[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6774-6777]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           REASONS FOR ENERGY AND FOOD CRISES FACING AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Walz) is recognized 
for 28 minutes.
  Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Thank you for this opportunity to speak on the 
floor and to give this Chamber a demonstration of what is so great 
about this country. The previous gentleman's district actually borders 
mine, but you may not find a more diametrically opposed view of what is 
happening in this country than you may get in the next 28 minutes.
  You hear a lot of statistics and you hear a lot things thrown out. 
You hear a lot of economists talking about different things. The one 
thing I have found, and I think maybe it comes from being new to this 
business of politics, coming from a high school classroom, coming out 
of what most middle class Americans are experiencing is, is that many 
of those things do not matter to people.
  What matters to them is the reality in their everyday lives. And that 
reality doesn't take a whole lot of background from them. It doesn't 
take a whole lot of statistics. It doesn't take a whole lot of 
anything, other than for them to make some simple judgments.
  One of those judgments that the American public is going to ask 
themselves, and they are going to get to ask themselves in November, 
after 12 straight years of Republican control of the House of 
Representatives, after 6 years of total control of both branches of the 
legislative procession, the American people got a chance to see by the 
fall of 2006 the direction that those policies had taken us in.
  In watching that, they made a decision come November. They chose 
about 45 new Members of this body, many of them without elected office 
experience, but many of them who came from the ranks of middle class 
working people, many of them like myself that never had a salary over 
$50,000. Teaching for 18 years, my salary when I left my teaching 
position was $48,000 a year. My insurance costs coming off the top of 
that were $7,200 a year, and then the taxes that came after that.
  One of the things the American public will ask is, were they better 
off before that time when President Bush and the Republican-controlled 
Congress took over, or were things going in the wrong direction? Were 
decisions made that were affecting their lives negatively, and what 
were those decisions doing to them?
  What was happening, as you saw the previous speaker talk about, what 
was happening to the price of fuel? Why was gas going up and who was 
benefiting from it? Why was the cost of their produce, why was the cost 
of groceries going up, and who was benefiting from that? What was 
happening to the cost of tuition? What was happening to their paycheck? 
What was happening to insurance costs?
  Those were questions that they don't get to stand here and 
theoretically talk about and come up with some cute alliteration that I 
always hear. My colleagues are wonderful at the alliteration, and 
somewhat weak on the policy that impacts people's lives.
  So as I listened this week and I watched a concerted effort, and one 
of the magazines on Capitol Hill wrote about that our friends in the 
minority have decided they are going to try and pin the energy policies 
on the new majority, understanding that President Bush will veto any 
attempt we make to change policy.
  The policies that we are operating under in this economy are the ones 
that were put into place by the minority and put into law by the 
President. The changes that have been attempted and those that have 
been made, such as CAFE standards, the fuel efficiency standards and 
improving them for the first time in 35 years, are so overwhelmingly 
accepted by the American public, those could not be ignored.
  The ideology being expressed by the previous speaker I think is 
reflected in some. You don't need the polls when you go out and talk to 
people, but if you want to get to the data you are hearing them talking 
about, 72 percent of the American people disagree. Twenty-eight percent 
of the American people agree that President Bush's economic policies 
are the right direction for this country.
  So when I hear talk about supply and demand, as if it is gravity, as 
if there have not been decisions made to influence either the supply 
chain or the demand by interests, by the growth, the astronomical 
growth of lobbyists, especially energy lobbyists at this place, it is 
bordering on the ridiculous. And when I hear about Adam Smith being 
talked about, the only ``invisible hand'' that is operating in our 
energy markets is that invisible handshake that happened in the White 
House between the oil company executives when they created this current 
energy policy.
  I would like to take a chance here to illustrate what has happened on 
energy as it impacts the economy.
  Now, again, speaking to the American people, when they are going and 
filling up, they are rightfully disturbed. They are rightfully 
concerned, and many of those people are understanding a larger portion 
of their disposable income is being eaten up in fuel costs, 
transportation costs.
  The policy that was put into place that has driven this upward climb 
and that was so conveniently taken out here, about right in here and 
shown, has been a steady upward trajectory. And they are right. Several 
things are happening here.
  There is no doubt that supply, world supply for fuels, especially 
with the rise of China and India, is having an impact in this. The only 
question I would ask on that is, who didn't know that back here? Who 
couldn't anticipate those changes and start planning ahead, instead of 
being reactive to everything that has happened?
  This administration has been wrong on almost every single indicator 
economically around the world, socially, and they have not gotten any 
of it correct since they have come to office. So the trajectory is 
pretty steady, almost exactly what could have been expected on that.
  But there are several other things at work here. One of the things is 
about this energy policy. I would love to show you and read from that 
energy policy to tell the Speaker, my colleagues and anyone in America 
that would like to know what that energy policy is. But the problem is, 
the White House claimed executive privilege, and in 2004 the Supreme 
Court upheld that executive privilege.
  So that meeting that took place, we do have some reports on who was 
there, by the way. One of the first visitors on February 14, 2001, just 
2 weeks after the inauguration and the President took office, was James 
Rouse, the vice president of ExxonMobil. He was also the major donor to 
all of the festivities that happened here with the inauguration of 
President Bush.
  A week later was a long-time friend of President Bush and a 
supporter, Kenneth Lay, then, of course, head of Enron. They had two 
meetings. By March 5, the country's biggest utilities, Duke Energy and 
Constellation Energy, were in the White House. Then British Petroleum 
came on March 22. And that was followed by 20 oil and drilling 
companies to get meetings. At this point, to this day, none of that 
documentation is public. None of it has been out there. None of it has 
shown what happened. And what we saw was a steady increase and a policy 
that put this entire Nation's energy needs in the hands of oil company 
executives.
  Now, I could almost get lucky in my district out in southern 
Minnesota. There is somebody who was in the room, somebody who knows. 
That somebody now lives in my district--well, temporarily. That someone 
is the vice president of Enron, Jeff Skilling.

