Congressional Record, Volume 156 Issue 75 (Tuesday, May 18, 2010)

[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 75 (Tuesday, May 18, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H3533-H3538]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

SUPERVISION OF OFFSHORE DRILLING

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 60 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Florida, his
discussion about energy. It's certainly a timely topic.
I think we're all pretty upset with what BP has done. We heard the
President point out that we're not going to have any finger-pointing.
But that was yesterday. That was yesterday's news. Then I understand
today the White House announces that it's going to have a commission
that's going to do the finger-pointing. So one day no finger-pointing,
the next day we're going to have a commission to do the finger-
pointing.

{time} 2230

So I guess we know that nobody that comes in here would ever do
anything but tell the truth, but whoever is sending out those messages
sure is being inconsistent.
I heard the President say last week that he was tired of all the cozy
relationships between Big Oil and government. Well, as long as Big Oil
is being properly supervised, then we are okay. But the trouble is in
the last year-and-a-half apparently things have not been going so well
in the area of supervision. There is an article that the AP put out:
Federal inspections on the rigs not as claimed. This was actually from
Sunday, May 16.
This article indicates the Federal agency responsible for ensuring
the Deepwater Horizon was operating safely before it exploded last
month fell well short of its own policy that the rig be inspected at
least once per month. The agency's inspection frequency on Deepwater
Horizon fell dramatically over the past 5 years, and apparently in the
last year-and-a-half that has dropped significantly.
According to the article, let's see, this indicates officials said 83
inspections had been performed since the rig arrived in the gulf 104
months ago, which was September of 2001. And then being questioned
about the once per month claim, officials subsequently revised that
total up to 88 inspections. And the number of more recent inspections
changed from 26 to 48 since January of 2005. No explanation was given
for the upward revisions.
But what's amazing to some of us is the fact that you could have a
level 5 hurricane as existed in the gulf with Hurricane Katrina before
it hit the coast of Louisiana--once it hit the coast it was a level 3,
but out there at the rigs it was still a 5--and some of those platforms
were completely destroyed, completely destroyed, but the blowout
preventers worked. There was no oil leaked. So you wonder, What's the
deal?
And relying on the old adage here in Washington that no matter how
cynical you get it's never enough to catch up, begin thinking about the
President deploring this cozy relationship between Big Oil and the
government. Because if he is blowing smoke, then maybe there's fire
there.
So we got to looking, as, after all, it is MMS, the Minerals
Management Service of the Department of the Interior that's supposed to
be monitoring British Petroleum and making sure that our environment's
kept safe because we need the energy. My friend from Florida was
talking about all the alternative energies. Well, that's going

[[Page H3534]]

to cost a ton of money to develop. So on the one hand you can shut down
this economy and prevent everybody from driving cars, prevent the
trains from carrying all the freight that they do, prevent ships from
traveling using the fuel they do, stop all these things, stop commerce
completely and somehow come up with money to develop alternative
energies, or you can develop what we have and make sure that the
government is doing a good enough job as a watchdog to make sure that
there are not these kind of violations. That's what could be done.
And some of us have proposed repeatedly that all you have to do is
use the resources we have got, take the government's royalty and use
that to develop alternative energy sources so that as we deplete our
energy resources, more than any nation in the world when you consider
all the different resources we have, use the government's share of the
royalty to fund alternative energy research so that we keep moving
smoothly, transitioning into the day when we don't need any type of
carbon-based fuel. But it's not in the next few years.
We saw efforts in the last 2\1/2\ years since Republicans properly
lost the majority because they were spending too much. Little did we
know those that convinced the public to elect them to stop the deficit
spending would do 10 times the spending, or create 10 times the deficit
in 1 year that we dealt with in 1 year right after I got here. But be
that as it may, we have the resources to drive this economy like none
in the world. We have the resources that will allow us to take those
royalties and to develop resources so we don't need the carbon-based
fuel that we are using today.
We could be moving toward nuclear energy, making sure it's a cookie-
cutter-type facility and that parts can be utilized in different
facilities. You train somebody to work in one, they can work in others.
Those things can be done, but we are not moving in that direction. We
are still moving, under this majority, toward greater and greater
reliance on foreign oil and foreign energy.
So wanting to see, though, what could the President be talking about
regarding this cozy relationship? Being on the Natural Resources
Committee, I have some institutional recollection of things that have
gone on since I have been here the last 5\1/2\ years, and one of the
things that we have taken up was the fact that during the last 2 or 3
years of the Clinton administration the Department of the Interior had
at least a couple of people who intentionally left language regarding
price controls out of the Federal leases with major oil for offshore
drilling. And it has cost this Nation millions and millions of dollars
because it was knowingly done.

