[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 23]
[House]
[Pages 31933-31936]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    JOBS AND THE RECOVERY--Continued

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Oregon may proceed.
  Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I assume that that is the rule coming out of 
the Rules Committee that provides for same-day consideration of four 
pieces of legislation. Would that be correct?


                         Parliamentary Inquiry

  Mr. WALDEN. Could I ask a parliamentary inquiry?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman will state his inquiry.
  Mr. WALDEN. Does clause 6(a) provide for same-day consideration of 
the bill?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman is correct that clause 6(a) of 
rule XIII addresses same-day consideration of a rule.
  Mr. WALDEN. Thank you.
  So what you've heard there is a procedural action that has importance 
because it comes right in the point I'm talking about with the omnibus, 
where we had 2 days to consider a bill that costs American taxpayers 
half a trillion dollars.
  What is coming up next are the four ``go home'' bills. These are the 
four bills we've got to pass in order to wind things up before 
Christmas, and they will take these up tomorrow. I haven't seen them, 
have you? Have any of you? Nobody here has seen them. Maybe they have 
in the Rules Committee which just apparently has finished its work, but 
we haven't seen them. They will raise the debt. They will spend--well, 
I don't know. I'm told one of them is going to spend tens of billions 
of dollars; I don't know how much, don't know where.
  There will probably be a continuing resolution to fund the government 
because the Democrats, who control the House by a huge 40-vote margin, 
41, the Senate with 60 votes, and the White House, even with that 
massive, overwhelming, powerful control, couldn't pass the budget bills 
by the time the fiscal year ended.
  Now, in America, in real America--that's the area outside the Beltway 
of Washington--if you don't pay your bill on time, what happens? What 
happens? You get an interest penalty. What happens? Somebody says, hey, 
you're behind on paying your bill. When it happens here, nothing 
happens--except it will come November of 2010, I predict, because I 
think Americans have had enough of what's happened here.
  But what happens here is they didn't do their work, they didn't 
finish the process, they didn't pass the budgets, they didn't meet the 
deadlines. So now we've punted into 2010 for the budget year we're 
already in. Both parties have done this. That's why we need to reform 
the process. But, hey, they control 60 in the Senate; that gets you 
past any filibuster, 60 votes. They control the House with a huge 
margin, and the White House, and not even with those margins, with 
single-party powerful control of both Chambers of Congress and the 
White House could they pass the budget bills. That's why you had the 
omnibus at the end of the week where they lumped six of them together 
and jacked up the spending by 10, 12 percent.
  So here's the final tally: The omnibus brings the new spending for 
nondefense, nonveteran discretionary programs to 85 percent higher than 
just 2 years ago; 85 percent higher spending by the Federal Government. 
You want to know where your money is going? Out of your paycheck, into 
this body, and out into the bureaucracy.
  So it should come as no surprise during this time--which tracks with 
the recession that has eliminated 2.9 million American jobs--the 
salaries of government bureaucrats have exploded. According to a story 
in USA Today, Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more 
jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent of civil servants during the 
recession's first 18 months. And you wondered where the money is going.
  Let's go back to the Republican plan because, once again, when it 
came to the deficit, a lot of us came out of the private sector, small 
business. Every business that makes jobs is a good thing, frankly, in 
America these days, but I happen to come out of small communities and 
represent a district that's 70,000 square miles of gorgeous country, 
high desert plateaus, forested mountain ranges, wonderful agriculture. 
We believe in renewable energy--hydro, wind, solar, geothermal. 
Renewable energy matters. It's a good thing. And Republicans actually 
have supported renewable energy--I have and will continue to as long as 
it's reasonable and doesn't jack up rates.
  But you look at what's happening right now with the Speaker taking a 
government jet over to Copenhagen with a whole bunch of Members of 
Congress. They're going to go to that climate change conference.
  Now, let's look at what happened here in this Congress when they 
passed the climate change bill, the global warming bill. I was on the 
committee that dealt with that legislation and it passed in pretty 
record time. It's a $700, $800 billion cost. But what does it mean to 
you as an individual American out there? Well, let me tell you. If that 
becomes law, it means the loss of probably 2 to 5 million American jobs 
because companies will look at all requirements and say either, I can't 
afford to continue to operate and I'm closing my doors, or I found a 
cheaper place to manufacture my product than the good old USA, so I'm 
going to go and open a factory in China or India that doesn't play by 
the same rules that this law has and I'm going to move my jobs over 
there. Sorry. Just one too many things.
  So for the average American, it means the loss of a couple million 
jobs. This is being done intentionally. They are passing this knowing 
what the estimates show from the National Association of Manufacturers, 
the Black Chamber of Commerce, and other organizations that have looked 
at this legislation, this cap-and-tax, cap-and-trade legislation. 
They've said, we've run the numbers; this is going to cost us a lot of 
jobs, puts new taxes on it. It is a huge, big Federal involvement in 
everything you and I do in this economy.
  But what else does it mean? If you're a consumer and you happen to 
live in the great Northwest and are a customer of Pacific Power, 
they've reviewed this legislation, they've run it through their power 
production model and out comes the data. The data on what the cap-and-
trade that the Democrats passed, Speaker Pelosi's bill, would do to a 
Pacific Power customer in Oregon and the rest of their region is, in 
the first year your electricity rates, as high as they are today, will 
go up 17.9 percent. You know, maybe this is the year you do want coal 
in your stocking. 17.9 percent is what your electricity rates will go 
up.
  Now, that's bad enough. Maybe you have put in the fluorescent 
lights--and I think Oregon has been a real leader in that effort--to 
reduce your energy consumption, maybe you've weatherized and caulked, 
done all the things to reduce your energy consumption, maybe you just 
crank it back down to 67 instead of 68 degrees in the winter and not 
run air conditioning in the summer. You do everything you can. Maybe 
you can adjust for that. But here's what it does when you go to the gas 
station. There are estimates out there that say the cap-and-tax bill 
that

