Transcripts For CSPAN Tonight From Washington 20100527

south florida share a common value that a lifetime of hard work should be honored with a secure retirement. i stand with them when i say that social security must remain a reliable program, not just for this generation of seniors but for generations to come, to the opponents of this program, we will fight for the due benefits of our seniors who have spent a lifetime of earnings. we will not yield. we will not back down. and for this generation of seniors and the next and the next after that, we will not let social security be privatized. and while the social program keeps millions out of poverty, how we care for our retirees has not ended. the current cost of living formula that ties cola, tracks flation across the economy. our nation's economic downturn has prevented seniors from receiving an adequate cost-of-living adjustment and that's not right. the consumer price index for wage earners tells us that good and services were less expensive than the third quarter in 2008. but the seniors in my district and across america know that their prices continue to go up. our social secuty cost of living calculator is insufficient and doesn't reflect the true cost of living for seniors. the merment for determining seniors' cost of living should be indexed to seniors' cost of living. i have trouble explaining that even though their part b premiums went up and co-pays went up, they don't get a cost of living increase because the price of cell phones and sporting equipment went down. in the worst economic downturn, seniors are watching their home values drop and on top of all that, the agenda that the republicans have put forward threatento privatize this sacred trust. and while the congress has inherited this, the men and women serving on the task force looking at the challenges facing our country fiscally have the task of reducing our deficit and getting our national debt under control. i would remind the distinguished members of the commission that before the great recession, social security has run a surplus every year since the 1980's and today, has $2.5 trillion in reserves. mr. speaker, on behalf of american seniors, i would say on behalf of the commission, they should not undercut a program that contributes nothing to our national deficit. just a month ago, the good people of florida's 19th district sent me to congress to fight for our seniors, our community and our values and i'm happy to tell them with my democratic colleagues today, the congress is making these values a top priority and i'm pleased to reassure the seniors in palm beach and braurd counties i will be a tireless defender of social security and medicare and protect the health and financial security of america's seniors. i'm thrilled to stand here with my colleagues and i yield back. ms. speier: i thank the gentleman from for his passionate commitment. i would like to address this issue of mortgages. so many americans have seen their homes being foreclosed over the last two to three years and the numbers are staggering, seff million, eight million, nine million homes. there is a misconception that these are younger families. but the truth is many of these people are senior citizens. and one of the protections in the wall street reform is we are going to deal with banning predatory mortgage lending. and i want to just share with you one example. this is ba in 2000 at the age of 57, willie howard, who at long last became a homeowner and had a tiny house in washington, d.c. of 963 square feet. now willie never learned how to read. so he proved to be an easy touch for refinancing offers as the housing bubble inflated. by may of 2005, his $108,000 loan had ballooned to $137,000 because he had been courted by mortgage brokers who wanted to suggest that he could save more money. by october of 2006, after four more refinancings, mr. howard's loan balance had ballooned to $2 35,000. half of thincreased debt came from $51,000 in points, fees, pre-payment penalties and negative amortization. so it was about the scam artist, a mortgage broker, who wanted to get him in and out of loans and was able to make more money as a mortgage broker and poor mr. howard, who could not read went from having a 08,000 oan to a $238,000 loan. mr. howard said, the problem with the system is that the broker had no obligation to act on behalf of mr. howard's best interest. what does wall street reform do to help mr. howard and seniors across this country? two things. it requires that they show a net tangible benefit to the client consumer and that that client consumer has the ability to pay. now, those two tests couldn't possibly have been met by mr. howard for that mortgage broker. as a result of wall street reform, seniors and americans across this country are going to have recourse. and in this case, mr. hard would be in a position to have that contract rescinded, have his costs, his consumer costs, be they attorneys' fees or anything else paid for and the opportunity to have that particular loan reworked in 90 days or less. that's the kinof benefit that accrues to seniors in the new reform. the final ar that i thought would be worth spending a little time on is the other rights that benefit seniors and that's the right to know that wall street bankers will not gamble away their retirement savings. both mr. deutch and ms. kilroy had spoken about the 401-k's turning into 201-k's, it's tragic and happened to senior americans across the country. i'm going to talk to you abt a senior citizen in my district. this is a real story of a senior citizen who spent his entire life as a doctor providing health care to those who did not have resources. he provided health care in a county hospital setting. and he made, you know, a good salary doing that. so he retired, had a comfortable home. had $1 million in retirement, in his 401-k. he was using a financial adviser, one of the slick financial advise we have heard about, much like the employees at goldman sachsho would sell a risky investment but on the other hand would short it for their rsonal gain. this particular constituent had the situation where his financial adviser was not looking out for his best interest. so over the course of the financial meltdown, this constituent lost three-quarters of his 401-k. now that's just outrageous on so many scores, but particularly so when you're dealing with the 401-k's to senior citizens who don't have the luxury of trying to find other ways to make up that money and don't have the ability to go back to work. and our financial service reform is going to make sure that that particular activity of wall street gambling away retirement savings can no longer happen because we do have these standards put in place. i now believe that we have committed our time on this issue. and i will be happy to yield back, mr. speaker, for the next special order that may be appropriate to take up at this time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman yields back her time. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker's announcedolicy of january 6, 2009, the gentleman from missouri, mr. akin, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader. mr. akin: thank you, mr. speaker. we'll get our charts adjusted here and get started for the evening. it's a pleasure to be joining you this evening and talk once again about the subjects that are on the list of attention for many americans, the kind of questions people are paying attention to, things that make people concerned and overall questions regarding jobs and our economy. and if you step back a considerable distance and get way outside of washington, d.c., one of the things you can see if you look over a long period of time is that there is a big debate as to what the federal government should be doing. in fact, that is the main political debate. and should the government be doing a whole lot of things or be doing a smaller limited number of things. we have just heard over the previous 40 or 50 minutes from the democrat party and they were very excited about all the things the government was doing. the government was involved in all of these handouts to different people. and the different ways of trying to show compassion. and so they were very interested in seeing that the federal government was involved in a whole lot of different things. there is a different perspective on that and that is the federal government should be involved in a smaller number of things and that, in fact, the government should be limited, federal government should be limited and leave a lot of things to the state governments and that local governments also should be taking responsibility. the federal government should not be the big mother giving everybody erythg they want. so this debate goes back and forth as to what should the federal government be doing. if we take a look, there are things we could learn from history. we do recall there was a very famous well known nation that you have heard of, read off many times and they had the philosophy that it was the job of t government to provide these basic necessities to their citizens. they believed the government should provide food and a place for people to live. they believed that the government should provide education and that the government should provide health care to the citizens. after all, if you don't have health care, you'll get sick. and they also believed that the government should provide jobs for their citizens. and so that nation operated under that principle that the federal government should be providing food and cleething and a place to live, education, health care and a job. and yet, we watched that nation. it was a big threat to america. and over a period of time, it totly collapsed, the wheels fell off of it and the nation doesn't exist anymore. used to be called the union of socialist soviet republic. we looked at their nation and said thr economy is a mess and they don't know what they're doing. the federal government can't afford to be giving all things to all people and it is much better for the private sector to run the economy and federal government be limited and focus on the things that it can do well. so those -- this is sort of the source of the large debate today. and what is it that the federal government should be doing. and of course the problem with the federal government doing too much is pretty soo you run out of money. and that is what we are starting to see all over europe and the governments of europe and in our own government particularly in the last year and a half. . now we have heard comments from the democratic party saying that the financial and economic crisis that we have experienced was the result of wall street. it was all wall street's fault. unfortunately their memories are selective. the fault lies more than anywhere else here in congress. this was a government mistake. republican and democrat economists saw this thing coming, they saw it a long distance away and politically we did not have the will to deal with it and solve the problem. how did this all happen? well, we came up with a nifty idea a good number of years ago that it would be a nice thing if people who were very bad investment risk had the opportunity to buy their own home. and so what we demanded was that banks had to make loans to people who were of poor credit risk. well, so, we said, well, you got to make a certain percentage of your loans like that. so the banks are going, boy, this doesn't seem like a very good idea. you're demanding that we make loans to people who probably can't pay back their loan. now, i don't know how you could try to say that that's a compassionate thing to do. i don't think a family that has a loan that's too big for them to pay and that constantly is missing their mortgage deadlines and eventually gets evicted from their house, somehow that doesn't impress me as a picture of compassion. but that was the desirable thing. and so we put that into the different regulations and the government mandates and we created freddie and fannie, two quasi-public with you really private firms, which -- -- but really private firms, which gave loans to people and many people had their loans put into fannie mae and freddie mac. what happened the last year of the clinton administration, they kicked up the percentage of loans that had to be made to people who were bad credit risks. so we're starting to create a bit of a problem because what happens when all the bad credit risks don't work? who's going to pay? well, the implied payer was, you guessed it, the poor old taxpayer. so, we see fannie mae and freddie mac moving along and through a series of other circumstances, particularly greenspan keeping the interest rates low, the liquidity high, we see this big bubble in real estate, bubbling right on up from when i first came to congress, 2001, the housing prices almost doubled in abt five years. you thought, boy, was i silly not to have bought a house because i bought a house, it would have doubled in price. then the bubble pops. when that happens now, all of this mischief that was created by fannie mae and freddie mac making bad loans starts to come due. and was this something tt people understood? yeah. there were people smart enough to see it coming. in fact, president bush saw freddie and fannie, saw that they were in serious financial trouble, saw it was going to be a tremendous hit on our economy and asked the u.s. congress for authority in the very smallest ways to regulate freddie an fannie. and that you can find documented in that great conservative oracle, "the new york times." take a look at september 11, 2003. this is five years, at least, before the big collapse of the economy. and he is requesting permission from congress to regulate freddie and fannie, to take care of this oblem that the liberal democrat it's created -- democrats created. that is making loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them. they were assisted in this mischief, also, by different rating firms like standard and poors who rated these different instruments that were created with these loans as a.a.a. rated which of course is a scam. they wren't. and the idea that wall street had was, if we take one bad loan and we put it together with 1,000 otr bad loans, we have enough diversity that all these bad loans will not be bad loans, which was of course a bad assumption. well, anyway, you know the story. the republicans passed the bill to get more control of freddie and fannie. it went to the senate. the republicans, while they were in the majority, -- majority, never had 60 votes, and the bill died over in the senate because the democrats refused to support it. in the meantime, the gentlem who is now in charge of fixing some of these economic problems, was saying there's nothing wrong with freddie and fannie and freddie and fannie had a great lobbying team, ran around the hill here in congress, giving away reds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in pack contributions. let's go back that it was loans made to people who couldn't afford to make those loans, it was loans that were put into freddie and fannie and ended up, the tab now being picked up by, you've got it, your grandchildren and your children. so, that's where we are. now, the big question is, if we're going to give all this money away to different people the way that we've been doing for t lt year and a half, how are we going to pay for it? somebody once said, the trouble with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money. well, so, what have we been doing? the last year and a half we've been doing some spending. but one of the things that anody who runs a business knows is, you got to have some kind of a budget. you have to have a plan as to where you're going so that you can somehow balance how much money you're spending with what's coming in. you have to have some sort of a sense of where you're going. you don't want to just float from month to month not knowing whatou're doing. and so if you're going to have any kind of decent management in a business, you need to have a budget. now, some families run without a budget but to some degree what they do is they just take the money that's coming in, put it in the bank and then they can take the money out until they run out and they know they have to stop spending until the next month. but there has to be some kind of a plan of how you're going to proceed economically for any kind of good management. i don't think there's hardly anybody whoas stocks and bonds or whatever traded on wall street that doesn't have a budget. and of course theongress needs to have a budget, too. in fact, the democrat whip steny hoyer made this statement, he said, that enacting the buth was the most basic responsibility -- budget was the most basic responsibility of governing. the most basic responsibility according to steny hoyer was that we have a plan. now, i agree with steny. i do think having a budget is very, very important. you got to