i had to wait until she broke up with this boyfriend and then i moved in for the kill. and so i started dating my wife, cindy, when she was 15 and i was 17. and we dated five and a half years before we got married. we would have gotten married sooner but we were afraid to stay by ourselves so we had to wait just a little while. but we've now been married 32 years and i can tell you that i can't imagine not being married to sydney. as i look and we talk about national marriage week and you look at the joys and troubles that you go through in life and for us part of that was having a son with special needs, our son livingston has a syndrome and the difficulty of going

through that with him is something i never could have done without that bond of marriage and that strength that came not only from the lord but from my relationship with my wife. and so we have been blessed with our son livingston and our daughter, maggie, and having that family together and them having us together i think helps us as we build our society and move forward. so i want to commend the gentleman from mississippi for having this event today where we can come and speak on that and i want you to know that i'm a very smart husband too. i'm giving this speech wearing the tie that my wife gave me for valentine's day last year, so hopefully that will score points. but i want to say as we look at this, let's try to encourage people that are going through difficulties in their marriage

to stay together, to keep that family together and this is something that we can build on that will benefit our society. with that i yield back. mr. nunnelee: thank you, mr. harper. now i'd like to call on my friend, mr. lamborn, the gentleman from colorado, recognize you. mr. lamborn: i request permission to address the house. mr. speaker, i thank the gentleman from mississippi for putting this time together, and i rise today in support of national marriage week. in so many ways from so many sources, marriage is under attack in america. when we consider the many social problems facing our country right now, the erosion of marriage and family is at the core of many of them. scholar michael novack once famously referred to the family as the, quote, original

department of health, education and welfare, unquote. because of providing the needs of its members and the next generation. study after study has shown the tremendous advantages for children and society as a whole when there is the sustained presence of mothers and fathers in the home. families in which mothers and fathers strive together to nurture their children have advantages over every other family forum that has been studied to date. today we are seen that marriage is increasingly in trouble in america. high rates of divorce, nonmarital childbearing and single parenthood were once problems primarily associated with poor communities. now, the american retreat from marriage is moving into the heart of the social order, the middle class. there is a widening gulf between the middle class where a sharp decline in marriage is at work and the most educated and of a lieutenant americans where they're stable or even improving. as unwed childbearing continues

to climb, risking continued social breakdown and increased government dependency, national leaders should be encouraging stable family formation, not redefining marriage. i call upon congress to recognize the intrinsic good that results to all of society when husbands and wives strive to uphold their marriage vows and to raise children in loving and stable homes. thank you, mr. speaker, and i want to thank the gentleman from mississippi for putting this time together on such an important issue, and i yield back. mr. nunnelee: thank you, mr. lamborn. now, mr. speaker, i would ask that you recognize the gentleman from oklahoma, mr. lankford. mr. lankford: i thank the gentleman for hosting this time. this is a conversation at the end of the day, after all the votes are over on the house floor and all the hustle and bustle and we should shut down

and talk about issues like this week being national marriage week. just for a moment to be able to pause on an area that we really do agree on as a congress and so many people can gather around, to celebrate marriage, what marriage has meant in our own families, what it means in our nation. 20 years ago this may i watched my bride walk in with her wedding dress and i could never begin to explain the emotion of that. it's a moment i will never forget, seeing her smile and thinking for the rest of my life i'm going to spend it with that lady. love is an amazing thing, but marriage is not just love, it is commitment. it is the foundation of our culture. it is the very essence of what we call family. for me as a follower of jesus christ, i also understand that marriage is one of the few things that survived the fall of man.

marriage existed in the garden of eden and it still exists today and while i fully appreciate and understand the dynamics of single parenting, growing up in a single parent family myself, i understand how hard my mother worked. i can understand from her perspective have at the picked up a newborn child and looked in that newborn's face and say i hope this child grows, gets great grades, goes to a good clemming, gets married and gets divorce. it's intrinsic within us that we get it and we honor that. we see an elderly couple in the park and see them smiling at each other and we wonder how many decades they spent with each other and we honor them as a culture because they have strived for so many years and been committed for so many years to each other. and it is to be honored, and

it's a good thing for us to stop in the hussle of this day and to -- hustle of this day and to honor marriage again. let me say as a government as well, marriage is a big deal to us because there is a direct proportion, the weaker our families are the more government has to stand up and provide services. the stronger our families are, the less there is a need for government. you'll see it in law enforcement, you'll see it in social services, you'll see it in food stamps. on and on and on. the stronger our families are the less government we need. and as our families collapse, we have an acceleration of government to try to fit in the gaps. it is this uniting aspect of our culture. white, black, latino, asian, american indian, every race, faith, family is the key and marriage is the essence of that. quick story. few weeks ago at the martin luther king day festivities in oklahoma city, parko valderrama, who works the gang

unit, he is a fantastic officer with a terrific reputation in our community, stood up and he began to talk about marriage and about families and he made a statement and he said, of all the gang arrests they do and all of all the gang interventions they do in oklahoma city, he said 1% of the gang members that i pick up come from married intact families. 1%. the more our families fall apart, the more government has to rise up. intact families you have a lower risk of druge use in those kids, -- drug use in those kids. they have safer homes with less abuse. they have less risk of sexual abuse. we should maintain that in our federal policies that in every way possible we support marriage, not discourage marriage. great example that is the marriage penalty that's in s.s.i. right now.

if you're on disability insurance and you're single, you get one payment. but if you're married, it's much lower. you're single you could have one amount and you can have one amount of assets but if you're married it's less. it's a disincentive for a person on s.s.i. to be married. i personally interacted with people in oklahoma city that have been living together for years. when i asked them about it and said, why don't you get married, why don't you settle this commitment? his response to me was, i can't afford to do that. i'll lose part of my s.s.i. benefit. we as a government should do everything we can to make sure there are no marriage penalties in any of our social service programs because the best thing that can be done to pull families out of poverty is a stable, strong home. and when there's a stable, strong marriage, that will build up families. and the more we step in as a

government and say, i know your family's falling apart but we will subsidize you to a level you have to get married, it's absurd on its face. the cultural thing that pulls us all together, every race, every religion, is marriage being the center of that home. and for every family that i ever talked with, the hope for their children is that they're married and they stay married. it's still a core foundation of our culture. many marriages fall apart, but we as a nation stand beside marriage. it's a great week to celebrate national marriage week. and with that i yield back. mr. nunnelee: mr. speaker, it is my honor to participate in national marriage week along with my bride of 30 years, tori.

in fact, it was february 13, 1980, that she and i went out for the first time and on that night i found a friend, a friend that would be a life partner. couple years later we were married. you know, the purpose of national marriage week, as has been articulated here on the house floor tonight, is to recognize the benefits and the stability that strong marriages bring to society. now, its purpose is not to belittle those that have never been married. neither is its purpose to make those who may have previously been married feel like their value to america is somehow not important. i recognize tonight there are thousands of single parents

struggling. they're struggling every day to make ends meet. they're trying to balance two tough full-time jobs, jobs of being the sole breadwinner and provider of a family and the full-time job of being a parent . but it's also important that we not forget to recognize the importance of strong marriages in our society. the home is the fundamental unit of society. the home is the system whereby values are transmitted from one generation to the next. studies have shown that children raised in intact married homes are nor likely to attend college -- more likely to attend college. they're physically and emotionally healthier. they are less likely to be

physically or sexually abused. they are less likely to use drugs or alcohol. they're less likely to be involved in a teenage pregnancy. the home was the first institution established on earth. in fact, it's older than the institutions of religion, of government or education. the home is the only institution we have on earth that is exactly the same as it was before sin entered the earth. and today we stand on the foundations of the homes created by our ancestors and a strong america and -- in the next century begins with strong homes today. strong homes begin with strong

marriages. i've known this to be true in my own life. while their story is not unique, in fact, it's a story that's replicated throughout america. next week there's a couple in tupelo, mississippi, that will celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary. they married as children in 1957. she was 17. he was an old man of 19. if their compatibility had been put into one of the match making computer programs that is available today and all their data had been input, those computers, i'm convinced, would have spit out a three-word message -- are you kidding? he had lived all of his 19 years of life on a small and

poor farm in mississippi. he'd rarely traveled from the place of his birth. on the other hand, she was born in pittsburgh, pennsylvania. she had lived there until her family was transferred to mississippi as she was to begin the 11th grade. . the summer after she graduated from high school, they met. she counsel -- canceled her plans to attend college because she met what would be her life partner. while their background -- while their backgrounds had very little in common, their families shared two very important values, a strong faith in god and a commitment to the family unit. their first night together, they

got down on their knees and they committed their marriage to god and they committed themselves to each other. over the ensuing 55 years, they shared many good days, the birth and adoption of seven children. her graduation from college, an event that had been delayed by almost two decades. his becoming very successful in the life insurance business, including becoming the president of one of the state's largest and most successful life insurance companies. the birth of 14 grandchildren. seeing all seven of their children given the opportunity to obtain a college education. but just like in so many families, every day has not been a bright one.

trying to raise children while building, there were a lot of times when there was not a lot of money left at the end of a long month. they've held hospitalized children, some hospitalized with routine childhood illnesses and others with life-threatening conditions and they have had long nights in the hospital not knowing if that child would make it to see the morning. they have had to console a griefing daughter as she was consoling a son. a griefing daughter who was far too young to be a widow. they leaned on each other as he was terminated from the company that he had built. he was the casualty of a

corporate merger. through the good days as well as the bad, the commitment they made to god, the commitment they made to each other has endured. and while the word retirement is not in their dictionary, they are beginning their eight decade on earth and beginning it each day with each other. and their seven children are scattered from knoxville to san antonio and each are contributing members in their communities. one of them lives in mississippi, but works part-time in washington, d.c.,. and tonight he is proud to stand on the united states house of representatives and on behalf of their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren say thank

you, thank you to your commitment to each other, because your commitment to each other, your commitment to your family will not be measured by years, but rather it will be measured by generations. this story is not unique. in fact, it's representative of the millions of stories told by millions of families that have made america great. but as we stand here tonight, we need to be mindful that because of value of strong marriages bring to society, the policies of government should support strong marriages and not oppose them. and all too often, whether it's in tax policy, housing policy, policy of federal benefits, the policies of government are

stacked against families. if we are to truly believe that families are the foundation of a strong america, we need to make the policies of government support and enhance those families. thank you. i recognize the gentleman from texas, mr. gohmert. mr. gohmert: thank you. appreciate my friend, mr. nunnelee's effort, in recognizing the role that america has had in fostering the greatest building block any society has ever known. marriage. plain and simple. i was blessed to have had two parents that loved each other,

loved each other enough to fuss at each other when they didn't feel like the other one was doing the right thing, but as mr. lankford from oklahoma pointed out, it's not only about love, it's also about commitment. and as anybody who has studied sociology and really wants to be honest about the history of the world, the greatest societies in the history of the world have had as their building block the marriage between a man and a woman. now, my wife was blessed to have been born and raised by a couple who loved her as her natural parents and loved each other. and the commitment was always there. her dad passed away years ago and her mother is still alive

and blesses us. my dad remarried a year after my mother died in 1991 and both have been a blessing to us and to our children. and it was a great blessing to me when i met kathy when i was in law school and she was an undergrad at baylor and somebody again this weekend said, your wife is so cute. i had no idea. and i have to explain to people because she met me and married while i had hair. i couldn't get someone cute, but back then i had hair and i know it's hard to believe and i actually looked ok when i had hair. but any way she stuck with me for 33 1/2 years now and we have been truly enriched to have three wonderful daughters.

