[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 17 (Wednesday, January 28, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H770-H776]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              INCOME TAXES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized.
  I sure enjoyed hearing from my colleagues talking about the work of 
the day in, I think, a very accurate way.
  I'm here tonight to talk about, I think, correcting some potential 
inequities.
  I'm very blessed in my life. I spent 10 years practicing law in the 
town of Round Rock, Texas, in Williamson County, at that time a small 
town where a lawyer in that town pretty well did anything that walked 
in the door, from criminal cases all the way down to property tax 
cases. And I had a lot of clients back in those days that were in small 
businesses or who might be individuals who sometimes, I would say, 
unintentionally failed to pay some of the taxes they owed to the IRS. 
And inevitably when those things would

[[Page H771]]

happen, they would receive from the IRS a notice that they had failed 
to pay their taxes or failed to file their income tax or failed to pay 
payroll taxes that they should have paid. And these clients would come 
running to a lawyer.
  At that time I was only one of two lawyers in town and never claimed 
to be a tax expert. But I could read the form that told us what they 
needed to do, and we could get them with a CPA, and they would get 
their taxes filed. And they would receive a notice from the IRS which 
would tell them that they would have to pay penalties and interest on 
this particular sum of money, whatever it may be. It might have been 
relatively small. But if the time period had been long, the penalties 
would be very horrendous. They would be very fierce. Sometimes over a 
period of time of, say, 8 or 10 years of failure to pay, you might see 
the penalties and interest be two, three, four times what the actual 
taxes were that were owed by the individual.
  If it happened to be payroll taxes, I will tell you that, by my 
experience in those days, they would threaten to padlock businesses and 
put people in prison for that, for failing to pay payroll taxes, 
because, actually, that was other people's money that they withhold 
held and didn't pay and didn't pay their matching share. So the IRS 
would get very mad about failing to pay payroll taxes.
  But they would also be a little bit upset about failing to pay income 
taxes and threaten similar actions, mostly padlocking businesses and 
seizing assets.
  It was possible to go talk with the IRS, and you could sometimes 
negotiate those penalties and interest. But I never saw them not assess 
them in my period of time that I did that.
  After the 10 years of practicing law, I spent 20 years as a general 
jurisdiction district judge in Texas, which is the highest trial court 
in Texas, and I tried a wide variety of cases, some of which was family 
law. I tried a tremendous amount of family law cases, somewhere in the 
neighborhood of 20,000 over that 20-year period of time.

