How Does Congress Use Google? Mentions on the Congressional Record

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I had read that a hearing regarding the proposed Google-Doubleclick merger was going in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights on Thursday.

In looking for information about the hearing, I also decided to take a look at when and how Google was mentioned by Congress on the Congressional Record.

A search on Thomas for the 110th Congress yielded 43 results, and I’ve listed those below, along with the quotes where the word “Google” was used. It’s difficult to link directly to documents found through Thomas, so if you want to see more context for those, the best way might be to go to the Thomas page that I’ve linked to in this paragraph, and search for “Google.”

Congress has used Google as an example (good and bad), and as a verb. The number of results found for a search in Google has been used as proof of a position, and as a clever retort of that position.

There are mentions of Google the company, and Google as a new employer of a former agency member. One Congressman pleaded for others to look at Google Maps for proof of the size of a particular landmass.

One interesting use (number 40 below) of Google was as a research tool to point out the potential stances on an issue (Social Security) by new Congressmen who hadn’t had a chance to join the “conversation” on the trust fund in the 109th Class.

I haven’t chosen these quotes to advance any political agenda, but rather because I was curious about how Google is referred to or is being used as a tool by politicians. I didn’t attribute the words to their speakers (except where it was part of the quote that I copied from the Congressional Record) because I don’t want to discuss or argue any of the politics behind the quotes. I thought that they were interesting enough to share.

1 . TRIBUTE TO ROBERT MARCUS — (Extensions of Remarks – June 15, 2007)

If you “Google” Robert Marcus, you will find over 14 million separate entries. True, not all of them are about OUR Robert Marcus, the real Robert Marcus, (particularly the one that reads “Robert Marcus: Real Threat or Just Another Stupid Clam?”), but we know he will make a huge mark in the world. We just hope he will always remember his days with Team Schakowsky. I know I will never forget him. I say, “Thank you, Robert Marcus. I love you very much.”

2 . THE CURRENT HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION IN CHINA — (Extensions of Remarks – January 17, 2007)

The PRC outlaws all independent trade unions, forcing its workers to join the state-sponsored All-China Federation Trade Union (ACFTU), which by international standards is useless and only serves the Communist Party’s needs. Most recently Wal-mart, a company that has opened 62 stores in China, capitulated to ACFTU demands and agreed to let the union set up branches in its stores.

This fact is alarming because Wal-mart does not allow its employees to unionize in any other country. This is a vivid example that disproves the common theory that economic development is a catalyst for democratization in China. In contrast, the more companies that cooperate with the Communist Party’s demands, such as Wal-mart, Cisco. Google . and Yahoo, the more the totalitarian regime is strengthened.

3 . HEALTH CARE INSURANCE — (House of Representatives – January 22, 2007)

Actually, this will provide tremendous benefits to young, healthy people like, say, people who are millionaires at Google who has chosen not to buy health insurance, they will get a nice $15,000 a year tax break. But for the family that earns $50,000 a year, they will not get a tax break because they are not paying Federal income taxes. So the President’s plan is worthless for those who most need it. It penalizes those who are getting by.

4 . THE LAW LIBRARY OF CONGRESS — (Extensions of Remarks – July 19, 2007)

Madam Speaker, I had the distinguished privilege of being the gala’s keynote speaker. The Honorary Committee consisted of members from the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, Congress, and representatives from AT&T, Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Real Networks, Inc., Microsoft, The World Bank, Apple, Sony Corporation and Google.

Additional Friends of the Law Library sponsorship came from: Thomson West; Beirne, Maynard & Parsons, L.L.P.; Burton Foundation for Legal Achievement; HeinOnLine; LexisNexis; Roll Call Group; American University and Congressional Quarterly, Inc. All of these social individuals were present to pay homage to the institution that serves as the world’s largest law library.