learned so much about the nature of god by being a father, learned a little more by being a judge, but marriage has truly been the enhancement beyond my faith in christ, the number two thing in my life as far as the blessing that i received. when we look at the laws regarding marriage, we know there's a great deal going on. the court, as i understand it today, struck down a law that said marriage is between a marriage and a woman. it's interesting that courts -- that there are some courts in america where the judges have become so wise in their own eyes that they know better than nature or nature's god.

it was interesting seeing what happened in iowa a year and a half ago after an iowa supreme court unanimously, well, they held en banc, having been a chief justice of a court of appeals, that means -- sometimes that means that nobody wanted to be out there signing the decision by themselves so that perhaps behind the scenes, they may have said, i'm making that a full decision en banc and so help me out here by all let's agree to this. three of them came up for an up or down vote and for the first time in iowa's history, the voters in iowa voted to terminate the time as judge of three of the nine judges -- or

seven -- but three of them were up and they were terminated. and one of the things i found interesting as i went on a bus trip across iowa, i loved the iowa folks. all i -- all i had to do is pull out the decision written by the iowa court and read in that decision how those judges had become wise in their own eyes that they said that even though the state of iowa raised as one of their issues that there was biological evidence that supported a marriage between a man a woman and they, the supreme court, so wise beyond nature, so wise beyond nature's god, they could not find any evidence whatsoever to support the notion of marriage being between a man a and a woman.

our voters will start laughing and some would gasp in shock that people that had so many years of education -- you know, at least 18, 19, 20 years of education have studied and looked at the evidence and could not find any indication that nature or biology supported marriage between a man and a woman. well, nature seemed to like the idea of an egg and a sperm coming together because of pro -creation. apparently they thought the sperm had far better use some other way biologyically, combining it with something else. but the voters of iowa came back and said, you know what? if you're not smart enough to figure out actual plumbing as my friend, steve king," splande it

and that's what they did. i believe the bible, the biblical statement that the two shall become one flesh and the two become one. and it's amazing -- heck a wrote a song for my wedding in which i pointed out that we use 10 senses, instead of five. and you do, and you learn from the senses of your mate. you grow together. and you apparently grow the point, good example, which there was a prosecutor who prosecuted in my court when i was a judge, and he had had a couple, both the man and wife were on the same jury panel of from which

the jury of 12 was to be drawn, and he was asking the husband, sir, the laws of texas require that you cannot be on a jury unless you can independently vote your own conscience. so i have to ask you, sir, you are under oath, will you be able, if you were on a jury with your wife to vote your own conscience? and the man said yes, of course, i can vote my own conscience. i'll ask my wife what's my conscience and then i'll vote it. it won't be a problem. we become one, as the bible points out. it broke my heart to hear testimony on sentencing of a gang leader in tyler, who had been convicted of murder, who

was being harassed about his gang membership -- he had heard all the testimony about his gang. and he pointed out, look, you keep saying all these bad things about gangs, but let me tell you, my mother was never around. i never knew my father. the gang -- my gang is the only family i've ever known. they're my family. you are trash-mouthing my family. they cared about me. they supported me. we cared about each other. and it led to murder. it led to all kinds of crimes. there was a reason that the most important building block of a stable society is a marriage between a man and a woman. i was in the soviet union as an exchange student in 1973.

visiting a day care before anybody had even heard of day care, really, in the united states, in mount pleasant, texas. we had momma stark. and if my mother had to go somewhere, where we were little bitty and old enough to go back to school, she would drop us off and we didn't know it was called day care at the time. by the time i weren't to the soviet union as an exchange student, i was appalled. it was actually shocking to the conscience to see a place where the government had dictated what every child should know about relationships, about the lack of religion, because they preached agentism -- aethism.

they taught the children what they should know about everything. and we were told that it was so important that each child be taught only what was permissible to the government, that if it were ever learned that a parent was teaching or telling a child anything at home that was not in accordance with the teamings and dictates of the government, the child was removed from the home and the parents were not allowed to have any contact with what was deemed to be an asset of the government and nothing to do with the home. . and that was because in that

society they believed that marriage was not important. it was the government that was the be all, end all. it was the government that would teach and would raise the children and they were only loaning them to parents until such time as they did something the government didn't like and then they took them away. and it was not normally any type of sexual abuse. the worst offense it seemed to be from what i heard from people i talked to there was if you taught something that was not in keeping with what the government taught. and, you know, i thank god that i lived in a country where my parents could teach them things that were true and things that were right and not some government that would be wishy-washy depending on who

would be in charge of the government. not some government that would perhaps take away the rights that were an endowment from our creator. it was the parents that would train and teach out of love. and then you find out, as i have over the years, our government ever since i got back from the soviet union year after year has moved as if it's an adversary of marriage. yet, as my colleagues before me pointed out, the study mr. nunnelee pointed out, of course we have some of our greatest citizens come from single parent homes, but if you want to play the odds, the odds are that a child is more appropriately adjusted if they come from a two-parent home, a loving mother and father

playing two different roles and yet we find out, gee, for decades now there has been instituted what is called a marriage penalty so that if a wife and a husband are married and they are both working, then they are going to pay extra in taxes. the message being subconsciously our government thinks you're better off not married, just live together. as mr. lankford pointed out, with social security, we do the same thing. you talk to elderly people who would love to be married because they believe in marriage from a religious standpoint and from a doctrinal standpoint and yet if they get married they lose government benefits. indication that the government thinks it's better to live together rather than be married. not only that but we've seen it over and over since the mid

1960's a congress who simply wanted to help when a deadbeat father wouldn't help with the financial raising of his children, congress said, you know what, let's help these single moms that are trying to make it. let's give them a check anytime they have a child out of wed lock. and after over four decades we've gotten what we paid for. we're between 40% and 50% of children being born out of a single mom despite the evidence that more children are better adjusted if they have a mother and father in a well-adjusted home. so i get to congress as a result of my wife, kathy, being a full partner. she taught for a while. she has her masters in business administration in accounting,

and she taught for a while while i was running but we saw if we really believe what was appropriate for our marriage, for our lives to try to get this country back on track, it was going to take a partnership. so she left teaching and came on board and was a full-time campaigner with me as my partner. we could hit two places at the same time and i was never shocked to hear that people loved kathy more than they loved me and they'd assume to have her over me. so that went on. we cashed out every asset we had except our home so that i practiced a little law when i could, made a few bucks. but at the same time we cashed out every asset, paid high penalties so we could live on that. i didn't see it was a big risk because i knew if i didn't get

elected i could go back and make more money than i ever would in congress. i've done it before. i could do it again. but at the same time this is what we believed we were supposed to do. and we were allowed to continue that partnership after i got elected because you can't avoid having a campaign office. you got to keep raising money. it's part of getting re-elected. you got to keep campaigning basically for the whole two-year period between each election. and so we kept my wife on for the same thing she had been making at teaching and after two years of a true partnership, i mean, we were true partners, i was fighting the battles here in washington and she was taking care of things in our district, going to all events that i couldn't

attend as my partner and then when speaker pelosi took the gavel, our friends across the aisle determined that we wouldn't allow things like that because there are -- there were some people who in a corrupt manner had overpaid family members to do nothing. so the message went back clearly that my wife could no longer be my partner and take care of the campaign issues. i could no longer pay her the same thing she got as a teacher, that she had to go back and since we cashed in all our assets and since i did not want my children to be coming out of college completely incumbered with massive debt from loans and since the money that we had tried to save for college had been expended, we

still needed her to work. we still got college loans to be paid even now. but she's no longer my partner as far as this enterprise because this congress said under speaker pelosi, we don't want wives working as the campaign partner of a member of commerce -- as a member of congress. so it seems like over and over the message keeps coming back that congress wants to be an enemy of marriage. then you get the president's jobs act last fall, and although the president said he was going after millionaires and billionaires, if you looked at the pages that concerned the increased taxes, the president revealed his true heart and that was that he considered you

to be a millionaire or billionaire -- and obviously you're not -- if you make $125,000 a year because under the president's jobs act you make $125,000 a year you were going to get popped, not merely with an alternative minimum tax, you were going to get popped with an extra tax on top of that. and that didn't matter if you were married, filing single or married fibling jointly, a married person could only claim $125,000 before they were going to get popped with president obama's extra tax. not exactly a millionaire or billionaire, but apparently the president felt if you are going to have the inappropriate conduct such that you would get married, then you have to get taxed more than others. how do you you know that? because in the president's same

section, if you are not married and you are filing, you could claim either a $200,000 exemption or a $250,000 exemption. therefore, if you were single and lived together, then you could claim either $400,000 or $500,000 exemption under the president's jobs act. and i was always wondering, and i hope someday the president will make clear why he had such animous of marriage toward a man and a woman. he seems to be happily married, seems to have a wonderful wife. why would he penalize others in the country simply because they are married? i didn't understand it. i still don't understand it. and i'm hoping before this year's up that enough people across america will make their voices heard that, you know what, we've gotten away from it, but the studies keep making

it impossible to avoid admitting, marriage between a man and a woman is a good thing. it is the building block of a stable society. and as those who took an oath to uphold our constitution, in essence, do all we could for this country, we owe it to the country to do what we can for marriage. and i do appreciate my friend, mr. nunnelee, so much for taking a whole hour and for giving some of the rest of us a chance to come speak with him with one voice. i yield back to my friend. mr. nunnelee: thank you, mr. gohmert. as we wrap up this hour, recognizing the importance of national marriage week, i want to conclude, recognize my own

life's partner. february 13 will mark the day little over three decades ago that i thought i was going out to eat dinner with a blind date. what i was doing was being introduced to a friend, a life-long friend. as we talked that night we found out that the things we shared we wanted to share with one another. and i've learned so much from my now bride of 30 years, tori, but i think one of the things that i've learned from her that applies to national marriage week, i've heard her say time and time again, love's not a feeling, it's an action. and you can't help how you feel about something. you can help how you act. there's another young family

i'm reminded of as i celebrate national marriage week. young couple that a little under six years ago i sat at a church, watched their families smile with excitement, watch them exchange promises to one another and here in their early years of marriage, they've had words introduce to their vocabulary that they didn't think would be part of their everyday conversation. words like buy opsy -- biopsy, radiation. and as i talked to that young bride over the christmas holidays, i told her, i said, you didn't sign up for this, did you? she looked at me and smiled and

she said, yes, sir, i did. but i committed for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, i did sign up for this. no, i wouldn't choose it, but i'm here and i'm committed. so, mr. speaker, as we conclude our recognition of national marriage week, i'm reminded of the observation of old, the observation that god thought it was not good for man to live alone. . for god put us in families. i thank god for those families. i hope and i pray that the policies of this government will continue to support marriages and families so we can have a strong america. and with that, mr. speaker, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the

gentleman yields back the balance of his time. under the speaker's policy of january 5, 2011, the gentleman from california, mr. garamendi, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader. mr. garamendi: mr. speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to share with those folks that are watching c-span and hopefully there are many, some of the issues that really

confront america today. we just heard a discussion on the fate of the american family and comes at that issue from one specific point of view and one specific section of the total problem. and that has to do with the issue of marriage and how we define marriage here in the united states. but there's also another way to -- and other very, very important issues that define the fate of the american family. and i would like to take that issue up tonight in the context of the economy. the american family is faced with many, many challenges. one of the most significant challenges is income, jobs, how can american family make it in america today. what does it take for an american family to make it. one of the most compelling charts that i have seen over

