[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 143 (Friday, September 23, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H6449-H6453]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1340
                       THE PRESIDENT'S JOBS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 45 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we're going into recess for a week. We 
passed a bill to keep the government running. Some of us were concerned 
that we were compromising with ourselves, but supposedly it was a bill 
that, though we compromised with ourselves, that the Senate could pass. 
Now we find out they've tabled the bill, and now they're talking 
shutdown.
  It's extremely disconcerting when it seems that one group believes 
that the best way to win politically is to have a shutdown and blame 
Republicans. It's also disconcerting to have a President come into this 
body here, speak to the House and Senate, stand here at the historic 
podium and lecture this body on the President's jobs bill that didn't 
exist while he was lecturing us.
  It was entirely consistent, though, with exactly 2 years before that 
when the President's polling data showed that people didn't think that 
the President's ideas for health care were good, and since he is such 
an incredibly gifted reader of speeches, apparently he felt if he came 
back to the House floor and were able to use the teleprompters and read 
to the body that he would be able to convince everyone to go along with 
the government takeover of health care completely. And that day, he 
kept representing things about ``his bill,'' ``this bill,'' ``my 
bill,'' ``my plan,'' ``this plan,'' and there was no plan. There was no 
bill at that time either.
  So it was not terribly surprising that the President would come in 
here again 2 years later when polls are not looking good and tell us 
that we had to pass a bill that didn't exist and that he had a plan but 
the plan didn't really exist.
  Eventually, we got a copy of his bill, even though for 6 days nobody 
filed an American Jobs Act. So I went to the trouble of filing one. I 
felt if the President wanted to fuss at us for not passing the American 
Jobs Act, there ought to be one. So mine was two pages. His is 155.
  But it's amazing, and especially with all the stuff going on with 
Solyndra in California and the scandal that that has become, that this 
administration twisted and pushed and potentially distorted things in 
order to get half a billion dollars to a company which wasn't doing 
well, and then turn around and turn the agreement upside down.
  Secured creditors, those that provide the money, are supposed to be 
paid first in the event that there's not enough to go around for 
everyone. And yet somebody in this administration--maybe a number of 
somebodies it appears right now--changed the deal so that the secured 
creditors, the American taxpayer, the government, would not get paid 
back first.
  My days as a district judge in Texas and chief justice would seem to 
indicate that that kind of thing is fraud

[[Page H6450]]

upon the American people. The investigation is going on, so we'll find 
out more about that as it does.
  It's interesting that in the President's so-called jobs bill that 
really will destroy more jobs than it creates, he's got these constant 
references to priority to the use of green practices, and it's got lots 
of provisions, apparently, that will ensure that any other Solyndras 
out there, any other companies that are trying to get government money 
for a business that can't make it on its own but they're close enough 
to the administration, they feel like they could get loans, they could 
get grants for things that cannot be commercially feasible, that this 
is the way to go. And we see that throughout the bill.
  Apparently, half a billion dollars squandered for crony capitalism 
was not enough. There's more provisions for that in the President's so-
called jobs bill. Of course, we've got the payback to unions and 
language in here for prevailing rates and that kind of thing. Some 
folks that I talk to would be glad to have a job at whatever rate they 
could get. There are those folks.
  Yet, when the administration pushes a jobs bill that's going to make 
the prevailing wage the price to be paid for wages so high that a 
business cannot afford to hire those extra people, have we really done 
the American people any favors? We can't even create entry-level jobs 
because of what this administration keeps pushing and trying to heap 
upon the American people.
  And there is a little bit of money for infrastructures. I say ``a 
little bit.'' Compared to the overall price tag of $450 billion, you 
would think that we could do a little better than what the President is 
proposing if he wants a $450 billion infrastructure bill. But the truth 
is it isn't an infrastructure bill.
  We heard this same language about the so-called stimulus back in 
January of 2009, that we needed bridges. He talked about bridges back 
then, the bridge in Minnesota, this bridge, that bridge, they all need 
to be fixed, and we can do it, but we need this stimulus bill to do all 
this infrastructure repair. Well, it was kind of the bait-and-switch 
thing.
  I certainly didn't support that stimulus bill. I believe Republicans 
were unanimous on that. It was not a stimulus bill. You could see that. 
There was such a small percentage going to stimulus that we would 
consider true stimulus. Infrastructure, we do have failing 
infrastructure, roads, bridges, things that need to be repaired, sewage 
plants and different things, but that bill had just a tiny trickle 
coming out. And again, this is percentagewise, it really was not an 
infrastructure stimulus. The people were told one thing and yet got 
another.
  Now, one of the ways the Federal Government gets its control of 
people, State governments and local governments, is by throwing money 
out there and saying, Here, we're going to help you. And once that 
money is received, they start getting all these strings that go with 
it. Now, if you're going to keep getting Federal money, then you're 
going to have to start doing this, that, and the other.
  In fact, there is one provision in the President's so-called jobs 
bill that ought to send shivers through people in the State governments 
all over the country, because there's a provision that says if the 
States receive any money at all from the Federal Government, basically 
for any program, then they waive their sovereign immunity, opening up 
themselves for lawsuits in yet another area where States have never 
been able to be sued before.