5 . NOTING KILLINGS OF DOZENS OF INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS IN RUSSIA AND CALLING ON RUSSIAN PRESIDENT TO AUTHORIZE COOPERATION WITH OUTSIDE INVESTIGATORS — (House of Representatives – June 18, 2007)

Mr. Speaker, any Member can do this, do a Google search, put in Russian journalists and murders, and you come up with one headline after another and one news story after another, usually in the Western press, of individuals being killed.

6 . EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING THE DUMPING OF INDUSTRIAL WASTE INTO THE GREAT LAKES — (House of Representatives – July 24, 2007)

As my colleague Mr. Oberstar noted, the fire at the Cuyahoga River and on Lake Erie galvanized the country. When I was growing up, before that bill, we used to run past the dead fish, dive into Lake Michigan, and swim 30 or 40 feet past all the dead fish to pop up. The Clean Water Act improved dramatically the environmental standard of Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, Lake Superior, Lake Ontario, and all the Great Lakes. The question here is, are we going to move forward, or are we going to go back?

What is ironic about all of this is that this issue isn’t about technology. They can do the refining to clean up and make sure that we don’t dump ammonia and mercury and other environmental hazards into the lake. The question here is not technology or money. They are spending $3.8 billion to expand this facility, which is a good thing to do because it will help with the energy supply.

The question is they said they don’t have the landmass to deal with it. They have 2.6 square miles there. If you look at the Google map, you can see the size of what they have. It is 1,600 acres. They have the land capacity to do this.

7 . Daily Digest – Friday, September 21, 2007

September 27, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, to hold hearings to examine the Google -DoubleClick merger and the online advertising industry, focusing on the risks for competition and privacy, 2 p.m., SD-226.

8 . Daily Digest – Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Committee on Finance: Committee concluded a hearing to examine America’s energy future, focusing on bold ideas and practical solutions, including the Air Force Energy Strategy for the 21st Century, after receiving testimony from Michael A. Aimone, Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Installations, and Mission Support, United States Air Force; Montana Governor, Brian Schweitzer, Helena; Dan E. Arvizu, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colorado; Robert Socolow, Princeton University Carbon Mitigation Initiative, Princeton, New Jersey; and Dan W. Reicher, Google Corporation Energy and Climate Initiatives, Mountain View, California.

9 . AMERICA’S COMPETITIVENESS — (Senate – April 24, 2007)

The step we are talking about this week with a reasonable degree of consensus is keeping our brainpower advantage. Why do we say brainpower advantage? Because that is one way we gained our wealth as a country. Many of the studies show that at least half and maybe a good deal more of the growth in the wealth of families, the family incomes in America since World War II, has come from technological advances.

That is going back a long way. That is from Thomas Edison’s inventions. That is from Henry Ford’s inventions, Walter Chrysler’s inventions, and more recently the Google invention. Wherever those inventions come, the jobs grow.

10 . THE BIPARTISAN CAMPAIGN REFORM ACT AND PEAK OIL — (House of Representatives – May 01, 2007)

I want to spend our remaining time, Mr. Speaker, talking about a subject that was highlighted today in the ACORE, the American Council on Renewable Energy, “The Outlook on Renewable Energy in America.” And several recent articles deal with this. There was a very interesting exchange between T. Boone Pickens and Steve Forbes. T. Boone Pickens believes that the world has reached its maximum capacity for producing oil; that try as hard as we wish, the oil-producing countries will not be able to increase their production of oil, and this phenomenon is called peak oil.

And T. Boone Pickens said several weeks ago that he believes the world has reached peak oil. Steve Forbes took exception with that and indicated that he believed that the marketplace could take care of this. And if it didn’t find more oil, it would find alternatives to oil so there would be no decrement in our growth when we’re growing at roughly 2 percent a year in energy use. By the way, that 2 percent a year may not sound like much, but that doubles in 35 years, it’s 4 times bigger in 70 years and it’s 8 times bigger in 105 years. Now the world will still be here in 105 years, and my great, great grandchildren will still be alive in 105 years.