[[Page 31934]]

Speaker Pelosi and others in this Chamber passed will drive up the cost 
of gasoline in America by 50 cents, 60, 70--some say as much as $1. 
Nobody really knows for sure until it takes effect.
  Explain this to me. This is like bad Santa. Explain this to me. This 
isn't the present I want. I don't want higher gasoline prices. Don't 
you think that had an effect on our economy? It certainly did on the 
families I talked to at Grants Pass and Medford and John Day across my 
district that commute great distances.
  You know, if you're a farmer or a rancher, you saw what it did to the 
price of your fertilizer when natural gas went up. You saw what it did 
when diesel went up to $5 a gallon. We should be accessing America's 
great energy resources, not importing them. We should be working toward 
new fuel-efficient vehicles and backing up that research. I actually 
drive hybrids on both coasts. I'm fortunate in that respect. I want to 
reduce my fuel intake and consumption, and I just don't like sending 
the money overseas where we get a lot of our fuel, frankly. I want to 
do my part. I am fortunate and able to do that now. A lot of people 
aren't; they're stuck. They can't buy a new car right now. They might 
not even have a job. My State is like the sixth highest unemployment in 
the country. I've got five counties that are lingering right at 20 
percent unemployment. This is tough.
  Rather than access our great oil and reserves that--by the way, there 
are estimates that at the peak price of gasoline in this country, that 
America's great oil and gas reserves, if not blocked off by the 
Congress, the Democrat-controlled Congress, if we had access to those, 
it would produce a value of $60 trillion. Now, that was at the peak of 
the value of gas and oil, certainly, but let's say it's off by half and 
it's only $30 trillion. Remember that debt I talked about earlier, the 
debt that could be $20 trillion? What if we actually developed our own 
oil and gas resources in America, became less dependent on Hugo Chavez 
and Venezuela or some of the other countries that frankly aren't real 
friendly to us? What if we stopped funding some of the things they do 
that actually work against our way of life by not spending money on 
oil? What if we developed our own resources? And they will say, well, 
it will take you 10 years. Well, let's get started. That's my view. 
Let's get started. While we work on a transitional vehicle that doesn't 
have to use oil and gas, which I'm all for; but in the meantime, there 
are a lot of working Americans that have to take that pickup, hook up 
that horse trailer and go out and do their work on the cattle ranch. 
There are a lot of people hauling things back and forth so that our 
economy functions; $3, $4 and $5 diesel about killed them economically.
  So why don't we access our great oil and gas reserves? We should. And 
we generate revenue to the government that, if you had a fiscally 
responsible Congress, would use to pay down the debt and pay down the 
debt before our kids come of age and our grandkids come of age. That is 
the Christmas present I would like to see. That actually would be like 
sort of good Santa as opposed to bad Santa. Bad Santa says, we're 
taking away everything we have. We're going to rely on foreign imports 
for oil and gas. We're going to jack up your electricity rates. That's 
not Christmas like I know it.
  I want a real Christmas, where we put people back to work in the 
private sector, not trying to figure out something about Viking era 
pollen in Iceland--that's where some of your stimulus money went--or 
jobs that last a day or two or a week or two and then go away and get 
counted as if they're permanent. I want permanent, family-wage jobs. 
This country can get back on its feet if we get this Congress out of 
the way.
  But as I talk to business people, I hear time and again, I can't keep 
pace with the change coming out of Washington. You're changing 
everything related to energy. I don't know what those costs are going 
to be, I don't know where you're headed, I don't know how I'm going to 
deal with that.
  And then health care takeover by the Federal Government, same sort of 
thing. Is the government going to run all this? Am I going to run all 
this? What's that going to cost me? Am I going to pay a penalty? 
There's another couple million jobs projected to go away with the 
government takeover of health care.
  And the debt. People who do have some money and want to invest in a 
start-up company are sitting on the sidelines because they don't know 
what is going to happen on tax policy. Do the tax reductions that 
spurred a very strong economy go away or do they stay? Do people who 
have some level of wealth lose it all to the Federal Government on New 
Year's Day of 2011?