have that. he was joined by congressman sprt who is the houseudget committee chairman. so he was even more specific. if you can't budget, you can't govern, he said that in 2006. so we -- the democrats, like the republicans, are recognizi that you got to have a budget, you got to have some kind of a plan the. if you don't you're going to start really -- plan. if you don't you're going to really start getting off the track economically. so we then find this rather surprising article in "the hill" newspaper just april, april 14, 2010. skipping a budget resolution this year would be unprecedented. wait a minute. skipping a budget resolution this year would be unprecedented. in other words, we don't have a budget, you got it right. we don't have a budget this year. we don't have a budget. any other business has to have a budget. do we have a budget? no. skipping a budget resolutions would unprecedented. the house has never failed to pass an annual budget resolution since the current budget rules were put into place in 1974. we have never not had a budget resolution since 1974. so we're setting a record this year. we've got no budget. no budget, first time that's happened since 1974. according to a congressional research service report. that's the research branch that works for everybody in congress. so we have just marched off the edge of the economic world. we decided rules don't apply to us. we have good intentions. we're going to have the federal government be all things to all people. let's spend some money. let's take caref everybody we want to dake care of. and about this deal about having a budget, let's not have a budget because somebody could really beat you off if you had a budget. i'm joined by a good friend of mine, congresswoman lummis. i don't know if you'd like to take a minute or two to make a comment. i'd be delighted to have you join us. mrs. lummis: i thank the representative from missouri and look forward to the opportunity join you this evening. i'm a member of the budget committee. and last year we had a lengthy budget debate in the committee. it was very robust, to discuss possible amendments to the budget and even though the majority of the republican amendments to the budget were not passed, we did pass a budget. it was over the no vote for the republicans. however, it fulfilled the duty of this body to pass a budget. at $3.6 trillion, it was the largest budget in the history of the united states. president obama this year proposed a $3.8 trillion budget. at a time of recession, he proposed a budget that was $200 billion larger than the budget the year before. and the budget the year before included some astronomical increases such as a 39% increase in the budget for the environmental protection agency. well, as you can see from a full day of hearings that were held today in the house natural resources committee, that additional $-- 39% increase in one agency's budget in one year is now applied in the gulf of mexico to the oil spill has not yielded the kind of efficiency that we expect from government. the united states is in charge of this cleanup. the president of the united states is in charge of this cleanup. and on occasion, he has dispatched members of his cabinet, members of the cofe coast guard, members -- coast guard, members of other agencies to involve themselves in the cleanup, but the fact that they increased their budget 39% in one year has not contributed to the coordination efforts of federal agencies in cleaning up the gulf. mr. akin: i'd like to reclaim my time for just a minute. i really wanted to inquire of you about some of these numbers you just said. because i'm not on the budget committee and i was kind of shocked in a way. we haven't not had a budget since back in the 1970's and that was just since we put this current budgeting process and we've always had a budget and yet this year we don't have a budget and we're spending money at a tremendous pace. it is the rapid rate of spending, is that part of the reason we don't have a budget? because we're just so embarrassed we're spending so much? is if because by putting a budget -- is it because by putting a budget down it acknowledging the complete fiscal irresponsibility that we've started down that path? do you think that's what it is? or why don't we have a budget? mrs. lummis: i thank the gentleman for the question. his question is very relevant because republicans are asking the same question. our chairman of the budget committee, john spratt, is an honorable man. and we have pursued with him frequent efforts to encourage him to convene the budget committee for purposes of passing a budget. normally the budget committee passes a budget by april 15. that's part of the traditional process of this house. and that budget sets the ceilings or the parameters by which the appropriations committee will act during its efforts to vet the line items within the budget. meaning really going through the budget carefully, deciding what to spend money on, what the priorities of congress are this year. so it is unprecedented, as mr. akin pointed out, for this congress not to consider a budget. and here we are at the end of may, fully 45 days into the period of time during which we normally have a budget for the appropriations committee to work with, and mr. akin, we do not have a -- and, mr. akin, we do not have a budget. and it is becoming more and more apparent every day that the budget committee will not be convened. i am certain that john spratt, who is the chairman of the budget committee, finds this painful. t i am also of the impression that the leadership within his party have encouraged him not to convene the budget committee out of concern that passing a $3.8 trillion budget, the budget asked -- as proposed by the president, would set a tone for this election year that democrats don't want to face up to, they don't seem to want to face up, for the fact that we are at over $12.9 trillion in debt. . mr. akin: of all of the different complaints i heard of president bush, the one i heard the most of was that he was spending too much money. i think the people didn't like the fact we were at war in iraq very much, but particularly they were worried he was spending too much money. so, i guess his last year in was 2008. and that was when the pelosi congress was here. and that was his worst amount of deficit spending that he did, which was out $470 billion deficit that year in his spending. now, that wasn't good. that was about 3.1% of gross domestic product and that was his worst spending and he was spending too much and some of us said yeah, he was and we didn't vote for some of his spending. he was followed by president obama, the next year, which was 2009. and the amount of deficit there was $1.6 trillion. that is three times more than bush's worst year. and boy, were we doing some spending. and went from 3.1% of g.d.p. all the way up to 9.9% g.d.p. so we just rocked. i'll tell you, president obama made president bush look like scruge. mrs. lummis: recall, president obama since he took office will double the deficit -- excuse me, double the debt in five years, triple it in 10 years. this is absolutely unsustainable. when the budget committee met with mr. orszag who is the director of management and budget,e asked him if this budget was sustainable, in other words, if there are adequate revenues being collected to pay for the budget that we have passed. and mr.ors zag acknowledged that there is not. we cannot do that. and yet we do it year after year after year. mr. akin: the thing that has, i think, other americans and myself included, concerned about is you keep going out into this unchartered territory where we're spending more and more and more money that we don't have and america is banking on our good credit. and we have nations like china, who buy our treasury bills because the chinese are very good at saving money and they are taking their savings and buying our treasury bills. and you wonder how long can we keep spending money on all kinds of pension and welfare programs and feel-good programs and reward people for not working programs and food stamp programs and all kinds of other things that may be nice, how long can we continue to borrow other people's money to do that before it comes time to pay the if i haddler and when we do, what is it going to look like? this is a chart of some of these absolutely amazing items of spending. this is the wall street bailout at $700 billion. you have the economic stimulus bill, which wasn't a stimulus bill at all, which was paying various states that exceeded their budgets so they could keep generous pensions which they can't afford to sustain. and you have the appropriations, obama appropriations and the i.m.f. bailout and health care, they are claiming that a trillion. and that is lucky. and you put all of this spending all together, they don't want a budget because they don't want people to see we are pushing the edges on things. i have a chart here that i think is a little bit spooky. i don't know if you can see it from where you're standing, but this is debt and deficit as a percent of gross domestic product. and what i've got here, this is deficit as a percent of gross domestic product. and the deficit we have in the united states as a percentage of g.d.p. is 10.3%. and you look at greece here and their deficit is 9.4%. now greece is about to crash the european union because of their crazy financial situation, socialized medicine, they can't make it work. deficit as a percentage of g.d.p. is 9.4 and we are at 10.3%. and we arworst off than greece. debt as a percentage of g.d.p., our debt is 90.9% of g.d.p. greece is worst at 130%. but greece and italy are worst off than america. these numbers don't give us cause to be very comfortable with our economic situation. and i'm wondering if that's not the reason democrats don't want to put a budget in front of people because somebody will get wise that we are blowing the lid off of any kind of any kind of economic sanity. mrs. lummis: wasn't it three weeks ago that the united states had a sale of u.s. treasuries that was undersubscribed, which means, there were not purchasers of our debt for that particular bond issue of u.s. treasuries that day, which is to say that in order to attract buyers of our debt, we are gog to have to pay a higher interest rate to the people who are willing to lend us the money, which is to say that our interest rate payments is going to go up, which means a larger portion of the annual federal budget will have to go towards paying the interest on our national debt, which is to say that it is a potential trigger for inflation. inflation is a job killer. we have asked the japanese, who had a period of time in the 1990's, called the forgotten decade, how we can avoid in the united states having a forgotten decade and they have told us, don't raise taxes during a recession. so we are in a problem. if we raise taxes, we will increase th length of the re session -- recession potentially. if we don't raise taxes, the deficit will grow, leaving us with one good choice. the good choice is to cut spending. how does this congress cut spending? this congress has never cut spending. im delighted to be a member of congresses at a time of economic turmoil because i come from the state of wyoming. wyoming is a state where we have had boom and bust cycles because of our dependence on the economies of oil, gas and coal. as commodities go, the state of wyoming goes. when i was in the wyoming legislature, i experienced both a boom and a bust cycle. and we had to reduce spending. recently, the wyoming legislature reduced spending to the tune of over 10%. and in wyoming, it is customary to just to these types of belt tightening and expenditures during times of largesse. when we have money, we have invested in the university of wyoming, invested in the bricks and mortar of our k-12 system, invested if our technology, in our economy. and yet, when we have to tighten our belts, we do it across the board. you know, it's not the best way to budget. we acknowledge it's not the best way to budget, but i do believe if we could cut domestic spending across the board, we would have an opportunity to reduce toes expenditures. but i would also acknowledge that without addressing the entitlement situation, we can never get a handle on our budget concerns. and i commend to the attention of everyone within earshot, a plan that was developed by paul ryan, the ranking republican member of the budget committee and can be reviewed at www.americanroadmap.org. it provides the glide path towards our economic recovery without raising taxes. it takes a long time. it's not without pain. there is as paul likes to say, sharp nives in the drawer. it does it in a responsible fashion without raising taxes and addresses long-term the consequences of overspending and of our potential of becoming a european style, social democracy and a culture of dependency, and i yield back. mr. akin: i appreciate the expertise thaw bring from wyoming and the idea of cutting spending here. that's got to be the closest thing to a swear word, the idea of cutting spending. and i heard less than an hour ago the democrats raving about social security and medicare and medicaid, all of which the democrat economists, republican economists agree that they are on a train wreck path. this is like a machine. you create the law. the law gives out money to people and just runs. and if you don't touch it it keeps giving out money and it gives out more money than we have. you aren't going to have anything to spend money on, such as defense, because medicare, medicaid, social security will eat the entire budget up. what you're saying is correct. we need some of that common sense that says wait a minute, we just can't keep running more and more and more govnment giveaways. and gets back to the question, do we want to follow the model of the soviet union into economic collapse? we know it didn't work. it's not working well for europe. and we know what the models are that make for a prospers, healthy and good economy. and if what you're saying, one of the mainhings you have to do is cut taxes. the interesting thing is j.f.k. figured that out. he cut taxes because we were in a recession. he cut taxes and found out that the recession stopped and the economy got stronger and actually collected more tax revenues with a lower tax rate. it's like making water run up hill, but it's not, but you have more economic activity and more taxes that are generated because there are more transactions and therefore the government actually raises more money by cutting taxes. j.f.k. figured it out and ronald reagan and george bush did the same thing. he did some serious tax cuts and removed us from recession to recovery because he understood this basic principle. there are certain things that are job killers. and one of the worst ones is excessive taxation. why is that true? because the people who make jobs are businesses. and the business people have to have some of their own money to plow back into a new business, put a new wing on a building, start a new process and to get a new plant going somewhere. so they have to have the money. and if you tax it all away from them, then they're not going to have money and not make jobs. f.d.r. found that out. they kept driving and driving and driving the taxation of business owners instead of creating business owners that were hiding and honkered down. they basically closed them down. the businesses closed and t employees were laid off. mrs. lummis: would the gentleman yield? one of the greaironies of being a freshman in congress you see people quote. we republicans frequently quote j.f.k. j.f.k. never disavowed american exceptionalism. he harnessed american exceptionalism and it is fascinating that we find ourselves frequently returning to his speeches as republicans to review the importance of american exceptionalism in stimulating the economy and growing our economy and acknowledging what ronald reagan acknowledged that we are a shining city on a hill and we are to be emulated but only to be emulated when we deserve to be emulated and it is at this time in our country's history when we need to review those great leaders and our great constitution and the declaration of independence and our founding principles in a manner which provis the road map to our future, and indeed it does when we return to our constitution and declaration of independence. we are reminded that we we endo youed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, not by our government, but by our creator, but we chose and consented to be goffered governed and we chose and consented to be governed pursuant to a constitution that provided limited obligation to the federal government and reserved the remainder of the rights to the states and to the people. if we in congress would -- with that bill, pursuant to that model, we would return that shining city on the hill and we could turn over to our children and