[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 52 (Thursday, March 26, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H4048-H4054]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN'S FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to come 
here today with some of my colleagues to talk about several issues that 
we think are of very much concern to the American people. Whatever we 
do here in terms of spending, we know has a major impact on our 
country. And it's not just for today that it has an impact but it's for 
a long, long time. And so we are highlighting today what is happening 
with the budget that has been made public today and that's going to be 
debated next week, and probably adopted, unfortunately, unfortunately 
for the American people and for our children and our grandchildren, 
maybe even our great grandchildren. So we'll be talking about that for 
the next hour.
  And I'm joined by two of my colleagues that I want to yield some time

[[Page H4049]]

to to ask them to make some presentations on some particular issues 
they are very familiar with and do a wonderful job of explaining. So 
I'd like to yield now to my colleague from Georgia, the distinguished 
physician, Mr. Gingrey.

                              {time}  1315

  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlelady from 
North Carolina for yielding.
  As she was pointing out, next week, the budget--the House version of 
our budget for fiscal year 2010--will be on this floor, and I think 
there is the full intention for that budget to be voted on and passed 
this coming week. Those of us who do not sit on the Budget Committee 
are not sure of all of the fine details in that budget, but we do know 
what our President has proffered to the Congress and to the American 
people as to what he would like to see as the Office of Management and 
Budget develops this $3.6 trillion budget. I think this is the highest 
amount of spending that we have had in this country since we originated 
our country way back in 1776 and 1779.
  The bottom line in regard to it is really simple as we look at it, as 
we, the loyal minority--the Republican party--look at that budget. 
There is no question but that it does three things: It spends 
enormously; it taxes painfully, and it borrows dangerously. Said 
another way, President Obama's budget spends too much; it taxes too 
much, and it borrows too much. We feel that that is wrong. As I talk 
today with my colleague Virginia Foxx, I think it is important that 
people understand that there is a better way.
  According to Republican philosophy, it has always been our feeling--
and I think this is a major difference between the Republicans and the 
Democrats--that we think ``less government.'' We think people have an 
opportunity to hold onto more of their hard-earned dollars and to pay 
less taxes to the Federal Government and to limit spending. That is the 
best recipe to get us out of this economic ditch that we are in. You 
have heard, and I have heard my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle many times say, ``The first rule of a ditch is that, when you're 
in one, you need to stop digging.'' Well, without question, this budget 
that the President has submitted to us is just digging a deeper and 
deeper hole in regard to the amount of debt--well, deficit spending, 
red ink--from year to year. In the aggregate, of course, you accumulate 
more and more debt, and you have to pay interest on that debt. It is 
just something that we, in our lifetimes, will never pay back. Our 
grandchildren will never pay it back, but our great grandchildren--
maybe they will pay it back, but what a burden, what a legacy to leave 
to the next generations.
  So I thank the gentlewoman. I am really happy to be sharing the time 
with her and with my other colleagues.
  I will yield back to Ms. Foxx, and we will continue to discuss some 
of the finer points of this budget that we are going to be voting on 
next week.
  Ms. FOXX. Well, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for setting the 
stage for this and for reiterating what we, as Republicans, believe so 
strongly in--that the President's budget spends too much, taxes too 
much and borrows too much.
  Well, what we know now is that the budget presented by the Democrats 
in the meetings in the Budget Committee yesterday is basically the 
same. They kept trying to say their budget was going to be different 
from the President's. They have heard the firestorm. The American 
people are beginning to wake up. They realize that some things that 
were said to them in last year's election are not turning out the way 
they thought they were going to turn out, and they are getting a little 
spooked by that, so they've been trying to backpedal from that. They 
were saying there is going to be less spending, smaller deficits, lower 
debt, but in the meeting yesterday, during the markup, we know now that 
the two budgets are really the same. Here are some of their comments 
that prove that. We don't have to say it. We just use their own words:

  ``This budget resolution shares the President's priorities.''
  ``This is a key step to making the President's plan a reality.''
  ``The President has proposed, and under this budget, we support his 
plans.''
  The chairman's mark ``embraces and supports the President's budget.''
  These remarks admitted the obvious. The mark could be described as 
different only if one believed the following: that the 5-year budget 
window as opposed to the President's 10-year plan is not designed to 
hide the explosion of cost after 2014 for the President's ambitious, 
big-government agenda; that the Alternative Minimum Tax will be fixed 
in a deficit neutral fashion--that is, by raising other taxes, though 
the Democrats, themselves, have rejected this approach for the past 2 
years; that Making Work Pay Tax Credit, a key provision in the 
President's budget, will not be extended unless offset, and it was 
created as an emergency; that the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the 
TARP, is over, and the Treasury Secretary's financial stabilization 
plan will get no more funding; and that the mark's numerous reserve 
funds, also known as tax-and-spend, will not be used to increase 
spending and taxes in the President's plan for a sweeping expansion of 
government.
  So we know now that the Democrat budget, presented by the Democrat 
leadership, is the same as the Obama budget, so we will go on to show 
why we think this budget is not the right thing to do.
  Before we spend more time on that, I want to give some time to my 
colleague from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette), who has an excellent presentation 
to show how we are getting into the messes that we are getting into as 
a result of the action of the majority. I know there are still some 
people out there who don't understand that this Congress is controlled 
by the Democrats. It has been controlled by the Democrats since January 
of 2007, and while they keep talking about what they have inherited, 
they have to own up to the responsibility at some point.
  I yield now such time as he may consume to my wonderful colleague 
from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette).
  (Mr. LaTOURETTE asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
his remarks.)
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, I thank the gentlelady from North Carolina.
  You know, I think the gentlelady from North Carolina and the 
gentleman from Georgia have correctly hit on the fact--and I think 
anyone who realistically looks at the budget that we are going to be 
asked to pass judgment on next week--spends too much, taxes too much 
and borrows too much from future generations, but of as much concern or 
maybe of more concern to me is, basically, that there are things 
occurring in this House that I never thought would occur.
  This is my 15th year in the United States Congress. I am proud to 
represent my corner of Ohio. There is this notion that we can rush 
legislation through without reading it and without knowing what is in 
it. Especially on our side--and I will talk about the stimulus bill in 
a minute--we got about 90 minutes to read 1,000 pages, 1,000 pages in 
the stimulus bill. They gave us 90 minutes to read it, and then people 
are surprised when funny things happen. The funny thing I want to just 
mention and why I hope we don't go down this road with the budget that 
spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much is what happened 
in the stimulus bill.
  So, again, this was put forward as ``we have to get it done.'' We had 
to get it done by the President's Day recess for some reason. I don't 
know what the reason was, but we had to get it done and get it done in 
a hurry. On the Tuesday of the week that we considered the stimulus 
bill, we had a vote here in this Chamber. The proposition was--and it 
was a silly proposition--before we would be asked to vote on the 
stimulus bill, every Member would be given 48 hours to read the bill, 
and it would be posted on the Internet so our constituents and anybody 
who was interested could also read the bill and could have 48 hours to 
sort of digest it. Everybody voted. Everybody who was here that day 
voted to do that--every Republican and every Democrat.
  Well, then we came along to Friday, and the bill was filed at a 
little after midnight on Thursday night. I apologize that I wasn't up 
to receive the 1,000 pages to read it then, but when I did get into the 
office, there were 90

[[Page H4050]]

minutes to read 1,000 pages between the time I got to work and the time 
that we had the vote. That was the length of the debate.
  People said, ``Well, don't worry about it, you know. It's only 1,000 
pages. It only spends $1 trillion. Why would you want to read the 
thing?'' Well, sadly--and we warned--what happens when you do things 
like that is that people get embarrassed, and in fact, people did get 
embarrassed.
  Some folks may remember that, for the last couple of weeks, people 
have been upset about these million-dollar bonuses, these multi-
million-dollar bonuses, included in the bill, that went to executives 
at a company called AIG, which many point a finger to as at least 
participating in the economic decline that we, sadly, are experiencing.
  When the stimulus bill was considered in the United States Senate, 
across the Rotunda on the other side, two Senators--a Democratic 
Senator by the name of Wyden from Oregon and a Republican Senator by 
the name of Snowe from Maine--authored an amendment that went into the 
stimulus bill that said--and it was pretty simple--that if you are a 
firm that is getting billions of taxpayer dollars, do not give million-
dollar bonuses to your executives. I mean that is something that I 
certainly support. As a matter of fact, it passed just like our thing--
that we were going to get 48 hours to read the bill. It passed in the 
Senate by voice vote. Every Senator said, ``Aye.'' Again, that sounded 
pretty reasonable to a lot of us.
  Now, there are those people who may not follow how everything works 
here--and God help you if you do follow everything that works here--but 
know that, once they have passed their bill on the Senate side and once 
we have passed our bill over here, we each appoint conferees. They go 
into a conference room, and they hash out the differences between the 
House bill and the Senate bill, and then it comes back to each body. We 
vote on it and we are done.
  Well, there's a funny thing. One of my favorite movies when I was 
growing up was ``A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.'' A 
funny thing happened on the way to this conference report. The Snowe-
Wyden amendment, which said no bonuses for people who got billions of 
dollars of taxpayer money, was taken out. What was put in instead, 
Madam Speaker, are these 47 words that are next to me. The 47 words not 
only removed the Snowe-Wyden amendment that said ``no bonuses,'' but 
this language specifically protected the bonuses, and authorized AIG 
and anybody else who got TARP money--who got billions of dollars in 
financial help from the Federal Government, from our taxpayers--to pay 
out the bonuses. I'm going to talk about how it got in there in just a 
minute.
  The thing that was amazing last week was that we had people all over 
town who were shocked. ``I am shocked that they paid out bonuses.'' ``I 
am shocked that we all had this happen.'' ``We want our money back.'' 
``I am shocked.'' Well, it is a little bit, Madam Speaker, like the guy 
who takes a bath with the clock radio on the side of the bathtub, and 
the thing falls in, and he's surprised and he's shocked. Clearly, 
anybody who voted for the stimulus bill voted to approve the bonuses to 
AIG and to all the other banks that have sort of led us into this mess, 
but then they were shocked.
  Ms. FOXX. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I would be happy to yield to the gentlelady.
  Ms. FOXX. My memory is this--and maybe you said it and I missed it. 
My memory is that every Republican voted against the stimulus; is that 
correct?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. That is my recollection, yes.
  Ms. FOXX. All right. And 11 Democrats joined us?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. That would be correct.
  Ms. FOXX. Right. So no Republican voted for that stimulus bill which 
took out this provision; is that correct?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. The gentlelady is correct.
  I would just say that, in talking to my Democratic colleagues who 
voted for the stimulus bill, I think some of them were surprised that 
this had happened, but I think the point is that this is not the way to 
legislate. You don't give the power to three or four people to go into 
a room, to take out an important provision, to then put in an important 
provision, to not give anybody time to read it, and then say you are 
surprised that there might be something goofy or embarrassing in the 
piece of legislation. So, basically, anybody who voted for the stimulus 
bill voted to give millions of dollars of bonuses to AIG officials and 
to everybody else.

