[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6392-6393]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             FEAR MONGERING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, you know, we have heard so much about 
global warming for so long. It is interesting, though: We're now 
hearing the term ``climate change.'' Has anybody started to ask why 
we're no longer hearing about global warming as being the evil thing 
and now we're hearing climate change is the evil thing?
  You know, I try to figure it out. All I can figure is that we're 
getting data indicating that the Earth may have been cooling for some 
time now. Groups that are getting enormous contributions, maybe even 
Nobel Prizes, whatever, by claiming global warming realized, uh-oh, if 
we're going to keep the money flowing in, we'd better be able to adapt 
in case the world is cooling instead of warming, so let's start saying 
we've got to do something about climate change. From my standpoint, 
that would mean we have to have some real serious discussions with the 
sun and with God. Nonetheless, climate change is now evil.
  I read an article recently that indicated that, you know, when we've 
been saying these greenhouse gases are trapping the heat in, it just 
may be that those carbon dioxide/greenhouse gases are causing the sun 
to bounce off into space and that they may be cooling the planet. 
They're going to have it either way, apparently. It's warming. It's 
cooling. They want to be alarmists because that allows a socialist 
agenda to come forward, and it allows the government to become big 
brother and run everything.
  You know, the wonderful Democratic Party member teachers who I had 
growing up, they were fantastic. In junior high, we were talking about 
photosynthesis and how a plant can take carbon dioxide and end up 
producing oxygen out of the process. It would seem that it would be 
cyclical. If you look at the patterns of the Earth, what we have are 
cycles up and down. The temperature goes up, and the temperature goes 
down over time--back up and down. You have more greenery. More carbon 
dioxide will apparently help that to grow. Then if we get too much, 
we'll start having too much oxygen and not enough carbon dioxide. It's 
just

[[Page 6393]]

amazing how nature addresses these issues by having cycles where it 
comes and it goes.
  But if you're in government and you want to control everything, you 
have got to scare people. You have got to have people alarmed, and 
that's what we're hearing over and over here on the floor of the House: 
Let's scare America. Let's make them be afraid of carbon dioxide 
because--guess what. If we really had the responsibility of regulating 
carbon dioxide, I can tell you from personal experience there are some 
people around here who are breathing too much. We're going to have to 
cut out some of this breathing because there's a whole lot of breathing 
going on, and that's too much carbon dioxide. That is how absurd it has 
been getting. You know, Congress is not the answer to everything that's 
wrong with the world. It's just not.
  Then we've got this omnibus spending bill that was passed last week. 
Maybe the Senate passes it tomorrow night. It was irresponsible. It was 
immoral. We as a generation, in effect, have gone to the bank--in this 
case China--as our Secretary of State has and has just asked them to 
``keep buying our debt, please.'' We go to China as the bank and say, 
``Please, keep buying our debt. We're going to borrow money. We're not 
going to pay you back, but our children and our grandchildren will take 
care of paying you back.'' That is immoral. That is irresponsible for a 
parent to borrow money and say, ``My children someday will pay you back 
because I can't control my spending. I'm just throwing money away, but 
they'll pay it back someday.'' That is not what we should be doing.
  Now, at the same time, we on the Natural Resources Committee are 
having hearings all the time. People don't realize we're putting more 
and more of our natural resources off limits. Every month, more natural 
resources are off limits. We're having hearings now because they want 
to put a moratorium back on drilling the Outer Continental Shelf. It 
would provide a million jobs. ANWR would provide a million jobs. The 
untouched gas in Alaska would provide a million jobs. Yet, even though 
it would cost nothing--no raised taxes--they don't want to do it.
  It's time to stop the fear mongering. It wasn't right when Secretary 
Paulson talked President Bush into it, and it's certainly not right now 
in order to promote a socialist agenda. Let's do the right thing for a 
change and quit borrowing money because we can't control ourselves. Our 
kids will have to pay it back. Let's control ourselves and show some 
responsibility for a change.

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