                              {time}  2045

  I also tried criminal cases and so forth. In many family law cases, 
one of the issues when you are trying to guide assets, you would also 
be dividing liabilities, and one of the liabilities you would 
inevitably see would be failure to pay taxes or being late on taxes or 
failing to file taxes. So we dealt with this same issue, and I can 
report to this body that by my experience, the failure to pay those 
taxes always seemed to result in a letter from the IRS assessing 
penalties and interest for failure to pay.
  Now, I raise this issue because I think it's important that we have 
fairness that everyone be treated fairly in this country. And so many 
will recall that it was reported by a Member of Congress on this House 
floor about 4 or 5 months ago, one of our Members, a very well 
respected, highly respected Member of this body, told us that he had 
failed to pay his taxes for a period of 10 years on a rental property 
in the Dominican Republic. And he reported that he was going through 
his people, he was going to discuss with the IRS the payment of these 
taxes, and he was going to pay his taxes.
  He has since reported that he has paid his taxes to the tune of 
somewhere near the sum of $10,000. He also has reported that he has not 
paid any penalties and interest because no penalties and interest have 
been assessed.
  Now, this struck me as very strange. By my experience and having 
dealt with it, I am not saying I did this full time every day, but you 
know, I think most Americans know, if they have been through anything, 
they have dealt with the IRS, the IRS is pretty proud of assessing 
penalties and interest. They like that a whole lot.
  And so, to me, it was at first curious that this person, who is very 
directly related to the taxing system of the United States, has, in 
fact, not been even assessed any penalties and interest. I thought, you 
know, we serve in this body here because a bunch of people back home 
actually said we would like you to represent us in Washington, and we 
think you think like we do, and so they vote for you, and they give you 
this job.
  But at least in my personal opinion, that makes us no different from 
them, other than we are kind of hired to speak for them up here as the 
best we can, and I think that's what we are here for. But we certainly, 
by the nature of our employment in the House of Representatives, should 
not receive any special treatment above and beyond the same special 
treatment that would be available to every American citizen, every 
American taxpayer.
  So I have introduced a bill today which would basically say that 
because no penalties and interest were assessed against a Member of 
this House, that, in fact, we have equal treatment under the law, which 
is one of our constitutional rights. We would allow people to claim 
that same right not to pay penalties and interest if they hadn't paid 
their taxes.
  This bill has got a name, and we call it the Rangel rule.
  I would hope that people would take it in the light that it is set. 
It is not criticism in any way of any Member of this House. In fact, if 
it's criticism of anything, it's criticism of the IRS of the United 
States for failure to treat people equally under the law. And so I 
raise this issue because, in fact, that's what I seek here by this 
legislation, equal treatment under the law.
  That club owner that I was well aware of back in the 1970s who 
constantly was having trouble with the IRS--and he is dead now, so I am 
not going to use his name; but I represented him before the IRS a half 
a dozen times, and we battled tooth and nail and borrowed money to pay 
that principal, interest and penalty that he had to pay.
  He, if there is someone that's given special consideration, then that 
man should have been given special consideration. And that's why I have 
introduced this bill which basically says that if you have failed to 
pay your taxes and you are willing to pay the taxes, and you don't want 
penalties and interest assessed against you, then you can claim the 
Rangel rule, and you won't have penalties and interest assessed against 
you, according to the law.
  That's what we are doing here today. We are not doing it out of any 
malice, we are only doing it because we think it's fair for the 
American people.
  I am joined by some of my colleagues here. I will first yield, I 
think, to my friend from Iowa (Mr. King) since he is down on the floor 
and let him give us some comments.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas, one of the 
stellar judges that come from Texas and the only State I know that 
delivers judges into this body, but I am glad to have you all as my 
allies. As I listened to his presentation, I know that it's delivered 
from the voice of experience, in having dealt with those kinds of 
inequities, and I just think that the language in this bill is so clean 
and so pure that it's important, Mr. Speaker, that the public actually 
hear it with this level of clarity.
  Any individual who is a citizen of the United States--and it's 
important that citizens are the ones that take advantage of this--and 
who writes ``Rangel rule'' on top of the first page of the return of 
tax imposed by chapter one for any taxable year, shall be exempt from 
any requirement to pay any interest and from any penalty, addition to 
tax, or additional amount with respect to such return.
  Very simple. Our Founding Fathers could have written something like 
this, and everybody can read it and understand it. It arises from the 
situations that have been discussed in that there seems to be one set 
of laws for one set of people and a set of exemptions for other folks 
that are very well and highly collected. And the list of things that 
have been raised from an ethical standpoint question in this House is 
getting longer and longer.
  I remember the effort in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 that this was going 
to become, under the new majority, which now is more than 2 years old, 
the most ethical Congress in history, the most open, the most 
democratic Congress in history. That would be the current Speaker of 
the House, Mr. Assigned Speaker.
  I don't know that that has emerged, but I can tell you what has 
emerged: a dysfunctional Ethics Committee that doesn't take up 
anything, won't address anything. And by lack of virtue of such lack of 
action, we end up with

[[Page H772]]

a body that's continuing to pick up more and more cases that the public 
needs to hear about because the Ethics Committee is not, or at least 
they are not dealing with it.
  A question that comes to me as I listen to this presentation from 
Judge Carter from Texas is that, should this bill become law--and I am 
a cosponsor of this bill; I certainly support it, I support the concept 
behind it. Should this bill become law, would it be, then, something 
that the Secretary of the Treasury could take advantage of when he 
finds that he wasn't thorough enough when he examined his taxes on 
TurboTax.
  Mr. CARTER. Actually, I point that out in the spirit of 
bipartisanship and working together, yes, very much, although I 
understand that the now-Secretary of the Treasury, designee of the new 
administration, has, in fact, paid the interest on this amount, but no 
penalties have been assessed. Yes, he could claim this very rule to 
have the penalties waived should this be enacted into law.

