[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 12] [House] [Pages 16464-16471] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]AMERICAN ENERGY The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 60 minutes. Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the honor to be recognized on the floor of the United States Congress. I also appreciate the presentation that has been delivered by the gentleman from Ohio and from the gentlelady of Minnesota, and I appreciate being able to listen to the presentation, knowing that they have been to ANWR just recently, within the past week or so, and have seen some of the things that I had seen there several years ago. What they see today is much of what I saw then. It's interesting that they flew across that coastal plain for 2 hours with everybody on the plane looking and looking for wildlife, and they didn't see any. I remember I did see some. I saw four musk oxen. I remember the pilots actually spotted them, and they announced back to the plane that they [[Page 16465]] had seen four musk oxen, and they were quite excited that they had seen wildlife in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This was the airplane crew who had flown that coastal plain over and over again. I was surprised at that excitement. I wouldn't have gotten that excited if I'd have looked down and had seen a deer. I might have if I'd seen a buffalo but not a deer. In any case, it's quite a thing to see that the people who had made the trip to ANWR saw the things that I saw, confirmed the things that I confirmed, gave speeches here on the floor of Congress tonight, and then let the rest of the world know that the things that I've been saying have been true all along, right down to ``there are no trees up there, Mr. Speaker, not a single tree.'' I recall giving a speech at the Iowa State Fair where I made that statement. The allegation was made in a very impolite way that that wasn't true. So the newspaper that Iowa depends upon decided they would go find a contrary view from mine when I said there were no trees in ANWR. They found a botanist--I believe he was at Iowa State University--who must have gone through and searched the Internet and found out that there is, at least allegedly, a tiny, little weed up there that grows about 10- to 12-feet high at the most, and it's technically a tree. There's not enough wood in that to make a toothpick, but it's technically a tree. So, if they found a botanist who said there was a tree in ANWR--and supposedly that's a rebuttal--I'd just say: Who has seen one? I don't think anybody has seen one up there. We know that the Arctic Circle is the line north of which trees cannot grow. This is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a frozen tundra coastal plain. When it has had any disturbance on the tundra, it has not been from the oil pipeline, and it has not been from the drillers in a significant way, but it happens sometimes when Native Americans get to moving around up there. They tell me they just drag it smooth, and in 5 to 6 years, the tundra has all grown back where it was. I've seen it. I know what it looks like. What my eyes see confirms for my head and for my heart. So I think this point has been made very clear. I don't know how a thinking, living, breathing American could listen to the dialogue that took place here in the last hour and conclude that we shouldn't drill in ANWR. It is an ideal place for there to be oil. It's an ideal place for us to extract oil, and we have the transmission system up there. I think we'd have to add another 74-mile pipeline. There is something on which I might have a little bit of a marginal-- not disagreement, but I'd just say here is the little way I see it differently from Mrs. Bachmann's statement, which is that, in 3 years, we'd have oil coming out of ANWR and coming down the pipeline. We did the entire North Slope and the entire Alaska pipeline and 600 miles of right-of-way. We drilled the wells, put it all together, built the industry up there, and had oil coming out of the pipeline in 3 years, from '72 till '75, marginally a little bit more than 36 months, but still, within 3 calendar years, there was oil coming out of that pipeline. There was an 800-mile pipeline. There were 600 miles of right-of-way. Drill the wells. Pick up the collection. Get it to the terminal at Mile Post Zero where the caribou congregate. That was in 3 years. So I believe this, that if America makes up its mind, we can do it, if we did a Manhattan Project and started to build an atom bomb after the beginning of World War II and, to end the war, we'd had two ready and two dropped. We did that. President Kennedy said--and I think the year was 1963--we're going to go to the Moon. In 1969, we were on the Moon. How can a nation that has that technical ability, a nation of smart, industrious people who have tamed everything we've decided to tame and that we've always done in record time--has something happened to our soul? Has something happened to our spirit that we would capitulate to the Lilliputian ropes that tie down America's greatness--the ropes of regulation? the ropes of environmental extremism? What's wrong with our spirit that we would let people like this hold America back? They would shut our economy down. If somebody shuts down the valve at the Strait of Hormuz, that shuts off 42.6 percent of the world's export oil supply. Ahmadinejad has threatened to do just that, and he has also threatened to annihilate Israel, and he is determined to move forward in building nuclear weapons. He has said so even if the CIA in the NIE report some months ago said, no, we concluded back in 2003 that they quit trying. Not true. They're continually trying to enrich uranium. They are enriching uranium. They showed it to us on our own television sets. They're developing missiles to deliver a weapon. They showed us that on our television sets. Why would we argue with the Iranians? Do we think they're perpetrating some kind of hoax? It didn't work out so well for Saddam Hussein when he sought to perpetrate some kind of a hoax. They thought we were bluffing, and now we won't take them at their word, and we will watch in this Congress as the San Francisco, Pelosi-led Congress shuts down every avenue of energy development that we can create? Well, every one except maybe they're okay with wind as long as it isn't out off of Nantucket. As long as Teddy Kennedy can't see it from his yacht, we can have some wind energy. They aren't so bad with geothermal because they don't see it very much, and they don't understand it as much as they see it. Then let's see. There must be some other things--solar, wind, geothermal. So we can have a little solar, too, but not if it means we've got to put solar panels