the chair: on this vote the yeas are 174. the nays are 240. the amendment is not adopted. the unfinished business is the request for recorded vote on amendment number 2, printed in part b of house report 112-73 by the gentleman from virginia, mr. connolly, on which further proceedings were postponed and on which the noes prevailed by

voice vote. the clerk will redesignate the amendment. the clerk: amendment number 2, printed in part b of house report number 112-73, offered by mr. connolly of virginia. the chair: a recorded vote has been requested. those in support of the recorded vote will rise and be counted. a sufficient number having arisen, a recorded vote is ordered. members will record their votes by electronic device. this is a five-minute vote. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.]

the chair: on this vote the yeas are 175. the nays are 240. the chair: on this vote the yeas are 176. the nays are 240. the amendment is not adopted. there be being -- there being no further amendments, the

committee rises. the speaker pro tempore: mr. chairman. the chair: mr. speaker, the committee of the whole house on the state of the union has had under consideration h.r. 1230, and mursuent to house resolution 245, i report the bill back to the house. the speaker pro tempore: the chairman of the committee of the whole house on the state of the union reports that the committee has had under consideration h.r. 1230, and pursuant to house resolution 245, reports the bill back to the house. under the rule the previous question is ordered. the question is on engrossment and third reading. so many as are in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. third reading. the clerk: the bill to require the secretary of interior to conduct certain offshore oil and gas lease sales, and for other purposes. >> mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order.

for what purpose does the gentleman from new mexico seek recognition? mr. lujan: i have a motion to recommit at the desk. the speaker pro tempore: is the gentleman opposed to the bill? mr. lujan: i am opposed. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the motion. the clerk: mr. lujan of new mexico moves to recommit the bill h.r. 1230 to the committee on natural resources to instructions to report the same back to the house forthwith with the following amendment. page 5, after line 14, insert the following and redesignate accordingly. section 5, no foreign sales. the leases offered for sale under this act shall specify that all oil and natural gas produced under such leases shall be offered for sale only in the united states. the speaker pro tempore: does the gentleman seek recognition? from washington seek recognition? mr. hastings: i reserve a point of order. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from new mexico is recognized for five minutes. mr. lujan: mr. speaker, the house is not in order. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is correct. the house will be in order.

the gentleman may proceed. mr. lujan: mr. speaker, my colleagues, american families are hurting right now. when the cost of gas at the pump rises, that means that the cost of groceries goes up, the cost of goods goes up. and the cost of just getting to work goes up. the american people need relief and the way this legislation is written, it will do nothing to decrease the price at the pump and will do nothing to lower the international price of oil.%m1 day today my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have said that drilling more is the -- mr. speaker, the house is not in order. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is correct. the gentleman may proceed.

mr. lujan: and if my republican colleagues believe that indresing drilling in the u.s. will lower gas prices, then we should all agree that oil produced in america should stay in america to help american families and american businesses. and that's why i'm offering this final amendment today to ensure that oil resources that are produced through leasing under this act or kept here and sold here in the united states -- are kept here and sold here in the united states. that means if we're producing here we should keep it here for the american people. mr. speaker, i come from a state that has oil and gas production, and we know how important domestic production is. we don't disagree that production in the united states is important. personally, i favor more comprehensive approach, a plan to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil, one that includes natural gas, wind, solar. one that grows new industries and creates jobs that cannot be outsourced out of the united states. and while i disagree with my

republican colleagues' approach, i think that we can all agree that something must be done to reduce the price of gasoline for consumers. the american people want us to work together to lower gas prices, plain and simple. they know our country is far too reliant on foreign oil and they want us to do something real about it. plain and simple. mr. speaker, the house is not in order. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is correct. the gentleman may proceed. mr. lujan: mr. speaker, something deserves to be repeated, and i tell you the american people want us to come together to lower gas prices, plain and simple. at a time when gas prices are at historic highs, if we can produce more we should keep it in america to help americans. the solution is simple as producing more oil in the u.s., but that's not going to lower cost in the international markets. that's not how it works. mr. speaker, u.s. domestic production is already at its

highest level in almost a decade and that's a fact. in the last two years, oil production from the u.s. outer continental shelf has increased by more than a third. and that's a fact. so while we've seen our production going up the cost is going up higher and thears -- that's hurting families. without this amendment there's nothing in the republican bill that would guarantee that oil produced under this act would stay in the united states to offer relief for the american people. mr. speaker, we can change all of that and we can do it together. do what's right for the american people and support this amendment that simply says that oil produced in the united states under these leases would stay in the united states. my republican colleagues will tell us that this bill is about sending a message to opec and to the world that we are willing to produce our own oil. if we're going to send a message, mr. speaker, let's

send the message that when we drill on the taxpayers' land that america's oil should stay right here in america to lower prices at the pump, plain and simple. to my colleagues, mr. speaker, and i hope we can have a little order. to my colleagues, when you go home to your districts this weekend, ask your constituents, if they think oil produced in the u.s. should be kept in the u.s. and refined in the u.s. for american consumers, american families and american businesses or if they think it should be shipped out of the country. what do you think they'll say? quite simply, that is the choice and that is all this final amendment says. it will not kill this bill. if it's adopted it will be immediately incorporated into the underlying bill and the bill will be voted up on immediately. let's do something for the american people and plain and

simple, let's support this amendment. i urge my colleagues to vote yes. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the chair would remind the membership to address their comments to the chair. the gentleman from washington. mr. hastings: mr. speaker, i withdraw my reservation. the speaker pro tempore: is the gentleman opposed to the bill? mr. hastings: i rise in opposition to the bill. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for five minutes. mr. hastings: mr. speaker, i oppose this motion to recommit. quite frankly, this amendment is redundant, unnecessary and another attempt to divert attention of the real issue of increasing oil production in order to create jobs, lower energy costs and improve national security by lessening our dependence own foreign oil. first, mr. speaker, experts are already subject to the export administration act. before oil or gas can be exported, the president must find that the exports will not

base the total quantity or quality of petroleum available to the u.s. and the national interest and are in accord of the export administration act of 1969. if the president finds that exports are in violation of the export administration act, an executive order could halt all these exports if congress find that the export are in conflict with the national interest. if it can pass and they can act accordingly. now, having said this, it's covered under law, let's really get to the bottom line. this is another distraction from the same people that brought us cap and trade. now, that should probably say everything right there because i find it absolutely ironic my good friend from new mexico making this argument that if we went out and talked oour constituents if they'd like to buy american-made energy they would say overwhelmingly yes. well, of course they would. they'd also say, why aren't we drilling for sources here in the united states?

offshore, in the gulf of mexico and onshore. and that's what these three bills do. so i urge my colleagues to vote against this motion to recommit and pass the bill. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. without objection, the previous question is ordered on the motion to recommit. the question is on the motion to recommit. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, the noes have it. mr. lujan: mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from new mexico requests a recorded vote. a recorded vote is requested. all those in favor will rise. a sufficient number having arisen, a recorded vote is ordered. members will record their votes by electronic device. this will be a 15-minute vote. pursuant to clause 9 of rule 20, the chair will reduce to five minutes the minimum time for any electronic vote in the question of passage of the bill. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.]

the speaker pro tempore: on this vote the yeas are 171. the nays are 238. the motion is not adopted. the question is on passage of the bill. so many as are in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the gentleman from washington. mr. hastings: i ask for the yeas and nays. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman requested a recorded vote. those in favor of a recorded vote will rise. a sufficient number having arisen, a recorded vote is ordered. members will record their votes by electronic device. this will be a 15-minute vote. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.]

the speaker pro tempore: this is a five-minute vote.

the speaker pro tempore: on this vote the yeas are 266. the nays are 149. without objection, the bill is passed. the chair lays before the house is communication. the clerk: the honorable the speaker, house of representatives. sir. i hereby give notice of my resignation from the united states house of representatives effective monday, may 9, 2011, at 1:30 eastern.

included is a cappy i submitted to governor brian sandoval serving nevada's second congressional district has been one of the greatest honors of my life. my state has the unfortunate distinction of leading the nation in unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy. there is no question that our nation needs to change the way we do business if we are going to get our economy back on track. it has been a privileged to join my house colleagues in the fight to restore fiscal responsibility to washington and work towards a more prosperous future for our great nation. i look forward to continuing our important work in the united states senate. signed sincerely, dean heller, member of congress. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from florida. >> mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as co-sponsor of h.r. 1081. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. the gentleman from florida. mr. stearns: i ask unanimous

consent that when the house adjourns today it adjourns to meet at noon tomorrow and further when the house adjourns on that day it adjourns to meet at noon on tuesday, may 10, 2011, for morning hour debate and 2:00 tm for legislative business. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. pursuant to 22 u.s.c. 276-h and the order of the house of january 5, 2011, the chair announces the speaker's appointment to the following member of the house to the mexico-united states interparliamentary group. the chair: mr. castor of arizona -- the clerk: mr. pastor of arizona. the speaker pro tempore: the chair is prepared to entertain one-minute requests. for what purpose does the gentleman from california seek recognition? without objection, so ordered. the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. lungren: mr. speaker, as we have appropriately celebrated the successful mission to take out osama bin laden, there has

been one discordant note sounded in the halls of congress, and that is with the testimony of the attorney general of the united states, there still is a reluctance on the part of this administration to recognize the major contribution made to this country by those who were involved in enhanced interrogation techniques which resulted in part of the information, the intelligence information that allowed us to find osama bin laden. the reason i bring this this up is this administration said in the past certain types of enhanced interrogation techniques equaled torture. i do not believe that to be true. and for that to remain on the record subjects those men and women who have done a tremendous job for this country which has resulted in one of the successful missions in addition to other mission that is have taken place in our war against terror. subjects them to the cloud of prosecution in the future and the accusation that they involve

them selves -- themselves in forms of conduct that would be defined as torture by some of the highest officials in the united states. that is something we cannot allow to happen. when we had the c.i.a. director indicate we did receive information as a result of some of these activities, it seems to me that we are duty bound to clear up the record. and to thank those men and women not condemn themment them. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from arkansas seek recognition? from texas seek recognition. without objection, the gentleman from texas is recognized for one minute. >> thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, texas is burning. since november, texas has experienced over 9,000 wildfires that have burned over two million acres and destroyed more than 400 homes and several thousand structures. these fires continue to rage, threatening the lives and property of texans.

the state of texas and local governments along with our firefighters and other first responders have done a magnificent job of responding to the threats of these wildfires. however, the resources of the state and the local government have been stretched responding to fires we already had, and the threats of wildfires continue. without additional assistance, the capacity to respond to future wildfires will be greatly diminished. that is why governor perry requested a major disaster declaration and federal disaster assistance, unfortunately president obama denied this request. mr. canseco: mr. speaker, many in texas and in my district can -- can't seem to understand the president's decision. governor perry intends to appeal the president's decision, and i hope the president will consider. thank you. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired.

for what purpose does the gentleman from arkansas seek recognition? without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. >> thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today to bring everyone's attention to the extraordinarily destructive storms that have raged throughout the south, particularly in my home state of arkansas. in my home state we have seen flooding and tornado damage wreak havoc on local communities. we have seen the lives of our loved ones tragically taken before their time. last week i personally surveyed the damage in central arkansas in my district. and a little town of villonia, 70 homes were destroyed and additional 50 were damaged. i toured little rock air force base and saw the average to structures there and the damage to our c-130's that are so important to our national security. mr. griffin: in hot springs village, i saw the damage left in the wake of the latest round of storms that claimed the life of an 8-month-old boy there.