  Now, when they found out and people were embarrassed--and we went 
through this political theater last week, a charade--a lot of people 
got up on the floor and said, ``We want our money back.'' You know, 
``give us our money back.'' So they used the Tax Code in a way that I 
have never seen, which said we are going to tax these bonuses at 90 
percent. That was their fix. You know, even that fix is--I will use the 
word--``stupid'' because it is only 90 percent. So the top guy at AIG 
got a $6.4 million bonus. Even under their fix, he still gets to keep 
$640,000. They are either entitled to some money, to all of their money 
or to none of their money. There is this notion that we fixed it and 
that we were mean to these people in that we only let them keep 
$640,000.
  You know, the gentlelady, Ms. Foxx from North Carolina, a person who 
works in my district outside of Cleveland, Ohio who makes $40,000 a 
year would have to work for 16 years to make $640,000.
  Anyway, we had a lot of fancy speeches, and people said, ``We are 
going to fix it.'' So we have been talking for 2 weeks, Madam Speaker, 
about how it happened, and nobody is willing to take responsibility. I 
mean, obviously, the thing, you know, didn't just drop down from the 
sky, and one paragraph goes out and this paragraph comes in. Somebody 
had to do it. We started last week with a number of our colleagues, and 
we said, you know, there are 435 Members of Congress. There are 100 
Senators, and so we started with 535 suspects.

                              {time}  1330

  Through good detective work by a lot of my colleagues, we have been 
able to narrow that down because sadly, not one Republican was invited 
in this room where this deal was cut. So you can take out all 178 
Republican Members of the House, all 38 Republican members of the 
Senate. And then we continued to cram it down.
  And we have had public statements from a number of people. There was 
a report by CNN's Dana Bash that this thing was hashed out over 8 
hours. And the President's chief of staff was here and the President's 
director of the budget was here. And so while we got down and 
eliminated a lot of Members of Congress, we had to add some people.
  So, Madam Speaker, what we have arrived at--and this was one of the 
favorite games that I played when I was a young person, and I enjoyed 
very much playing it with my children, and I bet a lot of people in 
America have played the game of Clue. With apologies to our friends at 
Hasbro, we now find ourselves with the sad situation where somebody put 
into this bill the authorization to pay out these millions of dollars 
of bonuses to AIG and everybody else, and now we're shocked.
  Well, those of you who play the game of Clue know you need to have a 
suspect--or the person that committed it--where it happened--in the 
House--and what the weapon was.
  Now, we started with a great advantage here because we didn't have to 
go lead pipe, wrench, gun, all of that other stuff. We know the crime 
was committed with a pen. So we're one-third of the way home. We also 
have the rooms located here in the Capitol that indicate where activity 
took place. And I will tell you that we're not there yet, and we really 
are seeking the person that did this. Just come forward. Just tell us 
you did it and we can move on to something else. And then maybe you can 
tell us why you did it, and we will be happy.
  But the reports indicate, first of all, they were all pointing to the 
senator from Connecticut, Senator Dodd. And why? Because he was the 
Chairperson of the Senate Banking Committee, and he is the person who 
has made some observations that his staff put it in at the suggestion 
of somebody else's staff and so forth and so on. And I don't know. But 
it went to him.

