[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 50 (Tuesday, March 24, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H3786-H3787]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1545
                             CAP-AND-TRADE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Rogers) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROGERS of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I rise today for the urgency 
that faces the United States--and I hope every single American engages 
in this debate.
  The economy has certainly taken a great toll on the great State of 
Michigan, where I'm from, and President Obama's recently offered 
budget, if enacted, is just one more slap at working people of the 
great State of Michigan and all around this country.
  It creates a cap-and-tax program for the first time in this history. 
Something that used to be free, you're now taxed to use it.
  The National Association of Manufacturers estimate this plan will 
cost Michigan alone 121,000 jobs by 2030. It also increases gas rates 
by 141 percent and electric rates by 177 percent. What does that mean 
to you? If you have a $70 per month electric bill today, it's going up 
to $193 per month just for the enactment of the cap-and-tax program.
  If you're paying about $1.91, as you are at the pump today, if 
enacted, the cap-and-tax program takes that to $4.60 a gallon. Good 
luck in economic prosperity.
  If you're a UAW worker in Michigan today and you happen to work in 
the great city of Lansing, Michigan, you are already paying a State gas 
tax, a Federal gas tax. You're paying a tax for your driver's license, 
a tax for your license tag, you're paying a sales tax on the car which 
you purchased. You pay a city income tax, a State income tax, and a 
Federal incomes. You pay your FICA tax.
  If you go home and if you enjoy a beer after work, there's a special 
excise tax on the beer that you consume. You click on your cable TV, 
you pay a tax for that as well. You sit in your Barcalounger. Guess 
what? You paid a sales tax on that, too.
  Mr. President, more taxes will not solve the problem. It will 
exacerbate the problem. Working families in this country deserve a 
break, not platitudes, not kind words, not silver-tongued speeches.
  These people are right on the edge of losing their homes, and we're 
going to enact a tax that makes it that much harder for them to make 
the very payments to stay in their homes today.
  Every time you tax a job like this--imagine this. We build cars. 
Imagine if the taxes go that much up on just your home ownership 
costs--your electric bill, your gas bill, when you fill up with 
gasoline--imagine what happens to the manufacturing base that uses 
energy. The cost for producing that car goes up.
  So you're your paying more for gas a gallon, you're paying more for 
your electric bill. And, guess what? If you want to go out and buy a 
car, good luck. The cost of that electricity increase is built into the 
cost of that car.
  We no longer will remain competitive. I tell you what--China loves 
this idea. India loves this idea. Absolutely. They want to make it 
prohibitive for us to build anything in the United States of America. 
And how do we do it in this budget? We increase the budget

[[Page H3787]]

by $49,040 per man, woman, and child in America.
  Your Congress will have borrowed more money in the past year than the 
cost of all America's wars combined. One year. You know, the sad thing 
is we have to go to countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and others and, 
we have to ask them: Please, lend us money for these programs that we 
know may in fact hurt the American people here in the very near future.
  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that President 
Obama's budget will force the United States to borrow $9.3 trillion. 
That equates to more than $120,000 per family of four for 14 years--
think of this--14 years of groceries for the average family of four. 
Every man, woman, and child, 14 years of groceries by just the debt 
that we are placing on our children's heads in the very near future. 
This is an unprecedented expanse of government at the expense of the 
future prosperity of the children of the United States.
  About 64 percent of the businesses will claim, at this $250,0000 
limit--64 percent of those are small businesses. So your diners, the 
folks that you go and get your auto fixed at--guess what? They're 
getting a tax increase as well. So not only are they paying all that 
other tax, they're getting another tax increase to make this whole 
budget try to work.
  At the end of the day, you're still assuming $120,000 in debt per 
family. What have we done? Where are we going?
  We know how this works. And if we can just take a step back, take a 
deep breath and say, Mr. President, we're with you. But you cannot tax 
the prosperity of America and our children and their future. You cannot 
tax so much, you cannot spend so much, and you cannot borrow so much if 
we want prosperity in the future.
  I would hope Americans are paying attention and asking some very hard 
questions about the future of this great Nation.

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