[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 59 (Wednesday, April 22, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H4670-H4677]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            RECKLESS OVERSPENDING BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. AKIN. Good evening, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for recognizing me.
  I am interested tonight in talking about a subject that I think is on 
the minds of Americans everywhere and has gotten people not just on 
their minds, but on their hearts as well. They're exercised, they're 
concerned, they're worried. And that is the subject of taxes, and 
really reckless overspending on the part of the Federal Government.
  We have heard over the past about 6 years or 7 years the high cost of 
the war, particularly in Iraq. People say, hey, we are spending a 
tremendous amount of money every day in Iraq, what are we getting for 
our money? This thing is breaking our budget. We're spending too much 
money. This is terrible. And then what we see here in the first 5 weeks 
of the Congress meeting, we saw them passing what was supposed to be a 
stimulus bill--or I call it a porkulus bill--and that bill, at $840 
billion, was more money than we spent in 6 and 7 years, respectively, 
in the war in Iraq added to the war in Afghanistan. So we were really 
burning some serious money just in the first 5 weeks.
  Now, let's add to that, turn forward a little bit, and the American 
public is becoming exercised about this subject. And just this last 
week, on the day when filing of taxes is due, we saw all across our 
country a massive turnout of people, just average citizens, largely--at 
least certainly that's what it was in the St. Louis area--having these 
TEA parties. And they were very upset. And they carried all kinds of 
signs to express their concern about this problem of reckless 
overspending on the part of the Federal Government. Some of the signs 
read--and they were fairly clever--``Give Me Liberty, Not Debt,'' 
obviously taking off of Patrick Henry. And it said ``No More Pork.'' 
Here's one, ``Got Taxes? Got Government? Get Liberty.''

                              {time}  1800

  Then there was a 6 year-old that carried the sign, ``I am 6 years old 
and I

[[Page H4671]]

owe $36,400 in taxes.'' And there were a number of other ones that were 
fairly pointed, ``Freedom, not socialism'' and things like that.
  People are really getting very concerned and with very good reason 
about our reckless overspending.
  In fact, there was enough pressure from all of these different events 
that happened all over the country that the President felt like he had 
to make some kind of a statement or gesture. And so he said, very 
graciously, look, I will tell you what we are going to do. We are going 
to try to find $100 million in the budget of wasted spending, to get 
rid of $100 million.
  Well, we have illustrated that point here graphically to my left.
  This first circle is $410 billion, and that was called an omnibus 
bill. That was just finishing up the spending for this year.
  Then we had two of this supposedly stimulus bill, which is what I was 
just talking about, at $787 billion in its final version, and then on 
top of that is the proposed $3.69 trillion, so these graphically 
represent the amount of money we are overspending and Obama's requested 
budget cuts represented by this spot, even on this chart, the size of 
an eraser.
  To try to put that into perspective, let's say that your family 
budget is $100,000. You have a $100,000 budget for the year, but you 
are $34,000 behind. That's like calling the whole family together and 
saying to them, now, here is what I am going to do. I am going to give 
up a $3 Starbucks coffee. That's what this $100 million is equivalent 
to: $3 on a $100,000 budget.
  So these numbers show the fact that the administration and the 
current Congress just doesn't get it. This overspending problem is 
really serious, and the public is getting, as I said, very concerned 
about it.
  I have a statement from one of my constituents here, this is what he 
wrote to me.
  He said, this is William from the Saint Louis area, ``I am a small 
businessman in Union, Missouri, employing 12 people. I built my 
business from practically nothing to a company worth enough to retire 
on, or so I thought. I am 62 years old and plan to sell my business in 
3 years and to retire on the proceeds.
  ``In the year I sell my Federal tax rate will be 39 percent, that is 
assuming that Obama does not raise it even further by then, and my 
Missouri tax rate will be 6 percent. Since I am a service company, we 
have no real assets to sell. Virtually all of the proceeds will be 
taxed as ordinary income.
  ``That means that I worked a good part of my life to build a future 
and the taxing authorities are going to take 45 percent.
  ``Since my IRA accounts have been decimated thanks to,'' I believe he 
is talking about Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd,'' it looks like I 
will have to work until I die.''
  And then, bitterly, ``Only in America.''
  People around America are very upset about what's going on.
  I have a good friend, a Congressman from Georgia, Congressman Lynn 
Westmoreland, I believe that you have a chart also depicting in a 
different way the seriousness of what's going on with our excessive 
overspending.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Well, I want to thank my friend from Missouri for 
yielding some time, and I just wanted to ask one question to the 
gentleman about the chart that he just had up, and that was the fact 
that the chart that he just had up, you are telling me that what the 
President has asked of his cabinet members, if I am hearing you 
correctly, is that they are to cut, in the next 90 days, they are to 
cut $100 million.
  Mr. AKIN. That's correct. Yes.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. So the other thing you are pointing out there with 
your chart is that would be like calling in a family that had a budget 
of $100,000, and they had a $34,000 shortfall--
  Mr. AKIN. You are talking about one-third of that $100,000, they are 
overspending $34,000, right.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to make sure we understand this. They had 
$100,000 annual spending, they have got a $34,000 shortfall. If from 
what I am hearing you say, they would only have to cut $3?
  Mr. AKIN. That's correct. That's why when you say $100 million with a 
$3.69 trillion proposed budget, it's almost a joke. It's almost a joke. 
By comparison, that spot is $100 million. That's the size of a pencil.
  This looks like the sun. It looks like a small Moon falling into the 
sun. That's what we are talking about here. Three dollars, they would 
laugh you out of the family meeting.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. That's what I would call a drop in the bucket or a 
spit in the ocean or something. I mean, I can barely see the little dot 
from here.
  But that's interesting, and I wanted to show one thing, because I 
think that's something that everybody can get their head around is the 
amount of money that the President has asked his Cabinet members to 
save over next 90 days is equal to $3 of a family that had $100,000 
spending that had a $34,000 shortfall.
  But to the gentleman from Missouri, this is a debt day, and debt day 
is when we actually start ringing things up on the charge card that we 
can't pay for. And so in 2002, and after we went through the 9/11, on 
September 2 is when we actually started charging things. We had run out 
of the money, and we had to start putting it on a charge card.
  Mr. AKIN. What you are saying is that right after September 11, we 
are already starting to spend some serious money there. And what you 
are saying is that by the time we got to September, we had pretty much 
used up all the taxpayers' money that had paid their taxes that year, 
and beyond that point, every day beyond that where we are spending 
money, that's all becoming part of our debt. Is that what you are 
saying?
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Yes, I am. And what I am saying, too, is that then 
the minority party, the Democrat party, was hollering at the loudest 
point saying we would have deficit spending, that we did not need to 
have deficit spending, we did not need to increase the debt. They were 
hollering about that.
  And then in 2003 it went to July 29 to when we actually started 
having to borrow money; 2004 it was July 27; 2005, August 14; 2006, 
August 27; 2007, September 9; 2008, August 5th, and then we come to 
this year.
  Mr. AKIN. Gentlemen, what was going on there was starting about 2003 
or 2004 we started to benefit from the fact that the recession had 
turned around because of the tax cuts and the economy was doing well 
and the Federal revenues were coming in pretty strong.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Yes.
  Mr. AKIN. That's why we were able to hold things up into that August-
September kind of timeframe, even though there was some spending going 
on.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Absolutely. Remember we were funding the military 
and the war on terror or now, as it is called, the human catastrophe or 
something. But in 2009, this year, 2009, debt day comes next week on 
April 26.
  So imagine this, after April 26th, everything that this government 
does is going to be put on a charge card. After April 26th almost 160 
days----
  Mr. AKIN. Gentleman, that number really stands out, because what you 
are saying is we got all the way through the summer all these previous 
years when we were screaming about spending too much money. And you and 
I agreed we shouldn't have been spending as much as we did.
  But that being the case, what you are saying is this year we barely 
got the taxes in on April 15, and by the time we get to April 26th, 
which is that next week----
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. That's next week.
  Mr. AKIN. We are out of money already.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Absolutely.
  Mr. AKIN. I am surprised they haven't put us in jail.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Well, I don't know they haven't pulled our credit 
card, and I think that could happen, because we are charging this on a 
credit card to China, to the Middle East, to foreign nations. This is 
not something that we are borrowing it from ourself.
  This is money that we are borrowing from foreign countries. So at the 
end of next week, all the money, all the revenues, all the revenues 
that's going to come into our Treasury are going to be