  So I'm not sure what jobs that creates. I know it helps the 
plaintiffs' lawyers, and perhaps that's the whole goal of the 
President, to help plaintiffs' lawyers. But what a disaster.
  Nonetheless, we know that Fannie and Freddie, which may end up 
costing the country trillions of dollars, brought us to the brink of 
absolute financial disaster. And so what does the President propose? 
Well, houses, maybe they get a loan, $50,000, $100,000 or so, different 
amounts. Well, what costs more than housing? That would be 
infrastructure. When we talk about houses, we're talking about tens of 
thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe. With infrastructure, we're 
talking about hundreds of millions, billions.
  So what does the President propose for that? The American 
Infrastructure Financing Authority. And the good news is that that will 
be--and I'm reading from page 40 of the President's so-called jobs 
bill. It says the American Infrastructure Financing Authority is 
established as a wholly-owned government corporation.

                              {time}  1350

  Happy days. Wholly owned government corporation. But if somebody's 
concerned that people that would be running the President's American 
Infrastructure Financing Authority that would start trying to do the 
financing for these massive infrastructure projects, if you're 
concerned they might not have good business sense, if you're concerned 
they might not understand how an economy really is stimulated, how real 
jobs in the real private sector are created, you don't have to worry 
because the next page, page 41, says the board of directors--and this 
is just so exciting to read--is consisting of seven voting members 
appointed by the President.
  Now there's excitement. The President has shown that when he picks 
people--well, okay, it's true that they come from universities and 
places where they have letters after their names. But do they really 
know how to create jobs? Well, so far we've got a big old ``no.'' They 
don't know what they're doing. They have PhDs after their names, and 
they just don't know what they're doing in trying to get the economy 
going, stimulating the economy. It's scaring investors these days. But 
the President will appoint the seven board members of the American 
Infrastructure Financing Authority.
  When you look through the President's bill, Mr. Speaker, I think it's 
a good indication of the aspirations and goals of this administration 
if the people of America will give them 4 more years. Because if you 
look, the Federal Government will be in charge of infrastructure. Well, 
we've seen how that worked with student loans. Students, their parents, 
trying to go to college, get college paid for. We know that college 
costs have gone through the roof. I wanted my three children to have 
the chance that I did to go to a major university. I didn't want them 
to be burdened with debt simply because I gave up lucrative work and 
decided to try to help my State and country.
  So we took out student loans. You can take them from banks, from 
private lending institutions; and there were provisions for student 
loans. But under Speaker Pelosi and this President, Harry Reid in the 
Senate's leadership, the Federal Government took over the student loan 
business. Well, I thank God that I got loans for my kids to go through 
college before we took over, as a Federal Government, the student loan 
business. Because I would hate for not just me, but anyone, especially 
from the opposite party of the President, those in power, to have to go 
begging to the Obama administration: Please, would you loan me money so 
my child can get a college education?
  We put the Federal Government in charge of who can get loans? Who can 
get a college education? That's not what was intended for this country, 
to have the Federal Government make decisions on who can get educated 
and who doesn't.
  I know it scares people sometimes to have these examples brought up; 
but in 1973, that summer I was an exchange student to the Soviet 
Union--I had had a couple of years of Russian language, and I was an 
exchange student there. And one of the things that surprised me was, in 
the Soviet Union, the federal government there decides who gets to go 
to college. They tell you who gets to go to college.
  Now, never mind that here in America sometimes the most successful 
business people, some of the most successful scientists may have made 
some grades that weren't very good in college, but maybe came back in 
grad school and then really showed promise and did well, but it didn't 
matter. Maybe they didn't do all that great in high school, got to 
college and made good grades here in America.
  But in Russia, it didn't matter. It didn't matter what your inner 
drive was, that you had a yearning to help in health care, make some 
discovery in medicine. It didn't matter that you had