out there across the desert, because that's unsightly. So they worship the goddess, Mother Earth, and despise the idea of free market capitalism. They shut down the economy. You know, I think they're also aware that, as to the energy supplies that we have, as soon as we drill a well and we get that well up to production, that's the maximum that that well is going to produce for a day, and then its production day by day tapers off. That's the case with the energy as we develop it, so we constantly have to be out there exploring for new energy. That's the point, I think, that maybe wasn't made in the last hour that's essential for us in this hour. I see that my good friend from California, Mr. Royce, has arrived on the floor, and he knows that I have offered an open invitation by my very presence here. I'd be so happy to yield so much time as he may consume to the astute gentleman from California. Mr. ROYCE. Well, perhaps I could engage the gentleman from Iowa in a discussion here of the fact that I don't think many were really paying attention in this country over the last few years, but today, 80 percent of oil reserves are owned by nationalized oil companies of foreign governments. We don't think a lot about this, but if we reflect, we will remember that, in many cases, the property has been seized and that OPEC now controls these assets through cartels overseas. As a matter of fact, it controls about 80 percent. In my view, I think Congress sort of shrugged off the testimony of our former CIA Director, who warned of the OPEC cartel spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, deliberately lowering production levels in order to drive the price of oil up. Now, as it turns out, the price of oil they managed to drive up to $140 a barrel. In his view, this was a bid to siphon $10 trillion over the next 10 years from our economy here into the coffers of the OPEC members. So I wanted to just touch briefly on the national security component of this. I think Congress watched as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board explained that our supplies in oil are so tight in the United States today that a 1 percent increase in supply could lower costs by 10 percent. Just 2 weeks ago, our Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, testified to that point. So what is the studied indifference as consumers and policymakers lay out the case for more supply? My concern is that the Democratic leadership has made a commitment to maintain the moratoriums against new [[Page 16466]] drilling, new refineries, new nuclear power, the opportunity to extract oil from shale. Like my colleague from Iowa, I believe that market economics still have consequences and that the American Energy Act, which we have cosponsored which would lift these prohibitions, would increase supply by 33 percent. Now, if a 1 percent increase in supply drives down the price in the estimate of the Federal Reserve Chairman by 10 percent, what would a 33 percent increase in supply do for the price? You know, a majority of the House of Representatives, I now believe, is feeling enough heat back home that they would vote for increased supply, but the congressional leadership has blocked not only the American Energy Act, but the Democratic leadership has also blocked all other amendments that might lift any of the prohibitions from coming to the House floor. Well, under this American Energy Act that the gentleman from Iowa and I are supporting, we would open our deep water ocean resources. That would provide another 3 million barrels of oil per day to our domestic supply. Currently, we use 20 million barrels a day. Now, Cuba and Venezuela are already operating in these waters. It would open the Arctic coastal plain. That would provide an additional 1 million barrels of oil a day. Now the Russian oil exploration is already operating in the Arctic today. It would develop our Nation's oil shale resources, providing an additional 2.5 million barrels per day. Canada is developing its oil shale resources. It would cut the red tape that hinders the construction of new refineries. None have been built in the last 31 years. It would extend the tax credit for alternative energy production, including wind and solar and hydrogen, and it would eliminate barriers to the expansion of nuclear power production. As we know, France gets 80 percent of its energy from nuclear power. My State of California gets 12\1/2\ percent. So, today, the OPEC cartel controls more than three-quarters of the world's global oil reserves, and it severely restricts both supply and access to its oil fields. This is one of the factors that helps cause this dramatic spike in the price of oil, which not only hits consumers at the pump but which, frankly, harms nearly every aspect of our economy, and the moratoriums here maintained by the Democratic leadership, in my view, help drive up energy costs and risk further sinking this economy. This is the reason I've come to the floor, to make the case to have our colleagues bring this bill before the floor of the House of Representatives. {time} 2215 I don't know of a case where we have gone so long without an appropriations bill before this Congress. Article I, section 9, clause 7 of the Constitution says that, ``No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.'' Normally, we have the 13 appropriations bills that come out of our committees that fund every government agency, but this is being held off. And one of the reasons why we are not having these votes on the House floor is because of the concern that we might bring up these amendments. We might attach this Act to one of the appropriations bills. And we've gone over 200 years on this House floor, and the House has never gone into the August recess without passing a single appropriations bill. In fact, the House has always passed at least one appropriations bill prior to July 9. And I am concerned that the Democrat leadership is so insistent on blocking any votes to increase energy production that they are rolling over until the end of the year all of the work that this Congress--and we will have one omnibus bill in which we cannot bring up any of these amendments to increase energy production in the United States. I would ask if my colleague from the State of Iowa shares my concern. Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from California, and I appreciate you bringing this to the floor and laying it out with the clarity that you have. Supply and demand, as you're speaking, I'm thinking, let's see, if there was 32 percent more corn on the market--being from Iowa, I think in those terms--that might be, say, 4\1/2\ billion bushels more corn on the market, maybe a little more than that. I'm pretty sure if we dump 4\1/2\ billion bushels of corn supposedly that we found somewhere on the market, the price would go down. I was also thinking about Adam Smith when he wrote in his famous book ``Wealth of Nations,'' published in 1776, how it was that the cost of everything that we produce is the sum total of the capital and the labor required to produce whatever the commodity is. And he wrote about how the price of gold plummeted in Europe when the Spanish galleons returned from the New World loaded with gold. But he didn't say because of supply and demand strictly. He said it was because they had figured out how to take the price of labor out of the production of gold. They stole the gold, but the effect was the labor got cheap. Supply and demand works for gold, it works for corn, and it works for oil. It works for everything including labor. They're all commodities. And some of the things that can affect that, of course, are the value of our dollar. I'd like to see that dollar shored up. When I look at these bushels--excuse me, I'm thinking like an Iowan-- when I look at these million barrels, 3 million a day off the gulf as described by the gentleman from California, 1 million a day out of the arctic region up there, 2\1/2\ million in oil shale, those are really just for starters. We've always found more oil than we predicted was there, and it will be the case this time. On the subject matter of what it is that this Imperial Pelosi Congress won't let us vote on, this is the production chart for the United States of America for energy. And we need to, Mr. Speaker, talk about energy from the concept of total Btus of energy. We have to put it in one common measurement. So, rather than gallons or cords of wood, whatever it might be, we put this into Btus and energy. This is all of the energy sources that we have here that we produce in the United States. And as we go around the edge here, I'll start right in here. Hydroelectric power, nuclear. Coal, 32\1/2\ percent of our overall production is coal. Natural gas, 27\1/2\ percent of our overall production is natural gas. Then you've got heavy petroleum, like asphalt and those kind of oils. Jet fuel, kerosene, diesel fuel's in red, and gasoline in blue, biomass, and a lot of that's wood. People are burning more wood today because of the cost of energy in pink. Then you get down to these tiny little slivers, biodiesel, nine-one hundredths of 1 percent. Ethanol fuel, .76 of 1 percent; solar, .11 of 1 percent; wind, .44; geothermal, .49. This is it. Now, I would take you around this chart, and we're going to find that the folks that, I will say, worship at the altar of Mother Earth object to nearly every kind of energy that we produce in the United States. They object to a lot of the biofuels because it is burning wood, and it puts carbon dioxide in the air. The biomass, they've objected to. Gasoline, we know the objection to that, and we have people in here that would rather have you ride your bicycle and they think that if gas prices go to $4 or $5 or more a gallon, more people will ride their bikes. Fewer will get in their car. That will save the environment, and they can save Mother Earth. That's what they're thinking. So we can't develop anymore gasoline here in the United States or diesel fuel or jet fuel or heavy oils. That's all in the same kind of hydrocarbon, comes out of the same well, the crude oil well. That's all verboten, according to the Speaker's team from San Francisco. And you get to natural gas. They have to drill wells to do that, and they've got us blocked offshore. They've got us blocked on non-national park public lands. Sometimes we can drill there, but we can't get access, and we can't lay pipelines, and we know that we can't transport natural gas unless we can conduct it through a pipeline or turn it into liquefied natural gas. [[Page 16467]] By the way, we had a vote on the floor today on a motion to recommit on a bill that would have opened up a bridge that's blocking tankers that are coming into Massachusetts with liquefied natural gas. They blocked that. They don't even want liquefied natural gas coming in up their little river, even though the Federal taxpayers pay for the bridge that's already replaced the one that's keeping the tankers from going underneath it. That tells you where they are with natural gas, and that's Massachusetts mentality that teams up with some of that left coast mentality, not all of it by any means. And the coal, it's almost to the point now--I happen to know of one expansion of a coal-fired generation plant. There may be more. But the people that are putting these plants together say we can't meet the regulations anymore. They're getting tighter and tighter. So coal-fired generating plants are pretty much off the table. You kind of see, and I'm going around here, off the table all the way around. Nuclear, no, off the table. They're afraid of a Chernobyl, even though our technology doesn't melt down that way. It actually cools, instead of warms. So the greens are afraid of nuclear. Hydroelectric, boy, now there is a superclean, wonderful, natural resource that renews itself. It rains, water runs down the river, comes through the turbine, spins it, generates electricity. What could be better than that? But a strong contingent of environmental extremists want to put all of our rivers back to where they were before because they don't believe we should even think or attempt to improve upon Mother Nature. So I've gone all the way around here. Hydroelectric power, that was the piece there. And what's left? When you add this all up, all of these things are forbidden by one entity or another. Even wind has resistance to it because people think that birds are going to fly into those windmills. And I can tell you, I can see 17 of them from my house. They have hundreds of them in my district. There aren't piles of dead birds underneath there. It's more dangerous to the birds when you drive your car down the road. They can at least see that windmill coming and they tend to avoid it. So I can only find three sources of energy that maybe, maybe we could expand, and that would be--by the way, ethanol, biodiesel, that's food versus fuel, so there's a resistance there. So we end up with wind, unless Teddy Kennedy can see it; geothermal, as long as you can't see it; and what do they have, solar. Now, these tiny little pieces here, if you add up of our overall production, that's .49, .44 and .11. Now I haven't done that. That's a little bit over 1 percent of our overall energy production is what they're going to let us expand to produce 100 percent of the energy that we can consume. And Mr. Speaker, we're producing only 72 percent of the energy that we're consuming. So this energy pie isn't big enough. It's only 72 percent big enough to provide