[[Page H4672]]

spent, and we are going to be ringing it up on a charge card.
  How many families or small businesses could survive on that? There is 
not any. We can't do that, and that's the reason that we have given an 
alternative to this budget that has been proposed by the current 
administration. That's the reason today that we----
  Mr. AKIN. You were talking about the budget, the study committee, 
which is actually a balanced budget, a certain number of years out, it 
balances out.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. In 10 years, it balances out in 10 years.
  Mr. AKIN. Don't you think that's what the people at these tea parties 
were trying to say, hey, what's wrong with the concept like every other 
American, you have to balance your budget. What's the problem with us 
getting this concept down here in Washington D.C.?
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. And that's the point that we have been trying to 
make. It spends too much, it borrows too much, and it taxes too much.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, we are going to get into that a little bit too. We 
are joined this evening by my good friend from Indiana, Congressman 
Burton, a long-time leader in this House, a very respected gentleman.
  I would like to yield to him to talk on the same subject. I know it's 
something you know quite a bit about.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  The thing that bothers me is the kind of legacy that we are leaving 
for our kids and grandkids. The amount of money that we are spending 
right now, $3.69 trillion in the budget, $410 billion in the omnibus, 
$14 billion for the auto companies; $700 billion, which we spent last 
year on TARP, $787 billion on the stimulus package.
  We are spending trillions and trillions of dollars that we don't 
have, as my colleague just said.
  I would just conclude by saying that we are spending trillions of 
dollars that we don't have. Our kids and grandkids are going to be 
paying taxes that they shouldn't have to bear. In addition to that we 
are going to have an inflationary problem that is going to rival 
anything that we have seen in the past. In the 1970s and the early 
1980s we had inflation that was 14 percent and we ended up raising 
interest rates to 21 percent to slow down the rate of inflation to get 
the economy back in shape, and we ended up with another major recession 
because of it.
  We have got to control our spending. We can't spend 8 or $10 trillion 
like we are doing. And the thing that bothers me the most is the legacy 
we are leaving to our kids and grandkids.
  I want to thank my colleague for taking these. He comes down here 
almost every night or every other night talking about these things. The 
American people owe you a debt of gratitude for doing this. I really 
appreciate it.
  Mr. AKIN. I appreciate the gentleman from Indiana.
  Congressman, before you go, just let me ask you a question, you know, 
both of us grew up and we saw our parents, that had come out of the 
World War II time period, and they were people that worked very, very 
hard. They had been called the Greatest Generation, and one of the 
things that I remember that was just ingrained in my own parents, and I 
want to ask you whether you had the same experience, but it was the 
attitude that they were going to do something better for us than they 
had been able to have for themselves. It was this driving ambition to 
leave something better, to leave America a better place, a freer 
country, a safer country.
  And so they would say, and their words were, yes, I am going over to 
Europe or to the Pacific to do my bit, that they were going to give 
their lives or their limbs. And they had this ideal of leaving America 
a better place.
  And what you are talking about is the opposite. Is that not right, 
Gentleman?
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Yes, I would say to my colleague briefly, that 
my mother worked 18 years as a waitress, my stepfather worked in a 
foundry. And I think that he made, before he paid child support, $75 a 
week.
  And they were very concerned about living within their budget, and 
they worked very hard to make sure that our family did well without 
having to depend on the government. And unfortunately today we have a 
different mindset, and that is that the government can handle 
everything for us from cradle to grave.
  And this attitude that's prevalent in this society right now really 
bothers me because it has taken such a hold of us that we are now 
spending trillions of dollars that we don't have. And the things that 
you and I had as young people and our parents gave to us, even though 
we had rough times, it's going to be worse in my opinion, because of 
the inflation we are going to leave our kids and the high taxes that we 
are going to have to pay to keep pace with the spending that's going 
on.
  Once again, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
  Mr. AKIN. Congressman Burton, the distinguished guest from the State 
of Indiana. We are very thankful for the good people that Indiana 
sends.
  We also have joining us here tonight a judge from Texas. When you get 
a judge from Texas you're talking about somebody that kind of keeps an 
eye on things. I would like to yield to Judge Carter, a good friend of 
mine and a great and patriotic American and an American, as I 
understand, with some pretty good stories to boot.

