[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 38 (Thursday, March 8, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H1297-H1300]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       PRODUCING AMERICAN ENERGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it's always a pleasure to get to address 
the House in your presence.
  I tell you what. There was quite an election in November of 2010. One 
of the results was a freshman named Rob Woodall from Georgia, and the 
gentleman from Georgia does his constituents proud. It's a pleasure to 
serve with him.
  His comments, most meaningful. When we think of what is going on 
today in the world of energy and the world of constitutional rights, in 
the world of religious freedom, there are things to be excited about, 
and there are things to be greatly saddened about.
  When I came to Congress as a freshman, was sworn in in January of 
2005, it looked like our days of being an energy giant in the world 
were over. Sure, we were the kings of technology, but we were hearing 
from people that use natural gas for most of the stuff it seems like--
you look around the room and see whether it's plastics, or if you've 
got food, probably had fertilizer, natural gas used to make the 
fertilizer--it has had such a role in many things.
  In recent months I've asked some scientists, do you see anything on 
the horizon that might replace natural gas for the use as a feed stock 
for so many things we make, and manufacture, in this country. I was 
told not for at least 30 years or so.
  The amazing thing, though, in the last 7 years that should have 
everybody in America excited, is all the energy that's been found in 
America. Here we are having to all wring our hands, lower our heads, 
oh, woe is us, gas prices going up. We've got a President, 
unfortunately, seems like a nice fellow, but he doesn't know anything 
about energy other than what's handed to him that he could read about. 
I wish that it was otherwise, but the fact is he keeps making 
statements that are not borne out by the facts with regard to energy.
  I've been excited as a member of the Natural Resources Committee to 
find out all of the things that are being found. In east Texas, where I 
am, we are fortunate because there was a natural gas formation that 
Louisiana was

[[Page H1298]]

kind enough to share with us. It's called the Haynesville shale. For 
that reason, there's more natural gas being produced in east Texas than 
any of the other 31 congressional districts in America.
  There's the Marcellus shale, Pennsylvania, runs up into New York 
State. But a massive natural gas formation. The ability of hydraulic 
fracking, which has never been shown by a single scientific study to 
pollute water, despite some of the stories--once they're investigated 
people find out they're not true. Because the purpose of hydraulic 
fracking is to push oil or natural gas out of the formation and up. 
There is a vested interest in making sure that everything is sealed 
thousands of feet below where drinking water would be found. There is 
no scientific study that finds hydraulic fracking has polluted drinking 
water.
  Yet, you look at the things it's done. Depending on who you believe, 
we probably have at least 300 years of natural gas, even at an 
accelerated rate. People are now looking at having their cars running 
on natural gas.
  Then, just when we think, well, natural gas is the thing of the 
future, now we've got 300 years in which to find a suitable alternative 
without bankrupting the country trying to create something in the way 
of solar power or wind power--one day solar power I think will be a 
very viable source, but in the meantime, this President, in supporting 
his cronies who are manufacturing solar panels, some of them not doing 
anything but enriching themselves--but the market will take care of 
these things.
  When it is economically feasible and economically viable, then we'll 
see things like solar power become a reality. But it's no time soon. In 
the meantime, the President's friends are being enriched, the country 
is being taken to the poorhouse on a fast track. There is no need for 
that.
  Natural gas is the cleanest burning form of energy we could hope for.
  We're the largest repository of coal in the world.
  Then we find all of this oil, this huge place in North Dakota. I've 
met with a third group now who tells me that in Utah, this hard reddish 
brown rock that you wouldn't think has oil, when put under intense 
heat, without oxygen, you get oil. They say it's $60 a barrel. They can 
make $10 or more a barrel. They're doing it right now in Estonia. The 
same kind of rock, the same kind of thing. Now the third group has told 
me they believe they think they can get 3 trillion barrels of oil from 
just one area of Utah. Then it goes into northwest Colorado and 
southwest Wyoming, from what I'm told.
  We know that there have been enough wells drilled in the Middle East 
that all the oil that is there, we pretty well know where it is. We 
have a good idea from the way the wells and the fields are being 
depleted about how much is left.

