[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 90 (Wednesday, June 16, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H4590-H4595]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSE TO THE OIL SPILL

  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. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on what my 
friends were discussing because this oil spill is so important. And 
when our colleagues across the aisle control the White House, the 
Senate, the House of Representatives, the most we can do is use this 
honored place here to bring out some points so that, hopefully, America 
will respond, let their Members of Congress know what can be done, what 
should be done, and why. And then perhaps we will get the appropriate 
action from the majority.
  But I know there have been a lot of people that have been perplexed 
over the President waiting for so long to sit down with the chairman of 
British Petroleum. I know our President has said he has been involved 
and been in control and been in charge since day one. We have heard 
that over and over. And I know my colleague, former Judge Carter, like 
me--maybe it's the judge in us--but even though the President has said 
he wasn't going to believe--something like he wasn't going to be able 
to believe whatever he said, so he didn't even meet with him. Well, as 
my fellow former judge knows, the best way to find out if you can 
believe them is bring them. Look them in the eye. Ask them questions. 
Find out if their answers are credible. Find out by the questions you 
ask whether they make sense, whether they're conflicting. And you find 
out whether you can trust somebody just by getting them in and talking 
to them. To make the statement that, for whatever reason, but if it was 
you can't trust what he says, then get him in and talk to him, for 
heaven's sake. I guess if you're used to condemning police officers 
before you know the facts, then, as we know from court cases, the best 
indication of future activity is often past history. It needs to rise 
to the level of being habit. But we're beginning to see a pattern 
developed here.

  But many have wondered, Why was the President easy on British 
Petroleum for so long? Lately, he talked about kicking rear ends and 
all this stuff, but this is over a month and a half later. So I was 
very interested in this article, apparently from the Washington 
Examiner. And the K Street Column appears on Wednesday by Timothy 
Carney. I'm just going to read the article because I found this very 
interesting and helped give me some insight into this relationship with 
British Petroleum.
  But the article says, ``As British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon oil 
rig was sinking on April 22, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of 
Massachusetts, was on the phone with allies in his push for climate 
legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate climate 
bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil companies, 
including BP, according to the Washington Post.''
  Let me explain here why this is called climate legislation. In the 
last couple of years, it became clear that there was significant 
evidence to indicate that global warming was not occurring. We've had 
indication one of the heads of the movement that is claiming it was, 
actually admits there has been no evidence that the planet has been 
warming since 1995. And the evidence has been the last few years it is 
probably cooling. I read an article in the wee hours this morning that 
South Africa is getting the first snow in decades.
  So, anyway, but apparently, the global warming movement realized this 
was a problem. And I read another article sometime back around this 
time that indicated, you know what? We've been saying carbon dioxide 
trapped the warmth in, but it may be, since the planet may be cooling, 
maybe it makes the Sun's rays bounce off the carbon dioxide. And so 
maybe CO2 is to blame for the cooling. So they realize if 
the planet is cooling, and you want to blame CO2, you're 
going to have to change the name, because global warming doesn't work 
if the climate is actually getting cooler. So they have started calling 
it climate legislation rather than global warming legislation. So 
that's why it's referred to this way, and that's why senators like 
Senator Kerry down the hall are referring to it as climate legislation.
  But, anyway, going back to the article, it says, ``Kerry never got to 
have his photo op with BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward and other 
regulation-friendly corporate chieftains. Within days, Republican 
cosponsor Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, repudiated 
the bill following a spat about immigration, and Democrats went back to 
the drawing board. But the Kerry-British Petroleum alliance for an 
energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gasses 
pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in 
the media that BP's lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. 
Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader but instead a 
close friend of Big Government whenever it serves the company's bottom 
line. While BP has resisted some government intervention, it has 
lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, 
the Wall Street bailout, the subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, 
natural gas and biofuels.''
  The article continues on, ``Now that BP's oil rig has caused the 
biggest environmental disaster in American history, the left is pulling 
the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG. Whenever a company 
earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market. As 
Democrats fight to advance climate change policies,'' AKA global 
warming when it's not warming. Back to the article, ``they are 
resorting to the misleading tactics they used in their health care and 
finance report: posing as the scourges of the special interest and 
tarring reform opponents as the stooges of big business. Expect BP to 
be public enemy number one in the climate debate. There's a problem. BP 
was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a lobby 
dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the Nation's largest 
producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate 
legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to 
coal-fired power plants that switch to gas. In February, BP quit the 
United States Climate Action Partnership without giving much of a 
reason beyond saying the company could lobby more effectively on its 
own than in a coalition that is increasingly dominated by power 
companies. They made out particularly well in the House climate bill, 
while natural gas producers suffer.''