[[Page H6451]]

a vision for how to create some new engineering work. It didn't matter 
because the government told every student whether you would be allowed 
to go to college or whether you would not, whether you would go work in 
the factory or whether you would go and teach. The government told 
people what they got to do with their lives and who got to have a 
college education.
  Now, I became friends with numerous Russian college students. I was 
impressed and I liked them very much. But I could not imagine such a 
system back then. And I was so grateful and thankful that I was from 
the United States. I made good grades in high school and college, good 
enough to go to law school, but I just was so grateful that I lived in 
a country that really was the land of the free and the home of the 
brave.
  It's fantastic. Because when I had a yearning in my heart to do 
something and fix something here, I didn't have to beg the government: 
Will you please allow me to follow my life's goal, my life's pursuit?
  This used to be the only country in the world where any parent could 
tell their child you can be whatever you want to be. Now, we're kind of 
proud of Jamie Foxx in east Texas. He grew up in Terrell. And I ran 
into him in Los Angeles last year and told him I was from Tyler, Texas.

  He said Tyler, Texas. He said, you know, my childhood memory about 
Tyler, our family came over to the Tyler State Park--it's a beautiful 
park on a lake, one of the most visited State parks in the State of 
Texas--and he said, you know, Tyler had the highest diving board I had 
ever seen. I had never seen one that high. And people told me, Jamie, 
if you can climb up there and go off that diving board, you can do 
anything you want with your life, anything. He said he was scared, but 
he climbed up there, that high diving board, and went off the board 
because he wanted to be whatever he wanted to be. And now he is so 
successful as a singer, actor, all these kinds of things.
  You could be what you really wanted to be in this country, but it's 
scary to see that changing. And when I see moves in this country that I 
had nightmares seeing them happen in the Soviet Union, it's a little 
scary here. The Federal Government's going to get to tell people 
whether they can have a student loan or not? That's not a good idea. 
And yet the Federal Government, under Speaker Pelosi's leadership and 
the President's leadership, President Obama, and Harry Reid, we put the 
private lenders out of business because the Federal Government--I guess 
they sold some people on the idea it would be politics free. Yeah, 
right--they would do a better job of picking out who should get a 
student loan to go to college. I couldn't believe those things came 
back.
  And seeing the socialized medicine in the Soviet Union back in those 
days, visiting med schools, clinics and things--I had a little need for 
health care back then--I was so thankful that in America we had so much 
better health care. And we didn't have to depend on the government to 
tell us what we could have treatment for or what we couldn't, what we 
had to get on a list to maybe get treatment for or what we couldn't. 
This was America, where doctors could strive to be the greatest they 
could be and to help humanity, and then make money at the same time.
  I had one Soviet friend, college friend that summer, who some lady 
ran off to tell on him. And I said, why would she do that?

