[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 17, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H3514-H3520]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              HIDDEN TAXES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foster). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.

                              {time}  2200

  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the 
House and talk about the economic crisis that our country is facing and 
also to go through and walk through some of the things that got us 
here, because as you talk to Americans all around the country, they are 
frustrated. They realize the problems that we are facing in our 
economy. But then they start to see a lot of these proposals that are 
coming out of Washington, and they don't see how any of these relate to 
the problems that we are facing today and how they are going to get our 
economy and our country back on track.
  I have got to say that there are a lot of us here that share that 
same frustration and share that same feeling that Washington still 
doesn't get the message of what is happening out there in the country 
and what it is going to take to get the economy back on track.
  I think what really underscored it in the last few weeks was when the 
President released his budget, which really shows the first outline of 
which direction President Obama wants to take our country and how he 
plans on dealing with these problems that our country faces. I think 
what most people have now realized is that the President's budget 
spends too much money. It taxes too much, and it leaves too much debt 
behind for our children and grandchildren.
  Really, if you look at that in a theme, it really underscores how it 
misses the point of what is happening out there in the country, the 
fact that people all across the Nation are tightening their belts. They 
realize that there are tough economic times out there, and they are 
dealing with it in each individual family. You hear a lot about the 
problems with the banking industry. And we will talk a little bit about 
the banking industry and really how that problem still has not been 
addressed by this President or by his budget director or by his 
Treasury Secretary and the fact that a lot of the problems facing our 
economy still go back to a tightened credit market and a failure in the 
banking system that we can address and there are ways to address it. 
And we will talk about that too.
  But unfortunately, rather than focusing on those areas, those very 
narrow areas that can get our economy back on track and get small 
businesses creating jobs again--the ability is there for us to do 
that--unfortunately, the budget that the President submitted goes in 
the opposite direction. At that point, a lot of us who really care 
about this country and really feel that we have got to make sure we 
chart the right course have been standing up and saying that there is a 
better way to do this.
  Some people might want to just criticize people who don't just go 
along and blindly vote ``yes.'' And we have seen so many bad policies 
coming from people who are just blindly voting for the next thing that 
is laid on this floor here in the House of Representatives. Yet, there 
is no accountability and there are no actual benchmarks to get us to 
where we need to be. There is a better way. And people know this is the 
greatest country, with all of our flaws, the greatest country in the 
history of the world. And we know we can get to a better place. Yet, as 
we stand here tonight, we wonder why we do this. Why do we fight to 
make this a better country? A lot of it is because we want to leave 
behind a better place than we have today.
  Tonight is a special night because tonight is my daughter's second 
birthday. I'm here in Washington, and unfortunately, I cannot be with 
her, and I want to say ``happy birthday'' to Madison. But I want to be 
here to fight to make it a better country so that my daughter, and 
everybody else's daughter and son, has a better place, that they can 
still pursue that American Dream, that dream that makes people come 
here from all across the world, that they would give up everything to 
go beneath the Statute of Liberty and look up and see what that 
represents.
  That vision of America is still out there. And it is still in the 
hearts of people all across this country. But I think for too many 
people, they don't see that same vision, that same spirit here in this 
Chamber dealing with these problems. We have been here for 3 days now 
as we have come back from the break, and all that has been brought up 
by the Speaker has been votes on post offices and ceremonial 
resolutions. People want us to be here dealing with these tough issues. 
People want us to be here tonight, late at night and going into the 
midnight hour dealing with these tough issues, because they know we can 
get through this. And they know there is a better way. And that is what 
we are going to be talking about tonight.
  We have some other people that are going to talk with us. But first, 
I want to talk about some other parts of the President's budget that 
have caused so much concern for people across the country. I want to 
talk about how much money it spends. This budget gives a record deficit 
of $1.7 trillion in deficit spending this year. It is an amount that is 
unseen in past budgets, an amount that none of us think is a tolerable 
level. This is all money we don't have, money that will be left to our 
children and grandchildren to have to pay off. But if they also look--
and this is what is sending shock waves throughout the rest of this 
country now--as people start to read the fine print, they are looking 
at these tax increases. These are tax increases that President Obama 
submitted in his own budget. And if you look here, he is projecting to 
raise $1.4 trillion in new taxes at a time when our economy is in such 
disarray. We are in a recession, possibly heading toward a depression, 
because of some of the decisions being made here. We have got the 
ability to stop that from happening. But you surely don't fix tough 
economic times by adding $1.4 trillion in new taxes on to the backs of 
hardworking people, small businesses.
  Look at these tax increases, $636 billion would fall on to the backs 
of small businesses in our country, the people

[[Page H3515]]

who create 70 percent of the jobs in our country. Then look at the cap-
and-trade legislation. This is a tax on energy. There is actually an 
energy tax in the President's budget. And while he said here on this 
floor just a few weeks ago that 95 percent of the people in this 
country would not be paying a dime in new taxes, what they failed to 
mention was the next day when he submitted his budget, he had a $646 
billion energy tax which is paid for not by those rich people in the 
top 2 percent, but paid for by every family out there who actually uses 
energy. And that is going to be roughly a $1,300 tax on everybody who 
uses power.
  So we have laid out a little bit of a framework of what is in this 
President's budget, what causes us concern and how there is a better 
way. With that I want to introduce my friend from Georgia (Mr. 
Westmoreland) to also share some of his thoughts on this.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank my friend from Louisiana for 
hosting this hour tonight and giving us a time to come talk to each 
other and the American people to give them an idea and maybe be able to 
connect some of the dots of what has been going on in this Chamber for 
the last 50-plus days of the new administration that we have.
  What we have seen in the gentleman's chart where it talks about small 
business and investors, $636 billion in tax increases on small 
business. And with that, a small business, a Subchapter S, if they make 
over $250,000--and if you're in business, you need to make that so 
you can reinvest in your company--they are taxed as individuals. So, 
this is a big tax increase. And the interesting part is that yesterday, 
President Obama came out with a $15 billion small business loan program 
which, if my figures are correct, is about 2.5 percent of the amount 
that he is going to increase the taxes on small business. Then the 
other startling thing when we started looking at this $15 billion--and 
I want to commend the President for doing the $15 billion and trying to 
help small businesses after he is burying them in this additional tax 
burden--but only 5 percent of the small businesses, only 5 percent of 
the small businesses get their loans from the SBA. So it means the 
other 95 percent get their loans from their community banks, their 
local banks.