these last several months is this one, which really describes the fate of the american family compared to the fate of the top 1% of americans. we've seen an enormous shift in the income and the wealth in america over the last 30 years. largely because of governmental policies. this blue line indicates how well the superwealthy are doing. they have seen a nearly 370% increase in their annual income. their wealth would see a similar, enormous increase. down here on the bottom are the rest of americans, the other 99%. if you took all of those together, you would see that the bottom 50% have seen very, very little increase in their annual income. and most of that increase is due

to both husbands and wives working sime you will tan yousely. this is the challenge for the american family, how do they make it in america when in america, we have seen an enormous decline in the great american manufacturing sector, where the middle class really succeeded. and so tonight, what i would like to talk about with my colleagues who will shortly be joining me is how they can make it in america, by, once again, making it in america. we can do this in america, manufacturing matters. american manufacturing has been in deep trouble for the last 20 years. that trouble has been caused by a variety of issues, some of which are beyond the control of anybody in this nation and

certainly any member of congress , the senate and the presidency. but a far greater part of the american manufacturing issue has been governmental policy. let's see if we can lay the foundation for a discussion on what it takes to once again make it in america. this chart shows what's happened to american manufacturing since 1975. in the 1970's, american manufacturing peaked out somewhere just under 20 million american jobs. those were the good days. that's when the american middle class was at its peak, when more americans were enjoying the greatest share of wealth in

america. that is the time when america was at its ultimate strength, when we had the greatest economy anywhere in the world. beginning that year, in the mid-1970's, we have seen a steady decline of the american manufacturing base. we have seen that decline for a number of reasons. but what we need to understand is that through the 1970's and into the 1980's and into the 1990's, even though there was a decline from 19 million to 17 million manufacturing jobs, it was in the century of 2000 to 2010 that the great decline took place. we are now down to just over 11 million manufacturing jobs in this country. why did this happen? why did we see this great decline?

well, as we try to answer that question, we need to also understand that there was a great increase in one, two and three sectors in the american economy, but it was not matched by the manufacturing sector. the manufacturing sector was headed downward from 19 million to just over 11 million jobs. at the same time, the american economy was on fire. the finance, insurance and real estate economy took off in the united states. i think all of us have heard the term, financial engineering. i'm a graduate of harvard business school. financial engineering was their schtick. that's what they wanted to do.

it wasn't over the nuclear engineering or chemical engineering, it was across the river at the business school. and every other business school in america, if you wanted to make it in america, you had to be a financial engineer. and so we saw the fire economy grow. corporate finance, not corporate finance, but wall street finance, insurance, real estate. and throughout the 1990's, it peaked out. and the best and the brightest in america decided they didn't want to be in manufacturing. after all, that was a dirty, greasy job, they wanted to be financial engineers in real estate, insurance and wall street finance. we know where that got us. we got that what that did to us was great us into the great

bubble from 2000 to 2007 and the great crash. financial engineering turned out to be nothing but paper. we aren't talking about dollars here, but talking about worthless paper and that worthless paper nearly crashed the world economy. so there we have it. we became financial engineers rather than chemical engineers, manufacturing and the rest. so where did our money go? where did the american wealth go? as we saw the decline of the jobs in manufacturing, we also saw the rise of imports. if you go back to the year 1976, you'll see that we were running a very small trade deficit. we were importing and exporting

approximately the same amount. but we were exporting was american-made equipment. we were exporting food that had been processed, food that had been grown. we were exporting machinery and machine tools and airplanes. we were the great exporter of the world. and then government policy began to shift it. and we wound up here in 2008 the great exporters of american money, the great exporters of american wealth. we need to turn this around. we have seen a slight improvement here in the most recent years. but all of this red is basically china. what's happened is that the united states has given up its manufacturing power to china. and to a few other countries. we can see this in certain

industries. for example, the automobile industry. thankfully, as a result of laws that were passed by the democrats and siped by president obama giving him the power through the stimulus program, the american recovery act, the power to bail out the american automobile industry. and he did. the president said, on my watch, i will not allow the american auto industry to die. and he took action. he bail out general motors and chrysler and in so doing, saved the american auto industry and the tens of thousands of small businesses that rely upon that industry for their jobs.

however, that's only part of the story. and here's the rest of the story. other countries that are auto manufacturers have been able to increase their supply chain. and while we still have an automobile manufacturing sector in the united states, we heavily depend upon imported parts for the assembly of automobiles here in the united states. and so other countries actually manufacture the parts. and assemble the autos. but not in the united states. we assemble, but we also import many of the parts. we can change this. and here's what the democrats want to do. we want to change the trend

line. we want to rebuild the great american manufacturing sector, and we can, with good, wise, public policies. we say, make it in america so that america and americans can make it once again. manufacturing matters. i want to share with you and as my colleagues begin to join me, some of the ways in which we can do that. you may have noticed that i'm working on the tail end of a cold. so i will use a lot of charts tonight. here are the policies that we want to put in place. we want to seek manufacturing within the united states. we want jobs and income within

the united states. we are targeting specific industries. and we want to align the trade and tax policies in the united states so we can, once again, re-ignite the american dream. we will go into these in somewhat more detail. and thankfully as i clear my throat and use this lozenge for a few moments, mr. tonko will take over for a few moments. mr. tonko: representative garamendi, thank you for bringing us together in a manner that allows us to look closely at the american economy, the american dream and the decline of manufacturing that represents a serious concern for workers across the country and represents a serious concern for

communities as we engage in this effort to grow jobs and retain jobs. it's important to look at the statistics out there. and just where was the focus, where was the emphasis on job creation and job retention. and could we do a better sort of stewardship, if you will, of our resources and our policies. and i believe the answer is a resounding yes. we can do better. and as was made mention by representative garamendi, it is important for us to acknowledge that the work done here, the challenge, the crises that face us can also be transformed into opportunities. and the opportunity here for this great nation, for the powerful force that we are in the global economy, the opportunity here is to reignite the american dream, reignite

to reignite that greem with the underpinnings of support that comes through three separate dynamics. first, engaging in a small business comeback. inspiring that comeback because the small business is the pulse of american enterprise. it has a -- it is replete with a history of mom and pop operations, of ancestors that built their american dream into an ideas economy, into a service economy that enabled small business to become that very promising enterprise. second, leg -- the second leg of the stool would be that of entrepreneurs, those movers and shakers, the builders, the dreamers if you will, in our society that constantly inspire us with job creation that is driven by ideas and the moving

of ideas into a product and enabling us to, again, create that engine of ingenuity and creativity. then finally a thriving middle class. these are the basic principles, a thriving middle class, that is driven to have additional purchasing power, simply by policy that is done so there's tax fairness, tax justice, in our outcome and so reigniting the american dream is driven by those principles of small business, entrepreneurship and a thriving middle class. basic, simple approach that we have embraced as democrats in the house, driven by a set of policies an goals that will enable us to look at all sectors of the economy and understand that the manufacturing sector was mostly ignored, we focused primarily

on service as a sector of the economy, ignored agriculture, ignored manufacturing. when the focus was on service sector, it was primarily onto the financial services where they were given free rein a and we found that that drove america's economy to its knees. so now we look at the results, we look at the history of the last decade or two, and the precipitous loss of manufacturing jobs from 1997 to 2009, 12-year run, produced a loss of six million jobs in manufacturing alone, representative garamendi, and what that meant was, that indicated, that reflected, personified, the largest such loss in world history. that's unacceptable system of when we talk about reigniting the american dream, there is

work to be done. there's work to be done an it's time for us to engage in a set of policies, resource advocacy and goals established to create ladders of opportunity to enable people to climb up the economic ladder as we have done from our time as a nation, from our humble beginnings, where rags to riches scenarios were common place and where america saw, where imgrants saw this land as the promised land. that's history that ought to speak to us and we can bring back to the appropriate advocacy here the climate that creates manufacturing jobs, makes us competitive in the global economy. mr. garamendi: mr. tonko, thank you very much for joining me, i needed a break. beyond that, let's talk about the specific policies we have been discussing amongst -- well, here in the house, legislations that been

introduced, specific policies that will bring back the american manufacturing sector. indeed it was specific laws written here over the years that were largely, in my view, responsible for those outsourcing of jobs. an interesting word, outsourcing. until december of 2010, an american corporation cowl receive a tax cut -- an american corporation could receive a tax cut for every job they outsourced. that's largely over. there's a little more to be done, but most of those tax breaks have been eliminated in outsourcing american jobs. the president said it so very well in his state of the union, he said, we should not reward companies for sending jobs overseas. we should reward them for bringing those companies -- or those jobs back to the united states.

and that can be done by some of the policies that we're talking about. the president signed a bill authored by democrats, voted on by all democrats and a few republicans that actually encouraged that by giving companies a 100% immediate expensing of all capital equipment that they would invest in the united states. there's two examples and i know you've got some that you've been interested in, that you're authoring, you may want to talk about those and we'll come back and talk about the specific thins we could do. mr. tonko: absolutely. my response to those changes you just shared is it create this is sea change, creates the u-turn in the road and people understand that now we're operating under a different set of principles. you need to invest in america, invest in her work force, and in the job opportunities that

will follow. that's what it's base -- what it basically says. when you look at machine tool operations and activities, and look at that over the last, again, decade or, you will find that in both categories, representative garamendi, you find in both categories of consumption and production of machine tools, we're not in the top three. that ought to be a flag that goes up that draws our attention and would hopefully express a dire sense of urgency. when you see japan and china and germany not only producing the machine tools, they're also consuming, it tells you where the activity is, and it's robust. that's all a matter of policy. those are intentional outcomes that were driven by a very focused agenda in these nations

and america needs to get back, the united states needs to get back to that agenda and i applaud the pd for setting the tone in his recent state of the union message. i applaud the leadership in this house that is coming under the banner of the democratic leadership, that has engaged in make it in america as our mantra, and reigniting our american dream is within our grasp if we begin to advocate a stand that brings back a robust quality. mr. garamendi: i'll take another example of how policy can change what's happened. for a long, long time we would send our tax dollars overseas to buy buses, rail cars, light rail, ferryboats, and the like. every one of us that buys gasoline or diesel fuel pays a federal tax on that. 18.5 cents for gasoline, 25

cents for diesel fuel. that money is used to build transportation systems, roads, bridge, and the like, and where does it go? the buy american laws were largely ignored. however, in the american recovery act, the stimulus bill, money was provided for additional purchase of rail cars, buses, and ferryboats. somehow, wisely, the democrats, who authored the bill, put in a clause that said, that money could only be used, only be used to buy american-made equipment. so what happened in sacramento, california, siemens, the large, german manufacturing company, decided that they would like to have some of that stimulus money, they wanted to build street cars. light rail systems.

so they opened and expanded their manufacturing plant in sacramento to manufacture the street cars for austin, texas. and san diego. made in america. because of a law. that was passed. a prime example of what can be done when we pass the right law that says our tax money must be used to buy american-made equipment. mr. tonko. mr. tonko: i agree that those are great incentives. if we can provide for employment-linked investments in r&d and tax credits, that's a feather in the cap that is a catalyst that draws a great response, great reaction. your indications here of procurement in regard to buy america is very important as one of the cornerstones of our

agenda. but also, i think we need to focus on the investments in infrastructure and energy and the investments in a different order of infrastructure, the human capital. the human infrastructure, making certain that we move forward with the training and retraining of the american worker, advancing higher education, certainly looking at pre-k through 12, and providing the career path opportunities. now, i mention that because the employment linked investments in r&d, brinning back r&d here, where research is, is where manufacturing follows. so i mentioned that, i use the example of wynn kents, it's a recent example and worth mentioning.