                              {time}  2000

  And I am still reading from the article: ``But 2 months later, BP 
signed off on Kerry's Senate climate bill, which was hardly a 
capitalist concoction. One provision BP explicitly backed, according to 
Congressional Quarterly and other media reports: a higher gas tax. The 
money would be earmarked for building more highways, thus inducing more 
driving and more gasoline consumption.
  ``Elsewhere in the green arena, BP has lobbied for and profited from 
subsidies for biofuels and solar energy, two products that cannot break 
even without government support. Lobbying records show the company 
backing solar subsidies including Federal funding for solar research. 
The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a Federal agency, is currently financing a 
BP solar energy project in Argentina.
  ``Export-Import has also put up taxpayer cash to finance construction 
of the 1,094-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying oil from the 
Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey--again, profiting BP. Lobbying records 
also show BP lobbying on Obama's stimulus bill

[[Page H4591]]

and Bush's Wall Street bailout. You can guess the oil giant wasn't in 
league with the Cato Institute or Ron Paul on those.''
  Continuing to read from the article, the last couple of paragraphs: 
``BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans. It employs the 
Podesta Group, cofounded by John Podesta, Obama's transition director 
and confidant. Other BP troops on K Street include Michael Berman, a 
former top aide to Vice President Walter Mondale; Steven Champlin, 
former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus; and Matthew 
LaRocco, who worked in Bill Clinton's Interior Department and whose 
father was a Democratic Congressman. Former Republican staffers, such 
as Reagan alumnus Ken Duberstein, also lobby for BP, but there's no 
truth to Democratic portrayals of the oil company as an arm of the 
GOP.''
  Reading the last paragraph: ``Two patterns have emerged during 
Obama's Presidency: 1) Big business increasingly seeks profits through 
more government, and 2) Obama nonetheless paints opponents of his 
intervention as industry shills. BP is just the latest example of this 
tawdry sleight of hand. Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist 
tool.''
  So I would like to yield time to my friend from Round Rock, the 
Georgetown area, and ask if that makes sense now that you know the full 
story and perhaps explains why the President was so slow to get after 
British Petroleum. I yield.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend from Texas for yielding. And let me 
say, that was a real eye-opener. I knew from having read some of the 
things previously that BP certainly was claiming big green activities 
both in their ads on television and in other places, and I do remember 
reading, I believe in the National Journal, some articles about their 
activities on behalf of climate change. But it didn't really sink in 
until this very minute when you read this to me. And I am going to 
bring something up that's a little tongue-in-cheek humor. But I have a 
question I wanted to ask because now you have talked about the 
difference between what we talked about, which was global warming and 
climate change.
  When I went to school in Lubbock, Texas, back in the sixties, I 
remember specifically a day when a bunch of buddies and I went out to 
play a round of golf. It was 89 or 90 degrees. We were in a pair of 
golf shirts and Bermuda shorts, and we started out playing a round of 
golf. Before we got through with nine holes, a dust storm came up, and 
we could hardly see the ball, and we could hardly hit it. Then it began 
to rain, and it rained mud for about an hour through the dust storm. 
Then as the dust seemed to calm and go away, the temperature began to 
drop, and by the time we got to the club house, the temperature was 20 
degrees.
  So we had had a climate change from 90 to 20 in a 10-hour period, 
including a dust storm and rain. And we know that climate change is 
George W. Bush's fault. Now did he do that? Because that certainly was 
the most spectacular climate change I have ever seen in my entire life. 
But, unfortunately, we all know in Texas, we have those climate changes 
all year long. Is that the Republicans' fault and the Bush 
administration's fault? Good Lord, where were they in 1964? I think he 
was probably in junior high school or something. I don't know. What do 
you think, Mr. Gohmert?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, reclaiming my time, it appears that apparently 
former President George W. Bush must have had an awful lot of activity 
to have that kind of effect on global warming even back then. But then 
I find it interesting, because I know my friend recalls seeing the 
articles as I did. In fact, I recall in college being told that we were 
probably at the very beginning--some said we absolutely were at the 
very early stages of a new ice age that would end the world, end all 
people on the world with ice.
  Well, I just didn't believe it because as a Christian, you know, the 
Bible doesn't teach that the world ends with an ice age, and so I just 
knew that couldn't be right. But the people all around me were saying, 
Oh, yeah, we're at the beginning of a new ice age. It's the global 
cooling. It's going to ultimately have the whole planet frozen solid, 
and then who knows what life forms will emerge, if any, after the big 
ice age. Now I remember that, and I remember the discussions and 
discussing it with classmates and things, and I just could not buy back 
in the seventies that we were at the beginning of a new ice age.
  So I come into this thing a bit skeptical. And as I have said many 
times, there is an adage here in Washington that no matter how cynical 
you get, it's never enough to catch up. And this is exactly the kind of 
thing that makes you see that. It just creates too much cynicism.
  Mr. CARTER. If the gentleman will yield for a moment, I would argue 
that we enhance our cynicism quite a bit by the article that you just 
read concerning the relationship between the Obama administration, the 
Democratic Party, and British Petroleum prior to the leak, the massive 
disaster in the gulf. So you have to be a cynic when you see the kind 
of ``whose blank am I going to kick'' attitude out there. And of course 
everybody knew who we were talking about's blank that was going to get 
kicked, and that was going to be British Petroleum, as if they were the 
evil empire, you know, the black knights or whatever you want to call 
them. When you realize that they were partners on the same piece of 
legislation that he talked about for at least one-third to almost one-
half of the speech that the President made last night to the American 
people because the solution to the oil flowing into the gulf is not 
bringing in the Dutch ships and other ships that have volunteered to 
come help by awaiting the Jones Act. It's not even releasing American 
flagships to go out there, which is no violation of the Jones Act.
  No. The solution to the oil spill is cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax. 
Let's see if we can't come up with a whole new tax scheme for the 
American people. Let's see if we can't drive up the cost of the energy 
for their homes and for their businesses. Let's see if we can't put the 
American farmer out of business. Because you talk to a farmer about 
cap-and-tax, and he will tell you, his food and fertilizer--or the food 
and fiber he produces and the energy it takes to run his farm equipment 
is all going to be destroyed by this scheme to make money another way 
with cap-and-tax programs.