[[Page 6775]]

He is in the Federal Penitentiary in Waseca, Minnesota, in my district. 
He was with Enron. He understood what happened here, and he ended up, 
after going to court, in Federal prison for 24 years.
  The policies here have nothing to do with supply and demand. They 
have everything to do with special interests and corporate interests 
over the national interests of this country.
  So as you hear the previous speakers speak, and they talk about us 
trying to take energy off the market, the fact of the matter is, as I 
said, the previous speaker's district borders mine, I am very proud 
that in southern Minnesota my district is one of the Nation's top four 
producers of wind energy. We have beautiful wind generators going up 
and down the district. We have small towns, like Minnesota Lake, that 
are taking their town's energy and deriving over 75 percent of the 
energy for the town through the use of clean, renewable wind 
generation.
  We are also one of the leading producers of alternative fuels and 
biofuels. And let me be very clear about this. As people talk about, 
well, biofuels are driving up the cost of food products, of 
commodities, there is a definite moral argument to be made of the idea 
of taking food, such as corn or soybeans, and turning it into fuel. The 
fact of the matter is, most economists agree that the impact on that is 
negligible, compared to the impact of the price of oil.
  There is something I would like to quote here, and I would like you 
to see a couple of things here. When President Bush was asked prior to 
the election during the campaign back in 2000, he was asked what he 
would do to help control energy costs, he said, ``What I think the 
President ought to do when gas prices spike is he ought to get on the 
phone with the OPEC cartel and say I expect you to open your spigots, 
and the President of the United States starts jawboning with OPEC 
members to lower the price.''
  Well, in April 2005 there is a pretty famous picture here of the 
President holding hands with that. That is about the point where oil 
went up. This is from an ally who has promised to help us pay for the 
war in Iraq and has yet to pay 7 percent of their total cost.
  Now, if they can't make it on $118 a barrel, it makes it pretty 
difficult for me to understand when they are ever going to get jawboned 
into doing something about this.
  The next thing that I think is a bit of a fallacy here in this whole 
free market thing and this supply and demand, as if it is going to come 
down and drop upon us and be in perfect order, is why in the world did 
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to vote for $18.6 
billion in subsidies to the oil companies? At $40 billion in profits 
for one oil company alone last year, over $100 billion in profits for 
the three major oil companies, they haven't got it figured out how to 
run their business to make a profit without the subsidies?
  And what is at stake here is this isn't about class warfare. This 
isn't about, as the previous speaker from Michigan talked about, not 
being a friend of the oil companies or being their enemies. The fact of 
the matter is they have an unfair advantage on a unlevel playing field. 
If my wind generation and my cellulosic ethanol producers could get the 
same amount of subsidies driven back into research and development that 
we are putting into oil and natural gas exploration, I guarantee you we 
would compete on that.
  I guarantee you we would have renewable energy sources that would 
take several things away. One is the dependence on foreign oil. That 
driver or that magnet of conflict around the world would be taken out 
of the equation. We would also start to create rural jobs and rural 
green collar jobs that would respur the economy.
  This President and this energy policy that has created these prices 
that have been on a steady upward climb also took an economy that went 
from a manufacturing base and a base of middle class workers, who could 
figure it out. And this is all they are asking for. They go to work, 
they work hard at their job, they make the right decisions, they work 
40 hours a week, maybe a little overtime.
  Here is what they are asking for. All they want in return is the 
ability to have a home, the ability to have transportation to get to 
and from their job and maybe partake in their recreational activities. 
They would like to have health care for themselves and their children 
that is affordable and they can go when it is needed. And they would 
like to get to the point where perhaps they could save enough money to 
send their children to college to ensure their future.

