[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 78 (Wednesday, May 20, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H5882-H5889]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        AMERICA'S ENERGY CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The gentleman from Iowa is 
pleased to be recognized to address you tonight in this 60-minute 
period of time.
  Having recognized that the gentleman from Missouri was in the middle 
of a statement, and having recognized that there were gentlemen here on 
the floor, along with the gentlewoman from Wyoming, that are still full 
of information that America needs to hear, Mr. Speaker, I will just 
simply set the stage with a very short piece of this--and that is that 
I think we need to have the smoothest of transitions from Special Order 
to Special Order, and that would require that I yield so much time as 
he may consume to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) who was in the 
middle of a statement when his 60-minute clock ran out.
  Mr. AKIN. I thank you very much, gentlemen. Congressman King is known 
for the Opportunity Society that he chairs. He brought in a speaker 
just a matter of a couple of weeks ago, an economist from Spain, 
talking about the exact same thing that's being proposed here in 
America. In fact, the President has referred to Spain as a great 
example of what we should do. And he informed us that it's a great 
example if you like 17\1/2\ percent unemployment.
  What he described was--one of the things that was just amazing to me 
in terms of the contradiction that's involved was, they closed down 
nuclear

[[Page H5883]]

power plants in Spain because they're worried about CO2. 
Yet, nuclear power plants don't make any CO2 at all.
  In fact, the chart next to my good friend from Iowa there, the chart 
is a blowup of that little tiny card in the top left corner that's 
clipped on there. That little tiny pellet that's the size of two pencil 
erasers, if you have a couple of those, it takes just--let's see, if 
you have two of those, it takes all of the energy you need to heat your 
house for 1 year. Two of those little tiny pellets. Yet, you're talking 
about two times 149 gallons of oil or 2 tons of coal or the equivalent 
of two times 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas.
  And so if you're really serious about stopping CO2, aside 
from the flatulence of the sheep in Australia and all, look, nuclear is 
clearly the logical thing for us to do.
  If you could pop the next chart up there, too. These are the sources 
of emission-free electricity. If you take a look at it, nuclear right 
now, that's making no CO2 emissions, is 73 percent. Yet, 
there's no discussion at all about what is going to be done with 
nuclear. That just seems to be--I mean, what we are really talking 
about is just a good excuse to tax people. And I'm afraid.
  I don't want to ramble on too far, but it seems so odd that Spain 
would basically shut down nuclear in the name of trying to protect 
against CO2. I mean the engineer in me just says these 
people have drunk some kind of Kool-Aid.
  The thing that was frightening--and I will conclude with this--about 
the Spanish system, was that the country sold off licenses to people to 
make their clean energy that was solar and wind. And the government 
would guarantee you a really high rate of electricity if you bought 
solar panels if you bought one of these licenses.
  So the people would give these licenses. You've got all these people 
with licenses. They're buying solar panels and windmills. As they do 
that, they feed that electricity into the grid, and they get paid a 
good chunk of change for it, which then of course is then passed on to 
the taxpayers.
  They have had a 30 percent increase in electric rates in the last 
couple of years for the consumer. But for industry, in a year and a 
half, it's been a 100 percent increase. Here's the bad thing. When the 
wind and the solar don't cooperate, they tell the aluminum 
manufacturer, they tell the steel manufacturer, Shut your plant down.
  Guess what those aluminum and steel manufacturers are doing? They're 
moving out of Spain. That's why they have got a 17\1/2\ percent 
unemployment over there.
  And so I don't think we really want to follow Spain's example. They 
create this system where now, politically, they can't put the genie 
back in the bottle because you have all these people on the take and 
you politically can't say we're going to take away your lucrative 
business of making all of this electricity because they bought 
windmills and solar panels which don't work when the sun isn't shining 
or the wind isn't blowing.
  It's a really amazing thing. I sure hope America doesn't go down this 
big old tax thing. I yield back to my good friend from Iowa and your 
leadership.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Thanking the gentleman from Missouri, and 
reclaiming my time, I would add to the statement he's made--and I'm 
quite impressed with the attention the gentleman must have paid at that 
presentation that morning--but to look at the situation in Spain, the 
highest unemployment in the industrialized world; 17\1/2\ percent, as 
the gentleman from Missouri has said. Over 100 percent increase in 
industries' electricity costs, and the idea that 20 percent of the 
electricity in Spain is generated by wind, which pushes up against the 
threshold of anybody in the country, anybody in the world that lays out 
these standards.

