just a couple of minutes left in this fifteen minute vote ahead of the house wrapping up work on a bill that expands america for some economic news related to a hearing we're covering tomorrow the associated press says today mortgage ranks sank mortgage rates sank this week reflecting investors worries about the country's economic health freddie mac the mortgage company reported today that the thirty year fixed rate mortgages average six point zero three percent for the week ending march sixth that was down from last week six point two four percent which had been the highest in more than three months and along those lines new york times reporting today defaults on home mortgages touched touched another all time high the mortgage bankers association reporting today the number of loans pas or in foreclosure jumped to seven point nine percent from seven point three percent at the end of september and also from the associated press federal reserve saying americans percentage of equity in their homes has fallen below fifty percent for the first time hundred five now the hearing we're covering tomorrow house oversight committee hearing will be hearing from the heads of mortgage companies like countrywide also the head of merrill lynch and citi group government oversight committee the house oversight and government reform committee right will be meeting tomorrow morning to look specifically at mortgage c e o severance packages that hearings attend tomorrow live on c span radio c span dot org and one of the three c span television networks stay tuned for schedule information for what purpose gentleman from new york ri to report the motion takes one twenty three after line to an answer to the following news section section one eighty nine criminal history checks in general and the selecting individual to serve in a position in which the individual receives a corporation grant funded living allowance stipend education award salary or other rename aeration a project receiving assistance under the national service was shall subject to regulations and requirements  c eligibility prohibits an individual shall be eligible to serve in a position described under section a if such an individual one refuses to consent to the criminal history check described in subsection b to makes a false statement in connection with such criminal history check three is registered or is required to be registered on a state sex offender registry or the national sex offender registry established under the adam walsh child protection and safety act of two thousand and six forty two u s c sixteen nine zero one or four has been convicted of murder it's crime section eleven one eleven of title eighteen seven and the national service laws to ensure that we are all doing what we can to protect those individuals being served by these programs and by the federal investment in national service sparked by a two thousand and five inspector general report that found rampant and i recognize and emphasize that word rampant noncompliance with individual grant provisions requiring background checks the corporation for national community service recently completed a rulemaking process to institute background checks for any individual seeking a federally funded national service position within the senior companion and the foster grandparents program and from the america core positions in which individuals have access to a vulnerable population the regs also prohibited individuals from serving in the u s positions if they were required and registered sex offenders mr speaker i applaud  administration for taking these steps to protect vulnerable populations being served by the national service programs but i believe that we should go further and provide more protection first this motion to recommit would caught up by the corporations regulations ensuring that these protections are not subject to the way ims of future administrations despite current efforts program on its conducted by the office of the inspector general have detected a disturbing pattern of noncompliance with criminal background check provision requirements in some cases programs have failed to conduct checks justice disturbing however other programs that failed to retain the documentation providing these background check information and were that were conducted for members working with youth and other vulnerable persons second this motion to reco would expand on the corporation's effort by including and i emphasize that including all federally funded national service positions not just those within the foster grandparents and senior competitive programs or just those of america or programs dealing with specific populations and finally mr speaker in addition to prohibiting registered sex offenders from serving in these positions this motion to recommit would include those individuals convicted of murder as well mr speaker our message is clear with this motion to recommit if you are program receiving assistance under these national service laws and are accepting participants to serve in federally funded programs and positions within your program we expect you to screen those potential participants to ensure that they are not and i have a size again not registered sex offenders or convicted murderers and if you wish to serve in federally funded national service positions some of which include is there a reward in education awards that will exceed that which is received by low income students through the form of a pell grant you're not welcome if you committed these crimes as some people would ask why do we include these crimes we believe that these crimes are so egregious that they demand federal action but also we hope that by requiring criminal history background checks programs will have increased information with which they can exercise good judgment it only seems to make sense in deciding to repeat myself the democrats aid to repeat myself we also hope that by requiring criminal background checks programs will have the increased information for which they can exercise good judgment in deciding who deserves the reward that come rewards that come with federally funded national service positions mr speaker i urge my colleagues to support this motion to recommit which would provide the education and labor committee further time to deliberate on this important topic this motion expresses a cloud in clear message that the house of representatives believes that those in need who are s proceed this is speaker this motion also expresses a loud and clear message and the message is that this house of representatives believes that those in need who are served by programs supported with assistance under these laws should be as i understand in motion mr speaker it is it is too codified the regulations that were finalized in november of last year that the department is proposed for background checks and protection of  consent request to to change promptly to forthwith so we could vote on it now and report the bill out of this chairman and i said listen to the previous motion to recommit to say this is unfortunate because this is a minute that we would agree to it embodies the regulations supported by the by the bush administration in effect a program that has huge bipartisan support in all of our communities that the president is in support of this looking forward to the opportunity to sign this bill but the german insist upon making this motion in the form of promptly so that the bill has to go back to committee which don't expire for another level now online i yield back i mean i bring back my time and i will just say this is the memo was never offered in committee it was never taken to the rules committee this is just sort of a gotcha but unfortunately it dramatically resolution ten fifteen further proceedings on this bill will will be postponed the house now jones march thirteenth five minutes of yours truly mr lincoln the as well are today five minutes mr pence today five minutes should cool march thirteenth five minutes to revise and extend their remarks and ng and include their in extraneous material mr yama of kentucky minister mr schiff of california for five minutes and mr watt of north carolina for five minutes without objection under the speaker's announced policy of january eighteenth two thousand and seven and under a previous order of the house the following members are recognized for five minutes each  speaker after after thousands of kidnappings and murders inside colombia carried out by the terrorist organization known by its initials as far colombia finally had enough and when it learned that he heads of the terrorist group that were being given sanctuary inside ecuador by the government of that country when colombia learned that the terrorists were eighteen hundred met from colombia colombia decided to strike it did so from colombia on colombian airspace and in fact the fark shot at the colombian air force which permitted the colombian air force to pinpoint the exact spot where the fark terrorists were where they had been and from where they were attacking columbia u s was killed along with approx mentally twenty other terrorists unfortunately one brave colombian soldier fighting in the fence of freedom carlos a nun this loan was also killed during the operation it is as tragic as it is condemning evil it is in fact criminal for the governments of ecuador and venezuela to provide sanctuary for terrorists who systematically commit murder and kidnapping xin side colombia and then those terrorists returned to venezuela and ecuador and soil president bush  the united states of america have stood by and are firmly standing by our great democratic ally and friend colombia and it's twice overwhelmingly elected doing unfortunately that is not the case with much of the rest of our hemisphere i commend president bush for his steadfast support of our great ally president levy now mr speaker it's time for this congress to act we need to renew and to increase our security aid to colombia which has been known for a decade as plan colombia and the majority leadership of this congress must immediately schedule a vote on the u s colombia free trade agreement an agreement that is in the interests both of the american and the colombian peoples the majority leadership of this house must stop preventing a vote on the u s colombia free trade agreement the position on that critical issue of the majority leadership of this congress is petty and is ultimately irresponsible the chairman of the house ways  means committee was quoted recently as saying referring to trips that members of congress have been taking to colombia to find out for themselves how the free trade agreement would affect our two countries i quote it's not the facts on the ground that are important it's the politics in the air and coke how sad mr speaker how sad it is time for this congress to send a clear sign of support and solidarity to  good friend colombia it is time to stop blocking the f d a with colombia and for the majority leadership of congress to schedule a vote on the free trade agreement with colombia now you'll back  consent to revise and extend my remarks without objection and today i rise to recognize and pay tribute to the johnson c smith university golden bowls men's basketball team which won the central intercollegiate athletic association basketball tournament held in my congressional district this past weekend the lady golden balls unfortunately lost to show university in the women's chan in chip game the double a basketball tournament is of course the premier basketball tournament in the country among historically black colleges and universities dating back years before african american athletes were admitted to and allowed to compete in athletics at other universities throughout the united states while the tournament highlights the tops in athletic competition and is a source of much needed funding for academic and athletic scholarships anyone who has ever attended the to no of course that is also an unrivaled social reunion and family event that outstanding athletic performances by justin c smith universities teams this weekend especially the championship performance by the men's team was one more tribute to dr dorothy yancey who has announced that she will be retiring at the end of this school year after fourteen years as president of johnson c smith university dr yancey made history when she became the first female justin c smith president of the smith university in one thousand nine hundred four her leadership and hands on management has led johnson's the smith university to many outstanding accomplishments including t successful accreditation reviews getting johnson c smith university fully wired and making it one of the first destitution is in the nation to provide laptop computer computers to every student construction renovation or rest ration of state facilities and recognition by the u s news and world report magazine as a top t institution among comprehensive colleges that all for a bachelor's degree each of the last six years the recent success of johnson c smith university's basketball teams especially the double ladies man mince championship is another tribute to dr dances leadership as she prepares to retire from johnson c smith it couldn't have come yancey and johnson c smith university continuing success i'm fortunate to be the representative of this by university in congress thank you now you go back to balance  mr burton of indiana what purpose does a gentleman  with with without objection challenged recognize for five minutes thank you mr speaker i like today to discuss an issue that is on the horizon that could very well affect the economic freedom of americans especially their families prosperity and happiness it is an issue that i would also like to thank the chairman of the financial services committee representative frank and the ranking member of subcommittee representative  issue i'm talking about is the issue of sovereign wealth funds that many people will question what is a sovereign wealth fund well the answer is very simple a sovereign wealth fund is a gift is a fund that i controlled by a foreign government that then invest into the private market of the united states many people especially those within my own party disturbingly think that sovereign wealth funds are a wonderful way to inject capital into the united states but the reality is that these are very dangerous instrumentalities of foreign nations and would allow for the potential interference of these foreign nations in our domestic affairs and not only within our economic sphere one of the reasons i joined the republican party was because i opposed socialism communism and i wanted to vent the cause of liberty a sovereign wealth fund denies all of those again the sovereign wealth fund is controlled by a government now those of you who recall economics can understand that when a government buys an asset from the private sector when the government owns it these product or service has been quote nationalized this is the route of socialism government by something in the private sector socialism gets bigger free markets and free enterprise and free peoples get diminished this is the root  sovereign wealth fund it will diminish the economic liberty of individuals in the face of governments that are trying to control free enterprise we should not have this occurring in the united states of america the bastion of free enterprise conducted by free people the second problem that i have with sovereign wealth funds regrows from the first a foreign country controls this fun this is not protectionism of anything except americans liberty prosperity sovereignty and security the cow i mean it's chinese have one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world as they continue to tell us although few people seem to understand if they're serious they remain communist the communist sovereign wealth fund from china comes in and buys private assets in the united states those government assets are now socialized and again your freedom  liberty prosperity and security are diminished and there's a huge problem with this in the hands of the communist chinese in addition whereas in the free market private investment funds have to raise capital voluntarily from individuals and then make rational decisions based upon the profit motive a sovereign governments wealth fund is allowed to take and spend and invest they spend and invest that which