grandchildren the nation that we inherited from our parents. you know, it is stunning, and mr. akin has seen these numbers, that people in america today, when you ask them, do you have a higher standard of living than your parents? acknowledge that we do. and then you ask those same baby boomers, do you believe your children will enjoy a higher standard of living than we do? they say no. they're concerned. they see a path, a pattern, a culture of dependency forming. but i'm convinced that this year being another election year and another opportunity for government of the people to rise up, to take control and to consent to be governed in the way they wish to be governed, that we'll see an opportunity next year to return to government of the people and to our founding principles. . it all all -- it will all be for astronaut unless those governing next year take seriously the messages of the people of this country of the and i can assure -- assure you, based on what i have heard as a freshman member of congress, that our country will indeed take seriously the messages of the people in this country and that we will restore for the american people our first principles and that we're going to be able to be a strong, vibrant country and proud to hand the reigns to our children and grandchildren. mr. akin: i the appreciate the history lesson and the shot of inspiration -- i appreciate the history lesson and shot of inspiration you shared with us. there are a lot of people that can be quoted. i'm thinking of good old frenchman that traveled around america, took a look at our system and said he looked for the secret of america's greatness and he had a great quote along those lines. one of the things he said was, you have a weakness in america and that is, if the public realizes that they can vote themselves out of the public treasury, you're going to be in trouble. there's another name for that. it's called socialism. the idea that voters can demand the federal government keep giving them more and more stuff and the problem with that system is that eventually you run out of other people's money and that was the -- one of the great weaknesses that he saw with our system. that because we are a self-governing people, because people have the right to vote, they can also make irresponsible voteand they can perpetuate a socialistic system. and a lot of americans don't really know what socialism means anymore. they don't understand that the concept of american law was that people are all equal before the law. the lady justice is not supposed to give a special deal to a rich person or a poor person or anybody else, that people are all equal before the law. the pilgrims experimented with socialism. it was demanded of them by the agreement that they made with the loan sharks of london that financed the expedition to send the pilgrims to america. so it was forced on them and they agreed to it, to have everybody take all of their corn that they grew and everything they produced over to the new colony in plymouth and divided it equally and send the shares back to london. that lasted less than about a yearr so. and governor bradford saw everybody starving to death and they pitched socialism and he wrote, in the history of plymouth plantation, he said, as though men were wiser than god, and he said, this is an experiment that's been tried among godly hard working people and everybody can take a look at our example and see that this isn't going to work. so the pilgrims understood it. unfortunately our congress today doesn't seem to understd it and that's why you see these kinds of things. here's the federal government employment numbers. we're trying to create employment. that's one way to do it. go hire everybody. what's the trouble with this theory? well, every time you hire somebody in the government, you lose two jobs on the private sector. so now after we've passed this wonderful stimulus bill, which we were told, if we didn't pass it, unemployment might get to 8%, we're now close to 10% unemployment. and we continue to do the very things which kill jobs, particularly worst of which is taxation. but this is an alarming trend as well, government employment going up and i think a recent study just indicated that the average government employee makes twice as much money as the average civilian employee in america. that is not a good trend because pretty soon everybody's going to be working for the government. that's not hard to break that equation. then who's going to be paying? i see my friend from texas going to bring us a little bit of texas wisdom, perhaps. would you join us, please? mr. gohmert: thank you for yielding. actually, i was going to bring a bit of john adams wisdom, because to follow up on my colleague's wonderful -- colleagues' wonderful quotes and references to history, john adams toward the end of his life said, the longer i've lived, the more i've come to understand that one worthless man is a shame. two is a law firm and three is a congress. i yield back. mr. akin: let's do that one again. one worthless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three is a congress. congress was smaller in those days, i suppose. we thank you for that bit of texas wisdom. here's another chart that runs along with it. this is private sector employment, government employment, you can see what's happened here. we're doing some employment all right. it's the government that's doing the employment. but you take a look at the blue line, this is the private sector employment, you see jobs going down like a submarine and that isn't just a statistic, tha isn't just a fact, that is suffering. suffering in our economy, suffering with lots of people who don't have jobs, a lot of younger people moving back wi their parents to hous full of people because we're having trouble with not having the jobs. now, what kills the jobs? first of all, excessive taxation is a big deal. insufficient liquidity is another problem. our banking regulators are so tough it makes it very, very hard for businesses to get loans. a third big job killer is economic uncertainty. boy, oh, boy to we have some of that. who knows what we're going to do next. we just passed this socialized medicine bill and everybody who has employees is going to get whacked for having employees. there's a huge incentive week of created to get rid of any excessive employees on your budget because you're going to get taxed heskly for socialized medicine. and then of course -- heavily for sokesized medicine and then the standby, if you can't get it with too much taxes and liquidity and uncertainty, then you hit them with red tape and government mandates. you put this together you have a great formula to destroy jobs in america and we have been doing this in a massive kind of way. here's a kind of a list of some of the obama plan taxes. cap and tax, that's that tax on energy. do you remember how the president said, i'm not going to tax anybody who makes less than $250,000? then he comes up with this deal, that you get taxed when you flip your light switch. i don't know how in the world you can keep those two things, keep them separate, that you're going to only tax people making $250,000 and then nail them with a tax when you flip your light itch. did you want to make a comment? i'd be happy if you want to jump in. mrs. lummis: thank you, mr. akin. would you be so kind as to pull the chart up that you have behind you? the one that displays what has happened to private sector employment versus public sector employment. as you can see from the chart, private sector employment is an upside down u. in that in the ars since the majorityarty has switched handses and democratic control of congress has been in place, we have seen private sector employment decline dramatically at the same time. we have seen public sector employment increase to the tune of about 188,000 public sector workers increase, at the same time we've lost about 12 million private sector employees. now, i have a bill that i believe will begin to address the serious problem that we see with regard to employment. it is a work force reduction act. but it does it without firing anyone. it does it through attrition. the bill provides that for every employee who vacates a position due to retirement or moving on, that that position would be moved into position pool. in fact, for every 100 retirements that occurs in the federal government, 50 positions would be moved into a position pool. the other 50 positions, vacant, would be eliminated. and then agencies would need to apply for reinstatement of a position based on necessity. those agencies who critically need employees such as possibly the minerals management service in its enforcement functions in the gulf of mexico would be likely recipients of employees in order to meet the obligations of the federal government, to protect our borders with regard to the encroachment of o that is seeping into the gulf of mexico. for other positions which are less missiocritical, those agencies would downsize. now, this is not going to be dramatically harmful to federal agencies, because, as i said, since the obama administration took office, 188,000 new federal employees have been added and this excludes people that were hired pursuant to thedy sential census. consequently, we know that somehow we survived without these employees prior to president obama taking office. mr. akin: i would just -- reclaiming my time -- all of these things are really indicatorshat we've got a federal government that is out of control. we're hiring too many federal employees, spending too much money, we don't even have a budget for the first time since the 1970's. this is not a good picture. congressman goal earth. mr. gohmert: i appreciate you yield -- gohmert. mr. gohmert: i appreciate you yielding. i appreciate the gentlelady yields -- mentioning mineral management services. i know she was present for hearings today, the director of the m.m.s. was testifying, we had the secretary of interior for a while testifying and his deputy secretary testifying, the coast guard admiral testifying, but i tell you what, after hearing the testimony about m.m.s., i'm very concerned that adding more jobs there is just creating more problems. there is so much mismanagement, so much impropriety it sounds like that that would be a disastrous mistake to add to the m.m.s. but let me point out, as the director of the m.m.s. testified , they have decided that the m.m.s. would be better nonexistent, so now they're dividing it into three different groups. and, you know, you talk about texas, back home if you have a pond that's become stagnant and it's begun to stink and become rancid, it doesn't matter how many ways you divide that pond, it still stinks. and they're not going to address the management problems, they're not going to address the fact that -- and get this, the only entity within the minerals management service that is uniized -- unionized and if we were out somewhere else i might expect a drum roll,ut it is the offshore inspectors. only entity within the m.m.s. that's unionized. and we come to find outhat as critical as those offshore inspectors were to protecting our country, to protecting our environment, to protecting all of those thousands and thousands and thousands of livings that were gained off of the coast area, the protection was an appropriate offshore inspector and yet when i asked the director of m.m.s., was there a good way to have a check or balance so that someby insured the offshore inspector was adequately doing their job and making sure that when they finally bothered to go out and watch a blowup or btested that somebody made sure they we really doing their job? becausas i'm shoe you all know, there's an investigation currently going on about some of the gifts and perks and things that were provided by people being inspected to those doing the inspection. well, how do you guard against improprieties and the director said, well, we had a system that fixed that. we had two offshore inspectors that would go out at the same time to an offshore rig. that w they could kind of watch over each other's shoulder, make sure that each other were doing the right thing , so my question was, then, would it have been a good idea that the last inspectors, union team that went out to the deepwater horizon rig, were, in order to watch each other and casmey make sure each other did their job, that you sent out a father and son union team? and she was not able to comment because that was under investigation. . there were going to be restrictions on how much hours they could travel and there are some areas in the country we need unions to make sure things are done fairly, but we are talking about the government, our united states government that is supposed to protect us. i mean these guys out there are protecting our lands, our livelihoods and almost like the military, they're on a mission. can you imagine if the military were unionized and said we are going to work so ma hours a day and restrict the amount of travel, what kind of union contract would you get for the military? these people -- the offshore inspectors, the m.m.s., they are supposed to be protecting us and our country. mr. akin: i would like to jump in, if i could, gentleman, i'm detecting a certain level of skepticism on your part whether or not this government agency was effective in protecting us and preventing a massive environmental mess. and i think the question i have is, you're suggesting that maybe a government agency isn't that reliable and yet, we just trusted the government with all of americans' health care. does that make you feel comfortable now that you see the government working in the m.m.s. area? mr. gohmert: it's a disaster. it was a disaster in m.m.s. and it was a disaster that their performance allowed to happen. and we're going to find out, there's somebody responsible, maybe one, maybe many at british petroleum. and this came up in the hearing today as well that you know, the president had previously mentioned that he wanted to end the cozyness between inspectors -- coziness between inspectors people making sure they are doing the right thing and the big oil companies. and that inspired some double-checking. and we had hearings before in the two years between 1998 and 1999, the clinton administration had employees who pulled the price control adjustment language out of the offshore leases and originally, i was thinking it cost millions, but now billions of dollars that had gone to big oil that should have gone into the federal treasury. when we had a hearing about that, i asked the inspector general and this was a clinton appointee originally, the inspector general and now in another capacity, but i asked him, did you not interview these two people who had the most knowledge about why that language was pulled out. he said they're not with the government. he could call them. he could see if they wanted to talk. he didn't bother to do that. after the president's coent about the coziness, whatever happened to those two peop the inspector general couldn't talk to? one of them, when they left the clinton administration went to work for a company called british petroleum and had three major officer/director positions. and secretary salazar and this administration hired her to come to work for the mineral management folks. mr. akin: we are we're talking about a cozy relationship. obama's person in charge, salazar is in charge of this whole thing, basically hired somebody out to basically to do this oversight -- mr. gohmert: working nine years for british petroleum in high capacities. and so it's interesting to hear about that cozy relationship. mr. akin: what was her name, gentleman? >> andrea baca, b-a-c-a. this is completely an extension of the white house. the -- whatever the administration is, the minerals management service is part of the administration. the congress has no authority to confirm, say yes or no on somebody who is appointed. this is an extension of the president's own hand running the minerals management service. and we have absolutely got to clean house. the trouble is, it's not our house. it's the president's house. mr. akin: doesn't law require that the president in a major environmental disaster like this -- i have been told that the federal law requires that the president take charge of the situation. has he been down there basically running it and calling the shots? mr. gohmert: i understand he has been there. but as some of our friends from louisiana have pointed out and as governor jindal has been fighting, the president, through the m.m.s. and through his responders have -- they gave full authority to british petroleum to make all the calls. and so, here louisiana folks, people on the gulf who are wanting to mitigate and try to get protection and protect thselves, they had to get protection from british petroleum who was not giving it. we heard in the hearing today that there were people who wanted to build barriers to this oil coming