                              {time}  1400

  He said, well, in America you can get ahead by working hard and 
making money, and money can give you power in America. Here, in the 
Soviet Union, he said, the only way to elevate yourself is by stepping 
on others.
  You saw it repeatedly. They couldn't wait to run and tell government 
authorities on each other. Basically, you could tell who was spying on 
an American. It wasn't hard to see. You could tell who was spying on 
the other students. It wasn't hard to see.
  And I was grateful to be from the home of the brave, land of the 
free, land of the free and home of the brave. And I see things 
changing, and it breaks my heart.
  Now, another thing I observed in the Soviet Union back in 1973, we 
went to a daycare facility, and it was made very clear that children 
didn't really belong to parents in the Soviet Union. They were the 
property of the government.
  The parents would be allowed to keep their children so long as they 
trained them up in the way the government said. But if the government 
ever had one of these stool pigeons that ran in and reported that 
parents maybe were teaching children that they should strive to be the 
greatest they could be and do what they wanted to do, for example, that 
was totally opposite of the government's teaching, and it would be a 
basis for you're teaching them evil things.
  I had a student friend, Russian friend who was removed from the camp 
where I was because somebody told on him, that he was being too 
friendly to me. He never said anything negative about his country, but 
we had frank discussions about a free market system compared to a 
socialist system. And they were very honest, candid discussions. And 
yet, he did nothing wrong, but he was removed, and he was told if he 
had contact with me again, he would be kicked out of college and go to 
work in Siberia or some other place that would be very unpleasant.
  I saw when a government controls people's lives. And I was shocked at 
daycare. And I was so grateful to live in a country where children 
belong to their parents, and the parents cared about seeing that they 
were raised up in the way they should go. And they may disagree with 
the government and that's okay in America. But they could disagree with 
the government, and they were still not at risk of having their 
children removed.
  And now, more and more, with political correctness setting in in this 
country, people are told, you raise the children the way we say is 
proper; otherwise, we'll take them away. And it keeps coming back as 
hints from what I saw 38 years ago. It's hard to believe this stuff is 
happening.
  When I look at the American Infrastructure Financing Authority, I see 
things down the road that this creates. And you can't help but believe 
that it will end up as the student loan business was. We create a 
Federal entity run by the President's cronies that will make decisions 
on who gets lending for infrastructure.
  You could envision a day, just like with student loans, maybe the 
private lenders still keep lending and that goes for a while. But as we 
saw with flood insurance, the Federal Government got into the flood 
insurance market and said, you know what? These private lenders are not 
selling it as cheaply as we think they should, so we'll get involved to 
give them a choice.
  Well, what the private insurance companies found was they are not 
allowed to run at a loss for a long period of time. They go out of 
business, go bankrupt. Yet, the Federal Government has no problem with 
running in the red, so the Federal flood program has run in the red for 
years. It doesn't appear there's any hope that it will ever get to the 
black.
  And, naturally, the Federal Government drives all the private 
insurance companies out of the business because the Federal Government 
can do it cheaper and run in the red. I can envision that happening 
with the American Infrastructure Financing Authority.
  Mr. Speaker, you think about a day when a local government, a State 
government, has no lender that can lend on infrastructure because the 
Federal Government started small and got bigger, and now nobody lends 
but the Federal Government. And once again, we create a situation. It's 
the potential, and if you don't look at the potential consequences of 
what we do in this body and the unintended consequences that can occur, 
we do damage to America.
  If the President had his way, and I feel sure that if he has four 
more years, there's a good chance he will, we'll have an American 
Infrastructure Financing Authority, and eventually local governments, 
State governments, entities will have to come begging to the President 
or to the new czar of whatever it is and say, please, please, could we 
please have a loan to fix our roads or to build new infrastructure that 
our people are crying out for? Please? We promise we'll be good. We'll 
do what you tell us. God forbid we

[[Page H6452]]

should get to a system that way. But we're on the way. We see it 
happening more and more.

  We dangle money out to States and local government through grants. 
You want to keep getting the grants? Do what we tell you. The Founders 
never intended that. Never intended that. Bad enough that we set up a 
system where we order unfunded mandates of State governments. Before 
the 17th amendment things weren't perfect. They did need fixing, so I'm 
not advocating complete repeal.
  But there has got to be a way to restore power back to the States 
that it lost when State legislatures could no longer select the U.S. 
Senators. And I'm aware, there were some abuses there, but we have got 
to get a veto power, some leverage back to the States again so the 
Federal Government doesn't keep doing the kind of thing that this 
President throws out in his bill.
  And, of course, more and more of the airwaves are being moved toward 
broadband. So at page 75, something that tells you a lot about where 
this President wants to go for the future, he has the establishment of 
the Public Safety Broadband Corporation. But not to worry, page 76 
points out this establishes a private, nonprofit corporation to be 
known as the ``Public Safety Broadband Corporation.'' It says, and I'm 
quoting, ``which is neither an agency nor establishment of the U.S. 
Government or the District of Columbia.''
  But they will control broadband. So anyone that might have broadband 
coming in, maybe get television, computer, Internet, radio through 
broadband, well, guess who comes into your home or place of business 
through your broadband? It's control of the new Public Safety Broadband 
Corporation.
  In 1984 there was that eye that looked out into every room from 
something hanging on the wall. It was Big Brother watching everything. 
How comforting to know this President wants Big Brother watching us 
through our computer, watching us through the means of broadband.
  But if you're worried, well, it says, this will not be, and I'm 
quoting, ``neither an agency nor establishment of the United States 
Government or the District of Columbia.'' That's great news.
  So who will be controlling this new Public Safety Broadband 
Corporation? We see that in the next section a little further down in 
page 76.
  ``The following individuals, or their respective designees, shall 
serve as Federal members.'' These are the people that will control the 
Public Safety Broadband Corporation that this administration wants to 
impose and inflict upon America, controlling all broadband.