[[Page H4051]]

  But I am not really suspecting Senator Dodd because I think he has a 
vested interest in making sure we clean this up. And, you know, when 
there is a mystery and you can't solve it, people begin to speculate 
and people begin to pass out nasty rumors and you become the subject of 
rumors.
  And two rumors that have coordinated around Senator Dodd that makes 
people think, well, he must be the guy. Well, one, is he is the largest 
recipient of campaign donations from AIG and their executives. And that 
makes some people say, ``Well, of course he did it. He's paying back 
AIG.'' I don't think that's true.
  Second, there was a second report in the Hartford Courant this week 
that his wife was employed by a subsidiary of AIG. So that causes the 
tongue waggers to say, Hey, you know what? We really think it's him.
  But, Madam Speaker, I am a big fan of Agatha Christie novels. And the 
great thing about those novels is you read them, you always think it's 
the butler and you get to the end of the book, it's not the butler. So 
I really don't think it was Senator Dodd who did this.
  The other folks that we have listed here--and I am also ready to give 
up on the distinguished chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. 
Rangel of New York. And I think the only reason that we have him here 
still is was he was quoted coming out of the room--because he was in 
the room--but when he came out of the room, he said, ``It's very 
frustrating when the Congress is run by only three people.'' So I think 
since he's expressing disappointment by that, I don't think he's one of 
the three people that actually got it done.
  Press reports indicate there was shuttle diplomacy between the 
Speaker's office and the Senate leader's office, and that's why we have 
the distinguished Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi of California, and 
the distinguished majority leader of the Senate, Mr. Reid of Nevada, 
over there. And these are their offices.
  And we are told that these two people--well, we will start with this 
fellow. He used to serve with us in the House. He is a fine fellow. He 
is now the President's chief of staff. His name is Rahm Emanuel from 
Illinois. And he was here for 8 hours shuttling back and forth between 
these two offices. And so is this fellow, who may not be as familiar to 
the Members as Mr. Emanuel, that's Peter Orszag, who happens to be the 
budget director for the new administration.
  So we know from events that a lot of shuttling back and forth over an 
8-hour period between these two offices, a deal was eventually struck, 
this language is inserted, the Snow White language is removed. And the 
problem we have is nobody will say they did it. And I think that that 
is a sad state of affairs. I think whoever did it should come forward 
and tell the American people you did it. Because whoever did it 
embarrassed--anybody that voted for the stimulus bill has to be 
embarrassed by the fact that they authorized the bonus to AIG.
  Ms. FOXX. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I would be happy to.
  Ms. FOXX. But no Republicans need to--in the House--need to be 
embarrassed, right, because none of us voted for this.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, the gentlelady is right. And that's why we have 
really done some hard work. I have to give credit to a lot of my 
cohorts on this. They've really done a lot of work from going from 535 
that I think we really are down to these 6 and 7 people.
  I should explain the question mark down there because the Secretary 
of the Treasury has twice appeared before the Financial Services 
Committee and given testimony. And when asked directly who did it, he 
said staff at the Treasury communicated with staff and Senator Dodd's 
office. Now, listen, that is the biggest ``what, are you kidding me?'' 
I've ever heard because staff can't write legislation, the Treasury 
can't write legislation. Members of Congress write legislation. And to 
hide behind the skirts of some unknown, unnamed staff member I think is 
a tremendous act of cowardice, and so just come out.

  But I put the question mark there because that question mark we hope 
to eventually fill in with the staffer at Treasury who apparently is 
somehow involved. All we're going to ask that staffer is, ``Who told 
you to do it?'' It has to be somebody in power. It can't be the staff 
got together and said, ``Hey, I got a good one. Let's give out some 
bonuses to AIG.'' So we are going to continue this quest.
  But the point in your special order that I just wanted to raise is 
that we have this budget next week. And this bill where this horrible 
thing happened only--and I can't believe I have been in Washington so 
long I can say ``only spent a trillion dollars,'' the proposal next 
week on the floor proposes to spend $3.6 trillion.
  And I would just hope under the straight-faced test, can I look at 
myself in the mirror when I wake up in the morning, that whoever is in 
charge, whoever happens to be in the next room where this is being 
negotiated says, You know what? I've got a novel idea. Why don't we let 
everybody read the bill, understand the bill, so we can have an 
intelligent debate on the bill. And when it goes to the conference 
committee and it goes in these rooms and there are only five or six 
people involved, maybe you check back and say, ``You know what? I have 
made this change. Here's why I made the change. I hope can you go along 
with it.''
  But this back door, backhanded sneaky stuff, it doesn't belong not 
only in the United States Congress, it doesn't belong anywhere.
  So I thank the gentlelady for yielding, and I would enlist the 
gentleman from Georgia, the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the 
gentlelady from North Carolina as junior sleuths. And we will continue 
this discussion next week, and we're going to find out who did it, what 
room it happened in, with the pen.
  I thank the gentlelady.
  Ms. FOXX. I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio for coming up with 
this very innovative way of describing this process, and I hope that 
the folks who created the game Clue are going to appreciate that there 
may be a revival of interest in it and that our young folks who are 
listening will look up the word ``sleuths'' and if they don't know that 
word, it's a good word to learn today. I advocate young people learn 
one word every day, and they can join us as sleuths and perhaps become 
identified with what we are doing here in terms of figuring out who is 
spending all of this money, who is putting these items in these bills 
that nobody has a chance to read because they are coming up at the last 
minute. They have to be done right now, and if they are not done right 
now, the world is going to come to an end.
  But I know that our colleague, Mr. Thompson from Pennsylvania, is 
going to be sharing some great insights with us about the budget and, 
again, other activities that we are doing. He has just joined the 
Congress in this session, but he's already making a great name for 
himself in terms of presenting items on the floor and doing hard work 
as a Member of Congress.
  So I would yield the floor to Mr. Thompson from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentlelady for yielding me 
some time here.
  Obviously, today there are serious concerns about the President's 
budget, a budget that borrows too much and spends too much and taxes 
just way too much.
  Prior to my running for Congress this past year, I spent 28 years in 
the health care business. And one of the first things you learn in the 
medical profession is ``do no harm.''
  So, Madam Speaker, I come to the floor today to speak briefly about 
the harm the President's budget will cause back in rural Pennsylvania. 
My rural district is much like the heartland of this country. Mom-and-
pop shops, family farms, small businesses. Just run-of-the-mill folks 
looking for a fair shake.
  So in evaluating the President's budget, I asked myself one question: 
will this proposal help or hamper the economic growth in my district. 
And truth be told, it didn't take long for me to answer this simple 
question.
  Increasing taxes on small businesses, as this budget proposes, will 
penalize the very segment of the economy that is best equipped to get 
us back on track. Small businesses are creating 7 out of every 10 jobs. 
They are the backbone of rural America. They are the