in and all we heard from the administration's representatives, we are discussing those to see -- we are worried that could create more problems than it solves because when they build the little barriers to the oil coming in to those march shes, it might -- marshes. it's killing animals and wildlife right now. and we heard today in the hearing, we are just discussing it and we are trying to figure out if we do more harm than good. outrageous what's going on. the president needs to take charge. it is a disaster of massive proportions. british petroleum is at the helm, but the white house should not have given them authority to make all the calls. it's unplefble the disaster that occurred and the disaster that's being created by the failure to respond. i asked the admiral in charge of the coast guard, how many ships have you moved in the last 37 days? they moved four major boats in the area. that's it. that's it. could have movethe navy, all kinds of response. the president has all kinds of responses and basically letting all this happen. british petroleum should be made to made and not limited to $75 million. we have to have a better response. peoplere losing their livelihoods. and i yield. mrs. lummis: it is the power of this purse that allows us to gain control of situations like this and that is why this discussion is so important. i thank the gentleman from missouri for including us, and i yield back. mr. akin: i thank you, lady, and we have been talking about a broad range of topics today but in general, the condition of our economy. and the thing i would like to be sure we don't do is to leave with the impression that there aren't solutions to these problems. the solution is one, we have to back off in giving away money to everybody. we have to reduce federal spending and what we're go to go have to do is to use the power of reducing taxes. so we have to reduce taxes in order to get the economy back going and start creating jobs. now if we want to continue the formula of destroyinjobs the way we have been, what's going to happen is it's going to be harder and harder to get the economy back on track. but there is a solution. it's not complicated. it involves doing tax cuts selectively to allow the small businesses to start creating jobs again. and weave to get off their back with regulations and red tape. we have to increase their ability to get liquidity, but we also have to stop taxing and taxing and taxing. and all of the talk about -- concern about jobs is all lip service because every one of these things are job killers, cap and tax. they're going to tax energy. health care taxes. massive effect to destroy jobs. there are all kinds of businesses. now they're saying, how can i get my employees under 50 so i don't get involved in this. death tax, tax on inheritance, this is another thing that is going to tie up money that could be invested in business and create jobs. and the capital gains tax, this is one of the big things that helped create jobs before. this is going to expire next year. and so there are solutions to these problems, but the solutions require some grownup leadership in washington, d.c. and mr. speaker, i thank you for your indulgence this evening. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of hitime. under the speaker's announced policy of january 6 2009, the chair recognizes ms. wasserman schultz for 60 minutes. ms. wasserman schultz: mr. speaker, i rise this evening to proudly commemorate the 5th annual jewish annual heritage month which takes place across the country. it promotes awareness of the contributions americans have made to the fabric of american life from technology and literature to entertainment, politics and medicine. it's a concept that was brought to me by leaders in the south florida jewish communte. when i was first elect todd serve in this body and it was an idea borne of the concern that was although there has been 355 years of jewish life in america, there is still a tremendous lack of understanding about jewish culture that jews are both a religion and a heritage. in terms of our traditions and our community, because we are less than 2% of the population in america, most people in america have either never met a jewish person or rarely if ever interacted with a jewish person. so our traditions are often a foreign concept. and it was felt by the leaders in my jewish community that having a month dedicated to cultural and educational programming, particularly in non-jewish communities, would raise awareness and foster understanding and deal with some of the concerns over the fact that of the bias incidents that have been documented by the f.b.i. and anti-defamation league, 65% of those bias incidents have been anti--jewish incidents. and if we use this month to foster understanding and tolerance, then hopefully we can reduce anti-cementism and bigotry in our country. the foundation of our country is built on the strength of our unique culture and backgrounds. our diverse it is america's strength, accomplishments of the jewish people are unfortunately are still prevalent. jews make up only 2% of our nation's population and as a result, we need to make sure that people in america understand that there has been so many different things, so much of american history has been touched by a significant contribution bamican jews and tonight my colleagues who are joining me tonight on the floor to acknowledge and mk the 5 of annual jewish american month, are going to talk about the impacts. and it's my privilege to yield to the the gentleman from colorado, mr. polis. mr. polis: pole talk about the jewish history in colorado. gold was discovered near pike's peek in 1858. the 59ers came to our state and growing the population and building a die versus community. jews were part of that quest. over the decades, our people have suffered exiles, migrating from one country to another meeting with hostility and hardship. jews emgrated to the emcan west where we established communities and maintained the jewish heritage despite great obstacles. . over the next two decades, jews settled in leadville, cripple creek, colorado sprin, pueblo, central city and denver. one of the first jewish pioneers was fred solomon who arrived in the area in june, 1859. he became the general manager of the first general mercantile in the area. they were joined by another brother who became the first elected official as arustee of greeley, colorado. another one of our famous early jewish coloradans was francis yaycobs, born in 1843, died in 1892. she was born in kentucky to bavarian immigrants but moved to colorado when she was young. she joined with the city's congregational ministers and catholic archdiocese to create a multifaith charity. she left her mark on tuberculosis relief, which denver became known for. she was one of the first to conceive of a free hospital for indigent tuberculosis victims for whom denver became known. she's one of 16 recognized as colorado pioneers, the only woman and only jew, in a stained glass window in the state capitol. she was inducted into the national women's hall of fame and awarded the denver mayor's award. from its humble beginning, the jewish population has grown. immigrants from the east coast, as my parents from peekskill, new york, moved west with their fellow jews and more recently with immigrants from california, jews finding a new home in my hometown of boulder, which, when i was growing up had one synagogue, now as six synagogues. denver continues to thrive with the jewish cultural and religious life across the region. i rise to proudly recognize the role of jews and the development of colorado and the rocky mountain west. i yield back to my friend from florida. ms. wasserman schultz:: your comments are a perfect example of the unique contribution american jews have made in our history and you specifically highlighted examples that most people would not have been familiar with. i bet coloradans are not familiar with that history. thank you very much for come do you think and sharing that with us this evening. mr. speaker, i want to share a story that was an experience that i lived through and for me, as a junge jewish woman, growing up in a predominantly jewish community in long island, in new york, on long island, spending my adult life in a significant large jewish community, one would think i had spent most of my life without experiencing anti-semitism and i have not experienced much in the way of overt anti-semitism. but i want to share a story with my colleagues from when i was in college at the university of florida. i was standing in the hallway of my dorm, the first week of school, and talking to another young woman who i had just met. she saw my last name on the door, because there are signs on the doors with your names on them at the beginning of each semester in most college dorms and somehow or another, the subject of religion came up, i shared with her that i was jewish. her response -- she was from a tiny town in north florida. it was evident after her comments that she had never met a jewish person before, because she said to me, you're jewish? i've seen pictures, but i've never seen a real one. i, growing up on long island, that being my first exposure to someone who had not met a jewish person, i had heard there were people in america who thought jews had horns and we were somehow not human, but, fortunately, i realized at the time that that was simply a reflection of the fact that she had not had experience with jews or the jewish community. as we got to know each other we lived on the hall together throughout our freshman year, we got to be very good friends and she realized i was human and didn't have horns but it's really important and that story and that experience helped me understand why we had a need for jewish american heritage month. just like the experience of black history month and the years and years of success of that cultural celebration that we have in february and asian-pacific islander month and hispanic heritage month, it's important that we celebrate the diversity and that all americans learn about the success and contributions that all different cultures have weaved together to make america the strong, vibrant nation that we are today and again, i'm really pleased to joined my bimy colleagues who are with me on the floor tonight. with that, i yield to my good friend and next door neighbor a gentleman who has been doing a fantastic job representing his constituents in south florida, someone who haspent many, many years as a leader in the organized jewish community, congressman ron klein from the great state of florida. mr. klein: i thank the gentlelady and i thank her for bringing this forward asart of the american fab lick. she talked about jewish-american heritage month is just one of many that make up the fabric of the united states. in fact, we're very diverse. it's a way of celebration. we're celebrating jewish-american heritage month and we'll have the opportunity to do that tomorrow and for weeks to come. being from cleveland, originally, cleveland, ohio, i grew up in a family that had roots, my family came to the united states in the 1920's from europe, from a persecuted background, where they weren't welcome as jews, and we know the history of what happened in the holocaust. they came to the united states and did what most immigrant families did. they congregated among themselves, initially. went to small towns, figured it was important to get education, started businesses. my dad had a variety store, like a wolworth's, but a small, independent store, started by my grandfather, in the great depression. it was a family business all the way through my dad taught me all about what it was to be part of that american fabric. being jewish was unique where i came from, but not totally unique. there was jewish community in cleveland. then with my wife, i moved to florida. there was a larger jewish mmunity there. but a generation before that, there were restrictions on where people could live, and they didn't allow various minorities, in the just jews but african-americans and various others to go into those communities and buy property. it was only one generation before i moved there. so it really is in our own lifetime that all these things change and we know as americans, there's still more work to be done with various forms of discrimination. i want to mention a couple of names that sort of have some fun tonight. first of all, the first jewish member of congress was from florida. in 1841, david levy euly was the first jew to serve in congress he went on to serve in the united states senate. it was a long, long time after that before another jewish resident from the state o florida came back to represent the community in congress. but i'm going to mention a few entertainment people. i think those are some of the fun people. many of you remember sandy koufax. this isn't entertainment, this is sports. but one of the truly great pitchers of all time. los angeles dodgers. i think many of you remember. he refused to pitch on yom kippur, the most significant holiday of the year for the jewish community. it was the world series. he made a conscious choice and said, re-- centre verb rations throughout the sports community, how could he make that decision? he became a folk hero for many people he he stood up for himself, for his people, and though he wasn't a religious man he did something quite unique at that time. steven spielberg. how many of you know steven spielberg and the touch he's had on all our lives with the movies and so many cultural things he's been a contributor to? he, for many reasons, not only as a film director and producers he set up foundation, and funded it with others, as a way of taking the written testimony of people who survived the hol austin to preserve it for -- the holocaust to preserve it forever. groucho marx, we all know him. i won't do the imitation, i see my colleague from denver from colorado over there, isoing to make fun of me if i do that. graucho marx is one of the truly great -- there were all the marx brothers. they came from that background of, you know, that early vaudeville era and sort of expressed that great sense of humor. there are so many and i know that our colleagues are going to mention one after the other here. i'm just happy to be here tonight to celebrate this important milestone to celebrate it every year as part of this communi, to talk about it to learn about it, and to get our community to talk about it and teach others as well. i thank the gentlelady for bringing us together tonight. ms. wasserman schultzi thank the gentleman for his remarks and taking us through an important aspect of jewish life in america. now it's my pleasure to yield to another colleague from the west, a leader on the house rules committee, who has a rules committee that is imminent that he needs to get to, and a leader in the jewish community as well, congressman perlmutter from the state of colorado. mr. perlmutter: i thank my friend from florida, i want to follow mr. polis in talking about the rocky mountain west which really did receive jewish immigrants with open arms. sometimes there was discrimination, but generally with open arms. in new mexico, colorado, wyoming, ranching, farming, mining, construction, you name it, the jewish community was involved in it. merchants, oil and gas. the manhattan project, down in los alamos in new mexico. so my family a great, great, great uncle, emigrated from the ukraine in the late 1800's, was part of a mining commune above a little town called center, colorado, remained in that mining commune for three years, realize head didn't like being at about 11,000 feet in the mountains of colorado, moved to the denver area, where he had a small store, and that uncle then attracted the others who emigrated from the ukraine. the youngest brother came first, then the next brother, the next brothe the next brother. my grandfather was the oldest, he was the last to arrive from the old country. it was one where the denver area really did allow a chance for people to show what they were made of. over the years it's been very much a part of the fabric of the community, charitable efforts as well as education, those kinds of things. the jewish heritage we're talking about tonight, at least the rocky mountain west, the jewish community and the rocky mountain west are inseparable. i thank my friend for organizing our special orders and i yield bacto her. ms. wasserman schultz: thank you, mr. perlmutter, we appreciate your contribution to our efforts to raise awareness of the cricks of jewish americans to american history. it's now my pleasure to yield to one of our newest members who as of just the other day, is no longer the most junior member of the house of representatives he held that title for, oh, about a month, and he is the neighbor to the other side of my congressional district and did a fantastic job as a state senator. he's also a leader in the organized jewish community, he's a staunch advocate for israel and other issues of importance to the jewish community, mr. deutsche. mr. deutsche: i rise in recognition of the jewish community's many contributions to our nation's society and culture. i would like to thank my dear friend and colleague, congresswoman wasserman schultz for her outstanding dedication to preserving jewish lture and history in america. jewish-american heritage month gives all americans the opportunity to recoize jewish americans as leaders in every facet of life, from education, entertainment, arts, academia, to our armed forces. florida's 19th district is home to one of the largest jewish american populations in this country. i'm privileged to represent many first generation americans whose parents arrived on our shores seeking a better life. many jewish americans are members of the greatest generation. they stepped up to serve i world war ii and helped rebuild the country after the great depression. 