                              {time}  2115

  Do their kids get to continue the family farm or family business, or 
does the tax man show up with the undertaker? That's the choice. That's 
the choice.
  It doesn't have to be that way. We can create real jobs in this 
country.
  Let me tell you about the other real jobs you can create, and that is 
in the great Northwest woods. Now, you have heard me on this floor 
before advocate for bipartisan legislative changes, changes in the law 
that have achieved broad support in this Congress to allow us to go out 
and be good stewards of our Federal forests. Teddy Roosevelt created 
these forests in 1905. He began that process with the great forest 
reserves.
  He said in a speech in Utah that the purpose of these reserves was 
twofold: to make sure that we had good clean water for agriculture, and 
that we had timber for homemaking, homebuilding. Now, those are the two 
purposes he outlined in a speech in Utah at about that period. Those 
are the purposes. Now, we know we have evolved since then. Clearly, 
though, we have not evolved from wanting good, clean water, healthy 
green forests. We do need lumber.
  The choice that the liberals have made in this government and in this 
Congress is away from active management to locking things up and 
calling it management, calling it preservation. As a result, you have 
forests across the West that are overgrown and choked. They can't 
breathe. You are standing on their air hose.
  Meanwhile, you have all this ladder fuel building up underneath them 
because for 100 years we have suppressed fire. Smokey Bear worked, 
convinced us we can go stop forest fires. We spend tens of millions, 
hundreds of millions of dollars, whatever the figure is every year to 
fight fire. It's over half, I believe, of the Forest Service budget now 
goes to fight fire when we should be doing the work on the ground to 
prevent fire. We should get these forests back into balance, get that 
ladder fuel out of there.
  It used to burn up naturally, but we started fighting fire, we 
allowed it to grow up, and we quit managing. The outcome is like your 
yard when you never prune or clean or weed or mow or do any of that. It 
just becomes a mess and out of balance until something catastrophic 
happens. The catastrophic thing that happens is fire.
  Fire is the great equalizer of the forest. It is the biggest clear-
cutter out there, and it is devastating when there is such a fuel load 
as exists today. The fires burn and they release enormous amounts of 
carbon, not only carbon dioxide but also all kinds of pollutants into 
the atmosphere, including particulates that are equivalent to vast 
volumes of automobiles on the highways.
  Now, you are not going to stop every fire. Nature has a wonderful way 
of continuing to participate in the management process. We can get out 
and protect our watersheds and we can put people back to work, because 
this really is about jobs, jobs in the woods.
  In my district, where we have 20 percent unemployment or nearly so, 
and it is probably actually higher than that in some areas because 
people have given up--we are sixth in the country with unemployment--
the policies of the Federal Government on Federal land have been so 
over the top that we have lost the jobs. We have lost the mills. In 
some communities, they are close to losing hope. Nothing this Congress 
has done has helped them in a measurable, sustainable way.