  Well, I mean, look at how much money the former Vice President of the 
United States, Al Gore, has made in participating in cap-and-tax issues 
in foreign areas, like the European Union. So get back to the oil 
spill, Mr. President. I yield back.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, I was just going to mention, former Vice President 
Gore. He has got a global warming problem of his own now, so I will 
probably just leave reference to him out entirely. Apparently his 
planet is warming right now.
  But it is interesting, too, when I heard the President talking 
previously about this cozy relationship between regulators and the Big 
Oil--here it is back again to the cynicism, and part of it I think is 
all those days as a judge--you know, it hit me. And I asked my office 
to check. And sure enough, they found a press release from the 
Department of Interior dated June 18, 2009, and I'm glad my friend was 
enlightened, as I was, to find out just how cozy British Petroleum and 
the White House and the global warming advocates here on Capitol Hill 
and the White House have been. There is apparently a very cozy 
relationship, which obviously made it difficult for him to want to 
condemn BP because they were the oil company that was jumping out there 
and saying, We support all this global warming stuff.
  Well, let me read you this press release. It's from the Department of 
the Interior. It says, Department of the Interior press release. Date, 
June 18, 2009. And the headline is, Secretary Salazar Names Sylvia V. 
Baca Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. 
Minerals Management should ring a bell with what's going on today. And 
then it has the city, ``Washington, D.C.--Secretary of the Interior Ken 
Salazar today named Sylvia V. Baca, a senior public and private sector 
manager in energy and environmental policy and programs, as Deputy 
Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. The appointment 
does not require Senate confirmation.'' Because see, if it required 
Senate confirmation, as my friend knows, then