                              {time}  1420

  Information that I've been given indicates that there is probably 
somewhere around a trillion barrels of oil left in the Middle East--a 
trillion. Yet, in one area of Utah, we're told there may be three times 
that much. Sadly, however, this administration does what it has done 
repeatedly for over 3 years: they put more and more of our resources 
off limits. So when the President reads the teleprompter and says, 
There's just nothing I can do to change the price of gasoline, would 
that we could get information to him to show him how wrong that is. 
There is oil; there is natural gas; there is coal.
  We've also been given the information that when gasoline hits $4 a 
gallon, normally at least 25 percent to a third or so is purely 
speculation. So I realize the President wouldn't say there's nothing he 
can do about the skyrocketing price of gasoline. He surely means that, 
or I'm sure he wouldn't say it.
  Yet the truth is, if the President were to go on television tonight 
and announce, Do you know what, folks? My Secretary of the Interior in 
January of 2009 immediately on coming into office announced that he was 
sending back the checks for leases in this small area. It may have 
involved some in northwest Colorado, but it was certainly in Utah. He 
sent back the checks and said that we're not going to allow leases on 
these areas that were let at the midnight hour by the Bush 
administration. Well, we'd give him the benefit of the doubt and just 
say, apparently he didn't know at the time what he was saying was not 
true.
  Those leases, as he admitted in one of our hearings as I had to keep 
pushing to get the answer, were part of a 7-year process. Companies 
can't just come in and bid massive amounts of money on a lease on which 
they expect to produce oil or gas until they've had a chance to study 
the information. It was a 7-year process--not the midnight hour, but 7 
years. Secretary Salazar finally admitted that. It was 7 years just to 
get to the point where people could bid on those leases--a massive 
amount of Federal land. The majority of Utah is Federal land. He put it 
off limits and returned the checks after the 7-year process was 
completed. Fortunately, during the prior 7, 8 years of the Bush 
administration, there were other areas where leases were let and 
permits were granted and drilling commenced.
  I don't think we ought to be allowing anybody to drill who has had as 
many safety violations as British Petroleum had in the gulf. If you 
can't have less than 800 egregious safety violations in your drilling, 
you've got no business drilling on American soil or over American 
waters. Yet they were allowed to drill when, during comparable times, 
Exxon and others had one, two, none. They had about 800.
  It appears the reason they were allowed to keep going, even though 
there was such a great lack of safety, is that they were about to come 
out publicly as being a big energy company that embraced the 
President's cap-and-trade bill. That was going to be big news, so they 
didn't want to alienate a big energy company. Of course, they were 
going to be getting even richer dealing in the carbon credits. 
Consistent with the crony capitalism, they were going to be thrown lots 
of bonuses through that.
  But anyway, this ought to be an exciting time in American history. We 
have energy galore. A man from China told me that he thought they had 
figured out what we were doing for our energy policy. We keep declaring 
all of our energy off limits, more and more of it. We don't use the 
energy we've got. We do have more energy, when you consider all of the 
resources, than any other country in the world.
  While the President is busy out there deriding America for using too 
much energy, we make the world safer; we make the world more peaceable; 
we make the environment cleaner. When manufacturers leave America and 
go to other places in the world, they pollute four to 10 times more in 
most of the places that those manufacturers are going to. If you really 
care about the environment, then keep them here. Many of them are union 
jobs. You'd think the unions would embrace what we're trying to do 
rather than what the President is doing, but I understand loyalty runs 
deep.
  We've got health care that has been rammed down the throats of 
Americans. The majority didn't want it. The elections revealed that in 
November of 2010. All of the polls revealed that throughout 2009 and 
2010. We got it forced upon us when, really, what this government does 
best is play referee. It makes sure everybody is playing fair and 
playing by the rules. The problem is, when we become a player, when we 
become a coach and the referee, we're terrible at all three. When we 
get so involved in owning part of Wall Street that we're not watching 
what's going on, you have things like Madoff ripping people off right 
and left. We should be the referees, making sure everybody plays 
fairly--not the players, not the coaches, but the referees. The 
government, Federal Government especially, is a terrible coach when 
trying to tell people how to make a business work.
  The best thing that could happen is if we get insurance companies out 
of the health care management business that they're in now. They're 
really not in the insurance business anymore; they're in the health 
management business. If we don't get them back into the insurance 
business and out of managing our lives and our health, then they'll be 
out of business, and the government will take over it all just as 
ObamaCare anticipates. That's where it's all headed. If we don't get 
the Federal Government out of being a player and a coach and a referee 
in health care, then the government will ultimately be the only player 
and coach