                              {time}  1815

  Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend for yielding.
  I'm proud to join my colleagues in speaking up against this 
horrendous amount of spending that's going on in the country today, and 
it's all done by the Obama administration. They're calling it 
``stimulus,'' they're calling it ``save the economy,'' all these 
things. But I just got back from a trip where I was meeting with some 
parliamentarians from the European Union. And, you know, I will admit, 
I will confess that I viewed the European Union--my wife is from 
Europe. In my experience, the fact that my wife is from Holland, we 
have visited Europe on many occasions, and I really thought they were 
much more towards the socialist side of the calendar and that their 
ideas were much more leaning to the left. And then I went to listen to 
these folks talk about what they called an economic stimulus package in 
the EU and what they were calling upon their member countries to do for 
economic stimulus. And, amazingly enough, it was exactly what the 
Republicans have been saying we should do to have an economic stimulus. 
And that is cut taxes, especially on those categories of people that 
create jobs like employers and business taxes, and cut spending.
  Mr. AKIN. Let me reclaim my time. What you're saying is kind of 
radical here. What you're saying is a bunch of socialistic Europeans 
are telling us that what we should be doing is providing liquidity for 
small business to create jobs and to pull our Nation out of recession. 
That's what I'm hearing you say. You're telling me that these people in 
Europe are telling us this?
  I yield.
  Mr. CARTER. Actually that's just it. I wouldn't, after having these 
conversations, classify them as socialist nearly as much as I might 
classify the administration we are dealing with today as socialist 
because their ideas are more that we've got to let the free market 
work; so we are, meaning the Europeans, cutting taxes, we are cutting 
spending.
  Then, amazingly enough, I think this should be a surprise to 
everybody: The United States of America could not join the European 
Union if they wanted to. Why couldn't they? Because our debt ratio is 
too high. And it's going higher.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, what you're saying is America could not 
join the European Union now because our debt is so high?
  Mr. CARTER. That's right. They have no more than 3 percent of gross 
domestic product and we're bumping up against 6 with the Obama plan 
here.
  Mr. AKIN. I see my friend from Georgia here wanting to get a word in.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I don't know much about the European Union, but I 
think that's a real wakeup call for the American people if they 
understand that.
  But I guess the whole thing that gets me is that we heard from the 
Blue Dogs today that the reason this budget was okay and the reason 
this debt was okay and the reason this deficit spending

[[Page H4673]]