                              {time}  2345

  The American people aren't demanding a lot. They are not asking for a 
lot. But let me give you a couple statistics.
  Since President Bush has come to office, guess what has happened. We 
have lost 1.4 million jobs. We need to be creating jobs. We need to be 
creating about 180,000 jobs a month to keep pace with population 
growth. Manufacturing jobs have increased by 3.4 million.
  Income is down on an average, so the person going to work 40 hours a 
week, the person making the right decisions, the person trying to 
fulfill the American dream is getting further behind no matter how hard 
they are working.
  The number without health care insurance has increased 8.6 percent. 
We now have 50 million American people without health care insurance.
  And I guess the debate can be supply and demand: There is a big 
supply, there is big demand for it, not quite enough to pay for it, so 
your child doesn't get to go to the doctor.
  If that is the type of country we are choosing to live in, then go 
ahead and follow the policies that have been put in place the last 8 
years. If we think there is a better way to do this, perhaps we can 
start having a vision that extends to the next generation, not the next 
election.
  Of course, we hear about gas prices doubling. College costs have gone 
up 36 percent. Foreclosure rates have hit an all-time high.
  This President created an economy totally predicated on consumer 
spending. He drove that spending by the only way people could do it 
under the economy that was dropping their wages, by borrowing on their 
homes. And then they were given risky loans, and those risky loans--
here is the thing in my district. I trust the bankers in my district; I 
trust those people to make loans. And do you know what? There used to 
be a contract in this country. As a borrower, you were expected to 
repay. I still believe that is true. But there is another part of that 
equation: As a lender, you actually used to want to get repaid. We have 
people now who are speculating, who are giving loans with no intention 
of ever caring what happened to the loan, selling it off into 
speculation, put in some exotic investment vehicle outside of any 
regulation, because we can have no regulation.
  This economy predicated itself on consumer spending, on consumer 
borrowing. And the driver here was, if we regulate companies, how could 
they make money? If we ask them to take lead out of toys for children, 
that would cut into profit. And how dare we think we would do that. If 
we actually asked that our food be safe before we fed it to our 
children, we were overregulating and messing with that invisible hand.
  Well, that is not the way the world works. It is not the way the 
people of America want things to work. What they want is a sense of 
fairness. They want that chance to be able to work hard, save a little 
money, get a house, take care of their family, and let their children 
have an attempt at living a life equal to or better than their own.
  There are statistics out there now, for the first time in American 
history after 7\1/2\ years of this Presidency, that the majority of 
Americans do not believe their children will live the type of life that 
they had, that they themselves had a chance to live. That is absolutely 
criminal. It is absolutely immoral. It is absolutely not the principles 
this country was founded on. And those that would say by us asking for 
alternative energy sources, by us asking to try and improve the ability 
of efficiencies in our automobiles and our building designs, that those 
of us who are asking oil companies to not be

