[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 33 (Wednesday, February 25, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H2812-H2819]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1715
                   REASONS FOR THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, through the period of the last 6 years, one of 
the things we have heard pretty commonly in the media has been the 
tremendous cost of the war in Iraq, and that every day we hear there 
are more and more millions being squandered on the war in Iraq. So it 
is an interesting fact to add up all of the spending in the war in Iraq 
and all of the spending in the war in Afghanistan and add it together. 
What you find is that there is less spending there than there was in 
the first 5 weeks of this new year, particularly with the new stimulus 
bill.
  Well, how is was it that we got into such a fix, into such a problem, 
that our economy seemed to dictate these kinds of draconian solutions? 
That story actually starts back some number of years. It goes back to 
the Carter administration, the Community Reinvestment Act and the idea 
that there were some people that couldn't get a decent home loan. So we 
were going to tell banks that they had to make some loans to people 
that were riskier, and maybe even risky enough that some of them 
couldn't make their loan payments.
  That started under the Carter administration, but over a period of 
time we then developed a couple of organizations called typically 
Freddie and Fannie, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Those organizations are 
neither quite government, but really not quite private either. Their 
objective was to create a source of innovative financing so

[[Page H2813]]

that people could afford home loans and the average person could have a 
piece of the American Dream and own their own house.
  Well, over a period of time Freddie and Fannie were established and 
they took more and more different loans, underwrote various loans for 
people's homes. By the time we got well through the Clinton years as 
President, President Clinton demanded that the Freddie and Fannie 
corporations, if you would call them corporations, had to change their 
rules, that they had to release more and more loans to people who in 
effect couldn't pay. So the percentage of these loans that were more 
marginal were increased.
  In the meantime, you had some other things going on. You had the 
government policy under Greenspan. The Federal Reserve had reduced the 
interest rate down quite low to about 1 percent, so you had the money 
being flooded as we moved on with more and more very low priced capital 
at 1 percent, so people tended to think, hey, this is a pretty good 
idea. Let's put some of this money in the real estate market, because 
the real estate market started to boom. In fact, it was in a bubble.
  When I came to Congress in 2001, real estate was starting to go up, 
and by the time 2004 or 2005 came, most of us around here that thought 
we knew a little bit about economics were kicking ourselves, how come 
we didn't buy the very biggest house we could possibly find and let the 
thing double and then quickly sell it.
  Of course, there were a lot of people that were doing that. There was 
a lot of speculation going on. Speculators took advantage of the 
situation and real estate continued to expand and to expand. In the 
meantime, what was going on on Wall Street was the fact that because 
there really weren't any rules, Freddie and Fannie were quasi-
governmental, it was assumed that they were going to back people up and 
back up these loans, and so it became kind of a free ride.
  You had all kinds of mortgage brokers traveling around the country 
saying to people, hey, you want to get a loan? Well, how much do you 
need? Half a million dollars? Fine. I don't really care whether you 
have got a job or whether you can pay it back, because I am going to 
turn the loan right on over. It is going to go over to Freddie or 
Fannie or to the Wall Street market. They are going to chop it up in 
pieces, repackage it and sell it all over the world.
  So it was one of those situations where we made a very big mistake in 
terms of government regulation. And we allowed this process to continue 
to run for some number of years without the proper regulations and 
control on Freddie and Fannie. So most people have read and understand 
that what got us into this recession was the fact that we allowed a 
whole lot of mortgages being made by people who could not pay those 
mortgages back. So that is how things got started.
  Now, you say, well, didn't somebody figure this out? Didn't somebody 
ring a warning bell or let us know that things weren't going the right 
way?
  Well, in fact they did. What you have here, and this is an 
interesting day to remember, in The New York Times, not exactly a 
right-wing oracle, The New York Times, September 11th, 2003, you have 
reported there that the President, at the time President Bush, was 
asking for greater authority to regulate Freddie and Fannie because he 
believed that what was going on was going to cause a whole lot of 
trouble. There were all kinds of mortgages and loans being made where 
it was not at all clear that people would pay them back.
  Of course, in the past years, many years before when somebody was 
going to get a home loan, you would go to your local bank and the 
banker would take a look and say, ``I am not going to loan him money if 
I don't think he can pay it back.'' But what we did was we separated 
the person that was taking that loan, we separated him from the person 
that was getting the money, and the end result was there wasn't any 
accountability anymore. So the President said, hey, this is a big 
problem.
  So you have September 11th, 2003, The New York Times. The President 
is saying in there, hey, we need to get some controls on these crazy 
mortgages that are going on, and he asked Congress to take action to 
regulate Freddie and Fannie.
  At that time, or a year or so later, Congress and the House passed a 
bill to do that. It went to the Senate and it was killed by the 
Democrats in the Senate. But in that same article, September 11th, 
2003, you have the words of the gentleman here in the House now who is 
in charge of rewriting the rules, and this is what he said about 
Freddie and Fannie. ``These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 
are not facing any kind of financial crisis, said Representative Barney 
Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services 
Committee.'' So the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services 
Committee is saying Freddie and Fannie are doing just fine, September 
11, 2003. The President is saying we need more regulation, there are 
going to be problems. Then Congressman Frank goes on, ``The more people 
exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these 
companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''
  Well, this doesn't look like very good prophesy here. Certainly this 
problem was caused by a lack of regulation. It was caused by the 
Democrat Party, as is reported in this article in The New York Times.
  Now, there are people today who want to say that this is a failure of 
free enterprise. This has nothing to do with free enterprise. This has 
to do with socialistic government meddling in the real estate market 
and an unwillingness of the government to be responsible in what the 
government says it is going to back.
  What has happened here is you have got Freddie and Fannie that could 
do anything they wanted, and we are supposed to, the taxpayer, you and 
I, are supposed to back up Freddie and Fannie when people make all of 
these lousy loans. So that is the quick rundown on how we got to where 
we are with the recession.