[[Page H4592]]

they would have been really digging into what she had been doing 
before.
  But anyway, back to the press release from the Department of 
Interior: ``Sylvia brings more than two decades of management 
experience dealing with natural resource and environmental stewardship 
issues in both the public and private sectors and at all levels of 
government, Secretary Salazar said. Sylvia understands the value of 
partnerships and the dynamics of consensus building on difficult 
issues, and her professionalism and detailed knowledge of Interior's 
land and energy responsibilities will make her a valuable member of our 
leadership team.
  ``Baca, who currently is general manager for Social Investment 
Programs and Strategic Partnerships at BP America Inc. in Houston, has 
held several senior management positions with the company since 2001, 
focusing on environmental initiatives, overseeing cooperative projects 
with private and public organizations, developing health, safety, and 
emergency response programs, and working on climate change, 
biodiversity, and sustainability objectives.
  ``As Director of Global Health, Safety, Environment, & Emergency 
Response for BP Shipping Ltd. in London, Baca led a worldwide team to 
develop innovative and proactive energy and the environment 
initiatives. Among her accomplishments, she oversaw health, safety and 
environmental outcomes for an $8 billion shipbuilding program, 
resulting in the youngest, greenest and most technically advanced fleet 
in the world. The project has received numerous awards for its safety 
and environmental advancements.

                              {time}  2015

  ``As vice president for Health, Safety and Environment, BP North 
America in Los Angeles, Baca served as policy adviser on environmental 
initiatives, such as climate change, biodiversity, sustainable 
development, land restoration, and air and water programs. Baca 
presented BP's Climate Change Program before congressional committees 
and served as a board member on the California Climate Action Registry, 
National Resources Council of America, NatureServe, and the University 
of Colorado Natural Resources School of Law. She developed 
collaborative partnerships with key constituents, trade associations, 
regulators, and other stakeholders on environmental legislative and 
regulatory issues.''
  It gets better.
  ``From 1995 to 2001, Baca 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 of public lands and resources. 
She was responsible for the development of national policy and 
management direction of the Bureau of Land Management, Minerals 
Management Service, and Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and 
Enforcement.
  ``Among her achievements, Baca formulated consensus-based Federal 
land and resource management policies and facilitated policy resolution 
for public land and mineral disputes with competing interest groups. 
She earlier served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and 
Minerals Management, and was the Acting Director of the Bureau of Land 
Management.''
  I'm going to stop reading here because what brought her to my 
attention for the first time I ever heard her name was when the 
inspector general, who had investigated a few years ago how in the 
world we ended up on our offshore leases having the price control 
adjustment language pulled out in 1998 and 1999, he mentioned that Ms. 
Baca was probably principally in the best position to talk about why it 
was pulled out.
  From the hearing, it certainly appeared that they were informed: We 
always put this price adjustment language in there. For some reason 
there were two people, Ms. Baca and another, who were involved 
apparently in seeing it was pulled out. And it has cost this country's 
Federal Treasury billions of dollars now that has gone to those who 
signed those leases in which she or somebody she knew about was pulling 
the language out regarding the price adjustment.
  When I asked the inspector general what Ms. Baca said about this when 
he questioned her, he said he had never questioned her because she left 
government service at the end of the Clinton administration and he 
couldn't talk to her now that she was in private business and in the 
private sector. I couldn't believe he wouldn't at least give her a 
call.
  Anyway, it turns out that cozy relationship that the President talked 
about is very real. It was present in the Clinton administration. It 
left during the Bush administration, but came back in June of 2009 as 
their own press release from the Department of the Interior indicates.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. CARTER. I want to congratulate my colleague for doing some mighty 
interesting research. It is good that we laid this kind of research out 
before this House and before the American public.
  One of the things that people get concerned about up here is who is 
shooting straight. As far as Ms. Baca is concerned, it looks right now 
like this administration decided to put their money on the wrong horse. 
When we start talking about Minerals Management, that is starting to 
ring a bell with the American people because our interesting father and 
son inspection team that you have talked about on the floor of the 
House, isn't that part of Minerals Management?
  Mr. GOHMERT. It certainly is part of Minerals Management Service. I 
have to say, it was a hunch when I heard President Obama talking about 
the cozy relationship between Big Oil and the regulators. It just hit 
me, and I sent a message to my staff and said find out where those two 
people are who the inspector general said were largely responsible or 
likely responsible for the price adjustment language being pulled out 
that cost our country billions of dollars while they were there in 1998 
and 1999. They came back and said we have a press release that is 
talking about one of them, and this is the press release that I just 
have read from.
  So it is interesting. There is a cozy relationship between this 
administration, and it goes beyond this, and I am deeply troubled. I 
know whether you are in Congress, but especially President of the 
United States, we rely so much on our staff and those people around us 
to help us get information, and we often depend on what they give us. 
That is why I like to see it in print, verified.
  But the President said in his speech last night, We are running out 
of places to drill. Well, yes, because if you go back a year and a half 
ago you will find this same Secretary Salazar took checks that the 
government had already received at the end of 2008 for leases in the 
middle of the United States area and returned the checks and said it 
was his decision and this administration's decision that they were not 
going to allow those leases to go forward that were let at the midnight 
hour as the Bush administration was leaving. That was grossly unfair to 
what occurred, because the information that some of our folks in 
natural resources had found was that actually that was a 7-year 
process. He called it a midnight hour, that is when the checks came in, 
but no company is just going to rush in and say, Here is a check; I 
don't know what the land looks like. They have to do some testing, see 
what they think they might want to offer in the way of a bid. So that 
was a long 7-year process. And it was terminated.
  So when the President says we are running out of places to drill, 
yeah, I guess so, when you keep declaring all of these areas off 
limits, on shore, in the shallow gulf, all of these shallow and inland 
areas. People are not aware, but every time they declare a wilderness 
area, they put that land off limits to drilling. When they declare a 
wilderness area like this body has, and it is on the Mexico-Arizona 
border, that means there is no Border Patrol cars or helicopters or 
anything that can be on the ground in that area in the wilderness area. 
So there is probably not a month goes by that we don't declare more and 
more land unavailable for any mineral production.
  Mr. CARTER. That comment about the no vehicles also prevents those 
who are in charge of enforcing our border from following the drug 
dealers as they take their caravans of bad product