the energy necessary to fuel the United States and keep our economy going. By the way, just providing enough energy isn't good enough. We can always buy enough energy until we go flat bloke. We have got to have enough energy that's economical for our industry to run, that's economical for people to engage in travel and enjoy life and be able to exercise our freedoms. Mr. ROYCE. If the gentleman would yield, what would the gentleman think the consequence would be over the next 10 years presuming that these moratoriums are kept in place? We can't do anything, presume for a moment, to address the issue that the Federal Reserve Chairman warned, that the supply of energy is so tight that a 1 percent increase in supply would drop prices by 10 percent. Let's say that things remain as they are, we don't get any additional sources for production because of the moratoriums. What do you think the consequences would be of the transfer of $10 trillion out of this economy over the next 10 years into OPEC, into the members of the OPEC cartel? Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, I think that we already see the heavy signs of those consequences, that when dictators become rich, they also become belligerent, and they begin to think that--well, actually, they're measuring their power. It's their economic power, and a lot of them run contrary to our values here in Western civilization. So we have more conflicts to face, and we're going to have to do it with less resources, and a Nation whose economy could no longer be thriving will have transferred our wealth overseas. Mr. ROYCE. If the gentleman will yield, I think it's pretty clear at this point that high gas prices are hurting the pocketbook of families across this country. Family budgets are strained. And the bottom line is we are pushing for short- and long-term solutions to lower gas prices and to address our future energy needs. We're doing that with the American Energy Act, which is going to provide tax incentives for businesses and families that purchase more fuel-efficient carts. It provides tax incentives to those that improve their energy efficiency. It permanently extends the tax credit for alternative energy production, including wind and solar and hydrogen. Barriers to the expansion of emission-free nuclear power production are eliminated in this piece of legislation. It spurs the development of alternative fuels. It's a balanced piece of legislation, which gives us more energy, and frankly, with gas prices increasing, it's vital that we utilize our Nation's vast energy supplies, and at the same time, we should continue to develop new, clean technology. And this would significantly reduce our use of foreign oil. That's what this bill is intended to do, and doing so is an economic necessity. It is vital to our national security. So I encourage our lawmakers, our colleagues to join us in this effort to bring this important piece of legislation to the floor for a vote. And I appreciate the gentleman from Iowa yielding to me, and I appreciate also his explanation of energy production and energy consumption here in the United States so that people can better understand just how tight the supply is and how great the need is for more energy production, to say nothing of the jobs, by the way, that this would create here in this country if we allowed more production. Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from California for coming to the floor and bringing this issue forward, helping to frame it in the fashion that he has. And the segue gave me an opportunity to put up these two charts, and the chart that I just took down was the energy production chart. That was 72 quadrillion Btus of energy. The inside circle is the energy production chart, 72 quadrillion total energy production in the United States. The outside circle is the energy consumption in the United States. That's 101.4 quadrillion Btus. Now, those numbers don't mean a lot to anybody, I don't think, until you just put it in perspective. We are producing 72 percent of the energy that we're consuming, and if we're going to be energy independent, if we're going to stop transferring American wealth overseas, as the gentleman from California said, then we've got to produce as much energy as we consume. And I'm not stuck specifically on producing just as much gas as we burn or just as much diesel or just as much electricity in whichever fashion it is, but I'm insistent upon the idea that we go to full energy production, that if we produce enough Btus and natural gas to offset something we might use in coal, let the size of the proportion of these pie charts change a little bit depending upon what's most economical. But I do think natural gas needs to remain, as John Peterson of Pennsylvania said, the mother's milk of manufacturing and that it should not be the kind of energy that we're using to expand our electrical generation. {time} 2230 And natural gas is also the feedstock for 90 percent of our nitrogen fertilizer. And so there's two essential uses. And we can't turn over the nitrogen [[Page 16468]] fertilizer production to places like Venezuela and Russia, but that's where it's going. We've almost lost the entire fertilizer industry in the United States because we haven't acted to open up these energy supplies. We know that we have 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and that's known reserves. That's known reserves, and we still can't go offshore in many places and explore. So here's our answer: It is, expand all of these forms of energy, every single one. And yes, we need to expand--even the energy that Teddy Kennedy objects to, let's expand some wind and some geothermal and some solar. That's the three that seem to be the least objectionable. But let's do all the rest while we're at it. And this green one right here, nuclear; when you think we haven't built a nuclear plant since the mid-1970s, about 1975, there is a brand new one that's under construction in South Carolina today--and boy we're on a blitzkrieg to get that built--and it's going to be going online in 2017. Can you imagine a nation that--we can put the erector set together a lot faster than that, we just can't jump through all the regulatory hoops any faster than that. So the master switch gets thrown and the lights come on in South Carolina in 2017. And that is then the master manual for how to go through all of the regulatory and environmental red tape to build the next one after that. And there was a vote in South Dakota, a public referendum to build a new refinery in Union County, South Dakota, Elk Point area, $10 billion investment. The referendum passed in favor of it, 59-41, so they said most of us think it's okay to have a refinery in our back yard. That refinery is one that