they take from their people they have no accountability to the citizens and they can invest for a political motive these entities of sovereign wealth funds are and to that a call to private sector free market investment and again when they are forced to operate on a private sector profit motive the sovereign wealth fund can operate on a political motive which may or not be and the a long term interests of the people of the united states so for two reasons i would like to go on record immediately in my opposition to sovereign wealth funds in any nation's hands being invested in the united states and socializing our private sector assets and i would like to also especially emphasize my abject contempt for nations that are opposed to the united states is first continued existence as a bastion of liberty being able to buy or influence within the united states based upon a soul a political motive and a political motive is not and people's best interest so to my fellow republicans i would ask them to remember why they are ns to remember that we have the support to advance the economic liberty of americans and to protect  preserve their liberty and prosperity and security and ask them to reassess the sovereign wealth funds because no matter how much money they inject into our economy to socialize private sector assets the cost we are going to pay to the long term vitality of our free people is too high a price to tender to the very enemies of our existence i yield back the balance of my time just shift  well thank you mr speaker mr speaker today marks a tragic anniversary in american history it was on this day in eight hundred fifty seven that the supreme court of the united states handed down the now famous dred scott versus sanford ruling saying that dred scott a black man born into slavery but living in a free state was not a united citizen and could not sue for his freedom in federal court in a seven to two ruling handed down by chief justice roger b taney a former slave owner from maryland the court found that the black man was not a person under the constitution that he was property and not a person and then s such that he was both prohibited from bringing suit against any citizen in federal court and was made subject to the fifth amendment of the constitution which prohibits taking property from its owner without quote due process the court said that all blacks slaves as well as free were not and could never be citizens of the united states and determined that blacks quote had no rights which the white man was bound to respect and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for he is the white man's benefit by that one ruling mr speaker nearly four million slaves living in america were deemed by an area di judiciary as less than human unworthy to be protected and it took an entire civil war to reverse the tragedy of that decision dred scott himself tasted the freedom he believed was the birthright of every human soul only a short time because tragically after his emancipation in may of hundred fifty seven of eight hundred fifty seven he lived in the freedom that he longed for for only nine months before he passed away today we remember the horrendous scar upon the soul of our nation of slavery and the scott decision and we all stand in retrospect and wonder how those people on that day could have been so blind to the on a noble truth that all men are created equal and yet today mr speaker here in the land of the free and the home of the brave we have allowed almost fifty million of our own unborn children to be killed in their mother's womb as a result of yet another supreme court decision that denied their personhood and the most basic constitutional right of all that being their right to live it has now been exactly twelve thousand eight hundred and twenty seven days since the travesty called roe versus wade was handed down by the supreme court since then the very foundation of this nation has been stained by the blood of almost fifty million of its own children and yet today even in the full glare of such tragedy this generation clings to a blind invincible ignorance while history repeats itself and our own silent genocide mercilessly annihilates the most helpless of all victims yet to date those yet unborn weston churchill mr speaker said americans always do the right thing after they have exhausted every other possibility americans are coming to realize that the avenues of heartlessness and selfishness are now exhausted americans are beginning to understand that if we as a society do not possess the courage and the will to protect innocent unborn children that in the final analysis we will never find the will or the courage to protect any kind of liberty or rights for anyone mr speaker perhaps it's important for us for those of us in this chamber to remind ourselves again of why we are really all here thomas jefferson said this he said the care of human life and its happiness and not its destruction is the chief and only object of good government mr speaker the rise and fall of slavery in america if it teaches us anything it is that the evil about us eventually and completely collapses upon itself the time is long past for roe versus wade the bloodiest court decision in the history of humanity to take its place along the  the dred scott decision in the ash heap of history thank you mr speaker for what purposes the gentleman from indiana ri ok what do we do speaker on february twenty eighth through march fourth just this past weekend i participated in a bipartisan congressional delegation to iraq and afghanistan i've written about this extensively on my web log which my constituents should know is located at mike pence dot house dot gov but i want to excerpt portions of that today by way every reporting back to the house on our findings  these two countries in which american forces face of war every day it was a bipartisan congressional delegation mr speaker to both iraq and afghanistan in four days we took off and landed twenty different times in four different aircraft we flew to kuwait in a military jet we flew into iraq on a cargo plane we flew around iraq and afghanistan in helicopters and ospreys we convoyed in military vehicles throughout both countries it was a rare opportunity to meet with leaders and locals in both theaters of combat and i'm personally grateful to the people of indiana and our military for making it possible our visit also took place against the backdrop of several major events the iraqi government announced that ali hassan better known as chemical early brutal military henchmen of saddam hussein was to be executed later this month we arrived in the kurdish region as that news was breaking but we also arrived in that area as turkish forces were announcing their withdrawal from military operations in the north and on the second day our trip to iraq coincided with the first official visit by a president of iran to varying degrees freedom is making progress in iraq and afghanistan in northern iraq known as the courage and kurdish region there is security political progress and economic growth and even in central iraq after years of insurgent violence following the military surge al qaeda and the insurgency are in steep decline and political progress is beginning to take hold as i saw firsthand in baghdad and in the anbar province the military surge in sunni cooperation have resulted in extraordinary progress in security but those gains are fragile violence in iraq has declined by more than sixty percent since the beginning of the s and has remained at relatively low levels since november of last year the iraqi parliament has passed legislation that may make further political progress possible our visit was mr speaker characterized by cautious optimism from american military leaders and ordinary iraqis on the street afghanistan was also equally encouraging in president hamid karzai we saw the determination of a leader devoted to his people and to defeating a resurgent taliban effort to overturn their progress with terrorist violence this spring in the kunar province particularly we convoyed out and witnessed really the greatest threat to the taliban terrorists who operate on that border with pakistan a bridge a bridge is being built by local afghanis with american resources seeing locals waving in our convoy greeting laborers of this remote construction site showed me the depth of american generosity and the resilience of this proud  people my summary on my website is a is simply an effort on my part to report point by point moment by moment on my trip we speak about each of the days from the kurdish region to our time in baghdad to our time  and our time even on the streets of the deeth through afghanistan and through a stop at ramstein military base to meet with injured soldiers at landstuhl medical center and again mr speaker my website is mike house and my constituents could access that by visiting my blog and gaining that information i would be grateful for any constituent who avail themselves of our writing and the message that we got from iraqis clear the surge is working but the battle is far from over violence is down significantly in the past year the enemy's abilities have been downgraded in both degree and type of attack u s forces have made measurable progress against terrorist elements in baghdad and al anbar province due to both the military surge and extraordinary expanded cooperation among the civilian civilian population and while the military surge is working the good news is the iraqi parliament seems to have gone to work to the adoption of a budget the passage of a law permitting bath party members to work for the government and the plan for provincial elections that may well occur by october of this year represent exactly the kind of progress that many in our diplomatic team and many in this chamber have hoped to see well mr speaker i thank you for the courtesy especially at the opening of this time on the house floor i  would be grateful if any of my constituents when to mike pence the house dot gov visited our blog and avail themselves of our firsthand account of what we saw in iraq and afghanistan the progress is real the progress of freedom is happening it is fragile and it is my hope that by bringing back the information from this bipartisan delegation that we will be able to find that bipartisan consensus necessary to see freedom win in afghanistan and iraq i yield back the balance of my time under the speaker's announced policy january eighteenth two thousand and seven gentleman from georgia mr price is recognized for sixty minutes as the designee of the minority leader i appreciate so much the opportunity to once again come before the house and address issues of concern to bring another version of the official truth squad official truth squad started a couple  years ago and was an attempt to actually grew out of a frustration by many of my colleagues and i who watched what occurred on the floor of the house here and and felt that there just that there just was a lot of sunshine going on bring to the conversations that go on here in the house on a number of different topics one of our favorite quotes is that of the late senator daniel patrick moynihan who said everyone is entitled to their own opinion but they're not entitled to their own fact mr speaker what i'd like to do today for a little bit is just talk about some facts and one fact that i'd like to present as i began is that about a week ago exactly a week ago thursday of last week a little earlier in the day  i took this same well and i made the comment that at that time it was a specific hour on the clock today as a matter of fact it's three thirty four p m on thursday afternoon many individuals are just getting completed with a full day's work or about to complete a full day's work a lot of folks are getting ready for the second shift get ready to start their their shift from three to eleven across this nation  some who will be working the midnight shift the late shift or probably just put their head on the pillow so they can get some sleep before they get back up later this evening to get to work tonight and where's the speaker if you look around you tell the house has gone home house is gone home in fact we went home that day without even passing a bill without even voting on a bill speak the american people have great concern about the lack of productive activity here in the house and they have specific concern about the end ability apparent inability of this house and this leadership to address the issues that are of most concern to the american people we take an oath mr speaker as you know that says that we will work to protect and defend the constitution in the united states of america one of the ways that we do that is to make certain that the individuals who are gaining information on our behalf from folks across the world who wish to do us harm that we get that information that we're working with as much information as possible that we as a nation know what the bad guys are going to do before they do it when we don't know what happens is days like nine eleven and so mr speaker shortly after nine eleven there were some laws that were passed that updated our intelligence capability that made it so that our intelligence officers across the world would be able to track and listen to and discover electronic communication verbal and otherwise when terrorists outside of the united states were talking to other terrorists outside of the united states which is speaker i represent the sixth district of georgia just outside of atlanta when i asked folks at home does anybody think that's not a good idea should we be able to listen to terrorists outside of our country when they talk to other terrorists outside of our country and they might be talking about plans to bring many of us great harm should we be able to listen if we have the technological capability to do so have met anybody yet not one person yet who thought that was a bad idea this is not the federal government wiretapping surveilling listening into conversations between you and me this is not the issue the issue is not whether or not the laws ought to be changed to determine whether or not our intelligence officers can listen to american citizens talking to american citizens on american soil no mr speaker this issue is the ability of our intelligence officers to listen to terrorists or suspected terrorists outside the united states who are talking or communicating with others of like mind outside the united states should we be able to do that the speaker of the senate thinks we ought to be able to do that by a bipartisan majority sixty eight twenty nine up until this leadership the house thought we ought to be able to do that the american people think we ought to be able to do that but the problem now mr speaker is this leadership in the house of representatives who has allowed this law to expire this later ship has made it so that the american people are suffering from an american government that has brought about a unilateral unilateral disarmament when it comes to determining what terrorists are doing plotting to do us great harm as not my opinion that's a fact that's a fact i'll give you some other facts here mr speaker what has happened in the past week since i last took this well and spoke about this issue is that a letter was sent out from a bipartisan group of fourth two thousand and eight and i'm going to read the majority of it because i think it's incredibly important for you mr speaker and the american people to appreciate the gravity of this situation again this is from a group of bipartisan attorneys generals from across the united states and what they say is we urge the house of representatives to schedule a vote again that's all we're asking for is a vote to schedule a vote and pass the senate bell twenty two forty eight t amendments act of two thousand and seven this bipartisan legislation is critical to the national security of the united states once passed as twenty two forty eight will ensure intelligence officials have the ability to collect vitally important information about foreign terrorists operating overseas which just baker foreign terrorists operating overseas state attorneys general understand it's not talking about change in u s law to surveil or listen in upon conversations between american citizens going on in the letter senate intelligence committee chairman john d rockefeller authored