I don’t have the foggiest notion where we would get 8 times the energy compared to the energy that we are using now. So clearly that is not a world we should look forward to. T. Boone Pickens had an interesting discussion with Steve Forbes; and if you use those two names on a Google search, you will pull up their conversation.

11 . REVOLUTIONIZING AMERICA’S ENERGY POLICY — (House of Representatives – January 29, 2007)

The second person I want to talk about is the director of the relocation for a town called Shishmareff, which is a town on the northern coast of Alaska. This is a town that has been there for 4,000 years in some village system or otherwise. For 4,000 years, people have enjoyed living there, but now they are being swallowed by the sea. The Arctic Ocean is essentially intruding into the town.

If you go and google Shishmareff, Alaska, you will see pictures of the houses simply falling into the ocean. For a combination of reasons, the tundra is melting underneath their houses, and the ocean is intruding because an ice barrier that formerly protected their village has melted. So they are both having the tundra melt underneath them and the storm waves coming in and washing away the town.

12 . EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT AND PEAK OIL — (House of Representatives – March 01, 2007)

Let me put the next chart up, and this chart comes from an incredible speech given by Hyman Rickover, the father of our nuclear submarine. I just want to quote a couple of things.

By the way, if you do a Google search, Mr. Speaker, and ask for Hyman Rickover and energy, I think you can probably pull up this speech he gave on May 14, 1957. He gave this speech at a banquet of the annual Scientific Assembly of the Minnesota State Medical Association in St. Paul, Minnesota. Let me just read a couple of things that he says in this speech because he was so prophetic:

13 . AMERICA COMPETES ACT — (Senate – April 23, 2007)

What this means is that there are so many good proposals before the peer review and merit review groups that give out basic research grants that they tend to be a little more conservative when presented with so many good ideas.

The disadvantage of that is that it reduces the impulse to take a few risks, to roll the dice, or to try some idea that has less of a chance of succeeding but might be the next Google or the next hybrid or the next Internet or the next stealth invention. So this legislation encourages all through the America COMPETES Act in virtually every section that we fund, the idea of setting as a goal–not a mandate but as a goal–8 percent of the research and development budget toward this high-risk frontier research.

14 . PEAK OIL — (House of Representatives – March 06, 2007)

If you do a Google search for Hyman Rickover and energy, you will pull up the transcript of this fascinating talk that he gave almost 50 years ago. He, in that talk, goes through a very interesting history of the development of civilization and the role that energy played in the development of that civilization.

15 . PEAK OIL — (House of Representatives – July 19, 2007)

There was a talk given 50 years ago, the 14th day of last month, by the father of our nuclear submarine, Hyman Rickover. He gave this talk to a group of physicians in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can do a Google search and just ask for “Rickover” and “energy” and this talk will come up. It is called “Energy Resources and Our Future” and it was on May 14, 1957, a little more than 50 years and one month ago.

16 . CELEBRATING NATIONAL AGRICULTURE WEEK — (House of Representatives – March 23, 2007)

One of the other points, this is another scientific mind-stretcher, and that is that about, let’s see, the years now come, about 32 years ago there was a rather dangerous species of an Asian animal, a bovine-related animal called a gaur, spelled G-A-U-R. And that animal had been in the San Diego Zoo for years. This poor gaur was getting old and had gone down, and it looked like it was going to die. Well, the zookeepers there or the scientists took a punch out of the ear of that gaur, froze it in liquid nitrogen at about, I think, 421 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and kept that little piece of that ear of that endangered species animal that had died frozen for 28 years.

And they picked that up and they sent it, then, about, oh, I am going to say 6 years ago on up to a town, a lab in Sioux Center, Iowa, called Trans Ova. There Dr. Jan Schietemann took that frozen piece of tissue, and he cloned that gaur animal by implanting the nucleus of that that he could take from that cell and cloning that into the egg of a cow, and implanted that embryo that was created, the cloned embryo of the gaur, into the uterus of the cow, where this gaur, this rare animal, kind of looks like a yak if you look him up on the Google image page.