I think it has a very good chance of going, but even those who are driving this don't have the answer to every question on how they jump through all of the regulatory hoops that have been created. So here's an example: In 1970, when the oil companies wanted to go up to the North Slope of Alaska and open up Alaska for drilling, there was a court injunction that was slapped on them. That was a new thing then. I can remember being shocked that someone could come along and file a court case and shut down an entire region from development for energy. There used to be a thing called property rights in America, constitutional property rights, and that would be a taking of the property. They went in there and acquired those leases with all good intent and above board, and they were shut down by an environmentalist lawsuit that went to court in 1970. In 1972, the final litigation hurdle had been leaped and they began the construction of the 600 miles of right-a-way and the 800 miles of pipelines and all the wells and collector tubes and the terminals on the Alaska Pipeline. It took 2 years. And in 1972, I was astonished that anybody could hold up an operation like that for 2 years. And yet today, that seems like a blink of a litigative eye, 2 years. If we could resolve all the litigation that's holding up energy in 2 years, in 4 years we could have the energy problem solved. And that's because the trial lawyers, the environmentalists, the people that want to make their money off of litigation, the same kind of people that held up the Intelligence bill and put our Nation at risk, those who see profit in squeezing it out of somebody else, that's holding us up on energy, and the environmentalists. So now I add this up on production. All of these things are off the table by environmentalists: Can't do biomass, that burns wood, puts greenhouse gas in the air. Can't do motor gasoline, same reason. Can't do diesel fuel. Can't do jet fuel. None of the crude oil can we do because they're afraid it contributes to global warming. And as we come on around the horn, kerosene fits in that same category. Natural gas, I spoke to that. Coal, can't build any more coal-fire plants, or if we do, we've got some new hoops to jump through that no one has jumped through before. You get to the nuclear, and the French are producing 78 percent of their electricity by nuclear, and we're down here where our overall energy consumption is 8.29 percent. The percentage of our overall energy production is 11.66 percent. But nuclear is also off the table. I spoke about hydroelectric, off the table. So we get to add up geothermal and wind and solar. I add up those three things. And I happen to know that in our overall consumption, those three sources, geothermal, wind and solar, total .74 of 1 percent of our overall energy consumption. And if we're going to be independent, we're going to only expand those? What's your answer? Do you have an answer? I don't think so. I think you worship at the alter of mother nature. And your default position is to always go back to pre Garden of Eden. I don't think you can think beyond that. I'll say this, that I know who created this Earth; God created this Earth. And he gave us dominion over it, and the animals and the plants in it to be used respectfully. And yes, we can improve upon mother nature, we've done it many times. That's why we're given the gift of the intellect and free will that we have. And we're to be tested in this fashion. And I'm more than happy to rise to that occasion and be tested in this fashion. And this side of the aisle over there, you all think the default position is, go back to pre Garden of Eden, mother nature, whatever the random grab-bag thing it was that came out of Darwin's ``survival of the fittest'' before man intervened as an intervening species, whatever that was, that's the utopian version that you're after because you have no other standard. We'll, I just described the standard, look it up in Genesis. We can do this. We can produce all the energy that this country consumes by expanding all of these sources of energy from the production chart. Stretch it out to the outside limits of the consumption chart. We can do this, we must do this. And if we fail, the other people in the world--whom we are sending money to every day by the billions--will own us. And when they own us, then they will tell us what to do and they will be our boss and our freedoms will be gone and diminished. And by the way, the people we're sending the money to for the most part don't believe much in freedom. And we're doing our best to encourage others to buy into the freedom model that we have. If we besmirch the freedom responsibility to make good decisions for the best long-term interests of the American people, we trail in the dust of golden hopes of the Founding Fathers. So much has been said about energy tonight, Mr. Speaker, and that makes my point on energy. I may come back and reiterate it, but I'll take up another subject matter that has me significantly concerned. And that is, that as we watch the Presidential race unfold, and we're watching as one of the Presidential candidates does his photo-op stops around the Middle East and Europe, and as that Presidential candidate-- and specifically the junior Senator from Illinois--has said that he expects to be in a leadership role for the next 10 years or so, he has already anointed himself as President. And so I would submit--and I don't hear anybody on the Democrat side say, wait a minute, calm down, that Presidential seal was a little bit of an overreach and the statement that you're going to be in command for the next 10 years means that, even if you win the Presidency this year and get re-elected 4 years later, it's still not 10 years. So perhaps you can amend the Constitution and make such a prediction. Maybe you're such a marvel of nature you can do all of that, Mr. Obama. But even if you're half of what you say, that makes you the leader of the Democrat Party in the United States of America. That means that the people over here on this side of the aisle are seeking to accommodate the positions that you've taken, trying to make you look good as you run for the Presidency, applauding and supporting the globe trotting and the speech--that didn't take place at the Brandenburg gate today-- all of that adulation that goes on is surely affecting the agenda here on the floor of Congress. It has to be and it has to have been. [[Page 16469]] For example, 40 different bills and resolutions brought to the floor of this House in the 110th Congress, all designed to underfund, unfund, deploy our troops out of Iraq and undermine the spirit and the will of our own fighting men and women, while they encourage our enemy. Forty bills and resolutions. All