11,000 jewish americans perished fighting for our country in world war ii. for those who arrived in europe as the holocaust raged on this war beme personal. as a quote from a jewish air force officer reads, quote, as a jew, it was hitler and me. that is the way i picture the war. . we have been fighting for this country since the revolutionary war. we were aides to general george washington. a general was court martialed six times. but the time the civil war broke out, there were 150,000 jews in the united states with 7,000 fighting for the north and 3,000 fighting for the south. senator benjamin served as secretary of state for the con federal rassy. and the jewmade up 6% of the armed forces. jewish americans have served in korea and vietnam and operation desert storm and countless operations around the globe. among the brave young men and women who served after september 11 and serving in iraq and afghanistan even as we speak. and as we approach memorial day, i recognize those jewish war veterans who made the sacrifice for freedom like major staurt wolfer who was killed by rocket fire in baghdad two years ago. since the congressional medal of honor, jewish americans have been awarded this high honor since it was created. six jewish americans received it during the civil war, two in the indian, two in world war i, two in world war ii and i'm proud to note that florida's 19th district is home of one of the largest war veterans of america. and their dedication to this great country is captured in their mission statement, which reads, we, citizens of the united states of america of the jewish faith, who served in the wars of the united states of america in order that we may be of greater service to our country and one another society ourselves together, to maintain true allegiance to the united states of america, to foster and perpetrate through americanism to defend our constitution, uphold the name of the jew where unjustly assailed. and equal rights and full justice to all men and women. to combat the powers of bigotry and darkness and to preserve the spirit of comradeship to comrades and their families. the mission of this wonderful organization holds a special significance to me. i'm the proud son of a jewish war veteran who volunteered as a teenager to serve our country and fought in the battle of the bulge. my dad is no longer with us but with every veteran, i hear his voice and remember his love of country. love of country that so many jewish americans hold in their hearts. those who practice jewish faith hold value, progress and juice. these are values embedded in the very fabric of this country and for this reason today on the 5 of anniversary that i'm so proud to recognize the jewish american men and women who for centuries not only shaped our national culture but defended our people in times of great challenge. thank you, mr. speaker. and thank you, congresswoman wasserman schultz. ms. wasserman schultz: i' pleased that you chose to highlight in your remarks the contributions that our jewish war veterans have made. last year, i think it was last year, we marked the jewish members, and some non-jewish members took a trip to the museum of jewish military history which is based in washington, d.c. and a museum that i wasn't familiar with and didn't know existed and we had an opportunity all the way back to the revolutionary war to see the contributions of jews throughout our military history and how they proudly, so many of them, hundreds of thousands, proudly fought side by side with their fellow american citizens to defend the freedoms that we continue to enjoy today so thank you so much for acknowledging that. it's now my privilege to yield to my good friend, the gentlelady from pennsylvania who has been a -- who i have shared many a conversation with in the time we have served in the congress together. we were elected in the same year and both served as state legislateors. she is a leader on health care in the senate in pennsylvania and has been a leader in the jewish community and i'm glad you have joined us. ms. schwartz: i'm pleased to join you this evening and thank you for your sponsorship, the resolution that created the jewish american heritage month and i'm the only jewish member of the pennsylvania delegation to speak tonight about the contributions of pennsylvania jewish community, particularly philadelphia's jewish community. i would be remiss if i didn't say i appreciate our colleagues' comments, jewish veterans and my father was a veteran serving in the korean war and those experiences have helped form who i am. but i wanted to talk about other subjects. let me start by saying, william penn who founded pennsylvania in 1682 as a colony, did so making sure that the colony was based on religious tolerance. the philadelphia jewish community has been around for a very lontime and really came expecting and being honored to be able to experience that he religious tolerance particularly inhiladelphia and has been a part of jewish philadelphia and the community for generations. as early as 1735, nathan levy established himself in the trade with his housin. the philadelphia port is still bustling and o of the busiest in the nation. philadelphia jews have contributed to our national fabric, through science, publ service and through the arts. just to name few, philanthropist, sam googen heim and howard dash and the comic larry fein were graduates of philadelphia's public mag gnat central high school where my sons went to school. and they are among the members of philadelphia jewish community. philadelphia is a center of jewish life. i was honored and proud to support temple beth shalom in ell kins park in montgomery and the only synagogue designed by frank lloyd wright and it is a remarkable place to see and i would commend it to all of my colleagues and looking to november 14, 2010, national museum of american jewish history will open its new facility on philadelphia's independence mall. this museum is the only museum in america dedicated excusive i havely to exploring the american jewish experience. i encourage all of my colleagues, jews and non-jews to visit this institution and learn the stories of jewish americans, their challenges, their hardships and their successes as they became a part of the fabric of who we are as americans. for me, the significance of american jewish heritage month is marked by a story of one i don't know woman named renee pearl, she fled austria on a kin dread transport. parents sent their children on the train hoping they would be taken care of. e was fleeing the holocaust. after two years, first in holland and then in england, she arrived in america, a 16-year-old without family or friends. but armed with a keen sense of hope and expectation and many refugees, he was anxious to put her difficult experiences behind her and embrace her country. renee pearl was my mother. she had a deep love for this country and capacity to provide not only safe harbor but opportunity. my mother searched for security and freedom in america as part of who i am. it is a reminder of the importance of democracy not only for american jews but for so many. her story, her life as for so many others, calls on us to meet the responsibility we have to respect the values of our great nation, build and protect the freedom and hope that it offers to so many citizens and newcomers. it is with pride and gratitude that i mark american jewish heritage month and pleased to participate in this discussion. ms. wasserman schultz: i have heard you share that story before and i get a lump in my throat every time you tell it, it is moving and meaningful for you to share that story in the chamber of the u.s. house of representatives and one of the ways we can help people understand why acknowledging the contributions of american jews and the rich tap estry we have weaved is so important so thank you for sharing that story once again. it's my privilege to yield to one of the most significant jewish leaders in our country, someone who has been a stalwart fighter for israel, a stalwart fighter for the issues that matter to american jews and to jews across the globe, the gentlelady from nevada, ms. berkley. ms. berkley: thank you, ms. wasserman schultz. we start our days together because we are next door neighbors and it's a pleasure to see you 14 hours later here on the floor of the house and i thank you for heading this effort. and i know this is near and dear to your heart and you have done an extraordinary job year after year bringing the jewish american story to our fellow citizens and i appreciate it very much and i can't help but agree with you about the beautiful story that our colleague ms. schwartz. i leaned over and i said is that her grandmother. and you said no that's her mother. and it ps a lump in my throat as well. congressman wasserman schultz, my family story is an american jewish story, not unlike so many millions of other american jews that came to our shores from other places. my mother's side of the family comes from greece where there was a very vibrant jewish community prior to world war ii. half of the population of her community in greece were jewish. but by the time the nazis finished, there were only a thousand jews left out of the 80,000 that existed and lived there and thrived there prior to world war i. i'm not thinking that my family would have chosen to live. my father's side of the family, russia-poland side of the border, 1,000 years of jewish culture was exterminated as a result of world war ii. my family escaped both the russia-poland area and the community in greece in order to come to our nation's shores and i grew up hearing stories of what their lives were like, where they came from and how thrilled and excited they were to come to the united states of america and truly felt this started as a haven. it was the very survival of my family had they stayed where they lived in europe, we would have been exterminated in the holocaust. we did survive and came to this remarkable country where not only did we have an opportunity to survive but the opportunity to thrive. i'm second generation american. when my grandparents came here and this is a story that is so common among jewish american families, they couldn't speak english, had no money or any skills. the only thing they had was a dream and that dream was that their children and children's children would have a better life here in the united states than where they came from. i think of myself and as my grandparents' american dream but even in their wildest dream they never would have imagined they would have a granddaughter serving in the house of representatives. i often do this, when i do this, i think of my grandparents and realize that they went through so much in order to come to this country and we have been able to share in the extraordinary success and lverage -- largesse. we are very lucky to be very much a part of the fabric of this great country and have full acceptance, to be able to access the highest levels of power, to actually if he can you tate meaningful change in a very positive way by participating in the american political process. my father, much like so many of the others that spoke today is also a world war ii veteran. he is 85 and still working. but i think what demonstrates our commitment and love of this country and our patriotism as american jews, my father also joined the navy when he wasn't quite old enough to do so but he wanted to stand up and do something positive for the united states of america to show that we belonged here and part of this great country. there were 500,000 jews who served in the armed forces in world war ii, including numerous who rose to the rank of general and several were admirals. my father was never an admiral in the navy, but he served, and he served his country proudly and well. we have made more than a life for ourselves in the united states of america. we are proud americans and we are very proud jews and we appreciate so much the fact that this couny offered so many remarkable opportunities and gave us a chance not only for survival, but to become a part of something so much bigger than ourselves. i think it's incumbent and i think most jews feel this wa that given the rights that we have here in the united states, there also comes responsibilities, and that means good citizenship, participating in the political process, voting, getting a good education, so you cannot only be part of the foundation of this country but to give back to a country that's given us so many opportuties. i am very much a part of the american jewish community but it's a story that so many of us share with our fellow americans and ms. wasserman schultz:, i want to thank you for giving us a chance to thank this country for not only taking us in, but letting us be so much a part not only of the wullture and the political life, but to be very much involved in the greatness of the united states of america. thank you very giving me this -- thank you for giving me this chance. ms. wasserman schultz: thank you for your eloquence. a lot of people think about the arrival of jews in america as really being an infusion after world war i, an infusion after world war ii, but we have 353 years of jewish life in this country and unfortunately, much of our arrival followed persecution in other parts of the world after the spanish inquisition, the pogroms in russia, that's when my family came initially in the 1800's, and then in the early 1900's, flee pogeland for a better way of life here. it's just -- it's so incredibly important that we tell our story and jewish american heritage month allows us to do that now. president bush proclaimed it five years ago. we had 250 co-sponsor, you were one, of the original legislation that urged him to do that. one of the things i think is important to acknowledge is, there is so much partisanship here in the house of representatives. i was the most proud at the time that we passed thatres. -- resolution unanimously out of the house with over 400 members voting over it we had 250 co-sponsors, bipartisan co-sponsors, then we had bipartisan effort acrosthe jewish community in this country to urge the president at the time to proclaim the first jewish american heritage month and they did so willingly, put aside party differences because they knew it was incredibly important and we've continued to be able to mark the occasion every year. ms. berkley: if it wasn't for your leadership we might not be here doing this. but congresswoman, when you and i hear the beautiful song "god bless america," it means a great deal to us, because i think every day, god bless america, god bless this country. the interesting thing, irving berlin gave prominence as -- gained prominence as a composer of patriotic songs. he was a very famous composer, he was jewish he wanted to show his love of this country and use his talents to create these remarkably patriotic songs. "god bless america" is still one of my favorites he received a congressional gold medal for his service to the country in composing these patriotic songs. whenever i hear that seasoning, -- that song, i get a little patter in my heart and it makes me prouthat an american jew composed it. >> and in that same name, emma lazarus was by far the leading jewish figure in 19th century america, and it's her son net, called "the new colossus" that is engraved on the statue of liberty. give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. there are so many contributions this month allows us to highlight, i thank you for joining us tonight. we look forward to the rest of the month and the celebrations across the country. ms. berkley: thank you very much. ms. wasserman schultz: thank you so much. it's my privilege to invite my colleague from the state of florida, the gentleman from central florida who is a newly elected member and who has done a fantastic job fighting for his constituents, fighting on behalf of the issues that are important to this country and fighting to help particularly focus on job