This animal then was cloned and raised, and the cow had this calf, a genetic copy of the animal that had died more than 28 years earlier. And about a year later, they shipped that young juvenile gaur back to the San Diego Zoo, where I presume he is still walking around and living happily ever after.

17 . ENERGY — (House of Representatives – January 30, 2007)

Fleeley, Roger Blanchard, Richard Duncan, Albert Bartlett, no relative of mine. But if you put Albert Bartlett, do a Google search for Albert Bartlett and Energy, and you will put out the most fascinating 1-hour lecture I have ever listened to. He has given it more than 1,600 times. I will tell you, there will be no thriller on television that will be as interesting as Albert Bartlett’s 1-hour lecture on energy. You will be captivated by it. They have all estimated that a peak in conventional oil production will occur at around 2005. This is now 2007.

18 . PEAK OIL — (House of Representatives – May 14, 2007)

“In this country,” he says, then 50 years ago, “in this country especially, many studies have been made in the last few years seeking to discover accurate information on fossil fuel reserves and foreseeable fuel needs. Statistics involving the human factor, of course, are never exact. The size of useable reserves depends on the ability of engineers to improve the efficiency of fuel extraction and use.”

The next chart is one that I will spend just a moment on because it amplifies what he is saying. This is referred to as the oil chart, and you can get a very large one if you do a Google search for that, and this is simply an insert in it.

19 . THE FEDERAL BUDGET AND OUR TAX DOLLARS — (House of Representatives – September 24, 2007)

I should step back for a moment and say, just as the gentleman from Texas said, that we are not suggesting that all earmarks are bad, that all earmarks are extra-Constitutional; that is to say, outside of the bounds of what the Constitution says we should be spending it on. Not by any means.

We are just suggesting that if we are going to have earmarks that are within the confines of the Constitution, what we should be spending our American taxpayer dollars on is on priority items. Shouldn’t we have that basic information there, who the sponsor is, what the project is, and how much money is being spent on it? Three basic pieces of information.

That is what we achieved. But here’s the rub. Here’s the little secret that came about in the mechanism that the Democrat majority put together when they implemented that.

Instead of putting all that information on one sheet or two sheets or three sheets, whatever you needed for all the many, many earmarks, and there are many, unfortunately, too many earmarks in one place, that we could, well, what put it on the Internet so the American public and bloggers and anybody else who wanted to Google or Yahoo or use any other search engine look into it and find out what it is easily. No, they didn’t do it that way

20 . PEAK OIL PRODUCTION — (House of Representatives – January 17, 2007)

I have a namesake, no relative. I wish I had some of his genes. He is very brilliant. Dr. Albert Bartlett, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, he gives the most interesting 1-hour lecture I have ever heard on the failure of our industrialized society to understand exponential growth. Just do a Google search for Albert Bartlett and energy, and it will come up and you will be fascinated with this 1-hour lecture.

21 . FROM FOSSIL FUELS TO RENEWABLES — (House of Representatives – March 15, 2007)

Well, Dr. Albert Bartlett’s fascinating 1-hour lecture, and just do a Google search for Dr. Bartlett, Albert Bartlett, and energy, and you can pull it up, and he has some very interesting illustrations in there.

22 . HEALTH CARE IN THE UNITED STATES — (House of Representatives – May 07, 2007)

Fast forward to the time after the health savings account legislation passed in 2003. Come to 2004, 2005, 10 years later, and a young person who needs health insurance just out of college, say, wants to go into business for themselves, doesn’t want to have to work for a big corporation to get that employer-sponsored health insurance but wants to carry their insurance, they can go to Google or the search engine of their choice, type in “health savings accounts,” and with a few clicks and a quick search they can find high deductible PPO policies sold by reputable names that we would all recognize.