of those fit exactly with Obama's foreign policy, ``get out and get out now.'' I'm a little amazed that he can argue that, when asked if the surge worked, he couldn't agree that the surge worked. He said it was a hypothetical question. What's hypothetical about sending 170,000 troops over into a combat zone? What's hypothetical about some of them that come back with a flag draped over their coffin? That's not hypothetical, Senator Obama. That's real life, it's real death, it's real families that gave their son or daughter, lost their husband or their wife for our freedom. And you can't answer frivolously and flippantly that it's a hypothetical question, did the surge work or didn't it work? Obviously it worked. And to argue that you have four points out there that the rest of-- the President and John McCain are coming around to, that they're agreeing with you because you said we ought to get out of Iraq back in 2005--I think 2005 was the year that he said my position on Iraq is identical with that of President Bush. So I'm not sure when the first time was he said I think we should get out, but I know it was when we were under combat stress and pressure and things weren't going that well over there. And now I see him walking around the tarmac at Baghdad International--where I've been five times and I'll be again before this election cycle is over. And each time I've been there--hmm, I don't know about that. I think maybe the first time I arrived there I didn't wear a bullet-proof vest and I didn't wear a helmet. I think I went in there in casual khakis because the threat wasn't deemed to be as high as it turned out to be. The rest of the time I wore a bullet-proof vest and I wore a helmet. And I look there now, Senator Obama gets off of the plane or the helicopter, no bullet-proof vest, no helmet. Why is that? Senator, it's because the surge worked. The surge worked, and it's safe enough for you to walk around at Baghdad International in your shirt sleeves. A couple or 3 years ago, when I was walking around Baghdad International and I had security personnel standing between me and the line of fire, the other side of the concrete wall was the Mahdi militia, Muqtada-al Sadr's militia. They were controlling the civilian side of the airport. And the military side, by some truce--we didn't shoot each other much, I guess, through that concrete--held the other side. And today, the Mahdi militia is decimated and gone. Muqtada al- Sadr, the bane of peace in Iraq, has gone from doing something he's not very good at. Now he's studying. He's no longer a general. When he loses his army, he goings off to be a scholar instead. And for him to get ramped back up again and ever be commanding a Mahdi militia looks pretty slim to the people I'm talking to. The reason, Obama, you can walk around on the tarmac at Baghdad International in shirt sleeves is because the surge worked. And the reason that we can pull some troops out of Iraq incrementally, as situations adjust on the ground, as they have been adjusting and continue to adjust on the ground, the reason is because the surge worked. And to take credit because some troops can come out of Iraq when you said ``pull them all out now, right now,'' and when you said, ``I will, on my first day in office, order the immediate withdrawal of the troops from Iraq,'' the only condition, the only caveat was, I'll maintain a rear guard so they don't get shot in the back as they run off and get on board the troop ship, that's what's going on. You can't fool the American people in that. And you say that you want to send a couple of brigades to Afghanistan. Do it now, do it before the election. We can't wait until January 20--presuming, of course, that John McCain won't make the right decision. He's far more likely to make the right decision. And I actually think he's actually more likely to be President today. But to argue that we should send troops from Iraq to Afghanistan immediately is an obscene contradiction to the sacrifice that's been made by our military personnel that are there. It works like this; here's how the logic in the rational world goes: If President Bush has the insight and the courage to empower General Petraeus, recognize his leadership, allow him the time to go back and write the counter-insurgency manual, appoint him to command the troops in Iraq for the purposes of initiating the surge, make sure General Petraeus comes here before this Congress, explains it to us, we appropriate the money--you didn't have the nerve to shut the funding off because you didn't want to say, well, absolutely no to the troops because the disgrace of shutting the funding off and watching 3 million people die in Southeast Asia in 1975 comes back to haunt. The President had the vision to appoint General Petraeus. He had the vision to buy into that vision. He made the tough order. He put the troops on the line. They went there. The surge worked. The political solution flowed behind it and with it and in anticipation of it because they knew that we were going to be there for a period of time and would give the Iraqis time to get themselves established. If the surge worked in Iraq, Obama, tell me why---- The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman is reminded that his remarks should be referred to the Chair Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge that statement as correct. And Mr. Speaker, I will direct my remarks to the Chair. I appreciate that. So Mr. Speaker, when I speak to you and echo this message across to the other Chamber, the idea that a surge didn't work in Iraq but it allowed Presidential candidates to walk around on the tarmac without a bullet-proof vest or a helmet, but it will work in Afghanistan? {time} 2245 That's a rationale that doesn't fit for the people in the Midwest. They know better. They've watched this. They stayed up to speed with what's going on, and they will not be fooled. And I will not be fooled either. So what we have is we have a situation where the political climate in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, seeks to meld and shape itself to a presidential campaign, to adopt those policies, to make it so it increases the odds that their candidate will be elected President. And part of this, Mr. Speaker, is unfolding tomorrow morning in the House Judiciary Committee. I don't know that this is published in the news media, but I know what I got in my Judiciary Committee hearing notice here within the last hour. This is a notice that says that there is going to be, for the first time in this millennia, impeachment hearings in the United States House of Representatives in the Judiciary Committee, impeachment hearings to consider impeachment of the President of the United States and the Vice President