he's one of the 22 arkansans killed by the storms in april. i ask my colleagues and all americans listening today to keep the families affected by this tragedy in their thoughts and prayers. i yield back. m -- the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from illinois seek recognition? oofl a to address the house for one minute. revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. >> thank you, mr. speaker, when the president sought to take out "america's most wanted" and dangerous enemy, he called on an elite team of the united states navy to execute the mission. the 10th district of illinois is home to an important navy base. the naval station great lakes is the first stop of every single naval recruit. it is likely that those who executed the mission in pakistan on sunday started their training at this base. today i want to recognize those who got the job done and the outstanding training provided at naval station great lakes. mr. dold: i applaud the

continued heroic efforts of our armed forces and intelligence personnel, and particularly those who under the cover of a dark pakistan night dropped into a fortified compound to give justice to millions of people around the world. mr. speaker, our fight against those who want to destroy democracies around the world continues. but today we can press ahead. as confident as ever in our nation's ability to confront and triumph over evil. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. for what purpose does the gentlelady from new york seek recognition? without objection, the gentlelady is recognized for one minute. >> this week marks the holocaust days of ref brans. in 1938 there was a family that lived in vienna, austria, the father was a successful tea

merchant, the boys were both talented and bright, and when the nazis arrived, the younger son watched as his mother signed away all of their possessions. the mother made her way to the united states because she had relatives here. the older of the two boys was smuggled out of austria in the trunk of a car. ms. hayworth: the younger boy was taken to an orphanage, in belgium. the father, sigmund, was not able to obtain passage as the boys eventually did to the united states. and he ended up in the free city of shanghai where he re-established his tea business. he kept writing to his wife, rose, over the ensuing two years, and then she stopped hearing from him. and it turned out that sigmund had died in shanghai of malaria. his younger son, henry, was my father-in-law. and i want to remember sigmund

and his brave family and all those who perished as a result of the terrible events of the holocaust. i thank you, mr. speaker. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady yields back. any other requests for one minutes? seeing none, the chair lays before the house the following personal request. the clerk: leave of absence requested for mr. rangel of new york for today. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the request is granted. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the gentleman from iowa, mr. king, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. mr. king: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker,'s my honor and privilege to address you here on the floor of the united states house of representatives.

and to have an hour to invest in laying out some points here that i think are important for you to consider. as america listens on, hopefully it will simulate some of the thought process and help bring people some conclusions. the first thing that i think any one of us wants to speak of and to is the president's announcement which came -- took place very late on sunday night, that the team, special forces team, had been successful in taking out osama bin laden. it is our first response to that news, that happy news for all america, and i think that is to congratulate the team that fast roped down into that compound. those who put their lives on the line to put an end to the life of perhaps the most evil man on the planet, osama bin laden. and i congratulate the president of the united states for issuing the order and making the

decision to go into that compound in the fashion that they did. he had a number of options. and i'm, as the news has reported, and accept this to be fact, the president sat in and led five different discussions as the news is reported to evaluate the quality of the intelligence that was available, and the tactics that might be used in that compound and gave the order. some said it was the most courageous order a president had given in their memory or lifetime. they were all from the administration. it was a good order, no question. i don't think it was the most courageous. it didn't lack courage. but there are a number of other big decisions that stand up there i think in a higher profile than this one. but it was the right decision. it was a good decision. the president had to take a chance. he could have ordered massive bombing raid on that compound and turned it into, as some have said, turned it into a glass parking lot.

which would have raised the level of degree of success, but probably eliminated the chance to show that osama bin laden was in that compound. he could have dropped a single bomb, one-ton-plus bomb from a predator that would have had a reasonable chance of succeeding and taking out the most evil man on the planet. or he could have just said nothing or ordered the special forces in, to fast rope inside that compound and do what they did. of those options i believe the president chose the right one. and i congratulate him for that decision. and sitting here and listening to the gentleman from california, mr. lungren, talk about the situation with the intelligence that we had, it's clear to me, and it's been clear to me for a long time, that one of the essential links in the intelligence that led us to osama bin laden and the compound in pakistan was information that was given up in part by can

league shake muhammad -- can leak sikh muhammad and the encounters he had probably before he went to get know. that information then was worked and it was matched up with other information and the thread was followed, in fact the courier was followed to the compound in pakistan. it's ironic that the president of the united states campaigned against such interrogation tactics. it's ironic that many of whom i serve with on the judiciary committee wind up against george w. bush and accused him of ordering torture against people who have been attacking and killing americans, terrorists in the like of khalid muhammad and very small number of others. i agree with the gentleman from california, waterboarding is not torture. if it were torture, we would be torturing our own special forces

troops. i would be willing to wager in this, can't verify not knowing the identities of the individuals who did fast rope down into that compound, but i would be willing to wager, mr. speaker, that a number of those very same forces that went into the compound that took out osama bin laden in their training were likely water boarded as a part of their training. i sat in my office and have gone out in the field and talked to special forces personnel who were water boarded as part of their training. it is not a painful procedure, but it is one that gives one the sensation that they are drowning. it's easy enough to go on the internet and read the material there, mr. speaker, but it's an enhanced and effective interrogation technique and in all of the research that i did and i read back in story after story of this, and had others dig down in it, i found one case where there was a fatality nearly a century ago because of the brutal tactics that they used in conjunction with the

waterboarding. in any case there are many americans alive today because of the information that our people were able to acquire because of enhanced interrogation techniques. and it's ironic that president bush approved the methods that acquired the thread, the significant thread of information without which no one can explain to me how we would have found osama bin laden in that compound. so the very president who campaigned against the tactics that george bush was employing was able to take the information from those tactics and make the right decision to take out o.b.l. i'm glad george bush made the decisions he made. i'm glad he was strong and courageous and defended america's ability to gain information in the fashion that they did because anyone will tell you that was involved with the interrogations, especially

of khalid shake muhammad, that once he understood what waterboarding was, he sang like a canary. if he had not warbled fashion he did, i don't think we would be celebrating in the fashion we are, the end of the life of the most evil man on the planet. so, i agree with the gentleman from california that the cloud the investigation around the american interrogators who are being investigated for the tactics that they were assured by the justice department were constitutional and were legal, and now we have a justice department with a different opinion, is putting some of our interrogators through an investigation with a cloud of an eventual indictment hanging over their head for doing the same type of tactics that were used with khalid muhammad and a very few others to gather the information that allowed us to take out osama bin laden. . this paradox needs to be resolved, mr. speaker.

i'm hopeful the president will give the order for the justice department to accept the conclusions that were drawn by the bush administration and adopt that policy so that americans can continue to be protected an safe in the face of this threat we have from without this threat that comes from the -- from radical islam. we are fighting radical islam. radical islamists are seeking to kill americans on a regular basis because they disagree with western civilization and our philosophy. it's why they attacked us on september 11, that's high they attacked the khobar towers, that's why they attacked the twin towers the first time in the early 1990's. that's high they attacked the u.s.s. cole, the marine barak, the list goes on and on of the times we've been attacked by the people who reject our free vote they feel threatened by the liberty and freedom that is america. they're threatened by the free

enterprise, they're threatened by the robust nature of our culture and our economy where we lead the world in patents and trademarks and because of that, we need to stand strong and hold ourselves confident. i point out also that the probability that the intelligence was correct and that osama bin laden was inside the compound where the attack came from our special forces on sunday, the probability that he was there was the probability that was probably less than 50% chance. the president took the chance. now, if they had gone in and attacked the compound and osama bin laden had not been there, i'd like to think we would have never heard about it, mr. speaker. and i don't have any information that says that they tried any other compounds or tried any other low cages, alshow i suspect we have checked a few more places, i'd like to think we checked a lot

of cafes up there in pakistan, that's where a lot of us thought he was, where our intelligence was telling us he was, i'd like to think we've gone into those locations. but if they'd gone into that compound in pakistan and osama bin laden had not been here -- been there, i hope we never would have heard about it. because the odds are never 100% and in this case, they were less than 50%. if you compare the value of intelligence that said there were weapons of mass destruction in iraq before we went in there, when you had intelligence from the israelis, the french, the americans, the universal, global intelligence said saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction. the probability of those weapons being there in iraq if you analyzed it from the intelligence we had at the time made that probability for

w.m.d. in iraq greater than the probability that osama bin laden was even in the compound last sunday when the attack came. so i ask these points or make these points, mr. speaker, so that we can look back across this continuum of history and understand that intelligence isn't an exact science. it's a series of judgment calls, it's a series of connecting different threads of information together and following hunches and then come to that and following the hunch and making the decision. president opaw ma made the right decision. the value of the intelligence we had, it wasn't a 100% piece of information he had to work with, so whatever was the hunch, whatever conviction that caused him to make that decision, there's times you're going to be right and times you're going to be wrong. he was right thistime. i'm glad he made the decision, i'm glad the world has seen the end of osama bin laden. with regard to whether a photograph should be published of the -- osama bin laden to

give the world a higher measure of proof. i'll give some deference to the opinion that came from the select committee on intelligence, mike rogers of michigan, he said his measure is, does it make it harder for the american military to work with, say, afghan people for intelligence and information on the ground in after depan stan? does it make it harder or does it make it easier? are the chances better or worse that our troops on the ground in afghanistan will have a more successful time if the picture goes out, comes out, or if it doesn't? i would say this, in addition to that position, i'd say this, mr. speaker, that if the rumors that it's a hoax grow so great that they're able to use those rumors to recruit more al qaeda and if the rumors that it's a hoax strengthen the recruitment of the taliban, then we should release the picture or the pictures or enough intelligence, enough information that people can be

completely convinced. i don't have any doubt osama bin laden was in that compound, osama bin laden is in the bottom of the arabian sea, and i don't have any doubt, but we may get to the point where we have to erase the doubts -- doubts and i expect it will be very hard to keep the pictures of this operation completely with a lid on them although if anybody can do it, our special forces can and if that's their order i expect they will. i don't know that the pakistanis aren't sitting on something now that would get released. just another little irony i i would point out as i transition into a little bit different subject matter, the compound is reported to have had 12 to 18-foot walls around it with barbed wire on top. that's pretty interesting that the secretary of homeland security made a trip to that part of the world to advise afghanistan on border security and compared the afghanistan-pakistan border with the u.s.-mexican border.

it's interesting that the secretary of homeland security has long said, show me a 50-foot wall, i'll show you a 51-foot ladder. it's interesting that the 12 foot and 18 foot walls weren't scaled by special forces personnel with 13 or 19-foot ladders. they flew helicopters over the top of the compound and fast roped down inside. the wall was effective, the wire on top wasesquive, that's why they put them there. they don't build all these wires with wire on top all around the world if they're not effective. it isn't like ladders aren't available in pakistan or afghanistan. my point is i often facetiously respond to this idea, if you know me a 20-foot wall, i'll show you a 21-foot ladder, that that just makes fun of anybody who thinks you can protect the border with the wall. if anybody goes to a military

compound, there's walls around the compound. why is that? to keep people out. it doesn't keep everybody out, they'll cut wires, they'll dig underneath, they blowholes in the wall with explosives, like they did in saigon. when i say we need to ball and a fence on our southern border, i'm not advocating that we build that and walk away and let somebody come up to the other side with a 21-foot ladder, i'm suggesting that first of all we don't have to build 2,000 miles of fence, wall, and fence. that we just build a fence, a wall, and a fence with a patrol road in between in those locations and build it until they stop going around the end. if anybody has been down to the border, you'll see the beaten path. the beaten path that goes sometimes right through what

they're declaring to be fence they are 600 miles of fence that they the claire we have, and when you go down and look at the real fence that's there, some of it is triple fencing that they call tertiary fencing, that's a little too sophisticated for me. if you go to the southwest arizona area, you can see 24-foot-high fences, triple fences. when i was down there last, i asked them directly, has anyone defeated this triple fencing? their answer after several evasive responses and me point-blanking the question several times was, no. they go around the end. of course they do. it's a short fence, doesn't go far enough system of people go around the end. so we just keep building a fence, a wall, and a fence until people stop going around the end. if we end up with 2,000 miles of fence, wall, and fence, we must have needed it because they were continuing to go around the end.