  As the gentleman from Louisiana might remember, one of the reasons 
that this huge stimulus package or bank bailout bill, there has been so 
many of them I get confused, but one of the reasons the bank bailout 
bill was done was to unfreeze the credit market. Well, within 2 days 
after the bill passed in both Chambers, then-Secretary Paulson took a 
different track and decided to bail out some of these investment houses 
on Wall Street. And we can see how that has turned out. But credit was 
never unfrozen. And so these small businesses are hurting because their 
community banks can't loan them the money that it takes to make their 
payroll or do new investment or really just keep their business 
running.
  So what we see is that now, all of a sudden, the government is 
saying, well, we will make this loan available to you through the SBA. 
What that does is, it says, we will decide who gets the loans.
  In other words, it gives the government the ability to pick the 
winners and losers of who is going to be able to get these government-
backed small business loans. It takes the ability away from these 
community banks. They don't have the money to lend as a result of the 
mark-to-market rules and the other rules that have come down because of 
the catastrophe that we have had on Wall Street. Their assets, their 
loanable product and their cash reserves have gone down because of the 
mark-to-market rules. And so they don't have the money to loan to these 
small businesses in their own community.
  If you have a nail shop or a barber shop or an auto repair facility, 
that community banker knows that community and your ability to repay 
that loan better than anybody else. But now you're going to have to 
jump through all the hoops and the red tape that the government has in 
trying to get an SBA loan. And they will be the ones to pick the 
winners and losers, rather than the people in the community itself.
  So I think you have to look at the big picture of what all of this 
means. We look at the charitable contributions. If you make over 
$250,000 a year, which these small business guys will, you can only 
deduct your charitable contributions or your home mortgage up to 28 
percent of your taxable income. Well, what does that mean? Well, the 
government said, well, the reason we are doing that is because we had 
money for the charities in the stimulus bill. So what happens? Now, the 
government is picking the winners and the losers in the charity 
business. They are not wanting us to be able to take our money and do 
the things that we normally did with it. We gave to the United Way or 
to our church or to an overseas ministry or wherever it was, where we 
wanted our money to go. Now the government is saying, ``no, we are 
going to limit your ability to do that. We will take care of that for 
you. We will take your tax dollars and we will reward and give to the 
charities that we want to give to.''
  So you can see the gentleman from Louisiana has greatly explained the 
cap-and-trade which is going to be a tax on everybody that uses energy. 
I don't think the American people are going to continue to buy that 95 
percent of the people are not going to have a tax increase. That is a 
misrepresentation. Because if we do the cap-and-trade, everybody that 
uses energy--and as far as I know, everybody in this country uses some 
sort of energy--is going to pay more for that energy. That is a direct 
tax increase.
  So I want to thank the gentleman for hosting this Special Order. And 
I will sit down now and let some of your other friends and my friends 
get up and talk and continue the conversation.
  Mr. SCALISE. Reclaiming my time. Again, I want to thank the gentleman 
from Georgia for talking on that point about that cap-and-trade tax. 
And interestingly, about 1 year ago, Peter Orszag was the head of the 
Office of Management and Budget. He is actually now the President's 
budget director. The person who today is the President's budget 
director said that this tax, this energy tax, while decreasing 
emissions would also impose costs on the economy. Much of those costs 
will be passed along to the consumers in the form of higher prices for 
energy and energy-intensive goods.
  So what the President's own budget director said was, this energy tax 
that he has proposed in his budget will actually increase the cost of 
energy for every American family in this country. But it also will 
increase the cost of every energy-intensive good, meaning any time you 
go to fill up your tank at the gas station, you're going to be paying 
more in energy taxes. Any time you go and buy goods at the grocery 
store you will pay more because those products you buy, the food you 
buy, the can of soup you buy, they are trucked in from somewhere or it 
was shipped in on rail. All of those have costs. And those costs, as 
the President's budget director said, will be passed on to the 
consumer.
  In fact, we have got estimates that right here, according to an 
analysis by MIT researchers, the total energy bill for the average 
American household will increase by up to $3,128 per year based on 
Congressional Budget Office testimony. So this energy tax right here, 
this $646 billion that is in the President's budget, we are not talking 
about some bill that somebody filed that is never going to see the 
light of day. This has already been filed just 2 weeks ago in the 
President's budget, a day after he said here on this House floor that 
no American family that makes less than $250,000 will pay a dime. And 
the key was a dime. And I guess he was right. He won't pay a dime. 
According to the Congressional Budget Office, you will pay $3,128 in 
new energy taxes.
  And all of this is coming at a time when our economy is in such a 
troubled period. We are in a recession. We are trying to get out. And 
you surely don't get out by throwing $1.4 trillion of new taxes on to 
the backs of every small business and every consumer of energy, every 
family in America. We especially want to talk about freeing up these 
credit markets and getting our banking system working, because that is 
the problem that got us here in the first place. Some people want to 
say that there are no alternatives on the table, and there is one way, 
or ``my way or the highway,'' and it is just their approach or nobody 
else's. And

[[Page H3516]]

maybe they don't want to listen to other opinions. And that is 
unfortunate.

