[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19235-19241]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     ISSUES IMPORTANT TO AMERICANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Kirkpatrick of Arizona). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the Speaker for the opportunity to talk about 
issues that I think are not only important to my congressional 
district, are not only important to the State of Michigan, but are also 
important to the people of the country.
  I was struck this morning when one of the first newspapers that I saw 
said: ``Democrats Out of Sync.'' I didn't read the article because what 
really caught my attention was the headline at the bottom that said: 
``Michigan Lawmakers look to Gitmo for Stimulus.''

                              {time}  1615

  Now this is a story that has been out there now for a couple of 
months, but it looks like my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
again believe that the stimulus package for the State of Michigan 
should be moving the people from Guantanamo--the radical jihadists, the 
individuals who are identified as being members of al Qaeda, some of 
whom have been identified as members of al Qaeda--and saying we ought 
to move these individuals to the State of Michigan. This is our 
economic stimulus package.
  Now I understand why they believe that Michigan needs help. As I take 
a look through my counties, I see unemployment rates of 10.9 percent, 
13 percent, 12.5 percent, 19.1 percent. Roughly one out of every five 
people are out

[[Page 19236]]

of work in at least two of my counties. You have 16.8, 15.3, 16.7. 
Those are the counties that I represent. And, as a State, we have an 
unemployment rate that is now 15.2 percent, which I expect will again 
be the highest unemployment rate in the country.
  But believing that Michigan's stimulus package and the way that we 
are going to rebuild the State of Michigan is by opening Gitmo North, I 
think is a terrible idea. I'm the ranking member of the Intelligence 
Committee. I've had the opportunity also to serve as the chairman of 
that committee. And we get some special insights into who these folks 
really are and what the impact of having these people in your community 
may be.
  I have no doubt that we can move these folks into a prison in 
Michigan. We can move them into a maximum security perhaps anywhere 
around the country. There's no doubt in my mind that we could probably 
contain them and hold them and they wouldn't escape. But there is a 
reason that they are in Guantanamo.
  Guantanamo is a difficult place to get to. We have constructed a 
facility specifically to match the needs and the challenges of the 
prisoners that are held in Guantanamo. And those facilities don't exist 
in other parts of the country.
  The other reason that we have them there is we recognize that by the 
very fact of putting them in the United States and putting them into a 
community, they present an increased threat to those communities, to 
the people that work in those facilities, and to the region itself.
  This is a really bad idea. To my colleagues from the Michigan 
delegation, let's not do this. Let's not promote this. Let's make sure 
that we keep Guantanamo open, and let's make sure that we don't move 
these people to Michigan, and let's make sure that we don't move them 
to other parts of the United States. Keep them in Gitmo and let's make 
sure that we deal with this threat in the most appropriate way.
  I also found it interesting that as we talk about economic 
development--you know, we've got a model for economic development. We 
did it in the 1990s. We did it with a Republican Congress, and we did 
it with a Democrat President. It began in January of 1995.
  It was relatively straightforward. We are going to cut taxes, we are 
going to reform government, and we are going to freeze spending.
  The end result is that during the 1990s we saw unprecedented economic 
growth, and we balanced the budget for 4 years in a row. I wish that my 
colleagues here from Michigan and my colleagues in the State of 
Michigan would have recognized that formula. Because instead of cutting 
taxes, reforming government, and freezing spending, what we are doing 
in Michigan today is we are increasing business costs by piling on more 
mandates, and there's no plan to create jobs.
  They want to raise the minimum wage to perhaps the highest minimum 
wage in the country. They want to put more mandates on businesses in 
Michigan. And we will end up with the most mandates on our businesses 
for any one State save one, which is California.
  Right now, I don't think Michigan really wants to go down the path of 
California. We've seen what California looks like.
  If you want to take a look at the State of Michigan, this is my 