s twenty two forty eight to solve a critical problem that arose when the protect america act was allowed to lapse on february sixteenth two thousand and eight that's the law mr speaker that was allowed to expire because this current left liberal majority left liberal leadership who runs this house refuses to allow a vote on this bill the letter goes on the root of the problem stems from a four foreign intelligen jeopardizes america's national security efforts under that decision u s intelligence agencies must obtain a face a warrant before and then she aiding surveillance in following suspected foreign terrorists located outside the united states and mr speaker some people say what's wrong with that what's wrong with going to court to see if you if it's ok to listen in to these folks the speaker you know and i know that the manner of communication since one nine hundred seventy eight when this bill when the five initial faisel bill was adopted the manner of communication across this world has changed we now have e mails we've got black berrys and blueberries and all sorts of things that we can provide that give people access to immediate real time communication we now are able to rent portable phones cellphones you can read on by the minute you can read them by the hour  if you rent a phone have a phone and use it for an hour and we're able to know that in fact that that phone is being used by a terrorist overseas but that phones only going to be used for one hour or one call it is in comprehensible that patriotic americans would believe that our government ought to have to go to court in order to get a court order to listen to that conversation that occurred yesterday the day before the day before that or that morning for that matter mr speaker current technology dictates that our law keeps up with current technology otherwise the terrorists the bad guys are a leap ahead of us and that's what's happened in the last one thousand days twenty days when this law has been allowed to expire and that is that the terrorists are getting a late by head of us again that's not my opinion that's a fact that i'll demonstrate as we talk more about this this afternoon continuing in the letter the face of court's decision hinged on the fact that those entirely foreign communications are frequently routed through telecommunications facilities that happen to be located in the united states and because modern global communications networks routinely route data through numerous facilities in a myriad of countries the nation in which the call originates may be completely unrelated to the nation through which the call is ultimately routed what that means mr speaker as you know is that when a call is made in a foreign land by a terrorist or a suspected terrorist and he or she is calling a nother suspected terrorist in a foreign land the electronics this the signal the electronic signal of that call may go to a satellite may come down to a station in the united states and may head back to another satellite and then down to the terrorists and that happens in real time that happens in split seconds and because that electronic communication touches american soil or a company on american soil then apparently the liberal leadership in this house of representatives believes that those individuals ought to be afforded every every protection of the united states constitution mr speaker that is an abrogation of duty that is not what the american people believe it's not what the constitution says and it's not what action we would choose in order to fulfill and live up to our responsibility and our oath again going on in the letter it says a bipartisan majority the united states senate recently approved yes twenty two forty eight but until it's passed by the house of representatives intelligence officials must obtain faisel warrants every time they attempt to monitor suspected terrorists in overseas countries we've talked about how unworkable that is passing as twenty to forty eight would ensure that our intelligence experts are once again able to conduct realtime surveillance as you know prompt access to intelligence data gather data is critical to the ongoing safety and security of our nation as attorneys general we are our state's chief law enforcement officials and therefore responsible for taking whatever action is necessary to keep our citizens safe with us twenty two forty eight still pending in the house of representatives our national security is in jeopardy mr speaker that's not congressman tom price saying that that is a signed letter from twenty five a group of by partisan twenty five state attorneys general saying until this is passed our national security is in jeopardy we therefore are the house of representatives to schedule a vote and pass the feis amendments act of two thousand and seven signed by the attorney general of the state of texas new hampshire georgia nebraska indiana alabama north carolina pennsylvania michigan oklahoma maryland south dakota rhode island florida arkansas virginia west virginia washington state south carolina utah kansas north dakota colorado and idaho mr speaker this letter demonstrates that those individuals republican and democrat across this nation who are charged with making certain that their citizens in their respective states are safe recognize the gravity the gravity of this situation and the the dereliction of duty that occurs when the house of representatives is not allowed the opportunity to vote on renewing the protect america act mr speaker we've called on the speaker called on the leadership on the majority side of the aisle on the democrat side of the aisle to schedule a vote three weeks ago the leadership said no we need about three weeks that's what they said mistake or three weeks ago they said we need about three weeks and we'll be able to work with the senate and work out any differences or disagreements or concerns that we have just give us three weeks misspeak or two weeks ago they said that there wasn't any urgency there wasn't any urgency and then last week on the floor of this house they said we're working on it it's an important matter we're working on it we'll get it done over this past weekend the the chairman of the intelligence committee said we ought to be able to get it done this week mr speaker time is ticking away day after day after day that we do not have this law in place makes it so that our nation is less secure or our people are less say all for want of a vote on the floor of the house of representatives s republicans understand that have acted appropriately senate democrats understand that and have acted appropriately house republicans understand that are trying to act appropriately house democratic leadership refuses to schedule a vote they do so apparently because they believe it will pass astounding astounding mr speaker i'm so pleased to be joined by my good friend from tennessee and look forward to her comments congresswoman blackburn and look for your comments on this issue which i know you have spoken out about so vigorously and understand the gravity of not acting on the protect america act and i'm pleased to yield to my friend and i thank the gentleman from georgia not only for his leadership on this issue but our nation's security but for his work on the truth squad as he always repeats the phrase everyone's entitled to their own opinion but not their on facts and that is so pertinence mr speaker to the debate that we are having on our nation's security there is no issue is that trumps the security issue this is something that we know to be very important as i travel the country and how travel my distrait what i hear from people is why are you not taking this up why are you not taking the steps to make certain that we can find out who is trying to harm us you know mr speaker it makes no sense at all as i talk with moms that are in my district so regularly they will talk about how concerned they are with security security in our communities security in our places of work security in our children's schools they want to make certain that the security to live peacefully is they are for us here in our homeland they want to be certain that those protections are there for our troops who are deployed and at this very minute i have troops from fort campbell which is in my district in tennessee and troops who are national guardsmen from tennessee who are deployed making certain that american interests are safe and making certain that americans in our great nation are also safe to live their life freely in pursuit of happiness every single day and mr speaker i find it absolutely revolting and unsettling that the leadership of this house continues to stand in the way of the protect america act our colleagues in the senate have decided this is a very important issue they set aside we all know what happens when you set aside work  have to kind of pick it up off the table and move it over and say we're going to come back to that and we're going to get those items accomplished but first and foremost let's deal with the nation's security so they put that on the desk they made it the priority they took it up and they said it is not a partisan issue we're going to find agreement on this because the security of this nation trumps it all the security trumps it all now you know if we wanted to go play the ostrich game or if we wanted to go play whack a mole with the terrorists we could do that we could just rely on the nineteen seventy eight five or and pretend that we never had email and that we never had cell phones that we didn't have voice video and data just travelling on the waves through the air now mr speaker that that would be nice and make us feel good uncomfortable but the point is it's not true it just isn't true gentleman from georgia has so eloquently said we know we know that the terrorist are using these new technologies to communicate and we know that there are terrorist in foreign countries who are communicating with other terrorists in foreign countries who are trying to do harm to our troops and the feel we have evidence of that mr speaker to our citizens in this country we have evidence of that and to our citizens and our allies around the globe well what is so difficult to understand about this mr speaker it just seems like when the evidence is there as the facts are there as my colleague from georgia says why and can there not be an admission that those are the facts and they are the givens  everybody everybody in d c seems to agree with this except the leadership of the spotty and i i find it very disconcerting and ideals of the gentleman from georgia for a comment i thank my good friend for her comments and for her op pushback tive and for bringing more light and truth to this issue and it's not just our opinion it's the opinion of so many individuals as you mentioned the bipartisan bill in the united states senate sixty eight to twenty  nine these aren't the most harmonious of times in washington mr speaker but the gentle lady from tennessee and i certainly understand appreciate that one of our primary responsibilities is the protection of our nation and the senate understood that and that's why they work together in a bipartisan way so many individuals have given their opinion about why this was important mike mcconnell who is the director of national intelligence said before the committee the house intelligence committee quote we are significantly burden in capturing overseas communications of foreign terrorists planning to conduct attacks inside the united states that's that's what the director of national intelligence said and senator jay rockefeller democrat from west virginia who is the on the the chairman of the intelligence committee in the senate said just last month what people have to understand around here is that the quality of the intelligence we're going to be receiving is going to be degraded he said that if we allow the protect america act to expire well mr speaker we didn't allow to expire but the later ship in this house has allowed to expire and that's what concerns us so greatly and not and i know that my friend from tennessee appreciates what senator rockefeller has said as it relates to this issue not please deal back and not thank the gentleman and there was a comment you mentioned mike mcconnell who is the director of national intelligence and i go to a quote that he gave before the senate panel and listen to this that half half not a third not a quarter not a ts that half fifty percent of what we know comes from electronic surveillance that means that all all of these new forms of communication that are out there this is what the terrorist sales are using half of what we know comes from electronic surveillance and  this and the outdated foreign intelligence surveillance act had degraded those intercepts by two so hard i just find it so agreed that we would hamstring and make it difficult for the intelligence community to carry out their job when they are seeking to serve this nation when they are seeking to work with the military and to make certain that we know who is seeking to do us harm and i yell back to the gentleman from georgia i thank my friend once again for her comments and perspective on this this most important issue i don't know the speaker if there there's anything that we do here that is more important than making certain that america is is safe and secure and the american people although they know that they're there are partisan battles and political games that are played here they understand and appreciate that but what they don't understand is a leadership abrogates the duty and responsibility that they have to make certain that that this nation is is safe person after person individual who individuals who have great knowledge and experience in this area much greater than than those of us in the house of representatives in terms of actual hands on experience in determining what the terrorists are trying to do to do us harm to a person to a person say that this is a bill that must be must be passed we're now nineteen or twenty days into not having the ability to gain this intelligence and it is it is harming our nation it is it putting us at greater risk we've been joined by another good friend from from georgia my friend mr westmoreland and i we had the time to do this and so i went back to the day that the files of failed which was february the thirteenth and i look at i said because this is a complicated bill and i know there are some issues and some things to be worked out have we had enough time to do it and how much time are we spending on discussing this facet and so after listening to ya'll went back and got the schedule for february and after the thirteenth of february that on the fourteenth we did eight suspension bills which are bills that have very little discussion and two motions to adjourn so we were in session that day about five hours but nothing about fast and then it seems to that we were gone for about a day s and then congresswoman when we got back the week of the twenty fifth we were four days for a total of fifteen hours and five minutes with no fazul legislation we did three suspensions on the twenty fifth we did the public housing on the twenty six which was withdrawn we did the energy tax on the twenty seventh in then we did three suspensions on the twenty eighth and so that was for february and if you look at what we've done in march we did three suspension jester day we did six suspensions the next day th we did the middle hill which a total of about ten hours that we spent on that and then today it's four o'clock and we all react and didn't do anything today so i guess my question and what are we doing i mean we the hundred ninth congress was called the do nothing congress what what can this congress be called is anybody have a good name low congressman that we could call this congress a motion that says we ought not do anything in this house until next week let's just go home my friend from georgia points out that that we have been doing a whole lot here this year and been in a whole lot the hundred tenth congress and the american people can tolerate a lot in their in their political leaders but what they can't tolerate is inaction on important issues and issues matters of national concern national security and so it it frustrates them it frustrates us that th leadership won't bring this bill to the floor twenty one members of the majority party have signed a