[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 43 (Wednesday, March 11, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H3322-H3329]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   FINANCIAL CONDITION OF OUR NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to be able to join you and my 
colleagues here today. Our topic today is something that is on the 
minds of Americans everywhere. It's the question of our economy, the 
seriousness of the recession and the steps that we are taking, whether 
they are constructive or destructive to repairing the financial 
condition of our Nation, our allies and of the world.
  I suppose it goes without saying that the recession is something 
that's serious. We can look at it in various different ways because it 
affects each of us in different ways.
  We could look at it from the fact that there are people who are 
husbands that have wives and children, who have mortgages that are due 
and no job and their bank account, already seriously whittled down, is 
shrinking even farther.
  We have those who have even been thrown out of their homes, those who 
have lost all of the money that they had saved for retirement, their 
401(k)s are becoming 101(k)s. And it has a troubling aspect that we 
don't have any idea when is it going to let up and what will be the end 
of this ride, as the stock market goes down and down and people 
continue to suffer.
  One of the things we have heard about over the last 6 years from our

[[Page H3323]]

liberal media and from others that are very critical of the foreign 
policies of America, as we stood up for freedom, was the tremendous 
cost of the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan.
  To put in perspective what we are talking about here on this economy, 
if you were to add up the cost of the war in Iraq, every day of it, and 
add up the cost in Afghanistan, and the first 5 weeks of this Congress 
in the stimulus--it was called a stimulus bill, I call it a porkulus 
bill--we spent more money, what we voted for in the fifth week here, 
than we spent in all of those wars, all of those years added together. 
So we are talking about a lot of money, and that's just the beginning.
  So I think it's appropriate for us to start out as we should. Instead 
of being too hasty and jump into things, to stop and just ask 
ourselves, how did we get in this mess? What policy mistakes did we 
make and what is our logical way forward?
  The good news I have for you, my friends, today is, is that there is 
a way home. The policies that are necessary to turn this situation 
around are available to us. History has shown us what works and what 
doesn't work. So a bright future is available, as it has always been 
for America, if we make the right choices.

                              {time}  1630

  So, how was it that we got here? Well, the story starts some number 
of years ago, a number of administrations ago, when it came to people's 
attention that there were certain areas of some cities where you could 
live where it would really be hard to get a loan to own a house. We 
felt that it's part of the American Dream for somebody to be able to 
own a house.
  So, we created a couple of groups. One was called Freddie Mac and the 
other was Fannie Mae. And the purpose of these groups--they were not 
quite government agencies, but they weren't quite private either. The 
purpose of them was to be able to make loans affordable to various 
people.
  We also leaned on the bankers in those various communities, saying, 
As a bank, you have got to write some loans to people. Well, Who are we 
supposed to write the loans too? Well, People who don't have very good 
credit ratings. Let me see if I understand this correctly. What you're 
saying is, You want me to give loans to people, and it may be they are 
not going to pay the loan back. That's right. The government is telling 
you to do that.
  In addition, as Freddie and Fannie had been created during the last 
years of Clinton's administration, what happened was that Freddie and 
Fannie were given legislative instructions saying that they had to make 
more and more loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them.
  And at the time, in 1999, the New York Times had an article that 
said, Hey, we better look out. This is like the savings and loan deal 
about to happen all over again. We are about to make the same mistakes 
we made before. The mistakes were that if people can't pay these things 
back, then the securities that you package these different loans up--
and that is what Wall Street was doing, was packaging these 
securities--they won't be able to pay, and we are going to have a big 
problem because Freddie and Fannie, everybody assumes that the 
government will back up their loans. And if it's the government that 
backs them up, that means all of the taxpayers in America are going to 
be held hostage for loans that were made, and maybe to people that 
couldn't afford to pay them. And so this article was written in 1999, 
warning: Savings and loan scandal. Look out. We are starting to do the 
same mistake we made before, 10 years earlier. But we didn't pay 
attention.
  By 2003, President Bush is also reported in the New York Times saying 
that what is going on in Freddie and Fannie is a big problem. It could 
create a whole lot of economic trouble for America. I need the 
authority to regulate Freddie and Fannie, the President was telling us.
  That same New York Times article said that he was opposed by the 
Democrat Party. In fact, the recent chairman, and this is an actual 
quote from the New York Times, September 11, 2003, this is in response 
to President Bush asking for authority to regulate Freddie and Fannie. 
Now, this Democrat Congressman, Barney Frank says, ``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, the man, I 
might add, who is working on the solution to this problem. ``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, anybody can be wrong. Some people can be terribly wrong. And, 
in this case, this mistake has turned the entire world economy upside 
down. And so we have a whole series of these loans.
  Now, you all know that what has gone wrong has been that these loans 
have been in default. But this is what started with the loan business 
and has now affected all of our economy. So, this is where the problem 
started, but it has now spread. So we have a recession.
  So, the question then is, this is where we got off track. We have the 
government spending just tons of money to try and turn this problem 
around, but the question is: How really should we go about fixing it.
  And I am joined here in the Congress today by one of our 
distinguished colleagues, a new Member, from the State of Ohio. Steve 
Austria has some experience in this area and is rapidly making a name 
as quite a sober and distinguished Member of our body. And I would like 
to yield to the gentlemen if you would like to make a comment on where 
we are and where we should be going.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. I want to thank the Member from Missouri for yielding 
his time and helping to put things in perspective. Mr. Speaker, thank 
you.
  Just like Missouri, Mr. Speaker, as you know, there are families in 
Ohio that are real families that are struggling right now, that are 
going through difficult times. And the economy in Ohio is down, and we 
are struggling, going through difficult times. I want to focus in on 
the 900,000 small businesses that we have in Ohio that are going 
through these difficult times, that we are asking to make sacrifices, 
we are asking them to help save jobs, help create new jobs, and we need 
to make sure that we are taking the necessary action to help them get 
back on their feet and not hurt them.
  Mr. AKIN. Just reclaiming my time for just a second, I really 
appreciate your starting there with the small businesses because a real 
solution has to take a look at where are the jobs. And small business, 
depending on how big you make a small business, but most people say 70 
to 80 percent of the jobs in America come from small business. So 
you're starting at exactly the right place.
  Forgive me for interrupting, but I yield.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. Thank you for those comments, because I think that puts 
things in perspective. The 900,000 small businesses across the State of 
Ohio is reflective across this country. As you mentioned, 70 to 80 
percent of our Nation's economy, the engine behind that economy is the 
small businesses. We should be working to help those small businesses, 
not hurting those small businesses, and helping them to be able to get 
through these difficult times and be able to save jobs, to be able to 
create new jobs, and to be able to sustain those jobs in the long term. 
We need to work hard.
  As I have traveled throughout my district, and I have a very unique 
district that runs from Dayton to Columbus, it's very diversified. You 
go to the western part of my district, you have Wright-Patterson Air 
Force Base, which is the largest single-site employer in the State of 
Ohio, located in Greene County. You go towards the middle of the 
district in Clarke County, Springfield, a lot of manufacturing and 
industry. You go to the eastern part of my district, you have a lot of 
small towns, rural areas, a lot of agriculture, and a lot of small 
businesses. I think that is reflective of Ohio and across this country.
  But no matter where I go, and I have had an opportunity to travel, in 
my 20 months as a new Member of Congress throughout all eight counties 
of my district, and I have spoken at many different events--with 
Chambers, Rotaries, at other events. And I have talked to many of our 
small business