was okay was because it was the total picture. It was all put out 
there. And their complaint was in the past that with the deficit 
spending and the reason they criticized it so badly is because it was 
not an open process. It wasn't open, that this money had been some kind 
of sleight of hand.
  Well, I would like to ask the gentleman from Missouri or my friend 
from Texas, are you aware that they are including in the revenue the 
alternative minimum tax, $50 billion of this alternative minimum tax 
that we have patched that we are not even going to get? So this is 
revenue that they are using and spending that we're not even going to 
get in.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, the alternative minimum tax, usually we 
have rolled that back every year. Are you saying they're not going to 
do that this time?
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. No, they are rolling it back. But they are claiming 
the revenue to use in the spending as if they were going to collect the 
tax.
  Mr. AKIN. That's kind of a unique accounting principle.
  If you did that in the free market, judge, and let me just yield, 
what would happen if a businessman were to do to that? What would you 
do to him if he came in your courtroom?
  Mr. CARTER. When we saw voodoo accounting in the Enron case, look 
what it has done to accounting principles and to accounting firms. That 
makes no sense, but then there is a lot of this thing that doesn't make 
an awful lot of sense. That surprises me, but it's kind of the old 
shell game. Look under this shell. Now, which way is it going? Which 
way is it going? There it is. We gave it to you. No, wait, what is 
this? That's what this whole thing is about.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I would like to ask a question whether 
either of you when you were in maybe first or second grade ever saw 
these workbooks and they had the pictures, what is the line that 
doesn't fit in? And they'd have a couple of dogs and they'd have a cat 
in the line or something like that.
  Well, let me just ask you, if you take a look at this chart to my 
left, can you see the thing that doesn't fit in here? These are either 
budget deficits or surpluses by year, all through these different 
Presidents here. This is when you had a Republican Congress and a 
Democrat President and we actually had a couple of surpluses here. This 
is September 11. We had the war in Iraq; so we were running some 
deficits. Do you see the line that doesn't quite fit in there?
  I yield to my friend from Texas.
  Mr. CARTER. If I may answer, of course, the stuff above the line, the 
surplus, is a little different. But on the below-the-line side, it's 
clearly the last four lines because there's this one gigantic line 
which looks like it's this year and then every year thereafter is 
bigger than the other lines all the way going back to 1990 or 
something. What year is that?
  Mr. AKIN. This goes back to 1980.
  Mr. CARTER. So basically the last four lines are bigger than anything 
that we've seen since 1980.
  Mr. AKIN. Those are the actual economic facts of where we are.
  I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I would like to point out to my friend from 
Missouri and to, Mr. Speaker, anybody that, if we could talk to them, 
ask the people that might be watching to understand that that is 
deficit spending, and that's what I was talking about on this chart. 
That's the deficit spending that we are doing. We are borrowing the 
money. After April 26 we are going to be going into debt, and that's 
what that long line is.
  But what we don't realize and what's not on that chart is the amount 
of debt that we are accumulating. Not just the deficit spending but the 
amount of debt. And I believe the gentleman has got a chart there that 
shows the amount of debt.
  When I would speak to groups at home or have a townhall meeting, I 
used to talk about the amount of debt that our children were 
inheriting. I'm having to include grandchildren now and may very soon 
have to pick up with great grandchildren. But I think what we need to 
look at is what this budget does is not just look at the deficit 
spending but look at the amount of debt. This thing increases our debt 
to $14.5 trillion. And I will let the gentleman explain the chart, but 
as this chart points out, we are almost doubling the amount of debt 
that it took us 232 years to accumulate in 1 year.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, sometimes you can talk about big 
numbers and when you get past a certain number of thousand dollars, 
it's hard for me to imagine what we are talking about. But here is a 
different way to look at it: You go from George to George. That's 
George Washington to George Bush. And you go through all of that, and 
they accumulated by overspending $5.8 trillion. That's a lot of money. 
We shouldn't have that much overspending. I know you gentlemen have 
voted with me against doing that kind of overspending. But that's the 
reality of where we are, $5.8 trillion. But now we're taking a look at 
this President, and just using the numbers he gave us, these are his 
numbers, and he has got $8.7 trillion he's going to add on top of this. 
So in other words, he's proposing to spend in the next 7 years $8.7 
trillion, which is more than what we had from George Washington to 
George Bush. Now, that is some serious level of spending.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. To the gentleman from Missouri, now, that is not 
just spending; that is accumulated debt. This is debt. This is not 
spending. The spending's going to be way more than that. We're doing 
3.6 trillion next year. That is the amount of debt that he's adding to 
our national debt. And I'm not sure and I don't want to quote it, but 
it's a good percentage of our GDP that we are going to be in debt.

  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman's pointing 
that out, and I misspoke. You're absolutely right.
  Mr. CARTER. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. AKIN. I do yield.
  Mr. CARTER. It is certainly enough of a percentage of our gross 
domestic product that if we were a nation trying to join the European 
Union, we would be above their joining point.
  Mr. AKIN. In fact, what you just said, I think, gentleman, was we are 
like twice over it.
  Mr. CARTER. I was in Estonia, which is protected by NATO but wants to 
join the EU, and their problem is they are 1 percentage point above 3 
percent of their gross domestic product. So they're cutting programs 
and reducing taxes because they've learned they get more revenue that 
way so that they can get to the point that they will be able to be 
admitted to the European Union. It's embarrassing that Estonia is doing 
better on debt than the United States of America.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, that's not a good scenario when Estonia 
is better on their economics than what we are doing in this country. 
And I think that's what generated these TEA parties and things. I will 
tell you people in my district, St. Louis, they were mad. They were 
very upset about this.
  I am delighted that we are joined here by Congressman Coffman from 
Colorado. Colorado is a good solid State, and they have elected a great 
Congressman here. And I look forward to your joining our discussion 
here tonight.
  Congressman Coffman, I yield.
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. Thank you. I think that what is most 
alarming about the level of borrowing, as a freshman Congressman, in 
our orientation process, we had economists of all ideological stripes, 
and I think that they differed on what was stimulative spending. They 
maybe differed on the amount of deficit spending that might be required 
for the recession. But one thing that they were all in agreement with 
is that we had to close that deficit gap. We had to control our 
spending within certainly the next 2 or 3 years because if we don't, 
and this plan that we're talking about that you have just referenced 
does not in any way close that spending gap, then we are going to have 
government borrowing competing with private sector borrowing as we try 
to move out of this recession and it's going to lead to high interest 
rates, high inflation rates. And if you overlay these taxes that are 
envisioned in this budget plan, you've really got a recipe for 1979/
1980: stagflation, double-digit interest rates, double-digit inflation, 
slow to no growth in the economy.

