[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18333-18340]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               THE REPUBLICAN VISION FOR THE NEXT CENTURY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McHenry). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here tonight. We have 
some good discussions planned.
  I am joined by the gentleman from California, Mr. Doolittle. We want 
to take this opportunity to show some of the contrasts that are going 
on as far as the debates are concerned here on the floor of the House 
and across the Nation.
  We have had some great opportunities for us to get together as 
Republicans and talk about our plans for the future and pull together a 
vision for where we think this country ought to go. I thought I would 
just start out with giving us some of the words that have been agreed 
to by the Republican Conference to start our vision for the next 
century.
  For the next century, the Republicans have agreed that we will 
promote the dignity and future of every individual by building a free 
society under a limited, accountable government that protects liberty, 
security and prosperity for a brighter American dream.
  Mr. Speaker, we have looked through the material that is available 
from the minority leader's office and other publications. We have yet 
to find the vision that the Democrats are presenting. They have no such 
vision. They have been lately the ``party of no,'' and they have really 
developed no plan to lead this Nation.
  We have uncovered some statements they have made on what they would 
like to do, and tonight we will be sharing those contrasts. One of the 
things we are going to start out with is talking about our economy.
  President Bush said over and over again at the State of the Union 
that the state of our economy is strong, and today's economic numbers 
prove that. Our Nation has bounced back from the blow the economy took 
after the attacks from September 11, 2001. Our economy between 
September 11, 2001, and the end of 2001, in that short period, took a 
$2 trillion hit. Our economy was reduced by $2 trillion.
  That is a lot of money. We don't write checks for $1 trillion. But to 
give you an idea, Mr. Speaker, of how much $1 trillion is, if you had 
started a business the day after Jesus Christ rose from the dead and 
made $1 million that first day with your business, and the next day you 
made another $1 million, and the next day until today, every day until 
today you made $1 million, in other words, $1 million a day for 2000 
years is not yet $1 trillion. It is only about three-fourths of the way 
there. So this is a tremendous hit to our economy following September 
11, 2001, a hit of over $2 trillion.
  Now, since that time, we have done things under the leadership of the 
President and the Republican House to revive our economy. We cut taxes. 
We have held the line on regulations. We have looked at making sure 
that health care costs do not grow too fast. We have made some minor 
changes to litigation, to our liability. And we have seen the 
employment gains continue. In fact, in August, 128,000 new payroll jobs 
were created.
  Today, there are more Americans working than ever before in the 
history of our Nation, and the average wage of those workers is higher 
than it has ever been in the history of our Nation. In fact, there are 
more homeowners today than ever before in the history of our Nation and 
more minority homeowners than ever before in the history of our Nation.
  Total jobs created since August of 2003, after we saw the final 
bottom of the hit following September 11, 2001, since August of 2003 
this economy has created 5.7 million new jobs and the unemployment rate 
is down to 4.7 percent. That is lower than the average of the 1990s, 
1980s and the 1970s. It is a tremendous statement on the strength of 
our economy.
  Many of you have noticed recently that gas prices are now down below 
$2.70 a gallon, in fact, in Wichita last week, I saw gas at Sam's 
Wholesale, gas for $2.259 per gallon. Now, that is a long ways down.
  I remember seeing the articles in our newspapers across the Nation 
where it said gasoline prices, and an arrow was poking up in the air. 
They did rise. They rose up above $3 per gallon. But now, when gas 
prices are coming down, we are all waiting to see where is the article 
to say, Congratulations, Republicans, gas prices are down. Thank you 
for expanding our refineries. Thank you for expanding our production. 
Thank you for expediting the things through the regulatory process so 
we can get more product on the market so we can lower the prices of 
gasoline. Thank you for changing the number of boutique fuels, which 
shortened supply and made prices rise. The article was never printed. I 
haven't seen it.
  But the fact is, energy prices are down, and they are down because of 
the policies of a Republican House, not down because of the naysaying 
Democrats, the obstructocrats, that have been trying to stop everything 
that has come through this House floor in the last year.

                              {time}  1945

  Majority Leader Boehner said that ``while Capitol Hill Democrats' 
rhetoric may be misleading, their hypocrisy always gives them away. 
There is a clear choice between Republicans who are working to enact 
serious reforms that grow our economy and reduce our deficit and 
Capitol Hill Democrats who want to spend more of America's taxpayer 
dollars on wasteful government programs as they see fit.''
  Well, the economic recovery was successful even though the Democrats 
opposed the reforms every step of the way. And it is clear the 
Democrats have no clear plan to strengthen our economy, as Republicans 
do.
  Now, off the Web site of the minority leader, there is a document 
that is available. It is called ``A New Direction for America.'' And in 
that they have their idea of how we are going to strengthen the 
economy. According to this document and according to the minority 
leader of the Democrats, prosperity for a better America and better 
pay: We are going to raise the Nation's minimum wage, and we are going 
to end the tax giveaways for companies that are moving oversees.
  Let us just talk about those two things for just a little bit because 
I believe the best policy for America so that we can keep and create 
jobs is to free those who create jobs, free those who create jobs, and 
not punish them for doing things that are demanded by the marketplace.
  Now, let us just talk a little bit about raising the minimum wage 
because the concept that we always hear is that this is not a livable 
wage and if you raise the minimum wage then people will have more 
money. They can have a livable income now. So we are going to raise it 
$1.15 an hour. Friends, that is not going to make a living wage. And 
the fact is, according to a Duke University study, the people they say 
they are trying to help actually become hindered and they do not get 
hired. In fact, the people who get hired are teenagers and people in 
their early 20s from middle-income families. They get hired instead of 
the working poor. So the minimum wage actually ends up punishing the 
working poor. And another interesting thing that they found out is that 
employers, when they are forced to pay more in wages, forced by the 
government to raise their wages, they come up with new innovations.
  Have you ever been to your local grocery store and had the ability to 
check yourself out or gone to a Home Depot or to a Wal-Mart or to other 
businesses where you shop, you pick your products out of your basket, 
you run them across the scanner yourself, you stick in your credit 
card, you put your purchased products in your own bags, and then you 
load them up after you pay your bill and go out the door. What does 
that mean? That means there is no checker. Why is there no checker? 
Because we forced the minimum wage up so much that it is cheaper for 
that company to bring in this new automation because they cannot afford 
to pay the additional wages.