[[Page H3324]]

owners who are going through difficult times right now. They are having 
a very difficult time right now just maintaining their businesses right 
now.
  I had two businesses actually came to Washington, D.C., this week to 
meet with their Congressman to express their concerns. And what I'm 
hearing is that they can't get the financing, they can't get the credit 
necessary to keep their doors open to be able to meet their payroll, to 
be able to expand and create new jobs and sustain those jobs in the 
long-run. They are worried about the uncertainty right now that we are 
seeing in our financial markets.

  As you brought up, I think anyone who's looked at their financial 
statements lately, whether it be your retirement savings, your kids' 
education savings, just your savings account, you have seen a 
significant drop in that. There's a lot of uncertainty as to what is 
happening in those financial markets right now.
  When they look at government, when they look at what is happening 
here in government right now, there's a lot of uncertainty as to what's 
happening and what direction we're going by infusing such large amounts 
of spending in government and on whether we are squeezing out the 
private sector and, in particular, small businesses.
  They are going through some very difficult times. During these times, 
we are asking families, we are asking small businesses to cut back, to 
make sacrifices, while government, on the other hand, seems to be doing 
the opposite. We should be doing the same thing. But, in my 60 days, 
nearly 60 days here in Congress, we have had some major spending bills.
  I spent 10 years in the State legislature before I came here, and I 
wasn't used to the B and the T words--the billions and trillions. It's 
becoming words that we are using regularly around here.
  The first bill that I was faced with was the second half of the $700 
billion bailout bill for the financial markets, also known as TARP, 
something that we have seen that there's been lack of, in my opinion, 
accountability and a lack of enough transparency.
  There's been really no definite decisive plan by the Department of 
Treasury. And that uncertainty, we have seen that reflected in the 
markets. We have seen them fluctuating, mainly downward.
  Mr. AKIN. I would yield in just a minute, but I note that my 
distinguished colleague from Ohio has started on the subject of small 
business. I recall that what you just said was that there is a certain 
level of uncertainty among small business owners. And just piggy-
backing on that idea, let's just think a little bit about what that 
uncertainty might be.
  First of all, you have got dividends and capital gains, which is 
about to be repealed. That was something which allowed small 
businessmen to have more capital, to keep more of their own capital so 
they could invest that in their own businesses.
  What we are going to do is we are going to repeal that tax cut and 
therefore tax the small business owners because many of them are in the 
bracket that are going to get taxed heavily. So that is the first thing 
they have got to be thinking about.
  Then we're talking about we are going to be doing this cap-and-trade 
stuff on any CO2 that is generated. So, we are going to 
increase their cost of electricity. And then we are talking about going 
to a socialized medical system, which is going to make medicine more 
expensive for them. And then we see a tremendous level of government 
spending, which is vacuuming the liquidity out of the private sector, 
which makes it harder for them to get loans to make investments in 
their own companies.
  It seems like we are loading the dice against the very people who 
should be creating the small jobs. So I can understand why they come 
and visit my good friend from his district in Ohio. But I continue to 
yield him time.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. Thank you to my good friend from Missouri for putting 
things in perspective. I think you're exactly right and, having been a 
small business owner, when you're looking at that and you're faced in 
this new budget with higher taxes, when you're looking at an economy 
right now where the financial markets, you can't get finance, you can't 
get the credit that you need to be able to expand your business to 
continue on your business, I don't think this is good for small 
businesses across this country. And they are the backbone of our 
economy.
  This is on the heels, again, of the $700 billion TARP bill. This is 
on the heels of an approximately $709 billion stimulus or spending, or, 
as you call it, pork plan. I think when you look at the spending that 
is taking place in this budget, and it concerns me as to what we are 
doing.
  I, as a member of the Budget Committee, we have heard testimony. We 
have heard testimony from the key officials in the administration. And 
I continue to have concerns about the amount of debt that we are 
accumulating.
  Trillions of dollars. This is debt that--how are we going to pay for 
this? We are now starting to see that come out in this budget, with 
higher taxes, as you mentioned, which is not a good thing, especially 
in a downturn of an economy. That is not going to help, again, 
businesses to create jobs.
  When we see the borrowing and the spending and the amount of debt 
that is being accumulated, and I have three children at home. When I 
came to Congress, I didn't come to Congress to be passing on to them 
trillions of dollars of debt; debt that is being passed on to my 
children, our grandchildren, that they will be paying for in years to 
come.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I'd like to lay a little bit of 
groundwork, if I could, along the lines, because what you're doing is 
getting right into the idea of solving the problem. Being an old 
engineer, I like solving problems.
  But I think it's also helpful here, if you will allow me to jump in a 
little bit, to say that there are two theories that are out there about 
what do you do when you have a recession. I think most people 
understand we have got a recession on our hands here, and they realize 
it's pretty darn serious because there's all these jobs that people 
have lost. Things are not going the way we'd like to see them go. So, 
what are you supposed to do in this?
  Well, there are two general ideas. One of them was tried by FDR some 
years ago. It was called Keynesian economics. Little Lord Keynes, a 
weird little guy, and he had this idea if you get in trouble 
financially, what you should do is spend like mad and it will make 
everything okay.
  It seems a little bit odd. I think most of the people in your 
district in Ohio, my district in Missouri, have enough common sense 
that when you get in trouble, you don't go out and buy a brand new car 
and run up the debt. You hunker down a little bit. That may be a 
Missouri term, to hunker down. You know, to hunker down like a toad in 
a hail storm. Things are getting bad so you're going to save some 
money. You're not going to spend as much money.
  So the idea that when you get in trouble, that you're going do spend 
money like mad, seems to offend the common sense, I would say, of most 
Americans. Yet, that is a common political theory.
  And so this guy, Henry Morgenthau, he was the Secretary of Treasury 
under FDR. He had this idea we have got to spend some money. So he does 
this for 8 years. Unemployment is terrible. It's the Great Depression 
going on.
  In 1939, he appears before our Ways and Means Committee right here in 
Congress, and this is his statement about their wonderful experiment. 
``We have tried spending money. We are spending money more than we have 
ever spent before, and it does not work. I say after 8 years of the 
administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started, 
and an enormous debt to boot.''
  Now, this guy is the father of this Keynesian economics, the idea 
that can you spend your way out of trouble. That is one theory. The 
other theory is one that the Republicans subscribe to. This is one the 
Democrats tend to like and, apparently, are following, even here as we 
speak.
  The other one is what is sometimes called supply side economics. And 
it's the idea that those 80 percent of those people creating those 
jobs, the small businesses, the entrepreneur, the investor, and the 
risk-taker, the people that work and create productivity, those are the 
ones that you have to empower