[[Page 31935]]

  Last week, my colleague from Washington State, Brian Baird, who, 
unfortunately, just announced his retirement from this body, he and 
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin from South Dakota, Walt Minnick from Idaho, 
Cathy McMorris Rodgers from Washington State and others who care about 
our great forests, offered up legislation to take a successful law we 
passed in a bipartisan way and expand it out over what they call 
condition class 2 and 3 forestlands and allow our professional 
scientists, biologists, geologists, hydrologists, all the people 
involved in forest management to get out there, get unshackled from the 
courtroom and the computer, get away from the lawsuits and, well, the 
litigation, the lawsuits, and get out and actually do what they were 
trained to do. Get our forests back in shape. Protect the watersheds 
and the environment. Put people to work.
  I mention that we use lumber in this country. This is a carbon sink 
right here, this podium. This is wood, you know that. This is wood. 
This is a carbon sink. This was a tree once. What we do now is we put 
off limits our Federal forests for active management and harvest, for 
the most part. Instead, we import wood from countries that have 
virtually no environmental, enforced environmental rules. As a result 
of that, we just shift the problem and make it worse somewhere else. 
Rather than responsibly managing our forests, we let them go up in 
smoke. We have catastrophic, destructive wildfire that does terrible 
damage to our watersheds and habitat, kills firefighters, kills people 
in their homes, burns up their homes.
  There is so much we could be doing if we got an economic model that 
works. It's not just because we don't spend enough Federal money. You 
know, one of the things that drives me over the top, over the edge, off 
the cliff, is when people say to me, If I just had more government 
money or more government employees, I could solve that problem.
  We are at a debt load that is unsustainable. Not every problem 
demands a government solution from Washington, D.C. In fact, we should 
be more creative than that. You know, spending somebody else's money 
isn't that hard. In fact, you can throw it away, as we have seen with a 
lot of the stimulus money. Throw it away, the causes and programs that 
study in pollen from Vikings. I have got to find out about those 
Vikings with pollen. I don't know if they used Claritin or not, but 
something was going on there.
  You can throw money out the door, flush it away. Those of us who have 
been in the private sector, small business, know that every dollar is 
hard to get. Making a profit ain't easy; it's tough. That's why you are 
so tight with your funds.
  You know that the good times come and the good times go. If you are 
successful enough, you try and set aside a reserve for those bad times. 
Yet, in this Congress, oh, my gosh, it is out of control in terms of 
the spending and the deficits.
  You know, the omnibus that passed last week, the bill that spent a 
half a trillion dollars, we had 2 days to even think about it. It's 
just not the way to legislate. It's not responsible. It's not becoming 
of this body. It is not how we should operate, regardless of which 
party is in control. Right now, the Democrats are in control, so they 
get the glory and they get the responsibility, and it needs to change 
in terms of how we operate.
  My colleague, Brian Baird from Washington State, and several Members 
on both sides of the aisle supported an effort to get it some reform 
that said we should change the rules of how this House operates so that 
the American people, the Members of Congress, and the press could see 
legislation on the Internet, the great equalizer of information, on the 
Internet at least 72 hours before it comes up for a vote on this House 
floor. We are talking 72 hours. Now, I think it ought to be 2 or 3 
weeks, by the way.
  Remember, this omnibus spending bill was 2,500 pages. Nobody in here 
read it before they voted on it. I voted against it, by the way, 
because I think it's irresponsible. I wasn't alone. I think every 