we can do this an we can do this for a lot less money than we're spending today to chase people across the desert 70 and 100 miles north of our border. here's how the math works out. we're spending about $12 billion protecting our southern border. that's 2,000 miles. now already, smart people have done this calculus and they've taken $12 billion and divided it by 2,000 miles and come up with a unit price conclusion that we're spending $6 million a mile to defend our southern border. $6 million. now imagine this. for me, i am an iowa guy. i rely on gravel road, it's a mile to concrete from where i live in any direction. my west road, no one lives on it, it's a full mile of granite. if janet napolitano came to me and said, i need you to guard this mile, will you guard this mile and see to it that the people who go across it, you

can let 75% of them through, 75% foe through an the 25% that you're required to stop or you should be stopping, you just have to turn them around and send them back south again. well, p -- and by the way, i'm going to pay you, congressman, $6 million a mile to defend this mile of your gravel road. and i'd look at that and say, could you give me a 10-year contract? that's what we do here in this congress, we budget out for 10 years. $6 million a mile for 10 years. $60 million for six year -- for 10 years to guard a single mile. in a population that's going across that, 75% of those that try is get -- are getting through. this is a little bit dated information but it's testimony before the immigration committee. so if they're going to pay me $60 million to forward this mile and i didn't have any kind of efficiency standard except turn 25% of them back or so,

first i want an efficiency standard. i want 100% efficiency standard. we ought to be developing infrastructure that gets us to that point. and so, i wouldn't -- it wouldn't take me $60 million to build a fence, a wall, and a fence on that mile, that mile that runs from my house west. $6 million a year for 10 years, $60 million. i would tap into the first year's annual budget and take 2/3 of it, $2 million, and i would build a fence, a wall, and a fence for the full mile so it's three miles of structure. i'd put a concrete wall in the middle oif it and have a concrete funation that made it difficult to dig underneath, one thing you know about concrete you don't get through with wire cutters and you don't get through it in a simple fashion like you might with a wire fence. i would put a concrete wall in the middle, a fence down near the border, i'd move in 60 or

100 feet and put a concrete wall in, about 14 feet tall with wire on top, and another fence inside that. so if they got over my concrete wall there's another corral. and i would then hire fewer border patrol and with needing less equipment, less pension plans, less benefit package, i'd put the money up in the infrastructure. by the time they get through the fence, the wall, and the fence, -- we'd put sensory dwisses up, cameras up, maybe get boeing to perfect their system and add that to the fence, the wall, and the fence. but it is foolish for us to think we can just keep hiring more an more border patrol, we've more than doubled our border patrol and back off up into the desert 70 or 100 miles and gip chasing people around in the sage brush. that's not the way to do this we need to shut off the bleeding at the border.

-- at the border. this isn't a recreational sport to be defending our border and chasing people down in the desert. if we can stop them before they get into the united states that is the preferred way to go. i've gone across the english channel from england over to calais, france where the brits have leased a chunk of ground because they want to stop the illegals before they get across the canal, across the channel. and so they've leased this piece of ground from the french and they set up high security system there and the trucks that come through go on ferries and the ferry hauls them across the english channel. cars and trucks a constant rotation of ferries across the english channel. the british leased this piece of ground they raised their technology and their manpower there, to preempt access into the united kingdom because they

would rather deal with them on french soil than they would on british soil because the british laws are -- get a little sloppy like ours do, once you pick somebody up inside the interior of the united states, they have an opportunity to appeal, be adjudicated, can cost us a lot of money. the important thing is to keep them out of the united states. let's build a fence, a wall, an a fence. we can do the whole thing for about $2 million a mile and that leaves $4 million the first year left over to hire border patrol to pay them salary and benefits and give them some equipment. the next year, there's another $6 million every year, a little maintenance on that wall but not a lot. that $60 million contract for a decade on a single mile, you put $2 million up front, now you've got $58 million to play with. i'll submit that we can do a better job by building infrastructure and using it to protect our border than we can

by hiring a lot more personnel and chasing people around in the desert. it is a simple business equation and this political arena doesn't lend itself very well to simple business equations but that is one, mr. speaker. . i'll continue to push to build the fence. i don't care if it looks a little bit bad. if they don't want to see wire on top of the wall at the border, why do the mexicans build walls at the border, the u.s. border, with concertino wire on top? they aren't offended with that. why would they be offended when we put it up? as part of the immigration we need to address and i'll continue to that. stop the bleeding at the border. that is the way to do it. we can force all traffic through our ports of entry. we should beef up our ports of entry. widen them out. invest in infrastructure there. put personnel there so we can use a surveillance techniques

that are state-of-the-art so we can efficiently move through the traffic that's relatively safe, that's unlikely to have contraband in it, and that we can even better scrutinize those pieces of traffic that are likely to have illegal persons or illegal contraband in them. that would stop the bleeding at the border in a significant way. we forget that 90% of the illegal drugs consumed in america come from or through mexico. 90%. the drug enforcement people tell me that of every illegal drug distribution chain in this country, at least one link in that chain, the distribution chain, is someone who is here in the united states unlawfully. many times the whole chain, the whole chain of custody of illegal drugs going from mexico through up into the united states, pick chicago, and all the way to the end user, it never goes in any hand except

somebody who is illegally here in the united states. 90% of the illegal drugs in america come from or through mexico. headless corpses are showing up by the dozens in mexico and they are starting to show up here in the united states. i went to a meeting in columbus, new mexico, a town hall meeting. there were people there that on their way to church drive parallel to the border on their way to church on a sunday morning, four heads were on display. for them to see. it was a warning to apparently the other drug cartel. this is spilling over into the united states. those heads were on the mexican side, i point out, mr. speaker, for point of accuracy. they are showing up on the u.s. side of the border. the drug trade here in the united states is extremely lucrative. and i have been trying to get these numbers from the drug enforcement personnel. it's been very hard to get. fox news reported that the illegal drug trade in america is a $40 billion industry. $40 billion.

and it's been reported that at least $60 billion are wired from the united states into points south. a lot of that may come from wages of people working here in the united states, and a lot of them working here illegally, around $8 million illegals working in america, taking jobs that legal immigrants or americans, american citizens, should be doing. but $60 billion a year wired south. half of it, $30 billion in mexico, and the other $30 billion goes into the crib ban, central america, and south america. the other $30 billion scattered around in the southern part south of us in the western hemisphere. we don't know and they don't speculate on how much of the $60 billion is just laundering illegal drug money. i don't know the basis of the $40 million number that fox news report on the value of illegal drugs consumed in america. that's the only number out there i can find. i don't think we have the basis

of enough intelligence to be able to bring a real solution to this. i don't think our people at the top have done enough work to quantify the problem. when they are not talking about the problem, and instead i see an emphasis on our southern border, a shift that took place under the obama administration, that causes some of our border patrol to pivot. instead of looking south to say, hold it, don't come into the united states illegally, they started to turn around and look north and try to interdict cash and guns coming from the united states going into mexico. a lot of these guns are perfectly legal in the united states, not legal in mexico. we have the personnel to filter that at the mexican border? it's fine to interdict the cash because that raises -- raises the transaction costs of those who are smuggling drugs into the united states. it's fine to work and cooperate with the mexicans this they need a little help on guns that become illegal when they get

across the border, but we need to focus on people smuggling illegal drugs into the united states. focus on illegal people that are being smuggled into the united states. mr. speaker, the value of it is not quantified. in american lives and the treasure is one thing, $60 billion wired south, $40 billion worth of illegal drugs consumed in the united states. violence in mexico. headless corpses by the dozens. but now begin to ask these questions some years ago, and finally have some response, mr. speaker. a result of two studies i have commissioned over the years by the general accountability office. g.a.o. studies, one came out in april of 2005, and the other one came out just this past month. within the past few weeks actually released. but it's dated march of 2011.

we have had witnesses come before the immigration committee who consistently testified, first they'll say, america is a nation of immigrants. as if that's the be all, end all of the conclusion we should draw and shouldn't try to limit illegal immigration into america, let alone eliminate it because america's a nation of immigrants. my response to that, mr. speaker, is, yes. sure enough, could you point out for me a nation on the planet that is not a nation of immigrants. and i ask that question of a witness, ms. hernandez, and some few years ago, asked if she would care to tell me of a nation that's not a nation of immigrants, and she sat there at the witness table under oath, mind you, and presented as an expert witness, her eyes rolled back in the back of her head, she said, what would be a nation that would not be a nation of immigrants? she said, well, that would be the inca is and aztecs. whom according to anthropolgist

came across the bearing straits about 12,000 years ago. would you like to try again, miss hernandez. she didn't want to try again. and no one has succeeded in pointing out a nation that's not a nation of immigrants. the closest you could come is the japanese and there are two ethnic groups in japan identified by their locales and by the accent and language that they have. they believe that both of them came from polynesian origins. centuries and centuries ago. every nation, mr. speaker, is a nation of immigrants. people have migrated around this planet since adam and eve left the guard yield back the balance of my time of eden and they always will. we don't carry a certain responsibility towards setting aside the rule of law in america because we are a nation of immigrants. we have a responsibility to preserve, protect, and defend the pillars of american exceptionalism. of course the rule of law is an

essential pillar of american exceptionalism. so the question, first, are we a nation of immigrants, yes, we are, but we are a nation of laws, and we must adhere to and protect those, the rule of law. so when we look at the policies that we have, it's important for us to shut off the jobs magnet here in the united states. not only control, stop the bleeding at the border, but we have to shut off the jobs magnet here in america and one of the ways that we do that is to enforce our laws, of course. e-verify is an important tool. it's a website based software program that allows an employer to run the -- i call it name, rank, and serial number, the social security number of an employee through that data base, and it will go back and it will search the department of homeland security's data base, the social security data base,

ncic, and come back and tell you if that individual can -- that the information represents, can lawfully work in the united states. we use it. i have tried to scramble it and fool it and the longest delay i can get out of it is six seconds. it's very fast, it's very accurate. data base is only -- the software package is only as accurate as the data behind it. when we find a mistake in e-verify, it's almost always because someone got married and forgot to change their name or some piece of ngs like that that needs to be upgrated easily fixed. the only way you make e-verify better is to use it and use it so that data base gets cleaned up. it's set up to do that with a 72-hour notice secure. using e-verify is a good tool. i have a better tool out there that i'll soon be introducing, mr. speaker, and i have introduced it in previous congresses. i have been waiting for the right time and will set up a press conference and roll out a

bill called the new idea act. now, i know, they say there are no new ideas in this congress. that it's just a repackaging of old ideas. this one i think actually is a relatively new idea. and it comes from this concept. that who enjoys enforcing the law? who is effective in it? who do the american people believe will come forward and enforce the law? as i was thinking that through, it occurred to me that the i.r.s. probably has the maximum respect of all the enforcers in america. they have better tools to work with than many of the other agencies out there. and we expect they will come in and they'll conduct an audit. they are going to look to see if they can find something wrong with your tax return. anybody that's been through an audit doesn't want to go through another audit. frank lunts puts out numbers that majority of americans would rather be mugged. 58% would rather have a root