  If you could produce 20 percent of your electricity by wind, that's 
way up against the threshold because we know that wind doesn't blow all 
the time. It lays down often at night, it doesn't always blow when you 
need the electricity. You have to have backup systems, you have to have 
gas-fired generators that can be fired up to take care of that demand 
when the wind is not blowing.
  But, additionally, another statement that the gentleman from Missouri 
didn't make is how the Sicilian Mafia stepped in and was engaged in the 
brokering of licenses that determined who would be building the wind 
generation plants in Spain and the companies that would be building 
them and the inefficiencies that came from that, let alone the 
corruption that came from it.
  Whenever you have government involved in brokering out licenses that 
has to do with who's going to be providing something that's not 
demanded by the market, I think exposes a great flaw in this. And the 
government of Spain about 7 or 8 years ago decided they wanted to be 
the world's leader in renewable energy. They set about going down that 
path.
  Following that path to become the world's leader in renewable energy, 
they achieved it. But they also achieved the highest unemployment in 
the industrialized world--17\1/2\ half percent--a 100 percent increase 
in industries' electricity costs. They brought in the Mafia from 
Sicily, the Sicilian Mafia, that would be brokering the licensures 
along with some people in Spain, I'm convinced, and now they have a 
situation that so many people are bought into it that they can't step 
away and say that was a colossal mistake, and if we're going to save 
the economy of Spain, we have to pull the plug on this renewable energy 
idea.
  This greenest of countries in the industrialized world, Spain, has 
the most stressed economy in the industrialized world and, in big part, 
because they have bought into this vast green concept of American 
energy.
  So, as we flow with this, I see a posture of eagerness on the part of 
the gentlelady from Wyoming, Mrs. Lummis.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you, Mr. King. You do such a nice job of laying 
out these issues. I want to thank Mr. Akin for including me in his last 
hour as well.
  The chart that was just placed up on the board illustrates something 
that is a new phenomenon in terms of the debate about renewable 
energies that I had not heard before arriving here in Washington--and 
that is objection by the environmental community to something called 
industrial-scale wind farms and industrial-scale solar farms.
  So even the advocates of renewable energy in terms of wind and solar 
are saying, Yes, we embrace wind energy and solar energy, but we do not 
want them done in industrial scale because it consumes so much land, it 
creates view sheds that have too many wind turbines on it, too many 
solar panels on it, and that we don't want them.
  And we are seeing efforts by Members of Congress when, coupled with 
environmental groups, to prevent large-scale wind farms and large-scale 
solar facilities in deserts and in areas where one might think would be 
appropriate for wind and solar, such as places where the wind blows and 
the sun shines. But, nevertheless, the problem seems to be the 
industrial scale that is being proposed for these facilities.
  Well, as you and I know, Mr. King, unless you do these on industrial 
scales, you can't possibly promote them as a larger component of our 
industrial energy mix. In fact, if you blanketed the entire State of 
Ohio with wind turbines, it would produce annually the equivalent 
amount of energy as one square mile of Wyoming coal.
  Now, Wyoming coal comes in square miles, which is very unusual for 
those of you from the East who are used to underground mines. We have 
something called surface mines, where you may have 30 to 100 feet of 
overburden, which is essentially the soil on top of the coal. And then 
you will uncover 100-foot coal seams. They are 100 feet level of coal, 
with no striations of anything but coal in between.
  So all you have to do is scrape off and save the overburden--the 
soil--pile it up, recover the coal, scoop it out, load it in trucks, 
load it in rail cars, and then put the top soil back in the same 
contours as it was before you began mining, reclaim the surface to a 
condition that is equivalent to or superior to the condition of the 
surface of the ground before you even began to recover the coal, and 
put it back to normal with ground for sage grouse, for rabbits, for 
snakes, and perfect, perfect ground cover.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Will the gentlelady yield?
  Mrs. LUMMIS. So it is a wonderful resource.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. For snakes?
  Mrs. LUMMIS. Snakes and rabbits. They seem to go together. I was at a

[[Page H5884]]

field hearing 2 weeks ago for the Natural Resources Committee. We 
toured solar facilities in California. We were in Representative Mary 
Bono Mack's district and Representative Jerry Lewis' district. We were 
on a Marine base at Twenty-Nine Palms with my committee cochairman, Jim 
Costa, who is from California as well.
  We got to tour their solar facilities. And they are about to put at a 
Marine base at Twenty-Nine Palms 240 acres of an abandoned lake bed--it 
is dry, there's absolutely nothing on it--in solar panels. And they 
will be able to do that in a way that improves the makeup, the mix of 
renewable and unrenewable resources on that base that will make it the 
leading base in the whole Marine system for renewables, because they 
have wind, solar, and some geothermal.
  But they probably could not pull that off if they were not on a 
nearly 600,000-acre military base, because if you try to move that same 
facility onto public lands in the desert, you encounter environmental 
group resistance to having large solar and wind projects, industrial 
scale.