[[Page H3325]]

to be the engine to pull America forward because government doesn't 
create prosperity, it either taxes or spends or slops money around, or 
it creates a whole lot of debt, but it doesn't create anything where it 
creates any prosperity. It can only move money from one person to 
another.

                              {time}  1645

  And so the other approach is to do as you are saying, gentleman, you 
have got to work and you have got to empower those small business 
people. But when you spend tons of money, that takes the liquidity away 
from the small businessman and you make it so that he can't go. And 
that is what they did for 8 years. Unemployment just stayed high, and 
they spent tons of money; and when they got all done, they said it 
didn't work.
  So I wanted to lay that down, because I think people have to 
understand there are two basic approaches people are taking: One is 
spend a whole lot of money, stimulate the economy. And the Japanese 
bought that theory. They tried it. It didn't work for the Japanese for 
10 years, and we can't seem to learn from them. And yet, the other 
theory was tried by JFK, by Ronald Reagan, and it has worked great. And 
so why don't we do the one that works? I am not quite sure why we are 
going down the wrong path.
  I want to yield to my good friend from Ohio, Congressman Austria.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. Thank you. Also, I think it is important to point out 
that we did have an alternative plan as we went through that stimulus 
plan that would have created twice as many jobs for half the cost. That 
is using the same standards as the President's own economic adviser. 
Using those same standards, we could have created, again, twice as many 
jobs for half the cost.
  The other thing is the spending plan, and we are looking very closely 
at this budget in committee. There are some good things, I will 
acknowledge. The fact that this budget acknowledges that we have an 
entitlement crisis going on right now I think is a good thing. The 
budget attempts to fix the AMT, which I think is a good thing. It sets 
a means test for Medicare part D premiums, which I think is a good 
thing. But then you get into this spending that we are talking about, 
and we are talking about increases from the 2009 budget, the spending 
of $3.9 trillion. Again, this is debt that we are accumulating that we 
are going to be passing on that our children and grandchildren will be 
paying for years to come.
  We look at the increases on the nondefense appropriations by 9.3 
percent, we look at the baseline that they are using as far as the war 
funding. Those are things that concern me in this budget. And what I 
want to talk about that I think is really going to hurt this economy is 
the higher taxes that are within this budget. That is going to hurt the 
economic growth and job creation, and these levees are totaling 
approximately $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years, allegedly targeting 
the wealthiest Americans. And let's define wealthiest. I would be glad 
to yield back the time, because I know we both know that many of those 
individuals that are falling in that category are small business owners 
that are going to be having to pay this tax. Again, these are the same 
business owners that we are asking to step up to the plate, to help 
create jobs, to help save jobs, to give of their own assets and invest 
it back in their business during uncertain times. At the same time, the 
government is going to come in and say, by the way, you need to pay us. 
We are going to raise your taxes during that time period. And as you 
mentioned earlier, these small businesses create anywhere from 60 
percent to 80 percent of jobs in the United States.