[[Page H4052]]

farmers that harvest much of the food that we eat. They are the small, 
independently owned energy companies whose employees go to work each 
day with the goal of achieving American energy independence. They are 
the independent truckers that haul the goods that we consume.
  You see, Madam Speaker, these are not Republican or Democrat jobs, 
but they are jobs that are at risk of being eliminated if this budget 
proceeds as currently written.
  The President's new cap-and-tax energy policy, which will inevitably 
drive up the cost of every manufactured and processed good we consume, 
will increase utility bills and will cost more just to fuel up at the 
tank and will devastate rural America.
  Madam Speaker, oil was discovered in my district 150 years ago. We 
are also home to the most promising natural gas play in the country and 
the third largest in the world. Many of my constituents make a living 
by harvesting the natural resources that we are blessed with. These 
same natural resources, I may add, that are used to build windmills, 
solar panels and biorefineries.
  You see, without natural gas and oil, there would be no windmills or 
solar panels. These very natural resources are the key feedstock in 
manufacturing the next generation of clean energy sources.
  So we should celebrate the American energy industry, the fuels that 
made this country what it is today, the fuels that will serve as a 
bridge to the renewable energy future; not penalize it, as does this 
budget that the President proposes.
  All is not lost, however. The Speaker will have an opportunity to 
allow fruitful debate and deliberation next week when the budget comes 
to the floor. House Republicans will put forward a budget proposal that 
offers smart government solutions and address the very issues I've laid 
out.
  The American people are hurting. The economy is on life support. And 
if the Democratic leadership asks themselves this simple one question--
will this budget help or hamper economic growth--they will come to the 
table and work with Republicans to find a reasonable compromise for the 
good of the entire country.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield for just a second?
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I certainly will.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me 
because I had some interesting statistics that follow right in with 
what Representative Thompson was talking about.
  And in regard to those small businesses in his district, I think he 
described his district is very much like mine in northwest Georgia.
  But just before we started this hour with Ms. Foxx controlling the 
time on discussing this budget, I had met with a good friend from the 
American Chemistry Council, and we sat down. He talked to me about this 
budget, this $3.6 trillion budget that borrows too much, spends too 
much, it taxes too much.
  And he said, Phil, let me just tell you what this does to jobs that 
are--business are part of the American Chemistry Council membership. 
But in your district, the 11th of Georgia, we're talking about 1,500 
direct jobs and 95,000 indirect employees of the chemical industry in 
the 11th District. And he was talking about the same thing 
Representative Thompson was talking about in regard to that energy tax, 
that hidden energy tax. And this business in chemicals and plastics, 
they are very energy dependent.
  And then on top of all of that, this cap-and-tax where the President 
is trying to get $600 billion to spend on education and a single-payer 
health care system and green energy, it's really hurting these small 
businesses that depend on electricity. And there is a Superfund tax of 
$2.8 billion over 2 years. They do a lot of things with accounting that 
hurts small businesses.
  But I just wanted to--because it's so important. It goes along right 
with what is going on in western Pennsylvania.
  I appreciate the gentleman for yielding, and I will yield back to 
him.