[[Page 18334]]

  So the first step in their plan is to punish employers by forcing 
them with a new regulation on wages.
  The second one is to end tax giveaways for people who have moved jobs 
overseas. Why do jobs go overseas? Why are we losing American jobs? It 
is really pretty interesting. I sat down with the CEO of Raytheon in 
Wichita, Kansas. He was moving 400 jobs over the border to Mexico. And 
I said to him, Have you looked at working with the union to make sure 
that we can save these jobs?
  He said, Yes, we sat down. We did everything we could. We went to 
productivity. We tried new ideas. We sketched it all out. And he said, 
Todd, I realized that even if my workers came in and worked for me for 
free, I would still have to look at moving those jobs to Mexico.
  Well, it dawned on me then it is not about wages. And from my 
previous experience I can verify that. I used to work at the Boeing 
Company. My job was to bring jobs into the Wichita area. When I was 
asked to bid a job, I had a predetermined rate that I could use based 
on a manufacturing hour or an engineering hour or a modification hour 
for the Boeing Company in Wichita. And for a manufacturing hour, the 
going rate back in 1994 was $150 per hour, and yet the average wage was 
about $15 an hour. In other words, 10 percent of the cost of making a 
product in Wichita, Kansas was wages, and the other 90 percent, a large 
part of which was driven by the cost forced on that company and every 
company in America by the Federal Government, barriers placed on these 
businesses by the Federal Government, keeping them from being more 
competitive and creating and keeping more jobs.
  I have something that we have been working on, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Doolittle) and I have been working on, in the Economic 
Competitive Caucus. We have decided that we can identify the areas 
where the Federal Government has created barriers to new jobs and we 
are going to try to eliminate those barriers. And one of the first ones 
that we are going to try to eliminate is the tax system that is so 
punitive on new jobs.
  One of the things that is in the document the Democrats have is 
ending tax giveaways. We have very little ways that we can getting 
things done that we hope to see done. For example, we want to have 
alternative fuels in America. So what we have done is we have the 
process. We have used tax credits and tax relief to see that we have 
alternative fuel sources available. Well, the Democrats want to end 
these tax giveaways because they think they are just a giveaway. They 
want to hold that money and create more bureaucracy.
  But we think we can get some better results if we trust these 
companies to take a little of their money and reinvest it into creating 
more jobs in America. So we want to change the tax system. We want it 
to be fair, and we want to see some tax relief because people do three 
things when they get a little extra money in their pocket: They save it 
or they spend it or they invest it. If they save it, that goes into 
saving accounts which create money for mortgages so people can go out 
and buy new homes. If they invest it, they invest it in companies that 
sell their stock. The companies take that stock and they build more 
facilities and they hire more people. That is also good for the 
economy. The third thing is they spend it. When they spend it, that is 
a demand for goods. Those goods then are off the shelf and they have to 
hire people and create new products and bring products in so that they 
can replace what has been taken from the shelf when people spend their 
money.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. TIAHRT. I would be glad to yield to the gentleman from 
California.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Talking about one of the big differences that we have 
between the Republicans and the Democrats in this House and in this 
Nation in terms of what goes on nationally here in Congress, there 
didn't used to be such a difference. In fact, President Kennedy said, 
``A rising tide lifts all boats'' and promoted broad-based tax cuts to 
stimulate economic growth in the early 1960s upon taking office, and it 
definitely worked. I think with our colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle, the Democrats, they tend to view it as what they call a zero sum 
game. In other words, if somebody wins in that situation, that means 
somebody else has to lose.
  And the thing I like about President Bush and the Republican policy 
is that we kind of harken back to the Reagan era and the Kennedy era, 
where we try to provide broad-based tax relief to everyone, recognizing 
that when we do that everyone will benefit, rich and poor. And that has 
happened, by the way. And, in fact, our standard of living is on the 
rise. And real after tax income, according to the figures I have, are 
up by 11 percent since December of 2000. That is substantially better 
than the gains following the last recession.
  And I also note just in terms of the effects of tax relief that 
despite the collapse of the stock market and the commencement of a 
recession in 2000; the terrorist attacks of 2001, which we just 
commemorated here earlier this week, the fifth anniversary of 9/11; and 
the ongoing war against terror, the economy has expanded by more than 
$1 trillion since President Bush took office.
  Our Speaker addressed this. I wrote this down a couple of years ago. 
He said our job is to leave this country a better place for our 
children and grandchildren, and I think that is really what it is all 
about.
  And this is something I think is really unfortunate, that the two 
parties cannot come to better agreement on this because we have had 
that in the past. And right now there is such sharp division with the 
other party constantly clamoring. They are promising higher taxes. That 
is one of the planks in their presidential platform. It is one of the 
planks in many congressional candidates that are running this year. And 
whenever we hike taxes, it takes money out of the people's pocket and 
puts it in the pocket of the government and puts the money out of the 
families' control and into the hands of government bureaucrats. It 
seems to me that our policies empower the individual.
  Taxes are way too high. Even after the Bush tax cuts, they are way 
too high and need to be cut further. And that is something that we 
constantly try to do as Republicans. I think every year, the Republican 
majority, we have introduced and passed bills to cut taxes. We are 
still trying to eliminate the horribly unfair death tax that is nothing 
more than a vicious socialistic scheme to punish the rich that was 
enacted back in the early part of the 20th century. We would be so much 
better off, as the gentleman observed, to change our tax system so that 
we are not all spending so much money to comply.
  And I really appreciate the gentleman's efforts in leading this 
discussion tonight and look forward to work with him to improve 
economic competitiveness, to empower families and individuals, to 
reduce the burden of government on their lives.
  By the way, the overwhelming impact of government regulation I think 
actually has a greater economic burden on families and individuals than 
direct taxation. I think it is astounding to see what this is costing 
us. When everybody wonders why are houses so expensive, you have got to 
look at all the built-in government regulation that causes the price to 
be probably 50 percent higher than it would need to be.
  Mr. TIAHRT. And also in that regulation, it is all based on an 
adversarial system between government and the private sector.
  One of the things that I look through is how we can improve the 
relationship between the Federal Government and how they do business 
with the private sector because everything is set up as an adversarial 
relationship. The EPA, for example, the Environmental Protection 
Agency, spends over half of their budget on lawyers. The reason they 
spend it on lawyers is because they are taking companies to court and 
suing them, and that means that these companies are spending more of 
their money just to defend themselves.
  And we had a very good example happen in Wichita, Kansas about how 
the government could actually work as an advocate instead of an 
adversary and