[[Page H4674]]

Only my worry is, again, unless we control spending, it's not going to 
be temporary as it was in 1980 and then, of course, we got the Reagan 
tax cuts and we moved out of it, but that we are not going to return to 
prosperity and we are going to have some real problems.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate your joining us for the 
discussion this evening.
  Sometimes people want to claim that Republicans don't have any 
solutions and are just always complaining about the excessive spending 
or what we really should do about it. But the fact of matter is that 
there are proven ways of getting the economy back on track when you 
start into a recession. And one of the things that's absolutely 
critical, and it works a couple of different ways, but what it does is 
it increases the amount of revenue that the Federal Government takes 
in, and that's a way to get a budget balanced. There are two ways to do 
it: cut spending or take in more revenue. The only trouble is if you 
tax too much, you kill the economy and you take in less revenue and you 
create something that's even worse than what you had before.
  Now, the way to do it is you want liquidity available for the free 
markets. You want the people who are the investors and the inventors, 
the small business people, you want those people to have the liquidity 
so they can run and manage their businesses. A lot of people don't 
realize that if you take a business that's got 500 employees down, and 
that's what we call a small business, they employ half of the people in 
our country but create almost 80 percent of the new jobs. So you want 
to make sure those guys have got the liquidity that they need, and 
that's what the Republicans understand.

                              {time}  1830

  That is why we are completely opposed to a whole series of things 
that the Democrats are doing which are going to make it hard for small 
businesses. It is exactly what you are saying. You have to get off of 
this spending, and it seems like our administration just does not 
understand that and we are going to take a recession and turn it into 
the Great Depression.
  I don't mean to cut in on you, but what you are talking about is the 
livelihood, the potential jobs that people in America wouldn't have 
access to because they were never created, because we have just 
vacuumed the liquidity out of the private sector.
  I want to yield to my friend from Texas, Judge Carter, for just a 
minute.
  Mr. CARTER. This spending and this debt record, I am sitting here 
thinking and contemplating while you all were talking, my children 
haven't rewarded me with any grandchildren yet, but they will. They 
don't even come close to taking care of this while my grandchildren are 
alive. We are talking about my great-grandchildren. In fact, there are 
people that estimate with the amount of interest that we will have to 
bear on this debt, that this goes on for generations not even conceived 
of today. It could be generation after generation after generation.
  When you take what we already considered a troublesome debt of $5.8 
trillion, there was an amazing amount of criticism of the Republican 
administration under George Bush when that number popped up. Of course, 
they blamed it all on George Bush. He did certainly increase it, but I 
am not here to go into that. But that number seemed to concern the 
Democratic now-majority quite a bit when they were in the minority.
  But their President, the new President, Barack Obama, our new 
President, $8.7 trillion on top of $5.8 trillion, and this means that 
that number that we were talking about could be the downfall of 
humanity is now almost tripled. People have to just realize what is 
happening.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time a little bit, first of all, who was it 
that supported this $410 billion for the omnibus? Was that the Democrat 
party? Yes. And then this bill here, this stimulus or ``porkulus'' bill 
for $787 billion, do you recall here in the House Chamber when we voted 
on this bill, do you recall how many Republicans supported that number?
  Mr. CARTER. None.
  Mr. AKIN. Not one.
  Mr. CARTER. By the way, I didn't support that first one either, or 
the one before that.
  Mr. AKIN. Neither did I, gentleman, and that is why we are here, I 
believe. So people want to say, well, you know the Republicans, we got 
a few liberal Members and all that kind of stuff and they want to beat 
us up for two or three Republicans that might vote for something like 
this. But there wasn't one Republican that supported that number, is 
there?
  Mr. CARTER. Not one.
  Mr. AKIN. All these people have been talking about the cost of the 
war in Iraq. They didn't seem to worry about spending more than that in 
the first 5 weeks we were here. I don't understand exactly how that 
works.
  Congressman Coffman from Colorado.
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. Congressman Akin, you know, I think that it 
is best categorized as generational theft. I had a high school senior 
when I was back home over this Easter recess and met with a high 
school, with a government class, and she said something very 
interesting. She said, I don't think this is fair to me, what the 
Congress is doing.
  I tried to describe it to the class as saying it is like if your 
parents with their credit cards were given no limit on their credit 
cards and signed you up as the guarantor for that debt. So in trying to 
put it in something they can relate to, it is very hard to relate to 
this extraordinary amount of debt that I think the majority in the 
Congress is thinking about today, and not thinking about tomorrow. To 
use the financial crisis as an excuse for their going into debt in the 
third year and the fourth year and the fifth year and the sixth year 
absolutely doesn't make sense.
  Mr. AKIN. If I could reclaim my time, piggy-backing on what you said, 
we should take a look at what you said. You said using the financial 
crisis as an excuse. Of course, that is what we have been doing here. 
We said, oh, look, there is this mortgage crisis that was created where 
all of these Freddie and Fannie mortgages were made to people who 
couldn't afford to pay and the Wall Street community played some funny 
games with the securities business and we end up in this big mess that 
was really started by this mortgage crisis. So now we have got the 
recession started.
  So there are really two schools of thought as to what you do when you 
got a recession going. One of the schools of thought is, and it goes 
back to FDR and Little Lord Keynes, he was a little weird, he had this 
idea if you spent enough money you could ``stimulate demand'' and 
everything would be fine. It was a little bit like reaching down, 
grabbing your bootstraps and lifting yourself up and flying around the 
room.
  So they tried this theory about the Federal Government spending tons 
of money. It was called Keynesian economics. And at the end of 8 years 
of this experiment of the Federal Government spending tons of money, 
this guy, the fellow who was FDR's Secretary of Treasury, comes before 
the Congress, the Ways and Means Committee, and he made this statement. 
This is exactly his words, Henry Morgenthau. He says, ``We have tried 
spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and 
it doesn't work.'' It also shows that we don't learn much from history. 
``I say after 8 years of the administration, we have just as much 
unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot.''
  Now, this theory is what we are doing, the idea we can fix a 
recession with excessive Federal spending. If that were such a good 
idea, with the amount of debt we just saw at $5 trillion, we should be 
doing great anyway, if lots and lots of debt is what makes things 
better. Yet, here we have Henry Morgenthau speaking to us from 1939 
like he is out of the grave saying, hey guys, this doesn't work.
  The other solution, of course, is that you could do what we said, 
which is get the liquidity into the hands of the business people. Let's 
talk just for a minute about small business. One of the worst things 
you can do for small business, let's sort of tick the things off.
  The thing you want to do is you want to tax them so much they can't 
run their business, right? So where would you start if you were trying 
to harm small business?
  I yield to my friend from Colorado.
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. Well, thank you Congressman Akin. I think

