[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 79 (Wednesday, May 14, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H3870-H3876]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             DEMOCRATS WORKING TO SOLVE AMERICA'S PROBLEMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here once again 
speaking on behalf of the majority makers, the freshmen Democrats 
elected in 2006 to bring change to Washington and who have worked very 
diligently over the last 16 months to begin to reverse the damage done 
to this country over the last 7\1/2\ years.
  It is interesting, I was planning to talk about what I saw as a very 
encouraging sign over the last few days, the encouraging sign that we 
had actually solid bipartisan participation in trying to come up with 
solutions to some of the very daunting challenges that face this 
country today, including energy prices.
  We had a bipartisan vote, an overwhelming bipartisan vote, to 
restrict additions to the strategic petroleum reserve, something which 
the President opposes but which overwhelming numbers of both bodies of 
Congress supported. And I was going to talk about the farm bill in 
which we had significant Republican participation in coming to grips 
with a new solution to our farm policy in this country. And I was going 
to talk about our housing initiatives, how we had significant 
Republican support last week in trying to craft policies that would 
help alleviate the serious housing situation we have and to try to keep 
things from getting worse.
  But after listening to the partisan attack that I just heard, I have 
to respond because what we have heard is something that is almost in a 
parallel universe. It is interesting that my colleagues from the other 
side speak as if the last 7 or 8 years didn't exist, as if the 
Republicans weren't in charge of the entire government from 2001 until 
2007, as if the national debt did not increase by $5 trillion during 
their stewardship of this government, as if earmarks had not been 
developed into an art form under Republican leadership. It is almost as 
if there is no history that they choose to remember.
  I can understand why they don't want to remember what went on from 
2001 to 2006, and before that many of the policies that were developed 
under Republican leadership in this Congress prior to George Bush's 
presidency because they don't want the American people to be reminded.
  But we know from all of the polls and the voter turnout that we have 
seen in the last few months, we know that the American people remember 
what has gone on in these last few years. We know because, as we have 
seen in a poll over the weekend, when asked which party does the 
American people trust to deal with the challenges we face as a country, 
the American people prefer the Democratic policies by a margin of 20 
percent, one of the largest margins ever recorded. It is not hard to 
understand why. What we have seen are failed policies from people well 
meaning, no question about it, but people who do not believe that 
government has a role in solving our problems.
  We see it when people come to the government, when the average 
citizen comes to the government for help. We see them in our offices 
every day, and we talk to them at home on weekends. We know that the 
American people are hurting. They come to us for help. We know that 
nurses come to us for help. Teachers come to us for help. Social 
workers come to us for help. They are dealing with the pain of average 
American citizens every day, and we are trying to do what we can to 
help them.
  We know that the other side does want to come to the help of American 
citizens from time to time if they happen to be the CEO of ExxonMobil, 
if they happen to be the CEO of Chevron, if they happen to be the 
insurance executives. Those people can always find assistance from the 
Republicans. But when the average citizen comes for help, no, no, no, 
we don't want to do that. Government is not in that business.
  Well, that's why the American people turned to the Democratic Party 
in 2006 and said, We have had enough, it is time for a change. We 
believe that the Democratic Party can help working Americans solve some 
of the problems that face them.
  I think we have made a very, very good start. From the very beginning 
of our leadership in the 110th Congress last January, we took steps 
immediately to raise the minimum wage which had not been raised in 10 
years. We took steps to change the rules under which drug companies 
dealt with Medicare. We took steps to end the subsidy of oil companies 
with huge tax breaks when they are making more money than they had ever 
made in their history. We worked very diligently, and we talked about 
earmarks.
  My colleagues on the other side want to make it sound like we 
invented earmarks, which we certainly didn't. We actually provided for 
the first time some transparency in earmarks. We said if you are going 
to put an earmark into a bill, then you have to identify that you 
sponsor that earmark and you have to attest and swear that you did not 
reap any personal benefit. You had no personal connection with the 
recipient of that earmark. Those were not the policies under the 
Republican Congress when they had in their last budget year 16,000 
earmarks. No, you could slip them in there. Nobody knew you got the 
earmark. You could take credit for it if you wanted to, but if you 
tried to find out who gave money for XYZ, you couldn't find that unless 
the person actually took credit for it. We changed that. We required 
accountability in the earmark process.
  So it is interesting to listen to my colleagues talk about the 
horrible leadership that they contend of this Democratic Congress as if 
the last decade had not occurred. I think the American people have seen 
through that. I think there is no question that the recent results, not 
just in polls but in special elections for Congress, reflect the fact 
that the American people understand that the Republicans are out of 
ideas. They just are out of ideas. The idea that government will play 
no role in solving some of the challenges that we have has proven to be 
a bankrupt idea. They persist in that philosophy, and they persist as 
of earlier today, and we have to call the attention of the American 
people that these are not the facts and that there is a very distinct 
difference between our policies, the Democratic majority, in which we 
are trying to use government to help the American people while 
maintaining fiscal responsibility, while maintaining our PAYGO rules so 
we make sure that we don't add to the Federal deficit and the national 
debt and that we pay for what we do when we do it.
  Now, there is a huge exception to that policy, as we all know. We are 
going to see it on the House, on this floor in the next few days. We 
are being asked once again to allocate billions and billions of dollars 
to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are being asked by the 
President, who now has the lowest job approval in modern history, we 
are being asked by him to give him a blank check, once again no 
constraints on his activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, no restrictions 
on his troops, no new regulations regarding the deployment of troops, 
just give him the money and let him try to accomplish the mission which 
he said was accomplished 5 years ago but which has not only not been 
accomplished in 2008 but which is something, a mission which we still 
can't define.
  I would like to ask the administration, and we have on many 
occasions, if you want our support, if you want us to continue to fund 
this failed policy in Iraq, tell us what the mission is. Tell us once 
and for all what the clear objectives are, and we will listen and we 
will use our judgment and see if that is the type of thing that the 
American people will support.