wynn kethskents in new york state in my district, i use that as an example, in order for kents plastics to compete effectively in the global marketplace, they kneed to move to an automated portion of their assembly operations. they worked with the local higher ed infrastructure, and we have partnerships in this country that have existed far long time, there's an intellectual exchange of creative genius coming from campus, from private sector, from public sector, it happens. it happens to a great degree. while they developed this automated assembly process for his industry, they also needed to train the workers on this new equipment. so that it brought with it an employment link. and did that through one of the local community colleges, did an reform p.i. automation

design and then did a hudson valley community college driven training process, so you brought about the workers you needed. these are the investments that then produce these very tangible results and very lucrative dividends that enable us to prosper and that's just one small example. i see it over and over again in the 21st congressional district. we're a hub of innovation jobs that are coming, green collar, high tech job, clean energy jobs. that's happening because there is a partnership with government a partnership where government assumes some of the risk or assume as we did with ar pa-e, a department of -- with arpa-e, a department of energy thing, move them along in much quicker stead, so we can develop the jobs associated with that. it's an investment, when you talk about the tool kit here,

it's an investment in employment-linked r&d and tax credit, it's an investment in procurement procedures that link themselves with buy america and then it's the work investing in infrastructure of routine kind, wiring communities, wiring the businesses, making certain that our roads, bridges, rail, are state of the art and then the human infrastructure. creating programs that train, retrain, educate, -- educate workers of the future. you need that in a cutting edge fashion to maintain world leadership. other nations have shown us when they invested they were able to be the giants of the machine operations, the machine tool operations. so it's possible, it's within our reach and it's all about reigniting the american dream. mr. garamendi: that reigniting of the american dream will be

dependent on two factors, the public, small businesses, entrepreneurs putting together their businesses, and at the same time, it's going to be dependent upon public policies. you mentioned education. for the last two years, the democrats have been proposing and pushing a series of pieces of legislation to enhance the ability of americans to go to school. the work force investment board, very, very important. i suspect that that that was one of the programs that your plastic company took advantage of in retraining. our republican friends last year in the budget and in the appropriations tried to reduce the work force investment but we wouldn't have that and we have been able to at least maintain it. . we were able to increase the pell grants so kids can go to college. so we hope they become chemical engineers and not financial engineers as i discussed early

on. if we continue to support the educational system, including such thing as vocational education. we used to do vocational education in america and let it go and as such, we saw dropouts. we need to drive this point home tonight, and that is the research side of it. this is something, mr. tonko, that you know a great deal about. you headed up an organization in the state of new york that was specifically looking at how to enhance the research within the state. share that, and then also share about our policies as democrats for enhancing research. mr. tonko: sure. before my involvement here in the house of representatives, i served as president and c.e.o. of the new york state research and development authority. and it was there that i got to see policy put into action. i had worked in the state assembly. had represented the 105th

assembly in the state of new york for nearly 25 years, last 15 years i served as energy chair. i got to see that energy policy put into action where there were meaningful partnerships with the private sector, where they would retrofit machine operations, manufacturing assembly lines with energy efficiency outcomes. and number one, with the most glutonous user of energy. and it is important for us to become more resousful and that should be a social, economic goal that is embraced by the nation. but beyond that, it saves money when we enable these companies to embrace these new technologies in a way that creates a more competitive outcome for them, especially as we move more north to a global

marketplace, that is the competing ground. also in so doing, there were opportunities to invest in research. now not every story in research is a success story, but the wonderful outcomes, when they are a success story, produce the sort of savings of the environment, savings of our energy supply and savings of the green, the dollars. those are quantifiable benefits that ought to be encouraged by policy. and here, what i see, is this walking away -- we had a hearing the other day on arpa-e, the energy department's programs that model themselves after darpa. and gave us strength for our military that brought about the -- mr. garamendi: the internet.

defense research agency. mr. tonko: and arpa e-is in the advanced research of energy. and we are go to go sit there and battle over the perhaps denying dollars to concepts like this where we found out at the hearing that it is expertly managed, very tight-fisted and outstanding results. we should produce additional resources for a program like that that enables us to stay ahead of the curve and ought to be government's mission. if we are going to reig night the american dream and support small business which is the economic engine of our recovery and if we are going to do it by partnering with entrepreneurs who are the dreamers who develop the ideas for the future that grow into job opportunities, if we are going to do it through a

thriving middle class, it takes focus, it takes policy and we are asking that do to that. it happened in generations past. we saw driven by groups that came here seeing this nation as the land of opportunity, a promised land, why not bring that pioneer spirit back into front line of our thinking, front and center of our thinking, so that what we witnessed in the district, in the humble beginnings of this nation, where my district was the donor area of the erie canal, that became the sebt of innovation and invention, that's

what we can achieve here in reigniting the american dream. mr. garamendi: it's going to depend on the small businesses, the entrepreneurs that are willing to take the risk, willing to take their concept and their idea and put it into a business. along the way, the history of america, as you well described it with the erie canal and we can look at all the other industrial advances that have been made, there has always been a partnership between the government and the entrepreneurs that are out there. the oil industry has enjoyed for more than a century over $13 billion a year of tax subsidies to encourage the production of oil. and it was incredible partnership between the government, not only with tax subsidies but making the public lands available for the exploration and the extraction of oil over the last 100 years,

creating the wealthiest industry in the world. now once an industry has matured, as has the oil industry, we should remove those subsidies and use those subsidies for the new industries that we need. we have been discussing for the last, well, since carter and the first oil embargo, the need for american energy security. most people now believes the american energy security is going to be based upon the continuation of the oil industry and the coal industry at some level, using the natural gas that we now find that is more plentyful as a bridge. let the oil and coal industries wayne while we build -- wane while we bill the renewable industry. if we take those subsidies and shift them to the new

industries, we could see a blossoming of the green industries. in california today, the solar and wind and biofuel industry employs some 320,000 people. it's a growing sector of the american economy. and the policies that eminate from washington, d.c., can either help or hinder that growth of the that growth is not only new jobs here in the united states, but it's also energy independence. the sun shines on the united states. well, not at night, but it does during the day and most parts of the united states, so solar, the wind blows. not just talking about the wind in this chamber, but across the nation. now, we have to couple that with public policies, and i want to speak to one specific policy. and that is shifting the subsidies that the oil industry has had for a century, shifting those subsidies over to the

renewable side of it. and here again, in the renewable side, this bill, h.r. 487, i happen to be the author and kind of pleased with this piece of legislation, this bill would require that the subsidies be used to buy american-made solar and wind and other renewable energy equipment. we should never use our tax dollars to buy a solar panel made in china. we should never use our tax dollars to buy a wind turbine manufactured in germany. if someone wants to go out and buy a solar panel using their own money, buy whatever you want. but if it's our tax dollars, buy american. use our tax dollars to buy american-made equipment. use that to reignite the american dream, to build those machines, those solar panels in

the united states. use our tax money to buy the american-made made equipment whether it's a bus, a train, a plane or a wind turbine. these are public policies that eminate from this house. we can change what's going on in the american manufacturing sector. mr. tonko. mr. tonko: as you talk out pieces of the puzzle there, conjures up all sorts of response that i think we need to provide and share. you talk about the interhit nt nature of -- intermittent use of renewables. the water perhaps, the hydro facilities, perhaps you have a dry season, whatever. we need to advance the notion of the battery as the lynchpin to move aggressively with a

sustainable agenda. so the advanced battery manufacturing that i see taking hold in the 21st congressional district -- mr. garamendi: excuse me. excuse me. why do we come back to the 21st congressional district? mr. tonko: it's the one i know best. what i see happening again, a great intellect being poured into design and the concept of advanced batteries and not only can these batteries move heavy freight, heavy equipment, they can also deal with storage of renewable, intermittent power. once you do that, now you have solved the reliability issue which is important to our operations of energy. to your point, not only is it sustainable and not only does it create energy independence, it speaks to our policies from a national security perspective.

we are purchasing from some of the most troubled spots in the world, if we're not doing that at the moment, we inspire, we cause the world market to do that. and a cartel controls our destiny. is that smart? we are sending hundreds of billions of dollars into treasuries of unfriendly nations that can use that to train troops to use that against our american forces. it speaks directly to our national security issues. and beyond that, when you talk about job creation, when we go energy independent and become more resourceful which we ought to pledge to do simply because no matter how it's generated, no matter the myth of our supply of energy resources, we need to steward those resources in a very deliberate fashion, in a way that is resourceful and not wasteful and we build alternative technologies and build into a renewable mrkt

market and advanced battery design and manufacturing. all of the u.s. and we provide for the training of the work force. we when had invested in our annual work force, green job development, we had those in one seminar, we had the presentation of how they were training plumbers in germany, in a solar hot water agenda, where they were able to put together the training that enabled homes in a very aggressive fashion to use hot water for their high pressure system purposes. what that can do for the nation is an incredible savings to our environment, to our job creation, and to energy costs. absolutely important. and households will do well,

jobs will be created. the environment will be better addressed. and isn't that the goal of a think tank like the house of representatives? instead, why did we ignore manufacturing for a decade and a half? why did we avoid dealing with agriculture and sound energy policy. i ran for this seat simply driven primarily by the lack of a comprehensive energy plan for this nation. how can a nation as great of the united states with all of its small business, all of its manufacturing, it's industrial sector, its households, how can we not develop a comprehensive energy plan? it's what the president has asked us to do. he has challenged us with fairness in the tax code and challenged us in a way that will inspire the reigniting the american dream driven by that notion of small business

support, entrepreneur nurturing and a thriving middle class. it's achievable. and what i would say, we have the format out there, we have the plan. we have work to do. let's move forward. mr. garamendi: there are so many pieces to this puzzle. you have talked about the research and talked about the support of new businesses, particularly in the clean energy sector. as we discuss those things, i keep thinking about what is happening. i think very unfortunately in this debate. it's a political year. and we've got our elections. we have the election of the president and the senate, all of those things are up. and so we take issues and we may take a specific problem and drive that problem to the point of destroying other good programs that are under way. this is happening right now. .