We had hearings, brought the Inspector General in. And I was one who
inquired, Why hasn't there been a more thorough investigation about why
these individuals intentionally, knowingly left the price control
language out of the leases? It was always put there under former
President Bush, under George W. Bush. His Department of the Interior
always put it in. But for some reason, the last 2 or 3 years of the
Clinton administration it was left out. And the Inspector General
indicated that, well, he couldn't talk to those two particular
individuals in question because they left government service.
Found it a little bit hard myself to understand why you can't
investigate gross negligence, and if not gross negligence maybe even
intentional misconduct. But we won't know until the proper
investigation is done, why wouldn't he, as the Inspector General who
was charged with doing the inspection while the Bush administration was
in the White House, why he wouldn't do this.
Now, this is a man who had worked in the Clinton administration, and
now he is Inspector General. Of course, his idea was to blame Bush, a
theme that's followed up today even, even though it wasn't President
Bush that negotiated the leases. It was the Clinton administration
Department of the Interior. But one of the two individuals that he
said, Well, we just can't question her because she is no longer a part
of the government. She has gone back in the private sector. There is
nothing we can do about it.
And so I certainly wondered myself why you wouldn't pursue that,
perhaps turn it over to the FBI, to the Justice Department, let them do
some investigation, because nobody is beyond their investigation of
potential Federal wrongdoing, certainly mismanagement in costing the
country millions and millions of dollars. But it's not just that it
cost the country millions and millions of dollars. It made that money
for the big oil companies with which the Clinton administration cut
these deals.

{time} 2240

But anyway, that individual who had worked with the Department of the
Interior and had assisted in seeing that the leases did not contain the
price control language cost the government taxpayers millions and made
those millions, transferred to the big oil companies, whatever happened
to her?
Well, a little checking because we know the President said there's a
cozy relationship he was concerned about. It turns out that this
administration has put her back in the Interior Department as the
deputy assistant secretary for Minerals Management Service. The people,
MMS, the very people who were supposed to inspect these offshore rigs,
the very people who are supposed to make sure that the blowout
preventers worked properly so that if there's a catastrophe like
Hurricane Katrina, the blowout preventers work and no oil is leaked
from those wells. Well, it didn't work out here, as the AP article
talks about. The inspections weren't done with the regularity that they
were supposed to.
Now, I agree with the President that we need to be working on issues
and not finger-pointing, except that if we--the problem is there are
other rigs under operation right now under the supervision of these
same folks that let this happen. We can't afford more disasters like
this in the gulf or anywhere else.
I've been a strong advocate for offshore drilling, but I anticipated
that we would have a government that would not spend days and weeks
deciding what to do, that they would get out there and do something.
Not do a flyover and a wave-by, but an actual on-the-job, on-the-
ground, you're-going-to-get-this-done.
Now, we've heard that maybe the boot was on the neck of these folks.
It feels like maybe it's more on the toe or something because we don't
seem to be moving in the right direction. You hear stories--you know,
having so many friends that know something about oil and gas. You hear
different versions about potential ways to close this well up. God help
BP if it turns out they could have closed this with some explosives
very quickly but have not acted quickly enough in order to hopefully
some day rework the same well, letting this disaster hit the coast in
this manner.
So what is the administration doing? I anticipated that with offshore
drilling we would make sure that these blowout preventers were
regularly tested--which wasn't happening here under this
administration--and that if there were an accident, we would see what
happened with Katrina; they would shut themselves down.
And we can't see that there's really any strong movement toward
inspecting the rest of the rigs that this Minerals Management Service
may have neglected just like this BP rig. They ought to be out there on
every rig checking and making sure that they're not allowing this to
happen somewhere else.
I'm not for shutting down the energy resources. But when you see a
major company having more than one problem and other major oil
companies not having the same problems, it does make you wonder if they
are, number one, not being properly inspected. And if they're not being
properly inspected, do they have a cozy relationship?
Well, let's see. This new deputy assistant secretary for Minerals
Management Service, what job did she come from? Well, here it is. She
was the general manager for social investment programs in strategic
partnerships at British Petroleum America in Houston. Previously, other
work experience, she had been director of Global Health, Safety,
Environment and Emergency Response. That would be people regarding
safety and environment and emergencies. They probably dealt with the
company she was with on blowout preventers, things that would prevent
emergencies, since she was the director of safety and environmental
emergency