[[Page 18335]]

still get the accomplished goal completed. I got a call from the 
Wichita Area Builders Association, and they told me that the home 
building industry in Wichita, Kansas had been shut down. This was three 
summers ago. I started looking into it, and I found out that OSHA had 
targeted that county in South Central Kansas, Sedgwick County, where 
Wichita is located, and they brought all their personnel down there and 
they started going through all these job sites and writing citations 
and assessing fines, and everybody just left and went home. And as one 
subcontractor told me, he said, When I build a house, my portion is 
very small. I am just a framing contractor, and my profit is probably 
only about $2,500 per job as an average; so if I get a $5,000 fine, I 
may as well not go to work. So they have stayed home.
  So I called up the regional director of OSHA, and I got them together 
with the people from Wichita, the Wichita Area Builders Association, 
and they worked out an agreement where OSHA would announce that they 
were coming and then they would go through the job site together with 
the contractor and make a list of any potential violations, and then 
they would leave them alone without any fines, any citations, and let 
them work out the problems. They would come back in 6 weeks and check 
on them. They did this. In the meantime the Wichita Area Builders 
Association hired someone out of the insurance industry that taught 
workplace safety, and he started sending them around to job sites. At 
the job sites, they realized that the biggest problem that employers 
were facing was the inability to talk effectively with their workers. 
There was a language barrier. Many of the workers were Hispanic. They 
didn't have good English skills. And how do you tell somebody that you 
cannot prop a ladder up against a wall at 45 degrees, that you need to 
prop it up at 60 degrees? Well, if you don't have good language skills, 
it is difficult to do that. So they hired an interpreter to go around 
with this insurance safety engineer, visited all the job sites, and 
then they completed that process. OSHA came back and they found out 
that all the checklists had been completed and everybody was back to 
work. So here was an instance when OSHA, working with the private 
sector as an advocate for a safe workplace, brought everybody back to 
work. Costs were reduced. Everyone went back to work. The same goal was 
accomplished. The goal that OSHA has of a safe work environment and the 
goal that the workers have, keeping their workers from being injured 
and raising the Workers' Compensation claims.

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. DOOLITTLE. You make a very, very good point, and I have 
occasionally seen a talented government official who is a problem 
solver. And so they get out of the adversarial mode where they are 
doing inspections and levying fines, and they are actually trying to 
create solutions for the businesses and the interests over whom they 
preside in order to make things work. We don't see that nearly often 
enough. And I think that is exactly the type of direction we need to 
move in.
  All the business people I know and all the working people are trying 
to accomplish a good thing, and it is extremely unfortunate when the 
government gets so heavy-handed, and instead of solving the problem 
they create many more problems. We have had a lot of this in the 
environmental regulation area in the Sacramento region with, really, an 
unhelpful approach by certain Federal agencies.
  I think that maybe the winds may be shifting a little bit after 
considerable prodding from the congressional delegation, and we may see 
a more friendly attitude in, say, the regulatory area of some of these 
agencies. And I certainly hope so, because I really like the example 
that you gave where you saw the good results that came from a different 
approach, where it is a helpful, solution-oriented approach as to this 
heavy-handed, traditional bureaucratic government, adversarial 
approach.
  Mr. TIAHRT. And what is interesting is that when we have put this 
legislation together to codify the very example that I gave you before, 
Republicans are for that, the Democrats are against it. And here we see 
this, once again this contrast, and it goes through all eight barriers 
that have been created by Congress over the last generation. Most of 
these barriers, in fact probably 99 percent of them, were created under 
a Democrat Congress and we are still trying to undo the mess that has 
been done.
  And, more recently, we are trying to make health care less expensive 
in America. We are trying to do it by innovative practices, by bringing 
market forces to bear on things like prescription drug and insurance 
sales. And one good example is associated health plans, where we would 
allow Americans in associations like your real estate agent or your 
insurance agents or farm bureau members, where they could join as an 
association to purchase health care. But the Democrats have opposed 
those innovative ideas because they want a single-payer plan. They want 
universal health care. They want socialized medicine.
  Now, we have seen a lot of socialized medicine. We have seen it in 
the United Kingdom, we have seen it all through Europe, we have seen it 
in Cuba, we have seen it in Canada. In fact, if you look at our 
northern border, look at the hospitals in Seattle, Detroit, Buffalo, 
they are filled with Canadians who are unable to get health care in 
Canada. So they come down to America and they pay right out of their 
pockets; they are so glad to get it. But they have limited health care 
in all of these places, because if you have a single-payer plan it is 
like every contract is a cost-plus contract.
  You know, the government right now, when they purchase things, they 
want to have a competitive contract. We see that whether they are 
buying tankers or toilet paper. They want a competitive contract. Why 
is that? Because when two companies compete, it brings the price down. 
When you have a single, sole-source contract which is based on all the 
costs plus a little profit on top of it, then there is a real incentive 
for all these people who are providing services to the government to 
drive up their costs higher and higher, because that means the profit 
margin, which is a percentage of cost, is greater and greater. So the 
costs go up dramatically.
  And in socialized health care where it is a cost-plus contract for 
every service provider in health care, it drives the costs up, and so 
the government has no choice but to limit health care access.
  And my dad is a good example. When he was 82 years old, because we 
have a free market system, he was able to get open-heart surgery. Had 
he been a Canadian citizen, he wouldn't be with me today. But he is 87 
years old, he is healthy, he just had a trip to the West Coast, and he 
did that because he got open-heart surgery at age 82, something he 
could not have gotten in socialized medicine.
  Our system is very good, but we have opposition in trying to make it 
more innovative and market responsive, from the Democrats.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. We do. We have some friends that lived in Germany, and 
when they would come over to the United States, one was an American 
citizen married to a German national, they would come over and they 
would spend the first day or two at the dentist's office, which I 
always thought was odd. That wouldn't be the first thing I would want 
to do if I came back home to the United States. But in Germany, you 
can't get preventive dental care, and so you have to wait until they 
have a tooth fall out or a cavity or something.
  And it was real frustrating. They would come over and get their teeth 
cleaned and have different kinds of work done. But I always thought, 
what a strange thing.
  You know, you hear about these socialistic single-payer systems; for 
years they were extolled. I think the glamour of this has sort of worn 
off. In fact, I have heard it said that those kinds of systems are 
great if you are healthy, but if you have a serious problem like you 
were talking about with your father, people come here, because we have 
the competition, we have the

