Finally, we should help developing nations like China and India curb their exponentially increasing consumption of oil and natural gas, which is driving world prices higher.
As we embrace the American dream and the freedoms it represents, we must also ensure that those who wish to enjoy those freedoms become a part of our society and learn to speak our language.
Congress did a good thing back in 1995 in passing the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act. That act did a simple thing. It provided automatic royalty relief for new leases for 5 years in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
First, we must stop issuing drivers' licenses to people in our country illegally. Providing them with forms of government identification makes a mockery of our laws and undermines national security efforts.
As everyone in Louisiana knows, there was often no communication or coordination between the state and federal government in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Anybody who spends time off of Louisiana's shores can recognize that these oysters are not endangered. To classify them as such risks great harm to not only fishermen who make their living collecting oysters in the Gulf, but also to Louisiana's economy in total.
The threat of terrorism is great and with today's porous borders, someone could bring a biological weapon into our country or sneak a dirty bomb across unmanned portions of our borders.
The recent riots in France demonstrate the problem European countries face where second and third generation immigrants still do not consider themselves French, German, or English.
We need to break our dependency on foreign sources of oil, which leaves us at the mercy of foreign powers. To do that, we should increase domestic energy production.
We should increase our development of alternative fuels, taking advantage of renewable resources, like using corn and sugar to produce ethanol or soybeans to produce biodiesel.
When a law enforcement officer apprehends an illegal immigrant, it makes no sense to simply release that individual who has been breaking our laws with no threat of sanction or penalty.
You can look at that by comparing Medicare's growth rates to the private insurance world, to the other Federal programs that we run, by looking at the billions of dollars, not millions but billions of dollars, we waste every year.