letter that said they would vote for this twenty one members this bill will pass if it would were just brought to the floor please deal to my good friend from tennessee i thank the gentleman for yielding and the gentleman from georgia so right in what he is pointing out what we're spending our time doing here are items that are not crucial their policy debates their policy debates about how you want to approach in a shoe my goodness the government reform committee and michael miti energy and commerce we have had hearings on steroids in pro sport now we had plenty of time to parade people in and do these hearings but we didn't have the time for fights that we have plenty of time to have committee hearings we've today we were in committee at energy and commerce on tobacco and if we wanted the f d a who already cannot keep the nation's food supply say they can't keep the nation's drug supply state but we were spending time on that instead of putting time on fighter now as a mother you know that children are going to put off to the very end doing the hardest thing so what you do when you're a mom is to say no we're going to do the hard things first when we're doing homework we're going to do the har problems first we're going to write the hard paper first because you get it out of the way and then you know that regardless of how much time is left you've attended to the things that are going to have the greatest impact now that is the way the leadership of this house needs to move forward they need to go back and learn a kindergarten lesson they need to go back and think about what they learned they are you the hard things first fight that is a difficult bill we're pleased that there are some issues that take a lot of work that we have to work to build consensus that we have to look carefully and study the nation benefits and our constituents benefit by that but to put it off to choose to not address it to leave it at the back of the line for partisan monarchy here the republicans here we've tried to bring it to the floor on over a half dozen occasions we try to bring it to the floor again today we tried to bring it to the floor yesterday in this is the same bill that passed the senate and the gen lady from tennessee was talking about it so hard issue in this issue that needs to be discussed there's no slower body in the world than are our colleagues across the hall i mean they've been working on a farm bill for a year now and so i mean it's a very deliber body and they passed is overwhelmingly sixty eight to twenty nine is jim of georgia said there are twenty one members that have said they would vote for this bill so we tried to bring it to the floor to see if it would pass but through parliamentary procedure they refused to let us vote on it and you know mr price if if we don't vote own issues our constituents know how we really feel about it so you can go home and say yes i'm for the security there's nation i'm for the foreign intelligence surveillance act but if you don't have an opportunity to vote own it is just words as simple words and so we're ready for some action up here i mean we want to see some action on our intelligence to make sure our intelligence community has the very best tools that they need and not only that but our cooperation to have been so generous in willing to go along with some of the things that our government has asked them to do to keep our people say we need to make sure that they're protected and so you know we're not the party of the trial lawyers we're the party of the people and so i think if we had quit trying to protect some of these special interests and start trying to protect this whole country we would be a lot better off and i want to applaud our leadership for study and consistent and been constant that we keep this in front of the american people and that we are trying to give the members of this people's house an opportunity to vote on it and reclaim my time and i appreciate that we are ready for action we're ready for action the american people are ready for action on this issue that they're demanding and that's why you begin we have begun i think over the last week or so to hear the language on the other side change but their actions haven't changed and what we're doing is we're given an opportunity for the terrorists to act exactly exactly and that because we can't surveil them and so rather than us taking the action they're taking that action in their head is this unconscionable that this body is letting that happen with with without a doubt in our constituents understand and appreciate that the folks that we're up against in this battle the individuals who wish to do us harm are very smart people very smart people and when we provide we have an open society when we provide them an opening in that open society they will take advantage of it and it as you say it's unconscionable it's unconscionable for this house to not allow a vote on it the some some my constituents at home say well why can't you just bring it up and as you've mentioned we have tried to bring it up but the house is a very majority  body it is run by strict rules and if the leadership of the majority party doesn't want it to happen it won't happen if the majority party doesn't want it to happen it won't happen and the reason for that is they they control absolutely everything that comes to the floor and consequently our constituents our friends at home get frustrated by the fact that we in this house of representatives seem to be unable to get this done and we call and i've called on everybody here has called on the democrat leadership on the speaker on the later on the other side to bring this to a vote to bring this to about we're comfortable i'm confident that this house will do the right thing will do the responsible thing and will pass this bill  to have a chance but i do want to say this we had a bomb go off in times square this morning fortunately it didn't do a lot of damage at recruiting station right in the middle of times square in the middle of new york city and we also have had a bombing in jerusalem  and so the terrorists were still at work people that want to terrify this country are still at work and we've let our guard down and i thank you for the for those comments were placed to be joined by our good friend from michigan mr hoekstra who is the ranking member former chairman of the intelligence committee understands this issue as well as anybody and it's been a champion for not just his constituents in the state of michigan but all americans in bringing focus on it i'm pleased to yield to my good friend and i thank my colleagues and i thank all of my colleagues for talking about this important to show you issues you know we've been talking about this now for over seven months last august we passed a six month extension that six month extension expired at the beginning of february we passed a two extension we got to the end of that and then the democratic majority said well let's do a three week extension and we said now we need to do a comprehensive fix we need to fix buys a long term we need to do the telecommunications compan and then they say that well we can do that in free weights you know an hour ago marks the end of the third week of the legislature they were never serious about getting this done and they wouldn't have  it they wouldn't have gotten it done when they said they were and you know they said at the beginning of this week they said well we're not going to get to it this week because our legend legislative agenda is just too packed full here we are at ten after four and are packed legislative agenda means the house that business at three o'clock absolute unbelievable but you know now five weeks ago when we started into this process one more time we said exactly what my colleague was highlighting both my colleague the terrorists have not stopped they continue their attacks in pakistan you know when five weeks ago is when they had some major bombings in pakistan just before the election they had the major bombing in afghanistan but we also then started hearing from al qaida in iraq saying they wanted to use a rack to do what you remember they wanted to use al qaida in iraq said we want to use it as a base to attack in jerusalem and then a major terrorists died in lebanon we're not sure exactly what the circumstances were some think it's israel some others say it might have been h one of the key leaders of hezbollah up passed away and the statement was from hezbollah then was we're going to hold israel accountable what happened today z far as we can tell a new terrorist group along with the gaza martyrs group which may also be a new terrorist group claim responsibility for the drew some operation so with the events of the last five weeks some new identify terrorist groups have popped up and most likely if there is any intelligence that our allies as we said who's going to be a vulnerable by our diminished capability it's going to be america's home it's going to be our troops in iraq and afghanistan it is our embassies around the world and it's potentially our allies we want al qaida in iraq and what the various organizations have now said after the death of these are new terrorist groups well gentlemen you yeah yeah i appreciate that because what you point out is it that in a relatively short period of time which is what we've been saying the terrorists are flexible they change based upon what happens here at home right this is what occurs on the floor of this house is consequential who's to say that that and that that there would have been information that would have been gained had we had this bill in place that would have been gained that would have allowed us to know and we got in our allies the israelis get meaningful intelligence about this group the law on surveillance would be the law that was in place on nine ten all want the very laws that the president and his national security advisers are current speaker of the house bipartisan leadership in the house and senate all said would not work another example within the last hour all right dynamic situation and remember i think we all know that intelligence only works when you do it in a timely way you know two year old intelligence is no longer intelligence it's data it's information for historical purposes to keep america safe intelligence hasta be real time in the old law didn't do it you know again when we talked about what potential threats would be five weeks ago we said you know there's been people who have been arrested because they were going to allegedly murr murder the dutch or the danish cartoonist there was a plot in denmark to do this and i said well that's interesting but there's another threat on the horizon dutch t v refuses to shell anti qur'an film as terror alert does raise what is this we've known first quite some time that a dutch  parliamentarian was going to do a video on islam his interpretation of islam i'm not saying whether it's right whether it's wrong but as a parliamentarian you would think that he could have the opportunity to express his views on islam in a country that i think in rotterdam now the most popular baby's name is mohammed but he was going to give his views of muslim so of islam and was preparing a video and there were allegations that there might be some things that were inflammatory in this video people saying he might burn the qur'an who knows we don't know what's in it but the dutch government now it just came out that the dutch we knew that this video was in development not knowing what was in it but the dutch now the t v networks have refused to show it but he may release this film on the internet which is cause the dutch spur and strong ally in afghanistan in the war against radical jihadists the dutch are you know of gone on a high heightened terror alert if there are groups new groups that form as a as a reaction to this new video the old law will apply our hands will be tied behind our back our intelligence community be will be limited in it ability to help the dutch protect their assets and as we've known from the past when radical jihadists have an opportunity like the this they don't just focus in on our particular country they use it as an opportunity to go after moderate islamic regimes in the middle east where countries in northern africa you all of europe not just the dutch and the americans but if there are new groups that haven't been identified before the old rules apply which means we are more vulnerable it is it is absolutely unconscionable that here we are three weeks later and once again we are going home without dealing with this and it's not because of a heavy workload  it's because they don't want to do what the senate has done senate passed a great bill sixty eight votes bipartisan and we all know how hard it is to get sixty eight votes in the u s senate today but a broad bipartisan bill that gave our intelligence community the tools that they needed and it gave to the telecommunications companies the help that they needed to do their work i mean it was absolutely you know it's absolutely unacceptable to have one of our colleagues up here today to talk about the intelligence community remember the last debate on the last bill not talking about what our intelligence community is doing to protect american lives and american intelligence officials and  intelligence community have lost their lives keeping america say and our friends on the other side say what their big brother well you know what they're big brother but they're gone out and they're not big brother in america they're focused on one thing finding radical jihadists but these folks the little the effort of our intelligence community and give the american people the impression that our intelligence communities is just looking for ways to destroy american civil liberties i've met with these people i know they're focused on one there are a couple of things protecting american civil liberties as they keep america safe and to be little the work of our intelligence community is absolutely unacceptable and it's really an embarrassment that those kinds of comments are made on the floor of this power without a doubt and there are so many things that have occurred during that this discussion about this issue that have been sad and distressing that was one of them today as as you saw the chuckles go across on the other side of the aisle when when when the company the patriotic company they're trying to assist this administration says assist this government assist our intelligence community in being able to protect all of us and all they do is denigrate them and it's just so distressing because it's such distant permission and misinformation that it confuses our constituents but what our constituents understand and appreciate is that it is the majority party in this house that won't allow this house to vote on a bill to protect american playfield that my friend from georgia i want to ask our my coll the ranking member of the select intelligence committee of the house so what you're telling me the these two new groups if i understand it correctly after nine eleven the president called in the security h s national security advisors of c i a the f b i all of our intelligence agencies along with the representatives of some the telecommunications companies and got together to find out what their assets were for doing surveillance and gathering intelligence i guess after they came up with if i here understand you correctly you're telling me that a bipartisan group which included the now speaker of the house were informed of this in that there was some adjustments made to the foreign intelligence surveillance act to cover these new groups in new methods of gathering intelligence but what i hear you say and now because this thing has expired then we're back to september the tenth of two thousand and one own our ability to gather intelligence on these new groups and that's exactly right the individuals in our government this is not an id this was never the administration's program it was never the president bush program this was always the american government's program because the administration identified what we needed to do and how we could do it and they went to a bipartisan leadership of the house and the senate a small group because when you get these kinds if you have these kinds of capabilities you don't want to broadcast to al qaeda and radical jihadist about what your capabilities are