                              {time}  2045

  So there's nowhere to go without offending someone in this country. 
Oil and gas development offshore on the Outer Continental Shelf would 
be a magnificent resource for us, but there are environmental groups 
that have testified against that. Industrial-scale wind and solar on 
deserts in California, groups are testifying against that. Nuclear, 
groups are testifying against that. Any hydrocarbon, groups are 
testifying against that. Coal, there are groups saying there's no such 
thing as clean coal.
  We have to meet our energy needs as human beings, and there are ways 
to do it by using all of the resources we've discussed in moderation. 
That is the Republican response to this issue. To do it cleaner, do it 
better, do it with all of the resources that we have at our disposal in 
America; disengage from our need for foreign oil, because that is a 
national security issue, and produce our own energy, our own security. 
Do it in a more environmentally sensitive manner, but don't diminish 
our standard of living at the time we do it because it falls more 
seriously on working-class Americans and poor Americans than it does on 
rich Americans when we do something like our national energy tax, which 
is proposed under the name of cap-and-tax.
  Thank you very much for including me in your discussion this evening, 
and I yield back to the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Wyoming.
  It occurs to me that if this Congress is to have a nuclear carbon 
footprint--I remember the Speaker when she was, let me say, sworn into 
the third-highest constitutional office in the United States of 
America, third in line for the presidency, she concluded that this 
Capitol Complex was going to be carbon neutral, which means greenhouse 
gas neutral, which means CO2 gas neutral. And having a look 
at the generating equipment that produces the lights that illuminates 
us tonight, Mr. Speaker, it occurred to the gentlelady, the Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, that she would need to make a correction 
that would make it consistent with her left coast constituents. So it 
went on the Board of Trade and carbon credits were purchased at a cost 
to the American taxpayers of $89,000 to buy these credits that were 
designed to pay people to change their behavior that was contributing 
to the greenhouse gas, CO2, and the atmosphere over all of 
God's creation. That $89,000 was invested in two areas. I checked this 
out, and I went to visit some of the sites. One of them was no-till 
farmers in South Dakota. They were no-till farmers before they got the 
check. They were no-till farmers after they got the check. If they 
actually tilled the ground afterwards, the carbon escaped anyway. So if 
they sell the farm, somebody comes in, puts a disk or a plow to it, it 
will go back into the atmosphere. So the sequestration was nillo, shall 
we say. That was the no-till farmers in South Dakota. There was also a 
nice check that was written to an electrical generating plant in 
Chillicothe, Iowa, that was to pay them to burn switchgrass in place of 
coal in order to make the CO2 emissions carbon neutral as 
opposed to contributing to the CO2 in the atmosphere, which 
would come from the net consumption of coal. Well, I don't know. This 
is a pretty interesting thing. So I went to Chillicothe, Iowa, and I 
visited the generating plant. I went into these buildings that were 
full of the switchgrass hay they had purchased several years earlier, 
at the cost to the Federal taxpayer and a government grant, the 
equipment to run these big round bails, 1,500-pound switchgrass bails, 
through a hammermill to chew them up into little itty-bitty pieces, to 
spit them into the incinerator and blend them with the coal dust that 
would come from the grinding of the coal that would allow it to combust 
at the most efficient rate. This switchgrass that was going to be 
carbon neutral had been burned to generate electricity a couple years 
earlier, but--here is something I know--when I'm looking at a shed full 
of switchgrass brown bails, and it's covered with coon manure--not cow 
flatulence but coon manure--they probably haven't burned much of that 
hay in a long time.
  So the conclusion that one can draw was actually, 2 years earlier was 
when they shut down the switchgrass burning technique, but yet they 
were paid to burn the switchgrass and to do this carbon-neutral 
approach. So we have 89,000 taxpayer dollars invested in purchasing 
carbon credits to provide carbon-neutral emissions for the Capitol 
Complex, to buy these carbon credits on the Board of Trade in Chicago, 
to encourage people to do more things that are more conducive to the 
environment and produce less CO2 than they would have 
otherwise. I couldn't verify that anybody changed their behavior 
whatsoever for $89,000. I can tell you, if somebody wrote me a check 
for $89,000, I would at least consume less energy, let alone produce 
that energy in a more environmentally friendly fashion.
  So that's the result of cap-and-trade that is being proposed by the 
Energy and Commerce Committee today and probably tomorrow and hopefully 
the next day and the next day and the next day ad infinitum until they 
decide that the science doesn't support this and the economics doesn't 
support it. But that comes to mind for me. And, by the way, the 
electricity that we consume in Iowa, a lot of it comes out of the 
Powder River Basin in Wyoming. I have been up there to look at that, 
where you could put a school bus in the bucket of the drag line. I'm 
still a little confused about square miles versus cubic miles of coal, 
but I know they have a lot of it in the Powder River Basin. I'm glad to 
have the power, and I appreciate the rail lines that come down. I 
really don't want captive shipping going on, but I appreciate the 
connection we have along with the renewable energy that comes out of 
the Missouri River and the seven dams that are on the Missouri River 
and the hydroelectric power that comes, which is carbon neutral, Madam 
Speaker. Our hydroelectric is carbon neutral but it does not get credit 
for being renewable energy because Bobby Kennedy Jr. and others think 
that however the rivers were is how they ought to be reverted back to 
and that we can't improve upon Mother Nature. I think God gave us these 
natural resources, and he's given us the ability to improve upon them. 
We've done so in many cases, and we should do so into the future.
  I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Texas, the Secretary 
of our conference, Judge Carter, as much time as he may consume.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend from Iowa.
  As I listened to that story about switchgrass and that we paid those 
people money, I don't have anything against them, but it sure sounds 
like the inmates are running the asylum around here. I mean, I think 
anybody that heard that story would think, Good Lord, those people are 
crazy. I really want to say again--and I've said this before--if you're 
trying to stop CO2, and I'm throwing off a bunch of 
CO2 in my company, and I can go out and buy some carbon 
credits from you who happens to be running a real good clean company, I 
still keep putting the stuff in the atmosphere, right? I haven't 
cleaned up my act. I mean, they put a cap on me. I'm not meeting the 
cap, and I just bought an excuse. Kind of like Al Gore with his 
100,000-foot house--or whatever it is he's got,

[[Page H5885]]