  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I think one of the things you alluded 
to, gentleman, was the fact that what we are talking about is an 
unprecedented level of spending that we have seen in a very short 
window. We are a week or two into March. We didn't really come in the 
first week or two of January, so we have been at this an equivalent of 
2 months, and we have been spending some money. We have been spending a 
lot of money.
  I happen to serve on the Armed Services Committee. When I think of 
trying to put a number on billions of dollars, I tend to think in terms 
of something that is tangible, like an aircraft carrier. For the Armed 
Services Committee, aircraft carriers are big and expensive. And we 
don't want them sunk, so we put ships all around them to protect them. 
We have got 11 of these. They cost about $3 billion apiece. So you take 
that $3 billion apiece for aircraft carriers into what we passed out of 
this House in this porkulus bill, $840 billion. We have got 11 of them. 
You are talking about a line of aircraft carriers, 250 aircraft 
carriers. We only have about 300 plus ships in the Navy. 250 aircraft 
carriers, that is a lot of money that we don't have that we spent.
  Now, what you are starting to see in this graph here, this is the 
deficit. Under the blue lines here, this is deficit under Republicans, 
2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. You see the deficits going down. 2008, 
2009, and 2010. You take a look at what is going on to this deficit, 
and we are talking about deficits unlike anything our Nation has seen 
historically at all. We are talking uncharted waters here, and that 
porkulus bill at $840 billion is just part of it. As you mentioned, we 
had that other Wall Street bailout bill for $700 billion. Half of that 
we did this year, also. That takes us over $1 trillion. We are talking 
about some real change here, and a change unlike anything we've seen 
before. This is the sort of change that the government will have a lot 
of money, and you and my constituents will have nothing left but 
change, I am afraid.
  I notice that we are also joined by a member of your class, 
gentlemen, a distinguished doctor from Tennessee, Congressman Phil Roe. 
I would love to have him jump in.
  Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Thank you. I went home this weekend and met 
with a number of constituents, and one of the things that they brought 
out is that they understand. And these are from police officers, 
sheriffs, builders, developers, grandmothers, grandparents. They are 
saying this is the craziest thing they have ever seen in their life. 
And the builders and developers believe that simply if we will get the 
financial situation straight, the banking straight in this country, 
they said: Look, we will go out and create the jobs if we will get 
where we can lend money. I will give an example.
  A person came in my office in the local district, and he said, Doc, 
this is the deal I am trying to put together. He had 14 or 15 
commercial lots on a river, beautiful river not too far from Knoxville, 
Tennessee. And they are not making any more Holston River, not making 
any more lots on the river. It was a $1.7 million project. It was 
appraised at $2.3 million. He put $500,000 of his own money down on 
this project.
  The bank regulators said, okay, if you had to have a fire sale, what 
could you sell this property for, the bank, in one month? Well, nobody 
does a project like that where you have got to liquidate. When you 
develop homes, you do it over a period of years is how you do these 
developments.
  The appraiser said, well, a fire sale would be probably $1.1 million. 
The bank then said that was a bad loan because it is $100,000 upside 
down and would go as a bad loan against that bank. Now, if you can't 
release capital when somebody puts down $500,000 on a $1.7 million 
project, then you can't do business. And that is one of the things that 
is clogging up right now, is this access to capital is being choked 
off. And until we open the capital market up, you are not going to see 
our businesses and jobs be created.
  The single number one thing the President of the United States should 
be doing right now is making sure that our banks are solvent and that 
capital is available, and that we can go out and let these business 
people create jobs. And they cannot create the jobs if you increase tax 
on small business, because that is where most of the jobs are being 
created in America. Certainly in my district that is the case.
  Now, we have been very fortunate in our area. The unemployment rate 
overall is not quite as high as it is Nationwide, but it is heading in 
that direction. And if you are a person who loses their job, basically 
it is a depression for you if you don't have a job.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, doctor, I appreciate what you are 
saying. When you really take a look at where we are here, the policies 
that we make in this House have a tremendous impact on people's lives. 
And a lot of

[[Page H3326]]

times the people that get hurt very badly, just as the example you are 
talking about, and all of the other jobs that would have been created 
by that project moving forward, those people are hurt because of the 
policies that we made. And people want to say, this is a failure of 
free enterprise.
  This has nothing to do with free enterprise failing. This is a 
failure of a socialistic scheme to force banks and lenders to give 
money to people who can't afford to do it. And I assume this was done 
under the pretense of being compassionate. But I am asking myself, if I 
am the dad and somebody talks me into a loan that I can't afford and I 
am getting my house foreclosed, how is that compassionate? I don't 
really understand that.
  We are joined also by another just fantastic Congresswoman, and this 
is Congresswoman Foxx from North Carolina. She always has a real 
commonsense point of view, and I would like to have her join our 
discussion, if you would go ahead and proceed.
  Ms. FOXX. I thank you, Mr. Akin, for taking charge of this Special 
Order this afternoon. You have been doing a fantastic job the past 
weeks. You always do a fantastic job the past several weeks. You always 
do a fantastic job, but I know that you have really put out the time 
and energy to do these Special Orders and bring to the attention of 
people things that need to be brought to their attention related to the 
budgets that have been passing, the whole economic situation that we 
see facing ourselves. And you talked about the problem with what is 
commonly called mark to market, our friend from Tennessee mentioned it, 
and what is happening with people not being able to get loans and how 
complicated our economic situation has become.
  I want to talk just a minute about an article that came out today in 
the Washington Times by a very well known person named Thomas Sowell. 
Thomas Sowell is one of the most brilliant minds we have in our country 
these days, and any time I see a piece by him I do my best to read it, 
because I always learn from reading from Thomas Sowell. The 
conversation about mark-to-marketing, the conversation about compassion 
made me think about this article. Any time we have a chance to quote 
Thomas Sowell, I think we should do that.

               [From The Washington Times, Mar. 11, 2009]

                 Commentary--Subsidizing Bad Decisions

                           (By Thomas Sowell)