canal than it go through an i.r.s. audit. i would like the i.r.s. help us with immigration law. so i drafted legislation called the new idea act. it's the new, and the acronym idea stands for illegal deduction elimination act. so what it does is it clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegals are not tax deductible. then it gives the employer safe harbor if they use e-verify. so if employer in good faith runs their employees through e-verify, we'll give the employer that credit that he used e-verify and he can deduct the wages if it should happen to be wrong for example, it won't be, but otherwise if the i.r.s. then comes in during a normal audit, we don't accelerate audits, we don't initiate anymore audits, but if it comes

in during normal audit, they would run the social security numbers and information of all the employees through e-verify, and if any of those employees were kicked back at them as not lawful to work in the united states, the i.r.s. then would take a look, they would give their employer an opportunity to cure, but they would look at that data and say, all right, i'm sorry the wages you paid this illegal are not going to be a business expense for you. they come off the schedule c and go over in the profit column on their tax form. imagine if you are an employer and paid $1 million to illegals in the and the i.r.s. came in and do the audit, i'm sorry, that $1 million you had as a business expense is not an expense. you can't spend wages and benefits paid to illegals. now that $1 million goes over into the profit side. and the i.r.s. looks at and that and says, you know, you are going to have to pay interest on that. you have a tax liability, you unlawfully claim, you have to pay interest on that tax liability and have to pay a

penalty and you have to pay the principle, which is a tax liability. if it rolls it over to a 36% tax rate, plus the interest, plus the penalty, the net result is, it turns your $10 an hour illegal into about a $16 an hour illegal. which means there will be americans out there that will be taking those jobs at $12, $13, $14 an hour that didn't have an opportunity to do that before because illegal workers in there doing it for $10. this will open up jobs for americans. we saw a big number of new jobless reports pop up today. this unemployment number is not getting better. it is just zig-zagging and stagnating at a number that hangs in there close to 9%. this is a very, very slow recovery. one of the things we can do to help recover is to pass the new idea act. let the i.r.s. come in and do their normal audits, and employers will decide that they

don't want to wait for the i.r.s. to get there, they don't want to clean up their work force as soon as they practically can. that's part of the beauty of this. this isn't a hard and fast piece of legislation that requires employers to fire all their illegals at once. they can make their decision on when they'll take the risk. and -- what it does do is accumulates a six-year statute of limitations. . so if an employer gets by this year without an audit, and next year without an audit, he has to wait six years for that first illegal to drop off, and he has to wait six years. this means, employers are going to say, i'm paying $1 million a

year to illegals, if they audit me at the end of sick years, they're going to take that $6 million that i've spent off and call it income and have taxes attached to it. so that becomes something like $3 million in penalties out of the $6 million that were formerly a writeoff. that's how this accumulates with the six-year statute of limitations. that's why employers, even though they may not be able to transition their work force into a 100% legal work force the first year, the pressure to do so will be so great, and knowing you'll carry with you a full sick years of risk will cause employers to clean up on their own. one problems we have is getting the i.r.s. toen force

immigration law. we can force them to use e-verify but cannot require the executive branch to ep force the law. the president takes an oath to see that the law this is faithfully enforced. that's true for executive branch employees, including eric holder, the attorney general, including janet napolitano, the secretary. we can have hearings, bring the press into the hearings because the press helps us a lot, they convey that message back to the american people and the american people understand that there are things they should be outraged about. but we have no tool other than to cut their budget or embarrass them or, i guess

there's more draconian methods that could be used and i won't mention those for fear they'll start an unnecessary rumor, but all of that said, mr. speaker, the i.r.s. will come in and do this work and it won't be about us trying to embarrass them into enforcing the law. it'll be about the i.r.s. coming in to turn it into a revenue yen rator. it will be the new idea act, mr. speaker, it is a tool that can do the most to bring our immigration laws in this country under enforcement and reduce the numbers of illegals in the united states, the most dramatically with the least amount of cost, it's a plus up because it will generate more revenue for the internal revenue service. another point on the boarder to roll back down to the southern border, mr. speaker and to make this point, is that we have a tourism industry that has to do with anchor babies. anchor babies are babies born in the united states to an

illegal mother and the practice over the years has been to grant automatic citizenship to babies born on u.s. soil. it is not a law. it is not a constitutional requirement, it's just a sloppy practice that began that's getting worse and worse and worse. so we have now in this country somewhere between 340,000 and 750,000 babies born to illegal mothers in america that get automatic citizenship, they're anchor babies. they sneak into the united states, many of them for the purposes of having the baby, they get the birth certificate with their feet fingerprints on -- footprints on there, and they either stay here or go back to their home country until the child comes of aim and then use the child to apply to bring in the family, the nuclear family and then the extended family. 340,000 to 750,000 a year

automatic citizens to america that have essentially unlimited ability to bring their families into the united states. we have testimony before the immigration committee that shows us that if you look at immigrants, legal immigrants and base it on merit, you would think a country would want to establish an immigration policy designed to enhance the commib, cultural and social well being of the united states of america. wouldn't any country have an immigration policy to designed to help them? it's not selfish of america to want to have an immigration policy that's gad for this country. we cannot be the release valve for all the poverty in the world. for every -- some 6.3 billion people on the planet, maybe more than that, they can't all live in america. but there's more than 5 billion that have a lower standard of living than the average mexican. if we think we're going to be the relief valve for poverty in

the world and we bring in one million to 1.5 million illegals in and across the border comes as many numbers as i've seen this show as many four million illegals in a year, many go back and forth, their carrying drugs on their back, maybe they're visiting family, we don't know the exact number. when i came to this congress, the number was 12 million illegals in america. now they're saying maybe 11 million illegals in america. how does that work? did that many people die? did we give that many people citizenship that came in here illegally? thing number is significantly higher than 11 million or 12 million. i think it's been growing every year for a generation. i think it continues to grow. but anchor babies, babies that are born to illegal mothers in the united states that get automatic sit zeppship cause

people to sneak poo the united states to have the baby because they see citizenship in america as cashing in to the giant a.t.m. the giant ample t.m. which is america's welfare cash ma sheep. there's been a study of medicare that shows that -- of how many go to households that are headed up by an illegal. and when we look at what's happened on the floor of this congress in the last four to five years, when the schip legislation patsed this congress they weakened requirements of proof of citizenship for medicaid. so free medical care for people who are lower income is being

provided to people that should actually be deported back to their home country because the standard that you've had to show proof of citizenship that was written into the old medicaid legislation was struck an replaced with a requirement that you attest to a nine-digit social security number. that's the standard. they lowered it that low because the people on that side of the aisle wanted to pay medicaid benefits to illegals. they want to give them a path to citizenship, want to give them an opportunity to vote. i look back on what ronald ray gap said. what you tax, you get less of. but what you subsidize you get more of. now if you reward people for coming into the united states illegally, and you reward them with welfare pack ammings and plans, you're going to get more people in the writes illegally an get more people signing up for more welfare. we have in this country 77 different means tested welfare programs in the united states of america. 77.

there isn't one person in this united states congress that could stand down here on the floor and without a cheat sheet name every one of them. there isn't one person in this united states congress that can actually understand how each one these 77 means tested welfare programs interrelate with each other, let alone how it affects the decisions of individuals on whether they're going to get a job or sit at home. if you're on rent subsidy and heat subsidy and food stamps and list all the other federal programs that are there, why would you work? when you're rewarded for not working? and i look at the labor situation in america, eight million working illegals in america. eight million. there are a number of others out there we probably didn't find in the data that we have and so here we are with the unemployment numbers of about 15 million americans who are registered as unemployed. 15 million.

there's another six million to eight million that are past the data, they've quit trying so they're no longer technically called unemployed, they've just quit looking for a job. you're up over 20 million americans on unemployment, drawing it, or have given up applying for it but when i start to add to that number of roughly 20 million, 22 million to 23 million americans that are unemployed or given up trying and aren't working and i go to the department of labor statistics, their own statistics that come from the department of labor and i begin to add up the american work force that work force number is a little foggy in my memory, it's 140-something million people in america's work force and if you start adding those who are not working, not currently working, and i start at age 16, because that's a legitimate age, you can collect unemployment at age 16 if you've earned enough that they paid in on your behalf, there

are between the teenagers, between age 16 and 19, there are 9.7 million that aren't in the work force at all, not even a part-time job of any kind. yes they may -- there may be -- they may be students, there's nothing wrong with working and going to school, it builds character, you add the people that are 20 to 25 years old and duo up the line in different age categories, i went up to age 74 because we pay unemployment at age 74 and wal-mart hires at 74 and so to a lot of other employers. so the age of the work force i'm using is 16 to 74, it's a legitimate bracket, we could narrow it a little bit but here's the pint. -- the point. the the eight million working illegals in america, there are 80 million americans of working age not in the work force. 80 million people of working age simply not in the work force.

they might have checked out, they're sitting back on some of the 77 means tested welfare program, they might be independently wealthy and decided to retire. if so, good on them. but they're not in the work force for one reason or another or they're working in the black market, might be some of those people selling drugs not in the work force. but if people say there are jobs out there americans won't do, name one. name one job americans won't do. i can take you and show you an american that's doing every single job definition in this country. the reason you see people here illegally and they're compete, outcompeting americans is because they'll work forless. they'll pile up in a house with many more people living in the same dwelling, they are not a threat to the employer to file workman's comp or unemployment claims. so they're a lower liability for the employer. they can bring a crew of illegals, get the job done and once they leave that job, they're no longer a liability

to them. it's like being able to lease a machine to come to a job you say take the machine back and park it in the los and you're done. you don't have to worry about the depreciation or maintenance. that's what's happened. in a way it's a bit inhuman to see this going on. but if we enforce our immigration laws, it opens up at least eight million jobs for americans or legal immigrants and if people say there aren't enough americans to do those jobs, that's nuts. we have to hire one out of every 10 that's sitting now on the couch and put them to work. why wouldn't you want to increase and enhance the average annual productivity of our people? why would would you not? think about sitting in -- what if we were on a big, like a cruise ship but it was powered by sails and oars. so many people have to be tripping the sails so many have been pulling on the of course ars, somebody has to be in the kitchen cooking, somebody has

to be swabbing the deck, somebody has to be in the wheel house navigating and somebody has to be steering. with all of that going on, if you didn't have enough people at the oars to pull the load, would you pull that cruise ship off on an island and find people to pull the oars or go to the people sitting on the couch now and have those people grab the of course ar and pull. i want to increase the production of americans. i want to increase the average annual productivity of americans. if we do that, we increase our standard of living. if not, if more of us sit back an don't go to work and don't produce anything and we bring others in to do the work we say we're now too good to do, then our brord standard of living goes down. and you need more an more welfare programs to pay the people that are not working and you still have to carry the social costs for the people that are working underneath the

market value. you can't sustain a household for some of the wages that are being paid to illegals. that's why they're tapping into welfare benefits. that's why they use their child that's an inlegal that's been born in america, an anchor baby, as a means to get access to the welfare program. here we have an america that's underemployed, 0 million people of working age not in the work force, a lot of them are living off the sweat of the brow of somebody else in the form of 77 means tested welfare programs out there, they don't have an incentive to go to work but we pay them with tax dollars if they just stay peaceful, stay in their houses, don't cause trouble, let's not have violence in the streets, if you do all that, we'll hire these other people in the united states illegally at substandard wages and subsidize them both. what sense does that make, mr. speaker? for a nation to not be we have to get more of our americans to work.

