[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 20 (Thursday, February 16, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H377-H385]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sodrel). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, this Member appreciates the privilege 
to address you, Mr. Speaker, and to stand on the floor of the people's 
House, the United States House of Representatives, and convey some 
thoughts that I think need to be shared with you, Mr. Speaker, and 
hopefully picked up by the American people.
  As I listen to the presentation and delivery that continually comes 
here on this floor night after night, Mr. Speaker, and as I analyze the 
tone and the attitude and the lament that flows continually from the 
other side of the aisle, I hear this constant strain, this constant 
strain of, and this is a quote, ``It would be different if we were in 
charge, but we are not in charge,'' meaning the minority party.
  But I am going to say this, that the members of the minority party 
have the same individual responsibilities as the members of the 
majority party. Each one of us is \1/435\th of this task that we have 
here, \1/435\th of the total voice of the American people, designed by 
our Founding Fathers, written into our Constitution, drafted in such a 
way that we do redistricting in America and we do so every 10 years. We 
draw new lines. We make sure that each of us represents pretty close to 
the same number of people, approximately 600,000 people. And the voice 
when you hear me speak, Mr. Speaker, is the voice, hopefully, of the 
600,000 people in western Iowa that I have the honor to represent. And 
I would like to think that when the voice of any of us steps down here 
and speaks, it is the voice of the collective opinions of their 
constituents within the districts of all the Members of this House of 
Representatives.
  If one listened to this debate here on the floor night after night 
after night, one could easily, an uninformed person, come to the 
conclusion that if you are a member of the Democrat Party, if you are a 
member of the minority party, you are really powerless to do anything 
about this.
  Take, for example, the case in point, the alleged $9 billion that is 
wasted in construction in Iraq. And I would point out, Mr. Speaker, 
that I came to the floor the night before last, and I spent perhaps 55 
minutes outlining the effort in the Middle East, the effort in Iraq, 
and particularly the construction projects that have been initiated 
there. I led a CODEL over to the Middle East and particularly into Iraq 
for the very purpose to identify, follow through, observe the projects 
that had been initiated, those that had been constructed, to go in and 
probe and ask questions and get a sense of where those dollars, that 
$18.5 billion that was part of an overall appropriations bill, where 
they went, how they were spent, under what conditions, and what are the 
projects that have been initiated and the projects that have been 
completed.
  I did not bring the poster over here tonight that has that chart on 
it, Mr. Speaker, but I do bring it in my memory. And as I discussed 
this with the United States Army, who had a responsibility for 
somewhere in the neighborhood of $13 billion in those projects, they 
have initiated over 3,300 projects with those dollars. They have 
completed over 2,200 projects with those dollars, and there remains 
another 1,100 projects that are either in the process of construction 
right now, soon to be completed, or they will soon be initiated, and 
the last projects will be completed some time after the first of next 
year. They will be the last pieces of that fallen place.
  And I heard the statement on the floor the night before last that all 
of that money was wasted. All of it. So if it is not even going to be 
qualified that one single dollar out of $18.5 billion went to something 
good, I wonder how much value one would put on the rest of the 
statements that are made by that side of the aisle and by that 
``informative'' team, and I put that in quotes, Mr. Speaker.

[[Page H378]]

  So I watched as they were nearing completion on the mother of all 
generators up by Kirkuk, a project that has 750,000 pounds of generator 
and turbine to drive that generator mounted there and is up and 
generating electricity for the people in that area.
  We have heard the complaint that Iraq's oil production is not up to 
where it was at the beginning of the war, that there is less 
electricity available and less electricity production than there was 
before the war. Or before the liberation, I prefer to say, Mr. Speaker. 
And I can categorically inform you that that is simply not true. The 
oil royalties before liberation in March of 2003 that came into the 
Iraqi Government were $5 billion a year. The royalties for the oil that 
was exported and collected, royalties for the last year were $26 
billion.
  Now, one cannot conclude that oil production is down with five times 
the royalties being paid to the Iraqi people to help fund their overall 
budget. And, yes, we have put money in that and resources in that. We 
have put minimal dollars into oil development and production, and we 
have done so because we have said the United States is not in this for 
the oil.
  We are in this for freedom for the Iraqi people. We are in this to 
erase the habitat that breeds terror, and there has been extraordinary 
success that has been accomplished there. But to own the oil or to 
invest United States taxpayer dollars into that oil infrastructure and 
then turn around and turn it back over to the Iraqis was never part of 
our plan. We did suggest that oil revenue in Iraq would go to pay for 
the reconstruction in Iraq. And after we had been there for 6 or 7 
months, it was apparent that that kind of revenue just was not going to 
flow, that the infrastructure in Iraq was so dilapidated, that it had 
not been reconstructed, had not been modernized in at least 35 years.
  So think, for example, of massive oil fields that have significant 
quantities of oil, oil so rich that it seeps to the top of the ground 
up by Kirkuk, but yet not drill a well. Or not drill wells in 
significant numbers. I should qualify that statement. To not build 
pipelines, to not build refineries, to not build a system to extract 
that oil, refine the oil, and distribute the oil to the rest of the 
world so that you can continue to increase your production while world 
consumption is going up, those are things that did not happen under 
Saddam Hussein's regime.
  So the production that was there 35 years ago simply diminished 
gradually in increments as Saddam took those resources for his own uses 
and starved the Iraqi people. But the production of oil is up. The 
production and generation of electricity is up, Mr. Speaker. An average 
day of electricity before the liberation, and I will pick a month, 
early March, 2003, would produce over 2,000 megawatts of electricity.