  Of course, I would urge the committees of jurisdiction to move 
forward on this very quickly, so we can treat every American citizen 
fairly under the rule. In fact, even Mrs. Kennedy's issues on her 
nanny, that seemed to prevent her to being a possible candidate for the 
United States Senate, that also might fall under the Rangel rule and 
those issues could also be addressed.
  So, yes, certainly we, some of our colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle could benefit from this.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I appreciate that perspective and the accuracy from 
that. It seems as though our Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Geithner, 
was able to establish a negotiated settlement on his back taxes, too.
  His negotiated settlement was that if he would pay--under the course 
of the audit, if he would pay the back taxes and the interest, then 
there was a waiver of the penalty. And I am hearing that if you haven't 
had a lot of experience with the waiver or the penalty when it comes to 
dealing with the IRS--and I know that they can come along and be a 
Monday morning quarterback about at any time, and they can make some 
subjective decisions about what you should or should not have claimed 
for your income or expenses; and then if you are not able to lay out 
the payment in a timely fashion, they can do a lot of things.
  Your house is not preserved for that kind of protection, they can 
assign a new title to your car and sell it and apply it to your tax 
liability.
  But in the case of our Treasurer, he was able to apparently negotiate 
a waiver of the penalty and just pay the principal and the interest 
and, indeed, having been, in advance, reimbursed for the taxes that he 
knew he had liability. So as he signed the form and agreed that he 
would pay the taxes--and there were several notices; I believe the 
notices came out quarterly--that he would be liable for his own payroll 
taxes, but if he applied for their reimbursement, he would receive a 
check for reimbursement for his payroll taxes, took the check for the 
reimbursement for the payroll taxes, cashed the money and didn't pay 
the taxes on the payroll taxes.
  There isn't any deniable argument that can be made--you had to be 
thoroughly aware of that--and yet he got a pass from the IRS; and my 
recollection on the years is, that audit was for 2003 and 2004. The 
statute of limitations didn't go back to 2001 and 2002, but the vetting 
process did go back to 2001 and 2002, and even only then did he go back 
to pay those taxes and interest, not penalty.
  And we have the situation now where we have a Secretary of the 
Treasury who has been--what's the nicest word--``resistant'' towards 
paying taxes that he has actually been paid in advance to pay. And we 
have a chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that has a whole stream 
of tax situations that are unanswered, unaddressed; and we are going to 
ask the American people to pay more taxes and off the floor of this 
House today, $1.1 trillion and maybe the largest, the most colossal, 
mistake made by the United States Congress.
  We have got to go back, I have got to ask my constituents, you have 
to write a check to pay your income taxes, but that isn't something 
that the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee feels the obligation 
to do, or the Secretary of the Treasury who runs the IRS feels the 
obligation to do; and neither is there anybody there to grant a pardon 
to the folks from my district who are locked up in Federal 
penitentiaries today for failure to do similar things and not complying 
to the letter of the IRS law.
  So I have a significant amount of frustration that builds, and I 
appreciate the judge's approach to this in that we are all equal under 
the law, and if we don't have a law that addresses each of us equally 
with a reasonable prospect of that enforcement on any one of us, that 
any American has the same excuse. That's why the Rangel rule is a good 
proposal that treats us all the same.
  Mr. CARTER. I would like now to hear from my friend from Georgia (Mr. 
Westmoreland) who has been patiently here waiting to speak. I yield 
such time as you might consume.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank my good friends from Texas and from Iowa. I 
could listen to you all night because you bring a lot of common sense 
to this floor. I think the American people were looking for a change in 
Washington and thought maybe they had gotten one. I don't know.
  To go back, Judge, to what you were talking about, the most open, 
honest, ethical Congress is what Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic-
then-to-be, soon-to-be majority in the 2006 election cycle promised the 
American people.
  But, you know, I watch Scooby-Doo sometimes with my grandchildren, 
and when Scooby-Doo runs into some type of expected challenge or 
something, he goes ``ruh roh.'' Well, there have been some ``ruh rohs'' 
lately at what's been going on here, because this most open, honest, 
ethical Congress has hit several ``ruh rohs.''
  This is just one of them, because I think you were being kind of 
candid, the gentleman from Texas was being kind of candid when he said 
this certain gentleman has some influence over the IRS. He is actually 
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee who writes all the tax laws 
for this House. So that's a little bit of a significant position.
  I, like the Judge and the gentleman from Iowa have known cases where, 
or at least every case I have ever heard is when you get a bill for 
your back taxes, it includes not only the taxes that you owe, but the 
penalty that they are charging or assessing you and the interest.
  Now, I am not to say that that's not negotiable at some point in 
time, that you can't work something out, but I have never just seen, 
after forgetting that you own something for 10 years, and not realizing 
that you need to pay tax on it, and not understanding the tax laws that 
you are responsible for writing, that they just go, Oh, well, don't 
worry about it. Just pay the back taxes.
  But I wanted to speak, if I could, Judge. There have been a couple 
more ``ruh rohs'' that we have run into.
  President Obama, in 2007, in November, was campaigning in Orangeburg, 
South Carolina. He made a statement, ``I have done more to take on 
lobbyists than any other candidate in this race. I don't take a dime of 
their money, and when I am President, they won't find a job in my White 
House.''

                              {time}  2100

  ``Ruh roh.'' Because we have got to look at Mr. Geithner because he 
had a little tax problem too. But this tax problem that he had, the new 
Secretary of the Treasury, was actually a self-employment tax trust.
  But he also hit a little ``ruh roh'' with his nominee for Deputy 
Secretary of Defense, the gentleman that was a lobbyist for Raytheon. 
Raytheon does about $18 billion worth of business a year with the 
Pentagon. This gentleman owns about anywhere from $500,000 to $1 
million in stock. He has unvested restricted stock of about $250,000 to 
$500,000. But he was given a waiver for this rule about lobbyists not 
working in the White House. President Obama gave him a waiver.
  So you can think well, you know, maybe once you need a waiver. But 
then we come up on Mr. Geithner's Chief of Staff, Mr. Patterson. ``Ruh 
roh.'' A registered lobbyist. Is he going to get a waiver? His company, 
Goldman Sachs, is a firm that has gotten a bunch of money in the 
bailout. He has