  Now, when you have a recession, there are a couple different ways to 
handle a recession, a couple of theories. One of the theories is what 
FDR did back in the 1930s. Their idea was that if the government spends 
enough money it stimulates demand. Of course, everybody has been taught 
this for years in college economic classes, that if the government 
stimulates the economy by spending enough money, why, then it will just 
make the recession go away.
  That sounds like a pretty cool idea, doesn't it? The government just 
spends more and more and more money and the economy is going to get 
better. The only trouble with that is if that really worked, where we 
have the amount of debt that we have at this time, trillions of dollars 
of debt, don't you think we would have a great economy?
  So we have to ask, what is this theory? It was called Keynesianism. 
Little Lord Keynes was proposing this idea about the same time Henry 
Morgenthau, who was the Secretary of Treasury under FDR, was making 
this proposal. So we have had in the laboratory of history this idea of 
the government spending a whole lot of money to make the economy 
better. So we had a chance to do that for 8 years, and Henry Morgenthau 
tried this whole thing out.
  At the end of 8 years, he appears before the House Ways and Means 
Committee and in 1939, and this is his quotation before the House Ways 
and Means Committee. ``We have tried spending money. We are spending 
more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. I say after 
8 years, the administration, we have just as much unemployment as when 
we started, and an enormous debt to boot.''
  So this is the author, this is the first guy that tried this theory 
over in this country, just spend a whole lot of money to fix a 
recession, and he says it doesn't work. You take a look at the numbers 
and the tremendous amount of joblessness when they started, and when he 
got all done, they still had a whole lot of unemployment going on. And 
he said we have tried it and it doesn't work. Yet there are people who 
still want to hang onto this warmed-over Keynesian idea, and it doesn't 
work.
  So, what does work? It is important for us to not be negative and 
just say what doesn't work, but what does work. And what does work is 
more of a supply side kind of model, and we are going to be talking 
about that in just a minute.
  I am joined here on the floor by a very good friend and a gentleman 
who

[[Page H2814]]

has lived a number of careers in this world, one as a medical doctor, a 
guy with a very bright mind, but also a U.S. Congressman from the State 
of Georgia. I would yield to the gentleman from the State of Georgia, 
Congressman Broun.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate your 
yielding. I want to just make a couple of comments.
  One thing, we have a recent experiment in this kind of economic 
theory. I think if we look historically, not only did the idea of 
spending more and more money not work during the Great Depression, in 
fact the only thing that got us out of the Depression was cranking up 
the manufacturing sector, the private manufacturing sector, to supply 
the needs for World War II. That is the only thing that got us out of 
the Depression.
  But I just want to remind you, I know my dear friend from Missouri, 
Mr. Akin, remembers just recently the Japanese tried the same kind of 
philosophy. I don't think it worked there either, did it?
  Mr. AKIN. I appreciate the gentleman and the additional point that 
you are making. I think it is a very persuasive point, because Henry 
Morgenthau tried this idea for 8 years and it didn't work worth a hoot. 
In fact, those were his words, we have a lot of debt to boot.
  But in addition, we also had the Japanese. They tried it, and it 
basically was like taking an entire economic decade out of Japan. They 
had a whole lot of these tax-and-spend fellows over in Japan, and they 
just went at it hammer and tongs for 10 years. The Japanese economy 
bumped and bumped and bumped and it never could get off the ground. It 
is like the plane that didn't have enough propulsion to be able to pull 
it up in the air. And it was because of the fact that they were just 
sold on this idea that if they spent enough government money, something 
would be okay.
  It kind of reminds me, I am an engineer by training and they probably 
shouldn't let us into a political body like this, but it reminds me of 
somebody grabbing their shoelaces, lifting up and trying to fly around 
the room.
  This is just foolishness. I think most Americans, most of our 
constituents that are out there, I think they have to look at this idea 
and think what sort of funny stuff are those people smoking up in 
Washington, D.C. to think that when you get in hard times economically 
that what you are going to do is just spend money like mad. I don't 
think there is anybody in my district dumb enough that when they are in 
hard times economically they go and buy a brand new big car and spend 
money like mad thinking it is going to fix the problem. It is almost 
insanity to look at it that way.
  The thing is, as well as the bad examples that we have, you have 
mentioned one of those, Congressman Broun, we have good examples, good 
examples of the right way to solve the problem. It is not like we are 
just hopeless and we are in a graveyard spiral with an airplane and 
there is nothing you can do to fix it. The fact is, there are all kinds 
of examples of the right thing to do, and that is not the Keynesian 
model but it is more what people call today a supply side model.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, and I appreciate that. Absolutely. I 
frequently say at home, as I am going around the 10th Congressional 
District in Georgia, that socialism has never worked; it won't work 
today, it has never worked in the past, and that is exactly what we are 
doing.
  I described the stimulus bill that we passed here in this House a 
couple of weeks ago as a steamroller of socialism being shoved down the 
throats of the American public, and that will strangle our economy and 
kill the American people economically. I believe, likewise, that we are 
seeing bill after bill; in fact, just tomorrow we are going to have a 
housing bill here on the floor that is going to create bigger 
government and spend more money.