                              {time}  1600

  Today, it is over 5,000 on peak days, and it falls off maybe 1,000 on 
your average days. But it is still significantly more production.
  Now, the statement will be made on the other side of the aisle, if 
they are paying attention and if they are astute, they will say, but 
Baghdad has less electricity than they had before liberation.
  Mr. Speaker, that also is true. And the reason for that is because 
Saddam focused his electrical resources into Baghdad. Baghdad had 10 to 
12 hours of electricity every day under Saddam Hussein's regime. The 
rest of the country got very little at any time, an hour or two a day. 
Now it has been shifted so the distribution of that electricity roughly 
doubled the generation of electricity by setting up new generation 
plants, setting up new transmission systems and new distribution 
systems. And one of the things that is a constraint there now is not 
being able to wield that power anywhere in Iraq where it is needed, not 
having a central terminal where switches can be thrown and you can send 
electricity to Mosul or Kirkuk or Tikrit or into Baghdad, into sections 
and zones that need it. That is also going to be rectified within the 
next half a year or so so that the need for electricity can be targeted 
to the regions of Iraq where it is going to be the most valuable.
  And the predictability that has been established there, it used to be 
unpredictable under Saddam for the outlying cities, more predictable in 
Baghdad because he took care of Baghdad. Today, it is predictable in 
most areas of Iraq. But the areas of Iraq outside of Baghdad have gone 
from one to two hours of electricity a day to 10, 11 and 12 hours of 
electricity a day, at predictable times, so people that are running a 
business or doing a little manufacturing or maybe there is someone 
doing their laundry, they can plan their lives around having a stream 
of electricity.
  We don't know what that is like, to have to think about managing our 
lives so that when the electricity is on we turn on the washing 
machine, plug in the iron, turn on the air conditioner and go start the 
pump to pump water for our livestock or even our irrigation. We don't 
think about that. But that has been a fact of life in that part of the 
Middle East from the beginning of electricity.
  So all of the country of Iraq is far better off in access to 
electricity and consistent supply, substantially better off, four to 
five times better off, with the exception of Baghdad.
  Baghdad is about one-fourth of the population of all of Iraq, excuse 
me, I should say one-fifth of the population of all of Iraq, and their 
daily electrical supply is down from what it was. It is no longer 10 to 
12 hours a day, it is 2 to 4 hours a day. And that needs to be ramped 
up, Mr. Speaker, and it will be. As soon as they are able to wield this 
power in a more efficient fashion and get a couple more generating 
systems up on line, then Baghdad will be moved up into the level with 
the rest of the country and provide some stability for that city as 
well.
  But it is important that Baghdad be brought into the level of 
electrical supply as the rest of the country. As Baghdad goes, so goes 
Iraq. With that kind of a population of about 5 million people, it is 
the core of the country. It a large metropolitan area, of course, Mr. 
Speaker.
  But they made significant progress. Some of that money went to great 
good. Some of that money went to security. When you are going in to lay 
a sewer plant because there are children playing in raw sewerage in the 
streets of Sadr City and you have insurgents shooting at your 
construction workers, some of that money needed to go for security, and 
some of it did.
  But if there is some money missing over there, and Paul Bremer says 
it is not, and if the Inspector General says it is, then I go back to 
the King law of physics, and that is everything has to be somewhere.
  So if it is alleged that $9 billion are missing, Mr. Speaker, then my 
challenge to the people that make that allegation would be, where is 
it? Did it disappear into thin air? Whose hands did it go into? Was 
there graft and corruption? If so, what? Be a little more definitive. 
Don't throw out just some wild allegations that here is some money that 
is missing and it is somebody else's responsibility to address this.
  We all have the same responsibility, 1/435th of the responsibility, 
all of us responsible to the people of the United States of America. 
And to stand here and admonish night after night after night that if 
they were just in the majority somehow they would do their job, but 
they are in the minority so they don't have to do their job, that their 
job is to criticize people in the majority, well, that is a bitter pill 
to swallow for those of us who get out of bed here, go to work, work 
late and do the research, and our staff goes to work in our district 
and here on the Hill, and we have a network with people around this 
city, around this country and in our districts and in our States and, 
in fact, around the world.
  I have watched my colleagues over here on this side of the aisle age 
in the few years I have been here. I can look at them today and see 
lines that weren't there 3 and 4 years ago. I see hair that is 
absolutely gray that had a trace of it 3 and 4 years ago. They are 
working hard for the people of this country. And things happen around 
the world, and anything you can find to criticize can't be laid at the 
feet, not everything, of the people on this side of the aisle that work 
hard for the people of the United States of America.
  In fact, I don't agree with all the decisions that are made by the 
majority of this Congress, and who in the world

[[Page H379]]