or two or three houses--he said, Oh, that's all right. I buy carbon 
credits. He's still putting the stuff up there in the air.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time for a moment, I would point out 
that the carbon credits are the modern-day equivalent of the reason 
that Martin Luther came forward and nailed his positions up on the Diet 
of Worms which is, the church was selling indulgences. Carbon credits 
are indulgences that allow a company to pay for the carbon emissions 
that they're emitting into the atmosphere. I think that's what the 
judge is talking about.
  Mr. CARTER. I think indulgence is a perfect word because you are 
allowing the dirty people to indulge in staying dirty by paying for it.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. For a price.
  Mr. CARTER. Under this ingenious government program we have got now, 
all they're doing is just paying more taxes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Sin tax.
  Mr. CARTER. It is a sin tax. That's exactly right. It's a sin tax. It 
is ludicrous to think it's going to reduce any carbon, CO2 
that goes into the atmosphere. Because as long as a guy wants to pay 
the taxes, he's in business. Let's face it, if I'm the guy that's 
paying the sin credit, the indulgence, well, if I can pass it on down 
to the neighbors down the street in their bill, that's where it's going 
to go. So those poor slobs are paying the tax. Why should I worry about 
it? Why is that going to keep me from putting CO2 into the 
atmosphere? This is insanity, but that's where we are.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Passing it on to the consumer is what this is 
about. We have seen the numbers that show that an MIT professor has 
done the calculation on the costs of the proposal on this cap-and-tax 
that's out before this Congress and put a macronumber on the cost to 
our economy. Then some ingenious people who just simply took the 
average number of persons in a household, which is calculated to be 
2.54, and divided that into the overall cost to our economy, the 
increased cost of energy that has to do with cap-and-tax. They 
concluded that each household would see their energy costs go up 
annually by $3,128 a year. Then the professor at MIT said, Oh, wait a 
minute. I'm real sorry I released the number because I don't like the 
result of the conclusion that came about because of the division of the 
numbers of persons in a household and the cost per household that would 
be the increase in the cost of all of our energy, electrical, our heat, 
our gas bill, our gasoline bill and our fuel oil and all of those 
things that are required to keep each household going. That's what's 
going on here. This is almost to the point where it's a religion that 
believes in something that isn't based upon a science. Now I'm great 
with faith, but I'm not so good with faith that's based upon pseudo-
science.
  I would ask the Speaker, how much time do we have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 35 minutes remaining.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would be happy to yield as much time as he may 
consume to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Paul Broun, another one of 
my friends and colleagues.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, this whole cap-and-tax philosophy is a hoax. It's a 
hoax. It's a hoax on the American people, and it's a hoax because it's 
giving a promise that cannot be fulfilled. We are promised by the 
Democrats that this is going to create green jobs. Going back to what 
the gentleman from Spain said as Mr. Akin and you, Mr. King, were 
talking about, he said it cost jobs. Going back to the figure that you 
put out, Mr. King, they had an unemployment rate of 17.5 percent 
because of their cap-and-tax, cap-and-trade policy that they put in 
place. The experts have looked at our economy, at our job market, and 
we're being promised green jobs. But the experts say that for every 
single green job that's produced, we're going to lose 2.2 other jobs, a 
net loss of 1.2 jobs for every job created in this false promise, this 
empty promise of creating jobs.
  Now to buy off some certain groups, particularly the retirees and the 
poor people, they're going to give--who knows what, refundable tax 
credits--the President and Mr. Waxman and others are promising to give 
more money to the poor people to take care of this higher tax, higher 
food cost, higher cost for all goods and services. Where's that going 
to come from? It's going to steal from my grandchildren. It's stealing 
from their future. Don't be fooled by this hoax, by all the smoke and 
mirrors, by all this promise because it's not going to do anything but 
cost jobs. It's going to create a higher cost of living for everybody, 
and it's going to put us in a deeper recession, maybe even a depression 
if we continue down this road. Republicans have offered amendment after 
amendment in the committee, but they've been defeated by the Democrats. 
Amendments to even just stop this from going into place if the gas 
taxes or gas costs go too high or if electric prices go too high or if 
other prices go too high for the American people. But the Democrats 
have voted uniformly not to accept those amendments over and over 
again.
  Congresswoman Lummis from Wyoming talked very eloquently about some 
of the ideas that Republicans are producing. The American people are 
told that the Republican Party is the Party of No. Well, I agree with 
that. We are the Party of No, but the know is K-N-O-W. We know how to 
solve this economic downturn. We know how to solve some of the 
financing problems in health care. We know how to create an all-of-the-
above solution to the energy problem to make America energy 
independent.

                              {time}  2100

  But the Speaker of the House has been an obstructionist. She has been 
an obstructionist and not allowed any idea that we have proposed for 
all these things to stimulate the economy, to solve the problem we had 
with the housing market and to solve the banking problem. We have not 
been allowed. All of our ideas have been blocked by the leadership of 
this House and the leadership of the Senate.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Absolutely.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would just ask: Have all of your ideas been 
blocked? How does this work? Can't you offer an amendment that would 
put up a recorded vote and tell America where you stand? What prevents 
you from at least telling America where you stand so that they can 
evaluate the votes of people on both sides of the aisle and make their 
decision in November of 2010? What is the obstruction there?
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Absolutely. And I have offered an amendment to 
the non-stimulus bill. I offered an amendment that said, let's bail out 
the American people instead of bailing out all these favorable groups, 
the payback groups. In fact, the Democrats were bent on spending $835 
billion of our grandchildren's and children's future. I said, if we are 
going to do that, let's really do something that stimulates the 
economy. Let's send that money to the legal resident taxpayers in this 
country. And I introduced an amendment that would have sent a check for 
almost $9,000 per legal resident taxpayer. A couple would have gotten 
$18,000. That would have stimulated the economy because they would have 
paid off credit card bills. They would have saved it. They would have 
bought education or food.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentleman would yield, then why didn't I see 
that amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives and have an 
opportunity to send a message to my constituents about how I would like 
to see this economy managed? Is there a reason that blocked that from 
coming to the floor?
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Absolutely. And I thank you for asking because 
that is exactly what I was referring to. Every single idea, my idea as 
well as many others, have been blocked. They have been obstructed. My 
amendment was considered not to be valid. And they just totally would 
not allow my amendment to even be considered on this floor.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, the Rules Committee, which is 
up there on the third floor, meets without the benefit of television 
cameras and often without the benefit of the news media even reporting 
it. They can decide whether your idea can be heard on the floor of the 
House of Representatives. And often the Rules Committee decides that 
your idea will not be heard and it will not see the light of day. Is 
that correct?