       Now that the federal government has decided to bail out 
     homeowners in trouble, with mortgage loans up to $729,000, 
     that raises some questions that should be asked but seldom 
     are asked.
       Since the average American never took out a mortgage loan 
     as big as 700 grand--for the very good reason that he could 
     not afford it--why should he be forced as a taxpayer to 
     subsidize someone else who apparently couldn't afford it 
     either, but who got in over his head anyway?
       Why should taxpayers who live in apartments, perhaps 
     because they did not feel they could afford to buy a house, 
     be forced to subsidize other people who could not afford to 
     buy a house, but who went ahead an bought one anyway?
       We hear a lot of talk in some quarters about how any one of 
     us could be in the same financial trouble that many 
     homeowners are in if we lost our job or had some other 
     misfortune. The pat phrase is that we are all just a few 
     paydays away from being in the same predicament.
       Another way of saying the same thing is that some people 
     live high enough on the hog that any of the common 
     misfortunes of life can ruin them.
       Who hasn't been out of work at some time or other, or had 
     an illness or accident that created unexpected expenses? The 
     old and trite notion of ``saving for a rainy day'' is old and 
     trite precisely because this has been a common experience for 
     a very long time.
       What is new is the current notion of indulging people who 
     refused to save for a rainy day or to live within their 
     means. In politics, it is called ``compassion''--which comes 
     in both the standard liberal version and ``compassionate 
     conservatism.''
       The one person toward whom there is no compassion is the 
     taxpayer.
       The current political stampede to stop mortgage 
     foreclosures proceeds as if foreclosures are just something 
     that strikes people like a bolt of lightning from the blue--
     and as if the people facing foreclosures are the only people 
     that matter.
       What if the foreclosure are not stopped?
       Will millions of homes just sit empty? Or will new people 
     move into those homes, now selling for lower prices--prices 
     perhaps more within the means of the new occupants?
       The same politicians who have been talking about a need for 
     ``affordable housing'' for years are now suddenly alarmed 
     that home prices are falling. How can housing become more 
     affordable unless prices fall?
       The political meaning of ``affordable housing'' is housing 
     that is made more affordable by politicians intervening to 
     create government subsidies, rent control or other gimmicks 
     for which politicians can take credit.
       Affordable housing produced by market forces provides no 
     benefit to politicians and has no attraction for them.
       Study after study, not only here but in other countries, 
     show that the most affordable housing is where there has been 
     the least government interference with the market--contrary 
     to rhetoric.
       When new occupants of foreclosed housing find it more 
     affordable, will the previous occupants all become homeless? 
     Or are they more likely to move into homes or apartments that 
     they can afford? They will of course be sadder--but perhaps 
     wiser as well.
       The old and trite phrase ``sadder but wiser'' is old and 
     trite for the same reason that ``saving for a rainy day'' is 
     old and trite. It reflects an all too common human 
     experience.
       Even in an era of much-ballyhooed ``change,'' the 
     government cannot eliminate sadness. What it can do is 
     transfer that sadness from those who made risky and unwise 
     decisions to the taxpayers who had nothing to do with their 
     decisions.
       Worse, the subsidizing of bad decisions destroys one of the 
     most effective sources of better decisions--namely, paying 
     the consequences of bad decisions.
       In the wake of the housing debacle in California, more 
     people are buying less expensive homes, making bigger down 
     payments, and staying away from ``creative'' and risky 
     financing. It is amazing how fast people learn when they are 
     not insulated from the consequences of their decisions.

  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time just a moment, what you said there was a 
mouthful, but it really makes a lot of sense. What we are doing is 
robbing the prudent to pay for the prodigal. The prudent and the 
prodigal.
  I think what he is saying in very fancy words is, we are punishing 
the guy who did the right thing. That is what is going on. In fact, 
there is a rule of economics; I think it says something that the more 
that you pay for, the more that you get. So if you pay for people to 
make bad loans, then you are going to get more of them. I think that is 
what he is getting at.
  Ms. FOXX. That is exactly right. There is another quote, I think it 
is Mark Twain that says, whenever you rob Peter to pay Paul, you are 
going to get a lot of support from Paul. So that is the same theory 
here.
  What Thomas Sowell is talking about is about this very bad bill that 
we passed last week on housing. Now, we have had people who feel very 
compassionate about Americans and want everybody to own a home if at 
all possible. And our colleagues on the other side of the aisle really 
pushed this theory, pushed it to the point where many people who 
shouldn't have bought homes went out and bought homes, and they had 
lenders who were their willing accomplices in either ignoring the 
condition they were in or not getting complete information from them.

                              {time}  1700

  And now we have this situation where we are going to allow people who 
have mortgage loans up to $729,000 to declare bankruptcy on their 
primary residence. We have never done that in this country before. And 
it is undermining our whole capitalistic system.
  Again, it is being done under the guise of compassion. But what we 
are doing, as you so eloquently said, we are rewarding people who made 
bad decisions and punishing those who have made good decisions and paid 
their mortgages. This is just adding to the kinds of problems that you 
and my colleagues have been describing.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, that is what is disconcerting. That is 
why the stock market just gets hammered down, because decision after 
decision we are making doesn't really make sense, particularly if you 
look at it from the point of view of the small business person. They 
are just getting asked to pick up the tab on everything. And aside from 
having trouble getting credit, the tremendous level of spending is just 
vacuuming that money, that liquidity, out of the market.
  I would like to return to our good friend from Ohio, Congressman 
Austria. If you would like to jump in, I will yield.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. I want to thank the Congressman for bringing that up. It 
is very important that taxpayers understand that their hardworking 
taxpayer dollars are paying $75 billion for that program that is going 
to reward those who are making irresponsible and bad decisions, and the 
ones that are paying

[[Page H3327]]