you want to use it as an effective tool but on a  bipartisan basis the leadership of the house in the senate and the leadership on a bipartisan basis of the intelligence committees in the house and the senate signed off on these programs the current speaker of the house was brief for time in the eight nine months immediately after nine eleven and you know what number one now she's not bringing to the floor the very changes and that she supported in the aftermath of nine eleven but the companies that we went to and asked them for their help and when these companies said ok we know the administration is supportive of this have members of congress been informed and the administration could truthfully say yes they have been briefed they've been informed they know what we're going to ask you to do what information we expect to get and how we expect that to keep america safe there now roland them onto the bus but the most important thing is the urgency of today and we need these companies to help us they help us all the time and we're we're having a chilling effect on these types of american businesses in many ways helping us in basic law enforcement activities not only radical jihadist but basic law enforcement because they're now being told if you help us recognize and in many cases we're going to throw you to the walls which in this case are the trial lawyers i appreciate my colleagues having this discussion and debate thank you very much for allowing me to be a part of this i need i need to get going i was hoping i could say i'm going to a meeting where we're going to work out the final details on pfizer but now that's not the case you know i've got to go to a different type of mean but thank you very much for furthering the effort on on this very very important issue thank for bringing greater clarity to that mr hoekstra night and before you joined us had read and inserted into the record a letter from twenty five state attorneys general talking about the importance of fice a bipartisan group of individuals across this nation who are who have the responsibility of keeping their state safe and they understand and appreciate the imperative of this again this is not this is this gets so confusing to the american people because the people that apparently don't want this to pass want the american people to be confused this is pretty simple the speaker please you neal you know one of those attorney generals wrote a letter because it's affecting the local government's ability to do surveillance own the people from mexico that are in this country illegally drug lords in others is called this is got i mean this is affecting our local governments homes ability to do this surveillance is not just al qaida in the terrorists this is affecting our local law enforcement to it's affecting the information that they're able to get but it's communication from for an individual on foreign soil to another foreign individual on foreign soil this is not between american individuals on american soil to american individual on american soil the speaker when it's confused and brought into to kind of a perplexing dilemma for people in talking about the violation of american civil rights that's not what this is about this is about protecting americans from terrorists overseas and what we've seen in the last nineteen or twenty days is exactly what senator rockefeller knew we would see when he said on february fourteenth of this year what people have to understand around here is that the quality of intelligence we are going to be receiving is going to be degraded he said that say stating before the senate that if this bill is not passed the ability to gather intelligence will be degraded mr speaker that means that we're not able to get the intelligence we need we're now one hundred twenty days into not having this bill in place not having this law in place and why i have difficulty when i get asked at home that question my constituents many of them will say well why won't they pass the bill a majority of the house wants it right and that's correct twenty one members of the democrat side of said they would they would vote for the bill the vast majority  not everybody on the republican side would vote for the bill mr speaker you know that's a majority of this house of representatives so let the house work its will why won't they bring it up the only rationale the only reason that is made any sense to anybody is purely political purely political either to continue the issue for their left liberal wing because they believe they can gain political points with it or the political nature of not making it so the communications companies have immunity from the information that they provide on foreign individuals terrorists overseas communicating with other terrorists overseas for providing those individuals the same protections that we have under the united states constitution never before has that been done never before have we provided individuals in a foreign land not american citizens in a foreign land the rights privileges and protections of the united states constitution that's apparently because of the trial lawyer lobby and because of the trial lawyer support for the majority party the democrat party that's apparently the only reasonable answer to the question why won't they allow this to come but mr speaker they the leadership is is is has recognized at least they say they recognize the importance of this issue just six days ago the majority leader said quote this is a very serious important bill it's critical to the defense of our country unquote just last week he said that by then mr speaker why are we not voting on it today it's four twenty five there's no reason that we ought not have brought this bill up today or yesterday or the day before or tomorrow but mr speaker know the house has gone home individual after individual have appreciated  recognized the importance of this bill that the that the terrorists those who want to do us harm are very nimble they're very flexible they're very bright members of the house of representatives oftentimes have the opportunity to go to iraq and to afghanistan i was talking to a colleague who was there just eleven days ago that's just a week into when we didn't have this capability and eleven days ago this member of this body this house of representatives was told by a general on the ground in iraq that the information they were receiving was not as of high quality as it had been the week before changes occur that rapidly in the ability to gain information mr speaker some say some say that the individuals representing them across this nation are incapable of leading this nation anymore sums say that the actions of this house of representatives border upon treasonous activity the speaker this isn't leadership that's going on in this house right now it's an abrogation of duty it's an abrogation of responsibility it's a violation of the people's trust it's a violation of the oath of office as speaker the american people are demanding that this be voted on and it be voted on at the first opportunity which now becomes next week misspeak are the senate republicans have voted yes the senate democrats have voted yes the house republicans will vote yes when given the opportunity the house democrat leadership is the only thing standing in the way of passing the protect america act and securing and defending this nation in only the way that we can now with appropriate intelligence capability we must do that and we must do that as soon as possible and i yield back the balance  under the speaker's announced policy of january eighteenth two thousand and seven the chair recognizes the gentleman from maryland mr bartlett for sixty minutes thank you very much mr speaker and just a few days now will be the third anniversary of the first time i came to this flow or to talk about this subject i believe i believe this may be the thirty ninth time that i have come to the floor and what and i was fishes time to come because when i got up this morning and turned on the television i could hardly believe that oil was one hundred and five dollars a barrel there are three groups in this country that are interested in transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables they have very different agendas they have very different concerns but they have common cause in wanting to transition from fossil fuels to renewables one of these groups as the group that is concerned about the national security of our country this first chart speaks to that there were thirty people about three years ago leading americans woolsey and twenty seven others retired four star admiral isn't generals who really understand the problems we face who wrote a letter to the president saying mr president the fact that we have only two percent of the world's oil reserves and we use twenty five percent of the world's oil and we import almost two thirds of what we use is a totally unacceptable national security exposure we really have to do something about that a couple of other statistics on this chart are interesting to note with our two percent of the world's oil reserves we are pumping eighty percent of the world's oil we're pumping our wells that means four times faster than the average in the rest of the world what that means of course that if there is an end  oil that our wells will go dry before the others because we're pumping them faster the last a distinct here is and which are the a bit less than five percent where one person out of twenty two in the world hold and we use a fourth of the world's energy and this fact is not lost on the rest of the world they recognize this the next chart is a statement by our secretary of state condoleezza rice she had in mind the statistics that you just saw and she had some other things in mind that will come to an a in a few moments when she said we do have to do something about the energy problem i can tell you that nothing has really taken me aback more as secretary of state than the way that the politics of energy is i will use the word warping diplomacy around the world we have simply got to do something about the warping now of diplomatic effort all rush for energy supply so our secretary of state recognizes the national security implications of the world's oil energy supply one of the things she had in mind was this next chart and this is a really interesting one this shows what the world would look like if the size of the country was relative to the amount of oil that it had in reserve and boy this is a war map of the world isn't it there is china and india over there so small you can hardly find them because they have very little oil saudi arabia huge it just dominates the landscape of saudi arabia has twenty two percent more than a fifth of the world's reserves of oil and notice little kuwait their tiny little province way down there in the southeastern part corner of of iraq and saddam hussein thought that that would look good as a province of iraq which  problem and about twelve years sixteen years ago i guess but look at the size of their reserves and iraq and iran the united arab emirates just dots on the map and look at how much oil they have and then across northern africa nigeria libya algeria egypt and and so forth and look in our hemisphere venezuela of course dwarves everything israel has more oil than all the rest of our hemisphere put together russia is big but not huge compared to to these other reserves little kazakhstan you see that it's fairly large there so really some really striking things about this map one is the size of the reserves in india and china about almost a fourth of the world's population lives in india and the challenge about a third really live in india and china and they have no more oil than we have and notice that our two biggest suppliers of oil are canada and mexico and they have less oil than we are now there aren't very many people in canada so to use the oil so they can export it to us and although there are a lot of people in mexico most of them are too poor to use the oil so they can export it to us but look of venezuela is dominating this hemisphere another thing that congolese the rice had in mind when she made that statement about how own oil is warping the worlds the policy was the distribution of the reserves of oil on the right over there we have the top ten all and gas companies on the basis of oil reserve holdings in two thousand and four  notice that ninety eight percent of those are governments nationally owned oil reserves luke oil and russia big and they have two percent and they are kind of quasi government really but notice over here on the left now this is the top ten oil and gas companies on the basis of production the graph on the right shows how much oil they have in the graph on the left shows  much oil they're producing now the big boys up here exxon mobil and royal dutch shell and b p and so forth they weren't even big enough to show up over here on the right they're not numbered among the top ten so they don't  oil but they're pumping a lot of oil that somebody else owns and so they're pumping twenty two percent of the oil but notice still that seventy eight percent of the oil is pumped by these national companies that own it there a i'm sure had this in mind when she made that statement she also had this next chart in mind and this is an interesting one this looks at holdings around the world world energy picture of january of zero five and you'll notice the symbols there for for china china is buying oil all over the world why would they do that because in today's world it really doesn't make any difference who owns the oil we own very little of the oil we have two for cent of the world's reserves but we're using twenty five percent of the world's oil and we do that because we come with our dollars let's hope it continues to be dollars rather than euro so we come with our dollars and we buy the oil so why are the chinese buying up the oil when it doesn't make any difference in today's world economy who owns the oil the person the company the country that comes with the dollars buys the oil only one in the world now you would need a blue water navy to protect the supply routes if you wanted to take the position that the oil was yours and you couldn't share it they have a billion three hundred million people and i can imagine that one day they may with pressure from their people tell the world gee i'm sorry but this oil is ours and we can't share it they have nine hundred million people in what they call rural areas that with the miracle of instant communication and television have observed the benefits of the industrialized world and they're clamoring for some of those benefits and i think that the  chinese recognize that they must do something to meet those demands or they might see their empire unraveling the way the saw of the empire unraveled so this is one group of people that have a concern about moving away from fossil fuels to alternatives renewables we have very few fossil fuels and so we have a big incentive to move away and develop renewables and these are those who are concerned about national security interest there is a second group and i don't have any charge for this group but you have seen so much of this that you don't need me to have charts and this is a very large group of people who believe that our excessive use of fossil fuels which is  releasing carbon dioxide that has been sequestered through the ages when the sun shone on ancient sub tropical season the algae and small animals and plants and so forth grew there and then at the end of these and they dropped to the bottom and still came in and then more the next season and then finally the tectonic plates opened up and they went down to a proper point where with pressure and temperature and time this organic material was converted into what we know today as as oil and gas coal is a little different and as a boy i knew very well where coal came from because we lived in coal mining country as a matter of fact we had a coal mine on our farm and the coal would come out of the mine the dust up to the big chunks of coal and we called it run on mine and we'd have to break some of those chunks to put it in our furnace and i remember taking that sledgehammer where it leaned against the wall and breaking a lump of coal and there it opened up and was a big fernley she remembers a kid the feelings i had i wonder how long a grow that foreign grew so i knew