State. The counties that are in pink have an unemployment rate of 
between 10 and 15 percent. The darker purple, that is 15 to 20 percent. 
And we now have two counties now where the unemployment rate is over 20 
percent. More than one out of every five workers.
  And the response from the other side of the aisle and from Democrats 
in the State of Michigan is to open Guantanamo North, put more mandates 
on businesses, and provide no incentives for economic growth in the 
State of Michigan.
  Michigan is a whole lot better than that. We could cut taxes, we 
could reform government programs, and we could freeze spending, and we 
could become a model and an engine for economic growth. Michigan has 
tremendous strengths that we could build off of.
  Sure, there's a lot of focus as to exactly what's happening with the 
automobile industry today, but think about the people that have lost 
their jobs in the automotive industry--the skills, the talents that 
they have that can be applied to other industries and other 
opportunities. It's happening each and every day.
  I have a situation in my congressional district right now where the 
people coming out of the automotive industry have developed some very 
innovative products for alternative energy. They have been ideated in 
Michigan--the ideas came out of Michigan. They have been created, they 
have been engineered, and developed in the State of Michigan.
  A relatively small number of jobs, but as this particular product is 
now moving into production, which is where the real jobs are and where 
Michigan has a tremendous number of strengths in terms of manufacturing 
skills and manufacturing facility, it appears that those jobs will go 
to some other State. Not some other country. They're not going 
offshore. They will go to some other State that has created a more 
inviting environment for job creation and business investment than the 
State of Michigan, even though we have got all of those manufacturing 
skills and all of those talented manufacturing people.
  We can build things in the United States. It appears that right now 
we just can't build them in the State of Michigan because we have put 
up too many barriers to job creation in the State of Michigan.
  We're also doing some of that same thing here in Washington that 
sometime in the future may force those types of jobs offshore.
  What kind of things am I talking about? Well, if the model is to 
freeze spending and to cut taxes, what are we doing in Washington, 
D.C.? Well, we're spending. We're spending much more than we have ever 
spent before.
  When President Clinton came into office and we were in a recession, 
he proposed, I believe, an economic stimulus of around $25 billion to 
$40 billion, primarily on infrastructure. When this President came into 
office, he too proposed a stimulus package. $787 billion. $787 billion, 
which is starting to slowly work its way through the system but is 
having very, very little impact because of the types of things that it 
is being used for. It's not being used significantly for long-term 
infrastructure investment.
  If you were looking at the State of Michigan, where could we be 
building or what could we be building, and what could we be using those 
dollars for? For real stimulus, meaning we would be building 
infrastructure that our kids would benefit from.
  We need a new train tunnel between Windsor and Detroit. Sounds like a 
good idea to build that tunnel with stimulus dollars. It is a long-term 
investment. Right now, Detroit and Michigan, we are the main link 
between Ontario and the United States. That traffic comes through the 
State of Michigan. Goes through that tunnel that we currently have.
  The problem is, if you take a look at the trains coming through, the 
trains coming through the tunnel, they're stacked too high with the 
containers. They get to the tunnel, they've got to take the top one 
off, set it aside, take the train through, put the container on another 
carrier, take it underneath the river. When they get to the other side 
of the river, they put the container back on.
  It's not a very efficient way to move goods from Canada into the 
United States. We need a new train tunnel. Build a new train tunnel 
that will accommodate a double-decker to make sure that Michigan and 
the Midwest stay competitive, because we have got an efficient 
transportation corridor.
  We need a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor. Build a new bridge. 
It will last a long time. We have a lot of minerals that we take out of 
the UP, that we take out of Minnesota, that go through Lake Superior 
and go down to the lower Great Lakes. We need a new Soo Lock.
  If we're worried about stimulus, and we're going to have Federal 
stimulus dollars being spent, let's use it on