[[Page H4675]]

if you wanted to hurt small business, unfortunately, where you would 
start is certainly by increasing their tax burden.
  Mr. AKIN. First off, you are going to increase their taxes. So what 
is the first thing that the President said he is going to do? Anybody 
making over $250,000 a year, he is going to increase their taxes. I 
don't know if he realizes that more than half of the small business 
owners make over $250,000 a year. So if he increases their taxes, then 
what are they going to have to spend money to help build up their small 
business? So, right off the bat, he is doing one of the first things to 
hurt a small business person.
  There are other taxes he is proposing. Do you recall some of the 
others? What else would you do?
  I yield.
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. Well, Congressman Akin, I think one of the 
issues we are going to be debating very soon in the Congress that is in 
the budget plan is certainly cap-and-trade, that tax on carbon, putting 
a burden across America from the standpoint of consumers as well as 
businesses in terms of a carbon tax. I think that is going to lead to 
the greatest export of America will continue to be jobs overseas. It is 
an economic development tool for India and China.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, what you are saying is absolutely 
fundamental for us to understand. What we are talking about is that the 
President has said that he is going to increase the cost of energy.
  He also said he wouldn't tax anybody making less than $250,000. He 
said that. But then he turned around and said, oh, no, but we are going 
to tax energy. How much are we going to tax energy? They call it cap-
and-trade. It is really cap-and-tax.
  So he is going to tax energy. So who is that going to affect? Well, 
the MIT people took a look at the proposal and said we are talking 
$3,100 for the average household in America. The average household 
doesn't make any $250,000. So he is going to run the tax of energy up. 
And what else is that going to be? Of course, as you are absolutely 
right, the astute gentleman from Colorado points out that small 
business, if it costs more money for energy, it makes it harder to do 
the business. So we are going to do that.

  First of all, we are going to tax them if they are making over 
$250,000. Then we are going to tax their energy. Any truck driver or 
anybody that has to bring supplies to their business is going to pay 
more money for it, because that is going to be taxed.
  So have we let off there or not? No, in fact they thought of some 
other innovative things.
  Mr. CARTER. If the gentleman will yield, let's not forget all the 
taxes you just rattled off, who is really going to pay those taxes? 
They are going to be put in the price of goods and services that are 
provided, and then those goods and services are going to go to the 
American people. So they are going to wake up in the morning and they 
are going to get delivered to their house this month's electricity 
bill, and, holy cow, where did all this come from? Everybody in 
America. It is not going to discriminate on whose bill is going to go 
if you are making $250,000 a year. No. It is going to every American 
that is burning electricity, every American that is consuming gas, if 
they have natural gas in their home.
  The American public is going to pay the price. And this cost that we 
have added to the manufacturers or to the retailers, these small 
business owners, they are going to put that on the price of their goods 
and services, and guess who is going to pay that? The people that need 
and purchase the goods and services. So the price of shirts and suits 
and shoes and T-shirts and baseball gloves and all of the things we 
want for our family are going up by the cost of that carbon tax, which 
that means who is paying the tax? The American people. All of the 
American people.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, there are kind of two scenarios, aren't 
there? Let's say you have a small business that is making a product in 
this country. They are paying an increased cost of electricity, so they 
have to raise the price of their product. One of two things happens: 
Either the American consumer buys the higher cost product or they buy a 
foreign competitor's product that the foreign competitor didn't have to 
pay that tax on, so they can sell it cheaper. So then what happens is a 
foreign job replaces an American job and the jobs disappear in this 
country. Either scenario is not good policy for our country.
  I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. Well, thank you Congressman Akin. We are 
truly in a challenging time, and the American people have to hope that 
this budget is not fully implemented, that we in the Congress wake up 
and stop this madness of spending and taxing. I think it has been 
certainly said before that this budget spends too much, taxes too much 
and borrows too much. Again, it is a generational theft.
  Mr. AKIN. It is a generational theft. It is a budget that taxes too 
much, spends too much and borrows too much.
  The other thing that is kind of interesting to me was, reclaiming my 
time, if you take a look at this map of the country, these are 
manufacturing jobs. These are those businesses that are going to be 
hurt by this cap-and-tax. If you take a look, the ones that are the 
most orange are the ones that are hurt the most by this.
  You notice that our friends in New England and out on the West Coast 
don't seem to be affected by this tax very much. But somehow, the 
Midwestern States are going to get clobbered by this tax. And the tax 
is justified on the worry about global warming. But it is not popular 
to say ``global warming'' anymore because the world isn't really 
warming, so we call it climate change.
  So the problem is they are claiming we are making too much 
CO2. So we are going to then tax nuclear reactors for the 
CO2 they generate. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, 
does it, because they don't generate any CO2. Yet we are 
going to tax them anyway.
  So a lot of these manufacturing States where there are a lot of jobs 
tied to energy, they are going to get hammered with this proposal. So 
not only is the budget out of control, but now we are trying to raise 
money with this hair-brained scheme of taxing energy, which is just 
going to really hurt our productivity, and that is the thing that 
either chases jobs overseas or it prevents jobs from being created in 
the first place.
  I yield to my good friend from Texas.
  Mr. CARTER. And they are taxing energy. If you look at that map, you 
see that the energy-producing States, right now I am from Texas, my 
neighbors Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico are all energy-producing 
States, as is Mississippi to some extent, until you get over to the 
blackout area around Florida on the coastal offshore productions.