you noticed i didn't say back to work, mr. speaker. we're sometimes into the third and fourth generation where they didn't work at all. they have learned how to game the system. and we've accepted it. we no longer require the welfare to work part of this. you get five years total and then you have to go to work. what we see happen is 77 welfare programs, nobody can monitor that and the will of the american people isn't such because now half the households don't pay income tax. but they go vote and they vote themselves largess from the public treasury. they vote themselves welfare benefits. there are people here that pander to that and they understand their political base is expanded when they expand the dependency class in america. what do they do? they pass legislation in here under speaker pelosi lower and lower that expanded the dependency class. obamacare is a huge care of

expanding that dependency class. and it says we are going to promise you not only that every american has access to health care, every single one. it wasn't an issue but they conflated the two terms. the term health care and health insurance. anyone in america could show up in the emergency room and be treated. that's access to health care and it's probably superior to most nations. i'm sure it's superior to most nations in the world. don't know a nation that it's not superior to. then it was the promise, well, it's really not good. expensive you show up in the emergency room without health insurance. what we want to do is give everybody their own insurance policy and insure another 30 million people. i look at that and do i the math and i ask the question -- who's really not insured and doesn't have affordable option? these numbers came from the united states senate, the republican senate conference, the senate staff, and it came down to this.

you start with about 306 million american and then you subject those that are insured, those that are on medicare, those qule that i on medicaid, those qualified for medicaid but don't sign up, those that are eligible -- they're covered under their employer and those eligible under their employer do wanted to access the liberty and freedom we have here. it's a different kind of vigor than saying, well, we got good vigor from great britain and we got it from france and germany and italy and wherever else, eastern europe, and around the planet, greece, name it. no, we got the best of every donor civilization. we got the vigor from every donor civilization. we have the dreamers from every country that sent legal immigrants here. that gives america a unique vigor. it's different than any other country in the world. that's the reason why we succeed. it's a reason why we can take free enterprise and do something with it. it's why america has risen to

become the unchallenged greatest nation on the planet. we have all of the rights that come from god that are defined so clearly and well. not just in the declaration but mountain constitution and especially in the bill of rights. and you add to that free enterprise and you add to that this vigor that comes from legal immigrants from all over, from every civilization, and you have an america that has a spirit and attitude that's unique on the planet. it is unsuitable to take a free people and tie the yolk of obamacare around their neck. i will draw the line. i want to see shutting off all funding to obamacare tied to the debt ceiling bill, mr. speaker. before we even discuss the debt ceiling, i want to guarantee that all of our troops get paid on time mountain event of a debt ceiling limit -- on time

in the event of a debt ceiling limit. anyone in the serving in the world by uncle sam needs to know their paycheck will be wired into their account on time every time no matter what is going on here in the united states congress. second point, tom mcclintock's full faith and credit bill which sets up the priority on how we would pay our debts in the event of a debt limit ceiling being reached. we can set those priorities and it needs to be paid the interest on those who have london money to america first and move on down the priority list. do those two things, send them out of this house, send it over to harry reid in the senate and you can decide, pick them up and send it to the president of the united states. and let the president sign both of those bills, the gohmert bill, the mcclintock bill into law. that, mr. speaker, would be the qualifer before we'd even begin to discuss what to do about the prospects of raising a debt ceiling. but for me i put the cutting

off of all funds to obamacare on that debt ceiling bill and say, there will be no raising of the debt ceiling here by the house of representatives unless we shut off all the funding that's going to implement or enforce obamacare at least, at least until such time should the supreme court rule. the president is delaying the action of the supreme court. he could have asked for an expedited review of obamacare. we all know it's going to the supreme court. the president is delaying the decision of the supreme court the same way that he delayed bringing his birth certificate out. mr. speaker, it's so important, it's so important that we not chase good money after bad, that the supreme court rule on obamacare. at least then. then, let congress decide when they might appropriate rather than these automatic appropriations. thank you, mr. speaker. i appreciate your attention and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. gohmert, for 30

minutes. mr. gohmert: thank you, mr. speaker. i certainly do appreciate the recommendations of my friend from iowa and certainly agree, we should be passing a bill that would require no leeway for the treasury secretary that he should pay our debts as they come due and also make sure the military's paid on time. we know the social security is already going to be mandatory spending in the event of a shutdown, and that way we'll be allowed to pursue the issues that are most critical and that is really in the interest of children. that term is used so often. the really true now. we got to cut the ridiculous, irresponsible spending to preserve this union. but there are two problems out there that are seeking to destroy this country.

one is passively to destroy this country and that is our gross irresponsible overspending. $2.1 trillion coming in and $3.75 trillion going out. we won't last much longer as a country if that conditions. and the other is not passive. it's very active. and our great military and intelligence communities did a fantastic job apparently in taking out the most wanted man last weekend in the world, the man responsible for possibly more murders than anyone currently in existence on the planet, but certainly he had killed more americans than anyone else alive on the planet today and that was, of course, osama bin laden. but there's been a great rewriting of history, and since

we know it's been made very clear that there are radical islamist jihadists that want to destroy our country, it is ridiculous not to defend ourselves. we took an oath to defend the constitution. we are supposed to provide for the common defense. it's the most important responsibility that we as a federal government have because if we do not provide for a common defense, then it matters not what we try to do in the way of medicare, medicaid, all kinds of problems that occur in the u.s. if we don't defend ourselves. there are plenty of evil groups who would love to destroy our way of life. some in the case of the radical islamic jihadists believe that

as much freedom as we have in america leads to decadence and debotchry and that we need one leader, one religious leader to preside over one giant worldwide caliphate and so for those of us who realize on both sides of the aisle, we make a lot of mistakes. people across the country make a lot of mistakes. no one at the current time on earth is perfect. we realize still that freedom to make our own choices is what the founders intended and that's because they believed that the creator, as they referenced in the declaration, god referenced in other places, providence in other places,

they believed that that was god's choice for our life. that we have choice. and even though god knew that we would make bad choices, when people can freely love of their own volition, their own choice. as a father i know that means so much more than if you demand that a child or someone in your care act like they love you. so thank god he desires our love and our praise, and as a result we were given freedom of choice. you don't have to look too deeply into founding documents and diaries and journals to realize just how much the founders, continental congress members, believed that. so it gets interesting when people try to rewrite history, and especially in the process of failing to properly provide

for the common defense. we had the attorney general of the united states before the judiciary committee this week, and of concern to me and many others has been the refusal of this justice department to prosecute the unindicted co-conspirators in the holy land foundation trial. the evidence used in that case had been adduced from back in 1991, 1993, there was a treasure trove of material found in i believe 2004 here across in virginia, and it was a subbasement that had tremendous amount of documents reflecting the plans and

intentions and strategy for the effort to bring down the government as we know it, our way of life as we know it. and that was by radical muslims. i'm also thankful that there are a majority of muslims who are moderates, they don't believe jihad means go about destroying those who oppose what you're doing. they believe it -- jihad means an internal change of life. and when someone has a moderate muslim for a friend, he has a friend for life, and it kind of reminds me of southern hospitality. but nonetheless, we do our moderate muslim friends no favors in failing to oppose the radical islamic jihaddists because make no mistake, if we

do not defend this nation against the radical islamic jihaddists, then some of the people that would lose their lives, at a minimum lose their freedoms, would be moderate muslims because they're not -- being a moderate is not abided in the world of a radical muslim. if you don't believe just as they do, then it is ok to take your life. so, that's why i say we are no friend to our moderate muslim friends if we do not defend this nation against the radicals. because our moderate muslim friends will be targeted. if we do not do our job in defending the nation. which brings me back again to the holy land foundation trial, the bush administration, acting

on information that was obtained through the 1990's, through the clinton administration justice department, f.b.i., and especially since 1993, the efforts made by the f.b.i., the incredibly professional work that was done, it was amazing how well they put a case together. unfortunately, when the case was tried the first time, it led to a hung jury, but in the pleadings, and i have the documents here, many, not all of them, there are boxes and boxes of documents and i understand even now under attorney general holder, the justice department has boxes and boxes of evidence, documents, wiretaps, that have in the even been translated. you would think that would be fairly important before a decision was made on whether or

not to pursue the unindicted co-conspirators. now in this case, it's not always the case, but in this case, the unindicted co-conspirators were actually listed and if one goes through the list of unindicted co-conspirators, you find groups like the islamic society of north america, ample conform a. isna. you find the north american islamic trust, a.k.a. n.a.i.t. it is amazing. you find founders of care, crmbingeds i-a-r-. -- of c-a-i-r-. after having five convictions on all 108 allegations in the holy land foundation trial that

went on in dallas, that this justice department would ultimately decide we're not going to pursue any of those other co-conspirators or joint venturers who the evidence shows clearly provided financing for a known terrorist group, hamas, the documentation is substantial. and this is only a tiny thimbleful of the evidence that was in the case. when i look here, islamic society of north america, some of the evidence that came out, we have journal voucher after journal voucher showing the money that was taken out and used to ultimately assist in terrorism. or to fund a terrorist group.

you see, all these journal entries, there are deposit slips in here. making clear all kinds of things were transferred in the way of money, all kinds of amounts were transferred to assist in the funding of terrorism. and in fact, at the conclusion of the first part of the case with the five defendants, some of the unindicted co-conspirators filed a motion to require the federal district judge in dallas to strike or eliminate all the names of the unindicted co-conspirators, at least their own, and a -- an assistant u.s. attorney in dallas named james jacks, did a very good job in rebutting that and laying out in his brief before the federal district

court how there was significant, tremendous amounts of evidence that showed that the unindicted co-conspirators' names should not be stricken from the record. and the judge in his memo order on the case came back and said, basically, there is a prima facie case and in fact the judge said here, this is in his memo decision, that -- an this is judge solis, a federal judge in dallas, he says the government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of cair, isna, and nait, the north american islamic -- i have it here what the t stands for.

with h.l.f., the islamic association for palestine, and with hamas. while the court recognizes that evidence produced by the government largely predates the h.l.f. designation date, the evidence -- is nonetheless sufficient to show the association of these entities with h.l.f., i.a.p. and hamas and being conjunctive together, not disjunctive and the judge goes on to say, thus maintaining the names of the entities on the list is appropriate in light of the evidence proffered by the government. he goes further in his opinion and says, the explanatory memorandum in-- includes a section entitled understanding the role of the muslim brotherhood in north america. which states that the work of the embing quan in the united

states is, quote, kind of a grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands an the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and god's religion is made victorious over all other religions, unquote. also contained in that document is a list of the muslim brotherhood's organizations and the organizations of our friends, unquote, which includes isna, nait, the occupied land fund, which was h.l.f.'s former name, and the united association for studies and research. during the early years of o.l.f. and h.l.f. operation, o.l.f. raised money and supported hamas the a bank account that it held with isna

and nait. indeed, o.l.f. operated from within isna in plainfield, indiana, where defendant baker was employed. the muslim brotherhood supervised the creation of the quote, palestine committee, unquote, which was put in charge of other organizations such as h.l.f., i.a.p., u.a.s.r., and i.s.n.a. the july 30, 199 , quote meeting agenda for the palestine committee, unquote, his i.h.p., hslr, and cair as working organizations for the palestine committee. thed orer is pretty extraordinary in following the pleadings as filed by a -- by a

quite capable u.s. stonet attorney at that time, now interim u.s. attorney in dallas , and stating basically there's a prima facie case here. and in fact, this has come to the attention of a number of us , not in an insignificant way to do do with patrick pool and his research, andrew mccarthy and his research and other individuals who are -- have been prosecutors, people are familiar with the system, how the system works, and pete king himself has a very pointed letter that was sent to the attorney general asking for answers and yet he really didn't get much of an answer. in fact, his letter reads this way, it was dated april 15,

dear attorney general holder irk write to inquire about your decision not to prosecute the 246 individuals and organizations named as unindicted co-conspirators in a hamas terror finance case, and actually it's the largest terror finance case in american history. if you don't cut off the money, the terrorism will continue. and if the terrorists have tremendous amounts of money, it's a lot tougher to defeat them as our enemy, our sworn enemy, sworn to destroy our way of life. if you cut off their funding, it's a lot easier to be at war with someone in a tent riding a camel than it is someone who has jets, r.p.g.'s and sophisticated weaponry and the ability to build million-dollar compounds to hide in.