And of course, I won’t mention any of those names, but they are sold by reputable companies that we would all recognize as longstanding established insurers in this country, and the premium would be in the range of $60 to $65 a month for a high deductible policy, imminently within reach of that 25-year-old nonsmoking male just out of college in my home State of Texas. Again, that type of policy was unavailable in 1994 for any price, and now it is available at a price that arguably would be affordable by a lot of people who are just getting out of college and have their earnings at the beginning of their earning cycle.

23 . AMERICA COMPETES ACT — (Senate – April 24, 2007)

There is one other area that would be helpful when it comes to competitiveness. Most of us know today what miracle computers have turned out to be. They bring so much information to our fingertips which long ago was hard to find. I can recall as a college student walking across the street to the Library of Congress, sending in the little slips of paper and ordering a big stack of books and searching through them to find information that I can now Google in a matter of seconds.

That is great. That information is helpful. But if one is going to be able to take advantage of that opportunity, one needs to have access to high-speed computers.

24 . CLEAN ENERGY — (House of Representatives – January 17, 2007)

The Nanosolar Company, a company that was started, and the fellows who wrote the first two checks were the two guys who started Google. They have done pretty well for themselves, and they wrote a check to a couple of entrepreneurs in California, and now they are ready to do 450 megawatts of thin cell solar, where you use a solar panel that has one-fiftieth the width, using a selenium, iridium, gallium and caesium type of technology that they think can be 30 or 40 percent cheaper.

25 . WHAT IS GOOD FOR AMERICA — (House of Representatives – January 30, 2007)

“Demagogue” is a term that we use occasionally in our vernacular, perhaps here on the floor reluctantly, but also throughout our dialogue across the country. There is not a lot of history on demagogues. It is hard to Google demagogue and to become an expert, to look under amazon.com, and to come up with real books that are written on real facts that identify demagogues in the Greek era. They are almost nonexistent in this Nation’s literature, at least so far as I have been able to identify.

26 . AMERICA COMPETES ACT — (Senate – August 02, 2007)

So imagine if you are living in China or India or Ireland or any country in the world, and you are looking at the United States. It is not so hard to look at other countries today with the Internet and travel and television the way they are. Someone in one of those countries could say: How can those Americans be producing 30 percent of all the wealth for themselves when they are only 5 percent of the world’s population? They have the same brains everybody else does. They cannot work any harder than anybody else does.

What is it? There are a variety of advantages we have in this country. But most people who look at this country, since World War II, believe our standard of living, our family incomes, our great wealth comes primarily from our technological advances, from the fact that it has been in this country that the automobile, the electric lightbulb, the television set, the Internet, Google have been invented. Or the pharmaceutical drugs that help cure disease all over the world, they also have come mostly from this country.

27 . STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS — (Senate – January 09, 2007)

The FCC removed these rules, and broadband operators soon thereafter announced their interest in acting in discriminatory ways, planning to create tiers on the Internet that could restrict content providers’ access to the Internet unless they pay extra for faster speeds or better service. Under their plan, the Internet would become a new world where those content providers who can afford to pay special fees would have better access to consumers.

On November 7, 2005 then-SBC, now AT&T, CEO Ed Whitacre was quoted in Business Week as saying: “They don’t have any fiber out there. They don’t have any wires. They don’t have anything ….. They use my lines for free–and that’s bull. For a Google or a Yahoo! or a Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes for free is nuts!”

In another article, a senior executive from Verizon was quoted as saying: “(Google ) is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers.”

28 . COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2007–Continued — (Senate – May 22, 2007)

It is interesting. You can now go to your computer and Google “Earth.” If you haven’t done that, I encourage people to do that. Google “Earth,” and you can, from the air, come down and find out what is happening on Earth–any spot on the Earth. So if you Google “Earth” and try to evaluate what is happening on this planet, the United States doesn’t look so much different than anyplace else.

It is just a piece of property on this planet of ours. But it is a very different piece of property, a very unusual piece of property. It was born and nurtured by those who wrote a Constitution starting with the words “We the people” that has created the most affluent country on Earth, with a dramatic expansion of the middle class and opportunity that is a universal opportunity–universal education, saying that every child can become whatever their God-given talents allow them to become in this country of ours.