the solindra case. this is a company that was supported by a loan guarantee and it failed. it largely failed because of china's policy of dumping, dumping onto the american market, underpriced solar cells. that's why the company failed. now, we have the opportunity to deal with this, but before i get to how we can deal with he china problem, i want to ask my republican colleagues to be very, very careful as they drive this political issue. because they may succeed in making this a big political issue for this country, but by doing so, they may cause america to turn its attention to away from renewable energy. the very issue you raised, mr. tonko. we have to have energy security

and renewable energy of all kinds is going to be part of that. so we must be very careful, whatever political advantage there may be to the solindra case, be aware, america that underliing this is an extremely important policy in the united states to achieve energy independence torque free ourselveses from the slavery of the oil barrens and dictators -- barons and dictators around the world so we can have a secure energy system in the united states. it will, by necessity, involve renewable energy. make it into a political problem, ok, but don't turn americans' views and hopes away from the renewable clean energy sector. it is vital. we have to have policies in place to support that, just as we have supported the oil

industry for more than a century. put that same support behind the batteries that you talked about, mr. tonko, put that same support behind the biofuel industry, put the same sport behind solar and wind and also the smart grid. right now in my district, lawrence livermore labs is looking at developing a research program on how to integrate these renewable and variable energy systems into the grid so that they all mesh and provide the energy that is needed by america as it changes hour by hour across the united states. a very, very important research project. all of these things come back to government policy and support. so we must be very careful about that. i do want to take up the china currency issue and the dumping of, in this case, solar cells

on the american market. would you like to start that discussion, mr. tonko? mr. tonko: i would like to make a comment on the grid, sometimes we're challenged so that we can walk away from the challenge of the moment and it's not the best thing for us. in 2003, this nation witnessed from the blackout from ohio, through southern canada, the great northeast, new england, new york and some of the the eastern seacoast. all driven by failure in the grid system. never in that year that elapsed was there much discussion of public policy and that was a presidential year and itst just did not get talked up. now, finally, historic investments were made in the grid system, challenging taos step it up, do what's required to use state of the art opportunities for smart grid,

smart thermostats, smart meters, enabling people to have more control, more destiny over their energy usage, over their energy bills, making certain that again we pour ourselves into an investment of a unique type, a historic investment that enables us to go forward with the sorts of responses we need. we need the arteries and veens, the transmission and distribution system to wield the electrons to the workplace, the home place, as it's require. in new york again, in our bordering of canada, if we want to import hydropower from another nation and -- we're well beyond the monopoly setting where you had regional settings, now you go from region to region, state to state. we need rules to do that.

it's not if we're going to do it, it's when we're going to do it. the chance we have now is to move us forward in a way that strengthens this economy, cuts energy costs, provides for more wise use of the energy supplies, enables taos produce the nrbling ideas if it's alternative technology or energy efficiency or what have you, but this nation is replete with a history of inventions that has come through very thoughtful application of what is needed out there by society. for us to have walked away from those challenges is unacceptable. that's what the grid is telling us. you know, you can lay back and say, hey, you don't need an upgraded train system, you don't need an upgraded grid system you don't need broadband you don't need investment in r&d. well that complacency, the contentment people might feel with the status quo will get us nowhere.

in fact, it will push us farther behind as nations bulk up, invest, and commit to a progressive agenda. that's what we call for here to reignite the american dream. mr. garamendi: that american dream will be held back by unfair trade policies that are seriously harming the american economy. early on, i put this -- i'll find it in a moment. early on, i put this up. i don't know that you were here at the time. this is the american trade deficit. much of this deficit is a deficit in trade with china. a lot of that deficit is caused by chinese currency manipulation. the chinese currency is undervalued somewhere around 20% to 25%, maybe 27%, which

gives their manufacturing sector a 20% or 25% advantage because of the currency manipulation. mr. tonko: would you yield for a point? i believe i saw earlier a chart you had on manufacturing jobs? could you put that one up on the's el over the -- over that there, and point to the -- to the 1997 to 2009 curve. it's a startling mimicing, those two graphs mimic each other. i think you can draw a correlation there that deals with the loss of manufacturing jobs as it relates to the trade deficit. i think that is something that ought to guide our discussions, guide our policy development, and actually address the sort of response we need in terms of job creation, job retention. mr. garamendi: thank you.

i really hadn't noticed but they almost parallel, one is right on top of the other. you can put that blue line and it copies the red line that is the growth in the american trade deficit. i want to just deal with this china thing quickly, we only have another seven minutes before we yield the floor. a year ago, this house with both republican and democrat support, passed the china currency legislation. that would require the department of commerce to put a countervailing tariff on imported chinese goods. if that trade -- if that currency manipulation were to continue. it went over to the senate, it did not pass the senate this year, i should say this session in 2011, the senate passed a similar bill that would impose

a countervailing tariff on chinese goods as long as china maintained its currency manipulation. came over to the house nearly seven months ago. the speaker and the republicans have refused to take up that bill, the very same bill that a previous year we voted on bipartisan. this is an important piece of legislation because it would deal with this issue -- two issues. the los of american manufacturing jobs and the extraordinary trade deficit that is the export of american money to china. it is the policy behind many of the problems in the manufacturing sector and it is policy changes that we have the power to put in place, to reignite the american

manufacturing sector. to rebuild it. and simultaneously put in place the ladders of success, education, research, entrepreneurship, support of small businesses, all of those things that actually does reignite the american dream. mr. tonko, why don't you take the last two minutes and then we can wrap up. mr. tonko: what i hear here is that an election outcome is more important than the outcome for the american worker. and when political party benefit trumps the american worker, or trumps america's manufacturing base, trumps hope into the future, that's a regrettable outcome. and what we need to focus on is the big picture. if there's upset and upheaval because we're coming back from what was a very long and deep

and painful recession, if that's upsetting news to a political scene, then we have lost the spirit that is required right now to bring america back and to reignite the american dream. that reigniting of the american dream, i believe, is what people want to see in action. they keep asking washington to work together in a bipartisan, bicameral spirited way. work in a way that will engage the policies and advocate for the resources that will build the hope back into the fabric of america's families, her individuals. and it's within our grasp. these ladders of success, these rungs of opportunity, they are a very achieveable goal. we saw what happened when you ignore manufacturing. we saw what happened when you avoid sound agriculture policy.

we saw what happened when you didn't get aggressive about a -- an innovative ajeb da for energy jeb ration, energy alternatives, energy efficiency. these are the things that people are asking us to do as leaders. they're saying, look, we asked you to lead. not to sit content with status quo, not to watch others pass us by. but our best days lie ahead of us. i'm filled with optimism about reigniting that american dream. i saw what happened. i saw what happened in my district when there was a commitment. you know, the erie canal itself, that came about in response to tough economic times. and the leadership then said, let's do this. let's build a port on the coast out of new york, let's wed it to the great lakes, let's inspire progress. look what happened. that response to troubling economic times drew upon the

leadership, it produced the leadership, it gave it a face and gave it a voice and the message was, we're going to build. we're not going to cut our way to prosperity. cut our way to opportunity. cut hope. we're going to build hope, we're going to build and invest in america, her workers. our best days lie ahead of us, representative garamendi and thank you for the chance to join you this evening. mr. garamendi: we still have a minute, i see my republican colleagues were going to take the floor in a few moments, and as i recall, they said that the key is doing away with regulations. mr. tonko: are those the same regulations wen want to take away from wall street? mr. garamendi: i hope they don't want to take away the regulations we put in place to keep wall street under criminal. but regulations are a small part of the overall problem. there's a large number of other

issues, some of which we have talked about today, ores of which we'll bring up as we discuss, for example, infrastructure which will be our next piece. but those regulations that are in place today are there for the protection of key parts of the american economy. worker safety. the pollution regulations, so that our streams and rivers are not polluted, our air is not polluted, so there's no mercury or other carcinogens in the air. and regulations dealing with the way in which business operates. they could be modified, but be very, very careful -- if that is your only solution to the demise of the manufacturing sector because it is but a small part of the overall issue. we've discussed many of the other parts here today. we ought to be all of us, democrat and republican, alike, in dealing with the twin problems of the trade deficit and the extraordinary and

disastrous loss of manufacturing jobs. this is where the american middle class lost it. when the american manufacturing sector declined. we can rebuild it, with wise, public policies, wise public policies are we what we ought to be doing, rebuilding the american manufacturing sector and reigniting the american dream as we do that. . we yield back. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the chair recognizes the gentleman from iowa, mr. king, for 30 minutes. mr. king: it is my privilege and honor to address you on the floor of the house of representatives and also my privilege to be here to listen to the presentation of the the gentleman from from essentially the east coast and west coast

present their solutions for united states of america. if i could take that and roll it backwards from bottom to top, rather than top to bottom, i hear the concern and i share concerns about the loss of american manufacturing and the loss of american trade and the trade deficit that we do have. and i hear the advice, which is we should have wise public policies that we should advance going forward, that would be good for american manufacturing, good for american trade, that would bring about the refurbishment and renewal of american manufacturing and bring about a balance in trade and perhaps a surplus in exports which is good for this country, because we would rather collect i.o.u.'s. i agree with the gentlemen on both of those points but we don't agree on how to get there,

mr. speaker. the united states has been a very strong industrial nation. at the end of world war ii, we were the only industrialized nation in the world that had an established globally competitive industry that had not been devastated by the war. and we had a surplus of exports because here in the united states, we could produce things and make things and export them to the rest of the world. we did. we did it with industrial supplies and the united states of america was the industrial powerhouse of the world. and we had built ours up in that period of time in order to supply the global world war ii effort. so the united states' industry was a preeminent industry of the world. why was it? because of the reasons i said, plus, we were competitive. we had a wage, salary and benefit package, american

workers that were more productive than any others in the world, we had a work ethic and we took great provided in going to work. we produced more per hour than we were out there on the floor of that factory because of a number of reasons. american work ethic. we set the standards for the world and that carried us beyond world war ii, beyond the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's and 1990's. and american industry began to lose its competitive advantage with the rest of the world and the rest of the world began to catch up. i saw the signs of that. i saw the signs of it in the 1950's, when we would get close to new year's, japan devastated in world war ii, a lot of their

production facilities were in homes, not in factories. they were bombed, destroyed and all of that is a part of history that i don't care to address that. in the aftermath, they needed to produce goods and services that had a marketable value. and the things that showed up here were paper goods, little things like trying to celebrate new year's, there would be a japanese new year, a tongue of the dragon. they could make them, and produce them and sell them and make them and sell those things to americans. in the early 1960's, what came along? tran cyst tore radio. and portable radio that you could carry out with you on the farm and listen to the radio.

didn't mean it was a japanese idea, but a japanese-produced idea that could compete with the american productions and sold radios made in japan into the united states and a lot of those american kids carried those around in to listen to rock music. the jap nice began to ramp up their industry from paper toys to radios to optical equipment, some of the best in the world was produced in japan. they made cameras and they created a culture of people that loved their cameras and they evaluate those camerased made in japan. and if you watch the japanese tourists, they use them. they were able to compete.

this wave that we had caught would forever carry us. and our industry slowly began to lose its competitiveness. and reminds me of a study that was done by a russian economist that was commissioned by lenin in the second decade of the 20th century when he decided that he wanted to find an economist that would prove that capitalism would expire. it was a self-defeating economy. he ordered him to produce a product. well, the economist koltiev, he put together the theory, which is that capitalism would expire and self-defeating and might

have a brief burst of success and it would run out of energy and expire and diminish and essentially that would be the end of the wave of capitalism. he chartered the free enterprise economy going back to the 18th century and tracked unemployment, gross domestic product, the output of the nations and followed the industry. and when he tracked this cycle of capitalism in the effort to prove his charge that had come from len inch n, it was this, yes, capitalism does decline, the capitalist investment and g.d.p. of the countries does diminish, but it diminishes down to a point where it regenerates itself again. and when looked at, and this was a study that was back in the dusty volumes at m.i.t.

university and much forgotten about until a computer study and someone had read the study, they went back and compared it to the modern computer analysis, which is now a generation old and they said that it matched that of koltiev saying that we have a 52-year cycle. i don't say it is any year other than that but the theory he uses to explain his 52-year cycle is instructtive to all of us. when you hit the bottom economically, when your g.d.p. has bottomed out and unemployment rate is at the top and when your capital investment is at the bottom, you look around as a society of culture and the economy and you think we have to do something, what are we going to do.