would? If you agreed with the decisions that were made by the majority 
of the United States Congress and you served in this place, or you are 
someone who hopefully aspires to come serve in this body someday, if 
you agree with the majority opinion, that means you are not thinking 
for yourself.
  Of course, we are critical among ourselves. We are critical among 
ourselves as a Republican majority. We are critical on the other side 
of the minority's opinion. But in the end we have to stand on our own 
integrity, use our own intelligence, use our own research and be 
objective, open up our eyes and ears, read, listen, hear, think, 
analyze and resolve to do the right thing for the American people in a 
bipartisan fashion that brings us toward a conclusion and towards a 
successful conclusion. And that success is not defined as if the 
Democrats were just in the majority in the House and in the Senate and 
had the White House the world would be a different place. Yes, I am 
convinced it would be a very different place, Mr. Speaker. But that is 
not how you define success.
  You have to lay out a plan and vision for the American people. You 
need to stick to that plan. It has to have vision. It has to have 
foresight. It has to have a short-term, midterm and long-term vision. 
It has to be something that the American people can subscribe to and 
believe in, something they can work for and work towards. In fact, Mr. 
Speaker, it needs to be something that the American people can 
sacrifice for so that they know that the delayed gratification can one 
day turn this country into a better country, tomorrow, next week, next 
month, next year, next decade, next generation, next century, and on 
and on into the future of this great Nation, the United States of 
America.
  So I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that it is not that ``it would be 
different if we were in charge.'' No, it won't be different. You will 
still hear complaints. What makes things different is if you lay out a 
vision.
  So, in the brief time that is here on the floor of this Congress, Mr. 
Speaker, I don't propose to be able to lay out a complete and total 
vision for America. I would touch a few subject matters that were 
raised here and then move on to the subject I came down here to talk 
about.
  One is the issue of foreign debt. I would agree, we are borrowing 
money from foreign countries in order to provide for the funding to run 
this government, and that is because we have deficit spending.
  I am one that stands here and says I am for a balanced budget. I am 
for a balanced budget without taxing the people of America any more 
than we are today. In fact, the Bush tax cuts that were passed in 2002 
and in 2003 were tax cuts that don't affect the bottom line of our 
deficit in a measurable fashion. But what they did do was stimulate the 
economy.
  I would back us all up to the day, Mr. Speaker, that we had a 
recognizable, identifiable dot.com bubble. We saw great growth in this 
economy. It was speculative growth in the economy for the most part.
  People said, well, we are in the information age. We have gone 
through the stone age, we have gone into the industrial age, and now we 
have transformed ourselves into the information age, and the 
information age is an era by which the ability to store and transfer 
knowledge in and of itself apparently had a lot of value.
  Because whenever we would come up with a microchip that could store 
and transfer information more effectively and more software programs 
and more creativity that had to do with all of the intel industrial out 
there, the investors of the world looked at this and said, my gracious, 
I can't wait to jump on that, I can't wait to buy some shares of this 
intel company, because it is going to grow, and I am going to double 
and triple and quadruple my money, and I will be a rich person someday 
because we are in the information age. Surely, this company can store 
and transfer information faster and better than ever before. That has 
to have value.
  So that created this dot.com bubble, because we forgot something. We 
forgot that the marketability of everything that we have has to come 
back down to something that has substance, that is sustainable, and 
that is this, and it has always been the case in the economy, you have 
to produce a good or a service that has a marketable value.
  Now, what does information have for a marketable value? Well, 
companies will want to be able to purchase information and the ability 
to store and transfer and sort that information because it makes them 
more efficient in their decisionmaking process and in the delivery 
process of their products or service.
  So if I am in manufacturing, I will have sales and I will have 
inventory coming in and I will be manufacturing things and my inventory 
will be going out. We will have our marketing and distribution. All of 
those things happen to be working.
  Now ways that I can use the dot.com industry on that, this 
information age, is that if I can sort my inventory better, if I can 
order more efficiently and precisely, if I can get better bargains 
because I am doing an Internet negotiation auction as opposed to a 
purchasing agent sitting there on an old black dial telephone, yes, 
information has value then.
  If it allows me to store just-in-time inventory so I can bring the 
trucks of my raw materials in just in time, so I cut down on my own 
inventory, that capital investment, turn it into a product and turn it 
out the door more efficiently, and if it helps my sales people get out 
there and market that product, and if I can get that product made with 
computerized equipment so that it is done with better precision and 
more cost-effectiveness and better quality and get that on the truck 
and get it delivered to the customer in just-in-time delivery time, 
reliable, all of that information has value.
  So we paid for those things because information had value. But we 
created our ability to store and transfer information way beyond our 
ability to utilize it within our economy. In fact, we created it to the 
point where information itself had a recreational value, and that 
recreational value became in some components of the Internet.
  So here is the day today where a vast majority of the households in 
America have Internet access, including mine, wireless. I was one of 
the first ones wireless, one of the first ones with high-speed Internet 
in my office. Actually I was the first one in the telephone service 
company where my construction office is and my campaign office. That 
office was the very first customer for high-speed Internet services for 
that telephone company.
  Out in the country where Marilyn and I live, it is another telephone 
service company, we were the very first customer there to have DSL 
high-speed Internet services in our house, because we also ran the 
business out of the house and we needed access to high speed. So I love 
technology. It has value.
  But, in the end, when you pay for all of this information and this 
technology and even when you market it to people for recreational 
purposes, that means their disposable income, people say I have an 
extra 25 or 40 or 50 dollars a month that I want to put into this 
Internet. Even though I can get along without it, I really like the 
convenience of being able to send out the e-mails to my friends and be 
able to find the answer to any question I want to ask just simply by 
going up on the Internet, do a search, and here it is.
  So we marketed that as well off of the information age. But we 
produced the ability to store and transfer information way beyond our 
ability to market it. That was the dot.com bubble. You knew I would 
come back to that, Mr. Speaker. That was the dot.com bubble.
  So this bubble in our economy was the speculative bubble that was 
created because there was investment made in the information age that 
went beyond the amount of information that could be sustained by the 
economy. And, like any bubble, bubbles will burst, and that bubble did 
burst, and it burst about the same time, just before we had a 
transition from President, from President Clinton to President George 
W. Bush.
  The bursting of the dot.com bubble, Mr. Speaker, and we forget that 
so often, and as we saw our economy take the downturn and plummet and 
try to adjust for the bursting of the dot.com bubble, we also saw two 
planes go into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001,

[[Page H380]]

right dead center into the financial center of America and the world. 
At the same time, a plane went into the ground in Pennsylvania and into 
the Pentagon.
  We were all of a sudden from a nation that was scrambling to recover 
from a dot.com bubble, we were thrust into a worldwide war on terror, 
with our financial centers crashed down around us and left just a 
smoking hole in the ground at the Twin Towers. Our economy went down 
with that. It already was headed down, and as it ran down the hill, it 
was pushed off the cliff by September 11.
  So what did we do here in this Congress? A number of things to react. 
And the decisions that were made were astonishing in their efficiency. 
I look back on that era and I commend the people in this Chamber and 
across in the United States Senate and the President, Mr. Speaker, 
because two big decisions were made and made fairly quickly.
  One I will just briefly reference, the PATRIOT Act, the need to be 
able to protect us from an intelligence perspective from those who 
would wish to do us harm and protect the privacy rights of the American 
people at the same time.
  I have sat through 12 hearings of the PATRIOT Act. We need to 
reauthorize that, Mr. Speaker. That piece of legislation is far better 
in its quality, and we have improved it some, more than anyone had a 
right to expect, considering the pressure that this Congress was under 
at the time to make those changes.
  But the PATRIOT Act has sustained itself, and to this date, not a 
single critic, not in the United States House of Representatives, not 
in the government function, not in a hearing, even under specific 
requests of the witnesses that were there in the hearings, not a single 
critic has been able to name an individual who has had their privacy 
rights and constitutional rights usurped by the PATRIOT Act. Only 
hypotheticals, Mr. Speaker, and as we know, hypotheticals don't get you 
very far in this world.