29 . CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008 — (Senate – March 20, )

Mr. GREGG. On the issue of loopholes, the Senator is a leading expert in this Chamber. Mr. Conrad, the Senator from North Dakota, the chairman of the committee, has, on many occasions, said as to offshore tax planning, when you go on Google and put in “offshore tax planning,” you get 1.2 million hits on Google for sites you would go to to find out how to game the tax system.

I was wondering if the Senator was aware, when you put “Democratic tax increases” into Google, you get 1.5 million hits.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Well, I could imagine so because they are a party that enjoys increasing taxes. So I can understand that.

30 . CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008 — (Senate – March 20, 2007)

A repeat of the above conversation (29).

31 . AMERICA COMPETES ACT — (Senate – April 20, 2007)

We talk a lot about outsourcing jobs, about growing new jobs. Well, this is the way to keep good new jobs in the United States and to grow them. When a graduate of a university, such as a student at the University of Maryland–I think he dropped out, actually–a foreign student–creates Google, that creates thousands and thousands of new jobs in the United States, as Thomas Edison did years ago, as Bill Gates did more recently, and as thousands of entrepreneurs do every day. It takes the brainpower advantage to create the job and it takes the brainpower advantage to work at the facility or the plant that has the jobs.

32 . STEM CELL RESEARCH ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2007 — (House of Representatives – June 07, 2007)

No quotes, but rather referrals in URLs to articles on sites like Businessweek.

33 . STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS — (Senate – April 25, 2007)

It happened when ice storms ravaged northern New England in 1998, it happened when Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, it happened Monday after 70 mph winds from a nor’easter blew chaos into this small Vermont city.

When the lights go out and Google is unavailable, radio is.

(quoting an Associated Press article on Hurricane Katrina)

34 . FAIR MINIMUM WAGE ACT OF 2007 — (House of Representatives – January 10, 2007)

The biggest lie of all is that small businesses have created most of the new jobs in America. This canard, perpetrated by the small-business lobby and embraced by politicians of both parties, has been used for decades to justify all manner of special subsidies for small businesses. But as economist Veronique de Rugy of the American Enterprise Institute reported in a paper last year, new jobs have been created by both large and small businesses in roughly the same proportion.

In truth, the bulk of new jobs have always been created by a relatively small number of new firms that grow fast and get quite big–think of companies like Southwest Airlines, Google, CarMax. Most have little in common with the small-business lobby in Washington or fast-food restaurant chains or the members of the Kiwanis Club in Helena, Mont. As a rule, companies like these couldn’t care less about the minimum wage or special tax breaks to offset it.

35 . CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008 — (Senate – May 09, 2007)

Experts have estimated that the total loss to the Treasury from offshore tax evasion alone approaches $100 billion per year, including $40 to $70 billion from individuals and another $30 billion from corporations engaged in offshore tax evasion.

If our friends on the other side of the aisle want to protect these abusive tax havens, let them do it. Let’s see what the American people say about that. Let’s see what the American people think about having wealthy individuals and wealthy corporations avoiding what they legitimately owe in this country by going off to these tax havens and claiming they are doing business out of this five-story building down in the Cayman Islands–12,700 companies–come on.

It doesn’t end there. I say go onto the Internet. If you wonder whether this thing is real on tax havens, enter in “offshore tax planning,” Google it, and what do you get? You get 1,260,000 hits. What do you find out there? Here is my favorite:

Live worldwide on a luxury yacht, tax-free.

That is what our friends over here are defending.

Live worldwide on a luxury yacht, tax-free….. Live tax-free and worldwide on a luxury yacht ….. Moving offshore living tax-free just got easier ….. Live tax-free and worldwide on a luxury yacht–exciting stuff.

Indeed it is. It is costing us $100 billion a year, and it doesn’t end there. We have these other scams that are going on.