[[Page H5886]]

  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. You are absolutely correct, Mr. King. That is 
exactly what has happened. That is what has happened over and over 
again. And I want to remind the gentleman from Iowa, my dear friend, 
that over and over again, we see these bills come to the floor with 
what is called a closed rule. Now we know here in the House what that 
means. That means we cannot amend the bill. They will not accept our 
amendments. They have their bills shoved down the throats of the 
American people. That is the reason I'm calling what is going on here a 
steamroller of socialism. That is being shoved down the throats of the 
American people and strangling the American economy
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Am I hearing that the Speaker of the House of the 
Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is the one who has the power and does 
decide what will be voted on on the floor of the House of 
Representatives, and the people of America have no access to being able 
to know what your position is or what the position is of Democrats and 
Republicans because it is being blocked by the Speaker and by the Rules 
Committee? That is how I understand that.
  And I would yield to the gentleman from Texas to clarify that point.
  Mr. CARTER. Let me make this very clear. The Rules Committee is the 
Speaker's committee. The Speaker decides who is on the Rules Committee. 
So this Rules Committee is an arm of the Speaker's committee. Like one 
of my Democratic colleagues who went before the Rules Committee said 
just the other day, he was sort of nervous until he went in and he 
counted one, two, three, four, five, six; one, two, three, four, oh, I 
think I'm going to win because there are six Democrats and four 
Republicans. But the Speaker chooses that committee. They answer to the 
Speaker. And the chairman is set by the Speaker.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I would make also three 
additional points to this process.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people don't care about process. But I'm 
about to address process again. It has been raised by the gentleman 
from Georgia and addressed by the gentleman from Texas. And I will say 
this, that not only do we have a Rules Committee that decides what the 
American people get to know about the opinions by recorded vote here on 
the floor of the House of Representatives, because no matter what kind 
of logical improvement that may come to perfect legislation from the 
minds and hearts of the American people, as brought through the minds 
and hearts of their elected representatives, if the Speaker's Rules 
Committee doesn't think it is a good idea for that debate to take 
place, let alone the vote to take place, it will not happen, Mr. 
Speaker. That is what happens here in the House of Representatives. It 
is a distorted process. And the rules regulate how much, what is going 
to be heard, what is going to be debated and what is going to be voted 
on here on the floor of the House of Representatives. And so I think 
that that is an educational process that needs to take place. And as I 
have gone before the Rules Committee, and I have found out that no 
matter how good my idea is, I actually have come down to the floor here 
and into the Record, it is a matter of record, I have said that we need 
to get television cameras up there so at least the American people can 
see the behavior of the Rules Committee carte blanche wiping out good 
idea after good idea.
  Additionally, it isn't just the Rules Committee. It is the full 
committee process. And I can think of three occasions, Mr. Speaker, 
where the committee chair has either allowed his staff, or directed his 
staff, to change a bill after it passed out of committee to go to the 
floor. And I can think of the case of the stimulus package where there 
was a 12-hour markup in Energy and Commerce, the ranking member, former 
chairman, Joe Barton, was livid that they spent 12 hours marking up, 
writing, trying to amend and seeking to perfect legislation that was 
the stimulus package that was initiated at the request of the 
President, having seen that bill finally pass out of the Energy and 
Commerce Committee and come to the Rules Committee and come to this 
floor in a different form, the committee had no say in the end. It was 
a mock markup in Energy and Commerce.
  Subsequent to that, the bankruptcy bill came out of the Judiciary 
Committee, where I sit and where Judge Carter and I used to sit arm to 
arm. I offered an amendment that would set up special provisions for 
people who went bankrupt because of their house mortgages. I offered an 
amendment that would have exempted those who have fraudulently 
misrepresented their income, their assets or the appraisal of the 
property. It would have exempted them from relief under the bankruptcy 
bill. That amendment was passed in the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 
21-3. After the bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee, the 
language was changed before it came to the floor.

  Then just a little over 1 week ago, on the Financial Services 
Committee, there was an amendment offered by Michele Bachmann of 
Minnesota. I think she is Minnesota Number 5. And that amendment would 
have exempted any proceeds of the bill from going to ACORN, an 
organization that had been indicted and was under investigation by the 
Federal Government for election fraud. And that amendment passed 
unanimously out of the Financial Services Committee. It should have 
come to the floor as part of the bill. It was totally changed, I 
believe, at the direction of the chairman of the Financial Services 
Committee to limit it to only those companies that had been actually 
convicted of fraud, not those that had admitted to fraudulently filing 
over 400,000 voter registration forms.
  This process is corrupted, Mr. Speaker, and it is because the process 
doesn't work. If it can change after it comes out of the committee, if 
it can change out of the Energy and Commerce Committee, if it can 
change out of the Judiciary Committee, if it can be changed at the 
direction of the chairman out of the Financial Services Committee, and 
if the Rules Committee can decide and the Speaker can direct them to 
decide what comes to this floor, then the American people don't even 
have the benefit of the debate, let alone the opportunity to improve 
and perfect legislation, which is a provision by our Founding Fathers.
  And I would yield to the gentleman from Georgia to reiterate my 
point.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. King, for bringing this up. The 
American people need to understand this. And I think this is something 
that you made very clear. What they did is all of your hard work, and 
all of Energy and Commerce's hard work, was just thrown in the trash 
can. And who was involved in doing that? It was the leadership of this 
House. It was thrown in the trash can. It didn't go through the normal 
process, normal ``order'' as we call it here. It was thrown in the 
trash can. And something else was produced by just a very small handful 
of people. And we had no way of changing that, no way of amending it 
and no way of doing anything with it. It was shoved down our throats.
  That is an oligarchy type of rule. It is a dictatorial manner of 
running things. And the American people need to know that that's what 
is going on up here. And the Republicans are offering solution after 
solution to all these things. The American people need to start 
demanding something different. It is up to the American people. Because 
we are in a minority, we can be here talking tonight and every night, 
as we are, and Mr. Akin has been here week after week, and you too 
have, Mr. King. But the American people need to stand up and say ``no'' 
to the way this business is going on up here.
  Let's go back to regular order. Let's go back to having debate and 
being able to bring forth ideas from both sides of the aisle. But we 
are not allowed to do that by the leadership of this House. It is 
wrong. It is immoral. It needs to stop. And the American people need to 
demand it to be stopped.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, the gentleman from Georgia, I 
thank you for your statement on this matter. And I would reiterate that 
each of us represents somewhere between 600 and 700,000 Americans. The 
franchise is this, Mr. Speaker, we owe all our constituents our best 
effort and our best judgment. And a lot of that best judgment comes 
from our constituents who are tuned into those issues who funnel those 
ideas to us. And we need to sort those ideas, and then we need to bring 
them back into the process in the hearing process in the subcommittee 
and in the full committee markup process and in the