[[Page H3535]]

responses. Oh, yes, that was for British Petroleum of London.
Well, what other experience did she have? Well, previously she had
also been a vice president for Health, Safety and Environment.
Environment like preventing oil spills? What company would she have
gotten her training? Oh, yes. That was British Petroleum of North
America in Los Angeles.
But 1995 to 2001 when the Bush administration came in and let her go,
she served as the assistant secretary for Land and Minerals Management
at the Department of the Interior, where she was the principal policy
adviser to the Secretary of the Interior for environmentally
responsible stewardship. Isn't that special?
So, once you hear the chief executive of the land talking about chief
executives of big oil companies being too cozy with his administration,
well, it bears looking into. And you don't have to go very far to see
there is a very serious problem here. And the person that worked for
British Petroleum that may have worked with MMS officials from the
British Petroleum side is now the deputy secretary or assistant
secretary with MMS, working with these same people, of which she used
to be one. Interesting.
Now, we know that the jobs have not come as was promised. We were
told a year and a half ago that if we would move in a socialist
direction, give $787 billion more on top of the ridiculous Wall Street
bailout from months before, that if we add another $787 billion in a
so-called stimulus package, that that would prevent the unemployment
rate from ever going above 8. We were told if we didn't pass that $787
billion of a stimulus package, the President said unemployment might
reach as high as 8\1/2\ percent. Well, doesn't that sound good now?