36 . WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2007 — (House of Representatives – March 14, 2007)

We have a predicament that we are dealing with in this very committee, in the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. We are dealing with global warming. The $2 billion-plus that we spend every year, and scientists like Jim Hansen and others who have been out there saying what they want to freely, the way they want to, and they have done this at a time in which there is an allegation of a problem.

Quite frankly, it is amazing that when I Google, I get tens of thousands of hits on a scientist who is talking about why global warming is a threat, why we have to do things quickly, and yet there is some theory that we have stifled science.

37 . STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS — (Senate – April 19, 2007)

In the legislation I have presented, the Alexander-Lieberman legislation, we seek to preserve our jobs while we clean the air and preserve the planet. We have many concerns in our country, and global warming is only one of those. So I would argue that the provisions we have set out are aggressive, but they are practical and they are achievable.

They set schedules for powerplants to reduce emissions for sulfur dioxide, for nitrogen oxide, for mercury, and carbon dioxide. Doing so will relieve some of the worst air-related health environmental problems such as ozone, acid rain, mercury contamination, and global warming.

I think it is important to note that one of the differences with this Alexander-Lieberman bill is it proposes carbon caps only on powerplants that produce electricity; it does not propose carbon caps on the economy as a whole.

Now, why would we only do that? Well, here are the reasons for that: No. 1, when we talk about global warming and carbon, we are dealing with a huge, complex economy. This country of ours produces and uses about 25 percent of all of the energy in the world. We have businesses that range from the shoe shop to Google to chemical plants.

38 . COLLEGE STUDENT RELIEF ACT OF 2007 — (House of Representatives – January 17, 2007)

Madam Speaker, Since 2001, tuition and fees have increased by 41 percent, after inflation, at four-year public colleges, and by 17 percent (after inflation) at four-year private colleges.

Now, we have a chance to act; otherwise, financial barriers will prevent more than 4 million students from attending a four-year college and more than 2 million from attending any college in the coming decade.

That would be a crisis for millions of hard-working families–but it also would be a crisis for our country’s ability to compete in the 21st-century economy.

In his article, “It’s a Flat World, After All,” Thomas Friedman argues that America’s historical economic advantages have disappeared because “the world is flat, and anyone with smarts; access to Google; and, a cheap wireless laptop can join the innovation fray.” No matter where they live in the world.

This means we must invest more in our most valuable resource–our people–and this bill would do just that.

39 . CREATING LONG-TERM ENERGY ALTERNATIVES FOR THE NATION ACT OF 2007 — (Senate – June 13, 2007)

We believe the time has come for Congress to move quickly to enact national RPS legislation. The costs of inaction for our environment, national security, and economy are too high. Although more than 20 states have adopted individual RPS programs, the country will not realize the full potential for renewable electricity without the adoption of a Federal program to enhance the states’ efforts.

Thank you for your consideration of this important matter.

Sincerely,

GE, BP America, Inc., National Venture Capital Association, Miasole, Wisconsin Power and Light, National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, Technet, APX, Inc., Alliant Energy, Sempra Energy, Shell Wind Energy, Inc., Solar Turbines, Inc., Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Alliant Energy, Invenergy LLC, Owens Corning Composites System Business, Leeco Steel, Clipper Wind Power, Inc., Google, United Steelworkers, Edison International, Pacific Gas & Electric, Union for Reform Judaism, GT Solar, PPM Energy, Inc., Avista Utilities, Horizon Wind Energy, Enel NA, D.H. Blattner, and Sons, Applied Materials, Inc., Greene Engineers, Oregon Steel Mills, LM Glasfiber ND, Inc., Noble Environmental Power, enXco, Interstate Power and Light, National Audobon Society, American Wind Energy Association, Blue-Green Alliance, Big Crane & Rigging Company, Iberdrola U.S.A., Natural Resources Defense Council.

(A long list of additional organizations followed, as signers of a letter attached to a recommendation for a bill as an exhibit.