and the psychology of that is, all of us sitting at the bottom of the economic cycle, with high unemployment, low g.d.p. and low capital investment, we see that if we keep doing the same thing over and over again, we will end up with the same result. we don't want to be where we are in four, five, 20 years, so what will we do that is different. i have lived through this a time or two, especially through the farm crisis during the 1980's when land values were spiraling downwards, market prices going downwards the same way, we rely on rain. the markets didn't produce a value for the crops that could be raised and the land values went downwards. what was going on was, the manifestation of the theory was springing up and people who had no immediate hope economically

began to put together a strategy for the long-term so we would have a successful economy. and it matched almost perfectly with koltiev's theory, which is when your economic cycle reaches the bottom and everything is sitting down here, high unemployment, low g.d.p., people are looking for a way to solve those problems. so their creativity kicks in. they began to talk, dream and pray about what kind of ideas can come to fruition to reverse the downward cycle they are in. they began to come up with new inventions and new efficiencies and new business models and as these ideas are generated, the ideas have to catch the kind of energy that can attract capital. there is not as much capital in a low economy, but much more nnd

for it so you go out with your ideas and market them and attract the capital to generate these yesterdays. this is what we did when -- at the beginning of the dot-com bubble. we learned at the beginning of a bad activity cycle, a ability to store and transfer information, more effectively and more efficiently than ever before. and thus was born the dot-com bubble. and that was once investors saw that ability to store and transfer that information more efficiently than ever before, they began to invest in it because they believed storing and transferring that information turned into a profit share. so they invested their capital and profit share began to get invested in the dot-com bubble.

the mistake was just an adjustment in investment, but what really happened is there was an overinvestment though those years and that was the middle of the 1990's where the bishes resulted. the overexuberance reflected the attraction of capital to these ideas, these creative ideas to store and transfer information more than ever before, the creativeness of that was not regulated by this realization, storing and transferring of information didn't translate into profit, that it had to create an efficiency in order to be translated into profit. so we had an overexuberance and under the clinton administration, the justice department filed a lawsuit

against microsoft that pierced the dot-com bubble. the growth that mr. campbell: from the understanding that we had created an ability to be more efficient than ever before and the adjustment were in the aftermath. that fits exactly into koltiev's theory. the creative people were looking around to change that paradigm and what they came up with was the microchip and tools that allowed us to store and transfer information and being able to do that caused people to invest more, start new businesses to transfer efficiencies around the country and to increase our efficiencies. if you think for the trucking industry, the software packages that would allow them to click the mouse rather than make a

judgment decision and send the truck to portland and go to seattle and circle back to montana and drop off a load off in des moines, much more efficiencies were created by software packages that made the decisions instead of fall i believe that were using judgment calls that were under stress on the fly. all of those things fit back to koltiev's theory, during hard economic times, good ideas would attract capital and capital would be invested and bring about new technology and bring about increased efficiencies, increased efficiencies, increased productivity, increased productivity, increased g.d.p. was good for the wealth of the nation and once you reach the apex of the growth in the g.d.p., you ended up with a sense of success, a

success of come placen si. we have arrived our capital and invented our new methods to produce new goods and services more efficiently than ever before and translated that into profits and now keep this ball rolling down the road. . you don't realize it at the time but the complacency of the day-to-day success brings about that idea of, well, let's just hold on. let's not create new, let's just ride this out. and societies, economies, cultures ride out the successes and when they ride out the successes, eventually if competition doesn't catch you first from a foreign country, eventually those successes are riding on the capital investment of decades gone by and the efficiencies diminish in proportion to the

depreciation of those capital investments and also in proportion to the creativity of the competing economies. when that happens, you don't know it, but you're going downhill. think of a poster that i saw on a friend of mine's house years and years ago, and it's a picture of a little boy sitting on a tricycle and he has his hands on the handlebars and his feet up off the pedals and he's got a big grin on his face, his hair is blowing back behind his head and underneath the picture it says if you're coasting, you're going downhill. mr. speaker, there are many economies in the world throughout history that have reached the apex of their growth. and they have decided they like where they are, they get complacent and they begin to coast. if they're coasting, they're going downhill. each economy, each society, each culture gets to that point

where they start to coast and they go downhill. and the societies and the cultures that see it a different way, that understand that you have to constantly be innovating, you have to constantly be creating, you have to constantly find a way to be more competitive, they're the ones that show up in the super bowl of the global economy. so when i listen to my colleagues from the east coast and west coast talk about what's wrong and what we need to fix and we need manufacturing jobs and that we've exported these jobs overseas, i would say to them, you've been advocates for the policies that are protectionism. you tried to protect the union jobs in the united states. you've opposed the free trade agreements we've negotiated with foreign countries, including south korea and panama and colombia and you've insisted that, it may just be the voices of the unions you represent, have insisted that

we have trade protectionism and the working conditions and jobs and benefits packages that are negotiated in places like colombia and south korea be similar to those negotiated here in the united states. mr. speaker, we can't change the policy in south korea. we can't change in it colombia, we can't change it in panama and we can't change it in places like china or other places in the world. they are who they are. and they will compete with -- within the limits of their ability to produce. and if we have policies that diminish our ability to compete, then we're going to have a lower market share and no amount of congress posturing itself for the people that write campaign checks is going to change that competitiveness. we've got to be competitive. so what would i advocate, mr. speaker? what is my solution for this? i can go through the list, they talk about the american dream, trade afreements, talk about manufacturing jobs and exporting jobs overseas and the

export of jobs to china and trade protectionism and they want to reignite the american dream. reignite it. so do i, mr. speaker. i'd like to think that it still burns. but it burns based upon american liberty, american freedom, american opportunity. and what make this is country great, wonderful discussion to have between democrats and republicans here in the united states congress. we seldom have any discussion like that. what make this is country great? what are the underpinnings that has grown this country into the unchallenged greatest nation in the world. yes, we have our contemporary troubles but we remain the unchallenged greatest nation in the world economically, culturally, militarily, we're the unchallenged greatest in addition nation in the world. why in i challenge my colleagues to embellish the

things i'm about to say but i would say this, we have god-given rights. god-given liberty. this is not a manifestation of steve king and the mod -- in the modern world in 2012 telling you something right now, mr. speaker. this was a deep conviction of the american founders that we have rights that come directly from god. we get our rights from god. we don't get them from man. we don't get them from goves. if government gives us rights, then who are we if government decides to take our rights away? who are we to complain? they're the all-powerful, they're the omnipotent, but our rights come from god and our founding fathers all knew it and they signed off the declaration of independence. we are endowed by our creators with certain inalienable rights, these rights are the foundation of american vigor. if you think about what this

means, america has received immigrants from donor nations all over the world. i believe every nation in the world. and why do they come here? because they're inspired by the american dream. the image of the statue of liberty, not necessarily the inscription but the image of the statue of liberty. it says all of you who come here, legally, into the united states, have an opportunity to access the american dream. and when you access the american dream, you have an obligation to leave this country and this world a better place than it was when you came. and into that bar gape is this, god-given rights. the only country in the world founded upon that history. others might aspire to it. others might look across the ocean to the united states and aspire to god-given liberty but this is the only nation in the world that's founded upon it. and the beacon that comes out

of the statue of liberty, the beacon of that liberty itself is what attracts people here to the united states. when they get on that ship or on that plane or whatever their method of transportation is to legally come into the united states they come for the dream. they're attracted by the free tom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press, the right to keep ap bear arms, the protection against double jeopardy, to be tried by a jury of your peers, to have property rights. states' rights component of this that devolves the powers down to the state so each state can be a laboratory an the government is to be a hands off minimalist government, not an all-powerful, omnipotent government. so, mr. speaker, that vision, that atrack, that magnetism of american liberty brings people from all over the world here into the united states. and who does it bring?

we have the visa lottery, all right. even that gets a better cross section of the global humanity that you'd have if you went out and did a random selection of six-plus billion people on the planet and brought in 50,000. at least those who sign up for the visa lottery have a dream. they want to come to america. 50,000 a year get lucky and cash in on the visa lottery. i think it's a bad policy. add that to the family reunification plan and a number of other plans an anywhere between 93% an 89% of the legal immigrants in america are not measured by their merit or their ability to contribute to the united states, they're measured simply by their ability, their desire to come here. if they have a family member to come and join or if they got lucky in the visa lottery or if they receive asigh -- asylum by

the secretary of the united states. we only about 7% of legal american immigration where we set the criteria here in this country. you know the constitution says our job is to, congress has an authority to establish a uniform form of immigration. uniform to me would mean a standard for everybody that comes into the united states and i would set that policy to reward those people that could most contribute to the united states of america. why wouldn't you have an immigration policy designed to enhance the economic, social, and cultural well being of the united states. -- united states? that's the logic and rationale we had when the constitution was drafted and when it was ratified. it should be our logic and rationale today, mr. speaker. it looks good. there are many good things about our immigration policy, but what's good in particular is it has attracted the cream

of the crop of every donor civilization on the planet. every country that contributed immigrants to the united states has sent us their dreamers, their doers, their workers. those people that wanted to access the american liberty and develop out the american dream. excuse me. when you think about america not being an appendage of england or scotland or ireland or italy or ethiopia or colombia or any other nation on the planet, we're not an appendage of that. we're the country that is set up to filter, to screen out the also-rans, those people who had only a mode yolker dream and went through the filter of people who had the exceptional

dream, the dream that gave them exceptional energy and exceptional vision and exceptional desire to come here and add to american exceptionalism. american exceptionalism is built upon those liberties, those rights, freedom of speech, religion, the press, keep an bear arms, protection for double jeopardy, property rights, states rights, the list goes on. tried by a jury of your peers. all of those things. and free enterprise capitalism. an essential component. if you want to be naturalized into the united states and study the naturalization for the naturalization test, the flash cards, the glossy flash cards put out by c.i.s., citizenship and immigration services, use those to study to become an american citizen. you look at them, it'll say a question, such as who is the father of our country, and snap it over and it says george washington.

then the next card, it might say, who emancipated the slaves? snap it over. abraham lincoln. next card. what is the economic system of the united states of america? the president might flunk this, but the answer is, snap it over, free enterprise capitalism. those are principles that give us american vi for gor. when you look at american vigor and the component of that, and the american vigor that comes from a filter, the fitter of the difficulty of legally coming into the united states, to skim the also-rans out and skim the global vigor in, redirected them into the united states, we have this thing, the dreamers came to america, the doers came to america, we are an american vigorous civilization and society of people who came here because they wanted more opportunity than they had in the country they left. there was only one place they could go that has the opportunity that matches that

and that's the united states of america. they came here to do and they did. they came for religious freedom they came to raise their family they came to leave this country a better place than it was an they succeeded in all of that, mr. speaker, the united states of america is the unchallenged greatest nation in the world because of the fundamental principles, the fundamental right the fundamental american liberty, that exercise by dreamers and doers who stood on principle, who came here for religious freedom, for economic freedom, for property rights, for all the things that are listed and laid out in the bill of rights and they were not just a mediocre cross-section of the global population. they were the dream the doers, the vigor of the planet, came to the united states of america and this vigorous american character, culture and personality is unsuitable for the nanny state. it's unsuitable for the nanny

state. the nanny state cannot be used and should not be used to os prea free people a people of vifwor a people of personality a people of can-do spirit. yet here we are, what happened in the last congress, the ruling troika imposed upon us dodd-frank, obamacare, they tried to impose on us cap and tax, all of them should be rejected by a vigorous american people who will regulate themselves, who will control themselves, who will set their own moral standards and need to have those standards be implemented and enforced at the closest level to the people as possible, the cities, counties, and states, not the federal government, mr. speaker. is so, i think it's important for us to realize and recognize the american people are a unique race of people, we are not like anyone else on the planet, we may not look like anyone else, but underneath whatever those looks might be

of your idea of what a cross section of americans are is an american vigor and american personality, american culture, a common sense of history, a can-do spirit, people that are members of the society and the culture and the civilization of the unchallenged greatest nation in the world and we derive our strength from free enterprise capitalism, judeo christianity, western civil sation, that's the -- civil sation, that's the -- civilization, that's the corps of -- core of america, that's what we must continue to regrow and refurbish. i'm aware that the clock is winding down, whether there's another speaker that's about to arrive, but i have more in me, but i pause to receive my strex from the speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman has 30 seconds remaining. mr. king: i recap this with my gratitude to the american people that that we are here

where we are putting a mark many place for posster by -- posterity. they are inspired and informed by the actions of the congress and the actions of the president. and as i watch what unfolds here and the continuing work, the dependency, the growth and the regulatory class and society, and i think about the growth of the nanny state and the nanny state that seems to think that it can be the protector for all of us, that somehow we can't make -- the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. king: for ourselves and for our well-being, mr. speaker, yes he, we can, to quote the president. but not in any foreign language. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. king: thank you, mr. speaker. i appreciate your attention and the opportunity to address you here on the floor of the house of representatives.