                              {time}  1615

  So that was one thing, one action that was taken by this Congress 
that was an amazingly efficient action, and we are to this day 4 years 
beyond, and we have not suffered another attack on American property or 
people on this soil since that period of time.
  So the PATRIOT Act was extraordinarily effective. The Bush tax cuts 
came right behind that, because we knew that with the bursting of the 
dot-com bubble, and the attacks of September 11 and the crashing down 
into a smoking hole with 3,000 American lives along with it, was our 
financial future.
  Now, if we had listened to the naysayers on this side of the aisle at 
that period of time, we would have said, gee, we got to have a balanced 
budget here, so let us raise taxes. That is how we will get ourselves 
out of the smoking hole of the Twin Towers. We would have raised taxes 
so we had enough money to do what? Arm this huge police force to go out 
and serve warrants and try to identify these al Qaeda people that wish 
us ill and go around the world and work with Interpol, and maybe we can 
bring them to justice in handcuffs.
  Some of them said we are not really at war here, and some of them 
said, well, no, you need to understand them. Some of them said that one 
man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Those words were 
spoken here, Mr. Speaker. And I think they were completely and utterly 
wrong.
  I think the people who have pledged to do us ill mean it. I think 
they have proven it. And I think it is up to us not just to protect and 
defend ourselves in this country, but carry the battle to them; and we 
need to do that with a strong economy.
  The Bush tax cuts provided that. And in spite of the criticism, in 
spite of the things that have been laid out in opposition that say that 
the deficit is because of the tax cuts, can you go back and calculate 
the loss of revenue because of the tax cuts and will you see there has 
been an increase in revenue that came from the growth in our economy. 
The number is over 14 percent over anticipated revenue over the last 
year, Mr. Speaker, and the deficit that was projected is significantly 
reduced, and that is because we have had tax cuts that stimulate 
business.
  So I do not think I would want to have people in charge that do not 
believe in free enterprise or people that believe that you could tax 
your way into prosperity. These are the kinds of people that if you 
give them the goose that lays the golden egg, they wouldn't think you 
could feed the goose, but they do think you can cut the goose apart and 
take the eggs and then go on and live in happy prosperity with that 
basket of golden eggs the rest of your life.
  That is the attitude that comes. At some point it goes backwards on 
you. We have to have a revenue stream. We need a low broad tax scale so 
that we can stimulate this economy.
  With regard to the foreign debt, if we can balance this budget, we 
can eliminate the increase in foreign debt. If we can produce a 
surplus, we can pay down the national debt, which reduces the foreign 
debt. But we have debt to American domestic indebtedness, as well as 
foreign debt. Both of those concern me. The foreign debt concerns me 
more than the American domestic debt.
  We also have, Mr. Speaker, a negative balance of trade. That number 
should come out fairly quickly, within the next 30 days. As I recall, 
it was about this time last year when the 2004 balance of trade number 
came to us, $617.7 billion negative.
  That meant that we purchased $617.7 billion more from foreign 
countries than we sold, than we exported to them. And some say, yeah, 
and it was all purchasing oil that was part of that, that was most of 
that deficit. But, Mr. Speaker, it was a significant portion. I do not 
deny that. It was over $200 billion that we spent in purchasing oil 
from foreign countries that added to this $617 billion in red ink trade 
deficit.
  And I submit that we can fix that a number of ways. One of them is 
drill in ANWR, get that oil coming down here. That will be at least a 
million barrels a day. That will reduce our dependency on foreign oil.
  We are bringing in liquefied natural gas that has got to be 
compressed in the Middle East and brought over here on a compressed 
tanker and brought into a terminal and converted back to gas again and 
delivered up here into the United States.
  We sit on enough natural gas under the non-national parks, Federal 
lands in America, to heat every home in this country for the next 150 
years. And we can drill natural gas wells, but we cannot get the 
distribution systems laid, we cannot get the roads built, because the 
environmentals are in the way.
  They seem to think that we should not develop our natural resources, 
that this Earth is for every species except homosapiens, Mr. Speaker; 
and I submit that we are here to have dominion, to manage all of the 
species. But these resources are here for us.
  We got that message clearly from God in Genesis, and I stand by that 
need for us to develop our natural resources. So we should drill on 
Federal lands for natural gas and oil. We should do it in an 
environmentally friendly fashion.
  We should build a distribution system so we can heat our homes in 
America and run our factories and produce our fertilizer. Being from 
the Corn Belt, Mr. Speaker, I have to say that corn uses more nitrogen 
to produce it than any other crop. All crops use nitrogen. Corn just 
uses more than any other. And the production of nitrogen fertilizer 
uses natural gas.
  It is essential in the production of nitrogen fertilizer. In fact, 
the very cost of the fertilizer, the composition of that cost, out of 
every dollar of nitrogen fertilizer, 90 cents out of that dollar is the 
very cost of natural gas.
  So if we can cut the cost of natural gas in half, we would nearly cut 
the cost of nitrogen fertilizer in half. But instead, we have watched 
fertilizer go from $2 up to $15 in America because we are not drilling 
on our federally owned lands. We cannot get access to get the gas out, 
if we can get in there to drill.
  We are not drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf because there are 
environmentalist extremists in the way. These are people that argue, 
well, if you drill a natural gas well on the Outer Continental Shelf, 
it will pollute our beaches. So I simply say, please

[[Page H381]]