Republican voted against it, just like we did against the stimulus. 
This stuff is not responsible, folks. There are alternatives we have 
offered, not on that one, because I don't think we were allowed to, but 
certainly on the others. On health care and on energy and on creating 
jobs, we have offered real alternatives, and we will talk more about 
those in subsequent evenings.
  This notion that we should have 72 hours should be bipartisan. I say 
to my colleagues, I guarantee you, if that resolution to change how we 
operate in this assembly were to come up for a vote and it said we get 
72 hours, these bills go on the Internet for 72 hours so the whole 
world can read them and understand them--and, by the way, give us input 
of what may be wrong in them before we vote on them. That's a concept 
that's novel. If that resolution were brought to this floor and the 
yeas and nays were called for, I doubt there would be a dissenting 
vote. Does anyone in here think there would be a dissenting vote? 
Nobody would want to go back to a town hall and say, No, you shouldn't 
have 72 hours to read the bills.
  You know, I began to ask this question when we were taking up the 
cap-and-trade bill, cap-and-tax bill, the global warming and climate 
change bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee, the administration 
Cabinet secretaries who came before us to tell us the great, wonderful 
nature of this legislation. I asked a simple question of every single 
witness that came before us: Have you read this bill? Have you read 
this bill? With one exception, and that person was right at the last 
hearing we had the last day and I think maybe saw it coming, everyone 
said, Well, no. Well, no, I haven't really read the bill, but I know 
the concept.
  We ought to have at least 72 hours to read the bills. That ought to 
change.
  Now, I know when I filed a discharge petition, and that goes in a box 
over here--or, actually, not in a box. They keep track of it over here 
on a ledger. All it takes is 218 Members of the House, which is a 
simple majority, to go sign that petition and then it comes up for a 
vote. But the Democrat leadership in the House has made it very clear 
to their Members not to sign the petition. Only six of them have. I 
commend those for standing up for what's right for this body and this 
process and for the American people, those six who signed it. The 
others have buckled at their knees, apparently, and refused. They have 
walked away. It's available today to be signed, tonight, tomorrow, when 
we come back in January. The American people are watching. They know 
that this would be a good thing. They know that this would be a good 
thing.
  I see we now have the omnibus which has arrived. When we talk about 
2,500 pages of spending, this is it. This puppy is 2,500 pages of 
spending. This is what the Congress was given 2 days to work its way 
through. This is half a trillion dollars. Have you ever seen half a 
trillion dollars? This is it, right here, half a trillion. Come on 
down, we will get it half price, half a trillion dollars.
  Do you wonder why the deficit is so big? No time to consider this 
thoughtfully, thoroughly, rush it through. Rush it through, 2,500 
pages.
  The stimulus, the Recovery Act that spent $787 billion. You know, I 
told you we had 2 days to consider this omnibus spending bill, 2 whole 
days, count them. When the stimulus bill passed in February of this 
year, the House was given 12 hours to review it, 12 hours. It was 1,073 
pages, 1,072 pages, spent $787 billion. Remember, that's where that 
Viking pollen study in Iceland comes from, or the sidewalk around a 
casino or sending casino workers to sort of sensitivity training. Don't 
be so rough on the slot machine. Be nicer to the craps table. I don't 
know.
  Cap-and-trade, passed in June; $846 billion is the cost of that bill, 
according to the Congressional Budget Office, 1,428 pages, 1,428 pages, 
16\1/2\ hours to consider it. Oh, by the way, they dropped a 309-page 
amendment at 3 o'clock in the morning. Now I am going to tell you, 
nothing good happens at 3 o'clock in the morning. Nothing good happens 
at 3 o'clock in the morning.