                              {time}  2215

  We live in a democracy, and that means that we exchange ideas and not 
everybody has a monopoly on great ideas. In fact, with 435 people in 
this body, you will get some good ideas, and some bad ideas too. I 
think some of them we have just talked about. But there are good ideas 
on the table.
  One idea still on the table, going back to the first financial 
bailout, H.R. 7223, this is a bill that was filed, almost a hundred-
page bill. I was a cosponsor of this bill. This was our alternative 
bill to the first financial bailout, about 6 months ago, when that 
first $700 billion bailout passed which many of us said was the wrong 
approach to fixing the financial crisis in our country. There was 
definitely a financial crisis. There still is a financial crisis.
  The problem is now the taxpayers are on the hook for $700 billion 
because the approach they used was to just throw taxpayer money at the 
problem and not go to the root and say why are banks not lending to 
banks? Why is it that people who have good credit ratings are having 
trouble getting loans?
  So what we did was we put an alternative on the table. It is kind of 
an interesting point now that we look at the problems going on with AIG 
and the fact that we see these egregious bonuses being paid to people, 
who in many cases were people who ran their company into the ground. 
The folks over at AIG who were getting $165 million in bonuses, they 
actually got $173 billion in taxpayer-funded bailouts from that 
financial bailout. In fact, they were the very people, many of these, 
who ran that company into the ground.
  So why is that a bad approach? I think the American public that is 
looking at this knows it is a bad approach. They are offended that 
their tax dollars, their hard-earned tax dollars and money that we 
don't have, money that our children and grandchildren are going to have 
to pay, are going to give executives of a failed company up to $6.5 
million each in bonuses during these tough times.
  So this bill that we filed that is still out there, this is still a 
solid alternative that I would suggest would help address and fix our 
economic problems, H.R. 7223, from the 110th Congress.
  What it did basically was set up a workout, not a bailout. It allowed 
and made these companies who ran their companies into the groundwork, 
actually go and work themselves out by going in and establishing a 
price for mortgage-backed securities, which is the problem which 
started all of this. A lot of the problems with subprime mortgages and 
then Fannie and Freddie giving loans to people who didn't have the 
ability to pay, all those things that still have not been reformed that 
need to be reformed, this bill actually addressed that problem, but it 
went one step further.
  My friend from Georgia talked about the mark-to-market accounting 
rule. Our bill addresses that and suspends it. There is a rule out 
there, it is a financial accounting rule, that many bank executives 
will tell you is currently forcing a lot of these mortgaged-backed 
securities to be valued at zero dollars, even though they have some 
value. Nobody knows what the value is today. But because the value is 
unknown, they have to literally mark them down to almost zero which 
means they have no ability to loan to anybody. By suspending that 
accounting rule alone, you would free up liquidity in the markets.
  One other change we were going to make that still is on the table 
today, it is still in this proposal and it is called repatriation.
  Back in 2005, Congress actually for 1 year lowered the capital gains 
rates for U.S. companies who have foreign profits. Believe it or not, 
there are still U.S. companies that are making profits. And some of 
them work and have businesses in other countries. Unfortunately, not 
enough of them bring those profits back to America to help the American 
economy. They leave them in foreign countries because they are taxed. 
Today, they are taxed on bringing that money back.
  For 1 year they tried suspending that tax. They lowered it from 35 
percent down to 5 percent. You know what happened, $300 billion of 
money came into our economy because those U.S. companies said we want 
to bring that money back and help the U.S. economy because the Federal 
Government is not going to tax us at such a high rate.
  That worked so well, you know what happened when the Democrats took 
control of Congress in 2006, they revoked that law. So the tax went 
back up, and you know what happened. Because the tax went up, those 
profits from those U.S. companies went back overseas. And they are 
still sitting in foreign banks helping foreign countries. But they 
could be here helping our country. Not taxpayer money, $300 billion by 
that one change could be here helping our country get back on track.
  These are just a few examples of what is in the alternative bill that 
was filed over 6 months ago that is still an alternative and we still 
offer up to the President. If President Obama really wants to get 
serious about addressing the banking problem, this is one way to go, to 
not put taxpayers on the hook, but actually use the markets and use the 
people that created this mess, and then use some smart changes that 
have been proven over time to put real liquidity back in the 
marketplace.
  I am joined by one of our bright new shining stars, a freshman Member 
from Utah, Mr. Chaffetz.
  Mr. CHAFFETZ. I thank the good Member for allowing me to join in this 
conversation because I think the American people are so frustrated. I 
am so frustrated. Here we have the greatest opportunity, the greatest 
country on the face of the planet, and yet we see this excessive 
spending and these taxes that will continue to grow and take away our 
liberty and freedom and ability to grow as families and as people. And 
that borrows so much.
  I think inherently the American people know that we can no longer 
afford to run this country on a credit card. I was touched by the 
mention of your daughter, Madison, and being 2 years old.
  As a father, I have three kids at home, and one of the hardest things 
about being in the House of Representatives is being away from your 
family at night. To do the work and argue about the issues of the day 
is a great privilege, but it is so hard to be away from that family. 
And you look into the eyes of your daughter or of your son, or you have 
a loved one who has maybe lost a job, or a friend who has lost a job or 
has a business that is struggling. I have people in my own community 
who had home building businesses, and they have literally fallen apart.
  The question is how are we going to solve these problems? How are we 
going to move this country forward? There are some on the Democrat side 
of the aisle who will argue that only government can solve these 
problems. It is not only government. In fact, I would argue it is only 
the American people that will actually go forward and solve and create 
and build this country back up to where it should be, as the economic 
and military leader in the world. That is done through entrepreneurs. 
It is done through building businesses.
  I was so satisfied. Actually, I felt a bit of vindication when I saw 
the President stand up and make the case that I have been making for a 
long, long time: that small businesses are the ones that are going to 
build jobs in this country, that small businesses are the drivers of 
this economy.
  And yet, that was the same argument that I used to say look, the 
trillions of dollars that are going to be set aside for stimulus and 
bailouts and all of that, isn't going to drive our economy forward. The 
last stimulus bill that we had, the Republicans in the House of 
Representatives united. Not one of them voted in favor of it. That was 
because it expanded 106 Federal programs, 33 new programs and a whole 
host of other programs, that got money sprinkled across it, but it did 
nothing for the Madisons of the world, for my son, Max, and Ellis and 
Kate, and for Burtis Bills, the mayor of Payson, and even my brother's 
father-in-law, Bob Johnson of Topeka, Kansas, who owns a transmission 
shop. I had to talk to these people and look them in the eye and convey 
to them that we weren't doing anything to help them. We were growing 
government, we weren't growing jobs. We were building all-time,