                              {time}  1730

  Certainly people need to be able to buy houses. People need to be 
able to buy cars. The Big Three auto makers are having problems. I have 
my own dealers at home that talk to me about the car sales. In fact, I 
visited one and talked to the service people, I talked to the used car 
people, I talked to the new car people, I talked to the folks across 
the board, and in a large dealership in the 10th Congressional District 
back during this last break, a week ago, and they're suffering. People 
are hurting around this country. And we need to do something. And there 
is absolutely something that can be done.
  Republicans have proposed things that go along with what you're 
talking about tonight, the supply side, which means that we need to get 
dollars back in people's hands. We need to have small business be able 
to have the capital, money, to be able to create a new job, to be able 
to go out and buy inventory, to be able to do the things that they need 
to be successful as a small business. And that's the economic engine of 
America.
  I was just watching ``Fox and Friends,'' I guess two mornings ago, 
and the people there were talking about that the banks are the economic 
engines of America. They are totally misled. Small business is the 
economic engine of America.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time for a minute. What I think I'm hearing 
you say was something that I just think it's so much common sense and 
so many Americans understand this. And it's about productivity, isn't 
it?
  If you really look at, just look at your own life, and if you really 
want to do better, you become more productive. You produce more 
product. You're more efficient, and you get more stuff done, and 
therefore, you can earn more money that way. And that's the same thing. 
It's not like this is really complicated. You know, there's economists 
who would like to make it seem complicated so they get to keep that 
Ph.D. and have a nice job. But it's not that complicated.
  When a business or an investor or an entrepreneur puts some money out 
and makes a good gamble or makes a good investment, it works well, or 
maybe it doesn't work quite right and then they adjust it a little bit, 
and then they come up with a better way of doing things, we call that 
productivity. And in order for that process to work, you have to have, 
just like oil inside a machine, you have to have a certain amount of 
liquidity and capital out there for these investors to be investing.
  And so the whole logic of what you're saying is, you've got to prime 
the pump a little bit and let people keep some money so that they can 
invest it. And of course the thing that kills it is if you start to 
suck all the money out of the economy, now you don't have anybody 
investing, and so you start to run into this condition of joblessness. 
And we understand what that's like. There's all kinds of people.
  I yield.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. You've got a great chart here. I know you're 
going to explain it to our viewers tonight and show pre-tax relief and 
post-tax relief. And the great thing--I'll stop here in a second, but 
the great thing about this chart that you're just fixing to explain is 
it shows that tax relief will stimulate the economy.
  By getting the regulatory burden and the tax burden off of small 
business, we'll create jobs. We'll have a strong economy. People will 
have good-paying jobs so that they can buy a car, can buy a house, can 
pay for their college education for their children or technical 
education, they can do the things that they need, buy clothes, and all 
the things that come together to create a strong economy.
  So if you would explain that chart for us, I'd appreciate it.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time. What you're saying is that somehow or 
other people have trouble making this connection. But if you've got a 
business that's doing well, they hire people, and that makes jobs. Now, 
if you're jealous of the guy that owns the business, say you're too 
rich and I'm going to take you down a peg, and you take all the money 
away from everybody who owns businesses, then don't be surprised when 
you don't have as many jobs.
  And so one of these things that people, you know, if they want to get 
real covetous and don't like their neighbor having a fancy-looking car 
in their driveway, think about it a little bit, because you're really a 
lot better off if you live in a neighborhood where there's a lot of 
businesses that are

[[Page H2815]]

doing well than if you're in a neighborhood where everybody is 
unemployed. And you can't let it get you upset that somebody else is 
doing well if you really want jobs, because if you want to have a job 
you've got to work for somebody.
  But anyway, let's take a look at this. The point of the matter is 
there's no reason for there to be doom and gloom in America. There's no 
reason for us to be really upset or kicking our lips around. There are 
ways to fix the problem we're in. We made some very, very foolish 
mistakes with poor government regulation and basically misguided 
socialism that put us into the recession. But it can be fixed. America 
has come through a lot of challenges, and this is another challenge, 
and we can do okay with this. But we can't do it by doing the wrong 
thing.
  So what are the examples of what do you do in this situation? Well, 
here's an example. Actually, when I was here in Congress in 2001, when 
we started--and we did a bunch of tax cuts, and people thought tax cuts 
help make the economy do better. Well, but that's not entirely true. 
It's certain kinds of tax cuts that make the difference.
  So here you have a picture of what's going on in 2001; this is the 
year that I came here, and you see we were in the recession. And before 
this tax relief, right here at this line in the second quarter of 2003, 
we did a particular kind of tax cut which had a very strong effect. But 
going before that, we did some tax cuts here, and we still had an 
average GDP of 1.1 percent. So it wasn't just any tax cut. You just 
want to send a $1,000 check to everybody in America, people like it, 
but it's not going to fix the situation that we are in. No, you have to 
use your tax money wisely.
  So what did we do? In the second quarter of 2003, we did a dividend 
capital gains tax cut, and we took it from--it had been quite a lot 
higher--we took it down to 15 percent. And when we did that, let's take 
a look at what happened. Now, the effect of that, of course, is 
dividends capital gains is not something that just helps everybody on 
the street. This is something that really affects people who own 
businesses, particularly, or people who own money, and you want them to 
get the money freed up so they will use it to invest and create this 
productivity.
  So here's what happens. We do the tax cuts second quarter 2003. Look 
at what happens to gross domestic product. We're chugging along at 1.1, 
it's kind of spotty, and all of a sudden it jumps to 3. And this is 
going all the way over to 2007. So the effect--now, you could say, 
well, is that what caused that? Well, if you take a look at this point 
in history, this is the main thing we did economically.
  So you say, well, does that show up anywhere else? In fact, it does 
show up in some very, very important places. Let's take a look at the 
second chart, which is what we're very concerned with today, and that 
is the problem of job creation. These are all--all the lines going down 
are jobs that are lost, and so we're losing jobs at an average of 
almost 100,000 jobs a month. That's what's happening, 100,000 jobs a 
month being lost.
  Now, these lines going up are where we actually had some job 
creation. But this is an average here. Now, we do this tax cut, and 
take a look at what happens on the right side in terms of the gain of 
jobs: 147,000 jobs a month being gained with this one particular cut.
  So this isn't rocket science. We did it before. JFK did it. Ronald 
Reagan did the same kind of thing. And here we go, right in our recent 
past we did the same thing, and look what's going on.
  Now, here's the last thing. Let's say that you really do, as my 
friend from Georgia was just saying, using the word ``socialism.'' 
Let's say you really are a happy little socialist and you really want 
the government to slot money around and redistribute wealth and 
everything. If you want to do that, one thing you want is a good 
economy because it gives you more money to play with.
  Look what happened here. This is Federal revenues. Federal revenues 
are going down, just as they've been going down this year because the 
economy's in bad shape. You turn the economy around with the right kind 
of tax cut, and take a look at revenues. They're jumping.

