[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 49 (Monday, March 23, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H3722]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TAX THEM TO DEATH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the government answer to government-
created problems is to tax people and businesses that are producing. 
The economic philosophy is simple: Punish success by the power of the 
tax.
  The latest government tax plan is the energy tax. The idea is, tax 
anything that uses energy. And it contains several philosophies. The 
first one is raise the gasoline tax 10 cents. I guess the government 
bureaucrats don't think gasoline prices are high enough already. 
Americans pay 18 cents in Federal gasoline tax, about 20 cents in State 
tax; and gasoline is approaching $2 a gallon, so they are going to 
raise taxes and make it harder for us to drive.
  But that is not all. The idea also is to tax mileage of cars. It is 
called the car user tax. In other words, for every mile an American 
citizen drives, they are going to get taxed for that mile. Of course, 
that hurts people in rural areas, it hurts people who don't have mass 
transit and don't have a choo-choo train to ride to work. But it is the 
car user tax, and we don't know yet how much that is going to be.
  But we have more. The idea also is to tax the use of energy in your 
home. In other words, when you turn on the lights, you are using 
electricity and you are going to get taxed for using that energy. If 
you have hot water in your home and you use a hot water heater that is 
run by natural gas and you turn on the hot water, since you are using 
natural gas you are going to get taxed again for the use of energy. And 
of course in the winter in some places in the United States they use 
home heating oil to keep warm in the winter. And since they are using 
energy, they are going to get taxed for that. It is the home use energy 
tax on all Americans. And of course the same is going to be applied to 
businesses. But businesses, they are going to pass their taxes on down 
to the consumer who has to pay all of those taxes as well.
  There is more. There is the cap-and-trade tax, or the cap tax as I 
call it. What that is, it is based on the unproven mythical theory of 
global warming and the use of CO2; so if you use any 
CO2, you are going to get taxed for that.
  There are other taxes. Those include taxes on energy production. What 
that is, is those businesses--we call them oil companies--that produce 
energy for the rest of us to use, they are going to be taxed with so 
many different taxes I don't have time to go through it; but what it 
amounts to, it will cost the American consumer another 41 cents per 
gallon of gasoline to pay for that tax on energy production that is 
being passed from the oil companies down to the American consumer. And, 
of course, the effect of that, whether intended or unintended, will be 
to send those energy-producing companies, those oil companies, 
somewhere else. We already find out that some of them are moving to 
Switzerland.
  When that happens, we will get less tax revenue to begin with. You 
see, we already have the second highest corporate income tax in the 
world. And why would we fault oil companies for moving overseas when 
they are already paying so much taxes? And these energy taxes will 
increase and encourage people to move offshore and to other places.
  Mr. Speaker, whether people know it or not, we do not have 
alternatives for the use of crude oil or gasoline yet. Some day we 
might have one of those electric cars that we all get to drive around 
in, but we don't have it now. So if we keep sending energy companies 
overseas, make it harder for them to produce, tax the energy 
consumption, it is going to be more difficult for us to exist in this 
world.
  So why don't we do something a little novel. Why don't we allow more 
energy exploration, instead of continuing to subsidize the Middle 
Eastern oil countries who don't like us anyway.
  If we explore more, that will create jobs that stay in America. It 
will bring revenue to the American Treasury, because those oil 
companies have to pay for those leases. We can then get more tax 
revenue from those oil companies, and money will stay here, instead of 
shipping it overseas to foreign countries. A novel idea. And there is 
not a tax included in any of that.
  But it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that the current bureaucrats never 
saw a tax they didn't like. So we will all just get to ride bicycles 
and freeze in the cold dark of winter, and for light we will have to 
use candles since we can't afford to pay the electricity tax on our 
homes.
  And that's just the way it is.

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