[[Page H3517]]

record-high debt, debt that ultimately has to be paid.
  So I look at what we are doing in this government, the amount of 
spending and the amount of taxes and the amount of borrowing, and say 
it is just too much. If we are truly going to grow the United States of 
America, it is going to be that entrepreneur. It is going to be that 
small business owner that is going to propel this country forward.
  Mr. SCALISE. I appreciate the passion and the examples that my friend 
from Utah gives of real people out there in this country and the things 
that they are dealing with. And, of course, the way that they deal with 
it is a lot different than unfortunately the way it is not being dealt 
with here in Washington. And especially when we know there are proven 
ways to address these problems.
  A lot of us kind of get a little irritated when we hear people 
complaining that the Republicans were in power and they did this and 
that so that makes it okay to do what they are doing today.
  If we talk about spending, and let's talk about the spending that has 
gone on. There is a lot of blame that can go around. I sure don't 
support the deficit spending that has been going on, but what we are 
seeing today, the deficit spending we are seeing today is historic. It 
is record levels. While some of our friends may want to criticize 
spending that had been done in the past, the spending that is going on 
today makes people in the past look like amateurs on spending. It is 
levels we have never seen before.
  Here is a chart that shows deficits over the last 4 years, and it is 
$400 billion, trickling down below $200 billion in 2007, definitely 
going in the right direction. We want to have surpluses and we want to 
run a balanced budget. I am a cosponsor of a bill to balance the 
Federal budget. We should require a balanced budget, but at least the 
direction was trending downward. And then we see the 2010 budget that 
was just submitted goes to $1.7 trillion in deficit spending in 1 year 
alone. And those record numbers continue on for years. In fact, the 
first 4 years of the President's budget would be over a 50 percent 
increase in the national debt.
  In those 4 years combined with every budget since President George 
Washington, so if you take George Washington and go through President 
Bush, and in just 4 years, President Obama will add 50 percent to the 
national debt because of this level of spending. This is again money 
our children and our grandchildren will have to inherit. In fact, the 
budget, that spending bill, and some people called it a stimulus bill 
that passed just a few weeks ago, the $800 billion spending bill that 
ended up spending billions of dollars on a high-speed rail from 
California to Las Vegas, and research for a field mouse, and massive 
growth of government, that one bill alone added over $3,000 in new 
national debt, $3,000 for every man, woman and child in this country.
  People say what did my State get for it? What is my community going 
to get for it? I think as they look, they will realize over the next 
few months, as they see more of these egregious spending programs that 
came out of that bill, they are going to realize that they didn't get 
$3,000 worth out of that bill.
  That is why when we talk about the entrepreneurial spirit, and I 
think my friend from Texas has some good insights on that, and great 
entrepreneurs and the fact that government can encourage a way out of 
this problem, but government spending cannot solve this problem. We can 
look back to the Great Depression, and we will talk about that and the 
mistakes made during the Great Depression.
  Mr. CARTER. I would like to point out something that seems to be a 
mistake that is made by a lot of people.
  The 2008 budget which would be argued here on the floor of the House 
was Bush's budget. The reality of spending, we up here, this House of 
Representatives has responsibilities as well as rights. And the real 
world is the President proposes a budget, but the Congress adopts the 
budget. It is the Congress's budget when we get through with it.
  So the 2008 budget that shows the increase over 2007 fairly 
substantially is the Congress's budget. You are not seeing George 
Bush's budget, you are seeing the Democrat-controlled Congress's budget 
in 2008.
  Now their President has proposed, the Democratic Party's President 
has proposed a 2009 budget that goes off the charts. It is kind of 
interesting because we hear, ``I will reduce the budget by 50 
percent.'' So let's see, if you raise the budget 300 percent and you 
reduce it 150 percent, you have reduced it 50 percent. We are still 150 
percent over where you were.