[[Page H5887]]

Rules Committee and in debate on the floor of the House of 
Representatives. And the vision of the Founding Fathers is this, that 
the best ideas of America get synthesized, they get compressed and 
encapsulated here through this process that I have described finally 
being debated and voted upon on the floor of the House of 
Representatives. And there the vigor of the American people can be 
presented to the United States Senate for them to cool the coffee in 
the saucer as opposed to the hotter cup that comes from the House. That 
is the vision of our Founding Fathers. That is the vision that is being 
usurped by the policies of our regal Speaker who has undermined our 
national security.
  And I would yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. CARTER. We should be very grateful that the Speaker promised us 
the most open, honest and ethical Congress in the history of the 
Republic because think how bad it would be if we didn't have that. We 
wouldn't even be here, would we? It is amazing what promises are made 
and what promises are broken in this House of Representatives. It is a 
shame. It is a shame that somebody besides us on the floor of the 
House, and hopefully some people are watching this, it is a shame, Mr. 
Speaker, that we are not getting that message out. This is wrong. It is 
not what the American people sent us here for.
  Getting back to our hoax and our indulgences that we are talking 
about here, I want everybody to know that when Martin Luther hammered 
that up on the door of the church, he was informing the church that 
this was wrong to have these indulgences. We need to be pounding one on 
the front door of this Capitol Building. This is wrong to put this 
burden on the American people, some of whom really can't afford it, and 
many of whom are losing their jobs. And to give us a target of 17\1/2\ 
percent unemployment that we can see could come in a much less 
industrialized nation than we are and what happened there, think what 
can happen in this Nation.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. The President of the United States has said, why 
can't you learn from Spain?
  Mr. CARTER. What we learned from Spain is 17\1/2\ percent 
unemployment. My gosh, back during the Clinton administration they kept 
saying 6\1/2\ percent, 6 percent unemployment was full employment. 
Well, we have learned that is not true. But there is nobody going to 
argue 17\1/2\ percent unemployment is full employment. We are going to 
be hurting.
  We just spent, as my colleague says, our children and grandchildren 
and great grandchildren and maybe even for generations never even 
thought of, we just spent their inheritance just in the first 100 days 
of the Obama administration. We spent more money than all the history 
of the Republic put together. And we are wanting to put in a program 
that can put almost 20 percent of the American workforce out of work? 
Isn't this the inmates running the asylum?