40 . FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE REFORM ACT OF 2007 — (House of Representatives – May 17, 2007)

The chairman of the Financial Services Committee has sort of quietly admonished the Republicans on this side of the aisle who were here in the year 2005 for voting on a past bill and so forth. But there are 54 new Members of the House of Representatives, and we all took the oath of office.

I took it right over there where Congressman Feeney is sitting, took my oath; my wife was in the audience, my children were by my side, my mom and dad were here. Fifty-four of us all came in, 13 on our side, 41 on the other side, and we took that oath of office. We were not part of the conversation in the year 2005, but many of us campaigned on the integrity of the Social Security system.

Mr. Chairman, I don’t know what the parliamentary rule is on referring to quotes and so forth, and I know that it is not what in our family is called cool, so I am not going to name names. But a quick Google search of the new Members of Congress who joined me in this class, the class of 110th, criticized opponents that they defeated for voting to rob the Social Security Trust Fund and spend it on other programs.

41 . CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008 — (Senate – March 22, 2007)

Recently, Senator Kerry and I, as chair and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, heard small business representatives articulate the success of these incentives. However, businesses need sufficient lead time to make these investments, reduce risk, and ensure that businesses adopt the most energy-efficient infrastructure.

This budget must affirm and reflect upon the fact that energy efficiency is the most cost-effective solution to our energy crisis. As the former Assistant Secretary for Energy and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and current director of Google’s Climate Change and Energy Initiatives, Dan Reicher, stated to the Finance Committee last month, “Energy Efficiency is the real low-hanging fruit in the U.S. and global economy.

42 . CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008 — (Senate – March 21, 2007)

But more than anything else, the most important part of a pro-growth strategy in my State as schools, colleges, and universities. We learned that better schools, colleges, and universities meant better jobs.

So this legislation we are talking about is about America’s brainpower advantage. It is the reason why we produce a third of all the money for about 5 percent of all the people in the world. It is because of the big ideas that have come out of our country. From the automobile to the electric light bulb, to Google –they have been created here. The jobs are here and the standard of living is higher here.

But the rest of the world has figured that out. They have the same brains we do, and suddenly China is recruiting the most distinguished Chinese professors from great American universities to come back to China to build up China. You heard what Senator Bingaman said about what is happening in India.

43 . IRAQ WAR RESOLUTION — (House of Representatives – February 15, 2007)

The people should know that this is not a true debate. This exercise is a 3-day politically hatched farce. This exercise is absent of any legitimate legislative process. It is also, in fact, vacant of the two options provided Congress under our Constitution: first, to declare war or, second, to appropriate funds for the conduct of war.

This is a stealth resolution brought to the floor void of the democratic process; that our men and women are fighting, as we are here tonight, to preserve our freedoms at home and the rights at home and extend those rights to oppressed people abroad.

This is not Cuba. This isn’t Venezuela. This is not North Korea or some Third World country. This is the Congress of the United States.

But let me congratulate the authors of what history will surely record as a very dark chapter in the conduct of the House leadership and the House of Representatives, leadership, entrusted to them by the American people.

Let me congratulate the authors on the clever wording of a resolution to praise our Armed Forces and at the same time undermine our Commander in Chief. Very clever.

I also want to congratulate the very clever timing of the floor discussion of this worthless measure that disregards the fact that American troops have already been deployed for this mission.

Congratulations are also for duping the public and the media into creating the illusion that Congress is doing something about the conflict in Iraq.

And again congratulations on making people think that this is bipartisan support, that this is going to be bipartisan support for a resolution that achieves nothing but the discrediting of a President of the United States in a time of war. So I also want to extend congratulations to the crafters of this illegitimately drafted nonbinding resolution. Your accomplishments will be lauded by Hamas, al Qaeda, touted by Al Jazeera, and highly praised by America and Bush haters throughout the world.

Ironically, I pulled this up. Google it yourself. This is tomorrow, 8:17 Mecca time, Al Jazeera: “Democrats Attack Bush War Policy,” and the lead quote is from Speaker Pelosi.

Again, congratulations on your achievement.

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