                              {time}  2230

  And that chart exactly shows what we're talking about. If you look at 
those lines, we're taking the President at his word, as we go all the 
way down here, what is that last one? 2018?
  Mr. SCALISE. If I can reclaim my time for a moment, and then I will 
yield back to my friend from Texas. What you're talking about right 
here in 2008, and this is when the Democratic-controlled Congress 
ramped up that spending. But even here, it is below $600 billion. And 
then in the first year of President Obama's budget, it goes up to $1.7 
trillion in deficits. This isn't the size of the budget--the budget is 
over $3.5 trillion--this is just the size of the deficit. And then if 
you look, by the fourth year of the President's budget, it is still 
roughly $600 billion. So it's higher in his fourth year than the first 
budget that he inherited.
  And so, while he would say he is reducing it by 50 percent, it is 
actually larger than the first budget that he inherited because his 
first budget adds over $1.7 trillion in deficit spending.
  And I will yield back.
  Mr. CARTER. That's right. That is my whole point. That chart clearly 
shows you that if your criticism was of the Bush administration for 
deficit spending--which we heard a lot of noise about that--then if you 
look at those red columns, none of those drops down to even equal with 
the largest Republican-led Congress deficit. Okay. They are almost 
double the Republican-led Congress' deficit all the way to the end of 
your chart.
  But yes, they do reduce that big line by more than 50 percent. If you 
want to talk about voodoo chart drawing, that's voodoo chart drawing. 
That's saying, if I jack it up to $3.6 trillion, then, yes, I can drop 
this thing big time down the road, but you are still way over what you 
were dealing with back in 2004. So this whole concept of trying to 
smoke and mirrors the world, it's time to stop all that.
  There is a young man I was just talking to out in the hall who has a 
little business, and he wants to go out and expand his little business. 
And his world is this, that he looks at it, he gets taxed as ordinary 
income even though he's a small business, and he says to himself, why 
should I stick my neck out for another couple hundred thousand dollars 
in debt to try to expand my business when all I'm going to do is get 
myself up into a tax bracket that I'm going to be going downhill?
  So, that's exactly the example. Or a young man I talked to, walked up 
to me at an event in Killeen, Texas, and he said, you know, my wife and 
I started a business 5 years ago. He said, we have taken this idea up 
to a business that employs 40 people. We are now at a point where we 
have to make a decision; do we expand our business by borrowing about a 
half a million dollars, indebting ourselves as a couple, and have the 
potential to maybe employ 80 people--which, gosh, isn't that what we 
want? Isn't that what we're talking about, creating jobs? He said, but 
we look at it, and we see what is coming down with this cap-and-trade 
and the cost that that's going to put on me, when we see what's coming 
down on the tax increase for people earning over $250,000, and we're 
concerned that will put such a burden upon us that we might actually 
lose this business. So now we're looking at it and saying, maybe we 
should shore up what we've got and lay off a few people to be sound in 
hopes that somebody will get sanity back in the taxing of our people in 
this country. And let's hold on until logic comes back into the world.
  That's not the way we want to cause people to expand and have a 
better life. And that's exactly what we're talking about with this 
budget that's proposed by the President and looks like is 
overwhelmingly going to be adopted by the majority in this House.
  We've got real issues here that the American people have to think 
about. Because with your 2-year-old daughter--and I wish her a happy 
birthday--that's where you should be focusing all

[[Page H3518]]

your attention. And I should be focusing all my attention on what we're 
leaving--not just to her little generation at 2 years old that's going 
to grow up in this country, but the children that she is going to have 
and the children they are going to have. If we keep going down the road 
that we're going down right now with the kind of unbelievable spending 
that has gone on in the first 50 some-odd days of Obama's first term as 
President of the United States, if this keeps up, how will our 
descendants ever pay this back?
  Mr. SCALISE. Reclaiming my time, the gentleman from Texas makes some 
wonderful points. And I appreciate your concern for what happens when 
Madison, my daughter, grows up and what kind of country she is going to 
be left with and what kind of debt she is going to inherit. And I think 
when the American people across the country look at this--and they've 
started to look at it in, I think, a very close way. And what they're 
telling me when I go back home, and those of us that have gone 
throughout the country to our districts, they're telling us that this 
budget spends too much and it taxes too much. And it borrows too much 
from future generations at the expense of our ability to get our 
economy back on track to help those small businesses.
  And then they look and they say, well, what are all of these 
deficits? What is all of this spending going toward? And what they see, 
they see that first stimulus bill, they look at this TARP money, they 
look at what's happening with that TARP money and AIG and companies 
that are getting this money. In some cases, you can't even find out 
what they did with the money. And then when you find out what they did, 
it makes you even more angry because you see they are giving it in 
bonuses to people who helped run those companies into the ground. These 
are people who truly would be unemployed because they bankrupted their 
own companies, and today the only reason they have a job is because of 
these Federal bailouts of these companies. And then they are using that 
money--not to make loans, but something even more egregious. And as 
angered as we are hearing about these bonuses that they're paying--$160 
million in bonuses that AIG paid to its executives--we also found out 
today that AIG used $26 billion of that taxpayer money to give to 
French and German banks--not American banks, to help our American 
banking system, but $26 billion of that TARP money went to German and 
French banks, which might be helping their economies in those 
countries, but it sure isn't helping America. So for those of us who 
voted against those bailouts, saying I told you so doesn't help 
anybody, but saying this madness has to end.
  And people are looking at this. And then they are seeing the budget 
that's proposed. And they're seeing these huge spikes in deficit 
spending and this huge amount of new government socializing of 
different systems and forms of our economy, and it's scaring people. 
Because when you look at the stock market, the stock market is an 
indication not just of what's happening to those individual companies, 
but of consumer confidence. In fact, since this President took office 
in January, the stock market is down about 25 percent. That means 
401(k)s out there, families who are investing in those markets, their 
retirement savings are down over 25 percent just since January 20. 
We're not talking about something that has been going on for over a 
year now, we're talking about something that is maybe 2 months in the 
making, a 25 percent decrease because people are seeing these plans--
these spending plans, these tax plans, this massive borrowing--and they 
are realizing somebody has to pay for this.