                              {time}  1845

  And so we're looking at those States that everybody's been calling, 
you know, the evil monsters of the oil and gas industry, that that's 
who we're going to get even with. The tax burden on those States is 
going to be less than the tax burden on our Midwestern States and some 
of our Southern States. This has been conceived with a program of 
attacking people that you can--it's easy, they think it's easy to get 
mad at. And the reality is this is going to hurt the very people that 
they're calling upon to get mad. It's going to hurt the Midwest and the 
Southern States. It's embarrassing how much the public is being fooled 
by this particular tax. This is just the beginning. We're talking about 
carbon, not necessarily energy. There will come a time when we figure 
out other carbon producers that we will tax.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I'd just like to try and tick off--I 
should have a list of them here tonight. Let's tick off what we're 
doing for our small business people.
  First of all, if you're making $250,000 a year or more we're going to 
increase your taxes. That's more than half the small businesses. So 
first we're going to increase the taxes of the people that own the 
small businesses.
  The next thing we're going to do is we're going to tax heavily 
energy, not only the energy they use to run their own homes, but the 
energy used to run their business and to buy supplies and things for 
their business.
  Next thing we're going to do is we're going to let the death tax come 
back.

[[Page H4676]]

So now we have the death tax so that the guy that creates a business 
can't pass it on to his kids, and so he's going to have to sell his 
business in order to pay taxes when he dies. So some guy dies. The 
business needs a certain amount of capital goods and equipment to work. 
You've got to sell the business in order to pay the tax. Now the 
business isn't viable and the business goes away. Oh, that's wonderful 
for business, for small business.
  And then we're going to do--what else are we going to do with the 
thing? Well, the other thing we're going to do is dividends and capital 
gains. Now we reduced dividends and capital gains tax to put liquidity 
into the small businesses at the beginning, in 2003. And the whole 
recession turned around to a very strong economy for a number of years, 
greatly helped by the dividend and capital gains money being plowed 
back in to investors and inventors and small business people. Now, that 
tax it is going to go away.
  So we're hammering them on the $250,000. We're hammering them on the 
energy; we're hammering them on the death tax; we're going to get them 
on dividends and capital gains. I mean, how can a small business 
survive?
  And then people are going to wonder, gosh, gee, I wonder where all 
the jobs went?
  We're doing the wrong things, and yet we don't have to. We can learn 
from history.
  I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. Congressman Akin, I think what the budget 
fails to realize is how much the American people are suffering, that 
the level of stress on small business and the level of stress on the 
average American family, that it is Congress' first responsibility to 
stabilize this economy, to end this steep descent into a recession. And 
then afterwards, we ought to have a debate on energy policy. We ought 
to have a debate on health care. We ought to have a debate on global 
warming. We ought to have a debate on all these other things. But our 
first and foremost responsibility is to stabilize this economy.
  And I think that the President's Chief of Staff said it well; that a 
crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and words to the effect that we 
need to use it as an opportunity to do other agenda-driven items. And 
in doing so, I think they compromise the value of the stimulus and 
stabilizing this economy.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, I appreciate your thoughts on that. And again, where 
we're coming from in this deal is this faulty idea that somehow we 
could fix the economy by excessive spending. And Henry Morgenthau 
really shot that thing full of holes. But if he didn't, certainly the 
Japanese in the 1990s did the exact same thing and it just didn't work. 
It's really crazy.
  And you know, you talk about people suffering. You know, sometimes 
you think the upside down world in Washington, D.C. just doesn't seem 
to get it.
  Here's a letter I got from one of my constituents, and it just kind 
of reflects a little bit of the tone. This is Shannon from Baldwin, 
which is part of St. Louis County. ``You asked how I would be affected 
by the Obama budget. I'm self-employed with my own small business, 
professional organizer, personal assistant. I do not earn a large 
amount of money, but it's been enough to live a simple but comfortable 
life. I do not have credit card debt, and I have always made it a point 
to live within my means. Yes, my business has been affected by the 
economic downturn of the last year. Many of my clients have cut back on 
their spending, which means less work for me. So whether it be 
increased taxes, spending that affects me directly, or increased taxing 
of my wealthier clients, it reduces my overall income. But more than 
anything else, I think the most negative effect of all the spending, 
bailouts, irresponsibility, etc cetera, has had on me is that I no 
longer have any faith in my own government to do what is fiscally right 
for the country.''
  We are destroying the faith of our constituents that this government 
is in any kind of control whatsoever fiscally. That's what she's 
saying.
  ``The government produces nothing. It has no money to spend except 
for what it takes from taxpayers. I am disgusted with the enormous 
spending and bailing out of irresponsible or downright negligent 
behavior. It seems that while I have worked hard to be responsible and 
follow the rules, I'm now being punished by being forced to clean up 
the mess of those who choose not to with my tax dollars.''
  There's a sense of anger. There's a sense of resentment out there. I 
think you're absolutely right. And it's interesting that you're sensing 
that in Colorado.