[[Page H773]]

reportedly made quite a large sum of money. He has lobbied Congress on 
legislation including energy tax credits, Indian gaming. Wasn't that 
the same thing that Jack Abramoff--Indian gaming. That was a big 
problem. And those were according to his own financial reports.
  And I will yield back to the gentleman from Texas, but there are many 
more of these ``ruh rohs'' that we have hit already, and I think that 
we are going to continue to hit them the more that we find out because 
it seems to be that some of the cover is coming off of some of this 
stuff and some of the hope and change is getting to be more like 
business as usual.
  The most ethical Congress is turning into something totally 
different. Hope and change is turning into something different than 
what the American people thought that they were promised.
  So I will yield back to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank you for your comments. Your ``ruh rohs,'' this 
was very interesting. One of the things I was thinking about too, we 
had a very unusual procedure take place. When the gentleman I was 
describing was speaking on the floor, he announced that he was going to 
turn himself in to the Ethics Committee.
  Well, so that we understand exactly what the Ethics Committee is, 
they are very noble people who serve a very tough job in this House 
because they have to look into issues concerning their colleagues. I 
have a high respect for people who are willing to serve on the Ethics 
Committee.
  But the reality of the Ethics Committee in this House is that it has 
an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on that committee. So if 
everybody just sticks with their party, then things seem to have a 
deadlock time quite often in the ethics committee. In fact, for most of 
the time since I have been in Congress, the Ethics Committee has been 
deadlocked. I am going into my fourth term in Congress.
  So I would say that turning yourself in to the Ethics Committee would 
be sort of like someone turning themselves in to the grand jury when 
the grand jury is not going to function. And so that shouldn't be a 
defense. We shouldn't have that kind of defense for actions that take 
place in this House, that, Oh, I will step up in front of everybody and 
say this is what happened. I am turning I myself in to the Ethics 
Committee. And then it's going to be business as usual for their act.
  The American people don't have that kind of dark hole to dump things 
in. That shouldn't be an issue. This should be an issue of ethics and 
morals that touch the hearts of these people who serve in this 
Congress.
  The judiciary in Texas has a rule that not even the appearance of 
impropriety against the person who serves on the bench. It's very 
tough, strict, because you have to think, What does this look like when 
I do this? And if you think somebody thinks that there's something 
improprietous about what you just did or said, you better not do it, 
because you can be severely sanctioned by those who police up our 
judiciary in Texas for giving the appearance of impropriety.
  That is not the standard of this House. I would argue it maybe should 
be because it makes you police your conscience, to some extent. But 
it's not. So I do not want anybody to get the misconception that I'm 
saying that is the standard that we meet here. But we certainly should 
realize and be humbled by issues that go before the Ethics Committee. I 
am not saying that the Ethics Committee is the ``do-all, see-all,'' or 
that they do anything wrong. I think they actually are courageous 
people who have a tough job.
  We need a functioning Ethics Committee, and I think we will get one 
because Nancy Pelosi has told us we will get one. And so I take my 
Speaker at her word that we will get one. And I'm hoping that we can do 
that.
  I would ask Mr. King if he would like to make a comment.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas. I just thought I 
would call up that specific quote from Speaker Pelosi and make sure 
that we had this down in the Record precisely the way it was delivered. 
This is a quote that was from her own press release dated November 16, 
2006, Speaker Pelosi, and I quote, ``This leadership team will create 
the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.''
  I don't think there's been a delivery on that promise. In fact, I 
will look back at the circumstances of the Ethics Committee that we 
have and, Mr. Speaker, I point out that the former chairman of the 
Ethics Committee has stepped down, and stepped down under a cloud of an 
FBI investigation, and was subsequently appointed by the Speaker to 
become the chairman of Justice Appropriations, where he today holds the 
gavel and the purse strings to control the agency that is reportedly in 
the news, and not denied by him, to be investigating him.
  Now if that isn't something that is an ethical challenge. We talk 
about conflicts of interest, talk about appearance of impropriety. 
Isn't there an appearance of impropriety if you happen to be the 
chairman of the committee that appropriates the funds to the agency 
that is investigating you?
  To point out something that is beyond hypothetical, thoroughly 
reported in the news and reported as the reason for the step-down from 
the Ethics Committee and a sideways promotion to take over the people 
investigating. That is not the most open, most ethical Congress, Mr. 
Speaker. That is a sign of the exact opposite.
  I expect that we are going to see more and more of this balled up in 
the Ethics Committee, that will not move because of a number of 
reasons, one of them being it's a committee that is balanced with an 
equal number of Democrats and Republicans. But to throw yourselves on 
the mercy of the Ethics Committee is a shield, it's not a solution.
  The scrutiny that needs to come from the media and from the public--
the American people need to understand what is going on here. We have 
got to eliminate the appearance of impropriety, eliminate the 
impropriety, and the people who find themselves crossways with the law, 
it isn't enough to say, I'm sorry. It isn't good enough to say, I will 
pay the tax liability, maybe even some interest on that.
  In the case of Tim Geithner, the numbers that I saw were $34,000 
versus $43,000. I took that to mean that his tax liability was $34,000 
and the interest was an additional $9,000 dollars. That came to 
$43,000.
  Now, wouldn't you notice if they wrote you a check for $34,000, 
admittedly over a period of roughly 4 years, and you cash that check. 
Wouldn't you wonder where it came from? Any time I get that money, I'm 
certainly going to know where it came from, especially if I'm signing 
documents that I will pay my taxes and especially if I wanted to be the 
head of the IRS and especially if I was presented as a financial guru, 
especially at a time when we need stability in the Secretary of the 
Treasury's Office, when the previous Secretary of the Treasury has 
demonstrated--I will say there has been an erosion in confidence in his 
judgment, as the previous Secretary came to this Capitol September 19, 
and it wasn't chicken little, but he did say the sky is falling. Since 
that time, the sky has begun to fall. The economic sky has begun to 
fall.
  I'd also point out that on September 19, Mr. Speaker, one who maybe 
will accept that coincidences can happen from time to time, there was 
another issue that arose that changed the result of the elections in 
2006 that arose here on September 19, 2006. I'm very curious as to what 
might come to visit us on September 19, 2010, Mr. Speaker.
  But this needs to be cleaned up. The American people must demand it. 
There's got to be open sunlight on all that we do. We have got to 
provide the most open, ethical, and honest Congress in history.
  I'd yield back.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. My friend from 
Georgia had some comments, I think.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. To my friend from Texas, I just wanted to talk 
about a few more things that may be happening in the administration 
because the hope and the change that was promised to the American 
people and I think a lot of people were looking forward to and I think 
the change that they were wanting to see was some honesty and some 
transparency in somebody that really meant business of coming up here 
and trying to take this country in a new direction.