  So this says everybody wins when the economy is doing well, and this 
supply side kind of idea of letting money be invested by the productive 
private sector, just as my friend from Georgia was saying, this is what 
works.
  And there's no reason for Americans to be out of work if we just do 
the right thing. Instead, what we're doing is we're going to allow this 
tax cut to expire, and the math that drove these charts is going to go 
into reverse, and it's going to make the situation worse even than what 
it is right now.
  I yield to my good friend from Georgia.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, you're exactly right, Mr. Akin. And I 
think we're going to see a marked reversal in job creation as the 
capital gains tax goes higher. In fact, I'd like to remind my 
colleague, back when, in the last Congress, Republicans and Democrats 
alike had an alternative plan to the, what I call the Wall Street 
bailout bill, the TARP fund bill, the Troubled Assets Relief Program, 
where we were promoting not only not allowing the capital gains tax--
keeping it from expiring, but we were promoting lowering that, change 
the accounting principles that froze all the economic markets. And I 
fault Hank Paulson, Secretary Paulson, frankly, for not even letting 
our bill touch his lips or come across his throat. And nobody on the 
majority side would consider our bill.
  We had a plan that would not borrow from our grandchildren, like the 
TARP funds, Wall Street bailout bill did. Republicans have had a plan, 
actually, for a stimulus that would have actually stimulated the 
economy when we passed the stimulus bill a couple of weeks ago. And 
then now, just today, we voted on a bill that I think is going to 
exacerbate--that's a medical word that means ``make it worse.'' But 
it's going to make the problem worse for the American family.
  In fact, I hope that President Obama will fulfill his promise he made 
to the American people. He said that he did not want to--he would not 
sign a bill that had earmarks in it. This bill today had over 9,000 
earmarks in it. Last night he said that the stimulus bill didn't have 
any earmarks in it, and that's not factual either. That's totally 
false.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time. There is a little bit of a gap between 
the rhetoric and what's actually going on here, isn't there? And so 
what you've made reference to is--and this is easy for people to get it 
confused a little bit because this has been happening so rapidly.
  The end of last year, we had basically a Wall Street bailout bill at 
$700 billion. That is a lot of money. That puts us into uncharted 
territory. I know you voted against it. I voted against it. And the 
reason we voted against it was because it wasn't going to work. Quite 
simply, it was not going to work. We spent $350 billion of that, came 
back, and people said, where's the transparency? What happened? You 
know, this thing hasn't been working very well.
  And then, on top of $700 billion, just this last week, or week before 
last, we spent another 800-something billion dollars. At least in the 
House it was 840. They backed it off a small amount. Now, when you put 
$700 billion, $800 billion together, we're talking some change, aren't 
we?
  I notice we're joined by another doctor--this must be doctors night--
from Georgia over in the Chamber, my good friend, Dr. Gingrey, 
Congressman Gingrey. I just would yield some time to you.
  Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Missouri 
yielding. And I will say that every night is doctors night.
  It's always fun to be on the floor, of course, talking about issues 
like this. It's so important to the American people. And of course I 
know you've been talking about the economic ``spendulous'' bill that's 
already passed, already signed into law by President Obama.
  And now today, of course, we vote on this omnibus bill, I think nine 
categories of spending. They were sort of left over, wasn't it, from 
2008, from the last Congress, the last fiscal year. This should have 
been done and completed by October 1st. The end of the fiscal year was 
September 31, 2008. And here we have these nine spending bills that we 
throw into one big package, makes it extremely confusing.

[[Page H2816]]

  So it is important, I think, for Members to come to the floor, Mr. 
Speaker, to explain to both Republicans and Democrats, really what we 
did here today.
  And, of course, this bill passed. It certainly didn't pass with our 
vote and our support. And the thing that I want to point out--and maybe 
you've already said this, but if you have, it's okay, because we can't 
say it often enough. The fact that, without considering the economic 
stimulus package, the trillion dollars that's going to help the 
economic recovery bill, without considering that, we have increased 
discretionary spending over 2008 levels.
  And I have a chart to show it. We have increased discretionary 
spending by 7\1/2\ to 8 percent. And I'm pretty sure I'm right on this, 
Mr. Speaker. This was the largest increase in discretionary spending 
since the Carter administration. We have not had an overall 8 percent 
increase in discretionary spending in recent years, certainly not ever 
during the Bush administration, during his 8 years.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time for just a minute, I'd like to highlight 
what you just said.