{time} 2250

Wouldn't it have been nice not to have passed that $787 billion
porkulus bill and have unemployment not go beyond 8.5 percent? Because
what happens is the government is sucking all the air out of the
capital in the country. I keep hearing my friends across the aisle talk
about banks not making loans. Well, there are a couple of problems.
Number one, the Federal Government is using up all the capital to
build new buildings, hire new people, 60,000. The biggest sector of
hiring in the last month was from Census workers. Well, that's not
long-term help for the economy. It is a job that needs to be done. I am
glad it is not ACORN. Of course, these may be ACORN employees that are
now working for the Census Bureau. But that's not good news. How in the
world can anybody go out, as the Speaker and the President have,
saying: Great news, the unemployment rate went from 9.7 to 9.9. Isn't
that great news?
If you talk to the people that are out of work, it is not good news,
which is one of the reasons we have set up a couple of job fairs again
to try to marry up people who have jobs open with people that are
looking for jobs. We plan on doing one on June 2 in Marshall and then
another down in Lufkin July 8. That will be in Nacogdoches, Stephen F.
Austin University; and the one in Marshall will be the East Texas
Baptist University, and we are going to be trying to marry up people
that have some job openings with people that are looking for jobs. The
two we have done in the past ended up with hundreds of people having
employment that didn't before; but, sadly, not nearly enough people
found the employment they needed.
So what is going on? I mean, obviously this government is spending
tons of money. We know that Goldman Sachs had the best year they have
ever had last year. But then, when you get to scratching, we know the
Federal Reserve is refusing to open its books, refusing to be audited.
The same people that are demanding that the Intelligence Agency, the
FBI, all these other folks, the Department of Defense need to have
complete transparency, not demanding the same thing of the Federal
Reserve. We have got to keep that secret for some reason, when the
truth is we need to know how much trouble the Federal Reserve continues
to get us into.
But we were able to pull one contract between the Federal Reserve and
New York with someone called Goldman Sachs SF Management, and they got
a sweetheart deal here. But it does allow them to basically act on
behalf of the Federal Reserve, just do whatever the Federal Reserve
could do on their behalf, including hiring people to manage their
assets. But in order to be hired to manage assets of the Federal
Reserve, the manager, Goldman Sachs, acting on behalf of the Federal
Reserve, is restricted to only hiring those outside entities that are
listed in Exhibit C of their contract.
So you know that at least restricted them. They couldn't line their
own pockets. Except that Goldman Sachs Asset Management LP is the
manager acting on behalf of the Federal Reserve; and, lo and behold,
Goldman Sachs & Company is an authorized counterparty with whom Goldman
Sachs Asset Management can cut a deal as Goldman Sachs Asset Management
LP sees fit on behalf of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Well,
isn't that special. Isn't that convenient.
Those are the kinds of things we are talking about, I guess, when
someone here on the floor or the President talks about these cozy
relationships between his administration and others that are not good
for America, because that sure doesn't sound good for America.
But you know, there was a time in America when people had a
conscience. There was something in this country called morality. And
when morality was such an important thing in this country, if someone
was greedy and they through greed, avarice, neglect, ran their car off
in a ditch, and even though it was their own fault, their own greed,
that got them in trouble. If their neighbors came out and helped them
get their car out of a ditch, well, there was this conscience, this
still small voice that spoke within the greedy person to say, Gee, I am
so sorry. I am so sorry. I will never be able to thank you enough for
helping me get my car out of the ditch. I owe you. What can I do for
you?
Now we are in a day when greed of an entity like Goldman Sachs, I
think they gave 4-1 to help the President get elected over McCain, they
ran their car into a ditch during the end of the Bush administration.
And since the former chairman was the Secretary of the Treasury and he
could see his friends were in big trouble, he decided to scare America,
tell them the financial sky was falling, to convince the President that
the financial sky was falling, and that the only remedy was to give
him, Hank Paulson, $700 billion to play with so that maybe he could
keep things from getting too bad.
Well, he kept things from getting bad for Goldman Sachs. That's why
it was necessary to bail out AIG. Most of AIG's departments were doing
great. It was the credit default swaps that got them in trouble. But,
unfortunately, credit default swaps were deals that were done with
Goldman Sachs, an awful lot of them. So they had to bail AIG so that of
the billions that were paid to AIG to bail them out, most of that would
go to Goldman Sachs. So the American taxpayers were on the hook to pull
Goldman Sachs' car that their greed drove into the ditch; and once they
had it out of the ditch, they run over the rest of America, their
neighbors.

There used to be morality. There used to be a conscience. And
morality ensured that we could have economic stability. And when you
lose morality, you lose economic stability.
There are so many brilliant theologians and philosophers that have
talked about this. Chuck Colson was talking about it in a Bible study a
little over a year ago, and what he said was true: if you have got
morality, you can have economic stability. When you lose economic
stability, then throughout history people have always been willing to
give up liberty to get economic stability.
But to preserve liberty, wouldn't it have been better just to refine
this Nation's morals, our moral foundation? Then we don't lose liberty
to get economic stability. You get it by having a moral Nation.
You know, the Miss USA pageant got some notoriety before the pageant
this week because the contestants were required to take pictures
scantily clad. What was that about? It is about greed. Greed. Figuring,
if people saw how thinly clad the contestants were, more people would
tune in, which means

[[Page H3536]]

more money for the pageant. It is about greed. It is about greed. It
keeps coming back to that. So if you get back to morality, you can get
economic stability.
One of the things that George Washington warned about, he tried to
warn us in his farewell address. Washington said:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political
prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain
would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to
subvert these great pillars of human happiness. Let us with caution
indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without
religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined
education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both
forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of
religious principle.
So, to be moral, Washington said we need to be a religious people.
The Nation once was. In fact, when Washington resigned from the
leadership as commanding general of the Revolutionary military, he at
the end of his resignation had these words, and this is not the whole
thing but I'm shortening it here:
I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the
State over which you preside, in His holy protection; and, that He
would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to
love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and
pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine
Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of
whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.
Of course, he was talking about the divine author of our blessed
religion is how he referred to Jesus.