[[Page 18336]]

highly trained experts that can diagnose, that can treat, that can 
perform these miraculous types of surgeries.
  And we need to improve the system because it still isn't really 
driven enough by market forces. And that is what really the seeds for 
transformation of the whole health care system, private and public, 
were in that Medicare prescription drug bill.
  And you and I both know that the Democrat party did everything they 
could to deny the prescription drugs to senior citizens. Why? Because 
it is a good issue for them to not solve but to talk about and campaign 
upon.
  And I have noticed they are very good about not solving things. I 
can't think of a single thing they have solved. But they are good about 
bringing up problems and stirring up emotions and promoting reasons why 
they should be elected. But we actually got that through, and it has 
just been very, very well received.
  The premiums are actually dropping as a result of this Medicare 
prescription drug program. And what I really liked about it was, it 
contained for the first time the ability of any American in this 
country to invest money in a health savings account and to be able to 
get a tax deduction for it. And there has been a huge expansion in the 
number of health savings accounts as a result of that.
  And my hope is, and our hope at the time we enacted it was that this 
would begin to put the consumer in charge of his own health care, and 
through competitive forces, finding out who was a quality provider and 
who offered the best price, you begin to bring the cost of health care 
down. And I think we really have a bright future in that area.
  Mr. TIAHRT. That is an interesting concept, because the two things 
that we need the most in our economy are a good education system and a 
good health care system, and those are the two things that the 
Democrats do not want to trust to the free market.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. And yet they talk about it all the time and blame us 
for being antihealth care and antieducation. And yet all the 
innovations that have occurred in the last dozen years have occurred 
under Republican leadership.
  Mr. TIAHRT. I think a good example is phonics versus word 
recognition. They went through the education system, they went through 
the education bureaucracy that is controlled by the government, this 
concept that young kids just need to learn words. They don't need to 
learn phonics, they just need to learn words, and if they do that, they 
will have control of the English language.
  Now, that kind of experiment wouldn't have gone very far if we had a 
competitive system for education where parents had the ability to take 
their money and choose their own school, because most parents didn't 
believe that using something other than phonics would work.
  Now, this grand experiment about word recognition is gone now and we 
are back to phonics because it did not work. We have got thousands of 
kids across America that have a very difficult time reading. They have 
a hard time understanding new words, they have a difficult time 
pronouncing the words that they do know because they don't have a good 
grasp of phonics. Instead, they were taught under this archaic system 
that was forced on our kids by a bureaucratic, government-controlled 
system void of the free market.
  On the side of health care--and by the way, the Republican Party is 
for the free market, they are for a new concept in education and they 
are for accountability, and it is a contrast from the Democrats.
  Moving back to health care, what would it be like if you could go to 
a Web site and shop around for, say, a physical? You could see the list 
of doctors and what they bid for a physical and what services they 
would provide.
  Right now, what the Democrats are proposing is a single-payer system 
where you are assigned a doctor, and that is where you go, and there is 
a set fee that he is going to be paid. And if your costs go above that, 
you may have your health care limited. So it is a different concept. In 
the two parts of our culture that we really need innovation because the 
future depends on it, we depend on health care, but we depend on our 
kids having a bright future by a good education. And yet the Democrats 
won't trust the free market system. In fact, they are really against 
the free market system on a lot of issues.
  Let's go back for just a moment on energy, because I just want to 
show the contrast between what the Republican House has done and what 
the Democrats have tried to stop.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Would you yield before you get to energy? Because I 
want to comment on that.
  Mr. TIAHRT. I would be glad to yield.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. This is something I find that is very, very 
encouraging. Young people in general do trust the free market, and that 
is something that I find as a beacon of hope as they are coming up, 
because they are going to be the next generation that takes power. And 
I really think a lot of these heavy-handed sort of antifree market 
ideas which are embodied basically in a liberal Democrat philosophy, I 
just think that rings very hollow to the coming generation. And I take 
great hope in that.
  Just before you go to energy, I want to mention, speaking of young 
people, education. One aspect of the President's No Child Left Behind 
plan, which we enacted in Congress, which we passed and he signed into 
law and became enacted into law, is competition in education.
  You know, we have great schools in our area, and they were great 
before No Child Left Behind. In some ways there have been some 
unfortunate issues with that legislation for our areas, but one of the 
real areas of transformation has been in the inner city.
  In no place, I think, have we seen greater success for lifting people 
out of a hopeless future and putting them into a situation where 
finally they are going to be able to compete with the skills that they 
are learning in school than in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. has 
more charter schools than any other place in the country. These charter 
schools are actually educating children.
  When people do criticize the President's plan, I wish they would keep 
in mind that for the inner cities across this country this has brought 
a renaissance in education that has not been seen in this country for 
over 50 years. And in our inner cities we have had a lot of social 
problems festering that spill over into the suburbs in areas that you 
and I and many of us represent.
  I just really want to commend the President. I really feel that he 
has made a huge difference improving the lives of people, young people 
and their parents, by encouraging accountability and encouraging 
competition in education. And I just want to say to the Nation at 
large, they really should look at Washington, D.C. to see what is 
happening here in the public schools, because opportunities have been 
created and lives have been blessed that never were before.
  Mr. TIAHRT. When I first came to Congress, I was on the District of 
Columbia Subcommittee on Appropriations, and took some time to look at 
the D.C. schools. And in 1995, the dropout rate in Washington, D.C. 
schools was 60 percent. Six out of ten kids that started school never 
got to the graduation line.
  Now, since we have made some changes, since President Bush has been 
involved with enhancing charter schools and since some of the private 
sector government involved with vouchers, we have seen the dropout rate 
go down. Now it is down to 47 percent, which is a significant 
improvement. But they have still got a long ways to go.
  I cannot imagine the schools in Kansas tolerating a 47 percent 
dropout rate, but it is tolerated here for some reason. And the 
difference between 60 percent and 47 percent has been these Republican 
principles where the free markets got involved, either through vouchers 
or through charter schools, and giving these kids hope, hope that if 
they complete their high school degree, they will have a better future.