  And what are we doing with this money? And you can't even go find it. 
It's not helping our country get back on track; because, again, if you 
go back to the Great Depression--and we said we are going to talk about 
this a little bit--during the Great Depression in the 1930s, it wasn't 
because they didn't spent enough money. They actually spent money for 
years and years and the depression stayed as bad as it was. For over 8 
years they spent money. And there is an old saying, if you don't learn 
from history, you are doomed to repeat it.
  Back in the 1930s, the budget director, the Treasury Secretary under 
FDR, Henry Morgenthau, actually said, ``We're spending too much 
money.'' After 8 years of them spending money, they were still at 
double-digit unemployment. We were still in a Great Depression. In 
fact, some people said we were in a recession then, and the spending 
brought us into a Great Depression. And FDR's own Treasury Secretary in 
the 1930s said it's the spending that's giving us all this massive 
debt, and it's not doing anything to help our economy. It wasn't until 
World War II that we got back on track.
  And so people are looking at that and saying, wait a minute; we sure 
don't want to make the mistakes of history's past if we learn how we 
are going to get ourselves out of this problem today.
  If the gentleman has anything else to add----
  Mr. CARTER. If the gentleman would yield for just a moment, because I 
actually happened to be thinking about that on my way up here this 
week.
  We are experiencing that rare time that all Members of Congress who 
travel back and forth have to deal with called spring break. And I 
think that everybody that flew on an airplane coming up here knows that 
there were thousands and thousands and thousands of young people going 
all over the country and all over Mexico--and who knows where--on 
spring break. And it reminded me of something that Will Rogers said 
during the Great Depression, he said, ``America is a funny place. We 
may be the only country in the world that's driving to the poor house 
in an automobile.'' The whole point was, we need to remind ourselves, 
as we debate about this issue, that we are Americans who, if given the 
right tools, can incentivize our way out of any mess we get into.
  We are still the most blessed Nation on the face of the Earth. We 
need to fix this banking crisis. And we don't need to fix it by 
indebting our grandchildren and our great grandchildren with special 
projects to meet campaign promises that were made. We need to 
concentrate on the issue, which is getting credit back in the market. 
And then that young man out in the hall and that young man in Killeen, 
Texas, can go borrow their loan from their bank and go invest it in the 
future for their children and grandchildren, and our country will 
continue to send all these beautiful children off on spring break.
  I think we realize who we are. We can do anything we set our mind to 
if the government will just get out of the way and give us a chance to 
do it. I yield back.
  Mr. SCALISE. Reclaiming my time. And I thank the gentleman from Texas 
for sharing that because that is the reason that we're here tonight 
because we know that there is a better way, there is a way out of this 
problem. And people across this country know. They know that we put a 
man on the moon because we, as a nation, set our mind to it and we said 
we are not going to accept failure. And so as people look at these 
proposals and they look at these record deficits, they know this is not 
the way out. They know that if spending would solve this problem, we 
would have the best economy in decades. And so, clearly, spending and 
taxing is not the answer.
  But there are proven answers; and some of those answers are rooted in 
the very things we've been talking about, the alternative proposals 
we've been talking about, ways to help small businesses get back on 
their feet and hire more people. The people that employ 70 percent of 
our workforce today are being faced with $640 billion in taxes by this 
budget, and obviously that has had a ripple effect. And we can unravel 
that by stopping this from happening.
  And people across this country know that, too. That's why you are 
seeing these tea parties sprout up all across the country where people 
are saying, we are not going to take it anymore, and we want to stand 
up and let the government know--because government does answer to the 
people, especially here in this House, of all places, the People's 
House. So this is the voice of the people, and we're trying to express 
that voice. And another great voice is my friend from Texas as well, 
Mr. Burgess.
  Mr. BURGESS. I thank the gentleman for yielding. And I really 
appreciate your energy and enthusiasm with

[[Page H3519]]

coming to the floor at this late hour of the night. You and I serve on 
the same committee, and our committee has been extremely active for the 
past several weeks. I think we spent 10 hours today talking about 
health care. We will spend many hours tomorrow talking about the carbon 
tax that is going to be enacted before Memorial Day. And then on 
Thursday we will have another lengthy hearing dealing with food safety; 
all terribly important issues to the American people. It's good to be 
up here doing the people's work. Unfortunately, on the floor of the 
House this week we're not really doing very much, but at least in our 
committee there is a great deal of work going on.
  I will say that I am grateful that this week the President chose to 
stop talking down the economy and Wall Street, and we perhaps had a 
little bit of a respite from the inexorable downward spiral that we had 
seen from Inauguration Day forward. That has been a welcomed respite, I 
know, to my constituents back home.
  I so appreciate the gentleman having the poster which shows the 
differences in the deficit by the time we lost control of the House 
with the 2006 election. We were told that we lost the election for the 
majority of the House in 2006 because of spending, because we had a 
deficit of $160 billion at the end of that fiscal year. Mind you, that 
was a year that had seen Federal expenditures go up because of 
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the continued fighting of two wars in the 
Middle East. We had a tsunami that we had to help with right after the 
2004 election. There were some significant expenditures which were 
really once-in-a-lifetime expenditures, and our deficit was $160 
billion.
  Now, 3 years later, we are looking at a projected deficit 10 times 
that much, 10 times $160 billion. And we're told, don't worry, all is 
well, we can, indeed, spend our way out of this crisis. But I will tell 
you, I have not been in favor of any of these spending bills that have 
come through the House of Representatives in the past year. I think, 
going back to January of 2008, the so-called stimulus bill of $170 
billion at that time was an error; it was wrong, and it didn't deliver 
as intended.