[[Page 6776]]

able to take $18 billion, and to think that you are going to drill your 
way out of this--they just tell us world demand is up. How in the world 
is drilling going to be a long-term solution? It is beyond me. With 
those things happening, though, the American people can be glad to know 
that is the minority opinion.
  The majority in this House of Representatives is representative of 
the majority of the American people. Fully 72 percent disagree with the 
past policies we are on. Only 28 percent of the American people would 
espouse to believe that the policies you heard from the previous 
speakers are the direction that we should go in.
  We should have a civil debate on this House Floor, we should talk 
about the implications of our policies, but we should also realize what 
we are talking about is the livelihood and the quality of life of the 
American public, and we have got work to do in that regard.
  I wanted to just talk about a couple of things here, too. One of the 
things that is most striking to me is, is the President's and the 
rhetoric that happens on this House floor, that disconnect again with 
the American public, that disconnect of what a person is going through. 
And you can tell them all of these facts, all of these figures, all of 
the things that are out there, and they will still come back to the 
reality as it affects their life.
  And I want to talk to you, as many of us saw, just for a minute, Mr. 
Speaker, as many of us were predicting for several years, they felt the 
fragileness in this economy, they felt they were saving less, they felt 
costs were going up, they saw that the ability to get their children to 
college getting further and further out of their reach. We saw policies 
that when those people of my generation had the opportunity to go to 
college, fully 80 percent was on the idea of Pell Grants and different 
types of grants, 20 percent in the forms of loans. We have almost 
exactly reversed that. And then we took those loans from being low-
interest government guaranteed loans to being government guaranteed 
loans to private lenders with high interest rates. We have absolutely 
not made an investment in the future a priority.
  And when you hear people talk about the so-called tax cuts, I ask 
everyone out there to see if, since 2001 and President Bush's tax cuts, 
are you better off? Have they fulfilled their promise? Have they filled 
your pockets with wealth? Have your streets gotten better? Have your 
schools become more productive? Has everything gone exactly the way 
they told you they would do? Because the bottom line in this country 
is, we have seen the single largest shift of wealth to the smallest 
percentage at the top than we have seen since the 1920s. We have the 
greatest disparity from those in the middle class and those in the top 
1 percent than we have seen in the past 100 years.
  The policies that were put into place did exactly what they were 
supposed to do: They shifted that wealth. And in the ideology, and I 
don't deny that my friends across the aisle believe this, those people 
in their benevolence were going to reinvest it all, creating great jobs 
here, and spurring the American dream.
  The problem was this: They found out that they could invest in 
manufacturing jobs in places that didn't have worker standards, that 
didn't have environmental standards, that didn't care if there was lead 
in the toys. And, as they invested in those countries, their profits 
rose, and the jobs in America, according to I guess Adam Smith, the 
invisible hand pulled them and grabbed them to China. And when they 
couldn't do it in China anymore, they pulled them and grabbed them to 
Vietnam. And when they couldn't do it in Vietnam, they pulled them to 
Bangladesh.
  I am unsure where they will go next, but I can tell you this, there 
is a lot of people sitting throughout the Midwest through Ohio and 
Michigan that sure wish some of those jobs were here. And they are not 
asking for a fortune, they are asking for a living wage. Well, that 
living wage, and every time we ask for it: That is going to hurt 
business, that is going to hurt the profits.
  The bottom line on this is, this country was founded and predicated 
and was so successful because the middle class was successful. We are 
the most productive people in the world. Our productivity of workers in 
America is at an all-time high.
  Now, the question I ask is, how can that be and real wages are 
decreasing? How that can be when their buying power has decreased? 
Unless something is fundamentally wrong with the economy? But if you 
ask President Bush, all is peachy clean. There are a couple quotes 
here, I don't know if it would be fair, but it sounds an awful lot like 
Hoover in the 1930s.
  But here he was on October 17. Here was the economic news: The 
Commerce Department reports that housing starts in September fell to 
the lowest levels in over a decade and a half.
  Here are President Bush's words: When you got more houses than you 
got more buyers, the prices tend to go down and we are just going to 
have to work through the issue. I am not a forecaster, but I can tell 
people that I feel good about many of the economic indicators here in 
the United States.
  The subprime crisis was right on top of our heads, and yet we are 
hearing this type of rhetoric. It is not based in reality, it is not 
based on the people who were already behind in their mortgage payments. 
It is not based and behind some of those exotic investment vehicles 
that were going to come crashing down. It is not that we didn't see 
that the Bear Stearns thing was on the horizon. Most people did, 
including his former Fed Secretary in Alan Greenspan. But, nope, it 
didn't bother the President. It doesn't matter the people here who for 
6 years rubber-stamped every single piece of legislation written by K 
Street by the lobbyists and sent down here. Everything that was done 
behind closed door by Ken Lay, by Jeff Skilling, by the rest of them, 
sent down here, voted on against the objection by the minority party, 
our party at that time, that, you are heading for disaster, do not do 
this. Oh, no, no. We will create jobs, we will create wealth, we will 
create energy.
  Now, all of a sudden, we have a slim majority in the House, we are 
equal over in the Senate, and the President vetoes anything that we 
utter over here. Now all of a sudden all of this is the responsibility 
here.
  Well, I have one thing to say. The American people, come November, 
don't care what side of the aisle you are on, they care about, what are 
you going to do about it?
  Here are a couple more from the President.
  December 17, former Fed Chairman Greenspan, as I was just saying, 
suggested a tax break or other government help for home owners facing 
the mortgage crunch.
  Here is what the President said: This economy is pretty good. There 
are definitely some storm clouds and concerns, but the underpinnings 
are good, just fine.
  February 28, reports show that new home sales in January fell to the 
lowest level in 13 years, and orders for big ticket items such as cars 
and refrigerators slumped dramatically.
  Well, I don't think we are headed into a recession, but no question 
we are in a slowdown.
  And then, just yesterday: No recession. No recession.
  The bottom line on this is, you have got your head stuck in the sand 
for so long, you tell yourself for so long that these policies are 
going to work. The American public again, as I said, doesn't care what 
the economists say. The American public and the average person that is 
out there, middle-class worker, doesn't care what the exact number of 
foreclosed homes are. They don't care about the derivatives in these 
exotic vehicles that were created on the subprime. They don't 
necessarily care where the oil is coming from or where the energy is 
coming from. What they know is they have got to get to work in the 
morning, and that takes gas. And that job is not paying any more. It 
might not be there tomorrow. They are not saving enough.
  And I heard the person before me speaking on this floor talking about 
how great this oil investment is in the 401(K). Well, I should probably 
get some of his advice, because mine like