                              {time}  1410

  You have the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Homeland 
Security, the Attorney General of the United States, and the Director 
of the Office of Management and Budget.
  That's comforting, very comforting.
  There will be non-Federal members so they don't have just a total 
monopoly on control. In fact, there will be--the next section says--
non-Federal members on the board. Well, who might they be? The 
Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland 
Security and the Attorney General, shall appoint 11 individuals to 
serve as non-Federal members of the board.
  Isn't that comforting. You've got Cabinet members appointed by the 
President--but don't worry. The President won't control all of it, 
although his appointees appoint the rest of them, and they're going to 
control the broadband.
  I think this is what America can expect when you have the President 
push forward a bill that, until I filed my American Jobs Act, there was 
no American Jobs Act down here in the House; and that's where it had to 
be filed because the Constitution requires all revenue-raising bills to 
begin here in the House. They have to originate here.
  So great news. I mean, boy, if the President has his way, more and 
more Federal control. Infrastructure. If you need infrastructure, well, 
isn't that rosy. You can go begging to the Federal Government someday.
  But it's at page 133, as I'm moving through this bill, that you find 
section 376: Federal and State Immunity. But it doesn't address Federal 
immunity at all. It doesn't even touch Federal immunity. It, in fact, 
says, ``A State shall not be immune under the 11th Amendment of the 
Constitution from a suit brought in a Federal court of competent 
jurisdiction for a violation of this act.''
  We don't have the constitutional power to waive sovereign immunity 
for the State. This is an incredible overreach by the President taking 
away the sovereign immunity of a State not to be sued. He proposes a 
bill, and says, Not only am I proposing this bill, but I'm going to 
stick in a provision--it's here on page 133--that says, States, you can 
be sued if you don't follow my law--my bill--to the T.
  How could the Federal Government waive States' sovereign immunity? I 
can tell you. Under constitutional law, the Federal Government cannot 
waive States' sovereign immunity. Only a State can waive its sovereign 
immunity. The Federal Government cannot have anyone waive its sovereign 
immunity. Sovereign immunity is only waived for the Federal Government 
if the Federal Government decides to waive it.
  So how can the President stick in a bill that allows States to be 
sued willy-nilly under this bill? It's in the next provision.
  ``A State's receipt or use of Federal financial assistance for any 
program or activity of a State shall constitute a waiver of sovereign 
immunity under the 11th Amendment to the Constitution, or otherwise, to 
a suit brought by an employee or applicant for employment.''
  He recognizes constitutional law. The Federal Government cannot waive 
sovereign immunity for a State, but the President says, You know what? 
If you receive one dime from the Federal Government for any program, 
then that is an affirmative waiver of your right not to be sued under 
some bill that we make up here in my czar capital in Washington.
  We also heard about going after the millionaires and billionaires. 
Now, as people have been told over and over, the CBO--the Congressional 
Budget Office--that scores bills cannot score a speech unless, of 
course, the Director gets called to the White House and gets 
intimidated, and then perhaps they will. But in the meantime, 
generally, you cannot score a speech. There has got to be a bill. So it 
doesn't matter what a President says in a speech in this body or if he 
spends millions and millions and millions of dollars running around the 
country telling people to pass a bill that for so long did not exist 
here in the House. What matters is what's in a bill.
  So the President says he's going after millionaires and billionaires, 
but if you look at page 134 and page 135, you'll find out what the 
President really thinks constitutes a millionaire or a billionaire. At 
the bottom of page 134, it's subtitled, ``A 28 percent limitation on 
certain deductions and exclusions.''
  So who loses deductions? Who is going to get punished for making too 
much money? How many millions do you have to have before this President 
wants you punished and taxed extra? What does this President consider 
to be a millionaire or a billionaire who's not paying their fair share 
and who should pay more?
  It's in black and white now. The President's bill says that it 
applies to the taxpayer whose adjusted gross income is above $125,000 
if you're married, filing separately.

  So, under the President's definition of who's a millionaire and 
billionaire who's not paying their fair share and who needs to pay a 
lot more, it's defined here in black and white as a married person 
filing separately who makes more than $125,000. That's in the 
President's bill. If you're married filing jointly, then you get to be 
exempted unless you make over $250,000 jointly as a couple. Well, with 
$250,000 as a couple and $125,000 as an individual, it's still 
$125,000.
  So how about if you're single and you're not married? Well, good news 
there. You can have either a $200,000 exemption or a $225,000 exemption 
if you're single and head of the household. So it's potentially worth 
$100,000 to get divorced. The government is saying we'll give you an 
extra $75,000 to $100,000 exemption if you'll just get divorced and 
live together.