the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the chair recognizes the gentleman from maryland, mr. bartlett, for 30 minutes. mr. bartlett: thank you, mr. speaker. oil is about $100 a barrel. we're in a recession. the united states just a couple of years ago used 22 million barrels of oil a day. now we're using less than 19 million barrels of oil a day and still oil is $100 a barrel in the middle of a recession. we're also producing more oil in our country than we did last year, for the first time since

1970. the production of oil has increased this last year every year before that, the production of oil was lower than it was the preceding year. now with the buck in oil, we're producing more than we did last year. so why with increased oil production, decreased oil use, in the middle of a recession should oil still be $100 a barrel? this is the -- this is really hurting our economy. tin creases the cost of just about everything we use because if you've got it, a truck probably brought it. and increased fuel costs increases the cost of just about everything therefore that we have. really the most important speech

given the last century was given in 1956 on the eighth day of march in san antonio, texas. by an oil geologist known as m. king hubbard. we need to put his speech in context. at that time the united states was king of oil. we produced more oil, we used more oil, we exported more oil than any other country in the world. on this eighth day of march in 1956 m. king hubbard made an astounding prediction. he said that in just 14 years the united states would reach its maximum oil production. he wasn't sure what that number

would be but he made the prediction that we would reach our maximum production in 1970, just 14 years later, and no matter what we did, it would continue to go down after that. and from 1970 until about a year or so ago, that was true. here i have a chart that shows what has happened to oil production in our country. a whole lot of it comes from texas, as you can see from the lower dark blue below. and the rest of the united states is the lighter blue above. the kind of orange here is natural gas liquids, that's not in your gas tank, that's propane and butane and chemicals like that. m. king hubbard predicted that using all -- only the contiguous

48, he didn't include alaska answered didn't include the gulf of mexico in his predictions. he made that prediction in 19 of a, about here. in 1970, you can see here, we reached our maximum production in the lower 48 and it went down very consistently after that. then we found oil in alaska, a lot of it. and there was a little blip on the way down, when you add that to the oil from the rest of the united states and texas. and then a little later there was the fabled discoveries of oil in the gulf of mexico and you can see what that did, you can hardly see the blip there. a lot of oil. but we use a lot of oil. the world uses a billion barrels of oil every 12 days. it's pretty simple arithmetic.

84 million barrels a day by about 12, that's 1,000 and that's a million and that's a billion barrels of oil in every 12 days. here is a -- oh, by the way, the m. king hubbard that predicted that the united states was going to peak in 1970, of course he became a legend in his own time because he lived well beyond that and he was exactly right, relegated to the lunatic fringe for maybe 15 years or so. he became a celebrity after his predictions came true. and he predicted that what happened to the united states had to happen to the world. oil is finite. one day it will run out. one day we will reach our maximum production, after which it will tail off after that, in the world, just as it did in the united states. now, if you think that

collectively the world is brighter and cleverer and so forth than the united states, then you might think that that won't happen. but i think that we are the most creative, innovative society in the world. and if we couldn't turn it around, i think it's unlikely the world is going to turn it around. well, here is a chart from just a few years ago. peak oil this plateau, the maximum production is called peak oil, and the question was asked, are we there yet? because you see, these curves have planted out. these are from the two ends of these that do the best job of cataloging the production and use of oil, the e.i.a. and the i.e.a., it's the same three letters of the alphabet. one is a creature of the o.e. -- oecd and the other is a part of our department of energy. and they both, as you see, had a plateau here and look what happened to the price of oil.

this was a little bit before it peaked at $147 a barrel and the economy collapsed along with the housing market. and that was kind of a double whammy. it was both the housing market and the price of oil, $147 -a-barrel oil and the economy came tumbling down and oil dropped to something under $40 a barrel and it's steadily climbed up to now around $100 a barrel where it's been for several months now. are we there yet? well, just recently we've had two charts produced by one of those entities. the i.e.a., the international energy association. and this is called the world oil -- world energy outlook. the chart on top here is from 2008 and the one on the bottom is 2010. now, if you look at their

website you're going to have trouble finding the chart from 2008. they have purged their website of that chart. and in a few moments you'll understand why they purged it. let's look at that chart. this dark blue is con screntional oil. that -- conventional oil. that's what we look at before in the production of the united states. and it's been going up now for a very long time. if you started back here 150 years ago, we pumped more and more and more and now the total liquids, not all of it oil, some natural gas liquids, are up to 84 million barrels of oil a day. now they are predicting just exactly what m. king hubbard predicted and that is there would be a peak and after that peak it would fall off and they are predicting a fairly dramatic falloff in the production of oil from the fields that we are now

exploiting. but, predicting out to 2030, they believe that by then we will have a total liquid fuels production of about 106 million barrels of oil a day, that will be made up of increasing amounts of natural gas liquids and that will happen. we found a lot of natural gas and so those will increase. the green here is nonconventional oil. that's going to also increase. that's oil like the tar sands of alberta, canada, that won't flow. you have to lift it with a 100-ton shovel and put it in a truck that hauls 100 tons and then you cook it. that's natural gas. there aren't very many people to use it so it's kind of stranded so its price is less. scow afford to cook this oil -- so you can afford to cook this oil with it. that's going to grow too some.

then they make two predictions here, that this light blue is production from fields that we've found but are too difficult to develop. like a field found in the gulf of mexico under 7,000 feet of water and 30,000 feet of rock. i heard a number, i have no idea how you get this precise, but it was said that when oil was $111 a barrel, they could afford to develop this field. so this is projected production from fields that we have found but are, with the current price of oil, too difficult to develop and economically feasible to develop. and then the bright red here are fields yet to be discovered. the dark red here really belongs as a part of the oil down here. a little bit of additional conventional oil, enhanded oil

recovery, that's pumping some co-2 down there or in saudi arabia pushing some sea water down there and some of their wells now are producing seven times as much sea water as oil but it's ok because they can separate the sea water from the oil. ok. two things about this chart. note the falloff in production from conventional fields and note that by 2030106 million barrels of oil a day -- 2030 106 million barrels of oil a day projected that's what the world is going to be produced. just two years later in 2010 reality is setting in. that's the lower chart down here. reality is setting in. now they're up by 35, five years later, now they're up to only 96 million barrels of oil a day. not 106 million barrels of oil a day. this is five years later, it

really should have been higher. these top two curves here have been reversed and the colors are different but they're the same thing. this is unconventional oil and this is natural gas liquids. notice a precipitous decline in production from our current fields and this includes by the way the enhanced oil recovery you see is in this chart but it doesn't exist in this one because they now incorporate it and include it where it belongs and that is a part of the conventional fields that we're now pumping from. and here they show two huge wedges to keep the production going up slightly. they show two huge wedges here, notice considerably bigger they are -- are they than the ones they projected just two years earlier. i don't think that these two wedges are going to occur. they did not occur in the

united states. today we have technologies that we didn't have there like horsontal drilling and fracking, so we can get -- like horsontal drilling and track -- horizontal drilling and fracking, so we can get more than we could before. when you find a well that produces 10 million barrels of oil, that's a big field. we have not found many fields that produce 10 million barrels of oil. that will last the world 120 days. every 12 days, we use a billion barrels of oil. now, i think you can see why you can no longer find this projection they made in 2008 in their website because it is just not consistent with the reality that they are forced to use in projecting here in just last year, 2010. i will be enormously surprised

if these two wedges occur. there's little evidence that they should occur. they did not occur in our country, unless you think the world is incredibly more capable happen the united states then you'll have some doubts as to whether those two wedges will occur or not. if they don't this top curve will tip over for the world the way it did for the united states. we're not running out of oil. many people who are disparaging people who talk about peak oil would say that peak oil people say we're running out of oil. we are not running out of oil there is a lot of oil out there. there is more oil out there to be pumped than all the oil that we have pumped in the last 150 years. what we are running out of is our ability to pump that oil as fast as we would like to use it. this next chart is an interesting one. and it kind of puts what we're

talking about in perspective. the world according to oil. this is what the world would look like if the size of the country was relative to how much oil reserves it had. you see here that saudi arabia kind of dominates the planet. they do. for oil reserves. they have, we believe, maybe about 22% of all the reserves in the world. we're not quite sure of that. because a wikipedia leak indicated they may have 40% less oil than they said. let me explain what happened when opec could produce more oil than the world needed and increased production would drive down prices system of they had an agreement in the opec nations that you could pump a certain percentage of

your reserves. so if you were a country that needed some more revenues, you simply had more reserves. without finding new oil you could look back through history and see that some of them magically had maybe twice the reserves that they had. they didn't find new fields they just said they had twice the reserves in the field that they already had. then, you see, they could pump more oil. none of these opec nations will let our technical people in to look at their records so we really do not know how much oil they have. but we believe that it's relatively like this. you see, little kuwait looms huge on the world scene in terms of how much oil they have. iraq, iran, huge amounts of oil. venezuela dominates our hemisphere doesn't it?

it's bigger than all the rest of the countries put together in terms of oil reserves. here we are, the united states, we have 2% of the reserves of oil in the world an we use 25% of the world's oil a little less now because our cars get a little better mileage and our economy is down a -- down a little so we're using a little less but roughly 25% of the world's oil. our number one importer is canada. they have less oil than we but they don't have many people up there to use it so they can export it to us. until a couple of years ago, our number two importer of oil was mexico. they also have less than us. now, they have a lot of people put their people are too poor to use the oil so they can export it. but just a few years ago, the second largest oil feel in the world in mexico started in rapid decline. declining as much as 20% a year

in production. so now mexico is our number three importer and saudi arabia is now our number two. mexico has been displaced by saudi arabia. look at china and india over there. tiny. china with one billion, three hundred million people, india with well over a billion people, with an economy in china that is growing, well in a recession, they're slumping, they were 16% growth, now they're 8% growth and india is not far behind them work a static oil production of 84 billion barrels a day and china used 6%, where is it coming from? we use less. we were at 22 barrels a -- barrels a day, now we're at 20.