{time} 2300

But to be moral under Judeo-Christian beliefs, we would need to be
tolerant and allow the expression of opinions, even those opinions that
we happen to disagree with, even when those opinions disagree with our
lifestyle. And, Mr. Speaker, when people become so intolerant that they
do not allow people to speak their mind even when it is to say, I
believe your lifestyle is immoral, then we've lost the liberty that so
many have fought for and so many have died for and that the Founders
pledged their lives, their liberty, their sacred honor.
You see, there was a time during the revolution and for about 150
years after that where people were taught in school--I was taught in
school in my early days that this quote from Voltaire--some say
Voltaire, some say Cicero, hundreds of years earlier, but that ``I
disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right
to say it.'' Now it's become, I'm so angry at you because you have said
that you disagree with my lifestyle; therefore, I'm going to get you
fired. Not only am I not going to fight to the death for your right to
say it, I'm going to get you fired. I'm going to see that you lose all
your assets. I'm going to see that property is taken, hopefully, and
the government comes after you and hopefully puts you in jail and that
you die alone and miserable. What happened to the principles that
people fought and died for, ``I disagree with what you say, but I will
defend to the death your right to say it''?
There are friends from across the other side of the aisle who I
disagree with profoundly on many issues that are extremely important to
me, but I know them and I know their heart, and I know they really,
honestly believe that what they're saying is right. And I would fight
to the death. I was in the Army 4 years, active duty, took an oath,
willing to fight and die for their right to say what they say even
though I disagree.
Now we've come full circle. Those same things that the Pilgrims
depicted in the scene in the big mural down in the Rotunda, having a
big prayer meeting, praying to God for his protection and guidance, and
lo and behold, they ended up in Massachusetts, not where they had
intended. But they came to this land to get away from discrimination
because of their Christian beliefs, and now we've come full circle to
where Christian beliefs are the only ones that it's okay to
discriminate against. It's a sad time in America.
You know, we had a recent survey that indicated 70 percent of
American adults believe their children will not have it as good as they
have had it, will not have the opportunities, the liberties that we
have had. And the fact is, if we got back to a national morality--and
I'm sure not pointing the finger across the aisle because there's
plenty of finger-pointing to go around, but we need to do it. It's
wrong no matter which side of the aisle, and we need to not be afraid
to stand up and say it and say the immorality needs to be addressed,
and we need to protect this country, its liberties, its prosperity, its
opportunities, and that can only be done if we do as George Washington
suggested.
Now, there is another country around the world, halfway around the
world, called Israel that is under threat. Iran has made clear through
its leader, Ahmadinejad, that it needs to be wiped off the map. That
leader has also made clear that the great Satan--America, in his mind--
also needs to be completely destroyed. How do we ignore that? You
ignore those kinds of threats by people who are pursuing the means to
carry them out at your own peril, and they seem to be getting ignored.
I was at an APAC dinner recently where I heard a great orator,
Senator Schumer from New York, and he was pointing out all the things
that I agreed with about how Iran was running amok, trying to develop
nuclear weapons, and it could not be allowed. It must not be allowed.
It must be stopped. I was thrilled that he was taking that strong
position. And he got to the end, and he basically said, So we need
sanctions. Sanctions?
We've been trying to have sanctions for years. And while sanction
talk continues to go around this administration and Russia and China
and others in the U.N. who despise Israel and would also like to see it
wiped off the map, the centrifuges in Iran continue to spin. They
continue to enrich uranium. Oh, and now we hear that they may be
cutting a deal with Turkey to trade some enriched uranium. I mean,
there's plenty of bad news to go around, but that has to be stopped.
When you have an enemy who has sworn to wipe you off the map, as Iran's
leaders have us and Israel together, and he is working as fast as he
can to develop the weaponry to do that, then you sit idly by twiddling
your thumbs, talking about sanctions at your own peril.
Now, it is true that before the end of last year we began working on
a resolution that basically would run through just a small fraction of
some of the comments that Ahmadinejad has made. Apparently he has
indicated that he believes the Mahdi is coming, will rule over the
world, but that he can speed his return if he simply utilizes nuclear
weapons. Then the end and the Mahdi's rule comes that much quicker. And
yet we've had so-called journalists who have interviewed him, and the
man has talked about wiping out this country, including the journalist
asking him questions, and yet they don't have the nerve or the sense to
ask him, What about your comments about wiping us off the map? What
about your comments about bringing about the end of the world as we
know it? What about those things? The journalists have become lapdogs.
How sad is that? Not all of them. There's some excellent journalists,
and apparently they're the ones that this administration is pursuing
vendettas against, the way it sounds.