[[Page H3871]]

  But as always, we still don't have a clear idea what the mission in 
Iraq is. It changes on a day-to-day basis. We are being asked once 
again to spend billions and billions of American taxpayer dollars for a 
policy which no one really can explain.
  I think my colleagues, and several have joined me here now, are in 
the same situation as I am. On a daily basis I speak to people from my 
district, Louisville, Kentucky, and they say, we need money for this. 
We have been cut this way. We are going to have to cut services, why 
can't we just spend a little less in Iraq. Every day I get that 
question. I probably got it six times today. Why can't we take some of 
that money we are flushing down the toilet in Iraq and spend it on the 
American people who are in desperate need of the things that government 
needs to do. These are some of the issues we are confronted with today.
  It is my great pleasure to be joined by two of my colleagues from the 
class of 2006, the majority makers, Mr. Keith Ellison from Minnesota 
and Dr. Steve Kagen from Wisconsin, and I am going to yield to Mr. 
Ellison and have him continue this discussion about what we in the 
majority makers and we in the Democratic majority are trying to do on 
behalf of the American people.
  Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend from the great 
State of Kentucky. He has been helping to lead our majority-maker class 
in this leg of our two-term service, and has been doing a fine job of 
it.
  As I start, I want to invoke the memory of two young men, one Robert 
Dixon and another one, Quising Lee.

                              {time}  2130

  These are two young men who are from Minneapolis who were killed in 
Iraq. There have been 64 Minnesotans killed in Iraq, and Robert Dixon 
and Quising Lee are two gentlemen who lived in my district.
  I'll never forget when I went to go see Quising Lee's family after he 
was killed. He went to North High School. He was 20 years old when he 
died, and he was killed in a roadside bomb in Iraq.
  Robert Dixon was killed in a roadside bomb in Iraq as well. I wasn't 
able to go to see Robert Dixon's funeral. I was here. My wife went for 
me. Kim, thank you for doing that. And she sat there and listened to 
stories about Robert Dixon and his life and his service to our country 
and the things he hoped for and wanted.
  But I did get a chance to visit the family and go to the funeral of 
Quising Lee. Quising Lee, 20 years old when he was killed, went to 
North High School, had his whole life in front of him. Only 20 years 
old.
  It's in the memory of those two young men from Minneapolis that I 
offer remarks tonight, and on behalf of those 64 Minnesotans that have 
been killed, and on behalf of those 4,500-some individuals, Americans 
who've been killed in Iraq, and on behalf of those, probably as many as 
perhaps 600,000, perhaps even 1 million Iraqis who've lost their lives 
in Iraq.
  That's the spirit in which I approach tonight, my fellow majority 
makers, because, as you know, tomorrow is the big day we're going to be 
voting on Iraq appropriation once again.
  Just for the facts, I think it's important to point out this will be 
a three-tier vote. One will be on appropriation for Iraq. I'll be 
voting ``no.'' The second will be on certain terms and conditions to 
get out of Iraq. I'll be voting ``yes'' on that. And the third will be 
appropriations for GI bill and things like that, and I expect to be 
voting ``yes'' on that.
  And so I want to just lay this out tonight because I think people 
that are listening should know that tomorrow is a big deal. Tomorrow is 
a big day. We're all going to be casting votes, votes, I pray, of 
conscience, votes that are not based on licking a finger and sticking 
it in the wind, votes that we earnestly believe in. No matter what you 
may conclude about how you should vote tomorrow, I pray that you do it 
based on your conscience, consistent with your conscience.
  And as we sit here tonight, you know, I reflect on the fact that I've 
been to Iraq once, been to Afghanistan once, look forward to going 
back. I think it's the responsibility of every Member of Congress to 
see the place that we have these soldiers struggling to survive in. I 
don't think it's right to just send somebody there and then just expect 
that they're going to be fine. We should at least go there, eat with 
them, sit with them, listen to them, their hopes, dreams, aspirations, 
what they hope to do if they make it out of there.
  I think it's important for us, as Members of Congress, to go to the 
VA hospitals in our local communities and here in Washington, DC.
  I think that what we're dealing with is serious issues, life and 
death. And more importantly, perhaps most importantly for me, we're 
dealing with issues of how our Nation works in relation with other 
nations in the world.
  I believe that the United States should aspire to be a good neighbor 
in the world. I believe that our country, blessed with tremendous 
economic power, blessed with tremendous democracy, meaning not just 
elections, but the power to respect minority rights, the power to 
respect religious diversity, ethnic diversity. In America, we're not 
saying that people don't discriminate, but it's illegal if you do it, 
and good people fought and even died to make it so.
  So I hope that tonight, as we reflect upon our great Nation, we 
reflect upon our role in the world, reflect upon not only the hard 
power but the soft power of America; that we all reflect on the 
sacrifices that were made to make it that way; and that we say that 
American history is not written yet, and that greater things are left 
for us to do.
  And the greatness of this country is not bound up in guns and bombs, 
but, my friends, it's bound up in the goodness of the people and our 
desire to say that we cannot rest on having a democracy at home, but we 
should model it for the world, but not impose it or inflict it upon the 
world; and that we are not the world's police officer, but we could be 
a good example for what people might want to emulate, and that we 
should use our power to beat swords into plowshares and make war no 
more.
  I'll be voting ``no'' on that appropriation tomorrow. And so I just 
want to turn it back, as we reflect tonight, as I reflect on the lives 
of Robert Dixon and Quising Lee. I know my friends from Kentucky and 
Wisconsin have some young people, or not so young people who they're 
remembering tonight as well.
  Thank you. I yield back.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman. And now it's a pleasure to 
welcome Dr. Kagen from Wisconsin, someone who has been a steadfast 
advocate for not just the veterans of this country, but for working 
families everywhere, and has been a champion in trying to bring 
attention to the serious flaws and opportunities in our health care 
delivery system.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. KAGEN. Thank you for yielding, and thank you for carrying on for 
the first few minutes before I was able to attend. Our Committee on 
Transportation just ended its subcommittee meeting at 9:20 this evening 
where we were hearing some testimony about the possible merger between 
Delta and Northwest. And it was a very educational seminar, to say the 
least.
  But it's still an example of how we are working hard to gain 
oversight over these mega mergers, and taking a look at big business 
and big insurance and big corporations and the big war machine that's 
now costing Americans millions and millions of dollars every day.
  And if you like numbers, my friend, it's $14 million an hour that 
we're spending in Iraq instead of here at home. It's $338 million per 
day, $2.4 billion per week, and $10 to $12 billion per month that we 
have our hard-earned tax money going over to the sands of Iraq and not 
investing here at home in our own infrastructure, in our roads and our 
bridges, in our schools and in our social system.
  Now, if you like numbers, and I like numbers, I've got a head for 
numbers. I'll give you the number 300, 200 and 13. 300 percent is the 
increase in the gasoline price since the current administration took 
office in 2001; three times as much as what you're paying at the pump 
as when they started.
  Now, my friend, Mr. Ellison, the right honorable sir, mentioned Iraq 
and some Iraq tragedies. On Mother's Day I had the occasion, in 
Wisconsin, to dial up and wish a happy Mother's Day to a fallen 
soldier's mother, and I spoke