                              {time}  1745

  Because a lot of times what we hear our opponents, the Democrats, 
saying is, ``Well, you don't have an idea. You don't have a plan. 
What's your idea? You're just always saying negative things about 
ours.'' Well, that's not true.
  I mean, just starting with what we did today, the number I saw was 
that there was an 8 percent increase in a whole series of categories, 
an 8 percent increase. Now, the average household in my district has 
not had an 8 percent increase this year in their paychecks, and yet the 
government is going to push this 8 percent. So let's be specific. I 
don't want to be negative here. I would like to say positive things.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. AKIN. I will yield.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, the story is much worse. We are 
at 8, 8-0. 8.0 percent is bad enough as I tried to point out, but let 
me actually show this chart that I will hold up to my colleagues. I 
thank my physician colleague for helping me with the poster.
  This in the blue shows the amount of spending for each one of these 
categories in this omnibus bill--Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, 
Energy, Water, Financial Services, Interior, Legislative branch, Labor-
HHS, State, Foreign Ops, and Transportation-HUD. This is in the blue--
what we had spent in billions in fiscal year 2008. This is already 
enacted. The red is what we did today. Let's just take these nine 
categories and look, Mr. Speaker, very closely. On Agriculture, we 
increased spending over '08 by 45 percent, Commerce and Justice by 41 
percent, Energy and Water by 151 percent, and on and on and on.
  You might say, ``Well, wait a minute now. You just said the overall 
increased spending was 8 percent.'' What we need to understand is, in 
this economic stimulus package, much of that money was in these 
categories that should have been enacted under regular order. When we 
do these appropriations bills and we go through subcommittee and 
committee in regular order, that money--much of that--was in these 
different categories that had nothing to do, really, with job creation 
or very little to do with job creation. When you add that money out of 
the economic stimulus package to these categories, it's not 8 percent. 
I say to the gentleman from Missouri it is 80 percent--8-0 point, 80 
percent.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, you make an excellent point. So what's 
really going on here is there are two bills that are influencing those 
categories that you show on your bar graphs.
  The first bill you call the ``spendulous.'' I'm maybe not quite so 
kind. I call it the ``porkulous.'' They've rather nothing to do with 
job creation at all. They had to do with a whole lot of expansion of 
government programs and government spending.
  So, first of all, we took this about $800 billion. Now let's just 
stop for a minute and put that into perspective. One of the things 
that's really big that we buy, if you want to think of big things, is 
aircraft carriers. We have eleven aircraft carriers in our Navy, and we 
protect them. We put ships around them. We don't want people to sink 
our aircraft carriers because they're expensive. Now, if you take the 
average cost of our eleven aircraft carriers and divide this into these 
porkulous or spendulous bills, you've got 250 aircraft carriers. I mean 
I don't know if that would go all the way across the State of Georgia 
or not, but those are a lot of aircraft carriers--250 of them--when we 
only have eleven in the Navy. Now, if you want to get you one of them 
Cadillac kind of aircraft carriers, the extra long version with the 
super electronics and better planes and all, well now, you'll only get 
100-and-some aircraft carriers.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. If the gentleman would yield, with that 
number, if you put them end to end, that could go from Pearl Harbor to 
Wake Island.
  Mr. AKIN. Yes. Reclaiming my time, you could also look at it from 
this point of view, which would be that the interest we pay on that 
amount of money in this porkulous bill would buy nine new aircraft 
carriers every year, just the interest on that money, or you could look 
at it another way. You could say all we've been hearing about is how 
expensive the war in Iraq is. Well, add up every day of the war in 
Iraq. Add it all together. We're talking way more money in the first 5 
weeks than what we spend in Iraq. In the House version, you've put Iraq 
and Afghanistan together, and it's still more money. So this is a 
pretty good chunk of change.
  What you're saying, gentlemen, is that a lot of that had nothing to 
do with jobs. It was just putting more money into government programs. 
So the chart that you show there didn't really show an 8 percent 
increase. What it really showed was way up there. What did you say? 
I'll yield. What was the actual number when you added it up?
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Well, reclaiming my time, of course the 
amount of money, I think, that we were spending in this bill, just in 
the omnibus, was $410 billion, but I think that it's something like 
$300 billion additional. Anyway, overall, it brings it up to 80 
percent.
  You know, you wonder. We heard from the President last night in his 
semi State of the Union Address, and he talked about, you know, fiscal 
responsibility in this budget that he's going to present to us on 
Thursday for 2010 and how it's going to be very fiscally responsible 
and belt-tightening. He has an opportunity, colleagues--doesn't he?--to 
veto this omnibus. This is his first opportunity. What can he say?
  I mean we were criticized by the Democratic--now majority--when they 
were in the minority. President Bush didn't veto one spending bill, and 
on many occasions what came out of the Congress was a plus-up from what 
former President Bush had asked for. So the argument was, if you 
Republicans are fiscally responsible, why wouldn't your President veto 
this spending bill? In the first place, why did you plus them up? Here 
the Democrats said, ``Well, you bring us in, and we're going to change 
all of that.'' Here is the very first opportunity. Well, I challenge 
President Obama:
  Veto this sucker. Send it back, and say, ``You know, we don't need an 
80 percent increase in discretionary spending.'' As you've pointed out, 
Mr. Akin, much of that spending will be there 10 years from now.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, what you're really saying is what we 
passed on this floor today, in and of itself, was an 8 percent 
increase, and that 8 percent increase is the biggest we've had in these 
categories since Carter was President, but that 8 percent is deceiving 
because you can add to it all of the stuff in the porkulous bill or a 
lot of what was in the porkulous bill, and that's going to run it up to 
an 80 percent increase. So what we're really talking about is a massive 
increase in government programs.
  I see my other doctor friend, Congressman Broun, from Georgia. I 
yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, thank you, Mr. Akin. I just want to point 
out something here, too.
  As Dr. Gingrey has come on the floor, he and I have the mutual 
thought that President Obama has promised the American people that he 
would veto any bill that had earmarks in it. I call upon the President 
to veto