[[Page H6453]]

  Now, I'm not sure who came up with this. Obviously, the President's 
waving the bill around now, now that there's one printed, but he's 
advocating that you're better off financially--we'll reward you 
financially--if you'll just get divorced and live together. I'm not 
sure if that's his effort to placate people who want gay marriage to 
say, Look. You're financially better off not getting married, see? 
You've got an extra $75,000, $100,000 exemption if you'll just stay 
unmarried.
  So why would you want to get married?
  I don't know what his thinking was. I can't imagine why he would want 
to punish married people who are working hard and making this kind of 
money. But sure enough, that's in the President's bill.
  Happy days.
  He's had talks before about eliminating the alternative minimum tax, 
which was never meant to apply to the tens of thousands of people that 
it does. Well, guess what? On page 135, subsection (b) talks about 
additional amounts. Subsection (c) talks about the additional AMT 
amount. So we're going to add to the AMT. I know he said we were going 
to get rid of it, but actually, in his bill, where you really see what 
he's thinking, he adds to it.
  Now, the biggest help for independent oil producers is called the 
``deductibility of intangible drilling costs.'' These are the expenses 
of an independent oil company in producing a well; it's the costs of 
doing business. Any other manufacturer that produces a product is 
allowed to deduct the costs of doing business, but this President wants 
to demonize those things and call them what they're not. He calls them 
a subsidy. They're not a subsidy. A ``subsidy'' under any dictionary's 
definition is, in essence, a gift or a grant of money. There's no gift 
or grant of money to the people taking these deductions. They get to 
deduct the cost of producing oil and gas.

                              {time}  1420

  And when you find out that over 94 percent of the oil and gas wells 
drilled on the land in the continental United States are drilled by 
independent producers, not Exxon, not Shell, not the President's dear 
friends at British Petroleum who were so ready to endorse the cap-and-
trade bill, negotiating when to come out in favor of cap-and-trade the 
very day the Deepwater Horizon platform blew, losing lives, devastating 
the gulf.
  But then at the same time giving the President a chance to punish 
States like Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi who had so many 
thousands of jobs lost when he declared a moratorium that it has cost 
this country dearly by rigs having to leave American waters and go to 
other countries. And does that hurt the big oil companies? No. It means 
there is less oil and gas being produced, which means they will charge 
more and make more profit.
  So taking out the most important deduction for independent oil 
companies will devastate them, and it doesn't even apply to the major 
companies he says he's going after. So, once again, he says he's going 
after major oil, taking away their subsidies. Well, they're not 
subsidies. They're deductions for business expense.
  And on the other, what he really does in black and white in the 
bill--nobody has to take my word for it--he repeals the deduction that 
only applies to oil companies that produce less than a thousand barrels 
of oil a day. It doesn't even apply to the majors. The majors don't get 
that. They're able to do such vast production that they can survive 
without it. The independent producers can't.
  And a lot of people don't know like we do in East Texas where, during 
World War II, it was the largest oil field ever discovered in the 
world, but those, mainly wells still being drilled there, a lot of it 
for natural gas now, being drilled by independent producers, produce 
less than a thousand barrels a day. You can't go to a bank and get a 
loan to drill an oil or gas well. You can't. The odds are not good 
enough that it's going to be commercially productive.
  So what most independents do, they'll say take 18, 25 percent, 
something like that of their own well that they're going to drill and 
then they will sell working interests in that well and get investors to 
put up their money, because if an independent oil producer supplies all 
the money for their own wells, they hit three or four dry holes, it's 
what puts some of them out of business. So they're smart enough, they 
spread out the risk, because it certainly is risk, and so they don't 
lose everything when it's a dry hole.
  What section 435 does is devastate the ability to raise capital 
through investors investing because it repeals the oil and gas working 
interest exception to passive activity rules. So the working interests 
don't get the deductions passed through to them that they are normally 
allowed to do for the expenses they invest.
  Any independent oil producer can tell folks--and I've heard it over 
and over--you take away people's ability to invest, to deduct for what 
they're paying in, they're not going to pay into that. The odds aren't 
too good, that oftentimes the money they get back--if it is a 
commercial well--just barely pays the amount of expenses. If you don't 
pass through the deductibility of what they paid in, then it's a huge 
loss to them. So you're not going to have people investing like they do 
now. And it is tough to raise capital. They'll tell you.
  The President devastates an independent oil company's ability or gas 
company's ability to raise capital. This bill will devastate America. 
It's a great example of the President and Senate leadership saying 
we're going to do this and they do something entirely opposite. Those 
who have ears need to hear.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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