[[Page H3872]]

with Donna Opicka. She had lost her son, Dean. And in her words, quote, 
``It's not working.''
  She's been against our involvement in Iraq from the start. She has 
two sons that are there. And we will always support our troops, but not 
a failed policy. And in her words, ``It's just not working.''
  They told us oil prices would go down. They've gone up 300 percent.
  The Number 200, it's 200 percent, the increase in fuel oil that many 
people in Northeast Wisconsin rely on to heat their homes. And it was a 
long winter this year.
  And what about the number 13? 13 percent increase in your cost for 
groceries. Your food went up 13 percent.
  My friends, if the cost of our food went up 200 and 300 percent, we'd 
see a revolution in this country. And so earlier today we passed a farm 
bill that will fundamentally and dramatically change the way we're 
feeding ourselves. This farm bill determines what farmers will plant, 
what they're going to grow and, ultimately, what we're going to eat and 
what we're going to look like.
  That farm bill had the overwhelming support of over 300 Members of 
Congress, and it's a very good example of how Congress really ought to 
work, in a bipartisan way, Republicans and Democrats together putting 
their minds together and working out a way in which we can feed not 
just our own families but continue to feed the world.
  Now, as this increase in energy for food and energy for oil has gone 
skyrocketing, the food prices have held their own until recently, when 
the energy cost has crept into our food supply.
  At the same time as these costs are going up, your income is going 
down. The median income went down 2 percent since 2001. So at the very 
same time that middle class Americans are having a hard time keeping 
their head above water with the escalation in the cost for energy, both 
food and oil, their income is not going up.
  And so I think people watching tonight have to ask a fundamental 
question. Whose side are we on? Are we on the side of big business? Are 
we on the side of big insurance, big oil companies? I think not. We're 
not sitting in a boardroom. We're standing on the people's floor here 
in the House. And I'm very honored to work with my Class of 2006, the 
class I brand America's hope for a real positive and a new direction; 
not just in our farm policy, not just in our foreign policy, but our 
domestic policy as well, as we pay attention to and continue to work 
hard for the American people to give them a fair shake in our future.
  And I yield back.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman.
  I want to pick up on two of the things that he mentioned because I 
think these are fascinating contrasts and put into perspective some of 
the challenges that we face.
  First, on the subject of oil prices and gasoline prices, he mentioned 
that 300, the price of gasoline has gone up 300 percent since 2001. 
What's interesting is, when you look at what we're now paying in Iraq 
for gasoline, this is one of the truly astounding and very disturbing 
aspects of our involvement there.