creation and turning our economy around. the gentleman, and my friend from central florida, alan grayson. mr. grayson: it would be easy to spend this hour talking about the contribution jewish people have made to american science and culture. if you look at the back of the dollar bill you find the seal of the united states and find the3 original states are depicted in the form of a star of david on the back of every dollar bill. and that's to reflect the support that jews provided in the revolutionary war for our freedom as a country. it would also be easy to spend this time in fact, the whole hour, lking about people whom we know who have lived upstanding lives as jews and reflected our values in ways that have caused america to appreciate what they've given us. i'm thinking, for instance, of my father's mother, who came to america fleeing oppression in europe 110 years ago. i'm thinking of both of my mother's parents, my mother's parents told me their finest hour was when they got to visit jerusalem. and yet they came from europe to north america in the hope of achieving freedom and they did. but i'd like to try to do something, in some respect a little more difficult, if i may. which is try to explain in some general way what jews have meant for our intellectual and moral life as a country. i think it begins with the fact that we all lived as slaves. we not only remember that time and remember what it meant for us to achieve freedom ourselves as a people but we also make sure that each year, we come together during a time that's important to all of us to come together as families and remember the importance of that part of the jewish experience. that helps us relate to other people who are oppressed in all sorts of ways. we're also moved, i think by the concept -- by t concept of healing the world. this is a concept that dates in jewish law back to the mishna. it originally was basically an injunction that you should not take advantage of other people. one of the original examples of this, was that, for instance, when captives were taken, when people were held hostage in military battles, the tradition at that time was that they could be freed by payment of money. you don't do that anymore, nobody does that anymore. that was typical and ordinary in biblical times. the rule was applied to place a limit on how much you could take in order to give someone back their freedom. why? because that person was a prisoner, he or she could not defend himself or herself. he or she wanted or redeserved the -- deserved the freedom every human being deserves. we placed a limit on the price you could pay on somebody's freedom, even if they were captured in the field of battle or otherwise taken hostage. that's a concept that's brought -- that's broadened over time. it's a concept i think su fused through our life as a country in america today because it appeals to our better nature. i saw something recently that summarized this in a way that i thought was particularly vivid. this is rabbi michael learner talking about the concept and how it applies to modern life. we in the community, he said, use the word spiritual to include all those whose deepest values lead them to challenge the ethos of selfishness and materialism that has led people into a frantic search for money and power and away from a life that places love, kindness, generosity, peace, nonviolence, social justice, awe, and wonder at the grandeur of creation, thanksgiving, humility, and joy, especially joy, i think, at the center of our lives. what we strive for under jewish law is the hope to bring about the messianic age, the age when people live in peace, when their lives are filled with love and joy. our actions are meant to point in that direction. that's a good summary of what we try to accomplish as leglators. it's a good summary of what america tries to accomplish. that's the greatest ofll our contributions to american life. the concept of this the conception that the way we conduct ourselveses is the way that can spread throughout the world. i appreciate the time and i yield back. ms. wasserman schultz: thank you so much, mr. grayson, for share your unique perspective. again, it's so incredibly important that we have this opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of jewish americans to american history and i can tell you, mr. speaker, that's something i'm quite proud of, a contribution that i wasn't aware that i had made, upon my election to the congress in 2004, i learned that i was elected as the first jewish woman to represent the state of florida in congress in history. that's a source of great pride, certainly to my parents, my jewish parents, who were extremely proud and who had a great bubbling of pride so to speak, but it's something i have been -- has been a source of pride for me. i'd be happy to yield. mr. grayson: i'm sure, i know for a fact, that your parents must be proud of you. but when i was elected, my mother's reaction was, i wish you become a doctor instead. ms. wasserman schultz: they wished for a doctor or lawyer they got meab of congress. what can you do? they had to settle. mr. speaker, as i wrap up, i'm going to yield the last portion of our time to my good friend from indiana, i want to talk about this year's jewish-american heritage month, it's been packed with programs celebrating the contributions of american jews to our country with speakers and other events. here in washington, they'll be hosting a reception of members of congress and members of the jewish community here on capitol hill. j street will be hosting a reception to celebrate may as jewish-american heritage month, but that's not. they libry of congress the national archives and record administration has been hosting lectures and exhibits and discussions about jewish contributions to america in my home state of florida. there'll be a celebration of jewish contributions to the civil rights movement and the marlins baseball team will host a jewish heritage game. i can share, i had the privilege of throwing out the first pitch at the jewish heritage game, but at that game, they have kosher food and jewish muse nick between innings, it's an event. wyoming, of all places, will host a festival celebrating jesh food and lord knows that we jews like food a whole lot. events are also scheduled to occur in new york, california, texas and other states around the country but i think the thing we are all the most proud of is that tomorrow we will join president barack obama and the first lady who will hold the first ever white house celebration and ceremony honoring jewish american heritage month and the contributions of jewish americans throughout history and it's my first opportunity to have that celebration in the white house during t month of may and jewish-american heritagmonth. we've come a long way in recent years to promote appreciation for the multicultural fabric of the united states and it's our duty to continue this education. if we are to prepare our children for what lies ahead, teaching diversity is part of that promise. i thank my colleagues for their support and call on all americans to observe this special month by celebrating the many contributions of jewish culture throughout our nation's history. with that, i would be happy to yield to the gentleman from indiana who hopefully will come up with a good segue from jewish-american heritage month to what he has come to share with us tonight about his constituents. . mr. donnelly: i that i my colleague and what a successful jewish community we have in indiana as well and we are proud of our jewish community. and mr. speaker, as we near memorial day, i rise today also to offer some records in commemoration of those who gave their lives in the armed forces of the united states, in particular, three sons from the 2nd district of indiana. this weekend, members of this body will return to our districts and participate in memorial day parades and events that are tradition of american life. people will picnic with their families and watch parades and people will honor our veterans and pay respect to those service members who died in the line of duty. in places large and small and in places like south bend, preliminary outh and westville, indiana. specialist paul anderson, a reservist, died in acti on october 1, 2009 by indirect fire from enemy forces. a 24-year veteran of the armed forces, paul was completing his second tour of duty in iraq. a 1979 graduate of buchanan high school, paul enlisted in the army reserves in 1985. after serving his first tour in iraq, paul met his future wife linda at the home of a friend. they shared a love of country music, old movies and strawberry milkshakes. paul proposed in and they were married a few months later. when he re-enlisted, it was only after first seeking her consent. when he asked her how she would feel when he opted to redeploy. she said go ahead. i knew i married an army man. he is my world, my life, my friend. he served with the 855th quarter master company from south bend. his mission was to provide shower and laundry services and operating a clothing repair shop based in 10 different locations throughout the iraqi threeter. without these crucial services that helped make life bearable for those fighting far from home, our soldiers would not have been able to perform their duties as they do. paul will be remembered as a devoted husband, father and grandfather. as a civilian, paul worked at a fube and bending company. he loved to tinker with machines and notorious for going overboard on the christmas lights every year. he lived a life full of love and joy. specialist anderson is survived by his wife, six children and by nine grandchildren. army staff sergeant justin decrow of preliminary outh, indiana died in the tragic shooting in fort hood, texas. after 13 years of extraordinary service to his nation, justin was taken from his family, friends and comrades and will be missed. justin wanted to be a sold year. he graduated from plymouth high school in 1996 and after marrying his high school sweetheart, that spring he enlisted in the army. he answered the call because of an uailing love of america and also the opportunity to make a life for his family in a career like no other. early on, he performed light-vehicle maintenance. in 2000, justin and his family moved to evans, georgia after he was assigned to fort gordon where he was strained as a satellite operator. he would go on to work in that capacity in south korea. last september, justin was assigned to the 16th signal company at fort hood. he had hoped to return to return to fort gordon. while at fort hood, he trained new soldiers and will be remembered by his fellow soldiers as a mentor with charm and quick witness and by -- quick witt and as a devoted father and husband. he is surveist by his wife of 14 years, 13-year-old daughter and two proud parents, daniel decrow and rhonda thompson. he will be missed by them and by a grateful nation forever debt to his deep heart and sense of service. joshua bimpfield died in afghanistan on february 19, 2010. after two years of accomplished service, joshua was killed by small arms fire while on patrol during his first tour of duty in that country. josh graduated from westfield high school in 2004 and enlisted in the united states marine corps on april 18, 2008. he joined the marines after seeing a tv news segment focused on the hardships that military families endure when they are separated, especially during the holidays. he was inspired by those who dedicated their lives in the service of others. he wanted to share that burden on behalf of our nation. lance corporal birchfield was with the 3rd battalion, 4th mari regimen based in 29 palms, california. for his service and support in operation enduring freedom, josh has been decorated many times, earning the purple heart, combat action ribbon, national defense medal, afghanistan campaign medal, global war on terrorism service medal, sea service deployment ribbon. joshua was a baseball thuist and this coming weekend i'm pud i will be there as the baseball field in westfield will be renamed in his honor, a living memorial that will remain a place of joy and remembrance and we hope we can live up to the example that josh has given to all of us. he was an inspiring hero to the tight knit community and he will be remembered as a selfless and compassionate man. he is survived by both parents and sisters, extended family and many, many friends. we are forever in debt to these three great hoose years, all patriots in every sense of the word. all brave americans who have laid down their lives so we may be safe, so that others may live without fear and so that our country can remain safe and secure and strong. let us also remember today those brave americans who are serving their nation now here at home and in harm's way in places all around the globe. by choosing to serve their nation in uniform, these sons and daughters, mothers and fathers are continuing hundreds of years of a tradition of selflessness, excellence and courage and protecting the freedoms and values we are blessed to enjoy as citizens of this beloved country. mr. speaker, may the house of representatives always do right by these fine men and their families. and may we never forget the price of freedom and those who have laid their lives down in service of this great nation. i yield back the balance of my time. ms. wasserman schultz: mr. speaker, i'm privileged to have been here to listen to the gentleman acknowledge the patriots that gave their lives and served our country so faithfully from his community. and i can tell you that the constituents of the district that he represents in indiana have no greater friend and advocate than joe donnelly and with that, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, the chair recognizes the gentleman from iowa, mr. king. mr. king: it's a privilege to address you and the folks in this chamber and i appreciate my colleagues and their discussion about jewish heritage month and mr. donnelly, my support for our troops and the loss of our troops goes deep for all of us and i appreciate that sentment. i look ae democracy in the middle east and the demonstration there that in 1948, a nation that stood up and created a nation, a people that stood up and created a nation d identified with israel in particular because the generation of my life is mirroring the life of the generation of israel. so i would very much encourage the people in this administration and across this congress to support israel and support them in their self-defense in the middle east and understand there have been some things that have taken place in this country that undermine the national defense of israel and send a message that might encourage their enemies. i would like to send a message here tonight to encourage the nation of israel, the prime minister, benjamin netanyahu and all the people that stand up for freedom and liberty. it is one thing to stand up to defend your liberty in your country but another to be surrounded by enemies that would like to destroy you as a people and country. we have no neighbors that draw maps of the world that erase the united states from that map. we have some nghbors that would like to take chunks out of the great southwest of the united states and change the map of the united states of america. we don't have any neighbors that would seek to eradicate all of the united states of america. but that is for the nation of israel. to be surrounded by those kinds of people, people who raise their children, little girls to put suicide vests on them and walk them around to glorify the homicide -- the homicid bombing activities that have taken place all over the years. while i'm on the subject matter, many of those bombings have been reduced dramatically and significantly across israel and that has to do with the barrier they constructed between themselves and the west bank. i have been there and i have seen that barrier and watched how effective it has been and i have been a strong proponent of the construction of a barrier that would be that effective on our southern border in particular, where we have millions of illegal border crossers every year coming across our border into the united states. and those that are coming across are just coming to get a job, they just want to work and take care of their families. in fact, mr. speaker, many do. many do. but there are also many who do not. 90% of the illegal drugs consumed in the united states comes from or through mexico and out of that huge human haystack of humanity that pours across our southern border every night, the numbers are down. we don't know. but the numbers when i could have a reasonable measure of it were about four million illegal border crossings a year and i think if you take and this is from memory, mr. speaker, so hopefully the accountants don't hold me too accountable, but four million illegal crossings divided by 365 days comes down to 11,000 illegal crossings a night on average every night. and i have spent some time down on those crossings like san miguel. and there are three or four bashed wres on rusty posts and stretched apart. and 11,000 a night, mr. speaker. and so you can take your historical measure, but the airplane was someplace between 4,000 and 6,000 that surrounded and attacked the alamo. this is 11,000 a night. one might argue and i think very effectively, two to three times the size of santa ana's army that invaded texas every night on average and they don't come with muskets or in uniforms, but hat's the magnitude every single night. and now, thankfully, the president of the united states has announced yesterday that he was going to ask for $500 million and 1,200 naonal guard troops to bolster the security at the border. some of the people on my side of the aisle were critical of it as being not enough. and i won't take issue with them on that part, it's not enough, but it is a good baby step. we have taken so many giant steps in the wrong direction, especially economically and the effort to do so culturally and socially that when i see a baby step like 1,200 guard troops going down to the southern border, that's a good thing. little steps in the right direction are better than giant steps in the wrong direction. 