[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19199]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  LITIGATION IS KILLING AMERICAN JOBS

  (Mr. PEARCE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, a generation ago, extreme environmentalists 
began filing lawsuits to stop the production of timber in the United 
States. They killed the timber industry throughout this great country. 
20,000 jobs were lost in New Mexico alone. Today we have fewer than 100 
of those jobs left, and they're in the process of dying probably this 
year. That whole response to our timber industry was a hoax.
  Today we're involved in another hoax, the hoax that is sending $700 
billion a year to enemies across the seas; $700 billion a year would be 
a 6 percent increase in our economy. That means more jobs. And yet 
instead of solving the problem, we're extending the problem through a 
hoax.
  If we want to stop the outflow of American jobs, we need to stop the 
lawsuits that are killing every single new lease. They're killing 
mining, they have already killed the timber industry. The extremists, 
with litigation, are killing American jobs, and this hoax that is on 
the floor today called an energy bill is doing nothing about the 
litigation that is killing American jobs. We must stop it, and we must 
stop the litigation.

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