[[Page H774]]

  I will read, again, President Obama's November, 2007, speech, 
campaign trail speech, in Orangeburg, South Carolina. ``I've done more 
to take on lobbyists than any other candidate in this race. I don't 
take a dime of their money, and when I'm President, they won't find a 
job in my White House.''
  I want to bring up one other--a couple of other people. My friend 
from Texas has talked about what has been going on in this House and 
it's time to look at what may be becoming a pattern of maybe saying one 
thing and doing something else.
  Bill Corr, President Obama's nominee for Deputy Secretary of Health 
and Human Services, has been a registered lobbyist working on health-
related issues since 2000. President Obama has given Bill Corr a waiver 
to his ethics rule, just as he did Mr. Lynn.
  Cecilia Munoz, President Obama's new Director of Intergovernmental 
Affairs, has been issued a waiver to the President's ethics rules 
because she was a registered lobbyist with the National Council of La 
Raza, a Hispanic advocacy organization, much like ACORN, too. So she 
has been issued.
  Now I don't know if Ron Kirk, President Obama's nominee for U.S. 
Trade Representative, has been given a waiver or not, but he was a 
registered lobbyist that took in more than $1 million in lobbying 
revenue for financial and energy firms in the last 2 years.
  Of course, we know Tom Daschle, former Senator that has been, I 
guess, nominated or may be sworn in as new Secretary of Health and 
Human Services. Of course, he was an individual or advisor to the 
lobbying firm of Austin Byrd.
  So this seems to be a pattern. Patrick Gaspard, President Obama's new 
White House Political Director, was a registered lobbyist with the 
Service Employees International Union to work on health care issues, 
including expansion of funding for children's health care, which you 
know we just passed the SCHIP bill out of this House.
  There's some other things that are starting to unfold that will 
become more and more to light as far as the digital transition for 
digital TV. There has been some rumor that some of the people in the 
administration may be connected with that.
  Of course, these are things that are just starting to come out in the 
news, but these things are starting to surface to the top. So I think 
the American people are disappointed. I think they are disappointed in 
the fact that the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in this 
House seems to have gotten some preferential treatment.
  And to my friends from Texas and Iowa, I would dare to recommend that 
our citizens go ahead and try to apply the Rangel rule to any tax 
problems they have. But it may be a start. If you are negotiating with 
the IRS now, see if you can't get the same deal that somebody in 
Congress may have gotten, that you want that same kind of deal that 
they have got, and we will see if it works.
  If you're in trouble right now with the Internal Revenue Service 
about not sending in the withholding tax for your employees, or maybe 
some self-employment tax, you might want to try to go the Geithner way 
and say, Look, just tell me what I owe and I'll pay you. Don't really 
see that I need to give you any penalty or interest.

