolding here tomorrow. The unbelievable, the 
unanticipated, the breathtaking, the illogical, the major reach, the 
deja vu feeling with a different pair of figures in front of it.
  Mr. Speaker, I will take us back also to another little event when I 
had exposure to some of the things going on by the hard left in 
America.
  March 18, 2003, just a few days before the liberation of Iraq began, 
there was an anti-war protest that took place out on the mall. Now, I 
had not been to one of those before. We don't have them in my part of 
the country. But I thought I should take a look at this one. And so I 
put on my Redskins sweatshirt, an old one. I looked like a native, put 
a cap on, walked down there amongst the people that were getting ready 
for this march on the White House to protest the war that hadn't begun. 
And as I was there and I watched a photographer wash the lens of his 
camera with an American flag he kept in his pocket for a rag, and he 
was pleased to do it, as I watched some of the countercultural signs be 
put up, I took a lot of pictures down there, many of which couldn't be 
published and many of which you wouldn't show your children. There was 
a big stage. A big stage with big speakers up on it. And the orators 
that came forward to stand between those large speakers were there to 
gin up the crowd so they got all wound up and then they could march off 
across the mall and march around the White House and go protest the war 
that hadn't begun. And I did watch that entire march and that whole 
protest, and that's a longer speech than I've got time for tonight, Mr. 
Speaker. But I saw the chairman of the Judiciary Committee call for the 
impeachment of President Bush before the operations began.
  And now here we are, March 18, 2003, fast forward to July 24, and 
tomorrow will be July 25, 2008. Just a little over 5 years later, we're 
there. It's happening. It's coming before the Judiciary Committee 
tomorrow in room 2141, 10 o'clock a.m. I think it will be a day that 
lives in infamy, a shameful day, a day when the American people wake up 
and realize there is a connection between a committee and the United 
States Congress seeking to impeach a President without cause during a 
time of war, during a time when our energy is tied up and trapped up 
and we're looking at $4 gas, during a time when we have economic 
difficulties and there needs to be confidence in the American system 
and the American economy, during a time as we move up to a presidential 
election. All of these things are affected. They are all wrapped up 
together. They all have to have, Mr. Speaker, the imprimatur of 
approval stamped on it by the man that wanted to give a speech at the 
Brandenburg Gate today.

                              {time}  2300

  It's his agenda. It's his motive. It's them working with him. It's 
his impeachment hearings. This all ties together. And I believe the 
American voters will hold the kind of people who pull these kind of 
moves accountable. And I'm going to see to it that at least the 
information is out. And I trust the wisdom of the American people.
  Join me tomorrow, Mr. Speaker. I will hold a chair for you. All of us 
will be looking in and see that at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, room 
2141, the House Judiciary Committee, impeachment hearings, President 
Bush, Vice President Cheney, held tomorrow. They ensue at 10 in the 
morning. I will be there. Mr. Speaker, you be there. And let's right 
this ship that is going off tacking so hard to the left. It's going to 
sink if we don't turn it around.

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