[[Page 19237]]

things that make a real difference and will provide us a competitive 
advantage and strengthen our economy and will benefit our kids and our 
grandkids, rather than spending it on projects that don't have much of 
a long-term benefit.
  What are some of the things that we're going to be building in 
Michigan with our stimulus dollars? $500,000 to renovate a facility 
which may house yoga or children's movement classes. $6.9 million to 
put in 29 intelligent transportation system signs in four west Michigan 
counties. I'm assuming that these big electronic signs will be put up 
to warn the motorists about the potholes that are ahead because we're 
building signs instead of repairing the roads.
  We're going to be spending $983,000 dollars for streetscaping. We're 
going to be spending $1.3 million for construction of a wastewater 
treatment plant for which there may be no plan and little community 
support.
  Of course, every time, whether you're in Michigan or in some other 
State around the country, you're going to see these wonderful signs 
that say: This project was brought to you by the stimulus package.
  These signs cost anywhere from $300 to $1,000 apiece. They don't fill 
one pothole, they don't pave 1 increment of road. Yet, we're spending 
on those to remind you that your money that came to Washington, D.C.--
actually, the money that Washington, D.C., is borrowing for the 
stimulus package, you ought to thank us for borrowing this money, so we 
put up the sign to remind you where it came from.
  But we don't say: This road or this project is brought to you by your 
kids and your grandkids. We seem to think that it's brought to you by 
your Congress, and you should be thankful for the stuff that we've 
done.
  We've just approached and gone over a trillion dollars of deficit 
spending for this fiscal year--and the fiscal year doesn't end until 
September 30. So we've still got July, August, and September to go, and 
there are many that are saying the deficit for this fiscal year will 
probably exceed $1.5 trillion. That is something that our kids will not 
be thankful for, and it's something that they will carry long into 
their future.
  But in addition to that kind of spending--again, if the model is cut 
taxes, freeze spending, and reform government, where are we headed 
today in Washington, D.C., in regards to cutting taxes? We are not 
going to cut taxes. We are actually going to increase taxes on the 
American people.
  It is estimated by some accounts that the cap-and-trade, the cap-and-
tax bill that we passed through this Chamber a few weeks ago is going 
to cost the average American family about $3,100 per year.
  Now you may not see this as a tax bill that you will have to write a 
check to the Federal Government for, but what you will see in it is 
increased cost for electricity, for gasoline, and any other product 
that, when you consume it, has a carbon emission. It's a carbon tax. 
And so you will see the cost of goods, the cost of services increase 
for every American family.