                              {time}  2115

  So I am not a lawyer and I am not giving legal advice, but that might 
be something that you might want to try.
  But, anyway, it does seem funny and I do think the American people 
are going to get tired of this, of being told one thing and then 
something else happening, and then seeing special treatment coming out 
of this body. And that is not what they expect; they want people to be 
honest, open, transparent, forthcoming with them. And I think that is 
what they want. I think that is the real change that they want, the 
hope that they had, because politicians have very little credibility.
  In fact, I was a real estate agent when I was involved in politics, 
and I had somebody tell me one time that the two worst professions were 
real estate agents and politicians. And he didn't know I was a 
politician at the time, but he kind of hit me right in the head with 
both of them.
  So we don't get a lot of credibility already, and the things that we 
just seem to keep piling on ourselves give us less and less and less. 
And we wonder why people don't go out to vote. We wonder why the voting 
percentage is down so low. Because, I think, most Americans have just 
thrown up their hands and said it is going to be the same old, same 
old.
  This election was a little different. We had a lot of people who 
voted that had never voted before, who had not voted in a long time, 
thinking they were voting for a difference, a change. But I think now 
they are beginning to see that it is just the same old Washington 
attitude, and it is going to continue to be the same old Washington 
attitude, and their hopes have been dashed.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank you for your comments, and I think it is very 
important that we talk about these things.
  I think it is important that we do what--I want to praise my 
colleagues for doing this. We do this, we make these critical 
statements and we talk about these issues, and we are not being 
venomous and we are not trying to be mean. We are trying to lay out the 
facts and the issues that concern ethical conduct that we are concerned 
about. We are concerned about it because, quite frankly, we all get 
painted with the same brush, and we should think about that.
  We work daily with our colleagues that are on the floor of this 
House. We should, and do, respect each one of our colleagues for their 
service to the United States; and by our ethical behavior, we can paint 
our colleagues with a brush that shouldn't be there. And so we raise 
these issues in the good spirit of saying these are issues this body 
needs to address so that we don't taint others.
  In the past, there have been people who have created slogans that 
taint the whole body. That is not our purpose here today. Our purpose 
here today is to point out fairness and equality in our system, so that 
Members of Congress are not treated any differently than any other 
taxpaying American citizens. And that is what this legislation that I 
have introduced is all about. I have written a letter to the chairman 
of the Ways and Means Committee asking him to support it, and I did it 
in good spirit.
  So I am anxious to go forward with this concept. And I like what you 
say about people that are facing this issue. They ought to at least 
talk to somebody about being treated at least as well as a Congressman 
gets treated in Washington, D.C.
  Mr. King, I will yield you some more time if you need some.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I agree with 
the presentation here, of course; and as a cosponsor of the bill, I 
agree with the policy.
  It occurs to me to expand this discussion just a little bit, and that 
is that as the public sits out there and watches what goes on here, Mr. 
Speaker, on the floor of Congress. They are frustrated. They are 
rightfully frustrated. Some of them are angry. More will need to get 
angry before anything is going to change, because as George Will 
probably more than once said, democracy functions under the lash of 
necessity. Many Members of Congress understand that necessity to be 
what it takes for them to maintain their seat in this Congress.
  I believe this: that we should be the most honest, the most open, the 
most ethical Congress in history, as Nancy Pelosi said. And we should 
follow through on that by allowing full access to our finances, for 
example.
  We have a situation today where we file our financial disclosure 
forms under the guise of giving the public access so they can see if 
there is any conflict of interest, any ethical violation, any one of us 
that is taking advantage of our position and rolling in some equity out 
of any other sources that might come. But it is a flawed process, and 
one of the reasons that it is flawed is because it allows Members to 
put down their assets within a range of dollars in a category.
  Now, for me, I am in the narrower category. Say, for example, I might 
have some assets there, real estate, between, let's say, a quarter of a 
million and a half million dollars or less, or other categories between 
$100,000 and $250,000. But when you get into the

[[Page H775]]