[[Page H4593]]

across the border and into our wilderness area, and that is a serious 
situation.
  Mr. GOHMERT. The people who are coming into the country illegally, 
obviously they are not worrying about what the laws in the wilderness 
area are. They can bring mechanical things and let them work there, but 
the Border Patrol cannot pursue them. Those areas look like roadways, 
and it is from the illegals coming through the wilderness areas.
  I want to mention one other thing. I know our President has said he 
has been doing everything from day one. He has been in control. He has 
been in charge, and we are doing absolutely everything we can. But then 
we find out many weeks after this explosion that actually the 
Netherlands and other countries have offered their ships, their 
expertise to come help us. The Netherlands, probably the best nation in 
the world for building dikes and building sand barriers and things, 
they volunteered to come over here. The problem is that would violate a 
union-pushed law back in the 1920s. I believe it was in the 1920s when 
it came. It says, if it is not an American ship, it can't operate and 
do the things that the Dutch were willing to do for us.

  I am sure the President is just a victim of whoever put that 
information in his teleprompter, but the fact is that everything has 
not been done. We had a hearing where we had Coast Guard people, and 
the people from Louisiana have made clear, they have been trying to do 
things since it started and they keep being hampered by this 
administration giving BP the responsibility to make all decisions. That 
didn't make a lot of sense until you read this article and find out 
just how cozy that relationship has been between BP and the majority 
leaders in the Senate and in the Congress and at the White House.
  But since I know the President believed, I am sure he wouldn't have 
said it, believed he is doing everything--actually, Presidents can 
suspend the Jones Act on their own. I know it was mentioned by my 
friend from the Houston area, but just to bring the fact home and give 
some specific information, Hurricane Katrina hit the coast of mainly 
Louisiana on August 29, 2005. Two days later, on September 1 of 2005, 
President Bush suspended the Jones Act so foreign ships could come in 
and assist in the hurricane cleanup. As I understand it, I heard that 
they were a very good help. They came in immediately, and so we have a 
track record of foreign countries that can come in and help us. 
President Bush continued the suspension until September 19, 2005. So 19 
days was enough to allow those ships to come in and the foreign 
equipment to come in and help us clean up the disaster areas there on 
the coast in 2005.
  Now, the process requires signoff from Customs and Border Protection, 
from Department of Energy, and the Maritime Administration, but that 
can be done on an expedited basis and can be done all within 1 day. You 
could, in fact, give a call if you are President of the United States, 
you could give a call to Customs and Border Protection, DOE, and 
Maritime Administration and say, I want this done. If you are not going 
to do it, I am going to get somebody in your job that will get it done. 
Do it. Then get it for final signature to me. I will be finishing the 
9th hole on the golf course such and such time; get it to me before I 
start the 10th tee. He could jump out of the cart and sign that Jones 
Act suspension and not even be interrupted from a round of golf. It 
could easily have been done all these days ago.
  Just like Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, and just think about 
this. As incompetent as this administration has repeatedly said the 
Bush administration was, just think about if an incompetent 
administration as totally worthless and incompetent as the Bush 
administration was, could get the Jones Act suspended within 3 days 
after Hurricane Katrina hitting, just think what these guys could have 
done. Since they are so much more competent and qualified, think how 
much quicker they could have done it since it took the Bush 
administration nearly 3 days.
  Mr. CARTER. John Mica from Florida was with us earlier tonight, and 
he gave us an interesting revelation. There is an American flagship 
firm with cleanup capabilities that has informed our government they 
stand ready and willing, if they are asked, to start helping clean up.