[[Page H1299]]

and referee, and that does not bode well for Americans.
  We have a chance now, for the first time since the sixties, since 
Medicare was thought up, to allow our seniors to take control of their 
own health care and to give them the resources to do it. There would be 
nothing like a real test: Medicare here. If you want Medicare, have it 
just the way it is or we'll buy you health care, a private insurance 
policy; and we'll be referees and make sure they pay fair. We'll make 
it a high-deductible policy because those are so much cheaper. Then 
we'll give you cash in a health savings account that will be enough to 
cover the amount of your deductible each year.
  In the end, it will be cheaper, and it will give people the dignity 
and patience--the control--of their health care so they don't have to 
beg the Federal Government, so they don't have to beg this board that 
ObamaCare has set up, so they don't have to beg some insurance 
company--please, please, let me have this treatment. You'll have 
insurance; you'll have the money to cover the high deductible; and we 
will move people into being in charge of their own lives, because the 
alternative is rather grim.
  But let's be clear: this government wants to control people's lives. 
As soon as ObamaCare were to be fully operational, then the Federal 
Government has every right to tell people what they can eat; to tell 
people what medicines they can have; to tell people when they won't get 
that pacemaker, as the President told a lady at the White House during 
a town hall.
  Maybe it's time we tell people like your mom, who would have 10 extra 
years of life with a pacemaker, you don't get the pacemaker--just take 
a pain pill. If we don't get this turned around, the government will 
have every right to tell you what to eat, what to drink, how much you 
have to exercise, what you can and can't do.
  Our freedoms will be gone.

                              {time}  1430

  I've got a great quote here from one of the Founders, a man named 
Thomas Jefferson:

       If people let the government decide what foods they eat and 
     what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as 
     sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under 
     tyranny.

  Those that say: Gee, I want to have unlimited sex, and I want the 
government to pay for it. Somebody's got to. I want the government 
controlling my life. People that feel like they need the government 
telling them what to do whatever it is, whatever aspect of life.
  Sam Adams is given credit as being one of the most influential 
Founders in giving us this great Nation:

       If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of 
     servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go 
     home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. 
     Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your 
     chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye 
     were our countrymen.

  Now, once the government has the right to control everybody's health 
care, it will have the right to tell you what freedoms it will 
recognize and you can practice and which you can't. That's why one of 
the reasons ObamaCare is so objectionable. It's the government 
intrusion into so many areas of our lives.
  The First Amendment:

       Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 
     religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or 
     abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the 
     right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition 
     the Government for a redress of grievances.