But somebody needs to do the work because we're at risk, as is our
dear friend Israel on the other side of the world. And not just Israel,
not just the United States, but our Muslim friends who are moderate
Muslims that don't believe that jihad means to destroy all your
enemies, that they believe that the jihad is within. Well, those are
the very people that will also, with us, be wiped out if Ahmadinejad
has his way, gets his nuclear weaponry, because he has no use for
moderate Muslims. He'll kill them with the rest of us that he considers
infidels. How can we allow those centrifuges to continue to spin?
I have been reluctant to come to the floor and talk about this
because I wanted to make it a very bipartisan thing--it's gone on for
over 6 months--hoping that we would quietly be able to have Democrats
take the lead, because I didn't care who took the lead. Take the lead,
whoever wants to. But it is

[[Page H3537]]

time to step up and stop Iran from developing and acquiring nuclear
weapons that pose a threat to Israel, to moderate Muslims, and to the
existence of this country. It's time to step up, and sanctions are not
doing it.
We know from the Iraq sanctions when Saddam Hussein was in charge
that we had dear friends--France, Germany, Russia--cheating on the
sanctions. France's friend Joseph Wilson--not Congressman Wilson, but
Joseph Wilson started throwing around allegations about the Bush
administration. As his wife said, he has dear friends in France.
Well, France was about to come under fire for cheating on the Oil-
for-Food Programme, but Mr. Wilson was able to turn the discussion and
focus away from France and their cheating on those sanctions to the
Bush administration successfully, and the willing allies in the
mainstream media went right with him. But it didn't change the fact
that cheating went on and that there will be people who are willing to
cheat with Iran as long as they're willing to pay money to get what
they want.