submit to me a single case in all of history when a natural gas well 
polluted anything.
  If you have a natural gas leak, what happens to it, especially 
offshore in the ocean? The gas bubbles up to the top of the ocean and 
dissipates. It does that whether you drill wells or whether you do not, 
because a significant amount of that natural gas just percolates up out 
of the ocean floor anyway.
  So it would not be measurable if we had a natural gas leak, but the 
gas does not pollute anything; it just dissipates into the air. So 
before it all does that, we should go get that gas, tap into that gas, 
pipe it in here to the United States, and put it into these States that 
can use it for fertilizer.
  And so those things, those things alone would go a long way, Mr. 
Speaker, towards reducing our dependency on foreign oil. Reducing our 
dependency on foreign oil helps our balance of trade. But these are 
components of the fix, Mr. Speaker, and I would say there is one more 
step we need to take, and then I will go back to how we repair this 
balance of trade and how we eliminate the foreign debt, how we 
eliminate the domestic debt of this country and get us on sound fiscal 
foundation.
  One more component, before I go to that solution, Mr. Speaker, and 
that component is to produce a balanced budget. Produce a balanced 
budget so we do not have deficit spending, so we do not have to borrow. 
If we produce that balanced budget without raising taxes so that we 
diminish the production in this country, then we can have this robust 
economy that we have today.
  And this robust economy that we have is an economy that has grown at 
a rate of more than 3 percent increase on its gross domestic product 
each quarter for the last 10 quarters at a minimum. It has reduced the 
unemployment rate to under 5 percent over that period of time. By 
anybody's measure, that is the longest, most healthy economic growth 
period since the early part of the Reagan years. So more than a 
generation has passed since we have seen this kind of growth.
  And I would point out that during the Reagan years we had high 
inflation, the early part of the Reagan years. Before we got it under 
control, we had high inflation, we had high interest rates. So that 
kind of economic growth and that kind of lower unemployment ratings, 
there was not as good an environment as it is today, because we have 
got gradual growth, we have got controlled growth, we have got not too 
hot in our economy, we have got not too cold in our economy, Mr. 
Speaker, we have got just right.
  It is cruising along here at a more than 3 percent growth, less than 
5 percent unemployment. It is not as good as it can be. Unemployment 
can be better than this. By historical standards, it is a high 
standard. So I would say let us balance the budget without raising 
taxes. Let us get our spending down. Let us tighten our belts, Mr. 
Speaker; let us get our house in order.
  If you were running a company or running a business or taking care of 
your family budget, and you realized that on the portion of your budget 
that had discretion on the parts that you were going to spend, now we 
all have fixed costs, we have to make our house payment or rent, we 
have to keep the lights on, we have to keep the heat up some, maybe we 
have some other fixed costs there, we have to buy some groceries, and 
this cost of living, you can make a minimal budget on the amount that 
is a fixed cost.
  That is the equivalent to the entitlements in this Federal budget, 
those things that are fixed today that are very difficult to change, 
those items in our budget such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, 
and even to a lesser degree interest. They are all fixed costs. They 
are growing, entitlement costs. We have to have national defense, 
certainly, in this time. So if you would reduce those things down to 
eliminating the nondiscretionary spending, which is Medicare, Medicaid, 
Social Security, and you eliminate the Department of Defense, and by 
the way I would reduce Homeland Security's funding, they have raised 
that budget out of sight without the accountability that I would like 
to see.
  But if we go to non-defense discretionary spending, those things that 
we do have control over, those things that if it were your family 
budget, your going-out-to-dinner money, your vacation money, your 
recreational-tickets-to-the-ball-game money, going-off-to-golf money, 
those kind of things that you would naturally tap into if your budget 
got tight, the discretionary spending portion.
  If you looked at your budget and said, well, I have got it in mind 
for $2,500 this year that I am going to spend to make my life a little 
richer, but I am spending too much, and one of the ways I can balance 
my budget is simply take that hundred percent of your $2,500 for your 
recreational discretionary spending, reduce it down by 5 percent, down 
to 95 percent.
  Now who would not do that if they were running a family budget, or if 
you are running a company, Mr. Speaker? Would you not do that? Would 
you not look at those items that you could control and simply say, I am 
not going to take this procedure of spending the red, I am going to 
tighten my belt? I am going to do without for a little while so I can 
get my budget back under control.
  Well, what I have described is all we really need to do in this 
Congress, Mr. Speaker. We need only address the other spending, the 
non-defense discretionary spending portion, and we need to reduce it by 
5 percent.
  Now I do not think this is the best way to balance the budget; but it 
is a way, an understandable way to balance the budget. Reduce that by 5 
percent and we have balanced this budget, and in fact it balances the 
budget under current increases of the entitlement spending on out 
another 15 to 18 years, which becomes almost as far as we can to 
predict any economy, in fact beyond our ability to predict the economy.
  So we can balance this budget. We do not have the will to balance the 
budget, so we borrow money because the people on this side of the aisle 
cannot get along without their programs. They are afraid somebody will 
throw them out of office if they say tighten your belt.
  There are some people on this side of the aisle who feel the same 
way. They band together. It only takes about 10 or 12 people on this 
side of the aisle to see to it. Everybody on this side of the aisle 
will vote against the budget, I guarantee it.
  There will be a budget come to the floor of this Congress within a 
month, and that budget will be debated on this floor. It will be one 
that is crafted to be as responsible as it can be. When it is done, I 
will make the prediction that not one Democrat votes for a responsible 
budget that comes here on this floor, not one, because it is a 
political vote and it is not an economic vote.
  And so the belt is tightened over here. We try to send the right 
message. And then the criticism flows out of the other side. You cut my 
program. You squeezed this out. You starved children. You froze old 
folks. That is an old line. You hear it over and over again, Mr. 
Speaker.
  I have not noticed that it works with the thinking people that have 
watched history flow. But we should balance this budget. I testified 
before the Budget Committee the day before yesterday, Mr. Speaker, and 
I requested that they produce a balanced budget. Whether they can 
produce the votes to pass it or not, I do not think they can get the 
votes to pass it, they need to put a target up on the wall so the 
American people know what it would take to balance the budget.
  And I will be supportive of that in seeking to produce and develop a 
balanced budget. I cannot hide behind the Budget Committee and say, 
well, my friend, Mr. Nussle, did not produce a balanced budget. He is 
doing the best he can. He has got to get 218 votes, and it has been 
astonishing his ability to do so. He can take a 2.4 or $2.7 trillion 
budget and spin it around his head and calculate it all out, break it 
apart in pieces and put it back together.
  He can go out and get the votes that he needs to get that done. I am 
impressed with the work that he has done. But I still challenged them 
to produce a balanced budget so that we know what we have to do and 
that will help inspire the American people to come forward and say, let 
me tighten my belt. I am willing to tighten my belt if my neighbor 
tightens his. Cut my program here, if you like, just do not cut me out 
of proportion to the person over here. I will take my fair share of the 
load as long as you do not

[[Page H382]]

put the unfair share on me and give that other person a pass.
  But we cannot get there in this debate, because the demagoguery gets 
so heavy. And in fact last year we had reconciliation in the Ag 
Committee. We needed to reduce the spending over 5 years by about $3.7 
billion. We needed to find a way to do that. That is $3.7 billion out 
of an annual expenditure of about 34 billion, by the way. So multiply 
that by five and you are up there in this 165 or $170 billion range to 
find $3.7 billion in savings there.
  In the food stamp program alone there has been identified, even 
today, by Secretary Johanns' announcement a 5.88 percent error rate in 
handing out food stamps.