of the United States, starting at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning in room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building. I can only conclude, Mr. Speaker, that the initiative for this has to be approved by the presidential candidate of the party that controls the Judiciary Committee and this Chamber. There's no other conclusion that can be drawn. It is all politics all the time. There are no coincidences in politics. If a presidential candidate didn't want to have impeachment hearings going on, he'd make sure that they weren't going on. If a Speaker of the House or a chairman of the Judiciary Committee was considering such an idea to hold impeachment hearings, they would surely run it across the powers that be within their party so there wasn't a conflict that rose up to bite them. I have to believe, and I do believe, that this is with the full support and endorsement of the presidential candidate chosen by the party on the other side of the aisle. This is what we're up against tomorrow, Mr. Speaker. It's going to be an interesting day. I was not in this Congress during the impeachment hearings of 1998, although I was in this city. I came to [[Page 16470]] this city to do a couple of conferences, and I picked up the Washington Post, and on about Page 4, there was a little clip in there that said impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee, room 2141, open to the public, staring at 10 o'clock in the morning. I believe the dates were the 7th, 8th, and 9th of December, 1998. I looked at that, and I concluded that these were historical times and that in spite of whatever the conferences were that I'd come out here to attend, attending the impeachment hearings would be far more instructive, that I would then be part of history. Well, I observed those hearings for 3 days in a row. I was sitting behind David Shippers when he delivered the summary of the prosecution. I happen to have a copy that was handed to me that day by the Judiciary Committee staff. I keep that in my file. It's an historic event. These events tomorrow will be historic too, although they are far from as serious as what was taking place in 1998 because in 1998 there was an impeachment in this House. This House voted to impeach the President of the United States, Mr. Speaker. They did so based on solid evidence, and they went over to the Senate to bring forth the prosecution. And I see things in this notice that goes this way: ``Full Committee Hearing, Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations'' being the subject, the subject being three resolutions introduced by Congressman Dennis Kucinich and different resolutions to either impeach President Bush or Vice President Cheney. It says that interest groups have advocated for the impeachment of the President and the Vice President. Nobody's talking about this where I live, but there are enough radicals to bring this thing forward. We are going to hear from several Members of Congress, one, two, three, four Members of Congress tomorrow. We are going to hear from a former Associate Deputy Attorney General from the Reagan administration. We are going to hear from the Mayor of Salt Lake City, Mr. Speaker, who has said publicly this: ``This President has engaged in such incredible abuses of power and breaches of trust with both Congress and the American people and misleading us into this tragic and unbelievable war, the violation of treaties, other international law, our Constitution, our own domestic laws, and then his role in heinous human rights abuses, I think all of that together calls for impeachment.'' Well, I would reject all of those allegations as having substance, and I don't think that substance is going to come out tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, because this is a dog and pony show. This is a political exercise. Actually, I tried to get the chairman to yield to me the other day, and he declined to do so, because I was watching the progression of these judicial public lynchings that have been taking place of Bush administration officials in the Judiciary Committee over the last month or better. We had David Addington, the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States, brought before the Judiciary Committee under threat of subpoena. And he was told by one of the committee members, ``I'm glad al Qaeda can see you now.'' Brought before the public, a man who has been a private individual, and whipped up one side and down the other with verbal assaults, trying to find to trip him up so that he could go the same path as Scooter Libby, whom no one can still tell me what it was that Scooter Libby said or did that was wrong. All they know is that he's been beaten up on so much, there must be something there. Well, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the politics in this Chamber, I can tell you there doesn't have to be anything there to be beaten up upon. But here's what's going to make it a problem for some of the members in the Judiciary Committee. They were on the committee in 1998, many of them. They are on record as to what they thought was an objective constitutional means, reason for which a President should be impeached. They said such things as, and this is a quote, ``We are using the most powerful institutional tool available to this body, impeachment, in a highly partisan manner. Impeachment was designed to rid this Nation of traitors and tyrants.'' That's the chairman of the committee. Here's another quote from a committee member. This is Maxine Waters, California, who believes we should nationalize our oil industry, by the way, but, Mr. Speaker, here's the quote: ``How must our American soldiers feel to have their Commander in Chief under attack''--this is of President Clinton during the impeachment hearings. ``How must our American soldiers feel to have their Commander in Chief under attack while they are engaged in battle? They have the right to feel betrayed and undermined. Today we are here in the People's House debating the partisan impeachment of the President of the United States of America while the Commander in Chief is managing a crisis and asking world leaders for support. This is indeed a Republican coup d'etat.'' Mr. Speaker, that's Maxine Waters, 1998, during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I wonder how she is going to conduct herself tomorrow, if she is going to be consistent with her words then or if she's going to contrive another argument manana. Here's another quote from a current Judiciary Committee member speaking of the Clinton impeachment in 1998: ``We have been warned repeatedly that these allegations are nowhere near what is necessary to overturn a national election and to impeachment a President. Despite