                              {time}  2245

  The bill to bail out Fannie and Freddie in July that had to be redone 
in September didn't have the intended result, and then finally the big 
bailout that occurred right at the end of September, the first of 
October, in the election process clearly was a spending bill that we 
should not have undertaken.
  Now, it's instructive to know if you're spending all this money and 
you're not bringing it in in tax revenue, we are intending or at least 
the signals are there that the Democrats are intending to raise taxes 
considerably on every American, as has already been alluded to, this 
carbon tax. Yes, you won't pay more tax if you earn less than $250,000 
a year, unless you turn the lights on, in which case you're going to 
spend more in taxes, unless you drive a car, in which case you're going 
to spend more in taxes. So there will be massive tax increases visited 
upon the middle class of this country. But if you can't tax enough to 
cover this much spending, where do you get it? Well, you either print 
it or you borrow it, and right now we are in the process of borrowing 
this money.
  Just a little less than a month ago, I spent an interesting afternoon 
down at a Federal agency called the Bureau of Public Debt. The Bureau 
of Public Debt that day was having its third of three auctions. Each 
auction was to be $32 billion, so roughly $100 billion which was going 
to auctioned off that day. Each auction lasted 30 minutes. Each 
auction, fortunately, was fully subscribed, in fact, oversubscribed. So 
the notes that we had to sell as a country to keep our economy afloat 
did sell. The interest rate was not terrible. It was 1\1/3\ percent. At 
the same time, a month ago we were selling about $160 billion in paper 
every week. A year before, it was a little less than $100 billion, and 
it has obviously gone up every year, year over year, and will continue 
to do so.
  What is the effect of putting $2.1 trillion in new paper on the 
market in a very short period of time? Well, one of two things can 
happen: Your interest rates will go up or the paper won't sell. If the 
interest rates go up, that crowds out the private sector, which is also 
competing for that money to borrow to expand business and grow 
business. We're going to make it that much harder to add new jobs 
because we're going to add to the expense of a business growing or 
expanding. In addition, the tax burden that we are going to be adding 
in the energy sector alone will be a job-killing crush that most people 
at this point, quite frankly, haven't engaged upon. They do not 
comprehend the danger that is coming their way as we seek to recover 
our economy and grow new jobs and grow new sources of revenue.
  One of the things that I have been so concerned about is here we are 
talking about a very enormous budget, an enormous amount of Federal 
spending. Have we really corrected the problems that were the 
underlying difficulties before? And I'm not certain we had. I came to 
Congress in 2003. I was elected in 2002 and was sworn in in 2003. We 
had just come through a very significant economic downturn. We had just 
come through some very significant corporate malfeasance with the 
implosion of Enron. We had new regulations enacted in Sarbanes-Oxley. 
And the feeling was that we had done all we needed to do and we had 
gotten it right. But the reality was there were still problems and we 
hadn't gotten to the bottom of it.
  I urged the prior administration to proceed upon a course with 
engaging--I don't like to use the term ``Special Prosecutor.'' Perhaps 
we should call it a ``Special Inspector General''--to look into the 
problems in the financial institution that caused us to be in this 
place. That did not happen.
  Within the next 2 days, I am going to be introducing with another 
member on the Joint Economic Committee, another Member of the House, a 
bill to ask for a commission to study the problems that brought us to 
this point. I am not a fan of commissions. I think, in fact, most of 
the time they detract from congressional power and they are something 
that we should not do. But in this instance, the stakes are so high and 
the price we will pay if we get this wrong yet one more time will be so 
large that I, frankly, do not know if the country can sustain that. So 
I will be introducing legislation to ask for a commission to study not 
only what went wrong but who should be held accountable at this point. 
The same as we did with 9/11. The same as we did with the Iraq Study 
Group. I was not in favor of those commissions, but I think in this 
situation it does warrant that type of intervention because we cannot 
allow this to happen again.
  And I don't know about you, Mr. Scalise, but when I go down to 
Denton, Texas, when I go home to Fort Worth, Texas, or Lewisville, 
Texas, and I talk about these problems, everyone wants to know who is 
responsible and when are we going to see someone held accountable? And 
the fact that we see more people receive bonus money for driving their 
companies into the ground because, oh, I'm so sorry, it's contractual 
obligation; so we have no way around it. Nonsense. Ask any Delta pilot 
what happened to their contractual obligation about their pension. Ask 
any United pilot what happened to the contractual obligation with their 
pension, and they will tell you what those contractual obligations were 
worth. These contractual obligations to AIG border on criminal. There 
is no defense for our continuing down this road, and those need to be 
stopped.
  I do hope that people will take a look at the concept of having a 
commission to study this problem because I do believe that the 
difficulties are so deep and so entrenched that if we do not correct 
them, if we do not get rid of the dry rot that's in the system, we will 
build an entirely new house of cards on an unstable foundation, and we 
know where that will lead.
  But I do thank the gentleman for bringing this forward. Again, I know 
it's been a very long day at least for members of our committee. We 
will have a long day again tomorrow. We'll have a long day on Thursday. 
I wish our floor schedule mirrored that. Unfortunately, right now we 
don't seem to feel the same urgency on the floor of the House that the 
American people are feeling every single day as they watch the job 
losses mount in their communities and their area.