larger amounts of the assets, you can have assets there listed between, 
you just say, it fits my townhouse investment across the river in 
Virginia--not mine, but a hypothetical Member's--is valued between $5 
million and $25 million, and you put that down.
  And then this other real estate that might be an island in North 
Carolina is valued at between $5 million and $25 million. And I have 
some liabilities against them that could be between $5 million and $25 
million. Pretty soon, you add this all up, and the only way you can 
figure out what is going on here, you say, well, the assets will be the 
aggregate total at a minimum of, and you add the small amount. Or, they 
could be in the aggregate total of the maximum amount. You add the 
large amount.
  And the same with the liabilities. And when you are done and look at 
this, there is no way in the world to determine what has happened with 
the net worth of a Member, and they can game this system.
  And then we have a Member who has filed at least 261 false statements 
on his finances, and after it was brought to his attention, then he 
filed an amendment to these statements, without any repercussions--a 
different set of laws for him, at least as far as I know.
  What I have is a bill that I introduced in the last Congress, and I 
don't believe I have actually dropped it in this one. I don't expect it 
is going to get past this gatekeeper of the most honest, open, ethical 
Congress in history. But this bill is this: The Sunlight Act, and it 
just puts sunlight on all things that we do. On our finances, it 
requires us to file the exact dollar amount of our assets and our 
liabilities in every category, and to file them in a searchable, 
sortable, down-loadable database and make them available online so that 
anybody that can go to the public library and access a computer can go 
in and take a look.
  Now, if we are going to be honest and open and ethical, let's give 
300 million Americans the opportunity to examine our finances, examine 
our transactions; and they can be out there and they can raise the 
issue. And I think that, in itself, will keep us a little more honest 
because the restraint will be there. Kind of like random drug testing: 
There is somebody out there watching you, so don't take the risk.
  That is one piece that we could take, and those with a lot of assets 
and a lot of liabilities are in a position to not necessarily provide 
the most full information. The lower your assets are and the lower your 
liabilities, the more specific they will be.
  That is something we can do. And I think all of our records that we 
have here, when an amendment is filed, it should be available on the 
Internet. You post that thing immediately, stick it up there, and let 
the public follow it.
  It is a shame that the public can come into the Gallery here and not 
know what is being debated on the floor of the House of Representatives 
and not be able to find out or figure it out. A Member can have that 
happen, walk across, and in 2 minutes in the tunnel have the subject 
change, come out on the floor. And there is no light up on the ends 
that says, we are debating bill X and amendment Y. It is simply 
something you have to pick up by knowing whom to ask here on the floor.
  We haven't moved into the modern world is my point. And I think all 
that should be electronically posted on the wall, the subject matter of 
the debate and the amendment, if we have one, so that the people in the 
Gallery and those folks, Mr. Speaker, that are watching on C-SPAN can 
look and instantly know the discussion here on the floor.
  I think when an amendment is filed, if it is in an open rule down 
here, it should be scanned and immediately posted on the Internet. And 
when amendments are filed before the Rules Committee, they should be 
available for everybody in America to see, so they can understand how 
this is not an open process, how many of those amendments never see the 
light of day because they are balled up in the Rules Committee, and 
when we are looking for those recorded votes, so we can find out why 
was an amendment denied.
  Or a bill like SCHIP that can come to the floor; and I believe the 
number is bigger, but at least a $40 billion bill on SCHIP came to 
floor in the 111th Congress without a single hearing in this Congress, 
without a subcommittee markup, without a full committee markup, without 
any amendments being allowed all along the way, and without any 
amendments being allowed on the floor--not an open, honest, ethical 
approach, but a Draconian, top-down, cram-down approach to legislation.
  The public, if they had sunlight on all of our operations, then they 
can understand that there really is a high degree of ethics on the part 
of almost everybody in this Congress. And, on both sides of the aisle 
there are dedicated public servants that watch their finances and would 
not trade a vote for anything, that follow their convictions and listen 
to their constituents and follow the rules. That goes on in most cases. 
But we only see the egregious ones when they come up after they have 
gotten to the point where something has to be done.
  We have talked about some of those tonight, Mr. Speaker, and I would 
like to see the sunlight every day so that as soon as somebody bounces 
off of a guard rail, they can be reminded: Get back on track here. 
Because we do need to create the most open, honest, and ethical 
Congress in history.
  I yield back.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding back.
  I think those are some very interesting ideas that you have put 
forward. I have always wondered how some poor person sitting in the 
Gallery can figure out what in the heck is going on without sitting 
here for a couple of hours until finally it kind of soaks in that maybe 
they are talking about taxes or maybe they are talking about soldiers. 
But it can take a while to figure that out. Those are some interesting 
concepts.

  I very quickly yield to my friend from Georgia for some additional 
comments.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I just wanted to comment on something my friend 
from Iowa said about confusion in the process.
  You know, Leader Boehner brought a privileged resolution about asking 
the chairman to step aside until there could be some resolve in the 
questions in front of the Ethics Committee. And, of course, the first 
thing the majority party did was move that that motion or that 
resolution be tabled. So what it does, it keeps people from having to 
vote on whether to go through with the resolution or not. And so you 
are right when you talk about open.
  And I was real excited--well, I have got to be honest. I wasn't 
excited that we had got a new majority, but I was excited to hear that 
it was going to be an open Congress; and I thought that meant that we 
were going to have more open rules, and we would be able to offer more 
amendments, and let all 435 members, if they wanted to, offer 
amendments that would be important to their district or to their 
constituents.
  It has been just the opposite. We have had more closed rules than 
ever.
  We just passed a new rule at the start of the 111th Congress that 
changed the rules from the 110th about motions to recommit. And I am 
not going to go into all that tonight because we understand it, but it 
is so complicated to go in. But, basically, the rules were changed to 
prevent the majority, some of their vulnerable Members, from having to 
take very tough votes on specific language that we would put in the 
motions to recommit or our alternatives that we wanted to see put in 
this bill. And it's really a shame that we had to do it in that 
procedural way because we couldn't offer the amendments.
  And so when people do hear that word ``open,'' I think they think 
about something different than what is really going on here.
  This is not an open process. The People's House is the body where I 
think most of the deliberations should go on. This is the government 
that is closest to the people here in Washington, this body. We are all 
elected by roughly 700,000 people, some a little more, some a little 
less. But it is not a statewide election; we are from specific 
districts as a republic.
  It is a representative form of government, yet, probably at any time 
three-fourths of us are denied the opportunity to be part of that 
process. And I think that goes along with getting special treatment up 
here on the one hand

[[Page H776]]

depending on who you are and what chairman you are the committee of, 
and then, too, what party you belong to or where you are at in the 
pecking order in the majority party as to what kind of opportunity you 
will have to put your opinion or your constituent's thoughts into a 
bill.
  We need to do better with that. We need a transparency. You know, 
sunshine is the best disinfectant in the world, and we need to let 
light into this body. We need to let sunshine shine in here.
  And what is so bad about making somebody vote on something? That is 
the question I always have is, well, we are sent up here to vote. That 
is our job. Why don't we vote on the tough issues? Nobody wants to vote 
on the tough questions because they are afraid they will not get 
reelected if they have to make those decisions in the light that shines 
on what they do up here versus what they say at home.