[[Page H2817]]

this bill that we passed today. It has over 9,000 earmarks in it.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, gentlemen, I heard it was 7,500 
earmarks.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, whatever.
  Mr. AKIN. He said, if it has earmarks in it, he's going to veto it, 
but what do you think they'll say--that those really aren't earmarks? 
Those things that look like earmarks and that smell like earmarks 
aren't earmarks? Is that what we're going to hear?
  I yield.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. You don't know what he's going to say. We heard 
last night that that porkulous bill as you and I call it--I call it a 
steamroll of socialism being shoved down the throats of the American 
public. He said last night in his State of the Nation Address that 
there were no earmarks in that bill. The whole non-stimulus bill was 
earmarks. It was payback to all of the liberal folks who supported him 
and who supported our Democratic majority.
  But the point I wanted to make is that we hear from our friends on 
the left that Republicans don't have any ideas or that they're old 
ideas. The thing is that that's absolutely false in itself. Just on 
today's bill, I offered an amendment that the Democrats would not take 
that actually cut the discretionary spending out of this bill by 10 
percent. American families are cutting their budgets. They're hurting.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, you offered an amendment. It said we 
want to cut 10 percent out of this bill. When you made that amendment, 
did you bring that amendment to the floor, and did you have a chance to 
vote on it?
  I yield.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, no, they wouldn't let it. Now, the thing 
is we heard from the leadership on the Democratic side that we were 
going to have a new era of openness and fairness, but we weren't 
allowed any amendments. The Rules Committee ruled that this was going 
to be a closed rule, that they wouldn't accept my amendment or any 
others. The Republican party had another amendment to just freeze 
spending across the board, not increase it, just not bring this bill to 
the floor, just continue to have another continuing resolution to 
continue current spending for the rest of this budget year. That 
wouldn't be considered.
  We've brought plan after plan, project after project. We've brought 
forth to the Democratic majority many ideas that would stimulate the 
economy, that would create jobs, that would leave money in the hands of 
the people as well as small business, that wouldn't borrow from our 
grandchildren, but the Democratic majority won't even consider those 
things, and they've totally shut us out.

  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, gentlemen, I see my congressional 
friend from Georgia.
  Dr. Gingrey, I yield to you.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Akin, thank you. I just wanted to add to 
what Dr. Broun was saying as to that continuing resolution amendment.
  In other words, let's just stay at 2008 levels, the ones that we 
showed in the blue on this chart. Let's just stay right there. Dr. 
Broun was explaining that amendment. In that amendment, if we did 
that--and I'll ask Dr. Broun or I'll ask Representative Akin--how many 
earmarks would be in that?
  I'll go ahead and answer that before I yield back my time. The answer 
is it would be a big nada, zero, none. There would be no earmarks.
  Now, some Members don't ask for earmarks. I've probably got six or 
eight earmarks. I have, you know, transparent, light of day, good 
things for my district that have been vetted thoroughly, but that would 
wipe out all of my earmarks, and those other 7,500 or 9,000, whatever 
the number is, I'm fine with that, and I think my constituents, in the 
interest of fiscal responsibility, would be fine with it as well.
  So I think that's a point that we needed to make, and I yield back.
  Mr. AKIN. So, reclaiming my time, what we're saying is one simple 
solution would be to freeze the discretionary budget. That would 
probably be the first step of a supply side solution to get the economy 
going, wouldn't it, if we'd just simply freeze discretionary spending? 
Then if what we did was we allowed certain selective tax increases in a 
very short period of time, you'd see the stock market jump, and you'd 
see jobs being created, and the whole economy would start to move 
again.
  I mean this isn't something that's too complicated. It's just several 
of us talking this evening. There are a number of ways it could be 
done. It's not that complicated.
  One of the places that you might start would be with the fact that 
the corporate income tax in America is the second highest in the world. 
You could get rid of all of the little bells and whistles in that 
corporate tax and just knock it back a good number of percent, and that 
in and of itself could have a great influence in creating jobs. If you 
on top of that were to freeze the government spending and were also to 
maintain dividend and capital gains, I don't know how many months it 
would be, but you'd see a neck-snapping turnaround. There are solutions 
to these problems, and the fact of the matter is that the people who 
are in charge now are unwilling to look at those solutions.
  I yield back to Dr. Gingrey.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Well, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Again, I would just make the point that the President is a fantastic 
speaker, and he absolutely can talk the talk as good as anybody, 
certainly as any President whom I can remember going way back to JFK. 
Yet he has not had the opportunity to prove that he can walk the walk. 
I hope he can. I don't have any reason to think that he can't, but he 
does have an opportunity--doesn't he, my colleagues?--with this omnibus 
bill that was passed on the floor of this House today. President Obama 
has an opportunity to show that he can walk the walk.
  Now, if he's not willing to veto this, what possibly could be his 
excuse? Would he say, ``Well, you know, this was something that 
happened in 2008'' or ``this was a fiscal year 2009 budget, and it 
really is leftover business, and it's not my problem. It's somebody 
else's problem''? You know, that would be like an off-duty fireman 
walking in the streets of New York, coming upon a fire and having a 
hose there and a truck and saying, ``Look,'' you know, ``I'm not on 
duty. It's not my responsibility, and I'm not going to put the fire 
out.'' Hey, he's the fireman and chief. It's his responsibility to put 
the darned fire out, and he has got an opportunity to do it. He needs 
to walk the walk.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, reclaiming my time, I guess what can happen down 
here--and we should guard against this--is we can get a little cynical. 
I believe it was the week before last that this House unanimously 
passed a resolution that was saying that we were going to have 48 hours 
to take a look at this 1,000-page bill that was coming down the pike.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. On the Internet.
  Mr. AKIN. We were going to have 48 hours because there were 1,000 
pages, and there were all kinds of things in there. Doesn't it make 
sense to allow the staff and different people to read over it before 
they take the vote? Everybody said ``yes,'' so we voted unanimously for 
48 hours.
  The bill comes out. We get our first copy at 11:30 on Thursday night, 
and of course we have lots of staffers sitting around the office, 
waiting at 11:30 at night. The next day, we went straight to a vote on 
this.