are the ones that were responsible. And I talk to small business owners 
and families who are struggling. And they are altering their lifestyle 
in order to make their mortgage payments on time, in a timely manner. 
And unfortunately, they are the ones that are paying for the 
circumstances like Congresswoman Foxx talked about as far as mortgages 
up to $750,000 for bad decisions.
  A couple of facts on small businesses. I think it is very important 
that we not lose focus as to really who is hurting in this process 
right now and whom we should be focusing and targeting our economic 
stimulus towards. Small businesses create seven out of 10 new jobs 
across this country according to the SBA. The NFIB says America's small 
businesses are the world's second largest economy, trailing only the 
United States as a whole.
  According to the Zogby poll released last week, nearly two-thirds of 
Americans, 63 percent, said that small businesses, entrepreneurs, are 
the ones who are going to lead the U.S. to a better future.
  Mr. AKIN. If I could reclaim my time, let's talk a little bit about 
this because one of the things Republicans get accused of sometimes is 
that we are just a party of saying ``no'' and that we don't have any 
solutions. And that is absolutely not true.
  What is misunderstood is we just say ``no'' to a whole lot of 
excessive government spending. But there is a way to solve this 
problem. And it is the same thing that JFK did and the same thing that 
Ronald Reagan did. It is called supply-side economics. And it requires 
investing in these small-business kinds of people. And it means you 
can't invest in them and fleece them at the same time. This is the new 
set of taxes that the President is talking about. He says, ``oh, we are 
not going to tax anybody that doesn't make that much money.'' Well 
first of all, this cap-and-trade, all of this stuff in the blue, this 
is a tax that is going to anybody that pays electric bills. Does that 
seem like rich people? It doesn't to me. But anyway, that small 
business, one of their expenses is energy. And if you run their energy 
percentage up, and this will kick it up a good number of percentage, it 
makes them less competitive. And then you jump to the other side, and 
we have small businesses being taxed over here. This is not what you 
do. And if just those of us that are even here gathered on the floor, 
if we said, hey, okay, wise guys, you make a decision. How are you 
going to fix this thing? I think we would probably agree the first 
thing you do is you have to back off all of this Federal spending. And 
the second thing you have to do is you have to allow enough liquidity 
and capital to get to those small business people. There are different 
ways to do it.
  Ms. FOXX. Will the gentleman from Missouri yield?
  Mr. AKIN. I do yield.
  Ms. FOXX. I know you're an engineer, but I think you also know a 
great deal of history. And if my memory serves me, the times that we 
have been in recession, what seems to have worked has been cutting 
taxes, not raising taxes. And as we have been discussing these issues a 
lot in the last few weeks, my memory is that. Is your memory that we 
have heard over and over and over again, here are the times that we 
have cut taxes, here are the times we have raised taxes? And one more 
point before you answer, I know, as you say, Republicans are accused of 
not having new ideas. Well what I like to say to people is it isn't 
that we need new ideas, it is that we need to use the ideas that have 
always worked. And the ideas that have always worked have been where we 
have cut taxes, or at least that is my understanding. And I would like 
to get you, if you don't mind, to respond.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, thank you for that question.
  Maybe I assume too much. Certainly that is what happened. JFK cut 
taxes. Ronald Reagan cut taxes. And in a very strategic way, President 
Bush cut taxes and turned around a recession. But here is a point we 
have to clarify. It is not just any tax cut. One of the things that has 
been done lately which has kicked this debt up tremendously was the 
fact that we just gave some cash back to every good old American on the 
street. It is a nice thing to do if we had the money, but to tax their 
children and grandchildren in order to give them a $1,000 or $5,000 
paycheck, it is nice, but it doesn't help the economy. It isn't that 
kind of tax cut.
  You have to understand it is certain types of tax cuts. And those tax 
cuts have to have the effect of investing in entrepreneurs, the risk-
takers and the productivity-generating sector of the economy. And that 
is why the dividend capital gains is a big deal.
  Ms. FOXX. Would the gentleman yield for one more question?
  Mr. AKIN. I will yield.
  Ms. FOXX. I think that it is important that we point out to the 
American people over and over again that the money that the Federal 
Government has is not manna from Heaven. The only money that the 
Federal Government has is money it takes from us forcefully through 
taxes, money that it borrows from us and other countries, and of course 
printing money, which creates inflation.
  But there are people who think there is something called ``government 
money.'' Could you elaborate on that a little bit? Because it is an 
issue that I think needs to be pointed out.
  Mr. AKIN. Congresswoman Foxx, you have a way of making it very 
straightforward and plain. I like that common sense. I believe we have 
a couple of guests here that would love to comment on that.
  Dr. Roe from Tennessee, why don't you comment on that.
  Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Obviously one of my heroes, too, is Thomas 
Sowell whom Congresswoman Foxx quoted a minute ago who happened to be a 
student of Milton Friedman. And Dr. Friedman is a Nobel Prize-winning 
economist at the University of Chicago. And Dr. Friedman stated very 
clearly that if you want more of something, you subsidize it. If you 
want less of something, you tax it. So, if you want less wealth, you 
tax wealth, and you will have less wealth.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, what you said is so important to 
understand. It is such a basic principle that we should never, never 
forget what you said here on this floor, and that is that what you tax, 
you're going to get less of. And what you pay for, you're going to get 
more of.
  I will yield.
  Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Thank you for yielding. So if you want more 
programs, you create programs that subsidize those, and you will get 
more of those government programs. If you want more wealth, you cut 
taxes. Like you said, every single time the appropriate tax cut is 
done, revenue to the government has gone up, not down. Every single 
time the price of capital goes down, revenue to the government goes up. 
Why is that? Well because it leaves more money to the people who have 
earned it. They can go out and invest it, save it and do whatever they 
want to with it. And guess what that does? That creates jobs.
  One of the things I wanted to talk about was you had mentioned the 
word ``compassion'' a minute ago. And I had discussed this. I was on 
the phone with a local newspaper at home. And my previous job, besides 
practicing medicine when I had a real job before I came here, was being 
mayor of our city. And I had to look at my neighbors, especially the 
elderly. And the two ways we have to raise revenue locally was either 
raise your property taxes or sales taxes. Well, we can't raise sales 
tax. We can't make you go down and spend any more money. So I had one 
other option. Or I could limit the size of government. And I thought 
the most compassionate thing I could do for senior citizens who are on 
a fixed income was not overspend by government. Because then the only 
way locally I could do when these folks are on a fixed income, they are 
already making tough decisions about what to do with their money, was 
raise their property taxes, which they chose not to do. And we were 
rewarded by that.
  Let me go over a couple of things in the government spending that we 
have just done. There was a huge amount of money in there for 
infrastructure. And let me just think out loud for a minute. You hear a 
lot about green jobs and that we are going to invest in all this. In 
our local community, we invested not one dollar and created an enormous 
number of jobs. Let me tell you how we did it. We partnered with a 
private company. We had an open landfill. One of the largest carbon 
polluters in America is a landfill. We went to a

[[Page H3328]]