1,200 troops turns out to be this, an increase of personnel security of 6.5% and it's an increase from a budgetary perspective, $500 million divided by the roughly $12 billion we are spending on the southern border, 2.4% increase in the budget part of it. it sends the right message and we need to reinforce that message that is sent, this country, democrats and republicans, albeit within significantly different percentages, that we need to stop the bleeding at the border. the rest of the things don't count for much, they don't count for anything in we -- if we don't stop the bleeding at the border. i just went to a dinner and sat down and listened to the narrative of an individual, his wife told the greatest part of the narrative, who was kidnapped by the mexicans in mexico. one of the cartels that were the top of the line human kidnappers that had asked initially for $8 million in ransom. $8 million. and for eight months, kept this man in a box and he watched his weight drop from 165 down to 80 pounds and finally, finally, after those eight months and down to 80 pounds, was released that dsn't happen to all. some aren't released. some are killed in captivity. many of them are brutalized. when you see a person's body weight shrink in half you know that's brutalization. this is what's going on in mexico for these kind of activities threaded throughout the politics of south america and countries like brazil for example. colombia would be another, peru would be another. as i watch this unfold, it isn't a big surprise to us when we see the violence in the summer hemisphere, it shouldn't be a surprise when the violence spills over the border. when phoenix becomes the second highest kidal b city in the world, and it would be first if it were not for mexico city, i think it should be pretty clear to all of us here in the united states of america, mr. speaker, that the violence of the drug trafficking country of mexico has spilled over into the united states and the lawlessness that is part of what goes on south of the border is now in greater numbers backing the lawlessness that they're living with in arizona, border states along the way and when arizona passed their immigration law, we heard, mr. speaker, what i would call a primal scream of desperation come up out of arizona and they passed the legislation that they could. they passed the legislation that they needed to to protect and defend themselves. so, mr. speaker, that's a long and deep subject which i intend to go into a little more deeply, but i recognize that the astute gentleman from east texas, the aggie himself, the judge, mr. gohmert is here with some actual facts and data that come off the printed sheet rather than out of that globe of his that's got so much knowledge in it. i'd be happy to yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from east texas, mr. gohmert. mr. gohmert: i do appreciate the comments of my friend from iowa and we do appreciate the comments from our colleagues in the hour previous to this, about the wonderful jewish heritage in this country and it is jewish heritage month and it does mean so much to this nation when you look at the contributions of the jewish immigrant into this country. this country has benefit sod immeasurably from immigration. but it has to be legal. there's a number of different aspects, first of all, we've got basically a third world immigration service. it needs to be cleaned out, top to bottom, side to side, streamlined, made more efficient, more effective, that's got to be done. it wasn't done effectively in the previous administration. it's got to be done. it's not being done now by this administration. and it's got to be done. but, it grieves me much, my 5 1/2 years here, to hear people come down here to the floor and talk about laws, spouting off things as facts, that are wrong. because they hadn't read the bill. and my friend knows that in our republican conferences, nobody was more loud and emphatic than me in beggg my colleagues when we were going through the tarp bailout to read the bill if you just read the bill, you'll see we don't do this in america. we don't give one person $700 billion. we didn't have enough people read the bill. they didn't realize how much we were giving away the farm when the tarp bailout passed. but likewise, we have people including down pennsylvania avenue who had talked about this arizona bill and i've got it here. it's 19 pages, that's with the amendments. the amendments have passed, and i've gone through, highlighted, it's what i do. i'm not technically challenged, i loveoing things on the internet, finding, doing good research on the internet b there's something about having a hard copy i can through d highlight, that's what i've done here. this is not rocket science. and if you also have read the law as it's come down from the supreme court and as passed by this congress, you find out that this arizona law is actually not s tough, as stringent, as existing federal law and you find out when this arizona bill talks in terms of what a law officer will do because it says for any lawful contact, stop, detention, or arrest made by a law enforcement official. a lawful contact, -- a lawful contact stop, means a law officer cannot stop you unless it's authorized under state or federal law. and in fact, if he were to violate someone's civil rights by unlawfully stopping someone, they got a lawsuit. we've got something that allows them to sue local law enforcement, they abuse their powers, that's why the civil rights laws are there. any lawful contact. what it does, it allows, when that is done, perhaps an arrest, a -- what has been known since 1966 as a terry stop, probably not a certified law officer in iowa or texas or around the country tha has not had a class on what a lawful stop a terry stop is, because under terry vs. ohio in 1966, the supreme court discussed this. they said, you've got to have a reasonable suspicion there's been a crime committed in order to have a detention stop. you can't just willy nily stop people. and also, it could be a lawful stop if you see that somebody is violating the traffic laws. sometimes officers will have a lawful stop and give you a warning and they could have given you a full ticket because they saw you were violating the law, maybe you had a taillight out or mething, but it's a lawful stop. but they stop you and wonder, perhaps, were you carrying illegal drugs or something, they're authorized to stop you for violating the traffic laws and they're not bound to put on blinders when they do. so they can see if you violate ared something else while you're there, but not unreasonably. so this law allows them, if they've lawfully stopped you for some purpose, other than immigration, and they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is an alien, that you're not lawfully present in the country, then they may make what it says here, a reasonable attempt, when practicable, to determine immigration status of the person. now, what terry vs. ohio made clear is, a reasonable suspicion means yocan't just have,well, i suspect -- i suspected something. that's not good enough. in law school, when we studied terry vs. ohio, there's some terminology i had to practice saying before i got to class so that i could say it without, you know, stumbling and look more ignorant than i might otherwise already look and the word was arctic labble. -- articulable. it rolls off pretty easily. you can't just say, well irk had this suspicion. it has to be a reasonabl suspicion based upon articulable facts. if you cannot articulate facts that justify your suspicion, it's not reasonable, it's an unlawful stop and it's probably a civil rights violation that's going to get the community or the state of arizona sued successfully. the federal law is -- allows even further stopping just to check to see if somebody may be legally present in the country. federal law officers have the ability to do that, if they think it appropriate. arizonas just trying to deal with the fact that they have so many criminals in arizona. my friend mentioned a kidnapping. it is intolerable that one of our 50 states of these united states would have a beautiful, wonderful city like phoenix and that united states city, here in the continental united states, would be the second most prolific kidnapping capital in the world. this isn't the third world country where we have coup d'etats constantly and governments constantly changing hands so you don't know who is going to enforce the law. this is the united states of america. arizona is not some wild west territory. to have phoenix have the second st kidnappings in the world is intolerable. and it is an embrarsement for -- an embirsment for which this federal government -- embarrassment for which this federal government owes an apology to border states like arizona for allowing this kind of thing to go unstopped, unchecked. but this law is very reasonable. basically, there's just one page that people would bother to go check, you know, over on page 5, it talks about lawfully stopping someone who is operating a vehicle if he has a reasonable suspicion to believe the person is in violation of any civil traffic law. it's not an unreasonable law. but it does say repeatedly that a law enforcement official or agency of the state or county, city, town, or other political subdivision, may not consider race, color, or national origin in the enforcement of this section except to the extent permitted by the united states or the arizona constitution. the arizona constitution cannot allow it if it's forbidden by the u.s. constitution. so this is not some horrific bill as the president and others including our president made it sound. and that's why it's a little bit irritating to have the president mexico come into this body as a -- an invited guest. he's a guest in this house. and he comes in and says, i strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in arizona. it is a law that not only ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree but also introduces a terrible idea, using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement that is why i agree with president obama who said the new law, quote, carries a great amount of risk when core values we all care about are breached, unquote he comes in here as an invited guest and completely misrepresents the facts. and tells the world here in this body, to our faces, that the arizona law ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree and introduce asterable idea that racial profiling is a basis for law enforcement. i'm sure that he does not lie, but that statement is a lie. that is not true. . he needs to read the bill. the attorney general hadn't read it when he came before the judiciary committee. secretary napolitano she owed the state of arizona better than she gave it and she is out there condemning it. and have our invited guest and condemn a law that he clearly had not read. i would have been glad give him a copy. it's not hard to get. but to come in here, that is just so outrageous. but then he says, because of your global leadership, we will need your support, this is president calderon, to meet the meeting in cancun next november a success, that's because he has come in and touted global warming and for those who can't understand the words in here, what that statement means and what these countries around the world have said when they say we have got to have the united states global leadership come in to thiglobal warming conference, what that means is, if the united states does nt come in as the pat si who is willing to pay these other countries out of some guilt complex, then no one is going to come in and start redistributing the wealth of america into all those other countries. and i appreciate president calderon saying that's correct but the problem is we are distributing plenty of wealth to america. he mentioned it himself. the initiative, as i recall, this body passed a bill to give them $500 million, as i recall, to use to buy law enforcement equipment, to help enforce their laws. we are pouring plenty of money into mexico, so he doesn't need to go to some global warming meeting and try to construct some method of extorting more money out of the united states. we're giving them plenty. i yield to my friend. mr. king: i thank the gentleman from texas. i want to go back to a couple of points with regard to the arizona law and one of them is that lawful contact was amended to say stop, detention, and arrest. and i don't have a copy that has that amendment integrated into the overall bill. and i was able to sit down and read that on saturday morning. mr. gohmert: it says any lawful contact, stop, detention or arrest. mr. king: didn't they strike lawful contact and put in detention and arrest? mr. gohmert: this is supposed to be the updated law as amended. but contact, stop, means you can't stop them unless you have reasonable suspicion. mr. king: lawful contact would mean among it, the lawful contact would be stop, detention and arrest. so specific within those categories, i think i make a distinction without a difference in the language as i recall it. and in thr language and when we look at the reasonable suspicion component of this, i think about this that i wrote the wrote the reasonable suspicion law in iowa that we passed in 1998 and it's been in law for all of 12 years and in that period of time and in fact 12 years and two months i happen to remember it was st. patrick's day in 1998 when it was signed into law, but we provide for an employer or employer's designee to direct an employee to undergo a drug test and a urine analysis based upon the representative of the employee declaring -- representative of the employer declaring that the employee in question has reasonable suspicion that they are using and abusing drugs. and that might be any of the indicators that has to do with bloodshot eyes or die lated pupils or showing up late. or agitated nature or nervous nature. so the designee of the employer can point to an employee and say, i have a reasonable suspicion that you are using drugs, go get a drug test right now. it's more draconian than the arizona reasonable suspicion law requiring the law enforcement officer to draw their reasonable suspicion and make a determination when he has reasonable suspicion as to the lawful presence of the individual that he had lawful contact with. a reasonable suspicion i would add to the the gentleman from texas who went to law school down there, that if i remember correctly, it is a specififact so that it has to be specified as well as articulable. i'm having trouble saying that. but the reasonable suspicion law is well settled and has been utilized for decades in the united states and for at least 12 years in iowa that maybe it's the janitor or the nurse or the truck driver or maybe it's the accountant or the keyboard operator that are the designee of the employer that received two hours worth of training to start out and one hour worth of training to refresh them and they point the finger at somebody and not say, let's see your papers but we'll see if you are using illegal drugs. i would submit that if -- it's a little bit more invasive in a person's privacy to require a urineanalysis than to require to show their property. and there are people demonstrating against arizona law and all it does is asking law enforcement officers to enforce arizona immigration law which mirrors federal immigration law, in that practice and it has been a requirement for a long, long time, perhaps half a century that those who are here in the united states that are not natural born citizens or naturalized citizens have to carry their papers 18 years or older. that is a common