of course, money also opens the possibility for bribes, which makes it a whole lot easier to hide in plain sight because people are willing to look the other way. we don't know if that was occurring in pakistan, there's a lot still to be learned in that situation. but chairman king, pete king, goes on and says, i've been reliably informed that the decision not to seek indictments of the council on american islamic relations and its co-founder omar amad, the islamic society of north america and the north america islamic trust was jew surped by high ranking officials at department of justice headquarters over the vehement statements of special agents and supervisors of the f.b.i. as well as prosecutors at the u.s. attorney's office in tchass who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the

holy land foundation case. their opposition to this decision raises serious doubt that the decision not oto prosecute was a valid exercise of prosecutorial discretion. chairman king then goes on and says, i request you provide answers to the following questions. what are the reasons for the department's decision not to prosecute cair, isna, nait, and mr. ahmad who is a cair co-founder and member of the palestine committee of the muslim brotherhood in the united states who made the final decision not to prosecute? who if anyone of the executive office of theth president consulted with, advised or otherwise communicated with the department of justice in electronic, oral or written form regarding the decision not to seek dimes of cair, isna, nait and dr. ahmad.

how do they address the possibility for them to ep gauge in terrorism financing? what policies with regard to thosing orny -- organizations have you implemented to address that threat? the answers to these questions should proside some explanation -- provide some explanation for this. the chairman goes through and cites some of the information from that case and he goes on and says, hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the department of state since october 9, 1997, and its status was reconfirmed by the most recent annual report of the national counterterrorism center, issued april 30, 2010. hamas shamefully conducts cowardly suicide bombings against civilian targets inside rail. he goes on and sets out further information there.

now, it also should be noted that chairman lamar smith, at the request, when it was brought to the attention by some of us on the committee, also sent a letter to the attorney general requesting information about the very same things and in fact there was a memo that was involved and we -- chairman smith, on behalf of the judiciary committee, requested a copy of the march 31, 2010, memo entitled declineation of prosecution of omar ahmad from assistant attorney general david chris to acting attorney general gary grimler. if i understand it, chairman

king got a response, very unsatisfactory. basically they're not telling him anything. and if they follow that tradition, chairman smith's not likely to get much of an answer. but it causes great concern because we have the attorney general, who has testified before the committee this week, to one if his department was involved in advising or consulting over that. yet, we have information about a memo which may contradict the attorney general directly, and if that's the case he would have given false information before a committee not once but a number of times during his testimony before the house judiciary committee. and i hope and pray that's mott the case. but this is' one way to find out -- but there's one way to find out. and instead of providing the memo that was requested, he referred, mr. trent franks,

when he asked to a "dallas morning news" article which quotes mr. jacks saying there was no political pactors involved in that decision. well, i have a copy of that article as well. and i also have a copy of mr. jacks' pleadings where he did a very nice job of setting out that there was a strong case. in essence, a prima facie case of people who wanted their names eliminated as co-conspirators in the pleading. and he also filed a pleading with the fifth circuit court of appeals. now, i know as a former judge and chief justice, lawyers are not supposed to file pleadings and try to persuade based on fact that they believe or know not to be true. it's called fraud upon the court. and there's punitive actions that lie in that case.

but the information that u.s. attorney jacks provided to the district court and to the fifth circuit court of appeals seems to be very authentic and very well done. obviously a very capable lawyer. there are no punitive actions that can be taken for misleading a newspaper. and on the other hand, perhaps he doesn't know what was in the memo that was requested from march of last year. but we're now getting into some very serious grounds when the attorney general of the united states will not be forthcoming, changes his answers a number of times about who consulted or didn't consult, who's in his department, who's not in his department, who participated. and so we have a lot of explaining to get to.

and i hope the legit mate explanations will be. one thing is clear, mr. speaker. and that is when the attorney general is holding evidence that will answer the questions that were asked and prove if anyone's lying and who is loig and when they lied, it is not at all comforting to say we're not giving you evidence that might contradict something that's been said by the justice department, but we will refer you to a newspaper article that an interim u.s. attorney gave who serves at the will of the united states president. so then, again, as a former judge, you end up looking for evidence which may support or not. could there be political or politics that play in this kind

of decision? well, about this islamic society of north america, isna. i got a transcript of the speech because i got it off of the white house website today made by the deputy national security advisor to the president of the united states, barack obama, that being dennis mcdonough. and in his remarks -- and this was actually says for immediate release march 6, 2011. this was printed, like i say, from the website. but it says, these are the remarks of the deputy national security advisor to the president, barack hussein

obama, in which he starts his remarks like this. quote, thank you for your very kind introdux -- by the way, these are remarks to the all-dulles area muslim society, adams, ironically. anyway. he says, thank you for your very kind introdux and welcome. i know that president obama was -- introduction and welcome. i know that president obama was grateful that you led the prayer at last year's dinner at the white house which, as the president noted, is a tradition stretching back more than two centuries to when thomas jefferson hosted the first iftar dinner at the white house. well, ift ambing r refers to the evening meal when muslims break their fast during the islamic month of ramadan. iftar is one of the religious

observances of ramadan and is done as a community. it is done right after sunset time. traditionally a date is the first thing to be consumed when the fast is broken. but if you look at the true history of the country, thomas jefferson did invite a leader to break bread with him at the white house and it was conclusion of ramadan but there's no evidence to indicate whatsoever that this was a traditional iftar dinner. but you get back to the facts, this means that -- and the second paragraph he says, our founders -- and this is dennis mcdonough, deputy national security advisor -- our

founders understood the best way to place -- place fate in the lives of people was to protect their freedom of practice religion. in the virginia act of established religious reform -- or freedom -- thomas jefferson wrote that all men shall be free to profess and by arguments maintain their opinions in matters of religion. it goes on in his remarks and he says -- i'm sorry. this is dennis mcdonough. thank you, also, for being one of our nation's leading voices for the values at that make america so strong, especially religious freedom intolerance. and pair theyically, i'm not sure if intolerance includes funding terrorist activities against israel and the united states. but that's a parenthetical question on my part. back to mr. mcdonough. if it's here at the adams center or the president of the islamic society of north america, you've spoken with

passion and eloquence, not only about your own islamic fate but the need to build bridges between face. this is incredible. the deputy national security advisor is thanking the president of a co-conspirator named at least as a co-conspirator, joint venture in the holy land foundation trial, has not merely introducing him at this proceeding but also being a confident who led the white house in prayer in their iftar proceeding in the white house. the president of a conspirator to fund terrorist activities is leading muslim prayers in the white house. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. gohmert: thank you, mr. speaker. i realize my time has expired,

and i just know we need to work hard so that this country's time will not expire. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? mr. gohmert: mr. speaker, at this time i move that the house do now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is adopted. according?

that counts. rather, it is the man that is actually in the air arena. his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory or defeat. i can think of no better description how paul ryan than that.

welcome, and we're grateful. [applause] >> thank you. i will put that plaque along side the quote i audrey have on my wall of that quote. [laughter] i have had that on my wall for years. i can always use another one. so thank you very much. i really appreciate it. so you like me to talk for a little bit and just answer questions -- does that sound like a good use of everybody's time? why don't we do that? all right, let's start off with where we are right now. we have a soft economy. typically in this country when we have the deep recession, we come out of it with a deep recovery. usually the deeper the drop, the bigger the balance. that is not the case today. why is that not the case today? why is our economy fledgling? why did we just have a gdp corridor with a one on the front of it?

i would argue it is because of our policy, our government's policy. there is a growing body of evidence that the government activism in our economy is what is holding the economy back. and so not only do we have differences of opinions with the president on his domestic policy with respect to health care and things like that, we have big differences of opinion with the president on economic policy, what it will take to get jobs created in this country. i would say there's basically four foundations for economic growth that are not only being ignored better being turned upside down. and these four foundations, and i am simplify, or whether the necessary basic building blocks, foundations, ingredients to get a free economy growing again. number one, and this is a bigger threat, is our debts, are spending that are spending is out of control in our spending has been growing at unsustainable rates. our spending is not to take off based upon the current law, and

there's no sign that this is getting under control. when you take a look at the fact that today's big deficit means nothing more than tomorrow's big tax increase or interest-rate increase and inflation problem, that index a lot of uncertainty into the economy. the threat of a debt crisis, the threat of a bond problem is holding back investment. number two, our regulatory state is just untethered to reality. so much more regulations, whether it is financial services regulations with thousands of pages of new regulatory agency that dictates that we do not even know what they're going to do, is also putting a chilling effect on investment, on capitol. the environmental protection agency did not get the law they wanted in the last two years, so they are going to try to do it through the regulatory body. these things are putting a chilling effect on investment. so we have regulatory agencies that are out there, really not

looking at cost-benefit analysis. going down the path of what i would call corporate welfare or crony capitalism, picking winners and losers in the marketplace, and making a bid to guess who is going to be the winner and who is going to be the loser. we need a regulatory system that is transparent and fair to everybody, that does not pick winners and losers. that is predictable and reasonable. we do not have that. third is taxes. yes, this is an area where we have enormous uncertainty. remember the word uncertainty. enormous government activism, enormous uncertainty. the president has given us a budget. he did give us a budget in february. the criticism that he did not do anything if he did give us a budget, but it did not tackle the problems we have. it did not tackle spending problems. it did not address unsustainable and thomas. but it did is about taxes. the president, on taxes, said he wants the top individual tax rates to go up to 44.8%.

then he said he wants to do more tax creases on top of that. what we're getting from the administration, the signals being sent to investors, to job creators, to families is you're going to pay more. i would simply say if you take a look at our tax issues, the idea that we can just tax a few other people that we do not know better disconnected from us and that will take care of all of our problems is just a false look. it is not an accurate idea. we can confiscate tax, all of the profits of all of the fortune 500. they had run our government for something like 40 days. so we have to look at the facts that even if the president's tax rates occur, even if the top two tax rates go up in his budget, the 10-year revenue we would get from that would help us get about 50% of this year's deficit down. the point is spending is on a tear. it is growing at such an assets

-- unsustainable path that if we try to tax our way out of this problem, we will shut down our economy. we have signals being sent to the marketplace that there will be tax increase after tax increase after tax increase. and here's the problem. this is not the 20th century anymore. america is not just the undisputed economic superpower of the world. we have to compete. we have to be competitive. i did 19 town hall meetings over the last few weeks. i was i night -- in a small town in western kenosha county and southern wisconsin. only myself and the other people from wisconsin and michael barone know where that is. i am sure you know where that is, michael. excuse me, john might know where it is as well. that is right. so this gentleman was talking to me. he has got a small business. he just paid his taxes and pay