                              {time}  1345

  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman for his remarks. 
The fact is, it sounds like our districts are very similar, and we're 
hurting right now, and we need leadership, leadership with a vision for 
smart government solutions, and that's not what I'm seeing with this 
proposal coming forward next week from the President.
  With that, I thank the gentlelady.
  Ms. FOXX. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for coming and 
sharing his perspective. As he indicated, we all represent small 
businesses. We all represent people who are struggling in this country. 
Middle class families and small businesses are making tremendous 
sacrifices when it comes to their own budgets. They're learning to live 
within their budgets, but Washington continues to spend trillions in 
taxpayer dollars on bailouts and other government programs.
  We have people up here who are so out of touch with the American 
people. Some of them never go home. Some of them have been in 
Washington 50 years. A vast majority of the majority party has been 
here for a long, long time. Many of them have parents who served in 
Congress. They really are out of touch with the average American, and I 
think it's extraordinarily unfortunate.
  I'd now like to yield some time to our distinguished colleague from 
Michigan, the chairman of the Policy Committee, Mr. McCotter, who 
always has an interesting perspective to bring to us and usually some 
words we have to look up in the dictionary to see exactly what the 
definition is.
  Mr. McCOTTER. I thank the gentlelady. I will try to not use any words 
that anyone finds indecipherable or offensive.
  One of the reasons that we are here today addressing this budget is 
tied directly, intellectually, to the Clue game that our colleague from 
Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) put forward.
  In trying to find out who put into the stimulus bill the AIG bonuses, 
protections, and approvals, we are getting to the heart of what type of 
policy we can expect from this administration. Do we have an 
entrepreneurial, humane economy or do we continue to go with the too-
big-to-fail model that has already failed and cost taxpayers hundreds 
of billions of their dollars? This AIG amendment clearly shows that the 
mistakes that were made last fall with the Wall Street bailout are 
being perpetuated today. We cannot have this.
  The reason our economy is recessed is because of misfeasance and 
chaos within our financial institutions. Today, the budget that we have 
before us of $3.6 trillion sends the signal to the American people not 
just that it borrows too much, not just that it spends too much, not 
just that it taxes too much, but that the misfeasance and chaos, the 
collapse of the financial markets, is on the verge of collapsing our 
political institutions.
  The dot.com bubble which hurt so many people was, as we know now, 
replaced with a housing bubble. This housing bubble has collapsed. This 
budget is an attempt to replace the housing bubble with a government 
bubble, a bubble in the trillions of dollars of taxpayers' money. And 
when the government bubble breaks, as inevitably it will, where will we 
be?
  We have to get back to commonsense priorities, not only in our 
political institutions, but within our financial institutions. And one 
of the fundamental concepts has to be that responsibility will be 
encouraged and rewarded here, irresponsibility will not be.
  So to see the situation in our country, a very dire one economically 
for so many, including those in my home State of Michigan who have 
experienced 12 percent unemployment, for them to see this institution 
believe it can simply spend trillions of dollars to get us out of this 
situation tells them that their government is on the verge of making 
chaotic, shortsighted, long-term, injurious decisions. And you can see 
this in their comments to my office, and I'm sure my colleagues can see 
this in their comments to you.
  They want order, sanity, justice, equity restored not only to these 
financial institutions that failed but to the political institutions 
that are supposed to work for them. And yet as we watch proposals to go 
through to allow too-big-to-fail to continue to be the operative 
theory, we are on the verge of seeing the United States government too-
big-to-succeed.

[[Page H4053]]

  Big government does not stop chaos. Big government is chaos. And with 
the expansion in the trillions that is proposed today, we can talk 
about the items such as cap-and-tax that will hurt my blue collar and 
white collar people in the manufacturing industry; we can talk about 
how all those costs will be passed on to hard pressed consumers to 
shrink their family budgets for consumer goods that have had this tax 
added on and passed on or into their home energy prices at the very 
worst time for them; we can talk about abstract numbers and deficits. 
But let us be clear, the American people know that this is an 
irresponsible budget and that in a very chaotic time all it will do is 
increase the chaos around them that threatens their hearths at home.
  We have to stand firm. We have to say ``no.'' We cannot borrow and 
spend our way out of prosperity. We cannot tax our way into prosperity, 
but we can do the opposite.
  And I would encourage all Members of this caucus, this Congress, to 
remember one thing: our prosperity is from the private sector, not the 
public sector. The corporations are pass-throughs for taxes. They do 
not pay them. They collect them from you. And the more we allow the 
private sector, individual, hardworking men and women to have to pay 
more for the cost of government, the longer it is going to be before we 
can hand to our children the Nation's greatest economy on earth which 
we inherited and which today we have to preserve for them.
  I thank the gentlelady for the time.
  Ms. FOXX. I thank the gentleman from Michigan for his comments, and I 
actually had a constituent come to me this week and say what do you 
think about the phrase ``America, too big to fail''? That's a scary 
notion because that phrase has been used for these agencies and 
institutions that have been failing, and it is scary for us to think 
about that.
  This is the greatest country in the world. We have been 
extraordinarily successful by being very prudent in the way that we 
spend money. For two centuries, Americans have worked hard so their 
children could have better lives and greater opportunity. Democrats now 
want to reverse that order by having our children work hard so we don't 
have to make the hard economic choices now that need to be made.
  It is a terribly cynical approach to governing, and it is one that I 
can hardly believe we've come to in this country. But it appears to be 
that way, and I thank, again, Mr. McCotter from Michigan for always 
putting things in a very strong philosophical light to make us think 
about them in the larger order. And of course, we always need to think 
that way. I'm very grateful to him for doing that.
  I now want to yield back to my colleague from Georgia for a few more 
comments about where we are, and then I will wind up our Special Order 
for today and hope that we give the American people a lot to think 
about this weekend.
  Most of us are going home to our districts where we'll be dealing 
with our constituents. They will be telling us how this budget's going 
to affect them and what's happening to them on a day-to-day basis, and 
this is the kind of thing we always need to stay in touch with.