  And again, as my colleague, our colleague, Mr. Ellison said, we're 
going to be voting on more funding for the Iraq war tomorrow. The 
American people need to know that right now we are spending $153 
million a month on gasoline in Iraq, $153 million a month. And we're 
paying $3.23 a gallon for that gasoline. It's probably up since then, 
but the time that we have the statistics, $3.23 we're paying for 
gasoline in Iraq.
  Meanwhile, the Iraqi people, and Iraq is sitting on one of the 
largest oil reserves in the world, the Iraqi people are paying a 
subsidized cost of $1.30 a gallon. Now, wouldn't we all love to pay 
$1.30 a gallon?
  Now, that's unrealistic, but it's interesting that we're paying for 
the entire reconstruction cost of Iraq, we have up to this point; we're 
spending all this money to try and stabilize their country, and we're 
paying $2 more per gallon for gasoline than the Iraqi people are. 
That's just one of the strange quirks of our involvement there.
  Mr. KAGEN. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. YARMUTH. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. KAGEN. Does it bother you at all that we don't have any oversight 
in Iraq, where 20 percent of the money we're putting in, no receipts, 
no oversight at all, and it's a culture of corruption? Does that bother 
you at all?
  Mr. YARMUTH. Well, certainly. And again, I referenced the fact that 
not only are we being allowed to, or being asked to write a blank check 
for hundreds of billions of dollars, as we've been writing for some 
time now, somewhere over $500 billion total in direct appropriations 
for the war in Iraq, but we're also being asked to give the Iraqi 
government a blank check; do whatever you want, no accountability, you 
get to it when you get to it, you'll decide when things are right for 
us to be able to leave. It's all up to you. We're helpless.
  It's a very uncomfortable position for us to be in.
  Mr. KAGEN. Will the gentleman yield again for another question?
  Mr. YARMUTH. Of course.
  Mr. KAGEN. Does it not astound you that the administration today, and 
our opposing party, has no answer when we say, look, we are budget red. 
We have a budget deficit and Iraq has a budget surplus. Isn't it time 
that they paid for their own reconstruction?
  Isn't that a reasonable question?
  Mr. YARMUTH. It's a reasonable question which we are addressing in 
legislation. And I think the American people are totally justified in 
demanding that the Iraqi people pick up some of the tab when they're 
running a $70 billion surplus per year.
  And I was actually encouraged to hear one of the representatives of 
the government over the weekend talk about the fact that they intend to 
do that. But just their intentions don't seem to be much because, 
again, as you said, there is no accountability method in place.
  But I want to reference one other thing. And it's getting off on a 
little tangent, but you talked about the merger between Delta and 
Northwest, and that's being examined by the Transportation Committee 
now, and I'm glad it is.
  One of the things that I've been talking about more and more when I'm 
talking to the good people of Louisville, Kentucky is, you know, we've 
allowed, over the last couple of decades, maybe 3 decades, companies to 
get bigger and bigger and bigger in this country. We really haven't 
enforced the anti-trust laws in this country in 30 years. And we did it 
because they said, oh, you know, it's a global economy. We need to be 
able to get big so we can compete.
  Well, unfortunately, what they generally mean when they say they want 
to get big is they want to get big in revenues. They don't want to get 
big in job creation. They don't want to get big in many things that are 
the goals that we hold for this country. And when they want to get big, 
it generally means they want to save money. So they merge, and then 
they eliminate jobs, and they close facilities, and they destabilize 
communities, all in the name of being able to compete in the global 
economy.

                              {time}  2145

  And what concerns me is--and we had a hearing not too long ago in the 
Oversight Committee in which we talked to several of the CEOs of very 
large corporations, and this was about corporate executive 
compensation. And I asked three of the executives, When you have these 
compensation committee meetings when you're deciding what your CEO is 
going to be paid and what your top management is going to be paid, do 
you ever talk about the impact of these huge salaries and compensation 
packages on the morale of your employees? Do you ever talk about how 
you could make life better for your working people, your employees? Do 
you ever talk about how you can improve the communities that you 
occupy, that you serve?
  And the answer was very candid, and they said, No. It's always about 
just how we get the stock price up and how we compensate our 
executives.
  So the question I ask, and it's one that I hope we continue to ask in 
this Congress, if you want to get big, we need to make sure that your 
goals are the same as the American people's goals; and I think people 
on both sides of the aisle would say we have the same goals for the 
American people.

[[Page H3873]]