35%. but his main competitors are in canada. what is canada doing? right now, his competitor pays about 16% on their taxes, and they are lowering their tax rates. they just vindicated this approach with their last election. we cannot compete when we tax our producers, our job-creators, a whole lot more than our foreign competitors tax theirs. so it is not just a large companies in this global competition. everybody is in global competition. we have to be mindful of the fact that when we tax ourselves a lot more than they do, they win, we lose. we cannot do that. what we're talking about is not necessarily cutting taxes. we're talking about reforming the tax system. we're talking about not frothing tax revenues. we're talking about reforming the code to raise the revenues we have intergovernment more efficiently to more effectively, more fairly, and with an eye toward economic growth. if we're going to get ourselves on the path of prosperity, it is because you get spending under

control and we grow this economy. we create prosperity. the way we do that is you do not pick up the phone and call somebody, some bureaucrat downtown, and as a regulate more jobs. we say, create prosperity by unleashing the entrepreneur were. by getting american businesses more competitive so that they can go out and create jobs. and when we tax capital more, we get less capital. when we tax capital more, we extinguishant the seed corn that creates jobs, the creed of entrepreneurship, that creates investment. we want more risk-taking, more production, more in achievement. when we penalize those with our tax policies, however we do it, whether it is through class warfare or some and not was revenue-raising exercise, we get less job creation. fundamental tax reform is critical. that is why in our budget, we say let's clean up the tax system and let's lower our tax rates across the board to make ourselves more internationally competitive to get jobs created. a lot of people tell me, that is

a tax cut for the rich. when you clean up the tax code, you look at the fact that the people in the highest income brackets, the largest corporations are the ones who enjoy a unique tax deductions. they're the ones who are itemized deductions. they can put a lot of income in tax shelters. for every dollar brought to the tax shelter, that is taxed at zero. if we clean up the tax code and lower everybody's tax rates, more of that income is subject to taxation. but it is subject to taxation that is more internationally competitive. so it is not washington sitting in the ways and means committee at the iris a treasury department picking who wins and loses. who gets extra benefits, who does not? it is the after burner is deciding that. it is the economy deciding that. we need to make our economy more competitive. our tax code is one of those ways. now we have a tax system designed to penalize all those qualities that make us gray. saving, investing, thrift, investment, those are the things that make us grow. i would simply say that preying

on people's emotions of fear, of envy, of anxiety, that might make for good politics. it is hardly inspirational. it is hardly hopeful. it makes for a really bad economics. so the fourth foundation, i think, that is essential to growing and stable economy is sound money. we want our money to maintain a reliable store of value. there's nothing more insidious that a government can do to its people than to base its currency. i just finished 19 town hall meetings that i carry this around on my wall because i had constituents coming up to me. one lady in burlington, one guy over in twin lakes. have received these things over the years. it is astounding to me. this is a five -- i ask this because we cannot accept yes in congress of materials. this lady tried to give me this currency now. i said, i cannot accept anything of value.

he says this is a 500 deutsche mark from the neon mark republic. assad has no value. so i accepted it. if you just keep printing money, whether it is a $50 billion a ball when of, and $100 billion of what we know, all given to me by constituents, or $100 trillion note from zimbabwe, we have to be mindful of this. we're the world's reserve currency. we should act like we are the keeper of the world's reserve currency, and we're not acting like we're the keeper of the world's reserve currency. what do i mean? yes, we had a huge shock, and of the federal reserve needed to get involved. the federal reserve needed to intervene to stop the panic. they needed to intervene with credit facilities to make sure things were, that the commercial paper market worked, to make sure money markets worked. those things happened. those things needed to happen. but i think we have gone down the path of excessively loose money, which i fear will end up

being a big problem. and that means we should have our one institution of government in charge of maintaining our money, focused on sound money, focusing on stable prices. maintaining the value of our currency. and not often all these other tangents. i think the federal reserve as a schizophrenic agenda, or a schizophrenic charter. on the one hand, they have this employment mandate. on the other hand, they have a price stability mandate. we should just focus on price stability alone. they should focus on a transparent rule that takes the guessing game out so that we know that the focus in the federal reserve is transparency. price stability, sound money. we cannot mess this up. the goal, being the keeper of the world's reserve currency, is a privilege. it is. it gives us tremendous advantages. let's make sure we can keep that. and let's make sure that as we conduct ourselves, our money,

that we do not play with people's retirement funds. the person that gets hurt the worst is the person that needs help the most. people who have retired early on fixed incomes, people hanging on the social safety net to live off their dollars, we do not want to wipe out their purchasing power. and i fear that the way the fed measures these things, using this output gap model, is that they will see inflation after it is already set itself in its done. then the over compensation, the correction, will be even more severe. then the credit crunch that is instigated on the banks, the money velocity, the interest rates, all of it will shut us down, and it will all be for naught because we're not focusing on price stability. the four foundations of economic growth target is bidding under control to get your barring under control so we can live within our means and stop spending money we do not have. have a regulatory state that is fair, transparent, that stops trying to pick winners and losers, that is a reasonable and

predictable. having a tax system that reece is the proper amount of revenue for the federal government as efficiently as possible so we can maximize economic growth and job creation and prosperity. and i have a monetary system that honors our place at the world's reserve currency, does not debase our dollar, does not try to create a new vigor than our neighbors standard by which we all lose at the end of the day but keats and manages our currency as a reliable store of value. so that we connect all the guessing out of the investment horizon, so that we can be sure and sound with our investment. there is a growing body of evidence at all this economic or government activism is hurting the economy. greenspan put out an interesting paper with a vigorous regression analysis. others have done the same. government activism is injecting so much uncertainty that we're getting a lot of what a lot of people, male investment. we do not grow the economy are clinically by reflating a new bubble. we grow the economy by helping

out for burners become entrepreneurs. and we have a society that has been characterized by equal opportunity, upward mobility, and prosperity. and those characteristics are here because we have been true to our country's principles, to our founding principles. they will be just as true tomorrow if we reapplying those principles to the problem of the times. so i am quite optimistic, because i really do believe, from having just done all of these town hall meetings and talking to constituents, i did a telephone town hall with kenosha county yesterday, people get this. the country knows we're in trouble. and they know our government is not being straight. they know that politicians from the republican party and the democratic party have been making legions and decades of unfunded promises to them. and so i believe things are changing for the better. and they're going to stop rewarding the politician who

keeps making the empty promise to the voter to get reelected and hopefully start rewarding the political leader tells people what is going on in this country, but it will take to get us back on track in fix our problems. >> i think we are getting to that point right now. there is nothing that can stop us from gorham this -- from growing this economy. from leading beef rolled in limited government and economic freedom. the role of government is not to equalize the results of our lives. an agenda that is hopeful, that

is inspirational, that helps people get back on their feet instead of being on a path to dependency is the american idea. that can be restored. i have every reason to believe we will do that. that is what we are trying to do in the house of representatives. thank you very much. i will be happy to take your questions. [applause] >> there was some confusion over night about where things stand with negotiations about reducing spending and where entitlements are in that equation. under your plan for medicare, things would not get out of control and we would not bear

too much of a burden. there are assumptions the president makes. when you compare your assumptions to his assumptions on how to hold down economist? >> we spoke late last night about all this. our starting point is that the house passed an actual budget. our budget, as certified by the congressional budget office, but our debt on the path to balance. we pay off the debt. economic growth is restored. we put out a plan to fix the problem. the only way you can fix the problem is to address entitlements reforms, particularly health care entitlement reforms. the president put out a budget that did not do this. he gave us a speech a few weeks ago that gave us an additional idea. it doubled the touching targets. i will get to that in a second. it does not come close to the

problem of getting the deficit paid off. our starting point is the house budget. no way that we are far apart between the president, the senate, and where we are, we are not under any delusion that we will get some kind of grand slam agreement. we do not like the health care law. he likes the health-care law. big difference of opinion. our goal and hope as we go through the summer -- the debt limit issue is something that will move through the house and the white house. we may not get the grand slam agreement, but we can get a single or a double. let's cut discretionary and mandatory spending. the skits some tough discipline caps to lock in spending and troll to get this debt under control. we are under no illusion that we will get everything we have always wanted in this one bill. let's get a down payment and

let's get this in the situation in the right direction. your second point is medicare. medicare is not the biggest government program today, but it is tomorrow. medicare is growing at an onerous rates. baby boomers are retiring. we are going from 4 million retirees to 77 million. that is a good thing that they are living longer. [laughter] health inflation is growing so much faster than our economy and regular inflation. under anybody's plan to address medicare -- the president has one plant with dress medicare, which is slow the rate of growth. it is going bankrupt and in solving in nine years. we say, do not change the benefits for current seniors or people 10 years away from retiring. in order to keep this promise that was made to people and who

have organized their lives around these promises, you have to fix it for the rest of us. we want another kind of medicare that works like the program we have, that would work like the prescription drug benefit that would look like medicare advantage. it is not like we are not used to having choices in medicare. we want a system where the power goes to seniors. they choose among competing providers for their benefits. toys and competition is our path toward getting price competition and lowering prices. the president disagrees with that. he wants to this -- he wants to deny seniors' choice. he has selected a different path. it is a past many countries have taken. it is to create a board of 15 people. this board is called the independent payment advisory board. it is part of the health care law. he gives them arbitrary targets in cutting spending in medicare.

the already have targets of more than $500 billion. he is going to tell his board of people, go cut medicare prices. cut medicare reimbursement. price control medicare. this leads to rationing. this board makes its decision and it does not go through congress. it just goes into law. if congress does not like it, they have to replace those cuts in medicare with and somewhere else in medicare. we have given this unelected board of bureaucrats the power to decide how much medicare spending will be lowered. this starts with the current senior population. it is my opinion that this would lead to more and more providers dropping medicare. this will lead to medicare reimbursement that is lower than medicaid. more and more doctors will not take medicaid.

with every person who walks into the door with that kind of insurance, they lose money. will help shore -- it will help fuel inflation. doctors have to overcharged everybody else with private insurance who are under 65. that fuels health inflation. not only do i think this is going to fail to reduce health inflation, i think it will exacerbated. it will lower the quality of medicare for current seniors. i do not think it is necessary to do that, to create some kind of price control board. the choice and competition has worked well. there are many areas where we can improve this. tom coburn and i have had this bill. that is the way to go. we believe, do not break the promise to come and seniors. cannot stick it to the next generation or have some board of bureaucrats make these decisions.

the point we are making here is that we are not at the debt crisis stage yet. we are not where europe is where the bond market has turned on us and we are raising taxes. shared sacrifice is what you do after the debt crisis has hit. it is nothing more than share scarcity in my opinion. we are trying to preempt that. by fixing these problems today, you can keep the promise to those who of already retired and organize their lives around these programs and prevent that kind of things from happening. we keep kicking the can down the road and we will not be able to do that. we will not have a debt consolidation program that is done in our own way. it will be the ugly, across the board destructive thing. government has got to be foreign trade -- reorient its policy so that seniors do not have to reorganize their lives. if we have a debt crisis because we do not do anything to fix

this, they are going to have to reorganize their lives. it will be swift and sudden and people will not have time to prepare. i promise i would not give as long an answer for every question. >> i am andy sullivan. you mentioned the idea of caps. you might not be able to agree on all the specifics on how to overhaul the tax code. if congress commits to certain deficit targets and we do not reach those targets in the coming years, automatic traders would kick in that would cut spending or raise tax revenue. would this loan be enough for republicans as far as the debt ceiling is concerned? >> i do not think so. we are working off of our budget. we cut $6.20 trillion from the president's budget over the next 10 years. we have lots of cuts to choose from. we think actual spending cuts up

front are important. we do three kinds of budget process reforms in our budget. we proposed statutory caps in a lot and discretionary spending. we propose a cap in overall spending as a share of gdp. then we have a debt cap. we kept the debt as a percentage of the economy. we reinforce that with triggers. the question is what we typically use in the past. we put out three types of spending caps in our budget. we see our budget as a menu of options from which to select from to try to advance this dialogue. caps a long, i do not think our conference would accept. >> i promise to go over here. >> you talk about budget caps.

there were tears that would trigger tax increases, which are part of the president's proposal. for republicans, are tax increases on the table or off the table? >> spending is our problem. even keeping the bush tax cut permanent, our revenue still goes back to where they have historically been. spending goes from 20% of our economy to 40% of our economy and goes up from there. if we say we are just going to keep raising tax rates, you are going to slow down the economy and you do not get more revenue when you slow down the timing. i am has to be paid for. economic growth is essential and critical to getting revenue growth. i do not want to get into the minutia of what kind of budget process reforms we are for or are not for.

i do not think it is constructive to negotiate through the media. no offense. i do not think tax increases trigger work. i think they offer a cop out for politicians to not cut spending because there is an automatic tax increase. that would violate the four foundations for growth, which is that tax rates are going to be low and stable. if you have this threat of higher escalating tax increases, if the caller -- if the politicians don't cut spending, what do you think the odds of a tax increase i? i do not think that is a constructive way forward. >> you talked about the dangers of uncertainty and you talked about wanting to do overall tax reform. this is a big job. i am curious. what kind of time frame to you expect something like that to take?