                              {time}  2030

  The Jones Act has nothing to do with this. These are American-flagged 
ships, and they are still waiting for a response from the White House, 
and you don't have to waive any Jones Act. All you've got to do is say, 
come on, boys, get in there and start cleaning up. My Lord, if they 
know how and they've got the equipment, why don't we have anybody on 
the face of this globe that's willing to do it out there in the Gulf 
cleaning that water up?
  So it really is almost comical. With all the criticism of the Bush 
administration over Katrina and Rita and some of the hurricanes, 
natural disasters that occurred, this man-made disaster has had this 
administration's hands hog-tied for 2 months, and it's a hog tying of 
their own doing.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, it makes most of us just furious that BP appears 
to have gotten in such a hurry that with all the talk and all the help 
that Senator Kerry and the global warming bill and this administration 
on global warming and all the bills they were trying to get done, it 
makes it so outrageous when it appears they got in a hurry, they got 
sloppy, lots of safety problems. And this thing happens because it 
devastates not just--the worst tragedy is the loss of life, and then 
there are at least 17 others that were severely hurt, and our thoughts 
and prayers go out to them.
  And I know my friend says it's basically almost comical. I know he 
knows what it is to have personal loss in your life, and I do, 
including just in the last couple of months losing a brother and a 
cousin, funeral attended yesterday, and there's nothing like that kind 
of heartache.
  But then the next tragedy is what's being done to this country, 
what's being done to our ability to be energy independent and to force 
us to be more dependent on countries that don't like us, that help our 
enemies. There's tragedies in line behind those, most tragic the loss 
of life and the injuries and the hurt, but what they have done to our 
future is also really devastating. And we have got to take a step 
forward.
  And our friend from the Navy, Pete Olson, made it clear, when you're 
the leader, you've got to lead; it's not something you can vote 
``present'' on. You've got to take charge. People are looking at you, 
and I know when I was in the Army, it certainly made an impression on 
me when a superior commissioned officer got in my face and said, 
Captain, no decision is a decision, and that's exactly right. No 
decision for day after day after day after day was a decision not to 
move forward, not to embarrass British Petroleum because they were 
being so helpful on the global warming bills, not to embarrass British 
Petroleum because we've got people in this administration that came 
straight from BP and helped the Clinton administration, made billions 
of dollars for the oil companies at the cost of the Federal Treasury 
back during the Clinton administration. All that coziness that 
President Obama talked about, we're seeing it here, and it's 
understandable. He wouldn't want to be too harsh until the country 
didn't give him any choice on such a close ally on these global warming 
bills like BP.
  I appreciate so much my friend's assistance, but I did want to kind 
of change gears here and talk a little bit for a few minutes about 
something very close to my heart, and I know, my friend's heart. He 
mentioned the words ``my Lord'' and I know he and I believe in the same 
Lord, but the book that we're pointed to discusses Israel, our friend 
and our ally Israel, and it continues to grieve me much to see the way 
this administration continues to snub Israel.
  This episode with the flotilla that was obviously an effort to force 
Israel's hand because they knew, Israel had made clear, we're going to 
have to defend ourselves, and that means checking any shipment to see 
if you're bringing in anything that can be used to blow up more 
Israelis, into the Gaza Strip. They made it very clear. That was very 
predictable, because when you study the course of human history and 
government's history, you know that when the strongest ally of a small 
country shows the world that there is

