[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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