  So I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Once again, Madam Speaker, I thank the 
gentlelady from North Carolina, my good friend, Virginia Foxx, and 
thank her for bringing this information to our colleagues on both sides 
of the aisle because here it is, late Thursday afternoon, but we will 
be right back here on Monday and probably be in session next week until 
maybe even Friday or Saturday--I think it's possible we'll be here 
until Saturday--to try to pass this House version of the budget.
  I'm very hopeful that there will be some significant cuts, as Mr. 
Spratt, the chairman of the Budget Committee, brings that budget to the 
floor for a vote, and I hope there will be an opportunity for a 
Republican alternative. Certainly, we have a very good Republican 
alternative. I think there was a press conference on that today led by 
John Boehner and Paul Ryan the ranking member on the Budget Committee.
  We need to make sure that all people are represented in this people's 
House, and, hopefully, we will have a good debate next week and come up 
with a budget that's more reasonable than what the President has sent 
over here that was drawn up by his economic advisers, Christina Roemer 
and Larry Summers and, of course, Peter Orszag, the OMB, Office of 
Management and Budget, director. Our Congressional Budget Office, 
bipartisan to the core, said that his predictions of the amount of 
deficit were $2.3 trillion short.
  And before I yield back to Ms. Foxx, I want to just talk about some 
of the things in that budget that almost are incredulous.
  You know, Madam Speaker, this weekend I guess starting what, tonight, 
we go right back to pick up, as we go home--and I'm sure lots of folks 
across the country will be enjoying March Madness as the Sweet Sixteen 
gets down to the Final Four late Sunday afternoon. So this March 
Madness is wonderful for sports fans, and I know that President Obama 
is a big sports fan, in fact a big basketball fan; but I have had 
people in my district say there is no place in Washington for March 
Madness, but that's exactly what we're looking at in regard to this 
budget. I mean, it's unbelievable.
  Listen to this, Madam Speaker, in regard to increasing taxes during a 
recession, preposterous. Total tax increases during this recession over 
the next 10 years, $1.4 trillion; taxes on small businesses--which by 
the way we all know, nobody disputes the fact that they create about 
75, 80 percent of the jobs in this country--this cap-and-tax, or cap-
and-trade as President Obama calls it, this is a hidden tax of $646 
billion on every man, woman, and child in this country. It causes the 
energy costs, electricity, natural gas, it just goes up, and it's a 
hidden tax.
  But every month, the middle class, the small working people, the 
small businesses are paying that tax so that we can take that money, 
put it in a reserve fund and pay for national, government-run health 
care, which I quite honestly think that the people of this country 
spoke loud and clear, Madam Speaker, back in 1993-94 when they totally 
rejected HillaryCare.
  So, you know, we do need to reform health care, and we need to have 
our market-driven system improved. And we're all for that on this side 
of the aisle and reduce the number of uninsured, and we can do that 
without giving a blank check to the Federal Government.
  But I could go on about some of these taxes, but I know 
Representative Foxx, who's leading the hour, has a number of things 
that she wants to talk about in the final 15 minutes or so. So I just 
want to thank the gentlelady for letting me join her, and I look 
forward to seeing her back next week as we try to bring some sense into 
the budget process.
  Ms. FOXX. Well, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for his help on 
this Special Order. I think that having a variety of folks come in and 
speak about this issue is much better than having one talking head 
here. We have lots of different perspectives. We come from different 
experiences. I think that's very important to us.
  But I want to summarize some of the things that we have been talking 
about, and frankly, I hadn't thought about using the term ``March 
Madness'' for what's going on, but I certainly do think it's an 
appropriate term for the proposals that have been made for this budget.
  But I want to again reiterate some of the things that have been said 
before. This budget will give us the largest tax increase in the 
history of this country. It will be more borrowing than all the other 
Presidents have proposed in the history of this country.

                              {time}  1400

  If you take every President from President George Washington to 
President George W. Bush, what President Obama has recommended and what 
the Democrats have endorsed in this Congress is going to create more 
gross debt in 10 years than all the other President's combined. That is 
a pretty staggering thing to think about.
  Thomas Jefferson was a very wise man. He's represented here in this 
Chamber. We have a lot of folks in the gallery today. I'll point out to 
you that around the top of the House there are these profiles of 
people. All of them are ancient lawgivers except two. Behind