                              {time}  2130

  That is the reason our constituents are so disgusted with this 
system. They are tired of hearing people say one thing and do something 
else.
  I appreciate the opportunity the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) 
has given me tonight. I know that I have gotten off the subject a 
little bit on some of these things, but I do think that people want to 
hear that some of us are aware of the frustrations and the 
disappointments that they have had with their government. And I wanted 
to make sure that they understand that there is a group of us who want 
to flush some of these things out and bring it into the light and try 
to put some sunshine on it so people can tell what is really going on 
up here.
  My good friend from Iowa who is in the construction business has 
suffered many of the things that I have suffered through in business, 
and I thank him for his dedication and service.
  Mr. CARTER. It is true we got off the subject matter, and the subject 
matter here is equal treatment under the law. But, quite frankly, I 
think a good title, we may have just created a good title for people 
who want to lay things out in the sunshine for the American people to 
look at, without calling names, which is not what we have experienced 
in this body in previous Congresses, but just lay it out there. We are 
not going to say culture of anything. We are just going to say let's 
let some sunshine on the process, and let's let the common sense of the 
American people make that decision.
  I trust the common sense of the American people. I think that there 
is no better common sense than the folks back home. I did a telephone 
town hall last night and I heard the best assessment of the bill we 
passed today, spending $825 billion from the folks back home, because 
they looked at it with common sense and said this is ridiculous.
  I am proud of those people back home that take the commonsense view. 
We are going to be, and I'm not going to say sunshine boys because we 
have some ladies that are going to join us, too, but maybe the sunshine 
group. We will shine light on what is going on in the Congress, and I 
think that is a good thing to do. I think we ought to expose warts and 
all.
  But having served 20 years in the judiciary and in the law for almost 
40 years, I think the oath, the original oath I took when I became a 
lawyer and then the oath that I continually took for five terms as a 
judge and the oath I take in this Congress requires me to stand up for 
equal protection under the law as part of our Constitution of the 
United States. I think we are all required to seek for every American 
equal protection under the law.
  And that is why we have raised this issue. It may be a small issue to 
some people. It may be something that they say I don't care anything 
about that. They will care when the IRS sends them their penalties and 
interest. I can guarantee you they will care because they will look at 
that check and say holy cow, where did that come from. When you are 
talking about 10 years of failure to pay taxes, you are talking about 
what could potentially be a large number of especially penalties.
  So, you know, all we are asking is let everybody take a look at it 
and see if we can't all agree to give equal protection under the law; 
and, therefore, step up and tell the IRS if they are wanting penalties 
and interest that you are going to claim the Rangel rule and you 
hopefully will get the same equal treatment that is available in 
Washington, D.C.
  I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding, and 
the phrase that I hear ring true from you is that everyone deserves 
equal protection under the law.
  As reflecting upon a State of the Union Address that was delivered to 
this Congress by Thomas Jefferson in his early years as President, he 
said, ``The minority possesses their equal rights which equal law must 
protect and to violate would be oppression.'' That is Thomas Jefferson 
in his first inaugural March 4, 1801. I happened to have run across it 
because it was included in Speaker Pelosi's document titled ``A New 
Direction for America.''
  I think that is quite instructive for tonight's discussion. The most 
open, honest, ethical Congress in history, quoting Thomas Jefferson's 
inaugural address in the case of requiring equal protection under the 
law and the rights of the minority, feeling a little trampled here in 
the 111th Congress.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, we operate under a variation of 
Jefferson's original manual for the operations of this House. So he is 
the one who wrote the original rules for the operation of this House. 
Although there are variations and amendments that have been done to it, 
they give you a copy of Jefferson's Manual because it is the Bible, if 
you will, of the United States House of Representatives.
  So that is a good quote and one we should repeat to ourselves both in 
the minority and ultimately when we get back into the majority. I think 
that is where we should be, and I think that is where all of the 
minority and majority should be.
  We are about to run out of time. I want to thank my colleagues for 
coming here. I hope you will join me as we put sunshine on other issues 
that need to have sunshine shining upon them.
  We would encourage the new media that is out there to start 
interacting and discussing this because I think this is something that 
the public needs to talk about. I am not sure whether it is going to be 
talked about with the big boys, but the bloggers can talk about this 
and other folks can get a common discussion about are we putting 
sunshine on issues that are important and is fairness under the law 
important to all Americans.

                          ____________________