[[Page 18337]]

  And I think that is a significant advancement, brought on by 
Republican policies and the free market system that have changed the 
education system right here in the District of Columbia; and we could 
see advances all across America if we could carry them out.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. And one of our former colleagues, Frank Riggs, has 
been a real leader in this charter schools movement, and he continues 
to be involved these days in the private sector for education now, and 
is still involved in a nonprofit involving charter schools.
  I just think the Nation should be aware that this is a Republican 
idea that has been fostered, that has been legislated, and we are 
seeing clear results.
  You yourself mentioned the dramatic decline. It has a ways to go, but 
someone once said it doesn't matter so much where you are as it does in 
which direction you are headed. And in education in the inner cities, 
we are headed in a positive direction, and it is positive for the first 
time in many decades. And we just have to keep up the positive flow in 
that area, and I think we will be blessed in many different ways in 
this Nation.

                              {time}  2015

  Mr. TIAHRT. I want to go back to energy just a little to talk about 
the contrast about how the opposition the Democrat Party has made to 
trying to create jobs here in America.
  The House has passed the Energy Policy Act, H.R. 6, with 183 
Democrats, including the Democrat leadership, opposing this bill. In 
this bill was the advancement of production in the Alaskan National 
Wildlife Reserve, or ANWR, it is called for short. What is the term, 
the abbreviated term? It is an acronym.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR.
  Mr. TIAHRT. It is basically the North Slope of Alaska, which is 
approximately the size of California. There were also many other things 
in the Energy Policy Act. It included conservation, it included wind 
energy, wind-generated electricity, for example, which we have about 
eight wind generating farms in Kansas today. It included ethanol 
production. It included research and development for hydrogen-based 
energy. It had a lot of good things in it, yet 183 Democrats, including 
the Democrat leadership, opposed that bill.
  I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that the people of Kansas have been 
producing oil for over 100 years. In fact, just in August I was at 
Coffeyville Resources, in Coffeyville, Kansas, where they have had a 
refinery for 100 years. They were celebrating 100 years of producing 
gasoline. It was very interesting.
  Now, contrast that to the Democrat policies of not drilling in ANWR. 
Here we have Kansas, and we think it is beautiful country. We love the 
people there. The production of oil is done in an environmentally safe 
manner. We all live there, our kids are healthy. In fact, we just had a 
couple in Kansas that celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary. Isn't 
that wonderful? An 80th wedding anniversary. Well, it is a healthy 
place to live.
  But the Democrats didn't want us to drill in ANWR. ANWR is basically 
a frozen tundra, but it has been romanticized to be this glorious place 
with huge, beautiful green mountains and reindeer running everywhere, 
caribou everywhere, and polar bears everywhere. But basically it is a 
frozen tundra. It is moss on top of a flat plain. Well, all the space 
we were asking for in H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act, was 1,600 acres.
  That is about three sections. If you are a farmer, you know what a 
section is. It is a square mile. It is about three square miles, 
basically. That was all that was needed to produce oil, and oil that 
would make a significant reduction in the cost of gasoline in America. 
But it was opposed by the Democrats, the Energy Policy Act.
  We passed a bill called the Refinery Permit Process Schedule Act, a 
piece of legislation that I worked on, to help us move the regulatory 
process along so that we could update our refineries. We haven't built 
a new refinery in this country for about, what, 25 years?
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Yes, that is right.
  Mr. TIAHRT. So now we are trying to expand the ones we have now and 
accelerate the permit process. It was opposed by 176 Democrats. They 
did not want to see our refineries expanded, because they knew that 
would reduce the price of gasoline, and they are opposed to that. They 
smile when the gasoline prices are up; they frown when gasoline prices 
are down.
  They also opposed the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act. This is where 
we drill more than 100 miles off the shores of America. And 156 
Democrats, including the Democrat leadership, opposed this bill of 
expanding our production so that we could reduce the cost of energy in 
America.
  The Democrats have no plan for reducing energy other than just saying 
we are going to get rid of imported oil. Well, how do you do that? You 
have to impose, what, restrictions on trade? No, the better way to do 
it is to allow the free market system to work, develop new 
technologies, like cellulose ethanol.
  I met this morning with a Kansas company that is going to develop a 
new technology for cellulose. And I want to tell you about that for a 
minute. Cellulose, or excuse me, ethanol today is produced from the 
kernel of a corn, is the example I use. The kernel of a corn. Once it 
is processed, there is a by-product they take to the feed lot, and it 
is very good for the cattle. Right now, the cost of ethanol is 
somewhere around $2 to produce, sometimes it is $3, based on how much 
they can get for their by-products. But if we can successfully develop 
this cellulose, they not only use the kernel, but they use the cob, 
they use the husk around it, they use the stalk, they use the tassel, 
and they can even use the root. And they can chop all that up and 
process it and use that cellulose to make the ethanol.
  If the technology advances, as it is proposed, they can produce it 
not for $4 a gallon, not for $2 a gallon, but for $1.07 per gallon. 
Some believe they can get below $1. Can you imagine how nice it would 
be if we could go to the gas pump and buy E-85, 85 percent ethanol, 15 
percent gas? Fifteen percent of that would be $3 a gallon, and 85 
percent would be at $1 a gallon. What is the composition there? It is 
significantly lower than what we are seeing today. It would be below $2 
a gallon. That would be a good step forward to reducing the cost of 
energy.
  But those research and development policies, those new ideas were 
opposed by the Democrats. We are trying to lower the price of fuel; 
they are opposing us every step of the way.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. If the gentleman will yield. You know, ethanol is very 
exciting. The President has proposed the hydrogen initiative, which the 
burning of hydrogen has no by-product except good old H2O coming out of 
the tailpipe. These things, I know, sound futuristic, but, actually, 
hydrogen fuel cells exist. I drove a hand-built, million dollar Toyota 
Highlander around Roseville that was a hydrogen fuel cell. It was quiet 
and powerful. It was excellent.
  Now, one of the problems that is not quite worked out is they do not 
have the longevity they need to have. But it is the Republicans' intent 
to get us completely off of petroleum. We shouldn't have to be 
dependent on something that comes from foreign countries, who, by the 
way, for the most part, are hostile foreign countries. And it is time 
that we, just as a matter of national security, get off of our 
dependence on oil.
  We are moving, I am voting, and I believe you are too, just as fast 
as we can to get into something else. And there are some transitional 
technologies, like the gas-electric hybrids, like the E-85, like the 
vehicles that are battery powered that move people around their own 
local community. We have two such communities now that are approved 
for, I think they call them EAVs, and those are my communities of 
Rockland and Lincoln, which are both approved for that. We have the 
hydrogen area going on in Lake Tahoe, one of the five or six or eight 
areas in

[[Page 18338]]