where coal came from it came from from plants that die we can see the beginning of cold in the sis is that carbon dioxide is is taken out of the air and oxygen is released into the air and if you now vary that plant you now have sequestered the carbon dioxide when you take it out and burn it you are releasing the carbon dioxide and in the last hundred years or so we have doubled the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now this is what we call a greenhouse gas you see the effects the greenhouse effect when you go out to your car in the parking lot in the summer and you open the door and that blast of heat hits you what's happened is that that the rays from the sun and come in over a broad spectrum of waves and they have heated up the interior of your car and then that re radiates in the infrared red in the glass of your car is relatively impervious to infrared and so it keeps that heat in there the same thing happens in our world the sun shines down that warms up things down here and they radiate back and these greenhouse gases act very much in the atmosphere like the glass in your car or the glass in the greenhouse act it reflects the infrared back in and so it keeps us warmer and there are a growing number of people who believe believe that this increase in carbon dioxide increasing the greenhouse gases producing climate change in our world and producing a global warming and course enough global warming could melt it would take a very long time couple hundred years probably but could melt the polar ice caps and that would raise the level of the oceans about two hundred feet and if you look around the world at the number of people who live in less than two hundred feet above sea level it's a big big part of the world's population so these people who are concerned about global warming and climate change and by the way i would note that very small differences in temperature make huge changes in climate during the last ice age about ten thousand years ago our earth was about five degrees centigrade cooler than it is now that's about nine degrees fahrenheit that's not a whole lot nine degrees that's about like going from here to minnesota but that nine degrees fahrenheit difference in temperature caused the ice age so when you're looking at a temperature change that gee i go from one room and my house to another has a bigger change that in the sky isn't falling how come that's a big deal just remember that relatively small temperature changes can make huge climate changes now the solution to the problem that the climate change  exactly the same solution to the album that the national security concerns people see and that is we've got to move away from fossil fuels and we've got to move to renewables where we are recycling the carbon dioxide you see if you burn something that grew this summer if you burn it this fall like burning wood from a tree that may have been growing for thirty forty years and and taking c o two out of the air and storing it in the tree and when you burn the tree you put the c o two back in the air but that's the same c o two that the tree had taken out and so it's a balance and the c o two doesn't go up so what the climate change global warming people want to do is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and the common release of carbon dioxide and instead substitute these renewables which simply recycle the carbon dioxide now if you're going nuclear by the way it's even better after you've paid a carbon cost for building a nuclear power plant then there is no carbon dioxide produced for the duration of that nuclear power plant the third group and that's what i want to talk about namely this evening the third group that have common cause in this and before i talk about this group i want to note that that i think that the best interest of mankind the best interest of our country the best interest of republicans and democrats will be served if we don't criticize each other's premise and there are those who believe that the global warming thing is just silly there are others who believe that the that these foreign countries that own all this oil are going to play nice and give us who also why worry about the national security interest but rather than than criticizing the premise of these others why don't we just lock arms because what we want to solve the problems in just a month going to talk about the third problem which i think is really the big one is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and increase our reliance on alternatives  the next chart and i've got to go back fifty two years to to talk about the origin of this chart because this all began fifty two years ago as a matter of fact that anniversary will recognized as the most important speech given in all of the last century and that speech was given here in one thousand nine hundred fifty six so we're right here on the chart now the united states is king of oil we're producing more oil using more oil exporting more oil i think than any other country in the world and they all geologist by the name of m king hovered in this very famous speech in san antonio texas told a group of oil people that and fourteen years roughly fourteen years it turned out to be fourteen you will peak in oil production and no matter what you do after that you will not be able to produce more oil now remember the united states then is king of oil oil wells everywhere oklahoma texas little interesting sidelight here but why were there so many and that was because as i understand that the law of capture if you if the oil came out of your well you own the oil though much of it might have been sucked under the ground of the person next to you who owned the land next it was called the law of capture i think and so if you wanted to get some of those revenues you had to drill your own well and understand that wells were drilled  graveyards and through the four years of churches if you look at some of those pictures it looked like a forest of oil rigs out there and i think the reason was this this law of capture but right on schedule in  seventy we peaked in oil production is a chart of that we reached the peak in one nine hundred seventy now emptying hubbard had included only the lower forty eight in his prediction he had not included alaska where we found a lot of have not included the gulf of mexico where we found a meaningful amount of oil but you notice that the slide down the other side of hubbard's peak just a little blip from the oil that we found in alaska and the gulf of mexico and so right on schedule and king albert and his prediction of a phenomenon which we call today peak oil said that we would reach that maximum in the united states in one thousand nine hundred and seventy now this same forecaster with enormous credibility have been are right on target for the united states said that the world would be peaking about now the next chart is an interesting one and if you had only one graph one chart you could look at to talk about this it would be this one because it says so much information on it the little bars here show the discoveries of oil and you notice that we started discovering it way back there some of it in the depression really and then after the end of the oppression just before the the war and then huge discoveries in the fifty's sixty's and seventy's but ever since then down down down that kind of a rag it down because every once in awhile you hit a pretty big field here is a spike here but on average every year since what the seventy's or eighty's has been down down down the solid black line here represents the oil that we have produced which is also the oil we have used because there's no big store of oil anywhere we use it as we produce it and a really interesting curve notice the shape of this curve here and of nothing happened to change that curve it would have gone with the top of the graph by this time well something did happen to change the shape of that curve you know it's that changed in the seventy's and that was these were the oil price spike hikes ungendered by the arab oil embargo and it caused a worldwide recession here was a worldwide recession and boy we woke up we and much of the rest of the world and we found ways to do things more efficiently and now we are recovering from that and the economy is great for most of the world a little tremor now but it's been great economy but you notice the slope of this curve after that is very much less than the slope of this her there's an interesting statistic during the carter years up to the carter years a matter of fact that every decade we used as much oil as had been used in all of the world in all of previous history while what that means is of course  use half the or you have only one decade left well we have really slowed down now you can see the slope of this curve is very much very much less now when will the world reach its maximum oil production see what we've been doing since about one thousand nine hundred eighty we have found less than less oil but we've used more and more oil so this area here the area above the oil that we found has been filled in by the oil that we found way back now we've got a lot of these reserves left and the makers of this chart say that this is the average of what we'll find in the future it won't be smooth it will be up and down that that's probably about the quantity that we will find and but what we're using suggesting that we will be peaking about now as you can see and that this area here will have to be filled in by reserves that we found back here because we aren't finding any meaningful amount of oil now so those who made this chart believe that oil in the world should be peaking about now the next chart shows the estimates of a number of authorities some of them have enormous uncertainty and when they think peak oil might occur here's one that says it could occur anytime between now and twenty one twenty between twenty twenty twenty and twenty one twenty here is one that says gee it could be any time but you know a great number of them believe that it could be as early as about now here we are at this a great many of them believe it could be now or shortly after this so there's a general consensus to most of the authorities in the world that peaking could be now the next chart kind of puts all this in perspective and great speech the fourteenth day of may one thousand nine hundred fifty seven so this will be the fifty first anniversary of his speech noted that we were in an age of oil have some quotes from his speech in a few moments that we were in an age of oil and he said in eight thousand years of recorded history we were when he gave his speech about one hundred years into the age of oil and this is a chart that looks not back to eight thousand years but if we went back that it would you know the amount of energy used by mankind would be down here so near zero you can hardly see the difference and that we go here about four hundred years and the industrial revolution began with with wood and then we found coal and oil jumped up and then we found gas and oil and while the quality of the energy and the extract ability how easy it was to get easy it was to use and look what happened to energy  like now here we see that same this continuity in the seventy's the worldwide sesshin the oil price spike hikes now one can make this curve and let's look at the next curve here because it shows exactly the far over there and now we're going to we believe that down the other side but i want to focus here on the yellow area of this chart if we in fact are teaching an oil production and if the world follows the pattern that we have been following in the united states then the production of oil will look it has look up till now about this like this and in the future it will slide down the other side of hubbert's peak today in the united states we produce half the oil that we produced in one thousand nine hundred seventy in spite of finding a lot of oil in alaska and a fair amount of oil in the gulf of mexico and in spite of juli more oil wells than all of the rest of the world put together so we're about this point i believe and they demand is about two percent now two percent doesn't seem like much does it is about a fact our stock market doesn't like two percent growth if thinks that's a name they can likely not to do well but two percent growth doubles in thirty five years and here we're talking about long time periods it doubles in thirty five years it is four times bigger in seventy years it is eight times bigger in one hundred five years and it's sixteen times bigger in one hundred forty years this phenomenon of exponential growth caused albert einstein to respond to a question gee dr einstein what will be the next big energy force in the world and he said the most powerful force in the world is the power of compound interest the next of course after nuclear energy so with this two percent growth and i would submit that it's going to be hard to hold growth to two percent because we have india and china coming on board i was in beijing about a year or so ago and they had the and bicycles and parts of asia because they were getting in the way of cars with the demand for oil and in china i think it'll be hard to hold it to two percent growth that this is two percent growth and it doubles in thirty five years of this period is thirty five years now many people looking at the problem we faced with peak oil say gee let's fill the p i think it is manifestly impossible to fill the p i don't think we need to fill the peak i would be happy if we were reasonably sure that we could just fill the area below this peak so that we would have a plateau out here i'm not sure that the world will be able to do that neither am i sure that we have to do that two to live  well actually the next quote is a quote from this really great speech given by hyman rickover if i'm emptying hubbard speech was the most important speech of the last century and i think it may have been then i think that maybe the most insightful speech last century with that speech given fifty one years ago the fourteenth day of this may i came to this floor on the fiftieth anniversary of that and hyman rickover as well as sat in the gallery there when i read to largely from the really really insightful prophetic speech that he gave these are some of the quotes i suggested this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendants i do a lot of that i have ten kids i have sixteen grandkids and i have two great grandkids so i think a lot about my descendants those who will ring out the fossil fuel age while i was thinking of the statement when i let a codel to china the last holidays not this christmas new years but the one before that and we went there to talk about the nine of us went there to talk to the chinese about energy and it is really interesting they began their discussion of energy by talking about post while as hyman rickover said there will be a post also because if there is a fossil fuel age the age of oil then there will be some time after the age of oil in this country think in terms of the next quarterly report and how my get going to get myself elected the next time and really interesting that people in that part of the world tend to think more in terms of generations and centuries but the chinese recognize that there will be an age of oil those who will wring out the fossil fuel age we might give a break to these youngsters by cutting fuel and metal consumption so as to provide a safe or a margin for the necessary adjustments which will eventually which eventually must be made in a world without fossil fuels that will one day be a world without philosophies i think that has to be obvious if you look at the world the whole thing is not all and even if it it wouldn't last forever but it's certainly not so they will one day be a world without oil and hyman rickover was suggesting that fifty years ago fifty one years ago was a good time to start thinking about how we do that transition the next chart  shows a reality that i don't know how many have thought about this is a chart which shows on the abscissa the amount of energy you use and on the right over here it shows how happy you are with your station in life now we use more energy than anybody else and so there we are the fur this one over here to the right but we're not the happiest nation in the world there are twenty four countries everybody about this lie everybody