We want good jobs, we want stable communities, and we want secure 
families. And if we have a corporate world that has goals that are 
antithetical to that, then we need to revise our policy on anti-trust 
allowing these mergers and try to say if you want permission from us to 
get big and you want to operate in a certain way, we want you to 
operate in a way that benefits the American people and not just your 
CEOs and your stockholders.
  Mr. ELLISON. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. YARMUTH. Absolutely.
  Mr. ELLISON. As we talk about this merger of Northwest Airlines and 
Delta, I have a number of serious concerns I'd like to point out. One 
is that Northwest has a pilots' union, has a mechanics' union, has an 
airline attendants' union. Delta only has an airline pilots' union. And 
the fact is that Delta is the bigger entity. And so when they merge, 
what will happen with these organizations that are designed to make 
sure working people have some rights? I'm very concerned about that.
  And I think that's one of the reasons why I think--and I hope and 
pray we can pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which we already passed 
through this House, but we have not yet been able to make into law.
  I'm also concerned that Delta and Northwest in the future, if they 
merge, will never compete based on price or based on product. They will 
never compete because they will be one entity. They won't make each 
other better, and they won't make each other more efficient. They're 
just going to bond together and make some money. And of course, they're 
quite candid, and they tell you they are going to merge so they can get 
efficiencies. So what is that? Well, that means somebody is getting 
fired. That means somebody's got to go. You can't have two Employee 
Relations offices; you can't have two H.R. offices. Can't have two of 
everything. Somebody is going to go. And at the end of the day, a lot 
of folks who are paying property taxes, who are raising families, who 
are doing well, are going to be out of work and lose their jobs.
  So I'm very concerned about this. I'm concerned about what consumers 
are going to pay in terms of ticket prices. I'm concerned about loss of 
jobs. I'm concerned about the fact that this Justice Department has 
never seen a merger that it didn't like, and we are seeing an 
increasing monopolization, oligopolization of our, what should be, 
competitive markets.
  And I would love to see some of these free-market advocates get out 
there and fight for a competitive market. They seem to not be in favor 
of competitive markets. They seem to be in favor of really big 
business, not competitive markets, not free enterprise. These are 
things that are on my mind, and I think Americans want to know what is 
this Justice Department going to be about.
  Because as I wrap up and toss it back to you, I would like to ask you 
gentlemen a question. Did you know that in 1980, the average CEO made 
about 42 times the average worker; but in 2005, which is the last year 
I have data, the average CEO made about 411 times the average worker? 
That is a problem. What do you guys think of that?
  Mr. KAGEN. It wouldn't be so bad if everybody else was doing that 
good. The reason it's bad is because we didn't get lifted up at the 
same time.
  Mr. ELLISON. Did the rising tide lift our boats?
  Mr. KAGEN. Not the boats in my district, but median income might be 
$28,000 to $32,000 a year.
  When I was home in northeast Wisconsin, I was at a diner, Tina's 
Roost, in Oconto. And I was meeting with some workers there, and I 
said, well, listen. We're about to take up this discussion about an 
economic stimulus package to revitalize our economy and get us out of 
this upcoming recession; and one of the city workers stood up and took 
apart some of the six layers of clothing because it was still pretty 
cold in northern Wisconsin, and he said, Kagen, look out the window. 
You can see it right there. The price of gas. You drop the price of 
gasoline, I have got more money in my pocket. And while you're at it, 
knock down my health care bills. Those are the two things we could do 
immediately to put more money in people's pockets.
  But my response was very direct and very honest. We're working hard 
to do that, but it's hard to do it when you have a President who's an 
oil person and you have a vice president who's an oil person and a 
Secretary of State who is an oil person. So if you've got oil in the 
White House, it's hard to move it out until we look forward to that 
date in November when we get that real positive change that we really 
need.
  So we can drive our economy, but we have to have an energy policy 
that makes sense, one that is designed in the open and not behind 
closed doors; an energy policy that will be fashioned towards renewable 
sources of energy, away from fossil fuels, and it has to make sense for 
our environment at the same time.
  But fundamentally, people are like back home in Wisconsin. A lot of 
people are like turtles on their back. They just want to get back on 
their feet and get started. And that's what we did with the energy 
stimulus bill, and we're also doing that with this housing bill that we 
put forward, trying to find a pricing floor in the housing market.
  Mr. YARMUTH. The gentleman makes some very good points, and one of 
the things I just mentioned before you arrived was that over the past 
few days, we've actually done three things in a bipartisan way; and you 
mentioned one of them. We passed a farm bill with substantial 
Republican support. The housing bill, we had a number of Republicans 
join us; and when we dealt with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 
which we said we don't need to be adding any more fuel to the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve, taking it off the market, decreasing supply when 
we're at 98 percent capacity; we've never been, in recent history, 
below 600 million gallons of our 727-gallon capacity; and the bill, the 
freshman class, we asked the President to do it by himself. The 
President refused.
  So what happened? The Senate yesterday voted 97-1; the House voted 
385-25. I think it shows it was a pretty solid idea. There can't be 
that many people who have bad judgment. Maybe there are. But 97-1, 385-
25 are pretty good odds. So we spoke to the President in a bipartisan 
way.

  So there are situations in which we have found ways to work together, 
and as you said, that's the way it should be; and I think that's a very 
encouraging sign. Unfortunately, we have a President who doesn't 
recognize this body as having any say in policy in this country. He 
believes he is the decider, and despite provisions in the Constitution 
in article 1 to the contrary which says the American people are the 
deciders of policy and the laws through their representatives of 
Congress.
  I think we are doing the people's business, and we're doing it in a 
very responsible way. And I agree totally that it will be wonderful to 
have a new chief executive in the White House who maybe understands 
that government is a partnership and the Constitution was written so 
that it would be--we would have three branches who are not constantly 
in conflict but who are working together for the American people.
  Mr. ELLISON. I think you're right, Mr. Yarmuth, and I appreciate you 
pointing that point out.
  The article 1, that's kind of our theme this year, isn't it? 
Reasserting the power of the legislative branch.
  I want to pick up on a theme that Dr. Kagen mentioned a moment ago as 
he was laying out how he was speaking with some workers in northern 
Wisconsin.
  I was talking with some workers in Minneapolis recently, and we're 
kind of like cousins, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Folks had talked about 
how their pay has been stagnant and they haven't seen much of a pay 
increase except in the late nineties. But the prices of everything 
seems to be going up: health care, housing prices, and all of that. And 
what people did in the early part of this decade is they were able to 
get money out of their houses, right, which has led us into the 
foreclosure crisis.
  But what are people doing now that housing prices are flat? Well, 
they're turning to credit cards. Charge it. They're putting it on the 
plastic. And I think this is a big deal because I think we need to know 
that people are essentially consuming not out of savings, they're 
consuming out of pay-day loans, credit cards. They used to do it out of 
the equity of their houses. And this is a serious problem, and people 
cannot consume out of their savings but have to consume out of debt.