                              {time}  1630

  It will also make it more difficult for American businesses to 
compete, to invest and to grow our economy. Again, in Michigan we are a 
heavy manufacturing State. What does cap-and-trade do to the State of 
Michigan? What does it do to the Midwest? It hammers the Midwest. We 
have a lot of coal-fired plants. They do have carbon emissions. They 
will be heavily taxed, heavily regulated; and the cost of producing 
energy out of those plants will increase significantly. I've got a lot 
of foundries in my district. What do foundries do? They melt steel. 
They melt aluminum. They pour them in a mold. They wait for them to 
cool. They take the mold out, and you've got a piece of metal that has 
been molded and shaped and then will be machined. It will become part 
of a car, or it will become part of another product. That consumes a 
tremendous amount of energy. What do we think will happen to that 
business if cap-and-trade becomes the law of the land and that business 
sees its energy costs go up by 50 to 70 percent? Remember, this is a 
large input cost to this business. It's a cost of production. They will 
start looking for alternatives. And where will those alternatives be? 
Will they be someplace else in the United States? Probably not because 
these facilities and the similar facilities in the United States will 
all be experiencing these kinds of cost increases. Where will they 
begin looking? They will begin looking in places like China. They will 
begin looking in places like India and Mexico, the countries that do 
not have these types of regulatory burdens placed on them. So again, it 
is an indirect tax on jobs and businesses; and the result will be that 
more and more counties in my State and more and more counties around 
the country will start changing these pink counties from being pink to 
being purple, meaning that the unemployment rate is going to continue 
to increase. We see it both at the State level and at the Federal 
level.
  The model that my counterparts on the other side are using to--in 
their belief--grow the economy is to increase taxes, to grow spending 
and, really, to reform nothing. I'll give you one example of where 
we're not seeing a lot of effective reform. There's a couple of things 
that you ought to know about this chart. Number one, the Speaker of the 
House and counterparts on the other side have said, This chart is 
unapproved for public use. Actually, it's unapproved for us to send to 
our constituents under the franking process. So if someone calls my 
office, and they say, Congressman Hoekstra, we'd like a better 
understanding of how this new health care proposal is going to work or 
what the structure is going to be for that new plan--that's another new 
tax that's coming as well. But as the President proposed and as my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle proposed a new plan for 
health care, what does that system exactly look like? I don't know if 
this chart is right, but we had some really bright people come together 
and read the thousand pages of rules and regulations of the new health 
care bill. As they read it, they tried to put an organizational 
structure to it to say, Here's how it's going to work. This is the 
process, and these are the different kinds of organizations that are 
going to be necessary or are identified by name in the legislation. 
This is it. At least this is what they thought it looked like, as they 
put the pieces together and how the different pieces of this related to 
each other. This is the organization that will stand between my 
constituents and their doctors. This is the organization that will say, 
If you're sick and you want to go to a doctor or you want to go to a 
hospital, this is the organization that will decide whether that is 
permissible and then what the doctor may or may not be able to do. At 
least this is our understanding. But the franking board, the 
organization that determines whether we can make copies of this and 
send this out to our constituents, has decided that this is 
inappropriate to send to our constituents because they say it's 
inaccurate. So now the Democrats here in the House are starting to 
control what Members of Congress can send back to their constituents 
when their constituents ask for information. The interesting thing is, 
as we talk about this, we may ask and say, Well, if this chart isn't 
right, could you lay out for us the chart that is more accurate and the 
chart that you would use to explain to your constituents exactly how 
this process would work? We are still waiting for that chart.
  The other thing that we found out that was kind of interesting is 
that it appears that the Speaker's Office has determined that it is 
inappropriate to say ``government-run health care.'' So even though 
we're putting an organization in place like this to manage the health 
care system in America, something that the Congressional Budget Office 
says will add about $1 trillion to our debt over the next 10 years, 
even though we're creating all of these different agencies, it is 
inappropriate to tell our constituents that this is government-run 
health care and that we cannot use those words to describe this system 
to our constituents. So rather than reforming government, what we