the country where they are doing research work on the fuel cells.
  There are lots of exciting things. But in the meantime, though, as 
the gentleman pointed out initially, and we are going to push these 
alternative technologies, solar and wind and all of them as far and as 
fast as we can, but in the meantime, we need to continue to develop the 
new sources of petroleum.
  One of the problems we have, as the gentleman observed, we haven't 
built new refineries in the last 25 years. It is true that we have 
expanded capacity within the existing locations, so that has helped us 
get through what would otherwise be an insurmountable problem. But the 
fact of the matter is that now third world countries like China and 
India are coming into their own. There is greatly increased competition 
for petroleum.
  This country has increased its gasoline usage enough that if you have 
a natural disaster, like we had last year in the Gulf of Mexico, where 
we have quite a bit of refining capacity, then we don't have enough, 
and then there is a shortage and then the price goes way up. We ought 
to, just to protect our national security, develop more refinery sites.
  And it is true that the Democrats tend to oppose this every step of 
the way. And what happens then, when we do get these huge price spikes, 
people need to understand that we could avoid a lot of that if we took 
some steps now and built some more refineries. We could avoid a lot of 
that if we would drill in ANWR. Fortunately, we made the biggest 
discovery of new oil in the gulf since the discovery of oil at Prudhoe 
Bay, and that just happened here in the last week, so that is very, 
very fortunate, but we ought to be enacting this deep water bill that 
Mr. Pombo has sponsored out of the Resources Committee because it would 
vastly increase the reserves of petroleum and natural gas and would 
lower the price for people in this country. And it would be a huge 
boon.
  It is frustrating to see that there is such partisan antipathy 
towards, and almost unanimous opposition from the Democrats to us 
moving ahead. It just slows down our ability to get things done.
  Mr. TIAHRT. And you are talking about the contrast that we have 
between the philosophy the Republicans have, trusting people, believing 
in the free market, and the philosophy that the Democrats and liberals 
have of telling people what to do because they are not smart enough 
themselves.
  There is a real good article that was in today's Washington Post that 
was written by George Will, and it talks about a Wal-Mart that is 
located in Evergreen Park, Illinois. This is a suburb just a few miles 
from Chicago's city limit, and that suburb is 88 percent white. But at 
this Wal-Mart, 90 percent of the customers are African American.
  Now, one of the women that were interviewed there was pushing a 
shopping cart, and she had a 3-year-old along, but she had kind of a 
chip on her shoulder. And she told this interviewer that, well, she 
applied for a job here and they didn't hire her because the person that 
was doing the hiring had an attitude. So the interviewer says, well, 
why are you here? And she looks at the questioner as though he was 
dimwitted, and directs his attention to the low prices at the DVDs on 
the rack next to her. Well, it turns out 25,000 people had applied for 
the 325 openings in that store.
  Now, this really vexes the liberals, according to what Mr. Will says 
in his article, liberals, such as John Kerry. He called Wal-Mart 
disgraceful and symbolic of what is wrong with America. What is wrong 
with America.
  That is kind of puzzling, because the median household income of Wal-
Mart shoppers is under $40,000, but it is a huge job creator. In fact, 
they have 1.3 million jobs, almost as many as we have people in uniform 
for the entire U.S. Army. And according to a McKinsey Company study, 
Wal-Mart accounted for 13 percent of the Nation's productivity gains in 
the second half of the 1990s. In other words, Wal-Mart was one of the 
reasons the Clinton administration looked so good economically, yet 
they think that is what is exactly wrong with America.
  The article goes on to say that they have accounted for more than 
$200 billion in savings a year, which dwarfs the government's programs 
for the poor, of food stamps of $28.6 billion and the earned income tax 
credit of only $34.6 billion. In other words, Wal-Mart has increased 
the standard of living for working poor people and people who earn 
below $40,000 here in America. In fact, people who buy their groceries 
at Wal-Mart save 17 percent.
  Now, I am not here to advocate for Wal-Mart, but I am here advocating 
for the free market system and contrast the Democrat policies with the 
Republican policies.
  The Chicago City Council, unconcerned about the sales tax they would 
get, passed a resolution saying that Wal-Mart would have to pay certain 
wages. They wanted to dictate the wages. They wanted to tell them what 
to do and to tell them what benefits they were going to give. Wal-Mart 
said, if you are going to do that, we are not going to build any stores 
in Chicago, so Mayor Daley vetoed that.
  But the liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of 
introducing the subject of class warfare in the American political 
process. They are more right than they realize, but it is not how they 
anticipated. Before they went after Wal-Mart, which has 127 million 
customers a week, they went after McDonald's and tried to sue them for 
people being too fat. They have 175 million customers per week.
  Then, in an article written by the liberal magazine American 
Prospect, they gave full page ads talking about who was responsible for 
lies, deception, immorality, corruption, and the widespread labor, 
human rights, and environmental abuses, and having brought great 
hardship and despair to the people and communities throughout the 
world? What villain were they talking about? Were they talking about 
North Korea? No. Were they talking about the Bush administration? One 
would think that would be one of them, but, no. Were they talking about 
Fox News network? No. They were talking about Coca Cola.
  The liberals are opposed to the free market system. They are opposed 
to a company like Coca Cola, which sells 2.5 billion servings of Coca 
Cola every week.

                              {time}  2030

  It goes on to say when the liberal Presidential nominees consistently 
failed to carry Kansas. And I am from Kansas. Liberals do not rush out 
to read the book titled, ``What's the Matter with Liberal Nominees.'' 
No, they look to a book turned into a best seller that is called, 
``What's the Matter With Kansas?'' And it ends with saying, notice the 
pattern here, the book ``What's the Matter With Kansas?'' says that the 
people in Kansas don't get it.
  They vote for conservatives, they should be voting for liberals. 
People are going to vote for people that they feel best represent their 
ideas of supporting the free market, personal liberty, trying to give 
them the opportunity to make their dreams come true.
  Liberals want to tell even places like Wal-Mart and McDonald's and 
Coca-Cola and voters what to do. So there is a sharp contrast between 
the Republican and Democratic Parties.
  It carries over into Federal spending control. Republicans have had 
strong plans to hold the line on nondefense, nonhomeland security 
spending. Even in time of war, when we have a threat of terrorism, we 
want to make sure that we protect this country. But when it comes to 
the other part of the government, we are holding the line on spending.
  Last year, in the Appropriations Committee that Mr. Doolittle and I 
serve on, we eliminated 53 programs, saving taxpayers $3.5 billion. We 
cut earmark spending by $3 billion without any legislation, and we 
passed, each year, our bills on time, under budget, and avoided massive 
year-end omnibus packages.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Nondefense discretionary spending was cut for the 
first time in 19 years. Ronald Reagan was President the last time that 
happened.

[[Page 18339]]