[[Page H4594]]

space between us and our smaller ally, it is going to induce, many 
times, their enemies to make a move. This was entirely predictable. You 
didn't see a flotilla move toward Israel during the Bush 
administration. They knew there was no space between Israel and this 
country under President Bush. They see a lot of space, and it is 
dangerous, and I would just, Mr. Speaker, hope and pray and plead that 
this would stop.
  I have a letter that we're circulating getting signatures on asking 
the Speaker and Majority Leader Reid to please invite Prime Minister 
Netanyahu to come stand right there at that podium and speak to a Joint 
Session of Congress so that Iran and all of Israel's enemies will see 
both sides of the aisle standing and applauding the Prime Minister, the 
leader of our close ally Israel; so they will know there may be games 
being played some places around here in Washington, but when push comes 
to shove, we're going to defend our friend, our ally in Israel.
  We have shared belief systems in the value of human life. Both Israel 
and the United States believe women, for example, are not property, 
that they're not someone to have honor killings of if you think they've 
embarrassed your family. They're a country that does not believe that 
because you practice some other religion, it's okay to kill you. It is 
a country that believes, as Voltaire and Cicero said, apparently, that 
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your 
right to say it.
  Now I know we're moving away from that, and there are maybe some 
people in this country, not maybe, there are people in this country 
that say basically, you disagree with me, I'm not only not going to 
defend your right to say it, I'm going to get your job taken away from 
you; I want to take all your assets; I want to kill any chance you will 
ever have of making a living; I want to embarrass your family. That's 
some of the stuff we've had, but that's a minority in this country.
  Israel has the same belief system in the value of human life that we 
do, and we should embrace that relationship and make sure that the 
world knows that that relationship is intact and that, if necessary to 
defend itself--I have this resolution, and we're circulating that. 
We're getting lots of signatures on that from Members of Congress. I'm 
hoping more and more Members of Congress will be signing on so that we 
can get this bill to the floor and the Speaker will feel pressured by 
people's reactions, pushing on their Representatives and their Senators 
to get them to come on board and sign, so we can let the world know, 
these are our friends, and we're not going to forsake them.
  And like a big strong brother would tell the enemy of his little 
brother, if you're going to attack my little brother, you're going to 
have to go through me because I'm going to make sure you have to pay if 
you hurt my little brother. That's the kind of friend we need to be to 
Israel so that Iran knows and Ahmadinejad knows, and it sounds like he 
honestly does believe that he could use nuclear weapons to hasten the 
end, to hasten the return of the mighty to rule and apparently even 
believes Jesus would come and help fight to put the mighty in charge of 
the whole caliphate. But he needs to find out that if he hurts our 
friend, that not only is there not going to be a caliphate, there will 
not be an Iran.
  We need to make this clear: You don't go start anything with Israel.

  But in the meantime, while Israel's leaders are being snubbed by an 
administration here, the centrifuges are just spinning, and the IAEA 
says they have enough nuclear material for two nukes. You read 
Ahmadinejad's quotes, he makes it very clear: It's not just Israel. 
Israel apparently in his mind is the little Satan, and we're the big 
Satan.
  And some of his quotes, he said here at the conference in Tehran, 
called ``The World without Zionism,'' Ahmadinejad stated, quote, God 
willing, with the force of God behind it, we will soon experience a 
world without the United States and without Zionism.
  Well, as the New York Times, they also quoted him as saying, This 
occupying regime Israel is to be wiped off the map.
  It is one thing when some little pee wee punk with no weaponry says 
I'm going to kick your rear-end or something like that. It's another 
when a Nation has enough enriched uranium to make two nuclear weapons, 
says I'm going to wipe you off the face of the earth, you will no 
longer exist when we're done, and he continues to make material for a 
nuclear weapon to do that.
  I really thought that this Nation would be a bit like the Roman 
empire, not that we're an empire; we are not imperial. That's why they 
still speak French in France and German in Germany and Japanese in 
Japan, because we're not imperialists. We fight for liberty wherever it 
needs to be fought for. But this is a Nation that all of the sudden 
after 9/11, we realized we may not take decades and decades and decades 
to meet our end because we know every Nation eventually ends, and I 
would not stay in Congress if I didn't believe we could turn things 
around and this country could go for a couple hundred more years.
  But the problem is, after 9/11, we saw we're very vulnerable, and if 
he gets a nuclear weapon--and this is common knowledge, otherwise I 
wouldn't be out there saying it--but he takes a nuclear weapon on a 
boat into New York Harbor, Houston, New Orleans, and it takes out a 
tremendous amount of our energy capabilities; Chicago and New York, big 
financial hubs; LA, Washington, wouldn't take but a handful of nukes 
and we're in big trouble. We may not be able to respond. We've got to 
take this stuff seriously.
  Some have referred to Israel as the miner's canary for the world, 
that when they're under assault, that the world is going to be next. 
That may be true, but we have got to take it seriously, and we have got 
to support our friend Israel, and I yield to my friend for comment.
  Mr. CARTER. And the first thing I should say is, Amen to everything 
you've had to say, and I want to thank you for saying it.
  You know, it's become a strange world when our closest ally in the 
Middle East, Israel, sends its Prime Minister over here and he's taken 
in through the back door, the service entrance, to the White House. 
He's told no photo ops, and he is basically slighted by the person we 
have elected to be the leader of the free world.
  And then fast forward to just a couple of weeks ago, when the leader 
of the Palestinian movement comes in here, and we see photo ops, living 
room meetings, and a big chunk of money headed to the Palestinians 
promised by the President of the United States.