[[Page H3874]]

  And what it has caused us in our economy today, gentlemen, is that we 
have seen the credit card debt jump from 6.7 percent in the first 
quarter of this year, a credit card increase of 6.7 percent in the 
first quarter of this year to a whopping $957.2 billion. This is a very 
serious issue for our economy.
  That's why we need a high-wage strategy. We need to put more money in 
people's pockets by reducing the costs of education, housing, health 
care, gasoline, and by saying that folks are going to have a fair, 
decent wage that they're going to be able to earn; and we need a 
strategy to pull those things together for the American people.
  Mr. KAGEN. What we did the other day in terms of trying not to put 
more petrol into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is to increase the 
supply. And the President said what we should be doing is increasing 
supply by drilling more. But there's a fallacy in that argument. There 
are thousands of acres available for drilling on public land, and 
they're not drilling.
  So the fallacy is the price of oil is going to shoot up and up and up 
as long as we have fewer and fewer oil companies that are chasing down 
the oil. But we cannot drill our way out of this energy crisis. We 
can't drill and burn and drill and burn. We're going to end up choking 
on our own exhaust. We're going to inflate the temperature so much in 
this globe that we're going to melt not just the ice caps but our 
future at the same time.
  So we need to have that energy policy that is not based on increasing 
supply but finding alternative sources of energy.
  Mr. ELLISON. What do you think about an energy policy that would 
incentivize the production of cars that get 100 miles to the gallon? 
They're out there. The technology is there. There are a lot of things 
that we're looking at here in Congress that could help people go a long 
way. You plug that thing in at night when the load is a little lower, 
nonpeak hours. What about getting some of these light bulbs that don't 
use as much energy? What about converting some of these old windy 
buildings so they don't waste as much energy?
  Mr. KAGEN. We're doing that with the Department of Energy building 
because our Transportation Committee has decided that the energy 
building, the Department of Energy, should be led with some solar 
power. It's called future fitting. And if you future fit your home, put 
up solar cells, not to take it off the electrical grid but knock down 
your electric footprint, your carbon footprint, you will save much in 
your electric bill and also in terms of the CO2 production 
in the atmosphere.
  These are the little things that when they add up, when thousands of 
homes across the country begin to future fit their homes, we can gain a 
great deal of energy independence and stimulate the economy. People 
underestimate the millions of jobs that can be created by future 
fitting their home, and we have to help them out here in Congress to 
create that legislation to incentivize that.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Exactly.
  I would say you made the right statement. We will never drill our way 
out of the energy crisis, but we can invent our way out of the energy 
crisis; and the private sector is in the process of doing that. We need 
to give them the boost. We need to give them the incentives. We need to 
provide the tax credits, and in fact, we have tried to do that. And if 
anything, I think, represents a clear distinction--there is probably 
nothing that represents a clear distinction between the President's 
party and ours than the way we have handled the ideas of incentives.
  The Republican Congress in 2005 voted a 15--well, the number is 
vague--but it's around $15 billion a year in tax incentives to the oil 
companies to drill. We've tried to take that tax incentive away, that 
subsidy, and put it into the types of innovative technologies that will 
be the answer to our energy crisis, will make us independent of 
imported oil, and oil totally, and will stimulate and create new 
economies and new economic opportunity in this country.

                              {time}  2200

  Mr. ELLISON. I've got to ask the gentleman to yield on this one.
  What is the opinion of you two esteemed gentlemen on the $40.7 
billion ExxonMobil cleared? I mean, that's not revenue, that's profit, 
and yet and still, this President does not want to take away their 
incentives, their oil subsidies. What kind of sense does that make? Can 
somebody please rescue me from my ignorance?
  Mr. YARMUTH. That didn't make since in 2006 when they made $38- or 
$39 billion. It didn't make sense last year when they made $40 billion. 
It doesn't make sense when they made over $40 billion. Record profits 
every year since we gave them this huge tax subsidy.
  Mr. ELLISON. Well, let me ask you this, do you think there will come 
a day when the folks in the White House might just say, they might not 
need that subsidy after all?
  Mr. YARMUTH. Well, ironically, in a way, this President did say that 
because in 2004, when he was campaigning for reelection, he said once 
oil passes $55 a barrel, the oil companies will not need any incentive 
to drill. That was his campaign statement in 2004.
  Mr. ELLISON. That's the problem. He just doesn't know that oil is not 
$55 a barrel, but actually hit about $126 a barrel. He just doesn't 
know. Somebody ought to send him a news flash.
  Mr. KAGEN. Let me put it in a different perspective, if you will 
allow me to. It's not about profits. I'm in favor of profits. We have a 
capitalistic marketplace. I'd like people to be profitable. It 
certainly beats the alternative of being negative in red ink.
  But let me submit to you that the oil that we're pulling up out of 
the ground hasn't changed in millions of years. The gold we're mining 
out of these mines, it's the same gold as it has been for millions of 
years but it costs more. It costs more because the purchasing power of 
your United States dollar has declined.
  So there's a decline, a reevaluation south of everything you own and 
everything you do. Every working man and woman today is earning money 
that has less purchasing power than before, and it's because of our 
failed economic policy of this administration and the Republican party, 
the philosophy of borrow and spend and borrow and spend.
  You cannot borrow your way into national prosperity. You cannot spend 
your way into prosperity. We have to have a fiscally responsible and 
socially progressive House and Nation, and when we do that, when we 
reinstill these values, we'll begin to grow our way out of this current 
recession and restore some balance to our economy, wherein an oil 
company may not have to make that much money at the expense of every 
consumer who is struggling just to keep their head above water.
  Mr. ELLISON. You put your finger on a very important issue. You used 
the word ``philosophy,'' and I think it's a good time to talk about the 
philosophical framework that I believe is crumbling before our eyes.
  The idea that the middle class doesn't matter, that the wealthiest 
among us--and let me just tell you, I'm one who says, thank God that 
you were able to do really, really well. I'm not against people in the 
top 1 percent. I mean, I'm like great. But I think people in the top 1 
percent say, you know what, I climbed up the ladder and I'm going to 
leave it there so other people can climb up the ladder, too.
  But the philosophy that I think we have seen over the last 8 years is 
the philosophy that says, you know what, we're going to give every 
opportunity, every incentive to the people at the very tiptop; we're 
not going to make sure people in the middle are making it. And what 
eventually happens is that those people there in the middle don't have 
anymore money to spend. They are now spending out of debt, and then 
what happens is that they can't even afford the basic necessities of 
life, which then is going to have an impact on the consumer sector and 
on corporate America.
  Seventy percent of the whole GDP is what we spend, consumer spending, 
but we ain't got no money. And so the point is, we are literally 
killing the goose that laid the golden egg. We need to say that we need 
new politics where the market is a part of our life but not a holy, 
sacred grail. The market helps to propel productivity, but is not all 
there is. But we have alongside the market, a regulated market, a 
market that makes sure that competition is