[[Page 31936]]

You can get hit with a golf club at 3 o'clock in the morning, 309-page 
amendment, 3 o'clock in the morning, 16\1/2\ hours for consideration.
  The health bill, introduced July 14, 12:51 in the afternoon, $1.28 
trillion. Remember, we are talking T's now. Forget hundreds, thousands, 
millions, billions. We are now, in this Democrat-controlled Congress, 
talking trillions. With 1,026 pages in the committee upon which I 
serve, the Energy and Commerce Committee, we were allocated a whopping 
14 hours and 9 minutes before we started voting on that bill. Remember, 
I am including the all-night hours, all-night hours.
  According to a newspaper here on the Hill, actually, The Hill, 
Democratic leaders have waived transparency rules at least 24 times to 
rush votes this year alone, 24 times. Twelve of those bills were 
available for less than 24 hours.

                              {time}  2130

  This omnibus bill back here, half a trillion in spending, just this 
last week passed 221-201, no Republicans voting for the bill. Increased 
funding for Federal agencies, 12 percent. Some as much as 33, some as 
much as 21. The final tally for this omnibus new spending for 
nondefense, nonveteran discretionary programs took it up to a level of 
85 percent higher than 2 years ago. Eighty-five percent higher than 2 
years ago. The debt up $1.4 trillion. The deficit this year, $1.4 
trillion, in 1 year. It wasn't that many years ago, and, of course I'm 
getting older, I think it was in the eighties; so it's been some 20 
years, I think our whole national debt was only a trillion dollars, 
which was an enormous amount then. Now it's going up by more than that 
annually.
  This is a freight train without brakes. This is a runaway train 
that's headed off a cliff, and it's going to take Americans with it if 
we don't put a stop to it. You cannot continue down this path. You 
cannot continue down this path.
  We tried to figure out how some of this money has been spent. The 
press is doing its job. The New Orleans Times-Picayune. Details: 
Louisiana has seven congressional districts. So Louisianans visiting 
recovery.gov, that's the Web site where all this stuff is posted so 
there's great transparency and accountability. Remember, this was the 
Web site the President and the Vice President, Joe Biden, said by 
golly, you're going to see it all out there. So Louisianans visiting 
recovery.gov found themselves just skeptical but truly puzzled to see 
nearly $5 million was listed as headed to Louisiana's Eighth 
Congressional District. There are only seven. Not eight; seven. That 
site also listed the 12th, the 26th, the 45th, the 14th, the 32nd, and, 
my favorite, 00. I don't know if that's 007 or if it's--I don't know.
  According to Ed Pound, Director of Communications for recovery.gov, 
the site relies on self-reporting by recipients of the stimulus money.
  This is oversight? This is transparency? I mean, this is a government 
that can't figure out who's going to the White House for dinner that's 
spending your money, and this is transparency. Pound said information 
from FederalReporting.gov has been simply transferred to recovery.gov. 
And no one checks to verify its accuracy or to take note of the fact 
that Utah doesn't really have seven congressional districts; it has 
three. South Dakota has one, not 10.
  Pound: ``We're not certifying the accuracy of the information. We 
know what the problem is and we are trying to fix it,'' he said. Asked 
why recipients would pluck random numbers to fill in for their 
congressional district, Pound replied, and this is my favorite, ``Who 
knows, man. Who really knows. There are 130,000 reports out there.''
  Somebody should know. It's your money. Well, again, it's not really 
your money yet because we borrowed it. Congress borrowed it from the 
Chinese, the Japanese, all kinds of lenders, oil-producing nations that 
we pay exorbitant prices to for the crude oil because we don't access 
our own resources here. They're the ones doing it.
  Talladega County, Alabama, claimed to have saved or created 5,000 
jobs from only $42,000 in stimulus funds. That's 5,000 jobs, $42,000 in 
expenditures. Now they're efficient. That would be $8.40 a job. Now 
there are some cheap places to work, but I don't even think Alabama is 
paying their people $8.40 a job, though; so there's something wrong 
there.
  Belmont Metropolitan Housing Authority in Ohio reported 16,120 jobs 
saved or created for $1.3 million. Now, that is efficient too. So 
congratulations to Belmont. That's $80.64 a job.
  Folks, the government is not the creator of jobs, not jobs that are 
sustainable, because you have to take money away from those who have it 
to redistribute it, and it's not being done very efficiently, 
affordably, transparently, or with accountability.
  And how long do these jobs last? I want jobs created out in the 
private sector that fund the government, and by that I mean if you have 
a vibrant private sector, people are paying taxes. If businesses are 
making a profit, they're going to pay a tax, pay a lot of tax. 
Individuals earning a salary, earning a wage, they're paying tax. Ask 
them. That's what funds government. It's not the other way around. And 
that's the difference between many of us in this body is there are 
those who believe every problem needs a Federal solution regardless of 
what it costs now or in the future. That's why you need a balanced 
budget, a requirement in the Constitution to keep both parties in 
check.
  We need to get this house back in order, and I mean the global house, 
the U.S. itself, how money is spent, how it's allocated, what we do 
with it. This is obscene. It really is. All I see is just one 
government takeover after another.
  Now, is there room to do more oversight where it's necessary, fix 
markets where they're broken? Yes. Will we debate how far you go in 
that? We should. But we should do that in an open and thoughtful 
manner. I've served on some nonprofit boards, a hospital board, a 
business association board, and we'd have vigorous debates, but we 
always did it with the notion of common good. We'd bring what we had to 
the table, and we would try to find a solution.
  I thank you, my colleagues, for letting me share those comments with 
you tonight.

                          ____________________