                              {time}  2115

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time.
  This sparks a little bit of a number of some data that I produced 
about not quite a week ago. I have been asking the question, How do you 
put this global warming in context, Mr. Speaker? And so I begin to ask 
these basic questions that any environmentalist that was creating the 
idea of limiting the amount of greenhouse gasses that could be emitted 
into the atmosphere, when asked this broader question of, well, how big 
is this atmosphere--I mean, that is like question number one: How big 
is the atmosphere? And I don't think anybody here knows the answer to 
that question, Mr. Speaker. And I would ask you this question directly, 
but I don't want to put you on the spot. I just want you to listen 
carefully. That is that our atmosphere, the total weight--this is how 
we measure it in metric tons--the total weight of our atmosphere is 
5.150 quadrillion metric tons. That's the pressure of all of this 
atmosphere that's pushing down on the Earth's gravity. If you could put 
a scale on all of the surface of the Earth, they would say, Oh, 5.150 
quadrillion metric tons. That's all the atmosphere we have.
  Now, that's the idea or the content of the volume of our atmosphere.
  Then the next question you've got to ask is, well, if you're going to 
set the Earth's thermostat by controlling the emissions into the 
atmosphere from the industry of the United States of America, wouldn't 
you want to know what the net cumulative total of the U.S. industry 
since the dawn of industrial revolution would actually be?
  Well, I asked the question of the energy information agency that we 
have--and it's their job--and of course they don't have the answer to 
that because they never asked the second most obvious question. The 
first one is how big is the atmosphere. The second one is what has the 
Earth done or what has America done to contribute to the greenhouse 
gasses, the CO2 within the atmosphere? The cumulative total 
contributed by the U.S. industrial giant since 1800 works out to be 
this: 178,792,900 metric tons of CO2.
  Now, what's that mean to anybody that's paying attention? I'm sure 
there is somebody out there that's run the calculator and already come 
to this conclusion. This would be .00347 percent of the overall 
atmosphere.
  Now, what does that mean in terms we can understand? This way, Mr. 
Speaker. If you would draw a circle that represented the entire volume 
of the Earth's atmosphere and do it at a 48-inch radius, 8-foot 
circle--so two 4-by-8 sheets of drywall side to side, circle drawn, 
full amount, more than my full wingspan here, that's the circle that 
you envision, Mr. Speaker. Now, how much of this overall volume of the 
U.S. atmosphere is the cumulative total of CO2 contributed 
by the U.S. industrial might since the dawn of the industrial 
revolution? That little circle in the middle of that 8-foot circle 
would be about like that, .56 inches. The diameter of about a buffalo 
bullet is about all it would be in the center of that 8-foot circle, 
and that's the cumulative total.
  And we are going to reduce the overall U.S. emissions by 20 percent 
for a while and then 40 percent for a while and 83 percent for a while. 
And sooner or later, the arrogance and the vanity of America is going 
to adjust the thermostat of God's green Earth with a ratio of less than 
half an inch on an 8-foot diameter circle. How could we possibly 
imagine that could work? Where is Al Gore when I need him to explain 
this to me?
  I will say this. Al Gore, you were wrong on the science. And those of 
you who are busily marking up in Energy and Commerce a cap-and-tax bill 
today, tomorrow, the next day, and for eternity, are utterly wrong on 
the economics. You would handicap America's economy on some myopic 
idea, some vanity idea that we could control the Earth's temperature, 
set the thermostat of America by reducing the size of this .56 circle 
in the middle of the 8-foot diameter. That's what we are dealing with. 
That's Midwestern common sense. And we're dealing with the utter 
arrogance of people who believe this rather than the God that created 
this Earth.
  Mr. CARTER. Well, you forgot that there is one other source of 
CO2 that we haven't figured out how to tax on it, but I'm 
sure they're working on it. We've created some today as we've been in 
here.
  I had a lady when I was doing a townhall meeting. We were talking 
about energy, and she said, You know, I'm concerned about these 
emissions because I want my children to be able to breathe clean air. 
And I said, Do you ever lean over and kiss your kid goodnight? She 
said, Yeah, I do. I said, Do you realize when you breathe out you're 
breathing CO2 into that child's face? She stopped. She said, 
You know? That is right. I said, You're going to have to stop breathing 
in the presence of your child.
  This gas we're talking about we are all breathing out every breath 
and all animals are doing the same thing and all plants are loving it 
because they take it in. And guess what they give back? Oxygen for us. 
It's crazy. It's really crazy what we're talking about. But that number 
needs to be added in there. Maybe we should limit ourselves to 30 
breaths a minute.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Or allow the miracle of photosynthesis to solve 
this problem of mothers kissing their children goodnight.
  I will yield to the other judge from Texas, Mr. Gohmert.

[[Page H5888]]

  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend from Iowa for yielding, and I 
appreciate being in the presence of my former judge, my friend Judge 
Carter, and my doctor friend, Dr. Broun.
  Now, I was talking with a group from Baylor University working on 
their MBA here in Washington, and, of course, the rules are you don't 
acknowledge people in the gallery, so I won't do that.
  But one thing they understand, as sophisticated as the Baylor MBA 
program is, they understand that if you find yourself in a hole, it's 
time to stop digging. And the economy is in a hole, and we've been 
digging. And we're spending so much, we're digging a bigger hole. And 
we've got manufacturers leaving the country because we're digging 
ourselves a bigger hole.
  And when, as some of us have, you travel to China, Why did you move 
your industry here? they tell you--the number one answer I got was 
because the corporate tax is so--it's less than half of what it is in 
the U.S.--17 percent. And they will cut you a deal. If you bring them a 
big enough industry, they'll cut some off of that for years. We've got 
35 percent, and I believe it's the most insidious tax that there is in 
this country because we tell the American people that you don't have to 
pay it. We'll tax these greedy, evil corporations, but you don't have 
to worry about it. And they don't realize, because the Congress 
misleads them, that they're the ones that pay it because if they don't, 
the corporation cannot stay in business.
  So here we are with this insidious tax that hurts our corporations 
trying to compete worldwide, and we're losing jobs. The economy is in 
the crapper, and we are trying to bring it up. And we're bringing the 
economy back up, and what happens? Along comes this cap-and-trade idea 
that is going to further tax businesses that are producing the jobs in 
America that keep people working and keep people eating and living 
and surviving. And we're going to add another tax that those in China 
are not going to pay. And it is hurting the country.