{time} 2310

I think it is actually to China and Russia's credit that they haven't
said, Okay, sure, we will agree to sanctions, knowing that they are
going to cheat and sell things to Iran and not have competition because
sanctions are in place. I think it is to their credit that they have
been honest enough to say we don't think sanctions are a good idea. And
all of the while the centrifuges continue to spin, and uranium
continues to be enriched, and they move toward a bigger and bigger and
bigger bomb that poses such a threat to Israel, to our way of life, to
our liberties, because even though our liberties have allowed what the
jihadists, the radical Islamists see as nothing but corruption, that
our liberties have allowed us to move into complete immorality from
their way of seeing it, and therefore need to be destroyed. The fact is
our liberties allow us to move forward and progress and become what has
shown the world the greatest Nation in the history of mankind right
here in the United States of America. The greatest ever in the history
of the world.
We continue to move forward and advance because of the liberties and
encouragement of entrepreneurism. But what are we doing now? Now we are
moving more and more of the entrepreneurship into the Federal
Government and say the Federal Government is going to take over and
take care of things. But the truth is if we allow someone like a modern
day Hitler named Ahmadinejad to develop a nuclear weapon--and
apparently he may have enough fuel now to make a small bomb, if we
allow him to get a bomb, Israel is at risk, we are at risk, and it
would take a miracle of God to protect us because we have pulled down
our own defenses.
I never seek to push my religious belief on others, but it is my
belief, and since people have fought and died so I can express my
opinion, it is my belief that God does allow us to have freedom of
choice. And when we turn from God in our freedom of choice, and we walk
away from his direction, teachings, and become the immoral Nation we
have moved into where greed and avarice take over, eventually God turns
his back, and you go to the dust heap of history. It has happened over
and over. And now we seem to be moving ever so quickly in that
direction.
Well, the great news is that this incredible experiment in human
liberty and democracy does not have to go away, but it is going to have
to take a recommitment to the morals, and of course George Washington,
as I read, he said you cannot have morality that will sustain this
Nation in exclusion of religious principle.
We know that Benjamin Franklin, I have said it so many times, but
because there are still people out there saying Ben Franklin was a
deist who believed that a deity created the universe and never involves
himself in the things of man, it is important for people to know his
own words, because he himself said, in 1787 at the Constitutional
Convention, I have lived, sir, a long time. And the longer I live, the
more convincing proofs I see of this truth: That God governs in the
affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his
notice, is it possible an empire could rise without his aid?
Franklin said, We are assured in the sacred writing, sir, that except
the Lord build a house, they labor in vain that build it. He went on
and said, I also firmly believe that without His, the Lord's concurring
aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the
builders of Babel. We shall be confounded by our local partial
interests, and we ourselves will become a byword down to future ages.
And that is what scares me now in America.
We, as Franklin said, have forgotten our powerful friend. That is the
question that he asked the Constitutional Convention: Have we now
forgotten our powerful friend?
If he were here in this body today asking that question, we would
have to answer him ``yes.'' There is a judge in Wisconsin who said you
couldn't call upon your powerful friend as a Nation on a National Day
of Prayer. We have had a Supreme Court say previously that despite the
fact that the Constitution came about after Franklin moved that we
begin to have daily prayer in Congress, we had a Supreme Court that was
so miseducated that they felt like it was improper to have prayer in
public places. How did we get so far off base? Well, we have had people
that were miseducated.
There was a lady in Mount Pleasant where I grew up, Ms. Milum, she
got into her 90s and she could still cook. And she would call my mother
and say, Tell Louie I have some rolls. Her daughter was my mother's
best friend, Emma Lou. And one day Emma Lou was talking about a man
there in Mount Pleasant. And Ms. Milum said, He's a fool. Emma Lou
said, Mother, he has his Ph.D.
And she said, I don't care, he is still a P-H-U-L. Well, I think we
have a lot of Ph.D.s and other degrees who are still P-H-U-Ls. They are
fools still because they have been educated beyond their means. Or they
have become, as scripture refers to them, wise in their own eyes.
As a result, we have people in this country who think that while a
madman is spinning centrifuges, developing uranium, and saying that he
is going to use it to destroy Israel and America, and of course that
will also include destroying moderate Muslims, we are just talking over
here about sanctions and can't even agree on them.
We took an oath in this body to support and defend the Constitution.
We are supposed to provide for the common defense against all enemies,
foreign and domestic, and we have a self-announced enemy to this
country that wants to wipe us off the map and he stands there taunting
us, developing nuclear weapons, and we are not living up to our oath to
provide for the common defense.
I was in West Africa with Mercy Ships, a wonderful charitable
institution that helps the lame to walk, the blind to see, provides
surgeries for those who do not have health care in Africa. In the
country of Togo with around 6 million people, two hospitals, this Mercy
Ship is truly a ship of mercy.
But West Africans on the ship wanted to meet with me the last night I
was there. I don't know how well educated those folks were. They had
hearts of gold, and they were people of prayer. They were Christian
brothers and sisters. The oldest gentleman there, Ebenezer said, in
essence, it is so important that you understand what America means to
the rest of the world.