[[Page 6777]]

many others in this country showed a downturn last year because of all 
of the other drops in stocks and investment vehicles.
  So, Mr. Speaker, we have opportunities, there is no doubt. This 
country does, as the President said, have the underpinnings to perform 
better than any economy in the world. But the one thing the President 
fails to realize is the most important underpinning of that economy is 
middle-class American workers, the ones who for 12 years of Republican 
rule, 6 years of total rule by this ideology have suffered and seen 
their quality of life decrease dramatically.
  The good news is, it is starting to change. College is becoming more 
affordable under the new Democratic Congress, gas prices will start to 
be adjusted as we start to put research dollars in to moving towards 
cellulosic ethanol, fast growing poplar trees, switch grass, things 
that are out there that we can get to. These are the types of things 
that are going to happen. Our manufacturers in Detroit have already 
caught on. We are seeing hybrid vehicles now that you can actually buy. 
We are starting to see Detroit want to compete again. And, guess what? 
Where was that invisible hand? Where was that market when we were 
creating cars that got 15 miles to the gallon? When they start 
competing with everybody else in the world, we will start being able to 
get to where we need to go.
  This is an economy that can come back from this, but it will not come 
back with special interest policies that care nothing about what 
happens to the middle class, care nothing about the everyday things 
that people are going through.
  And the last thing I would say on this is, when I listen to what 
President Bush says, it reminds me of the time, and I think about this, 
when his father went to the supermarket about 2 decades ago. And I 
remember this very clearly, I was in high school, and it was a big 
story on the news because the first President Bush was fascinated that 
they had scanners to scan the price. Now, every American in the country 
had seen that since the early 1970s. They had seen them in their local 
supermarkets for a long time. But the President was flabbergasted that 
that would happen.
  My suggestion would be, there is a Safeway not far, the one I shop at 
down here, that the President get out there. He can take some security 
down there and he can go through there, and he can start to see what 
people are going through. On the way back, he needs to fill up. And 
then he might want to swing by and check the tuition costs at a 
university, even a State-run school. And then he would start to 
understand, saying things like: This economy is fine and that it is a 
little bit bumpy.
  Losing your home is not bumpy. Not being able to go to college is not 
bumpy. Not having a retirement account that you can retire with dignity 
is not bumpy. That is a fundamental failure of leadership. It is a 
fundamental failure to have a national economic policy that benefits 
the vast majority. And, as Justice Brandeis so clearly told us at one 
point is, you can have a wonderfully strong democracy or you can have 
the concentration of wealth in the hands of few, but you cannot have 
both. Well, we tried their way. I would like to go back to having the 
wonderful democracy.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to speak on 
this great floor. I thank you to give a different interpretation of 
what is happening in America.

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