[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7476-7477]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          A NEED FOR SELF-MADE LEADERS, NOT DERIVATIVE LEADERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I have been asking myself why the President 
of the United States really can't get a grip on policies that would 
help America become energy independent here at home. Last week, as we 
were looking at rising gasoline prices all across our country, he 
suggested that we import, import more ethanol.
  I thought about that comment and his whole administration's lack of 
attention to energy independence for our country, and I sort of sat 
there at my desk and thought, why would the President behave this way? 
And I thought a lot about how we form our personalities and when we 
take whatever occupation we get into as adults, why we behave the way 
we do.
  There are some personalities that result from experiences that make 
you self-made, and then there are those personalities that I call 
derivative personalities, and their behaviors result from a different 
set of experiences, so when they get in a job they really can't command 
and direct, because they have never really done it themselves.
  Here is an example. I grew up in a family where our mother made our 
clothing. We didn't have a lot of money, so we learned how to scrimp, 
and we learned how to invent and to create. And those are learned 
skills.
  The President grew up in a family that was extraordinarily wealthy. I 
would guess that they bought most of their clothes. In fact, I can 
remember when the President, his father, didn't even know how much 
socks cost in the store during one of his Presidential races. They 
always bought everything. They never made. They had enough assets, he 
inherited enough, that they really didn't have to learn how to be self-
made. So he doesn't have a mind that lends itself to creativity 
necessarily.
  We came from a family where we ran our own small business. Our dad 
made his own products. We made our own sausages, our own meatloafs, our 
own pickles. Dad had to do everything himself. He had to figure out how 
to finance his business.
  We have a President who inherited his wealth. Everything that he did, 
he had this soft landing pad. He failed a number of times in businesses 
that he inherited from his own family, but he never really paid the 
consequences, because someone was always there to catch him and to 
refinance him, even in the purchase of the baseball team that he owned, 
which then he eventually sold and used those dollars to get elected 
President of the United States. Most American families don't have that 
kind of landing pad.
  In our family, we had to earn our way to go to college, and we had to 
get good grades, because there was nobody there that was going to save 
you. Nobody in our family had ever gone to college before. I had to 
keep good grades to keep a scholarship up for the scholarship I did 
receive.
  But the President's education was paid for by his family. In fact, he 
was admitted to schools, based on his grades, that most Americans could 
never get admitted to.
  I think what these kinds of experiences do is create a different kind 
of personality, a personality of people who are self-made and they know 
how to create, versus a personality that is more derivative and 
sometimes can't solve problems, and they look to someone else to solve 
them.
  So if we have an energy problem in America, the President would look 
to somebody else. And he says, well, let's import the ethanol. He 
doesn't really

[[Page 7477]]

think about creating a whole new industry here at home and using the 
Government of the United States to help create that industry.
  That is why he has proposed cutting programs. At the same time out of 
one side of his mouth he talks about energy addiction, but then is 
trying to use the Government of the United States to create a new 
energy future for America. He really doesn't know what to do with it 
when he is in command of it.
  It was actually Congress that adopted the first energy title to a 
farm bill. It didn't come from the administration. And if you look at 
every single budget that he has offered, he talks about energy 
independence, and then he cuts the programs that would lead us in that 
direction.
  What America really needs is a new biofuels industry as a complement 
to other forms of power that we can create. But we need self-made 
people to help move America in that direction. Many of our farmers are 
figuring it out. We need programs to help them finance the development 
of the new infrastructure and the production facilities that are 
necessary to green up this industry. They need the President's help to 
do it so they are not bought out by Big Oil and by companies that 
really don't want them to bring up this new industry. But the President 
really doesn't know how to create it. His Secretary of Agriculture 
isn't doing it.
  We could have programs like title IX in USDA funded at $1 billion. We 
struggle to even get $25 million or $23 million in our committee, which 
is laughable in terms of a trade deficit in oil of over $60 billion and 
counting.
  The President's Cabinet members are not energy-focused. The Secretary 
of Defense said energy isn't his job. He runs the largest instrument in 
this country that uses fuel, and energy independence isn't his job? He 
said that to us in committee.
  Mr. Speaker, we need people in our country and the Presidency and 
this Congress who are self-made, not derivative, to lead America to a 
new independent energy age.

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