                              {time}  1630

  Now that error rate, I suppose it could be by that percentage that we 
missed that many people that should have had food stamps, but I do not 
think so, Mr. Speaker. I cannot imagine that there would be an error on 
that side that we did not reach out and help enough people. In fact, we 
are out there marketing those services to people in a fashion that I 
think we are going to find them instead of them finding us.
  I would submit that nearly all of that 5.88 percent of error rating 
in the food stamp program is all on giving food stamps to people who 
did not qualify, and this does not constrain some of the 
qualifications. We could tighten those qualifications down, too.
  For example, when people come into this country legally, we say you 
have to be here for 5 years before you can access benefits, welfare 
benefits from our Federal Government. We could raise that up by a 
couple of years without too much pressure, raise the standards. But 
5.88 percent of inaccuracy translates into over $2 billion a year in 
waste. And that $2 billion a year over 5 years is easy math. $10 
billion dollars could be saved there.
  But, you know, even though the numbers were bigger last year, I could 
not get one soul on that side of the aisle to support one dollar in 
cuts when we had the waste lying right in front of us, Mr. Speaker. 
And, in fact, there has been more waste there than they have even 
alleged took place in Iraq. But that does not disturb them because the 
waste is going into the households of some of their constituents and 
they have to answer to them. It is not the matter of the waste that 
concerns them. It is the opportunity to be critical.
  So I actually came to this floor, Mr. Speaker, to talk about a 
different subject matter, but, as I listened, it changed the subject 
for me. So now I promised that I would come with a solution on how to 
repair this deficit in foreign trade and how to fix the foreign debt.
  I would lay out real clearly, there is a policy out here, there is a 
bill, H.R. 25, the FAIR Tax. The FAIR Tax is a piece of legislation 
that takes the tax off of production in America and puts it on 
consumption. It is a consumption tax. It is a national sales tax, and 
it truly is an aptly named bill, the FAIR Tax.
  Now, the way we fix this foreign trade deficit with a fair tax is 
simply this, that whenever anyone goes to buy something off a shelf, a 
product, and pays retail price for that product, imputed into that cost 
is the Federal tax composition. For example, if you are a corporation 
and you are producing a widget, you are going to need to calculate into 
that your corporate income tax, any other Federal excise taxes that are 
part of that that you would have to incorporate in your share of the 
wage withholding in the employees. There are a number of other taxes 
into that. You build that tax all into the price.
  Corporations do not pay taxes. Private companies, sole 
proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, they do not pay taxes. Mr. 
Speaker, that may be a shock to a lot of the American people, but I 
will explain this. That is that, no, corporations do not pay taxes 
because they have to add those taxes into the price of the products 
that they produce, the goods and the services, and pass that along to 
the consumer. If they did not do that, they would go broke. How could a 
corporation have any capital to work with if they were going to pay 
that tax and not incorporate it into the price of what they sold? So 
they pass that price along, and it is built into the pricing mechanism 
of everything that they sell.
  When that product reaches the retail level, it has in it when you 
take it off the shelf, a person, and that $1-widget you lift off the 
shelf has 22 cents of imputed Federal tax built into that, 22 cents. So 
if we could pull the Federal tax out of those goods and services, the 
goods would go down by 22 cents, so your $1 widget becomes an 88-cent 
widget.
  But if it is a service and you take the tax out of that service, it 
is higher yet. Now your 1 dollar's worth of service that you pay your 
plumber, say your $100 plumber bill becomes a $75 plumber bill because 
25 percent of that is imputed price, is built in there to pay the 
taxes, passed along to, no big surprise, Mr. Speaker, people.
  People pay taxes. Corporations do not pay taxes. Businesses do not 
pay taxes. They collect them. And the reason they do is because 
government has found out that they are more efficient in collecting 
taxes than government can be. So we put that on the burden of the 
businesses to collect the taxes. They impute it into the prices of the 
goods and services they are producing. They tack it onto that price, 
and you, the consumer, go up to the shelf, pull that widget off of 
there for $1, and it is really 78 cents.
  Mr. Speaker, let me correct the earlier statement. I am doing my math 
on the run here. It is a 78 cent widget as opposed to $1 on the shelf 
because you get to take 22 cents out of that price.
  Now, another truism, Ronald Reagan said, what you tax you get less 
of. And we know that. If you have to pay taxes, it is a disincentive. 
So if you were going to produce a product and we were going to tax you 
for it, you would look at that equation and say, why should I do that? 
I have to pay too much taxes on this.
  How about if you are going to work an extra 10 hours a week and it 
comes in at time and a half and it puts you in another tax bracket and 
we come along and say, but Uncle Sam will get 50 cents out of every 
dollar that you earn. Now your $30 an hour that you can make on 
overtime becomes $15 an hour. Are you going to work or are you going to 
say, hey, boss, I would like a little time to go fishing, maybe a 
little golf and spend some time with the kids. I do not really need 
this overtime because I do not get to keep it. No, the tax is a 
disincentive to produce.
  So when Reagan said, what you tax you get less of, Mr. Speaker, that 
is the equation that is there. And yet the Federal Government in its 
wisdom, I will say lack of wisdom, has the first lien on all 
productivity in America, every bit of productivity in America. Whether 
it is a good or whether it is a service, when Americans step up to the 
time clock and punch their time card in at eight o'clock on Monday 
morning, thunk, Uncle Sam holds his hand out like that and he gets the 
first of everyone's productivity. And Uncle Sam holds his hand there 
until you paid your taxes for that day. Then he puts it in his pocket 
and then you can go to work for the State and that gets put in the 
other pocket, your State, Uncle Sam, and the other various taxes that 
come along with this. And then at some point late in the afternoon you 
are working for you.
  Or you can compute it the other way, and you can take a look at Tax 
Freedom Day. I do not know the exact date. It changes a little bit year 
to year. How many days do we work before we are working for ourselves? 
Tax freedom day falls in April or May. I am not sure of the precise 
date.
  Uncle Sam has the first lien on your labor, he has the first lien on 
the earnings from your checkbook or passbook savings account, and he 
has the first lien on the delayed earnings of your 401(k) and also any 
mutual funds you have invested, all of the interest dividend earnings, 
the capital gains. You buy a piece of property and you turn around and 
sell that property, the margin will be taxed, and Uncle Sam will be 
there with his hand out. That productivity that comes from labor or 
capital is the productivity that Uncle Sam taxes. He taxes it all.

  What I am proposing, Mr. Speaker, is that we step in here and we 
recognize that and we take the tax off of all productivity in America. 
Eliminate the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, eliminate the IRS 
Code, wipe that

[[Page H383]]