[[Page 19238]]

are doing is we are growing government. We are growing this bureaucracy 
in health care. We are also growing this bureaucracy in the energy 
area. So we are seeing a massive expansion of the role of government 
and an erosion of freedom for American citizens today. The model is, 
cut taxes, reform government and freeze spending. Whether you are in 
the State of Michigan and perhaps many other States around the country 
or you are in Washington, D.C., if you're asking, Where are the jobs 
and why is there not any economic recovery?, the answer becomes fairly 
clear. We've got the wrong model in place because rather than cutting 
taxes, we are going to be increasing taxes. Whether it's in cap-and-
trade, whether it's in health care or whether it is allowing many of 
the tax cuts that were implemented in the previous administration to 
expire, we are going to grow taxes rather than reforming government. We 
are going to grow government. And rather than freezing spending, we are 
going to increase spending. We're going in exactly the wrong direction 
for economic growth. The model that you are seeing here in Washington--
and I remember a couple of months after the election, President-elect 
Obama was sitting at a conference in Chicago and had a lot of his 
economic advisers and a lot of his future cabinet with him. They were 
talking about what to do with the economy. I saw that the governor of 
Michigan was sitting next to the President. I thought part of the 
reason for this would be for the President to learn from our governor 
about some of the things that we had tried in Michigan that clearly 
hadn't worked. That increasing taxes had not grown Michigan's economy, 
that it had been detrimental to our economy; that more regulations and 
more bureaucracy had been detrimental to our economy; that increasing 
the size and the scope of Michigan's government had been bad for our 
economy and bad for job creation; that the President would be able to 
understand that and say, Maybe we ought to take a different look at 
what we're going to be doing in Washington. But he has followed the 
same formula of increasing taxes, forgetting to reform government and 
increasing spending. In each of these cases, as we move through that 
direction, as we move down that path, when we grow taxes, who gets more 
control of America's future, and who loses freedom? When we grow taxes, 
it means that America's families, America's individuals and America's 
businesses, they lose control, and they lose freedom. When we grow 
government, when we put this system between you and your doctor, who 
gets control and who loses freedom? This system guarantees that control 
moves to the Federal Government. Who loses freedom? America's families, 
America's individuals, and America's businesses.
  So when we grow taxes, who loses freedom? The American people do. 
When we grow government, who loses freedom and who gains control? 
America's people lose freedom. The government gains control. When we 
grow spending, who gets control? The Federal Government. Who loses 
freedom? The American people. Which means that a lot of this debate now 
in Washington, D.C., is about control and it is about freedom.
  Let me give you a couple of examples. This week the President 
announced a new education program, $4 billion, one more education 
program. We counted all the education programs that were out there a 
few years ago, and we came up with a number of 659 different education 
programs, and now we've got one more. In other parts of this education 
bill, I agree with the themes and the objectives. It says, We've got to 
open up our education system to more K-12 systems and to more charter 
schools. It's kind of like, Yes, I like charter schools. I think they 
work. But then this is how the Federal Government's saying, If you want 
a piece of the action, if you want some of this $4 billion, these are 
the things that you're going to have to do to compete for those $4 
billion. Charter schools may be appropriate for Michigan; but they may 
not be appropriate for another State. So why's the Federal Government 
saying that with charter schools, that is now the way it's going to be 
nationally, and we're going to take your money to incent you to do 
things that the Federal Government wants to you do? Who loses control, 
and who loses freedom? The Federal Government gets control, using your 
money to bribe you to do things they want you to do that may or may not 
be appropriate for your State or your community. Who loses control? 
Local schools, local families and the States.
  Of course the most massive expansion and best example of this in 
education is the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001. The goal is a 
goal that I think every American agrees with, no child left behind. 
Every child is a unique gift to us. It's our responsibility. As a 
parent, it's my responsibility to try to do everything that I can to 
raise up that child and to make sure that that child is given the 
background, the values, and the education necessary that will enable 
them to have a fruitful and productive life. I want that responsibility 
as a parent. I want the freedom to raise my child. What does No Child 
Left Behind do? No Child Left Behind says, we're going to move 
responsibility for K-12 education. We're not going to move it from a 
parent and a family to the local school board, to the State. It says, 
Man, we're going to grab K-12 education, and we are going to move it 
not only from the local community; but from there, we're going to move 
it all the way to the Department of Education. Who gets control? Who 
now has control of your local schools? We send to your local school 
about 10 to 12, maybe 15 percent of the money that they spend every 
year. The majority of that money is raised at the State or the local 
level. But ask your teachers and ask your superintendents as to who is 
controlling what is going on in your local school. They'll tell you 
very clearly and very quickly. They'll say, It's that bureaucracy in 
Washington, D.C. It's called the Department of Education.
  When I chaired the Oversight Committee on the Education and Workforce 
Committee and had the opportunity to have oversight over the Department 
of Education, I always had a great time. Me and a colleague, we would 
walk over to the Department of Education. We would just walk in. We'd 
walk into some offices, and people would look at us and say, Who are 
you? And we would say, ``Well, I am Congressman Hoekstra, and this is 
Congressman Schaffer, and we're here to help.'' To help, we'd really 
like to understand what you do and how you help my kids in my local 
schools. So you kind of say, This is my congressional district. Here is 
Ludington, Michigan, and I am very concerned about what is happening 
with the schools in Detroit. There are some rural school districts up 
here. But this is my congressional district. Can you tell me if there's 
anybody from Ludington, Michigan, that works here in the Department of 
Education who might understand the needs of Ludington, Michigan? What 
about Pentwater? What about Muskegon? What about Holland? What about 
Zeeland? What about Jenison? I couldn't find anybody from west Michigan 
at the Department of Education. Then you'd say, Well, if we really 
don't have anybody there from west Michigan--it was even hard to find 
people from Michigan. As we went through, we would say, Do you guys 
know where these towns are? Do you know the differences in the needs of 
schools in Ludington versus the kids and the challenges and the 
opportunities that we have in Baldwin or Cadillac or Sparta? Do you 
understand that? These are just names to them. They're just little 
pushpins on a map to these folks. They don't know the differences and 
the unique characteristics of each of these communities. Then you would 
ask them and say, You know, all of my school districts in the State, 
they prepare a mountain of paperwork that they send to this place in 
Washington, to the Department of Education. Can you tell me where this 
paperwork comes in and to what office it goes to?