these cautionary flags, this committee has turned a deaf ear to hundreds of years of precedent and to the Constitution that has kept this country strong and unified.'' That's Congressman Robert C. Scott of Virginia, a Judiciary Committee member. Here's a statement made by the current Chair of the Immigration Subcommittee back in 1998 of the Clinton impeachment: ``The people's will must not be overridden by those who claim to know better, by those who believe they know what is best for the American people,'' Zoe Lofgren. You get the idea, Mr. Speaker. Let me just do another one just to put some of this on the record, Mr. Speaker. Here's another quote of the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton, Judiciary Committee member and Constitution Subcommittee Chair: ``It's an enormous responsibility and an extraordinary power. It's not one that should be exercised lightly. It certainly is not one which should be exercised in a manner which is or would be perceived to be unfair or partisan.'' Well, get ready for tomorrow, Mr. Speaker. I don't expect it's going to be fair, but I don't think there is a single pundit in America that could analyze it as anything except partisan. Not a witch hunt anymore. They've found their witch. They're bringing impeachment hearings before the House Judiciary Committee, all of that on the heels of the attempted public lynching of David Addington, the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States; Doug Feith, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, also brought before the committee; and then behind that last week, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, another attempt made at him yesterday or the day before. I guess it was the day before. We had Attorney General Mukasey. All of this before the committee, all of this under at least the implication that a subpoena can be issued, sometimes the actual vote and threat of a subpoena. I don't know if a subpoena has been actually issued under any of these cases. But these are honorable men. They'll come testify. They have got nothing to hide. But it's a grueling thing to sit there and look at the Judiciary Committee panel and know that it's exactly what, Mr. Speaker, Jerry Nadler said it should not be. He said, ``It certainly is not one which should be exercised in a manner which is or would be perceived to be unfair or partisan.'' Well, I am very convinced that Jerry Nadler thought that it was unfair and partisan in 1998. I don't know that a majority of the American people think that, but today if you would walk down the streets of America, at least inside the coasts in America, and say, ``What in the world would the Democrats want [[Page 16471]] to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney for?'' I would be hard pressed to find constituents in my part of the country that could give me an informed answer. That means to me that it's unfair and it's partisan, and this entire exercise is about discrediting the Bush administration so that the landing zone is prepped for Election Day in November. That's what I see. I don't think there are coincidences in politics. I think it's all real. And it is not a game. It is hardball. This is the hardest of hardball that's unfolding here tomorrow. The unbelievable, the unanticipated, the breathtaking, the illogical, the major reach, the deja vu feeling with a different pair of figures in front of it. Mr. Speaker, I will take us back also to another little event when I had exposure to some of the things going on by the hard left in America. March 18, 2003, just a few days before the liberation of Iraq began, there was an anti-war protest that took place out on the mall. Now, I had not been to one of those before. We don't have them in my part of the country. But I thought I should take a look at this one. And so I put on my Redskins sweatshirt, an old one. I looked like a native, put a cap on, walked down there amongst the people that were getting ready for this march on the White House to protest the war that hadn't begun. And as I was there and I watched a photographer wash the lens of his camera with an American flag he kept in his pocket for a rag, and he was pleased to do it, as I watched some of the countercultural signs be put up, I took a lot of pictures down there, many of which couldn't be published and many of which you wouldn't show your children. There was a big stage. A big stage with big speakers up on it. And the orators that came forward to stand between those large speakers were there to gin up the crowd so they got all wound up and then they could march off across the mall and march around the White House and go protest the war that hadn't begun. And I did watch that entire march and that whole protest, and that's a longer speech than I've got time for tonight, Mr. Speaker. But I saw the chairman of the Judiciary Committee call for the impeachment of President Bush before the operations began. And now here we are, March 18, 2003, fast forward to July 24, and tomorrow will be July 25, 2008. Just a little over 5 years later, we're there. It's happening. It's coming before the Judiciary Committee tomorrow in room 2141, 10 o'clock a.m. I think it will be a day that lives in infamy, a shameful day, a day when the American people wake up and realize there is a connection between a committee and the United States Congress seeking to impeach a President without cause during a time of war, during a time when our energy is tied up and trapped up and we're looking at $4 gas, during a time when we have economic difficulties and there needs to be confidence in the American system and the American economy, during a time as we move up to a presidential election. All of these things are affected. They are all wrapped up together. They all have to have, Mr. Speaker, the imprimatur of approval stamped on it by the man that wanted to give a speech at the Brandenburg Gate today. {time} 2300 It's his agenda. It's his motive. It's them working with him. It's his impeachment hearings. This all ties together. And I believe the American voters will hold the kind of people who pull these kind of moves accountable. And I'm going to see to it that at least the information is out. And I trust the wisdom of the American people. Join me tomorrow, Mr. Speaker. I will hold a chair for you. All of us will be looking in and see that at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, room 2141, the House Judiciary Committee, impeachment hearings, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, held tomorrow. They ensue at 10 in the morning. I will be there. Mr. Speaker, you be there. And let's right this ship that is going off tacking so hard to the left. It's going to sink if we don't turn it around. ____________________