thing out all the way back to the early 1900s, 92, 93 or 94 years ago 
that that began, Mr. Speaker, and pass the elimination of the repeal of 
the 16th amendment so that we no longer have a constitutional authority 
to put an income tax on our people.
  That sounds really interesting and exciting and thrilling, and it is, 
but we have to find a way to replace the revenue, and that is the 
hardest question. I have asked a lot of different questions myself on 
how to do that, but as I worked this policy out 25 or 27 or 28 years 
ago, Mr. Speaker, I came to the conclusion then that the only way we 
could fund the loss of revenue for eliminating the IRS would be to 
produce a consumption tax, a sales tax, like 45 States have today.
  The system is there. It is there to collect the sales off all of that 
revenue. It is a very simple equation to say to the States, keep the 
system you have in place, change the rates so we can fund the Federal 
Government. We will pay you one-tenth of 1 percent commission for 
collecting the Federal tax through your State Department of Revenue. 
You send the check out here to the U.S. Treasury, and we will put that 
into the general fund here.
  It is an easy tax to collect. And the other five States that have to 
generate a sales tax collection system, it has been done in 45 States. 
It has to be a lot easier than having these 100,000 plus IRS agents 
running all over here into our kitchens and our offices, prying into 
our business, making Monday morning quarterback judgmental decisions on 
the decisions of family and business that we have made and tried to do 
things in an honorable and ethical fashion and still be dinged for 
interest and penalty. When you cannot get two IRS agents themselves to 
agree on this convoluted tax policy that is so confusing that I can 
find no one on this planet, even the people on this side of the aisle 
would not argue that if we had a chance to do this over that we would 
construct anything that looks like what we have with the IRS Code 
today. It is a disaster.
  The cost of collection is beyond the comprehension of people who have 
not drilled into this and put the pieces together and tried to add it 
up. But I will give you the total on when you compile the costs of 
collecting from the IRS.
  Now there is some literature that is out there, and some of this has 
come from Harvard University's Department of Economics, some of it is 
coming from other economists, but it kind of works out this way, Mr. 
Speaker. By the time we pay the IRS and fund their infrastructure and 
build their buildings and maintain them, pay their travel and the 
overall expenses of the entire agency, that 100,000 plus that are out 
there every day, I am sure with a smile on their face, trying to 
increase the tax revenue, and I give them credit for being good 
servants, but I think they can do a little better in the private 
sector. They are smart people.
  By the time we fund the IRS and by the time we pay for our tax 
preparers, our H&R Block people, if you will, Mr. Speaker, as a 
euphemism. By the time we pay ourselves say $10 an hour to sit up half 
the night on April 14, then you add to that the disincentives we talked 
about on why people will not work that extra 15 hours of overtime 
because the tax liabilities are too great.
  When you open up the economy, when you accept the increase in 
productivity that we will have if people are not punished in producing 
and investing and saving, that adds up to a number that in 1991 was 
over $700 billion and today it is over $1 trillion.
  Think in terms of this. This economy, think of it as a huge cruise 
ship out there sailing across the ocean in smooth sailing and this is 
chugging along at maybe 10 knots. Because it is not going any faster 
than that, Mr. Speaker, because we are dragging this anchor. This 
anchor we are dragging is the IRS, the cost of compliance, the 
decisions that are made to not invest, the disincentives for producing 
because of the tax liability. You add that up to that trillion dollars 
a year and think of that sitting in a treasury chest hooked to our 
anchor chain, and we are chugging along in this economy at about 10 
knots.
  Now, we passed a FAIR tax, H.R. 25. We get to cut that anchor chain, 
that trillion dollars we are dragging across the bottom. It floats to 
the top. We throw it on board our cruise ship, and we get to invest 
that in our economy. Right away the 10 knots turns to 20 knots, and we 
are going along in 10 years in a doubled economy, at least doubled 
economy from the freedom that comes from taking that anchor that we are 
dragging and turning it into something that is productivity. It is 
really that simple to take that economic incentive of the trillion 
dollars and roll that back into our economy.
  There is another perhaps $11 trillion in stranded capital that is 
stranded overseas that cannot be repatriated into the United States 
because of the tax disincentive that is there; and that money would 
come back to the United States, too. The United States of America would 
become the destination nation of choice for that capital that is 
stranded out there in foreign countries. It is really naturally 
American capital, $11 trillion. A trillion dollars a year that we are 
dragging around in our treasure chest anchor across the bottom of the 
ocean, the doubling of our economy that comes.
  I would point out also, Mr. Speaker, that to get a handle on the 
magnitude of a trillion dollars injected into our economy every year 
that today is an anchor that turns into an asset, think in terms of, if 
you will, Mr. Speaker, 1992 Bill Clinton was elected President. He was 
elected President in part because he alleged and there were some 
statistics that supported his argument, I do not agree with it totally 
but there were, that our economy was in a downturn.
  So when he took office and was sworn in on the other side of the 
Capitol building, Mr. Speaker, one of the first things he did was to 
ask for a $30 billion economic incentive plan. So he went to the 
Congress and said, we need to borrow $30 billion, 30 with a B, and we 
need to put it into make work projects, much like Americorps is today, 
and once we put this $30 billion into the hands of these young people 
that will go out and go to work in our communities to make the world a 
better place here, that money will be spent. It will stimulate our 
economy. It will get us out of this economic doldrums that it was bad 
enough that it removed George Bush, Sr., from office.
  That was some of the psychology of the voters of the American people 
at the time. President Clinton came to Congress and asked for $30 
billion. Congress debated and deliberated and they negotiated, and they 
reduced the $30 billion, Mr. Speaker, down to finally $17 billion. It 
would have been borrowed money. But, finally, they all looked at the 
$17 billion dollars and said, it is not worth the trouble.

                              {time}  1645

  We are not going to go ahead and borrow $17 billion, put it into 
make-work programs, try to get it into the hands of the people so the 
money could be spent to stimulate the economy, because it was not worth 
the trouble; but if it was even arguable that it was at $17 billion and 
if it was a matter of consensus that it would have been at $30 billion 
borrowed money, annual spending $30 billion, think, Mr. Speaker, what 
$1 trillion of wasted money, $1 trillion of maintenance costs and 
overhead costs that go because of the IRS for tax collection.
  Think what that $1 trillion turned into the asset side of the ledger, 
into the productive sector of the economy could mean. That $1 trillion 
would stimulate this economy massively; and inject in behind that $11 
trillion that sits overseas, and you can see, I think, with ease, Mr. 
Speaker, what would happen to the economy in this country.
  We would double this economy in 10 years. We see the soundness of our 
dollar come back. We quit punishing people for savings and investment. 
Why are you putting money in your savings account with after-tax 
dollars? How can you get ahead doing that? Or when you make an 
investment and it is trapped here in a real estate investment, a 
capital investment, and you see an opportunity to make some money and 
roll it into something else and meanwhile give an opportunity to a 
young person to start a business or establish a residence and you sell 
that property, why do we punish you for that? Why do we give you 
incentive to hang on to that property until your inheritance right? 
Because you are afraid of being taxed?
  This frees up the capital in America that would not be a punishment 
for transferring that capital into other