  We're not supposed to make a law prohibiting the free exercise of 
religion. ObamaCare does that. It gives this government the power to 
say: You know what? People ought to be able to get abortions paid for 
by the government, which means the taxpayers pay for it. They ought to 
be able to get contraceptives as they wish. So never mind the fact that 
right now if there is somebody in America that needs contraceptives, 
they can be obtained, plenty of sources, still the President feels the 
need to intrude upon religious belief and say: Folks, you can't 
practice this belief. If you believe abortion is murder, it's murder of 
an unborn child, well, I will tell you what we'll do. We'll just say 
your money doesn't go for abortions.
  Yet in ObamaCare, it's very clear there will be clinics, there will 
be policies that will provide abortions, and people that pay into 
policies, those policies insure across the board and they will cover 
that. And money is fungible; it will be used for abortions; it will be 
used for contraceptives, even though there are people putting in money 
to the system that object and feel they are violating their religious 
beliefs.
  So it struck me that the President recently found time to apologize 
to someone who had been up here on the Hill testifying, but he never 
found time to apologize to those whom he told: You cannot practice your 
religious beliefs. Oh, yes, he tried to make an accommodation for a 
church and a hospital, but Catholics that have these closely held 
beliefs--I'm a Baptist, but, good grief, if you're going to tell a 
Catholic they can't practice their religion because, as some in this 
body have said, a majority think you shouldn't, you're going to tell 
people they can't practice their religious beliefs? For heaven's sake, 
at least give them an apology. But not so, no apology there. So I 
thought, well, maybe it would be helpful to track exactly what deserves 
apology and what doesn't.
  Well, we remember when the President first came into office, the 
first thing he did was take what a lot of people refer to as the 
apology tour. He went around the world apologizing for America's 
arrogance toward countries where we had Americans buried who gave their 
last full measure of devotion to free those countries. But the 
President found time. Do they get an apology or no apology? Yes, you 
got an apology.
  All right. There were Bush policies that our President said--toward 
countries that we actually give a tremendous amount of money to but who 
vote against us over half the time in the U.N. Do they get an apology? 
Bingo. He found time to give them an apology.
  The family of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, murdered by an 
Operation Fast and Furious gun that our government forced to be sold to 
criminals, well, well, no time for an apology. They don't get one.
  The CIA enhanced interrogation that saved lives and led to finding 
Osama bin Laden, we do have time to apologize to them. They get one. 
All right.
  Detaining terrorists who killed or conspired to kill Americans at 
Guantanamo, even though there hasn't been a single incident of 
waterboarding or torturing of any kind remotely at Guantanamo, even 
though when they throw feces or urine on our guards, we will take away 
2 hours of their movie watching, still, they get an apology from this 
White House.
  The accidental 2012 burning of these Korans that were desecrated by 
the writing of detainees, yes, they got an apology.
  The families of the American soldiers who were killed after President 
Obama said he ``calmed things down'' by apologizing to Afghanistan. No, 
didn't get an apology. No apology there. Our own soldiers, but, no, no 
apology.
  Death of two Pakistani soldiers in Pakistan and the death of four 
other Pakistanis in 2010 when a plane, we were told, made a mistake. 
Yes, Pakistanis, they get apology; but Americans don't, Pakistanis do.
  The President's support for the Ground Zero mosque at 2010 White 
House Iftar dinner opposed by most Americans, including 9/11 survivors, 
most Americans didn't want a mosque at Ground Zero. The President said 
it was a matter of religious freedom. So, basically, the word 
``apology'' I don't believe was used, but it was an apology. We believe 
in them being allowed to do that, even though it offends most Americans 
and victims' families, yes, yes. They were at the White House hearing 
how sorry he was that Americans opposed that.
  Comments in 2011 that Israel should return to its 1967 borders that 
would have subjected it to relentless attacks and vulnerability, as 
Prime Minister Netanyahu explained, no, Israel doesn't get one. No 
apology for Israel.
  His good friends Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the first people to 
have a fundraiser at their house for him, they were part of a radical 
left-wing group, Weather Underground, detonated a bomb at the Pentagon 
in 1972. And we know there are still people serving in the military 
that were

[[Page H1300]]

around when the Pentagon was attacked by his biggest, earliest 
supporters. They don't get an apology. No apology there.
  Ordering many Christians to violate their religious beliefs and pay 
for abortion, drugs, and contraceptives, no, no apology there. Violates 
your religious beliefs; too bad, no apology.
  Comments by President Obama and President Sarkozy in 2011 at the G 20 
summit where they belittled Prime Minister Netanyahu. He's Israeli. No 
apology for that.

                              {time}  1440

  Comments made by Rush Limbaugh in his radio program about pro-
abortion activist and Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, yes, the 
President found time for that apology.
  The President's support for not allowing nurses to save babies that 
were born alive after a botched abortion, we've heard from some of 
those--at least one of those nurses--how brokenhearted they were 
sitting there and being forced to watch a baby die. No apology for 
those folks.
  Attendance for 20 years at Trinity United Church of Christ where 
radical pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright used racial and anti-Semitic 
terms, inflammatory rhetoric and insulting comments about Hillary 
Clinton from his pastor--I believe the comment was he could no more 
disown that fine gentleman, which he later did. No apology for anybody 
offended by that.
  And inflammatory and indecent comments of one of President Obama's 
biggest supporters, Bill Maher, regarding Sarah Palin and Michele 
Bachmann, tens of times worse than anything Rush Limbaugh would have 
ever dreamed of saying. That's right, no apology for that.
  So I think it helps to chronicle exactly what deserves an apology 
from the White House these days, you know, just so we know where 
policies lie and where this President stands and with whom he stands.
  And with that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________