                              {time}  1645

  They said, Well, you know, not really. Who reads this stuff? And does 
anybody ever read it and then send a letter back to the kids at 
Muskegon or the

[[Page 19239]]

superintendent at Muskegon Heights and say, We've read your material, 
we've analyzed it, and here are some ideas as to how you may improve 
your schools?
  But at the same time that these folks in Washington really don't 
understand the kids or the communities that they are managing, they 
have a tremendous amount of control over what goes on in these schools. 
And how do you know?
  Every year now, what does this Department of Education, in 
conjunction, or mandated through the States do? Think about it. You 
have a Department of Education here in Washington that is dictating the 
standards that identify whether your school is a good school--and they 
don't call it a ``not so good school'' or a ``school in need of 
improvement.'' What do they call it? They call it a ``failing school.''
  You have the Department of Education telling you whether your school 
is a good school or a failing school. They'll tell you the same thing 
about your teachers. We put in all kinds of mandates. And I spend a lot 
of time going through these schools and talking to these different 
classrooms, and after we passed No Child Left Behind, I started going 
back to some of the schools that I had been at, and they'd bring in the 
kids and the government teacher would come in.
  And I said, Well, what happened to Mr. Smith? Well, Mr. Smith wasn't 
a highly qualified teacher. He didn't meet the requirements that some 
bureaucrat in Washington said you needed to have to teach government 
under No Child Left Behind, so he retired or he or she is not teaching 
government anymore. And I said, Wow, I didn't know that they didn't 
have necessarily all the class background. They've got a teaching 
degree and all of those types of things.
  But these persons, really, when I had been there before, they 
appeared to have a genuine passion for the kids. They understood the 
subject matter. They must have found out about it some way, and they 
appeared to be doing a really good job with the kids when I was there. 
But now what you find out is that because they didn't check every box 
on a form that came out of Washington, D.C., they no longer could teach 
the subject that they loved, and perhaps they had taught for 10 or 15 
years.
  Control came to Washington, D.C., and parents and local school boards 
lost the freedom to run their schools the way that they felt was most 
appropriate for their kids and would give them the best learning. And 
we now have a school system that, across the United States, is getting 
to look a lot more bureaucratic rather than innovating and being 
creative as we're moving forward.
  I'll give you another example as to where States lose freedom. Think 
about it. Every time you go to your local gas pump, a good portion, 10 
to 15 percent of the price that you pay comes to Washington, D.C. In 
the history of the transportation bill, a State like Michigan has 
gotten, historically we have gotten 83 cents of the dollar back. So for 
every dollar that we send to Washington, D.C., under the highway trust 
fund, we have gotten 83 cents back. That's not a very good return. It 
may be one of the reasons we don't have the greatest roads.
  There are other people around the country who ought to be thanking 
Michigan because Michigan dollars are paving their roads. But the 
interesting thing is, when this money comes back, when the money comes 
back to Michigan, it comes back with a lot of strings and mandates 
attached to it saying, You are going to build these signs that may be 
expensive.
  In the northern part of my district, a few years ago they were going 
to build a turtle fence along the expressway. It goes through a 
wetlands area maybe a mile, mile and a half long, and we found out 
about it and said, We are not going to build a turtle fence. And so we 
were effective in the delaying of that turtle fence for about a year. 
We came back a year, a year and a half later and saw that there was 
construction going on along the road there. And we said, Man, they are 
going to build this turtle fence.
  For those people who don't know what a turtle fence is, you don't 
need to have much of an imagination. A turtle fence is a fence that you 
put alongside the highway to make sure that turtles don't cross the 
road. And that's really good for the turtles, except when you build the 
turtle fence and you build it along the river so a turtle can't sneak 
into the river, swim under the bridge and then get into the median by 
getting up on the bank there. They put the turtle fence there so all 
they can do is get in the river, swim under both bridges and then get 
up on the other side of the other fence. For the turtles that are on 
the outside of the fence, they are really thrilled about this fence 
because they can't get hit by a car again. But I have gotten a 
significant number of complaints. The turtles inside of the fence are 
really unhappy because the only place that they can hang out is in the 
median or on the roadway, and they can't get back to the road.
  But the bottom line here is, I talked with the Governor about this, 
and she said, Pete, let's not get into an argument about the turtle 
fence. I'm just telling you that the Federal Government, that money 
came in a funnel. We had to use it for road beautification or 
enhancement projects, meaning we had to build things like turtle 
fences.
  Well, for those of us that live in the State of Michigan, we have a 
lot of potholes, and a turtle fence was not a priority for us. But it 
was $318,000 for the turtle fence. Before that, we had spent about 
$80,000 to $90,000, I believe, doing a study as to whether a turtle 
fence was absolutely essential.
  In Florida, they have done us one better. They have not only built 
the turtle fence, but they have also built turtle tunnels. They now 
have tunnels under the roadway so that the turtles can go and get from 
one side of the road to the other side of the road, and they go through 
tunnels. I'm not sure whether they have built turtle tunnels as well as 
alligator tunnels, because they don't want both of them in the same 
tunnel. That, again, is a bad place for the turtles to be.
  In Michigan we have been forced to spend about $400,000 on a turtle 
fence. We also have a rest area. It looked like a perfectly good rest 
area to me, but we ended up tearing down the rest area, and we ended up 
building a new rest area for about $3.6 million. And remember that this 
is the State where we have the eighth worst road system based on 
overall performance in the country.
  The $400,000 for the turtle fence and the $3.6 million for the rest 
area we could have spent on other things and invested that on the 
things that we really need those transportation dollars for, and that 
is to repair our roads, to build bypasses, and to build new on and off 
ramps so that we can facilitate the movement of goods and services 
throughout our State so that we would enhance our ability to compete, 
not only in the United States but on a global basis to enhance our 
transportation system.
  Again, when we send that money to Washington, when we send that 
dollar to Washington, Washington gets control, and Washington uses its 
control by saying, Michigan, you're sending a buck here, and we're only 
going to send you, over the life of the program, we have only sent you 
83 cents back. We've got that improved now. I think this year we're 
going to get 93 cents back. Still it's not good enough.
  But Washington says, We're going to exercise control by taking some 
of your money and siphoning it off and giving it to other States, and 
then when you get the money, we're going to force you to spend that 
money on things that you otherwise perhaps would not have wanted to do.
  And what does Washington, D.C., what does the Department of 
Transportation know about whether we ought to be building a turtle 
fence, a rest area, or investing it in basic infrastructure? Those are 
the decisions that should be made and could be made at the State level. 
Again, Washington exercising its control, the residents and the 
citizens of Michigan losing the freedom to set their own destination 
and to set their own priorities.
  The same thing happens with all kinds of other spending. It comes 
here