private company and negotiated the deal. They put all the capital up. 
We captured all the methane gas at this landfill. We cleaned this 
landfill gas up where it was almost pipeline quality. We piped it 4 
miles across town to one of our largest employers, which happens to be 
the Veterans Administration Hospital at Mountain Home. They operate, 
they heat and cool their facility, a 100-acre campus, at a 15 percent 
discount off their energy bills. We make money, and they save money. 
The local Federal taxpayers save money. And we as a local taxpayer made 
between 5 and $700,000. And it was the environmental equivalent of 
taking 34,000 cars off the road or not importing almost 20 millions of 
gasoline. And guess how many taxpayer dollars we spent? Zero.
  The second thing we did before I came up here, and I looked at this 
stimulus bill, and I thought you could do a lot of this for nothing. We 
did an energy audit of every building the city owned. We owned 44 
buildings. We got a guarantee from a private company that if you don't 
make the bond payments, we will make it for you. So what we did was we 
put in new HVAC systems and we put in new windows. We did all of that, 
$11 million worth of infrastructure improvements, to our building. And 
guess how much money the taxpayers paid? A big zero because energy 
savings paid for all of that redo.
  Did we do that in this bill that we just sent up as a stimulus 
package? No, we did not. And guess where the windows were made? Right 
there locally. Guess where the glass was made? In a community next door 
at Kingsport, Tennessee. And we did those kind of things at no cost to 
the taxpayers. That is the innovative things that the Republican party 
brings.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, you started with the premise, though, 
that it is not the job of the government to tax people. Particularly in 
your particular position, you just couldn't tax beyond a certain level, 
whereas here in Congress, we tax. We just print some more money. And 
you started with a mindset that, no, you're not going to make life hard 
on your constituents. You're going to try and find smart things and 
ways to encourage the private sector to function. And that is something 
that we should be looking at.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. AKIN. I certainly do yield to the gentleman from Ohio, 
Congressman Austria.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. I thank the good doctor from Tennessee for putting 
things in perspective.
  There are real families out there across this country, including in 
my State of Ohio, who are going through difficult times right now and 
who are suffering. I want to make sure that the general public out 
there, the American people, understand really what this cap-and-trade 
is.
  I'm looking at your chart up there. This is part of the $1.4 trillion 
increase over the next 10 years. And if you start counting how many 
zeroes are behind $1 trillion, it is a whole lot of zeroes. There are a 
lot of taxpayer dollars that we are talking about. This cap-and-trade 
heaps another $646 billion tax increase on families. And what that 
means in this budget that is being proposed right now is that it will 
increase prices for 95 percent of our families. For everyone who turns 
on their TV, who fills up their gas tank and who turns on their heat in 
the winter, this budget, the cap-and-trade proposal that they talked 
about, that some people are referring to now as a cap-and-tax, anything 
that is using carbon, it is estimated to heap again at least a $646 
billion tax increase on families, their natural gas, electricity, home 
heating and gasoline bills.
  During this difficult time when families are hurting, when small 
businesses are struggling, I would agree 100 percent with Dr. Roe, that 
this is not the way to turn our economy around and stimulate our 
economy. We should be going the opposite way. We should be giving 
families relief. And it is important again to note that we did have an 
alternative plan out there. We are not trying to be obstructors here on 
this budget. We have good ideas that will help stimulate this economy, 
that will help create jobs, that will give families permanent tax 
relief that they need right now. And unfortunately, these ideas are not 
being considered when these bills are coming to the floor.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, the proposals the gentleman is talking 
about are scored by different economists. And they are saying that 
these proposals are going to create twice as many jobs as the thing 
that we passed that put us into tremendous amount of debt. The thing 
that is ironic about that porkulus bill that we passed, billions and 
billions, as I said, if you want to go with your Cadillac aircraft 
carrier, you're talking 100 of these things. That is how much debt we 
created.
  And how much of that really went to the Keynesian idea of just 
building roads and hydro plants and that kind of hard manufacturing 
jobs? Almost none. It went to things like training people about STDs 
and AIDS and protecting mice in the Speaker's district that are on an 
endangered species list, and all kinds of maybe wonderful projects, but 
they have nothing to do with creating jobs or getting the economy 
going.

                              {time}  1715

  What it has a lot to do with is taking all of the money out of the 
private sector so these small businesses can't get a breath of oxygen. 
That is a problem.
  We don't like to just be negative, but these bills that we have 
passed won't work. It is not that we want to be negative. But I am an 
engineer. You have to say, Did you put enough steel in the bridge? If 
they don't have enough steel in the bridge, it falls down. This 
economic set of principles will not work. It has not worked 
historically. It did not work for the Japanese.
  The fact is we have a good set of principles that worked for JFK, for 
Ronald Reagan, and it worked quite well for us in the second quarter of 
2004.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. Let me just real quick, as I mentioned earlier, tell a 
story. I had a couple of businesses and they actually came to D.C., and 
this is how concerned they are. They are struggling to make payroll. 
One business has an opportunity to be able to expand and create new 
jobs but can't get the financing and credit.
  When you start combining, increasing taxes, when you start combining 
the debt that we are just continuing to increase, to try and tax and 
spend your way out of an economic crisis I don't believe is the right 
way to go. We can do better than that. I think when the American people 
spoke this last election last November and they wanted change, this is 
not the type of change they want. They didn't want to see government 
just continue to increase and a huge infusion of tax dollars and 
expanding government. What they wanted to see was real economic 
stimulus, a plan that will create and save jobs and sustain those jobs 
over the long term. Again, I believe our small businesses are the 
backbone that makes that happen. There are families out there that need 
relief. They need the permanent tax cut right now that we have offered 
on our side.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, this picture right here does not make 
the stock market feel very comfortable. There are people who are my 
age, I am an old geezer, and I am thinking about saving for retirement, 
and you see your 401(k) become a 101(k), you are not just one to shell 
out dollars to invest in small businesses, you just had your head 
handed to you financially, and then you see this kind of level of 
deficit spending, this is Republican spending in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 
2007, and you know what, I don't like the fact that the Republicans 
were spending and creating a deficit. I didn't vote for that deficit, I 
don't like it, but there are a lot of differences between these blue 
lines and these red lines.
  These red lines, we have never done anything like this in our country 
before. These are unprecedented times, and they are unchartered waters. 
The effect of doing this kind of thing sooner or later is going to come 
back, and we have to stop this.
  I recognize my good friend, Dr. Roe, from Tennessee.
  Mr. ROE of Tennessee. One of the things that my good friend from Ohio 
is talking about on the cap and trade, so people understand and get 
this jargon out of the way, cap and tax is a better definition or 
description of it.
  So people understand how it works, when you pump anything out of the 
ground, whether it is oil or you pump natural gas out of the ground or 
you dig coal out of the ground, there is a tax. It was first listed at 
$15 a ton. I saw the initial tax on coal was $15 a