[[Page H3520]]

  But I thank the gentleman very much for allowing me a chance to talk 
on this.
  Mr. SCALISE. I want to thank my friend from Texas for sharing that 
with us. And really it is important that we unravel this mess, that we 
not only fix these problems but also that we hold those accountable who 
got us in this mess in the first place because in some cases some of 
those same people are still out there today using taxpayer money to 
enrich themselves when so many people across the country are 
struggling.
  And when we go back to these charts and we look at these record 
deficits, we look at the fact that, yes, in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, 
we had deficits and they were too high. But they were too high while 
they were less than $200 billion. Today we're facing a deficit that's 
over $1.7 trillion. An exorbitant amount of money. An amount of money 
that's going to saddle future generations.
  And when we look historically at our national debt, we started with 
about $10 trillion in national debt at the beginning of this year. 
We're already closing in on $12 trillion in national debt, and this 
chart shows how it continues to rise in the years ahead with these 
record deficits and these taxes that are going to kill jobs in our 
country. So that's what we are trying to stop. We are not saying this 
is something that has already happened when we get beyond 2008. We're 
talking about things that are proposed that we can stop.

  So I want to go back to my friend from Utah who's got an interesting 
insight as well to talk about what we can do to stop this and where 
this national debt leads us if we don't stop it from happening.
  Mr. CHAFFETZ. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  This chart should be concerning to every single American because what 
it shows is a doubling, a doubling, from $10 trillion to over $20 
trillion of debt. Somebody has to pay that. It's going to be our kids 
and our grandkids and future generations. We continue to leave this 
country in a state of debt that is not sustainable.
  I didn't create this mess, but I am here to help clean it up. I'm a 
freshman here. But I think we all have to take some responsibility and 
hold our government leaders accountable for the mess that we're getting 
in. I think they would appreciate it a lot more if there were more 
sacrifice. The President talked about going line by line, item by line. 
We were going to get rid of earmarks. We were going to get rid of this; 
we were going to get rid of that, go line by line. That hasn't 
happened. The very day after the President said those words, we were 
presented a bill that was $410 billion and it had over 8,500 earmarks, 
8,500-plus earmarks. The President had just asked for zero, for none. 
And yet it passed. It went to the President and he signed it. That just 
doesn't sound like the type of responsibility and accountability that I 
would expect from my own kids, from the President of the United States. 
So there has to be this degree of responsibility.
  And I also want to touch on the AIG thing because that's on the top 
of everybody's mind. Really what we have seen is a redistribution of 
wealth. We have seen the government misuse the role of government in 
reaching into people's pockets and then redistributing that, picking 
winners and losers like AIG and others, and saying it's better that we 
take that money out of the people's pockets and put it in their 
pockets. And then with this audacity, this greed, this unsustainable, 
unacceptable passion, they go out and misuse this money.
  Don't you just wish these executives that were going to get these 
bonuses--why don't they just step up and do the right thing? I wish 
there would be a sense of pride within these people to say it's just 
not right for me to get a bonus. It's like when I was a little kid and 
I was playing soccer or baseball or something like that. I was taught 
that what you were supposed to do is if you stepped over the line, if 
you didn't actually make it, you're supposed to call it yourself 
instead of saying, well, that wasn't me, instead of getting tied up in 
some technicality that would allow them to do something that they 
really should not have been doing.
  So what I would hope that people would do is to take this personal 
responsibility. The government's not. We are here to fight to make sure 
that it does become more accountable. But it's this underlying greed 
that, oh, my goodness, please, step up and do the right thing.
  But that debt, that is something we can do something about. And 
that's why I think you see so many of us stepping up and saying the 
President's budget spends too much, it taxes too much, and it borrows 
too much.
  Mr. SCALISE. I thank my friend from Utah again because I think what 
he touches on is this lost direction, this lost focus on the real 
problem that we are facing right now. And those of us that are here 
tonight are staying here as late as we can to try to get this 
administration back on track, focused on fixing the problems of this 
economy, on fixing the problems in our banking system.
  Again, that bill is still out there, H.R. 7223, from the 110th 
Congress. We are still ready to present these ideas. These are good 
solutions to solve the problems our country faces today. But instead 
what do we get? Instead of that line-by-line scrutiny that we need, for 
the last 2 weeks we've had the White House, people in the White House, 
picking on media personalities, talking about what Rush Limbaugh is 
saying on the radio or what Jim Cramer is saying on CNBC. If that's the 
focus of this administration, it's no wonder why people are so mad out 
there in the rest of the country saying what about the focus on the 
real problems that we are facing and the things that need to be done, 
the things the White House needs to be doing to address those problems, 
going line by line and cutting out the waste and the fraud and the 
corruption that exists in this government and in this budget instead of 
picking on media personalities or filing bills to tax small businesses 
or families on their energy bill?
  Just last week we saw a bill filed called Card Check. A bill that 
literally would take away an employee's right to a secret ballot in a 
vote over whether or not to form a union. This is something for decades 
that's been in law. There's a process. If somebody wants to form a 
union, there is a process they go through, but it involves a secret 
ballot in the end to decide whether or not those employees actually 
want to form a union, and it's a protection for the employee so that 
they are freed from the intimidation and the coercion that has gone 
along in years past, in decades past, times in our history we sure 
don't want to repeat. That bill was filed last week to take away an 
employee's right to a secret ballot and forcing arbitration on 
companies.
  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has come out with reports that show that 
bill alone would cost our country 600,000 jobs in the first year, 
600,000 jobs if that bill passed that would go overseas. And the 
President said he would sign that bill. So people look at this and they 
say we're facing real problems in our country, but we know, because 
we're America, because we are the greatest country in the world, we 
know we can address and fix these problems. But what they are very 
disappointed in is that they don't see solutions coming out of the 
leadership here in Congress and the White House. So that's why we are 
going to continue to talk about it and find solutions and find a better 
way.

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