[[Page 19240]]

to Washington, D.C., it goes back to the States, but it comes back with 
all kinds of strings attached to it.
  Michigan's budget is about a $44 billion budget. I think it's roughly 
two-thirds, somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of that 
budget comes back to the State with strings attached to it by the 
Federal Government, and ``strings'' means control by the Federal 
Government and it means a loss of freedom for the people in the State 
of Michigan.
  There is one other area that is a very, very different area. Let me 
just change focus for a minute here. But before I do that, let me just 
reinforce, what we are talking about here, if we want to get back to 
economic growth, what we need to do is we need to move in a direction 
of cutting taxes, reforming government, and freezing spending. We need 
to empower individuals. We need to empower families and businesses, the 
job creators and the movers in our economy, and take control away from 
Washington, D.C. and devolve it back to States, local governments and 
individuals. That is how we will get economic growth; not by raising 
taxes, not by growing government, and not by increasing spending.
  The thing that I wanted to talk a little bit about is one other area 
of freedom. A year and a half ago, a friend of mine came to me and 
said, Pete, we need to do a constitutional amendment. I'm very cautious 
about amending the Constitution. I think that's something we ought to 
take very, very seriously. And he said, I've got an idea that we need 
to do a parental rights constitutional amendment. And I said, Parental 
rights? What are we doing with parental rights?
  The parental rights constitutional amendment is very simple. It is 
less than 50 words, and it basically says that parents have the right 
to raise and educate their kids or lead in the direction of raising and 
educating their kids. The government has the responsibility to step in 
if there are cases of abuse or neglect with the children, and the third 
part is that this constitutional amendment takes precedence over any 
treaty.
  You ask, Well, why would we need to do that? We understand that, and 
it is clear. That is an implied right in our Constitution, meaning, if 
you read the Constitution, most people would say, Yeah, we understand 
that to be true, that parents have the right and the responsibility to 
raise and educate their kids. But what we have found so often in the 
last 40 to 50 years is that the things we took for granted slowly 
eroded and changed and got to a point where we didn't expect that it 
would ever go.
  Fifty or 60 years ago, if people had said, We need an amendment to 
protect an unborn child, people would have said, People understand that 
that is a life. Obviously, we found out that that is not true. We have 
moved to a different place. Twenty or 25 years ago, if someone would 
have said, we need to define ``marriage'' and put a definition of 
``marriage'' into the law or into the Constitution, people would have 
said, everybody knows what that is. And we have now found out that no, 
we have broad disagreements as to exactly what that is.
  That's why we are doing this parental rights amendment, where we 
understand that it is an implied right, that parents have the right to 
raise and educate their kids. But what we are now seeing is that that 
right is starting to be eroded. It is being eroded by our courts. It is 
being eroded by what we are doing here in Congress and those types of 
things. So what we want to do is take this implied right and make it an 
explicit right in the Constitution, just like the Bill of Rights, which 
guaranteed explicitly what the rights and privileges were, the right to 
free speech, the right to practice religion, the right to bear arms and 
those types of things.
  The spirit of this amendment is to explicitly put into the 
Constitution the right of parents to raise, educate, and direct the 
upbringing of their children, because that right is being eroded and 
being questioned and challenged in the courts and in this building each 
and every day.
  The third piece here is, why put in that it takes precedence over any 
treaty? Well, under the U.S. Constitution, loosely interpreted by a 
marketing guy and not an attorney, under the Constitution, if the 
United States signs a treaty, the treaty takes precedence over the 
Constitution unless it is expressly stated in either the treaty or in 
the Constitution what takes precedence. And right now, moving through 
the U.N., and the President has said we ought to ratify this treaty; 
the Secretary of State has said that it is a disgrace that we have not 
yet signed this treaty or ratified this treaty.

                              {time}  1700

  And Barbara Boxer, a colleague in the Senate, has said that she is 
going to make it a priority of hers to move this through her committee 
and bring to the Senate. And this is the treaty on the U.N. Convention 
on the Rights of a Child. And if this were ratified by the United 
States Senate, it would totally change the relationship and set in 
place a framework to alter the relationship between a parent and their 
child, and put the government in a potentially critical role in 
directing the upbringing of our kids.
  Probably another bureaucracy just like this bureaucracy that is going 
to potentially get between you and your doctor, you could very easily 
envision this kind of bureaucracy getting between you and your 
children. And that's why we've done that amendment.
  And finally, let me bring up an issue that we're working through 
right now in the Intelligence Committee. Earlier this year, the Speaker 
of the House indicated and made a statement along the lines of, I 
believe that, loosely stated, that the CIA lies. They lie all the time. 
More recently, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee has made a 
similar statement, that the CIA lies and lies consistently. Seven 
members of the Intelligence Committee have written to the Director of 
the CIA asking him to retract some statements that he made back in May 
about the CIA and the honorable men and women in the CIA and their 
service and their intent to always fully brief Congress and to be 
truthful in their testimony to Congress.
  And these seven members said that he should retract that statement 
and, basically, implied that they believe that he had now misled the 
Congress and the Intelligence Committee. And remember, this is all 
Democrats, the Speaker saying, the CIA, this CIA lies, now under the 
direction of Leon Panetta, a former Democrat Member of this House. The 
seven Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee saying that Leon 
Panetta, a former Democrat Member of this House may have lied to the 
committee, the President of the United States, as we were considering, 
or we were hoping to bring an intelligence bill to the floor for a 
debate, the President coming back and saying that he--putting a veto 
threat on that bill because of the language that was in that bill.
  But the bottom line is that, as we've gone through this process, and 
coming out of this briefing where Director Panetta had briefed us, some 
of my colleagues on the committee have now said, well, we're going to 
bring in the Vice President. We need to bring in Vice President Cheney, 
and we have to investigate a program that was very clearly stated 
yesterday in USA Today. They want to investigate a program that they 
never told Congress about, that never happened, meaning they planned it 
and they did some work on it, but they never executed the program.
  And so, it's kind of like, what's going on here? The program, sure 
there was some planning done on it. There might have been some training 
dollars that were expended on it. Yeah, you're right; they didn't brief 
Congress, but they never did the program. And then USA Today said, you 
know, and guess what? This was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and 
it's alleged that the program and the deliberations within the CIA were 
about how to disrupt, contain, and perhaps, kill the leadership of al 
Qaeda.
  And you kind of step back and think, you would think that our 
national security apparatus in the months after 9/

[[Page 19241]]