  Mr. TIAHRT. House Republicans also proposed 95 program terminations 
for a savings of $4 billion. This year, Members' requests for projects 
was reduced by 37 percent, and the dollars spent on projects declined 
in every spending bill. Overall, spending on Member projects was 
reduced by $7.5 billion this year.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. And the increase in mandatory spending, and two-thirds 
of the budget is mandatory spending, we slowed the growth rate of 
mandatory spending for the first time in 9 years. 1997 was the last 
time that happened.
  Those are two huge accomplishments.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Today, through the rules of the House, we enacted earmark 
reform to make sure there is clarity and visibility in what we are 
doing through the earmark process.
  In contrast, the Democrats have no plan. They have not proposed any 
plan to improve mandatory spending programs. They have tried to add $45 
billion in new spending in the Appropriations Committee alone. More was 
attempted to be added on the floor, and over the past 4 years, the 
Democrats, had they been in control, they would have increased 
discretionary spending by over $106 billion.
  They voted against the Deficit Reduction Act. The Democrats 
unanimously voted against H.R. 4241 in November of 2005. The final vote 
was 217-215. The Republicans held the line on the deficit. We reduced 
it.
  The Line Item Veto Act, which would save money, 156 Democrats, 
including the Democratic leadership, voted against it. The final vote 
was 247-172.
  Earmark reform bill, H.R. 4975, Lobbying Accountability and 
Transparency Act, 192 Democrats were opposed to that act, including the 
leadership.
  To make matters worse, they are eager to raise taxes which will have 
a horrible impact on the economy. They want more revenue to increase 
government spending. That is what they propose.
  In our final time here, I want to talk a little bit about the 
September 11 resolution that was passed yesterday on the floor of the 
House and show the contrast.
  John Boehner said on Wednesday, when we adopted this overdue 
resolution marking the fifth anniversary, but only after a lengthy and 
partisan debate which further exposed the sour relationship between the 
Democrats and the Republicans, we finally passed the bill. Why was 
there some opposition to it? According to Jane Harman, a Democrat from 
California, ``I wish we could have considered a different resolution 
today.''
  I thought we ought to spend a little time talking about that 
resolution.
  House Resolution 994 was a commemoration of the fifth anniversary of 
September 11. Most was very generous and general in its verbiage. For 
example, the resolution, ``Expressing the sense of the House of 
Representatives on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks 
launched against the United States on September 11, 2001.'' No problem 
with that.
  ``Whereas on the morning of September 11, 2001, while Americans were 
attending their daily routines, terrorists hijacked four civilian 
aircraft, crashing two of them into the towers of the World Trade 
Center in New York City and a third into the Pentagon outside 
Washington.''
  No problem there.
  It talks about the nearly 3,000 lives that were lost and about how it 
was al Qaeda who declared war on us, which is all in the news and 
everybody agrees. Why was it controversial? It was controversial 
because the resolution talks about what the Republicans have 
accomplished to respond to the terrorist threat.
  ``Congress passed and the President signed numerous laws to assist 
victims, combat the forces of terrorism, protect the homeland and 
support members of the Armed Forces who defend American interests at 
home and abroad, including the U.S. PATRIOT Act of 2001 and its 2006 
reauthorization, the Homeland Security Act of 2002, and the Enhanced 
Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2004, the Maritime 
Transportation Security Act of 2002, and the Intelligence Reform and 
Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.''
  Now the Democrats don't want the people in America to be reminded 
that Republicans have responded to the threat and passed good 
legislation which has become effective and now is making a difference. 
It is hard to argue with success. We have not had a successful attack 
in the United States of America since September 11, 2001.
  I have heard it said on the floor, we are not safer than we were 