{time} 2320

And to Christians around the world, and those who want to be free,
who have freedom, those who want to be free, if you let your country
fall, there is no one else in this world, other than God, to help us.
You must keep your country strong in order for the rest of us to have
hope of protection.
There were so many words of wisdom from that group, one from a young
man who said, yes, but we must not only pray for their leaders--in
fact, they said, we're excited that you have a Black President. We're
concerned about some of his policies. We're concerned some of them will
weaken America. And if you become weak, we have no protection from the
forces of evil. Our protection of this country means so much to so
many.
As this young man said, we need to also pray for the people around
their

[[Page H3538]]

leaders in America because they all have people whispering and giving
them advice and giving them information. We need to pray for them too.
I was struck by the wisdom of that young man because he understands.
And in this country, whether it's at the White House, here in the
Halls of Congress, we all have people whom we rely on for information
and to help us work through and summarize and get information in a
nutshell so it can be absorbed and utilized. And if the wrong
information is provided, then our leaders have no hope of doing the
right thing.
That's what happened with the TARP bailout. We had a good leader in
President George W. Bush. He's smarter than people give him credit for.
He's witty, one of the wittiest guys to talk with, just a delight to
visit with. But the man who was his Secretary of the Treasury was
acting in the best interest of Goldman Sachs and his friends on Wall
Street, and not for the people across America. And I'll give him the
benefit of the doubt and say, okay, through his Wall Street lens he
thought, if my friends get rich again and they don't go bankrupt, then
everybody in America will do well. Well, we saw that's not the case.
But that's what we've got going on now. Apparently our President, our
great President, is getting some very bad advice, just like President
Bush did on the TARP bailout. He's got a Secretary of the Treasury that
we were told worked with Paulsen in the plan so he'll keep the same
things going. I thought that was a good reason not to confirm him, but
he was confirmed, and there he is giving the President advice.
And the jobs still are not being created. And as we move toward the
end of the year, we see the tax rates are going to go up in every way,
capital gains are going to go up, estate tax is coming back with a
vengeance. Some people are beginning to make their moves financially.
And as Art Laffer said, it's going to make this, the rest of the year,
look like we may be moving into a recovery, but it's a false recovery.
It's people preparing for the end of the year when the taxes skyrocket
in every area. And that's when the bottom will fall out.
So it's not surprising that there are some economic indicators that
are going up. It makes sense.
But we've got people giving the President bad advice. We have people
in this Congress, the leaders here who are getting bad advice, and
we're hurting the country.
And those wonderful West Africans that I met with, who warned me,
don't let your country fall; don't let your country get hurt. You're
the hope we have in this world because of the way God's used America in
the past.
We owe it to so many. Who will come rushing in to the Haitis, to the
international disasters once we're too broke?
You know, the Democrats took the majority in November of 2006 I think
largely on the promise that we're going to correct, as Democrats, what
the Republicans have done in running up the deficit. And unfortunately,
Republicans had done that. When Republicans got the White House, had
both Houses of Congress, they got giddy and they could run up a couple
of hundred billion in deficit. My first 2 years we were still in the
majority, and I couldn't believe some of the things that we were doing.
That was not Republican. That's not what we were supposed to do.
But the new majority, over the last--well, since January of '07, have
run up deficits. This administration has run up deficits like never
before in history. And I was embarrassed when Bush was talking about
$160 billion deficit in one year. And we're talking about a $1.6
trillion deficit in one year, 10 times what the Bush administration was
pushing. And yet no outrage from the same people that were so upset
about 160 billion. What happened to that?
Our country is in trouble morally, and because morally, then
economically, and because we're economically in trouble, people are
allowing their liberties to be taken.
And now we find out that 53 percent of Americans are going to carry
all of the income tax burden for the whole country?
Now, there are some in this country who want to work, and they're not
able to work. There are others in this country who are able to work and
they're not. There are those who could do more, but we're moving up to
47 percent that are not going to pay any income tax. And we know
historically that when one more than 50 percent of the voters in a
country get more benefits from the Federal Government, than they put
in, you are very close to the end of your Nation's history. You are
very close to the end of your Nation as you knew it. And we are moving
far too quickly in that direction. It's got to stop.
We need morality in the Department of the Interior, in the MMS, so
they don't just wink and nod on the blow-out preventers, that they will
step up and do what is morally correct to protect the environment.
We need people who will step up and say, we are not going to destroy
this economy. We're going to use the energy we've got, but we will make
sure that it's being used environmentally responsibly.
Apparently my time has expired, so I must yield back with a prayer
for America that we will regain our morality, our economic stability
and keep our liberties.

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