                              {time}  2045

  It's embarrassing how much of a change of policy we have towards our 
only--or at least our longest surviving ally in the Middle East. I was 
in New York the day before yesterday, and one of the people I met with 
said, Have you ever thought about the fact that if Israel didn't exist, 
how many Americans would have to be stationed somewhere in the Middle 
East to try to keep that cauldron from exploding all over the entire 
world? Remember what the Prime Minister of England told us right here 
before this House, the reason you have to respond is because it's your 
turn, you're the only real superpower left in the world.
  That responsibility we're taking and we know about it, but when we 
have those who have stood by our side and worked with us to try to make 
things go--like Israel, like great Britain--why would a change of 
administration be so insulting to an ally like Israel? I was struck 
dumb by the whole thing; I think you were too. And I think you've done 
an excellent job of describing the possible consequences of the 
position we seem to be taking in this administration against Israel. I 
think all Americans of whatever heritage should be seriously concerned 
about what's going on.
  I thank you for allowing me to participate in this evening, and I 
yield back my time to you, Mr. Gohmert.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend, Judge Carter, and I appreciate 
your insights in this discussion.
  I would like to finish tonight by reading a couple of things of 
historical nature because I know our President has said we're not a 
Christian Nation. I understand that; I'm not going to debate that. But 
I know our history, I know where we came from, and I know that people 
in the United States are really victims of who it was that

[[Page H4595]]

taught them and, therefore, only know so much as what they're taught.
  So I'd like to read this proclamation from George Washington, October 
3, 1789. This was during his first year as President of the new United 
States. He said--and these are Washington's words, his proclamation, 
``Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence 
of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and 
humbly to implore His protection and favor.'' ``And also that we may 
then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the 
great Lord and Ruler of nations and beseech Him to pardon our national 
and other transgressions, to enable us all to render our national 
government a blessing to all the people, to promote the knowledge and 
practice of true religion and virtue.''
  In fact, he mentioned in 1790, in his letter to the Hebrew 
congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, that, ``may the children of the 
stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the 
good will of the other inhabitants; while everyone shall sit in safety 
under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him 
afraid. May the Father of all mercies scatter light, not darkness, upon 
our paths and make us all in our civil vocations useful here and in His 
own due time and way everlastingly happy.''
  This is a book that was put together by William Federer, ``Prayers 
and Presidents: Inspiring Faith From Leaders of the Past.'' So these 
are direct quotes. I will just finish with a couple things from 
Lincoln.
  This is from August 12, 1861, the first year that Abraham Lincoln was 
President. This is his own words: ``Whereas, when our own beloved 
country, once, by the blessings of God, united, prosperous and happy, 
is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for 
us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in 
sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as 
individuals, to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy, 
to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly 
deserved; that the inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty may 
be restored.''
  And this in closing, Abraham Lincoln's own words, his first 
inaugural, March 4, 1861: ``Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and 
a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, 
are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present 
difficulties.''
  It was true then, it's true now.
  I yield back.

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