before September 11, 2001. I say we are safer than we were before 
September 11, 2001. Thanks to the Republican leadership and the 
President of the United States, thanks to the young men and women in 
uniform who have taken the fight to the terrorists.
  This battle is going to be fought somewhere. The al Qaeda membership 
tells us that on their Web sites, in their interviews, and when we 
catch their data off laptops or printed material. They are going to 
bring this fight to us.
  I observed an interview in Guantanamo Bay at the facility there. I 
heard through an interpreter what one al Qaeda member said while 
sipping tea while being interviewed. He said, ``When I get out of 
here,'' not if, but when, ``it is death to America, death to America, 
death to America.''
  Now there are many people here that think we are going to be safe, 
these guys are just criminals. We don't need to be in Iraq. I have to 
tell you, for one, I hope that this war is fought over there where the 
terrorists are, where every American carries a gun instead of fighting 
it on the streets of Washington, D.C., or New York City or Wichita, 
Kansas. For us to get out of the Iraq early would be a horrible 
mistake.
  The stated goals of al Qaeda and Al Zawahiri, the spiritual leader 
for bin Laden, he said our stated goal is to get the Americans out of 
Iraq. They could declare victory if we took the policies that the 
Democrats have been reporting of leaving Iraq and getting out. We have 
to complete this job.
  There will be a time to leave Iraq when the country is a safe 
democracy, when it is controlling its own borders, when it is 
controlling its own criminals, when it has a government that continues 
to be effective as a democracy. That is when it is time for us to get 
out. We cannot afford to allow a safe haven for al Qaeda, and that is 
their stated goal. By pulling out early it would simply give them a 
victory and make us less safe.
  This battle needs to be fought where every American carries a gun. 
That is what the 9/11 resolution was leading to. I supported this, but 
it was opposed on the floor by the Democratic leadership and the 
Democrats. But when the chips were down and everyone thought about 
November 7, a majority voted for this resolution.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Osama bin Laden said the center of the war on terror 
is in Iraq, yet we hear Democrats asserting Iraq has no connection to 
the war on terror. Osama bin Laden declared that, and that is why we 
need to understand it is important that we succeed in Iraq against the 
terrorists.
  Mr. TIAHRT. The policy of Howard Dean and many of the liberals in the 
Democratic Party has been, let's not fight them, let's not capture 
them, let's not interrogate them, let's not bother them. If we leave 
them alone, they will leave us alone. We knew, going back into the 
1970s when we were leaving them alone, that they were going to come 
after us. They came after us in Lebanon in the 1980s and they killed 
241 of our Marines. They went after our embassies in Africa, they went 
after the USS Cole, they went after the World Trade Center in 1993, and 
came back in 2001. And since then, even though this country has not 
been attacked on its home soil, there have been attempts.
  Thanks to our police force, the United States Government, the CIA, 
the FBI, those who try to protect us, the President and his leadership, 
we have not had a successful attack by terrorists on American soil 
since September 11, 2001.
  The policies proposed by the liberal Democrats are dangerous for 
America.

[[Page 18340]]

The Republican policies will lead to a bright future where this country 
is safe, where the economy is strong, and where every American will 
have an opportunity to make their dreams come true. That is the stated 
goal of the Republican House. It was the very goal that we read, our 
vision for the future. I would like to close with that.
  The vision statement is, ``We will promote the dignity and future of 
every individual by building a free society under a limited, 
accountable government that protects our liberty, security and 
prosperity for a brighter American dream.'' That is what the Republican 
Party is about. That is what the Republican-controlled House is about.
  We are pleased that we can talk to the American public and the 
Speaker tonight about what we have been doing to show the contrast and 
carry out the possibility for every American to pursue their dream 
successfully.

                          ____________________