and many countries are poor and do without. this disparity is going to set up huge geopolitical tensions in the world. china last year sole more cars than we sold. and that curve is accelerating. china is now the number one polluter in the world. they just passed us. china is buying up oil all over the world. i wonder why? we have only 2% of the oil in the world and we use 25% of the oil in the world and we're not buying oil anywhere. we don't need to. all you need to do is go to the global oil auction and have enough money and be the high bidder and -- or participate at the bid price and you get all the oil that you need if there's enough to meet everybody's needs system of why is china buying oil?

they just aren't buying oil, they're buying good will. you need a hospital? soccer field? roads? simultaneous with buying oil reserves all over the world, china's also aggressively building a blue water navy. they soon will have more ships than we. they haven't our -- they aren't our ships yet by a long shot but this year they will graduate seven times as many engineers as we graduate and about half of our engineering students are chinese, mostly, and some indian students. we can't for long have that disparity between the graduates of our two countries and continue to be the world's premiere economic and military power. we have got to do something to capture the imagination of our people and encourage our young people to go into careers of science, math, and engineering. let me tell you what i think

may happen. i hope it doesn't. why would china buy oil? well, they're simultaneously, very aggressively, building a blue water navy and building capabilities for denial. there is now, look it up, a chinese anti-ship missile that we have eensrblely no defense against. it travels 1,200 miles. there's no reason they can't put it on a ship, which means you couldn't get within 1,200 miles of a chinese ship that had this missile on it unless we developed some defense against that missile. let's hope the time has not come when china says, i'm sorry, we have over a billion people, 900 million people in rural areas that through communication know about the benefits of industrialized society saying, what about us?

and our entire plan may unravel if we don't meet their needs. so we can't share our oil. it's ours, we bought it, we can't share it, we've got to have it. that would plunge the rest of the world into a recession and china would have to look to their population as consumers for the goods they produce and a billion, three hundred million people could be a big -- could be big consumers. the tragedy is that your government has paid for four different studies. two of them issuing in 2005 and two of them in 2007, that said the same thing. the peaking of oil is either present or imminent with potentially devastating

consequences. your government chose to ignore those four studies because it was not politically expedient to squad mitt we had a problem of those pro-- to admit we had a problem of those proportions. we should have known those problems were coming because a very wise man in, i think, the best speech, i don't know if king and rickover knew each other, but to a group of physicians in st. paul, minnesota, hyman rickover gave a speech that was lost until a few years ago, but now it's been found, you can google it, it will come up. he said some things that should have been self-evident and everybody should have been saying it but it took rickover to say the obvious.

there's nothing man can do to rebuild exhausted fossil fuel reserves. they are finite. the moon is not made out of green cheese, the earth is not made out of oil. one day it will be gone. they were created by solar energy 500 million years ago and took eons to grow to their present volume. in the face of the basic fact that fossil fuel reserves are finite, the exact length of time these reserve will last is important in only one respect, the longer they last, the more time we have to invent ways to have living off renewable or substitute energy sources to and adjust our economy to the vast changes which we can expect from such a shift. have you noticed we have been doing that? i haven't. i love this last quote here. i think it pretty well describes where we are and what we're doing. fossil fuels resemiable capital in the bank. a prudent and responsible parent will use his capital

sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. a selfish and irresponsible parent will squappeder it in rye outous living an -- in lie riotous living and care not one whit how his offspring will fare. i hear that a lot. drill, baby, drill. r i remember when the -- i remember when i was asked would i vote to drill in anwr? i said i would be happy, when you commit that you'll use all the proceeds from that to look at alternative energy sources. i noted we're going to leave our kids a huge debt, bigger now than i thought it would be then. i said, wouldn't it be nice to leave them a little oil? here is a quote from one of those studies.

this was the first and the biggest of those study the so-called hirsch report, big study, world oil peaking is going to happen. world oil production will reach a maximum and decline thereafter. a number of competent forecasters predict peaking within a decade, others say it will odaughter later. oil peaking presents a unique challenge, the world has never faced a problem like this. an unprecedented problem that the world faces. i have a last chart here that i think kind of helps taos put this in perspective. and this shows the production of oil and this chart is a few years old, we need to have it updated, but this is when oil was discovered. way back in the 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, 1970's. this is the use of oil. by the way, tonight when you do

your prayers, thank the islamic world for the oil price spike hikes of the 19s 70'ses. look what it did, it woke us up. if they hadn't waked us, we'd be through the top of the chart by now. up until the carter years, it was a stunning statistic. every 10 years, we used as much oil as had been used in all of previous history. now look at the slope of that curve. it is much lower than that. our time is running out and i must yield back but i'll come to the floor again soon and we'll spend some time looking at this chart because if you have only one chart to look at when you were going to predict what might happen in the future, i think this would be the chart. because you look back through history and see what has happened and make a judgment, wow, are we going to find that much more oil in the future than we found back here, even with our increased capability to find ole? we're going to find more an

we're going to pump more, but i think there is little or no chance we'll be able to produce that oil fast enough to meet the growing demands of the world. i love challenges, this is a huge challenge. i think that facing this challenge we can produce more jobs, we can be an exporter of jobs for depreen energy. i feel challenged by this, mr. speaker, i hope americans feel the same way. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. mr. bartlett: mr. speaker, i move we do now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is adopted. accordingly the house stands adjourned until 10:00 a.m.

watch past speaker's online all archived and searchable at c-span.org/videolibrary. >> today president obama hosted the second white house science fair with over 100 winners from science, technology, engineering and math competitions around the country. the president announced that his upcoming budget will request $80 million for a new education department competition to support math and science teacher preparation programs. he also announced a $22 million investment from the philanthropic and private sector to support math and science efforts. this is 15 minutes. >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states.

>> welcome to the white house science fair. it is -- i just spent some time checking out some of the projects that were brought here today and i've got to say, this is fun. it's not every day that you have robots running all over your house. i am trying to figure out how you grot through the metal detectors. i also shot a marsh malow through a air gun which was very exciting. science is what got several of our guests where they are today, so i just want to make a couple of introductions. we've got a real-life astronaut and the head of nasa, charles bolten, in the house. [applause]

we have the administrator of the e.p.a., lisa jackson is here. the director of the national science foundation, sue. my science advisor, john hold are in, is in the house -- holdrin, is in the house. we've got a couple of people who have dedicated themselves to making science cool for young people, we've got kneel degrass tyson and bill nye the science guy. [applause] now, it is fitting that this year's fair is happening just two days after the super bowl. i want to congratulate the new york giants and all their fans. i just talked to coach

coughlin, i'm looking forward to having the giants here at the white house so we can celebrate their achievements. but what i've also said, i've said this many times, is if we are recognizing athletic achievements, and we should also be recognizing academic achievements. and science achievements. if we invite the team that wins the super bowl to the white house then we need to invite some science fair winners to the white house as well. [applause] now i'm going to talk about how great all of you are in a second. but before i do, i want to give the parents a big round of applause because they work hard to help you succeed and i know this is their day, they're really proud of you. as a parent i know that seeing your kids do extraordinary things brings the greatest

happiness a parent can have. so congratulations to all the parents of all these successful young people. [applause] but parents aren't the only ones who helped you get this far. every one of you can think of a teacher or maybe a couple of teachers without whom you would not be here. so, i want you to promise that the next time you see those teachers, that you give them a big thank you not just for yourselves but also for me. because teachers matter. they deserve our support and i want to make sure that we are constantly lifting up how important teachers are to making sure that not only you succeed but this country succeeds. so give teachers a big round of applause. [applause] now, as i was walking around the science fair, i was thinking back to when i was your age and basically you guys

put me to shame. [laughter] what impresses me so much is not just how smart you are, but it's the fact that you recognize you've got a responsibility to use your talents in service of something bigger than yourselves. some of you that means developing new products that will change the way we live, so hailey hoveter, where's haily? there she is, over here, invented a new type of sugar packet that dissolves in hot water, it's flavorless, it's colorless, and potentially could save up to two million pounds of trash each year and that's just at starbucks. so mastercart has already awarded her $10,000 to help turn her idea into a business. some of you are here because you saw a problem in your

community and you're trying to do something to solve it. benjamin hilack, where's benjamin? there's benjamin right here, was worried that folks at his grandmother's senior center were getting lonely. so he built a robot with a monitor and a video camera so it's like a moving skype and it moves around the center and allows seniors to talk to their kids and grandkids even when they can't visit in person. so inventions like benjamin's could make life better for millions of families. for some of you the journey you took to get here is just as inspiring as the work that you brought with you today. there's a team from texas, where's my team here? where are you? stand up, guys, stand up. this is part of the fourth poorest school district in the state of texas and i was told the teachers cooked food to sell after church, supporters drove 200 miles to pick up

doughnuts for bake sales, they even ralphed off a goat -- raffled off a goat just so they could raise enough money for the rockets routine to compete and the majority of the kids at the school are e.s.l., english as a second language. and the presentation they made could not make you prouder. so, way to go. [applause] there's a group of young engineers from paul robeson malcolm x academy and nobody needs to tell them the kinds of challenges that detroit still faces, where's my team from detroit in the house? there they are. stand up. [applause] they believe in their city and they're coming up with new ideas to keep detroit's comeback going.

and there's samantha garvey. where's samantha? just saw samantha. there she is. stand up, samantha. [applause] samantha spent years studying muscle populations -- mussel populations in the long island sound and when she learned that she was a semifinalist for the intel science talent search, when she found this out, her family was living in a homeless shelter. so think about what she's overcome. she wants to by the way work maybe for noaaa or e.p.a. -- noaa or e.p.a. this is dr. lachenko. lisa jackson, head of e.p.a. you might just want to, you know, hook up with them before you leave. [laughter] [applause] the young people i met today, the young people behind me, you

guys inspire me. it's young people like you that make me so confident that america's best days are still to come. when you work and study and excel at what you're doing at math and science, when you compete in something like this, you're not just trying to win a prize today, you're getting america in shape to win the future. you're making sure we have the best, smartest, most skilled workers in the world, so that the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root right here. you're making sure we'll always be home to the most creative entrepreneurs, the most advanced science labs and universities, you're making sure america will win the race to the future. so, as an american, i'm proud of you. as your president i think we need to make sure your success stories are happening all across the country. that's why when i took office i called for an all-hands-on-deck

approach to science, math, technology and engineering. let's train more teachers, let's get more kids studying these subjects. let's make sure these fields get the respect and attention that they deserve. but it's not just a government effort. i'm happy to say that the private sector has answered that call as well. they understand how important it is to their future. so today, led by the carneigie corporation, a group of businesses and foundations is announcing a $22 million fund to help train 100,000 new science and math teachers. a coalition of more than 100 c.e.o.'s is expanding innovative mat and science programs to 130 sites across the country. and other companies are partnering from everybody from william to dean kaman to make

sure we celebrate young scientists and investors and engineers, not just at the white house but in every city, in every town, all across america. many of these leaders are here today. and i want to thank them for doing their part. we're going to do everything we can to partner you, to help you succeed in your projects. and i'm proud to announce that the budget i unveiled next week will include programs to help prepare new math and science teachers and to meet an ambitious goal which is one million more american graduates in science, technology, engineering and math over the next 10 years. that is a goal we can achieve. [applause] that's a goal we can achieve. now, in a lot of ways today is a celebration of the new but the belief that we belong on the cutting edge of innovation, that's an idea as old as america itself. i mean, we're a nation of tinkerers and dreamers and tinkerers and dreamers and believers in a better tomorrow.