>> i think we should get as much done as we can in this session of congress. the president himself has come out against the basic contours of his own fiscal commission, which i served on. we put one dozen ideas from the fiscal commission in our budget. the fiscal commission was supported by the majority of democrats. they said the same thing i am saying. you can lower tax rates to get economic growth and international competitiveness. the president is not saying that. he is saying broaden the tax rates -- the tax base and raise taxes. we have democrats that agree with us on the general nature of tax reform, but the president does not. i have a hard time seeing a really good tax reform agreement. we are going to push forward on this nonetheless. he said something on corporate tax reform, but i am not sure what he means. he is extremely vague.

we are negotiating with ourselves right now. the president put out a budget that did not fix the problem. it gave us $1.50 trillion in tax increases. we put out a budget to literally pay off the debts. then he gave a speech that you cannot score speeches. cbo tried but they cannot do it. [laughter] there is no other plan on the table. he does not have a plan. the numbers he threw out -- he throws out in his speech are not close to what we propose. there are plans that have fiscal metrics that are close to what we have. but there is nothing that meets the moment from the white house or from the senate. maybe we will see something from the senate that will be done in a day now. we are out there along with a plan to fix the problem. it is tough to see where this is

going to go on these other issues. at the end of the day, hopefully, what we will do -- i use baseball analogies because we are in baseball season. which for the fall. this revolves around the world champions, the green bay packers. let's get spending cuts and spending control. at the end of the day, i think 2012 is going to make the decision. if we do our job right, which in the house we have, we will give the country a choice of two futures. the way we see it is, do we want to reignite the american idea? do we want to have a prosperous society with a sound that the net designed to get people back on their feet? or do we want to go down this path of that days decline and having more people dependent upon the government for their livelihoods, shared scarcity.

that is how i see the fourth in the road. that is the trajectory we are on right now. if we do our job right -- we all our fellow countrymen a choice. how we deal with the decorations go into it will completely determine what kind of country we are coming out of it for the 21st century. instead of having some back room deal by some six people from the senate, this is point to have to be a choice that is transparent, that every citizen in this country gets to choose. ultimately, that was will be made in 2012. >> chairman ryan, i wanted to ask you a specific question. do you see the debt limit being raised? if so, when and under what process? >> i do not think the votes are

there. i would not voted for a naked debt limit increase. i think that will hurt the credit markets. if we rubber stamp a debt limit increase, that shows there is no well in washington to do anything about because of the debt limit being hit in the first place. secretary geithner's numbers are probably accurate. we know about cash management. let's assume it is a second -- august 2. i think that is probably pretty accurate. these numbers move a little bit every day. our point is, we need something serious to address the debt in the future. the reason the debt limit is being hit is because of spending in the past. we do not want to rubber-stamp the debt limit. we want to have fiscal control in the future. that is what will wind up

happening. that gentleman. i tried to get to you earlier. >> mr. chairman, do you have any information on the progress the gang of six is making? >> i do not and i should not speculate. i talked to kent conrad. i think they have slowed down a little bit. i do not know. >> i am from the weekly standard. i want to ask about public support for the medicare part of the bomb -- of the budget. there have been a bunch of old and they represented -- pulls and they represented the issue differently. yesterday there was a poll that pretty fairly represented the medicare part. it said the what to keep the status quo or do you want to make the changes you talked about for seniors joining in

2020 to? it is a pretty fair representation of your plan. 60% say they want to keep the status quo. what i want to know is, is there a need for a national campaign to talk about this? >> it underscores it. the status quo is gone. the president changed the status quo already with his health care law. he took money out of medicare to spend on this other entitlement. we do not do that. we make sure it goes back into medicare solvency. a lot of people seem to think the status quo can keep going. cannot. medicare, medicaid, and social security consume all federal revenues by the time my kids are my age. if you add interest on that, by 2025, they consume revenue.

these entitlement programs are going bankrupt. the fiscal gap, which is the gao calculation, today it is $99.40 trillion. what is the fiscal gap. ? this is the amount of unfunded promises the government is making to americans, promises to seniors and their children that the government has no means to pay. what this tells us is that we have to -- tells us that the sooner we act, the better off we are. every year we delay, we go that much deeper into the hole. there is a sense of urgency here. we call up bond traders and have them come into the committee and ask them, how much time do we have?

they all say the same answer, 2- 5 years. the answer i get from every one of these people -- there is a sense of urgency. it is not extremely immediate, but it is in the near future. people have to understand. i have done over 500 town hall meetings in southern wisconsin on this topic. i've done 19 in southern wisconsin. i think i did a pretty good job there. we need to be doing more across the country. we deploy 243 house republicans who went out to do these town hall meetings. i have talked to dozens of members. they are exciting it -- excited about the town hall meetings. they deliver this message to their constituents and they came back energized like i did. the people are ahead of the

political class. i believe that people, when they see the circumstances and understand the numbers, they are ready to embrace the kinds of reforms we are talking about. the alternative is quite ugly. jerry? >> vice president biden is convening today a small group to talk about this. >> i am familiar with the biting commission. -- joe biden commission. >> how would you describe your dialogue with the administration right now? >> will take easier question first. the president, as a condition of the debt ceiling in the last session, created the fiscal commission. the fiscal commission produced the support -- a report

supported by the majority of democrats. he put out a budget that did not do anything to fix the problem. then he gave us a speech to say have a new commission, the joe biden commission, to figure this out. this cannot keep delegating decisions to other people. a leader has got to fix the problem. if we keep delegating this to others, that king -- to others, nothing is going to get done. what are our hopes to the bite and commission? we hope discussions occur with -- what are our hopes regarding the biden commission? our hopes is that a discussion will occur regarding the debt limit. i do not know if we are going down that path. i do not know if the senate can or will pass a budget resolution. the biden commission is the place where the talks revolve around the debt limit occur.

the person i talked to most is secretary geithner. he is the one i talked to more often than anyone else. i like jack. we have mutual respect for one another. i pretty much talk to the fiscal people. that is it. tim is the one i talked to the most. yes? >> it was from the financial times. could you remind us why house republicans also supported the bowles-simpson commission proposals and why that is not a possible compromise or a problem -- or a possible solution. >> we did not fail to support it. we did not bring it up for ray vote. i was on the bowles-simpson committee.

it did not address the problem. the problem was health care. i worry that we are giving the country a false sense of security if we put out a fiscal plan that addresses everything but the primary issue, which is the primary driver of our debt. you cannot structurally address the debt crisis if you do not just health care entitlements. not only did it ignore medicare and medicaid, but that commission accelerate to obamacare. that commission did more harm than good. it will accelerate the implementation of obamacare. we believe more employers will dump their people into this health care exchange and have subsidies go of far more than we

are estimating today. if you take the tax exclusion, that will exacerbate that effect. bowles-simpson will make that worse. it will accelerate obamacare, increase exchange subsidies driving up the deficit. i got a letter from the cbo say that they believe the president also health care law will exacerbate the deficit and the debt under more realistic assumptions that they believe are more likely to occur. they did not do anything to address medicare or medicaid. the health care law added 1/3 to the eligibility. it did not do anything fundamentally to fix medicare. price controls do not work. the 1997 agreement was good bipartisan agreement.

and they pulled back those savings and restored those savings except for the sdr. and we passed that every single year. those are just holes in the sand. ist the president's log does due more price controls -- resident's law does is introduce more price controls. >> does that mean that in your view no compromise is going to work that does not this mental health care reform? >> this is why i think 2012 is going to be the ultimate decider of these things. that is what this debt limit debate is about. there are a lot of things we can do to save money and put

controls on debt and spending that commits us to getting spending down. i do not think you can fundamentally fix this problem unless you fundamentally fix health care. that is where we have a goal that separates us. that will determine the -- the outcome will be determined in 2012 in my opinion. this is your watch? >> this is my watch. i am high-tech. your proposal lowers the rate, but it does not pay for it by increases on savings. that is unique about the riot program. i want to commend you on the house republican program. we commend you for that. secondly, i will continue to give you the man in the arena.

>> join us in thanking paul ryan. >> thank you very much. [inaudible] [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> paul ryan says there is a need to enact spending cuts. he says we will have to wait until the 2012 elections. there was an initial meeting to cut the budget and reduce the deficit today. vice president joe biden is leading the negotiations for the administration. he says there was progress.

>> how are you? good morning. good to see you. i am down here? we are going on a press tour today. how are you? >> let us know when you are ready. >> can you come for a little more? >> i will make a brief statement at the top here. i am please and painful that these people showed up to begin the hard business of trying to deal with what is at hand. we know we have two looming

concerns. one is the debt limit. they are not technically connected. we have to make sure -- the much larger issue is the long-term debt. we have to make progress. we are in agreement that we have to deal with both issues. this is the opening meeting. today, we had a chance to talk with the colleagues. we want to make sure each of us understand where the other guy is coming from and why the plan we put forward makes sense. then we will get to work. i am optimistic. then again, i am in congress for 36 years. i am always optimistic. thank you all for coming in. we will be talking to you later.

it was a good meeting. we are going to meet again on tuesday. everyone has agreed. there is a joint press release been put out acknowledging we made progress. we are meeting again tuesday. we are getting the process under way. -- underway./ >> we are going to see several events from president obama's day in new york. the visit there after the killing of osama bin laden on sunday. we will start with a meeting the president had with firefighters. [applause]

>> i like that. >> we have hot dogs every day. good to see you.

>> the main reason i came here is because i heard the food was pretty good.

mayor guiliani performed a heroic act almost 10 years ago. i wanted to come up here to thank you. this is a symbolic site of an extraordinary sacrifice that was made on that terrible day almost 10 years ago. i obviously, we cannot bring back the friends we lost. i know that each and everyone of you not only grieve for them, but have also dealt with their families, their children and tried to give them comfort, tried to give them support. what happened on sunday is because of the courage of our military and the outstanding work of our soldiers. it sends a message around the world that when we say we will

never forget, we mean what we say. our commitment to making sure justice is done is something that transcended politics. it did not matter which administration was in office and who was in charge. we were going to make sure the perpetrators of that horrible act would see justice. it is some comfort that all of you know that when those guys took those extraordinary risks, they were doing it in the name of your brothers who were lost. finally, let me just say that

although 9/11 was a high water mark of courage for the new york fire department, and a symbol of the sacrifice, you guys make a sacrifice every single day. it doesn't get as much notoriety our attention, but every time you run into a burning building, every time you are saving lives, you are making a difference. that is part of what makes this city great and makes this country great. i want to thank you from the bottom of my heart on behalf of the american people or the sacrifices you make every single day. i want to let you know that you are always going to have a president and administration that has your back. god bless and god bless the

united states of america. with that, i am going to try some of that chili. [applause]

[inaudible] >> which way are we going?

>> president obama also marked osama bin laden's debt where there was the greatest damage on 9/11, -- death where there was the greatest damage on 9/11, ground zero.

>> the kid gave him a photo.

[applause]

there was an observance in washington. vice president joe biden placed a wreath at the pentagon.

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