above this line feels better not just as good or better about their quality of life than we feel about our quality of life and some of them use only about half as much oil as we use and when i look at the  huge challenges that we have from the future i note that that we have a lot of opportunity to to live more efficiently and to live not just as happily but to live more happily because there are twenty four countries that use less oil than we some only half the oil that we use who feel better about their quality of life than we feel about ours now this third group that has common cause with the first two the first two being those who are concerned about our national security we get far too much of our oil from over there and as the president appropriately said from people who don't even like us  the second group who is concerned about global warming and releasing all of this sequestered stored c o two in these fossil fuels and dumping into the atmosphere and producing producing these greenhouse gases that reflect back the infrared radiation and warm up there by the way if i lived in siberia you might have a hard time convincing me that a warmer earth would be all that bad and i would note that if they play nice over there are these guys that have all the oil that may not be a problem so the national security thing may not be a problem i would submit that the earth has been very much warmer in the past that's the only way we could have had some tropical season the north slope and and the north se wire and so forth warmer earth will be very different better for some people worse for others and i don't think it's a risk work take worth taking but those many will argue that gee that may not be you know this guy may not fall if that were earth gets warmer but i will tell you that this is the third group of people the people who are concerned about peak oil there is no way that we're going to get through that without a very bumpy ride leslie aggressively pursue this challenge now i'm i'm excited about this my wife tells me that i really shouldn't be talking about this because people ancient greece killed the messenger that brought bad news and i need to get myself reelected i shouldn't be talking about this and tell it is a good news story the good news is that if we start today to meet this challenge the ride will be less bumpy than if we start tomorrow but the really good news part of this is that there is no exhilaration like the exhilaration of meeting and overcoming a big challenge and boy this is a big challenge you know many of the problems we have with with our unemployed and our kids and so forth in this country is because time weighs heavily on their hands and they end up doing sometimes hurtful things to themselves and society i lived through world war two the last war by the way in which everybody was involved it was the last war in which our country was at war now our military has been at war since then and our military families have been at war since then but boy world war two our country was at war everybody knew we were at war not a single automobile was made for public consumption forty three forty four and forty five you had to have a ration coupons to buy gas if you had convinced him you were a good church goer they gave you enough to go to church otherwise you stay home or walk to church you had to get a chit coupon to get to get sugar to do your canning with there were no real scarcity of automobile tires we saved our household grease and took it to a central repository of what we had a life saving time it comes this weekend and we had a bite saving time because the we had an extra hour to spend in our victory gardens and there was no law from congress that said you had a victory garden boy everybody who could talk to your grandparents they probably dug up their backyard and they put a garden area so i saw pictures of vacant lots in new york city where they took all the rubble and piled it up in rows and planted gardens between them you know everybody was involved in and that war and i'll tell you if we're going to get through this this is a huge challenge it will require the best of us but we're the most creative innovative society in the world and with leadership which is i think fairly conspicuously absent today with leadership i think that we can rally to this to this cause what we need to get through this is the total commitment we had in world war two we need to have the technology  focus when we put a man on the moon and we need to have the urgency of the manhattan project by the way that technology focus will do other really nice things for us i talk to a lot of businesses who cannot find enough technically trained  people or young people today just aren't turned off the are turned on to training in science math and engineering many of them are becoming lawyers and political scientists i think we have quite enough of both of those thank you but i remember during the less than a decade that our president challenged us to do it in a decade we did it in less than a decade putting a man on the moon and i remember how turned on it captured the  imagination of the american people and inspired our young people to go into careers of math science and engineering i remember a cartoon of a little red head freckled face bucks to see young fellows said six months ago i couldn't even spell ingenue year and now i are one you know everybody wanted to be involved in this and we need to have again the technology focus that we had then and what that will do is inspire more very bright young people and we have really bright young people and they need to be going into pursuits that will really be productive like science math and engineering when spyer them to go into those visits and we might once again become a manufacturing export ng nation by the way the technologies that we will need to develop to exploit these renewables i think we could become the center for that in the world and once again could become a major exploiting nation again i say we're the most creative innovative society in the world somehow somehow the genius of our founding fathers and the constitution they gave us which really really respects the rights of the individual created to milou a climate in which creativity in entrepreneurship could flourish and it's still flourishing just look at our small businesses that they're responsible bring us out bring us out of out of recession so i'm really in  enthusiastic about this everybody needs to be committed we need to have the technology focus of putting a man on one and this is urgent you know just in the last few days i have three things in front of me here where others are recognizing that this is urgent there's a two day summit with our national academy of sciences and they're looking on america's energy future about time they're going to be looking at america's energy future we have a huge challenge but as a force of the world's oil we have two percent of the world's oil and the president very correctly said that we are hooked on oil and like the cocaine addict that's hooked on the strop he just got to have another fix and so now there is a clamor to go out and drill for that oil up in anwar and drill for that oil offshore i haven't voted for those i have ten kids sixteen grandkids and two great grandkids were leaving my horrendous debt with my vote horrendous that and i just asked wouldn't it be nice if we could leave them a little energy i was asked to vote to drill in anwar and my question was if you good drill and pump and wire tomorrow what will you do the day after tomorrow and for my kids and grandkids and great grandkids there's going to be a day after tomorrow i'll vote to drill in in anwar and offshore when a commitment is made that all the energy that we get from those fields will be invested in alternatives you see today we have the situation where we have run out of time and there is no surplus energy if there was surplus energy oil wouldn't be one hundred and five dollars a barrel this morning when i say we've run out of time i'm really very critical of what we the world has done in the last twenty eight we're sliding down the other side of what's called hubbert's peak so we knew he was right about the united states now i believe it was in seventy nine just the year before eighty that he predicted the world would be peaking about now and i ask you if empting however was so right about the united states should there have been some concern that maybe just maybe he might be right about the world and wouldn't it have been appropriate to look at that possibility and put some programs in place that would address that potential eventually you know it's very difficult to look back on what we've done without using a couple of not very complementary analogies when we first found that incredible wealth under the ground and boy that was incredible wealth one barrel of oil and we use about twenty two million barrels a day in our country by the way one verrall of oil has the work output of twelve people working all year twenty five thousand man hours of work but when i first saw that number i thought that can't be true twelve people working all year one barrel of oil has that much energy and then i thought about that one the last maybe twenty thousand miles now i could pull my prius forty seven miles that's almost all the way from here to my home in fredrick that would take me a long while to have to get come along and hook to the guardrail and so forth to pull the car i could do it so i find that gee that's probably right every barrel of oil has the energy equivalent of twenty five thousand man hours of work twelve people working all year for you as a matter of fact i saw a statistic recently that was really interesting if there was no gas oil or coal no nuclear no s  no hydro it's the only power of a level was the power of human activity to enjoy the quality of life that each of us enjoys they would have to be three hundred people out there work that's the amount of energy from fossil fuels that each one of us consumes we live as well as if there were three hundred people out there working to support our quality of life no wonder hyman rickover referred to this as a as a golden age the next chart kind of shows where we are and where we are  all three of these groups want to move away from fossil fuels to alternative source the very different reasons and again i appeal that we stop criticizing each other's premise because what we want to do to solve the problem as we see it is exactly the same thing move away from fossil fuels to to renewables how are we going to do that now there are some finite resources that are really quite unconventional and we're exploiting some of them now from the tar sands and candidate we're getting about a million barrels of  oil a day that's with the heroic efforts of they are using local gas which is stranded which means that it's far away from any population and therefore it's cheap and so you can use it for something like this they have a huge tailings pond which is full of all sorts of noxious chemicals and the vein if you're thinking of it it's a vein is on top and it will soon duck under an overlay still have to have to exploited insight to and i don't know how to do that yet they have a shovel which lifts one hundred tons at a time they dump it in a truck which holds four hundred tons they haul it to a cooker which cooks it until it loosens up the step for oil and it flows and they add some chemicals to it to keep it flowing when it when it cools down they're getting about a million barrels  day and that's a million out of eighty eight million that the world is producing so bit more than a percent but it is not sustainable and they know it's not they're going to need more all their grandmother out of water by and by but if they could continue this exploitation there is more potential in the tar sands of canada than there is in all the huge oil reserves that we showed on that map of the world that we showed earlier so there's a huge potential there but remember in any one of these things you need to look at energy profit ratio how much energy a need to put in to get out a unit of energy and if you're putting in more energy to you get out obviously you're not go that and you're going to move on to some to some other source the oil shales western and i said that they have reserves at least as large and maybe larger that some believe up in the trillions of barrels of oil by the way we'll come to that number later but the world has had about we believe two trillion barrels of recoverable oil we've recovered about one trillion of those believe that there is another trillion to be recovered now some believe that we can find a lot more some believe that we can get a lot more out of the present reservoirs but i want you to note that in spite of the  the world the most aggressive economy in the world that we have not been able to reverse our slide down the other side of hubbert's feet so when you're listen in to people bringing these rosy pictures about a future with abundant oil remember that the united states with all of our superior already we're still the envy of the world in higher education but all our superiority has not been able to reverse our slide down the other side  organizations looking exploiting that are what's called the rocks that burn by the by the indians and when you heat it up it becomes oil it's not exactly oil in the form that it's found there can we develop that how quickly can we get it how much will we get from it we will certainly get something from it by and by but remember this and the profit ratio coal we have a lot of coal not as much as we thought we had the national academy of sciences took a new look at that and they said that the conventional wisdom that there was a two hundred fifty years out there at current use rates be very careful when somebody mentions current use rates and making for jackson's for the future because with growth that time duration really really shrinks that much out of his science is say that we now have something more like one hundred years of coal out there  current use rates and just a few moments we'll have a chart which will look at that that show you what that really means in terms of energy that's going to be available to us and then we have nuclear upgrade different potential sources of nuclear energy the one the world is using for producing electricity is a fusion of light water reactor plants france gets about seventy five eighty percent of their electricity from fusion we get twenty percent but we're much bigger than f produce more electric power than france produces but not so high a percentage of what we use fissionable uranium is a finite resource the world will one day run out i have no idea when that will be because  wildly divergent estimates when i ask people how long will it last ten years thirty years one hundred years we need an honest broker it's hard to have a discussion when there's not agreement on the facts and i would like to  to commission the national academy of sciences to help us decide on what the reserves are what the resources are so that we can have a productive dialogue that even when we run out of fish we'll be running we still can get nuclear power from what we call breeder reactors the world i think is use those only for producing nuclear weapons we have done that they have problems and you're producing stuff that's potentially weapons grade you're hauling it around for enrichment and there are opportunities for terrorists there then years of end product you have to store away for a quarter of a million you're now understand that there is some potential breakthroughs there where we can burn more of this fuel and we end up with a waste product which is much less radioactive and much shorter half life so the storage problems are going to be much reduced there's a lot of new technology in the nuclear area and i will tell you that that to some who have been stout opponents of nuclear when they're considering a likely alternative in an energy efficient world of shivering in the dark nuclear is looking better to them nuclear fusion that's the only energy source out there that is a silver bullet if we find that we're home free by the way we got a great a fusion reactor it's called the sun and the sun is the source of almost all the energy we use it was the shining of the sun a long while ago that produced the plants that produce the gas the oil and the coal