11, in the years after 9/11, that they would have been considering 
different ways to contain, disrupt or to kill the leaders of al Qaeda. 
And, in reality, according to press reports, much of that has happened 
over the last 8 years, guess what? In many of these cases, the American 
people are very grateful that we've disrupted al Qaeda, that they've 
not been able to carry out another attack against the United States.
  And according to press reports, in the last few months, one of the 
top leaders of al Qaeda, one of Bin Laden's sons may have been killed 
in an attack. But he's part of the leadership that still wants to 
attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan, to kill our troops in Afghanistan 
and, if possible, to attack the United States again.
  But it's just amazing to me that you have the men and women of the 
CIA who have been aggressively going after the threats and the enemies 
of the United States, and they've done it successfully for 8 years. We 
haven't been attacked again. And the thanks that they get now from this 
administration and the leadership of this Congress is that they are 
called liars and they're called liars repeatedly, and they are now 
being threatened by the Attorney General that they are going to be 
investigated and they may be prosecuted. That's the wrong way to go.
  These are all points that were raised in the editorial yesterday in 
USA Today, saying it's wrong to go down this path because, number one, 
there's nothing there to be investigated. What it appears that some 
want to do, what it appears they want to do is they want to move and 
they want to focus back on the previous administration. And what we 
need to be doing is we need to be looking forward. The threats to 
America are real. We need to be focused on containing and defeating the 
threats that we face as a country today, and we need a strong 
intelligence community and a strong military to make that happen, and 
we need to demonstrate to the men and women of the intelligence 
community and in the armed services that we stand behind them.
  And sure we recognize that they may make mistakes. They will 
recognize that, and that when they do, they will be held accountable. 
But when they do the job that we have asked them to do, when they do 
the job that we have funded them to do, it is amazing to me that many 
of the programs that are now being criticized that have kept us safe 
are the same programs that many of the Members of this House knew 
about, they supported them, they funded them, and they asked the 
intelligence community to carry them forward and to do them.
  They are now criticizing the intelligence community for--they are 
calling them liars, and they're saying, we may prosecute you. And the 
bottom line, as it was pointed out in the USA Today editorial, is they 
are destroying the morale within the intelligence community. These are 
people who risk their lives to keep America safe, and they're saying, 
this is the thanks that we are getting from America's elected political 
leadership for the risks that we have taken and for the results that we 
have gotten. It is just plain wrong for us to be doing this to the men 
and women of the intelligence community.
  And, like the USA Today, I think the message has to be very simply: 
Stop. Stop. There's not any evidence that you need to go down the path 
that you're going down, and all you're going to do is hurt the 
community that has kept America safe. America has great strengths. 
We've got great people in the State of Michigan. Yes, we are 
struggling, but Michigan is going to come back because we've got great 
people. We've got great resources. We have got the opportunity to 
rebuild the State, we've got the opportunity to rebuild this country, 
but the solutions for rebuilding America and rebuilding Michigan are 
not going to come from Washington, DC.
  They are not going to come from Lansing. They are going to come from 
Washington, DC and Lansing giving up control and giving more freedom 
back to the people of America, to the people of Michigan, to let them 
get some of their sovereignty back, let them get some of the freedom 
back and to free them from some of the burdensome mandates, rules and 
regulations. We do that by cutting their taxes, by reforming 
government, allowing for innovation and creativity at a grass-roots 
level, at a local level and by freezing spending here in Washington.
  I think, with the mad dash that we've done here in Washington on 
spending, we ought to be looking at cutting spending here in Washington 
and shrinking the size of this government and unleashing the potential 
of America's people and Michigan's citizens to rebuild our State and 
rebuild this country. Give them the freedom, give them the freedom to 
grow their business, to start a business, to hire a few more people, to 
try things, the freedom to grow a business, the freedom to fail, and 
the freedom to be successful, the freedom to succeed in a dream that 
they may have.
  Michigan was built on the creativity and the innovation and the 
ingenuity of a whole range of people over generations. Michigan's 
future was never built or created by a government in Lansing or a 
government in Washington, DC. We need to reform this government here in 
Washington. We need to cut taxes. We need to reform government and we 
need to reduce spending.
  And when we start setting up the tone here in Washington and start 
moving that money back, and just think, if we could get 5 or 10 percent 
efficiency of the money that goes back to the States, a lot of our 
States wouldn't be facing the financial challenges that they face 
today. They'd have more money coming in. And if they experienced and 
implemented the same kinds of practices of cutting taxes, lowering 
spending and getting rid of burdensome government programs, we would 
see a real rebirth at the local level, at the individual level, and at 
the business level in this country.
  We've done the model before. We didn't do enough of it in the 1990s. 
We need to do it again, and we need to do more of it because only, you 
know, during the last 8 years and now going into the last 9 years, what 
we've been doing is we've been growing this beast in Washington. We've 
been taking control here in Washington and we've been stripping freedom 
away from people at the local level and moving the control, moving the 
freedom that they had and been moving the control to Washington, and 
that's exactly the wrong thing to do.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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