[[Page H3875]]

present, a market that says that consumers cannot just get stuck and 
gouged and pinched and pulled and taken advantage of, and a market that 
says that we want to have innovation and room for small producers so 
that there's this competition over goods and services and brand and 
innovation and, of course, price.
  We need a new market that has the middle class as the VIP of this 
economy, not the CEO.
  Mr. KAGEN. I think that you're headed toward the philosophy that I 
think America really believes in, getting back to the basics and 
putting the letters U-N-I-T-Y, unity, back into community.
  Mr. ELLISON. Oh, yeah.
  Mr. KAGEN. We can do that by helping to evolve our health care system 
back to community-based ratings so there is no discrimination against 
any citizen, not just because of the color of their skin but their skin 
chemistry, not just the content of their heart but the arterial content 
of their heart.
  So we have to get back to a place, again, where American traditional 
values are reinforced here in Congress. I think that's the hard work, 
the working ethic. That's the hard work we have been doing here during 
these past 15 months that we got here.
  Mr. YARMUTH. There's another element to the philosophy that I think 
we need to talk about now, and I see it in discussions that we have in 
our caucus meetings, and I think it's a growing realization that we 
have to embrace as a philosophy in this body that we can't think just 
to the next election cycle. We have to start thinking very long-term, 
and we have to start thinking about investment and investments that 
will pay off over the long run but will not get us any immediate 
gratification or recognition so that we can get votes at the next 
election.
  And you mentioned health care, and that's certainly an area in which 
we have to start investing because every dollar we spend on early 
childhood health care we know pays off 10, 20 times down the road. You 
can't see it today. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, won't 
score it and say, okay, you can take credit for that, but we know that 
it happens. If children are tended to early on, preventive care, 
diagnostic work, we catch a hearing problem, a sight problem, you catch 
them before they get obese, we know how much that returns in savings 
down the road.
  The same way with infrastructure. We've neglected infrastructure in 
this country for far too long. We know we have to make investments in 
infrastructure, but those are the types of investments that do pay off. 
It's not like Iraq where every dollar, once you shoot a bullet, once 
you shoot a rocket, that's money gone. There's no investment there, no 
return on investment.
  But infrastructure, health care, medical research, if we could spend, 
let's say we spent $100 billion over the next 10 years and we were to 
cure cancer and diabetes, you're the doctor, it would save trillions of 
dollars long-term.
  Mr. KAGEN. Absolutely.
  Mr. YARMUTH. And so we have to start thinking I think in that long-
term, let's invest money now. You're right, you can't spend your way to 
solve these problems, but you can invest your way. And I think there's 
sound, solid, predictable results that we can get from these types of 
investments.
  Mr. KAGEN. But that requires judgment. It requires good judgment at 
every level of our government, not just a mayor or a county board 
member, but here in Congress and in the White House. And this is why 
this next election, I'm looking forward to having the opportunity to 
work with a President who has good judgment and a philosophy that 
believes in prevention, not just in health care, but by preventing 
going to war, you prevent human tragedy and you save tremendous amounts 
of money.
  Mr. ELLISON. That's why I really believe that we need a philosophy 
and a President who believes in the philosophy of the common good. The 
common good because, you know, as Representative Yarmuth refers to 
infrastructure, that's another word for our common wealth. That's our 
common wealth. That's what we all own together. That's the roads, the 
bridges, the dikes, the levees, the transit. That's the universities, 
the public school system. That could be a health care system that we 
own together, that's ours. And that's all of these things that when we 
invest in them, they pay dividends back.
  Like you just said, that military spending is a one-way good. You 
shoot that bullet, and it's gone. But when you build that road, all of 
us who use it for even just our businesses, just to truck stuff over 
it, are using it, that's a return on investment. Those of us who go to 
school on it, that's a return on investment. Those of us who use it 
just for recreation, that's a return on our investment.
  It's our common wealth, and we need to get back to the idea that, you 
know, America is a country where we have our common good and we share 
it, and we believe it and we have a common wealth that we share and we 
keep and we promote. And our market is a part of the common wealth, but 
it's in service to the people of the country. It's in service to tap 
into the creativity and the productive power of the people so that they 
can produce goods and services for the people of this country.
  Our markets are another, not just to produce goods and services, but 
to improve our social life because in that way, when I'm allowed to do 
my thing, right, I can be more happy, more productivity, more creative. 
And if I had health care and if I had a pension and if I had a school 
system that my kids could go to, boy, I could sit in that garage and 
come up with all kind of cool stuff.
  The fact is we've got to get back to this place where it's about the 
common good, it's about the common wealth, and not about just me for me 
and I don't care about anybody else. Greed essentially elevated to a 
political philosophy, we've got to get away from that. It has not 
served us well.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Well, the gentleman makes a wonderful point, and I'm 
reminded in a very kind of maybe indirect way of a movie that came out 
back in the early seventies, and it was called ``Rollerball.'' It was 
remade several years ago in a very different way. But the movie early 
in the 1970s was a science fiction movie, futuristic, looking to an era 
in which geopolitical boundaries had ceased to exist. And the world, 
instead of being divided into countries, was divided into economic 
entities.
  So James Caan, who starred in that movie, played Rollerball, a 
futuristic game, for the Energy Corporation, and they played against 
the Communications Corporation. And then there was the Food 
Corporation, and that's the way the world was divided.
  And sometimes when you see ExxonMobil with its volume of revenue and 
profits and some of these other enormous corporations, you say maybe 
we're not too far from that.
  So we have to decide, as a Nation, it's one thing to say the world is 
flat, but that doesn't mean the world has lost its distinctions yet and 
its delineations into Nations that have souls and have people who 
believe in their commonness, their common mission, their common 
ambitions. And that's something that I think every American wants to 
retain. We don't want to lose that.
  And I think when we essentially wash our hands in Washington and say 
corporate America, corporate world just go at it, do what you want to 
do and we'll take whatever you give us, we're not too far from that 
unfortunate scenario in ``Rollerball.''
  Mr. KAGEN. Let me make a comment about that if I may, and many people 
would like to say, well, why can't government run itself like a 
business. And in one sense, we can because in business there are three 
questions you have to ask yourself: Will it work? Will it be 
profitable? And the third most important question is, is it the right 
thing to do?
  These are the three questions we can ask ourselves as well here as we 
begin to fashion legislation. Will it really work? Is it going to have 
the outcomes that we hoped that it would, whether it's health care or a 
housing bill or a farm bill? Will it work?
  Secondly, is it going to be profitable? Will it be something for 
generations to come? Seven generations forward will feel that was a 
good investment of your time and your natural and national resources?
  And finally, is it the right thing to do? Is it the ethical thing to 
be doing?