[[Page H3329]]

ton, or I should say on the carbon dioxide per ton, and then it goes 
out $10 a year. So you are absolutely correct; everything you purchase 
is going to cost more. The exact opposite thing you should be doing in 
an economic downturn is even consider raising taxes because you have 
taken more capital out of the market.
  Right now small businesses are having to compete with the government 
for capital. It is difficult to do. The banks, the regulators, are 
having more stringent rules on banks, so it is much more difficult for 
them to get this capital. In fact, there is no question in my mind that 
it is delaying our recovery.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, certainly there are some things that 
could be done that wouldn't cost anything, just along the lines of what 
you proposed to your local businesses where you saw problems in your 
local area as mayor, but there is something called mark to market, and 
there is good opportunity there. We talked about that last year, but we 
just couldn't get Treasury and the people there to take a good look at 
this whole situation. The rules needed to be dealt with.
  We are joined by a good friend, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. 
Scalise), who has joined us before on the floor. He is articulate, very 
much up to speed on these topics, and it is a treat to yield time to 
Congressman Scalise.
  Mr. SCALISE. I appreciate my friend from Missouri yielding me time, 
and you are talking about what is happening today here in Congress, and 
all across America because as people are tightening their belts and 
dealing with these tough economic times in their own way, in 
responsible ways, it seems like Washington, this is the only place 
where they seem to be going on a wild spending spree, spending money 
that we don't have on programs that actually are causing more problems, 
actually hurting our economy.
  If you look at these proposals, especially this tax increase, and you 
just showed the proposal, the taxes both on small businesses, actually 
the engine of our economy, small businesses over $600 billion in taxes 
proposed on our small businesses, and they create 70 percent of our 
jobs.
  But what is more frightening to Americans all across the country is 
they realize this cap-and-trade proposal, it is a term that really 
means energy tax. It is a $640 billion tax on energy. People who 
actually use energy in their homes, if you are turning on your lights, 
you are going to be paying more in taxes, to the tune, the estimate 
that we got from the Congressional Budget Office, they estimate that 
this proposal in the President's budget, moving through right now, 
something that we can stop, but in this proposal, it actually increases 
individual American tax bills, the bills on their utilities, by $1,300 
a year.
  Imagine that, in tough economic times like we are dealing with today, 
if you actually want to use your air conditioner during a hot summer, 
$1,300.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, you just got my attention. I had seen 
some numbers, but are you saying that the average family in America, 
what is this cap-and-trade tax going to be? It is going to increase 
your electric bill on the electric side?
  Mr. SCALISE. Unfortunately, that is exactly what their proposal does. 
The Congressional Budget Office estimates, and in fact the President's 
own budget director, Mr. Orszag, has been saying that this will 
actually increase utility bills for ratepayers across the country.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, on top of everything else, you're 
saying we have another thousand bucks a family in this deal?
  Mr. SCALISE. Not just a thousand, $1,300 a year in electricity tax 
increases that people would be paying on their electric bill every 
year. This isn't a one-time thing.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, that is not even talking about what you 
are going to do to further bury small business, who are the very people 
we want to create our jobs.
  I see that we are joined by a highly respected congressman, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence). I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. PENCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank my good 
friend for his strong leadership on this issue on the floor of the 
Congress.
  After months of runaway spending here in Washington, D.C., on 
bailouts and on a so-called stimulus bill, and now the majority is 
beginning to talk about another stimulus bill and no doubt more 
bailouts, in the midst of all of that, the incoming administration has 
presented its budget, more than $3 trillion in spending and higher 
taxes.
  I come to the floor today to congratulate the gentleman and my 
colleagues for their strong statements today. But the American people 
deserve to know the President's budget spends too much, taxes too much, 
and borrows too much.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Pence, you said it so simply. What 
is that again?
  Mr. PENCE. The President's budget spends too much, it taxes too much, 
and it borrows too much; and Republicans in Congress have a better 
solution.
  In the coming weeks, the American people will hear from this floor, 
hear on the airwaves of America, and see in print a careful exposition 
of each of these points: about the extraordinary spending, the 
extraordinary increase in taxes that have just been described, taxes 
that will impact in the energy tax every household in America, every 
business in America.
  Mr. AKIN. Wait a minute, reclaiming my time, maybe my memory is 
foggy. I thought I recalled the President saying he wasn't going to tax 
anybody making less than $250,000, and I kind of almost went back to 
sleep. I said that's not me, I'm not going to worry about it. Now 
you're upsetting me.
  Mr. PENCE. The gentleman points to the President's comments made here 
on this floor, that only Americans with joint filings over $250,000 a 
year would experience higher marginal rates under his plan. But that 
leaves out two thoughts. Number one is that more than half of the 
American people that file tax returns in excess of $250,000 a year are 
actually small business owners filing as individuals. Raising taxes on 
small business owners in a recession is a prescription for economic 
decline. But there is another tax increase, and that is the energy tax 
increase the gentleman was just referring to.
  For the average American household, the energy tax increase could 
impact several thousand dollars per year on every homeowner, every 
renter, every small business. It will fall under the category of cap 
and trade and climate change, but the American people need to be 
prepared to count the cost as the President moves his budget forward. 
Higher energy taxes, higher taxes on small businesses, and higher taxes 
on contributions to charities.
  By one independent estimate, American charities and nonprofits, 
including educational institutions, religious institutions, charities 
that serve the underserved community, some estimates indicate that the 
President's tax increase could cost charities in this country $16 
billion per year.
  The President's budget spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows 
too much. Republicans have a better solution. We will be bringing those 
arguments and that solution to the American people in the weeks ahead.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, the budget that we are talking about 
spends too much, it taxes too much, and it borrows too much. That ought 
to be pretty close to the title of our discussion here.
  I really appreciate the good thinking and the high level of 
education. We have doctors here on the floor today. Congressman Austria 
from Ohio, we appreciate you joining us. And Congressman Pence, a 
solid, conservative, commonsense kind of guy, coming from the heartland 
of Indiana. And Dr. Roe, this is the first you have joined us, and I am 
so thankful for your perspective and leadership. You are a medical 
doctor, and you also literally ran a small government. You have tried 
and you know what works. That is obvious from your comments today. 
Congressman Scalise from Louisiana is a regular, and we are so thankful 
for you.
  Spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much.

                          ____________________