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Will the gentleman yield?
  I would ask the gentleman from Texas, can you think of some program, 
a tax or any other program that would more effectively transfer jobs to 
China, India, and developing countries other than cap-and-tax here in 
the United States?
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend yielding.
  I can't think of one. This will drive so many jobs overseas. It's 
like somebody is sitting back thinking, How can we further hurt the 
economy? Let's do that. And some genius came up with cap-and-tax.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time.
  I want to pose this question, and this is the question I posed to the 
judge from Texas and I posed this to the other judge from Texas and the 
doctor from Georgia. I pose this to all of my Democrat friends over on 
this side of the aisle. Can you envision any program that would 
transfer more jobs from America to the developing countries than cap-
and-tax? Is there anything out there that would be worse for our 
economy? If you have an idea, stand. I will yield to you. I will be 
very happy to yield this microphone to anybody on this side of the 
aisle that believes that Judge Gohmert would happen to be wrong or I 
happen to be wrong that there is any means that can more cripple 
America's industry or cost our economy more or transfer more jobs to 
foreign countries than cap-and-tax that's being debated right now in 
Energy and Commerce. I say none. You don't ask me to yield. That means 
you have no better idea.
  I will yield to the gentleman from Georgia instead.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. It's a great question.
  In my district in Georgia, the 10th Congressional District in Georgia 
where many counties already have right now, today, right at a 14 
percent unemployment rate, I've been told by a number of manufacturers 
that are still left here in this country that if this cap-and-tax bill 
goes through, they're shutting the doors. They're moving offshore. They 
cannot afford to continue to operate in this country. And they're going 
to do that. It's going to drive up the unemployment rate in my district 
that's already at 14 percent in many counties.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. So the gentleman agrees with my conclusion.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Absolutely. Nothing could be worse except for 
maybe the budget that has been produced by this administration.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Let me pose a question. What would be, in the 
history of the United States of America, today, including potentially a 
cap-and-tax bill that's before the Energy and Commerce Committee today, 
what would be the most colossal mistake ever made in the history of the 
United States Congress? In your opinion. And then I want to hear the 
opinion from the gentleman from Texas as well.
  Mr. CARTER. We know the corporate tax drives people offshore looking 
for a better tax structure. We know right now in just a competitive 
market we have the Chinese offer cheaper natural gas than the 
Americans. So if you're powering your plant by natural gas and you're 
paying that corporate tax structure, just in today's world, there is a 
lure to go overseas to China.
  Now, you come in and you're going to add 30 percent to the cost of 
everything. Why in the world would you not think it's the absolutely 
worst thing that could happen? We're probably going to get trampled if 
we don't get out of the way as they head for the west coast to get on a 
boat to go to China.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time.
  Is there a bigger mistake that has been made in the history of the 
United States Congress other than handicapping the U.S. economy by 
applying a cap-and-tax program? Can you think of anything, Judge 
Carter, that has happened in the last 200-and-some years?
  Mr. CARTER. One of the things that comes to mind is tariffs. Tariffs 
brought on the Great Depression. I don't know what you're fishing for.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Let me make this statement that Smoot-Hawley didn't 
put on our economy nearly as much burden as we would have with cap-and-
tax. This taxation is the most inefficient taxation ever devised in the 
history of the United States of America. It applies about $5 worth of 
tax for every dollar that ends up in the Federal coffers, and otherwise 
it has no impact whatsoever. It is a tax. It is an 80 percent 
overburden for a 20 percent revenue stream. That's how bad cap-and-tax 
is. And I believe it's the most colossal mistake--if it's done--in the 
history of the United States Congress.
  I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I absolutely agree with you, Mr. King. I don't 
believe there's been a bigger colossal failure to the American people 
than this proposed cap-and-tax--tax-and-cap, as I call it. It's going 
to be disastrous for our economy. It's going to be disastrous for 
everything that we believe in as a Nation.
  Right now today, this government is spending too much money, it's 
taxing too much, as Judge Carter was talking about. We have the highest 
corporate tax rate in the world, which is driving companies offshore 
and it's causing unemployment. We're borrowing too much. We're 
borrowing our children's and our grandchildren's future. They're going 
to live at a lower standard of living than we do today with the 
policies that we've seen just over the last about 120 days already 
today. And this cap-and-tax policy is going to make it magnified 
markedly.
  We've got to stop the spending. We've got to stop the taxing. We've 
got to stop the borrowing, and we've got to put America back on track.
  And what I want to say before I yield back is that the American 
people need to understand that the Republicans are the ``party of 
know,'' k-n-o-w, because we know how to solve all these problems if 
we'll just be allowed to do so.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time and presuming that we have a 
couple of minutes left.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Two minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the Speaker for that acknowledgment.
  We have watched this free enterprise system be subverted, and it's 
been subverted almost systematically and in a Machiavellian fashion and 
a fashion so much faster than I ever would have imagined it could have 
done. I've watched class envy be implemented as

[[Page H5889]]

a political tool that pit Americans against Americans and say to them, 
You don't have to worry about your car payment, your utility bill, or 
your rent or house payment because sooner or later, the Federal 
Government is going to cover that.

                              {time}  2130

  We're going to take from those who produce more, and we are going to 
give it to people who produce less. It's a matter of a political tool 
that says you are not really entitled to what you earn but you are 
entitled to what you claim you need.
  And so this statement was made this morning by Star Parker, who is a 
wonderful, wonderful American citizen. She said the policy, as exists 
now in America, is that if somebody has something that you want, you go 
hire politicians to take it from them and give it to you. That's what's 
going on in America today, this America that was a meritocracy, an 
America that when my grandmother came here from Germany a little over 
100 years ago, people stood on their own two feet, provided for 
themselves, and reached out and helped others. Where my father and his 
family were raised off of the coins in the cookie jar, today it's the 
coins of those who are working being passed over to those who don't, 
Mr. Speaker.
  We cannot be the most successful Nation in the history of the world 
if we do not refurbish the pillars of American exceptionalism. If we 
don't reestablish the merits of our free enterprise capitalistic 
system, if we don't refurbish the property rights that are there, if we 
fail to refurbish the rights that come from God, that are conferred 
through our Declaration and reiterated by our Founding Fathers, that 
these rights come from God and that they're natural rights and it falls 
under natural law, if we fail to refurbish the pillars of American 
exceptionalism, we have seen the apex of our civilization.
  The charge is on all of us. The charge is on Democrats to wake up to 
this fact, and the charge is on Republicans to wake America up to this 
fact. And I am committed to this cause, as are my colleagues here in 
the House of Representatives, including the judge from Texas and the 
doctor from Georgia.

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