[[Page H4054]]

me, over the Speaker's podium, there are two Americans--Thomas 
Jefferson to my right and George Mason to my left. The rest are ancient 
lawgivers--with Moses being over the center door in full face.
  We honor Jefferson in this country. The Democrats supposedly honor 
Thomas Jefferson for his wisdom. But this is what he said--and they 
have certainly forgotten this--``I sincerely believe that the principle 
of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is 
but swindling futurity on a large scale.'' Thomas Jefferson, 1816.
  Our Founders understood this. They wanted a small Federal Government, 
not one that would oppress the people, not one that would give us huge 
tax increases and take money from the people. They can spend better 
than the government can spend it. That's what Thomas Jefferson believed 
in--and I believe in that--and I'm so sorry that the Democrats have 
forgotten the lessons he taught their party and taught our country.
  Another thing in this budget is a new energy tax that will cost every 
household up to $3,128 annually. The President promised tax cuts. 
There's going to be about $600 in tax cuts given to the average family. 
But, in exchange for that, they're going to be $3,128 more for energy. 
It doesn't sound like a good deal to me. It's also going to cost 
American jobs.
  We know the cap-and-tax plan, in addition to all these taxes, are 
going to cost jobs, because the majority of the tax increases are going 
to fall on small businesses. They're not going to be able to keep being 
the engine of job creation that they have been.
  There's going to be a new tax on charitable giving, which could cost 
American charities at least $9 billion a year. The cynical attitude 
behind this is: We don't need the private sector doing all these 
things. We're going to take your money because government knows how to 
spend the money better.
  In fact, it will destroy many charities in this country that are 
doing wonderfully good things. But it will hurt them and, in some 
cases, destroy them, all in the name of having the government run our 
country.
  Some people have said that this sounds a lot like Animal Farm. I 
would say to people: If you haven't read 1984, if you haven't read 
Animal Farm in a long time, or, if you've never read them, get them out 
and read them and think about what's happening in this country as it 
compares to what was written in those books.
  This will be the highest level of borrowing ever. It's going to be 
unchecked spending, which will result in borrowing hundreds of billions 
of dollars from China, the Middle East, and other nations that own our 
growing debt.
  As I said earlier, for the first two centuries of this country, 
Americans have worked hard so their children could have better lives 
and better opportunities. Democrats want to reverse that order by 
having our children work hard so we don't have to make the hard choices 
now.
  Let me show you another chart here. Again, you don't have to take my 
word for it. I can show it to you graphically.
  This is going to be doubling the debt held by the public. Look how 
those numbers go up. This is what it was under Republican control of 
the Congress and a Republican administration. This is what it is under 
Democratic control.
  According to the CBO, President Obama's budget would add $9.3 
trillion to the national debt. This will lead to unprecedented 
borrowing, with debt held by the public increasing from 41 percent of 
GDP in 2008 to 82 percent of GDP in 2019. We have never seen that kind 
of debt, even in wartime.
  In 2010, the budget's going to spend $172 billion on interest on the 
national debt. Just think about that--$172 billion just on interest. 
It's going to be piling up more and more debt and less money to spend 
on real priorities.
  This is not the way for America. Putting our children and 
grandchildren into debt is wrong.
  After we had the bailout last fall, I went home and I was taking my 
grandchildren to school and they said to me, ``What were you doing in 
Washington? We know you were up there, you came back, you went back.'' 
I said to my 12-year-old grandson and 9\1/2\-year-old granddaughter--I 
said, ``Well, what the Congress just did was put you, your children, 
and your grandchildren into debt for more money than you're ever going 
to be able to pay off.'' And my 9\1/2\-year-old granddaughter Rana said 
to me, ``Grandma, why do you want to put little children into debt? I 
said, ``Rana, I don't. That's why I voted ``no.'' That's why most 
Republicans voted ``no.''
  We understand what's happening here. We don't want to do this. But 
what is about to occur here is even worse than what happened last fall, 
even worse than what happened with the stimulus. These people are going 
headlong in because they don't want to take the responsibility to do 
what needs to be done now--trim spending and make tough decisions.
  Somebody said the other day that we're pretty soon going to be like 
Argentina, because the Federal Reserve is printing dollars trying to 
get the economy stimulated. The government's spending, spending, 
spending. We're pretty soon going to go into a situation where we're 
going to look like a third-world country.
  I don't think that's what most Americans want. Most Americans love 
this country, they want us to continue to be the greatest country in 
the world, and they want us to continue to be successful in what we do. 
They want us to leave a country that is good and economically and 
fiscally healthy to our children and our grandchildren and to our 
posterity.
  That's not the direction the Democrats are taking us. They cannot 
blame this on the Republicans because they have been in charge of the 
Congress since January 2007. They started the spending going that way.
  The President, who's promised so many good things and led the 
American people to think that he would be a moderate person and who 
would bring good change to this country, is bringing change, all 
right--the kind of change that is going to lead us down a very, very 
dark path and create problems that will take a long, long time for us 
to fix.
  So I want to say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that 
this is the wrong thing to be doing. You've been cramming things down 
our throats and down the throats of the American people for the past 
2\1/2\ months. This is not the direction this country should be going 
in.
  We need to be fiscally responsible. We need to remember our oath to 
the Constitution. We need to be looking after this country and the 
people who elected us here to do that.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back.

                          ____________________