it's the shining of the sun that produces differential temperatures and that makes the winds blow it's the sunshine which lifts the water from the the ocean in the plains and drops it on the mountains and it flows down through the dams to produce a hydro power only a few sources of power that aren't that don't come from the sun nuclear trifling amount of chemical the tides don't come from the from the sun but huge potential amounts of energy in in the oceans but it's so this burst that it's just hard to  color it there's an old axiom that says that energy or power to be effective must be concentrated look at the tides the moons lift the whole two or three feet i carry two five gallon buckets of water and that's heavy how much energy w to lift a whole ocean seventy five percent of the world's surface two or three feet but the problem is harnessing that energy but there are other potential ocean energy sources the ocean thermal gradients you get in the air the tropics in the be very warm on the surface very cold on the bottom and there are several technologies for for getting energy from that temperature from that temperature difference then we get to the true renewables by the way there are many people who don't really think it's necessary to talk about this because they are market enthusiasm they will tell you not to worry the market will solve this problem the market will solve this problem you may not like the way the market solves this problem because the price of oil unless we do something to move aggressively to alternatives may go really high and you might think gee wasn't one hundred five dollars oil really cheat and when gas i hear people telling me gas could go to twenty twenty five dollars a gallon in an energy deficient world so the market will solve this problem that you may not like the way it solves the problem two problems with this one is that the resources are not infinite and are not available in the time in which the market would like to have them and the second problem is the market signals are not timely enough one of the big studies done our government your government has paid for for plan for this a couple of decades ahead because they said if you haven't started to plan for this two decades ahead there will be some economic consequences it's only a decade ahead there will be big economic problems and if you wait until it's upon you and apparently it is they said the world has never faced a problem like this there is no precedent in history well the next things on the chart here i think all of them are on the next chart and it shows him in a in a more interesting for me i'd like to use an analogy for this charge and that's a young couple whose grandparents have died and left them a big inheritance and they've established a lavish lifestyle where eighty five percent of the money they spend comes from their grandparents inheritance and fifteen percent from their income and they look at the inheritance and it's going to run out a long time before they retire at the rate they're spending so they obviously got to do want to two things either have to make more or spend less well here we are seventy eighty five percent of all of our energy comes from coal gas and petroleum oil fifteen percent is less left a bit more than half of that is nuclear electric power and the rest of it is is renewables now some people have eighty six fourteen but it's roughly eighty five fifteen notice the breakout here of the of the renewables solar and this is in two thousand it's grown some in two thousand it was a one percent of seven percent that's point zero seven percent so maybe it's ten times bigger that's still a tiny tiny point seven of one percent still it's a tiny tiny amount would that's the timber industry in the paper industry wisely burning what would otherwise  filling up landfills it doesn't mean there's a whole lot left over there for the rest of us waste energy that's a great idea a whole lot better i think than putting it in landfill we ought to recycle what we can productive the recycle from it and then burn the rest of it by the way is a great facility for doing it right here in montgomery county and it is really a class facility i wouldn't mind having it next to my church by the way it's a great looking building you don't see the trash you don't sell the trash and it's producing electricity but i would caution that that's not a solution to our energy problem because most of the trash that they're burning is the consequence of profit we get use of fossil fuel energy and in the fossil fuel efficient world that trash train is going to be very much less so for the moment that's a good idea but it's not a solution to our problem wind and that's the most rapidly growing alternative today the leading country and that is denmark they produce electricity i think it a cent and a half a kilowatt hour we can do it here two and a half or so cents a kilowatt hour conventional hydro were tapped out on that probably some believe we could get as much hydro from what they call micro hydro much less environmentally threatening small devices in streams and so forth to give us like just a alcohol fuel but just a moment to spend on that the national academy of sciences says if we turned all of our corn  ethanol all of it and discounted for fossil fuel input that it would displace two point four percent of our gasoline this is roscoe bartlett saying that this is the national academy of sciences saying that they kno that if you tuned up your car and put air in the tires you could say as much energy as you would get from all of our corn converted to ethanol now we have been converted at all but the amount that we have converted it has doubled the price of corn and our farm is devoted diverted land from wheat and soy beans to corn and it was an increased demand for it we saw it being so now the price of all three of these major foods for poor people around the world is up fact a member of the united nations said that what we had innocently done inadvertently done unintended consequences was a crime against humanity because now they three of the basic for food stuffs in the world something from from corn but hyman rickover caution wisely in his speech fifty one years ago you should be careful eating your corn or your eighty year food he also said that you should be careful you don't burn up the fertility of your soil by removing the organic material which produces what we call tilth which is what makes the difference between topsoil and subsoil it holds nutrients it holds water we will get something from these i think now there is irrational exuberance as was said about the market few years ago we will get something but it was it is not a silver bullet it will not be a huge amount and will use so much oil it will barely make a dent in just our well that's true geothermal tapping the one source of energy can come from the sun we have some of that in our country we need to exploit it more that's not tying your air conditioner your heat pump to ground temperature which is a great idea in the summertime to cool your house you're trying to heat up that one hundred degree air air outside so a whole lot easier to heat up the ground at fifty six degrees isn't that in the winter of course you're doing the opposite the next chart looks at the coal thing and of this assumes two hundred fifty years remember albert einstein's the most powerful force in the universe the power of compound interest compound growth if you grow only two percent i think we'll need to dip into our hold more than two percent as we have less and less oil it shrinks to eighty five years if you now use some of the energy from the coal to produce a gas or electric and it's not fair to make that comparison if you don't then it shrinks to fifty years no another interesting phenomenon here which is unavoidable we're going to have to share that with the world because if we use the oil we produce and coal then the oil we might have used someone else will use so in effect you're sharing it with the world so now the twelve divided by four shows producing light from the incandescent bulb the fluorescent and the light emitting diodes the little green up here on top is the light it's the same in all of those the blue is the energy and notice that the incandescent bulb is a much better heater than it is a light source i brewed my chickens with with that notice that i did that in diode if you have a an l c d flashlight you'll forget when you put batteries in and we need to move to these kinds of technologies i have one plan all charge here and i think this is a good one too to end this discussion with there are two major entities in the world that follows the consumption of oil and production of oil and they make assumptions about the future and i wouldn't pay it's the i a e a the international energy association this is a part of the united nations it says the group with all variety that's been following what's going on in iran both of them both of them have been tracking what we have been using an car their lines and notice for about the last three years thirty months or for their essential e flat and during that time that's just about the time that i have been coming here to the floor it'll be three years the fourteenth day of march that i made my first speech on the floor here relative to this subject and during that time or oil has doubled in price here we are about to fifty dollars a barrel and there we are up there at well off the chart now above about one hundred dollars a barrel in a few moments remaining to us i'd like to look at a couple of charge here this is the very recent statement january twenty two by the  of shell oil by the year twenty one hundred the world's energy system will be radically different from today boy will it be the world's current predicament limits are maneuvering room we are experiencing a step change in the growth of energy demand and shell estimates that after twenty fifteen supplies of easy to access oil and gas will no longer keep up with the man he's saying it's going to peak about then let me show you one more chart here in the mister mr speaker i would like to close by saying again that this is an enormously invigorating challenge america's up to this challenge what we need is the leadership necessary to make this happen recognized for five minutes i think the speaker for the recognition mr speaker we all we all spend time with search engines we all spend time with google you know if you google the term gambling you'll get millions of matches and of course you can't come to a google page without seeing the wikipedia reference and if you go to wikipedia to see about gambling it states that gambling has a specific economic definition referring to wagering money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome but speaker this is exactly what is going on with energy policy here in the united states house of representatives earlier today the price of oil rose to a record high nearly a hundred and six dollars a barrel we all feel pain at the pump in fact i drive a hybrid car back home but it's still getting awfully expensive fill up and like any good texan have a ford f one fifty pickup truck and last week when i had to fill it with metal to drive to the recycler it cost me almost eighty dollars to fill up the truck in fact since the speaker of the house took the gavel on january first two thousand and seven the average price of gasoline has increased by about a dollar a gallon the price of gas now back home for me is about where it was in the days after hurricane katrina you remember hurricane katrina wiped out almost all the refining capacity united states in the price of oil went up higher than anyone  seen it go before the price of gas at the pump was higher than anyone had ever seen before and where they are now and i got to tell you in texas this time of year we generally have our cheapest gas so what's it going to be on may first when we start having to have all of those fancy blended gasoline's for the compliance with the clean air act and the peak of the summer driving season is about to start we're likely to see gasoline at four dollars a barrel back home and how does the house of representatives handle this uncertainty and the resulting rise at the pump by gambling we bet our energy policy chips on future sources of energy that cannot fully support a country as large or as energy reliant as is the united states of america last week the house of representatives voted to provide tax breaks to consumers who make green choices and extends tax break or tax breaks to producers of renewable energy to create green jobs fair enough but unfortunately this scheme ignores the fact that green choices in renewable energy are currently more costly for consumers and are not yet ready for full market use in addition the plant offsets these breaks by sending an eighteen billion dollars bill to the energy industry that will ultimately pass that cost on to the consumer now i'm not all that good at math and i'm certainly not a gambler but for the life of me no matter how you add and subtract i cannot understand how we stand to benefit by handicapping the very resources that we rely upon to get to our jobs to go to school to go to the grocery store or even to the doctor's office by doing so the democratic majority here in the house of representatives is gambling american resources on a horse they know full well they cannot possibly win the race thanks to this legislation the country has now lost eighteen billion dollars that could have been spent by experts in the energy industry to expand renewable and alternative energy energy capabilities the same energy capabilities that this scheme purports to prove to promote i hope these new green jobs are close to home because workers are going to have to pay for walking shoes in addition to work boots but your speaker why is the majority willing to gamble our economic and national security on the uncertainty of the energy sources of tomorrow in order to bow out of the billion dollar environmental industry today of course members of this house want to expand alternative and renewable energy resources in fact we must do so  just heard in the last hour we must have clean safe reliable affordable sources of energy to continue to compete in the twenty first century but these are not new technology and sin which we are investing ethanol has been sub since the seventies and fact probably earlier than that we've had solar and wind power capability since the eighty's yet somehow this majority believes that the reason that these technologies have not taken over is because of some sort of couple by the energy market so rather than financially support the research into new technology this body chose to strap higher costs on the backs of already cash strapped americans what about the day needs of the nation's families today what about the family struggling to pay for oil to heat their homes gas to drive their cars today we face a slowing economy a credit crunch we have a hard hit housing sector so how does a majority respond to those who are struggling to pay for gasoline and heating oil they say the energy equivalent of let them eat cake let them pay for something that is inherently more expensive than the current market provides mr speaker if california wants to cut energy demand by pricing people out of the market as we just heard in the last hour that's fine for them but please don't think that the rest of the american people are going to sit back and let that happen without a fight our economy is suffering our energy needs are great this is not the time to double down on short term schemes that deals long term problems america's energy relies america relies on energy to fuel our economy and our lives that means that america needs real change to spur the development of new technology in the fields of renewable and alternative energy let's spur this development in the right way and invest in all forms of energy and let's do so without prejudice without handicapping  picking the winners and losers based upon the clean this or the carbon consciousness index whatever that is let me end by quoting the famous songster kenny rogers the gambler because it seems like an appropriate way to wrap up this discussion you gotta know when to hold them you gotta know when to fold them know when to walk away and know when to run well let's hope the other body walks away from this risky democratic scheme so we can