                              {time}  1800

  And we're told that this is going to be transparency and openness, 
and it does tend to make you a little bit cynical when we say one thing 
and we do something else.
  Now, the promise has been made here, if there's an earmark, we're 
going to veto it. Now, do any of you want to make any bets as to what's 
going to happen to this little puppy?
  I don't mean to cause you trouble, Congressman Broun.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, in Georgia, in my part of the woods, we 
say, ``That's hogwash,'' the claims that we hear.
  We've heard rhetoric, both from the President as well as the 
leadership in this House, about fairness. Well, they're not being fair 
to Republicans with the closed rule so we can't present our ideas and 
all.
  But the thing is, it's not only not fair to Republicans, it's not 
fair to the men

[[Page H2818]]

and women of America. It's not fair to the working families of America. 
It's not fair to the small business of America. Because we're being 
overrun with this socialistic idea that's going to destroy jobs, it's 
going to create more economic problems, just as we saw during the Great 
Depression.
  All the great spending, all the big growth of Federal Government that 
we're seeing just markedly grow with these ``porkulous'' bills--the 
Wall Street bail-out bill, the non-stimulus stimulus bill we had 2 
weeks ago, the bill we have today, and we're going to get another one 
tomorrow, and we're going to see more and more and more. And the thing 
is, it's not fair to the American people because what we're doing is 
we're killing our economy.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time.
  The American people, in a way, have a way to vote. The people that 
have money vote on the stock market, and the stock market has been 
saying, ``We're not buying all of this stuff that's coming out of 
Congress. We're not convinced.'' And the stock market, every time we do 
another one of these massive spending bills, the stock market goes down 
even farther. So that's some kind of an indication that all is not 
well.
  I yield to my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, all is not well. And we're not 
talking about our physical health here, but we're talking about our 
economic health. And, indeed, it will lead to poor physical health 
because people will be so frustrated and anxious and depressed.
  One of our colleagues on our side of the aisle, a gentleman from 
Kansas, Todd Tiahrt, I spoke to Representative Tiahrt earlier today, 
Mr. Speaker, and he asked me if I would like to sign on to a bill that 
he is going to introduce in the next couple of days that said, look, 
we're not going to have any more stimulus, any more emergency bailout, 
rescue packages, whether we're talking about General Motors or Chrysler 
or AIG or Bear Stearns or Bank of America--you know, I could go on and 
on.
  Todd Tiahrt is a strong fiscal conservative, and I said, ``Man, I'm 
so glad you're doing that,'' because, as the gentleman from Missouri 
was just saying, the one thing the stock market hates is uncertainty. 
And we have had nothing but uncertainty since the beginning of this 
111th Congress, and they don't know what to expect. So people keep 
thinking, well, am I going to buy a Bank of America stock at $4 a share 
when, the next bit of bad news comes out of Washington, it will be $2 a 
share? And that's exactly what's happening.
  So I say ``hurrah'' to Todd Tiahrt, and I hope his bill will see the 
light of day
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time.
  One of the things that strikes me and is of great concern to me is 
something that I believe was in the dustbin of history in our thinking 
for many years now, and that was the old Soviet Socialist Republic, the 
USSR. If you think back before the Berlin Wall fell--some of us are old 
enough to remember--that was a formidable--and we were concerned about 
the USSR, but we didn't ever believe that its economics were any good 
because we knew they were a bunch of socialists over there. That's what 
the ``USSR'' part was all about. So, in a way, when we saw the Berlin 
Wall come down, we could kind of catch our breath, but we kind of 
laughed at them as saying, ``See, we knew that old socialism wasn't 
going to work.''
  And what was that country based on? The basic assumption was that the 
government is going to provide you what? Well, I guess one of the first 
things would be the government's going to provide you with education. 
And then another thing the government's going to provide is health 
care, which I know, as a couple of medical doctors, this is something 
that we know a little bit about when the government decides to get in 
the health care business. And then, of course, we're going to have the 
government provide you with food and housing, you see. And then the 
government's going to give you a job.
  And that was the heart--aside from being just sort of antireligious, 
the USSR, that was the heart of their program. The government is going 
to do all of this stuff.
  And now, just a few weeks ago, the cover of a major news magazine in 
America, it says, ``We're All Socialists Now.'' When I saw that, I felt 
a little frustrated, because I'm not a socialist. And the people I 
represent are not socialists. And they didn't like socialism, and they 
don't want the government running everything in their lives.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Joe the Plumber is not a socialist either. 
It's all about that income redistribution. You remember that phrase?
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time
  One of the things that's of concern is that if we follow in the path 
of the model that doesn't work, the Soviet Union, with the government 
trying to run all of these things, the government is terribly 
inefficient. People may think and complain to you doctors that medicine 
is awfully expensive today. Well, if they think medicine is expensive 
today, let them get a snout full of what it's like when the government 
runs it, with all of that efficiency. About half of the health care 
dollars in America are already going through the government, and that's 
part of what's made it less efficient and expensive.
  So if we move in the direction of what I'm reading, if you read 
between the lines of the speech last night, we're talking about a 
single-payer system like Canada. And the bill that we passed already 
has the language in it saying the government can ration your health 
care, and I don't think that makes for good quality health care.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. As a physician, let me tell you, it's not going 
to. Government regulation is what's driven up the cost of health care 
markedly.
  When I was practicing medicine down in rural south Georgia, as a good 
example, Congress passed CLIA, the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act. 
I had a lab with quality control because I, as a physician, wanted to 
make sure that any lab test I did was accurate. We spent a lot of time, 
energy, and money making sure that those tests were accurate.
  Well, CLIA shut down my lab. If somebody came in to see me with a red 
sore throat, had white patches on the throat, running a fever, aching 
all over, I would do a CBC, a complete blood count, to see if they had 
a bacterial infection and thus needed antibiotics, like penicillin, or 
if they had a viral infection. Both clinical pictures could be exactly 
the same. Even allergies will present with the same clinical picture, 
even the fever.