[[Page H3876]]

  These are the three questions that apply to business. These are the 
three questions I think apply to our government, and I'm happy to say 
what we've been working on here in the 110th Congress, all three of 
these questions have been asked and answered, and we're doing the right 
thing for America. We're really moving it in a very positive direction.
  Mr. ELLISON. I would say, and we have about maybe 5 or 6 more minutes 
to go tonight. I just want to say it's always a pleasure to be on the 
floor with the difference makers, the majority makers. It's an honor to 
be able to stand in front of the American people and to project a 
progressive vision that includes us all, that allows us to share in a 
common good and a common wealth together and also allows us to, you 
know, embrace the fact that we are an economy, that our society 
embraces the free market as well, that we look at these two things as 
complementary and not one superior to the other, that we see them as 
something that enhances our life together.

                              {time}  2215

  And I just want to say, as you mentioned, Mr. Yarmuth, that I don't 
think Americans want to be under a corporatocracy. I think we like our 
national identity.
  And I'll say that you should know that before the 1870s, the 
corporate entity was nothing close to what it is today. As a matter of 
fact, you couldn't even own one unless the charter was issued by the 
State, the same as it is today. That's the thing; we think of these 
things as somehow natural or inevitable, but corporations are creatures 
of the State. Without a State charter, they don't exist. And we should 
say that corporations should ask, does it work, does it make money, and 
is it the right thing to do? That is a perfectly legitimate question. 
And I look forward to the day when that question is asked by all of us.
  So with that, I again thank you two gentlemen, and also salute the 
majority makers. And I look forward to a day when we have a cooperative 
and productive relationship with the executive.
  Mr. YARMUTH. That will be a nice day. And, you know, just following 
up a little bit on that thought, the image that I get in my mind when I 
look out over the economic landscape sometimes is that we have a lot of 
very wealthy, very powerful people who are just playing Monopoly with 
America, that this is just a game for them. And there are the little 
houses and the little trains and all the little pieces that are on the 
Monopoly board, and it's funny money. Unfortunately, it's funny money 
that many people are being deprived of because of the great 
concentrations of wealth in this country.
  And I don't want to sound like somebody who's saying, oh, we've got 
to redistribute the wealth, we've got to make sure everybody has the 
same thing. That's not what any of us are talking about. But as Mr. 
Ellison pointed out before, we have seen the greatest separation of 
wealth, disparity in wealth in this country than we've seen in almost 
100 years. And we've let the pendulum swing much too far to one side so 
that we've allowed the very wealthiest people to become incredibly 
wealthy, and almost everybody else has been treading water.
  As we said, we have not been floating everybody's boat; in fact, 
we've been drowning a lot of people. And we've got to make sure that 
everybody has a boat. And I think that's one of the things that this 
Congress is committed to.
  So I would like to yield to my friend, Dr. Kagen, for some closing 
remarks as we wind down this version of the majority makers.
  Mr. KAGEN. Well, I would close by thanking you for the opportunity. 
It's been a long day, another 15-hour day for both of us. And I want to 
thank the American people for tuning in tonight. And you can guarantee 
one thing, that we're working hard for you. We're on your side. We're 
going to protect our country. We're going to grow our economy, expand 
the middle class, and defend our planet against global climate change. 
And on that positive note, I yield back my time.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Dr. Kagen. It's wonderful to be here with you 
tonight, and also with Mr. Ellison.
  And one of the things, I guess if I could capsulize what we've said 
tonight and what the majority makers feel more than anything else, that 
in this country every person matters. Every individual matters, and 
every individual deserves our attention, our concern, and our action. 
And that's what we've been doing for 16 months and pledge to be doing 
for the rest of our tenure in office.
  So with that, once again, thank you for joining me tonight.

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