[[Page H384]]

hands, that theoretically in every case will do something more 
productive than it is today. Otherwise they could not afford to bid on 
the value of that property. That is the theory.
  So the things that we need to do in this economy that are good, Mr. 
Speaker, are the things such as we need to incent savings and the fair 
tax incents savings. We need to incent investment, and of course, 
savings is investment. We need to tell people to put your dollars into 
mutual funds and a company investment and capital investments and we 
will not punish you for that. We will let you make all the money you 
can make, and if you want to sell these shares and invest them over 
here, then do so.
  You can make the very best decision that you like, and we are not 
going to be in here with Uncle Sam's hand in the way, grabbing 
something out of every single transaction, not having a first lien on 
all productivity in America, but incenting earnings, savings and 
investment, research and development, Mr. Speaker, capital investment, 
higher education. That is where this money is going to go. The future 
of this capital would go into those three things, Mr. Speaker.
  So I would point out that there is a divide in the House of 
Representatives. There is a divide in our philosophy. There is a divide 
that I believe is rooted in this philosophy that of all of us here on 
this planet, if you could somehow shake us up, erase our institutional 
memories, start us as unbiased people again, and scatter us all over 
the globe, without having a network that is going to tell us how to 
think or indoctrinate us, some of the people would see their glass as 
half full, and they would begin filling that glass up in an industrious 
fashion, in a faithful Christian fashion many of them, and filling 
their glass up because that is the thing to do, go out and earn, save, 
invest, buy, sell, trade, make, gain.
  When we do that, everybody prospers. Pull everyone up the ladder next 
to us and strive for a better future for ourselves and for the 
succeeding generation, for our babies that we have in our arms and for 
our children that are growing up and for our grandchildren. That is 
what this does for the next generations that are here and across this 
country, Mr. Speaker.
  Half of the people, well, probably not half, a portion of the people 
see the glass as half full, and they would seek to fill it up, and they 
seek to help others fill their glass.
  There is another percentage of the people, the ones that are on the 
floor with their lamentations night after night after night that say, 
but my glass is half empty; and you know, I have sat in here for a 
lifetime and that person over there that was filling their glass did 
not put a single thing in my glass the whole time. Never mind they did 
not lift a finger themselves to do a thing, but they see it as a glass 
half empty. They see it as the economy is a zero sum game. They see it 
as a pie that is never going to be bigger, that only can be sliced up 
and however you distribute that pie, it will always be unfair in their 
mind's eye.
  But we see this as a Nation of opportunity, individual rights and a 
Nation of opportunity, and we challenge people to be the best you can 
be, be as productive as you can be, and we struggle to put policies in 
place and encourage people to be as productive as they can be.
  That is why I support H.R. 25, the fair tax, because it encourages 
everyone to do as good as they can, to produce as much as they can. It 
punishes no one for productivity. It takes the tax off of productivity, 
puts it on consumption, and thereby incents earnings, savings, 
investment, higher ed, research and development, capital investment. 
All of those things improve the productivity of the American worker, 
and those things increase the overall revenue and income of Americans.
  We really have a choice. We can accept the standard of living of the 
rest of the world. We can watch them catch up with us. We are on this 
treadmill. We are on the front of the treadmill, and as they catch up 
with us, we can begin to accept their standard of living or we can go 
faster and we can go faster with technology, with education, with 
capital investment.
  Those are the things that we need to do, Mr. Speaker; and so I would 
point out that before I came over here on the floor I did not know if I 
would use it, but I used some of this technology that I spoke of 
earlier and tapped in and did a little search for ``the 10 `Cannots' of 
Abe Lincoln,'' and Abe Lincoln had this figured out and laid it out in 
10 Cannots, and many things he has gotten credit for that he did not 
do. I have no idea if he actually did this or not, but I am going to 
give him credit because I think a lot of the man. I would point these 
points out, and I would like to drill them into the brains of everybody 
that votes for the future of America on this floor and across this 
country Mr. Speaker.
  Abe Lincoln said 10 points. You cannot bring about prosperity by 
discouraging thrift. The fair tax encourages thrift and savings. You 
cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift, Abe Lincoln's 
statement. So we want to encourage thrift.
  He said you cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your 
income. You heard me say, Mr. Speaker, balanced budget. We want to come 
with a balanced budget, and we want to put a tax policy in place that 
encourages more productivity so that we can spread this tax out among 
more people and have a lower rate and more individual productivity. The 
sum total of the strength of a nation's economy is the total 
productivity of its people.
  Item number three, you cannot establish security on borrowed money. 
Brings us all to a pause, Mr. Speaker, because we are paying for 
Department of Defense spending on borrowed money. It is necessary that 
we have Department of Defense spending, but that is something that 
causes me to want to back up, take a look and determine that we can pay 
our way, pay as we go. That means tighten the belt; we are at war.
  Item number four, you cannot help small men by tearing down big men. 
A little bit different verbiage in those days than there is today. In 
other words, you cannot help the poor by tearing down the weak. And I 
think he actually says that.
  Item number five, you cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the 
strong. Use your strength, build on those, help others, ask them, come 
on up the ladder with me; but do not pull someone down that has climbed 
up a few rungs. I keep hearing it over and over again, let us pull 
those people down; the oil companies made too much money. Why did they? 
Because the environmentalists would not let us drill for more and the 
price went up. They invested at least in the energy future of America. 
They will quit doing that if we punish them. You cannot strengthen the 
weak by weakening the strong.
  You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. 
Another solid point that needs to be hammered home.
  You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. It is important 
that we have people that have a level of prosperity. They build new 
houses. They move out of those houses and build a bigger and newer 
house. They sell that house to someone that can afford it and on and on 
and on until they get down a level of ways where you and I can afford. 
So you cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
  You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. 
Class hatred is incited every single night on the floor of the House of 
Representatives, Mr. Speaker. It does not help the brotherhood of man. 
It drives a wedge between the brotherhood of man.
  You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's 
initiative and independence. One of the ways that that is done is to 
create independence, and I spoke about individual initiative and 
individual responsibility and individual rights, and I pray that we can 
protect and defend those rights for all Americans, rich or poor, weak 
or strong, whatever color, whatever sex they might be. We need to 
guarantee their individual rights and protect them and give them that 
opportunity.
  The tenth one, you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what 
they could and should do for themselves. I remember that statement of 
Lincoln's.
  So all of these principles of Abraham Lincoln's, the 10 Cannots, have 
been violated on the floor over here night after night after night. If 
we could get back to those principles, Mr. Speaker,

[[Page H385]]

if we could get to this point where we understood that individual 
rights, individual responsibility, if we all could begin to climb that 
ladder, if we could see our glass as half full and begin to fill out, 
and as we did that, reached out and help our fellow man, if we could 
take the tax off all productivity in America, we could prepare this 
future for the young people, for the children, for those that are here 
tonight, Mr. Speaker, and with that, I thank you for your indulgence.

                          ____________________