  So I would do this simple blood test. I charged $12 for the test. 
CLIA shut my lab down. I had to send my patients over to the local 
hospital, and they charged $75. I could do the test in 5 minutes. It 
would take 2 to 3 hours to get the results from the local hospital.
  Now, what did that do across the whole of the spectrum of health 
care? It markedly drove the cost of--insurance and all health care 
markedly were elevated because of that.
  And Congress, not long ago, passed HIPAA. I call all of these things 
``critters,'' and if you see a critter coming down the pike, you better 
hold on to your wallet because it's going to take a big bite out of it. 
But HIPAA has cost the health care industry billions of dollars and 
hasn't paid for the first Aspirin to treat the headaches that it's 
created.
  So if we get the regulatory burden off of health care and we let the 
doctor-patient relationship be how health care decisions are made, we 
can literally lower the costs. But this ``porkulous'' bill is a giant 
push towards socialist medical care here in America, too. So it gives 
me great concern for me and for my physician colleagues, but it even 
gives me more concern for my patients.
  It's been said around here, if you think medicine is expensive now, 
wait until it's free and provided for by the government. We're going to 
have terrible quality or degradation of quality of health care. We're 
not going to have the innovation. We're not going to be developing the 
new drugs and procedures that we're doing today on the free enterprise 
system, and it's going to be disastrous.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time.
  I appreciate you being a medical doctor. You've seen first-hand 
examples where government intervention in the marketplace is driving up 
costs for everybody. And the more areas we get into--just like the 
Soviet Union, when we get into food and clothing and housing and 
education, the more the government gets its nose into all of those

[[Page H2819]]

areas, and the size of the government grows, as we've just seen--it 
wasn't just 8 percent today, but you add the 8 to all of that before 
from the ``porkulous'' bill, we're talking about a massive increase in 
government.
  And the Republicans did make some mistakes. We spent more money than 
we should have, but it's nothing on the scale of what we're talking 
about here.
  We're joined by a very distinguished colleague of mine from 
Louisiana. And, Congressman Scalise, we'd appreciate if you could join 
us.
  And I yield time.
  Mr. SCALISE. Thank you. I want to thank the gentleman from Missouri. 
What we've been talking about is the concern that a lot of us have with 
the runaway spending we have here in Washington.
  And as we all sat in this Chamber last night and listened to the 
President, there were a number of things he said that I think we all 
agreed with. One of the things that he harped on was the concern about 
adding more money, billions and trillions of dollars, to the national 
debt, and I share that concern.
  But I think what's even of more concern is that, if we look at what's 
happened in these last 6 weeks, we've seen not a reduction in spending, 
not a reduction in debts, we've seen a dramatic increase. In fact, in 
just the last 6 weeks since Barack Obama has been President, we've seen 
over $2 trillion added to the national debt. That's a 20 percent 
increase in the national debt. And that's the burden that our children 
and our grandchildren are going to have to inherit.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time for a minute.
  You're saying a 20 percent increase in the national debt. So you add 
up all of the national debt since the country was born, you put that 
all together, and you're saying we added 20 percent to that in a period 
of 6 weeks?
  Mr. SCALISE. In a period of 6 weeks between the spending bill that 
was passed and signed into law last week, added $800 billion in new 
government spending--not a bill to help stimulate our economy; a bill 
to massively grow the size of government, many programs, as you 
discussed, that are permanent programs, not one-time infrastructure 
spending.
  The other thing--and tomorrow there will be a bill filed; the 
President will be presenting his new budget. The expectations of what 
we're hearing is that that budget will be over $1 trillion out of 
balance. More money added to the national debt.
  And on top of that, a bill that a lot of us that are concerned about 
this runaway spending voted against, but a bill that passed today was 
this omnibus bill: $400 billion of additional spending, representing an 
8 percent increase in government spending at a time when States and 
families across this country are cutting back their spending because of 
tough economic times. Seems like Washington's the only place going on a 
spending spree.
  It's hard to picture when yesterday you hear somebody talking about 
the dangers of adding more money to the national debt, ironically on 
Mardi Gras day, and it seems like today and tomorrow, when these bills 
are filed, adding trillions more debt, it seems like the same people 
are trying to act like the King of Carnival, throwing beads and 
trinkets to people with more government spending.
  This was a picture that was actually in the New Orleans newspaper 
yesterday on Mardi Gras Day, and it talked about and it shows people 
throwing money, literally throwing money from a float. And it's titled 
``Stimulus,'' and they said, ``We'll worry about the hangover 
tomorrow.''
  And the sad part of it is, it's not our money that they're throwing. 
It's not only the taxpayers' money, but it's our children and 
grandchildren's money that they're throwing, because this is money we 
don't have. This is money that's going to go out and be printed up on a 
printing press because we don't have that money sitting in a bank 
somewhere.
  And so it adds more money--over 20 percent in 6 weeks has been added 
to the national debt. And that's the burden our children and 
grandchildren will inherit. And this has to end.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time.
  You're talking about, in the last 6 or 7 weeks, we have added 20 
percent to the debt. And yet, when you take a look at the money that 
we've spent, it's not going to do any good to help us with joblessness, 
it's not going to get the economy going, it just is flat not going to 
work. Because we can already see that it didn't work when you used the 
same approach during the ``Raw Deal'' or the New Deal. Henry Morgenthau 
says it won't work. He's the guy that engineered the plan. He says it 
won't work. And the Japanese tried it, and it didn't work for them. And 
yet we have solutions to the problem that will work which are being 
ignored.
  You know, gentlemen, one of the things that I think we have to be 
careful of: We are in a very difficult time in America right now, and a 
lot of people recognize that.
  And we'll have to continue this next week on Wednesday. And I really 
appreciate my good friend from Louisiana joining us, Congressman 
Scalise.

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