  We also have our very distinguished Congresswoman Foxx from North 
Carolina. She's maybe not huge, but powerful things come in small 
packages like atoms, and I would like to yield some time to my good 
friend, Congresswoman Foxx.
  Ms. FOXX. Well, I want to congratulate my colleague from Missouri and 
my colleagues from Texas and Colorado for spending the time that they 
have on this special order tonight. And I said I would come over and 
help a little bit, but you guys have been doing such a wonderful job, 
you don't need a lot of help.
  But I have been interested in talking about what our colleagues in 
the House said in the past about deficit financing and deficit 
spending. And I'm wondering, at times, whether they've been on the road 
to Damascus in terms of the revelations that they've had and the 
changes that they've made.
  I have a quote here from the chairman of the budget committee that I 
think we ought to talk about. He has talked about betting the budget on 
a blue sky forecast, and saying that he was concerned about these minor 
deficits under the Bush administration, a record deficit of $413 
billion. And now they're talking about deficits of trillions and 
trillions of dollars, and that seems not to bother them in the very 
least. And I think that the chart that you have, the bar graph there 
shows the problems that we're facing in this country.
  And I've said once before, I went home after we voted for the 
bailout, and said to my grandchildren when they asked me what were we 
doing in Washington. And I said, well, we're putting you and your 
children and your grandchildren in debt. And my granddaughter said to 
me with the wisdom of a child, Grandma, why do you want to put little 
children into debt? And I said, you know, I don't want to put little 
children into debt. But we know now that we have Debt Day the earliest 
that it's ever been in the history of this country. This coming Sunday 
is going to be Debt Day. It shows the size of government spending 
relative to our revenue. Never before has Debt Day come in April. It's 
coming up several months from when it used to come up. I mean, the 
earliest that it's ever come up before was in July 2004.
  And I think what we also have to remind the American people is that 
up until the year 2007, there was a Republican Congress and a 
Republican President. They blame all that's happened in the last 2 
years on President Bush. And I find that very intriguing. But when you 
ask----
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I think he's the one that created that 
hurricane, isn't he?
  Ms. FOXX. I think he created the hurricane too. He gets blamed for 
everything.
  But when you point out to them that they were in charge in 2007, 2008 
and now they're in charge in 2009 they just don't like to talk about 
that.
  And they want to give President Clinton all the accolades for the 
budget that he had. But let's point out again, it was a Republican 
Congress that reined in spending under President Clinton.
  So as I pointed out in the Rules Committee one day to the chairman of 
the Budget Committee, it's so convenient for them to give all the 
credit to a Democratic President with a Republican-controlled Congress, 
and all the blame to a Republican President with a Democratically-
controlled Congress.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, reclaiming my time, what we've got now very clearly 
is a huge majority of Democrats running the House; they're running the 
Senate, and they control the administration. So they have everything.
  And now what you are saying is, this is the equivalent, I mean, this 
is really hair-raising what you're saying, the gentlelady from North 
Carolina. What you're suggesting is that essentially we're like a 
family and we've been given some money to spend for a year. And we've 
only gotten to April, April

[[Page H4677]]

28th. That's just a little after the deadline that taxes are due, and 
we've already spent it all. In other words, by April 28, that's next 
week, we're going to have spent all the money that comes in in taxes in 
the year 2009. And that's what these different charts are showing in 
very different ways.
  But, you know, you've got the tax day, when you have to have your 
income taxes in, April 15. And now we've got Debt Day, which is April 
28. My goodness.
  Ms. FOXX. It's April 26.
  Mr. AKIN. 26 is it? Yeah.
  Yielding to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. CARTER. Well, I'm very sad to say that, to learn that Debt Day, 
the day we don't have any money that we raise from taxes, is my 
daughter's birthday. I wish her a happy birthday. But, quite frankly 
it's coming up this weekend. And you know, it's mind boggling that 
taxes are paid on the 15th, and basically we'll have spent all the 
money that we've gotten from tax revenues by the 26th. That's spending 
some money, folks. That's doing it better than anybody's ever done it.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, and I note that you are not so 
different in age than I am, and I'm just asking the same question I 
asked earlier this evening about our parents' generation. They've been 
called by some people the greatest generation. And they were called the 
greatest generation, because, among other things they had this 
intrinsic compass that said, we're going to leave our Nation better 
than it was when we were here. And they went to Europe, and they went 
to the China Seas and they did their bit and they left us a freer 
country. And they may not have gone through college themselves, but 
they saved their money so we could go through college, so that we could 
have a little bit better lifestyle.
  Some of those people now are like my own parents. They're just still 
alive, but they still have that attitude of making this a better 
country.
  And it breaks my heart to say, when I take a look at these numbers, 
that instead of leaving it a better country, we're leaving debt as an 
inheritance for our children. And that's tragic.
  I thank everyone for joining us this evening; look forward to next 
Wednesday night.

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