practice. there is no offense taken about that practice. but here, behind where i stand, mr. speaker, we had president calderon take issue with arizona's immigration law. and even though he said he strongly agrees with the arizona law and terrible idea that could lead to racial profiling. not an exact quote. so if president calderon is so offended by the law that arizona has passed, i would take him to the simplest lessons in reasoning that was perfected by the greeks. if you're not offended by the united states federal immigration law that sets a standard that is more stringent than the arizona imgation law, but you are offended by the arizona immigration law, the only reason that could remain is that he is offended that arizona law enforcement would be enforcing arizona immigration law. that would tell me that president calderon is insulted or offended by arizona state and political subdivision law enforcement officers. and i would suggest that the former member of congress from colorado and my friend, tom tancredo got it right when he said you could understand what's going on by the objectors of the arizona law, the higher the level hysteria, the greater the law will be effective. they don't believe if they ever read the bill, they don't believe that it's unconstitutional or violates the preemption standard or case law out that that prohibits local law enforcement that enforces immigration law, their argument that helped them arrive at a result that they want, open borders, full blown amnesty, pass the citizenship, more voters and more people coming into the united states to cash in to this giant a.t.m. called america and this breakfast i hosted this morning, since it's a confidential discussion, it was raised by one of the members in the upper midwest and rust belt state said he has watched as generations of americans have arrived here from foreign lands, because they had a dream, because they had a passion and wanted to build on that dream and here they could have the freedom to do so and have the constitutional rights and protections that man has ever known, right to appropriate, rule of law and a nation that was founded on judeo-christian principles and people came to build on that and that is a great core of the american experience and the american civilization, but he raised the point that when i start bringing in tens of millions of people who come here for a different reason, a different reason rather than build, that people coming here bleesk that they can cash in on the welfare state, that someone else is going to do the work and there is going to be money that gets get kicked out of this, he worries about the future of our nation because they and their children and their children's children will have a different view about what the work ethic is for example. the responsibilities we have to stand up and support the rule of law and hold everyone accountable to the american dream, which embodies a responsibility that we have to utilize this blessing that we have that is passed to us from the previous generation and to leave this world and this country in a better place than when we found it. this is the obligation. and if they come here for a different reason, this is new that has taken place because we have only been a welfare state. when my grandmother came here a little over 100 years ago, if people walked across the great hall at ellis island and had a gymp and they looked too pregnant, if something wasn't right and even though they we screened before they got on the boat, they shipped them back on the boat. 2% that arrived, they were put back on the boat and sent back to the country ey came from because the united states was filtering for physical specimens, good mental specimens, people who could sustain themselves in this growing country. but today, it's anything but. only 7% to 11% of the legal immigration in america is based on merit. the rest of it is completely out of our control with family reunification, but not based on merit. what kind of a country would not have a policy to enhance the economic, cultural and social well-being of the united states of america? that's one of my salient points and i yield to the the gentleman from from texas. mr. gohmert: it brings to a point something i think our friend from iowa and i can agree from a quote from our president that was quoted from president calderon and to give you the exact quote again, president calderon, in talking about the arizona law said that, quote, introduces a terrible idea using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement, unquote. now that is just blatantly not true. absolutely not true. using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement. that is -- flies in the face of the facts. and the facts of this bill. but then he goes on, and here's the part i believe my friend would agree with me in congratulating the president not on the first part of the quote, baugh he is applying this to the arizona law where he says the new law carriers a great amount of risk when core values we care about are breached, unquote, but the part that is in there is so important to us in the united states, and that is that there is, quote, a great amount of risk when core values that we all care about are breached. now, i grew up with my mother and dad telling me if i ever have an emergency, if i'm ever in trouble, look for someone in uniform, because i can trust them. that's the way i grew up in mount pleasant, texas, and that's the way i have taught our three girls growing up their whole lives, growing up in tyler, texas, that if there's a problem, even if you are worried you might have done something wrong, you go to somebody in uniform, you can trust them. . i've taught them toe the same thing, if somebody were kidnapped no matter what the note says or whatever, you call the f.b.i. and you can trust them. i know so many f.b.i. agents, you can trust them, i know they would lay down their lives in a second. but what about when we come to the point when the federal law enforcement is ld by their commander in the white house that enforcing the law is a bad idea? that's problematic. then that spills over until you have somebody who is charged and his whole job is enforcing the immigration laws and he says, if arizona sends somebody that they have detained because they're illegally in the country, he may not even enforce the law that flies in the face just like the president's quote says. it is -- there's a great amount of risk when the core values that we've taught our children, that we all care about are breached. i'm telling you, when you have someone in the federal government charged with enforcing the law and they're being taught and it's coming top down, ignore the law, don't enforce it, they're violating all the core values that we've tried to instill in our children. and the things that we grew up believing. and this country is not the country we hoped for that we dreamed for. it becomes like the country that so many immigrants flee illegally because they're not based, their country does not have the rule of law that's enforced, too much graft and corruption, you come to this country, don't ask us to ignore the rule of law. some of us, whether, like the four years i had in the army, time as a prosecutor, a judge, 5 1/2 years in congress, an oath given by the speaker to the new congressman from hawaii, we took an oath to follow the law. we're supposed to support and defend the constitution. this flies in the face of all those oaths when you say, ignore the law, it means nothing, we'll get around to enforcing it somewhere down the road. it means i've spent most of my life for nothing because the rule of law mea nothing. i implore people, do not come to this country and ask me to say that my adult life has been for nothing because the rule of law means something. it means nothing to them. it does mean something. it's meant something to me. it always will. i know, and i know my friend from iowa knows and i know the speaker knows, if we don't have the rule of law that's applied across the board, and i think better in this country than in any country in the history of the world, then we devolve into the ashes from which we rose and we are just a historic memory and nothing more. i yield back to my friend from iowa. mr. king: i thank the gentleman from texas. i'm standing here listening, thinking about what it means to be in a country that in the history of the world, there's been no country that has more profound respect for the rule of law. and the thought that all his life in the law as a prosecutor, as a judge, all of that activity to have someone declared it's all for nothing, behind it all was a facade simply there to facilitate somebody's political agenda. that's what it will come down to. i think back to the course of history and earlier, i spoke of the greeks, but i take this rule of law back to rome. roman law that survived the dark ages and manifested itself as the foundation of old english common law, they came across to this country and arrived here, let me suggest with the mayflower, 390 years ago, with pilgrims who came here for religious liberty and religious freedom to get out from underneath the athleticism ki, to be le to worship as they pleased, and the traditions of old english common law that came here and the injustices that came from old english common law were the injustices correct in a large way in the traditions and in the declaration, defining the declaration and corrected in the constitution of the united states. one of the reasons we are a great nation, one of the reasons that we are the unchallenged greatest nation in the world, is because one of the essential pillars of american exceptionalism is the rule of law, mr. speaker. when we look at the difference between the country represented by president lderon and the country represented by president obama, our traditions are entirely different. as i listened to president calderon's speech, he said, we're founded on the same principles. he said they were founded 200 years ago on the same principles of the united states. that's my recollection from the speech, i don't have it in front of me. it struck me, i would like to ask him to explain that to me, how we are founded on the same principles, the right to live, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, could that be in a mexican constitution that's 00 years ago -- 200 years old? i hope it is, i hope i just missed it this country was founded for religious liberty, it was founded on the rule of law, it was founded on the basic principle that our rights come from god and we hold these truths to be self-evident and all men are created equal for certain in-- with certain inalienable rights, among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. america was founded by shopkeepers and farmers, a nation that wrote in its constitution that we're not going to confer any title or royalty on anybody in this country. we're going to shed the trappings of royalty and be a nation that's empowered from right that come from god and come directly to the people and the people bestow the responsibility on government. that's what america was founded upon. and we believed for a long time that our voices mattered. we have been engaging in these debates well before the declaration of independence. patrick henry's speech was man testation of many decades of americans seeking to rule themselves before they threw the yoke of king george off in 1776 and cullmy nated it with the ratification of the constitution in 1787 and finishing in 1789. we're a different nation. when i asked the historian of mexico in mexico city abou the experience -- the colonial experience of mexico versus the colonial experience of the united states, his response was, well, about 7% of mexico are the aristocracy. they've run the country from the beginning. 93% are the people who are being run. and they have no tradition of being able to have a voice that actually changed and shifted the government and directed the government. not a government of the people but a government of the aristocracy, run for the aristocracy that managed and controls t people. now i hope president calderon is breaking that mold. i hope vi sin tee fox started -- i hope vicente fox started it and i hope president calderon continues it. they have suffered thousands and thousands of casualties in thed my tholve war against the cartels but they have a very heavy lift down there. it isn't that mexico mirrors that experience of the united states in my view, i think it's a different history, it's a different experience, it's a different culture, a different set of traditions and yes, we can be friends and we are trading partners and we need to enhance those trades. i want to be supportive of the effort to shut down the drug cartels and we have, mr. speaker, a responsibility in this country to shut down illegal drug consumption to turn down the magnet that draws so many illegal dollars out of the united states to mexico and the violence that is committed there and there and points south and there into the united states. we haven't addressed our side of the problem very well at all. we point our finger at mexico. i want them to do their job too. we can, by goly, shut off the bleeding at the border. that we can do there's $60 billion a year that are wired out of the united states into the western hemisphere, points south, about $30 billion of it goes into mexico, about $30 billion go into central america, the caribbean and south america and the drug enforcement agency does not even have an estimate on what percentage of that $60 billion are launderedllegal drug money. i would hang that point out there and yield to the gentleman from texas. mr. gohmert: thank you. some say, well if you're a caring nation, then you ought to just welcome anybody that wants to come. the problem is, because this nation has been so richly blessed and because we have been a nation that believed in the rule of law and enforced it more fairly across the board than any nation in the history of the world, then opportunities have abounded here and it has been a draw. and i know my friend from iowa was chairman of the immigration scommittee, which i was privileged to serve, and so i know he's aware of these statistics, but it's estimated that between -- out of the over six billion people in the world that one billion to 1.5 billion people in the world would like to come to america. and as mt folks know, we have over 300 million in this country now. if we were to just say there's no borders, you want to come, come on, we are just giving up on our obligation to protect the economy and the people and the way of life in this country so come on. one billion to $1 -- to 1.5 billion people would overwhelm this nation. it could no longer be the greatest nation in the world because you couldn't have an organized, sustained society with a government that functions. it would be overwhelmed. so in order to continue to be that light on the hill that beacon that reagan stalked about, we have to make sure we have managed immigration that we continue to be a beacon so people want to come here, but that we control the immigration so it doesn't overwhelm the economy so that this becomes a matter of regret for those who have come here. i know as my friend from iowa has done, you -- i guess most of us, assist people who have immigration problems. so we have some wonderful, dear, hispanic friends, constituents, whom we are helping to try to legally get in family. because they want to abide by the law. they want to do the right thing because they know the law is important. some people that i love very dearly are hispanic immigrants and you know, having been invited to come to family functions and back when i was a judge, one of the great honors of my time as a judge s to marry a couple and her parents were immigrants and -- it was just so moving. brought tears to my eyes. but i look around at this hispanic group of family and what comes to my mind when i'm with them, when i see them is, they believe in the things that made america great. this family, these dear friends they believe in god. they have a love of family. it's unrivaled. they have a hard work ethic like virtually nobody else can even aspire to. it's a beautiful thing. i have great hopes that that -- that those three things that you find generally so often in hispanic communities are what's going to reinvigorate this country and get us back on track and get us back the things that george washington tray -- prayed for this country when he resigned as commander in chief of the revolutionary military. those are good things. but we owe it to all the people, those who have immigrated legally, those who have been here, grandchildren, great grandchildren of immigrants, people that are native americans, we owe it to all of them to keep this country strong so it continues to be a land of opportunity and i come back to that prayer that

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