[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 62 (Monday, April 27, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H4757-H4763]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   FIRST 100 DAYS OF OBAMA PRESIDENCY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, we celebrate today, shortly, I think in 2 
days, we celebrate 100 days of President Obama's Presidency. His 
rankings are way up there, and we all respect him on his first 100 
days, but I am going to talk about those 100 days because I have a 
little bit different viewpoint than others might. I highly respect the 
man but, in turn, you can view the world differently, and I certainly 
view the world differently than Mr. Obama and the majority party.
  I am going to talk, and I hope I will be joined by some of my 
colleagues, a little bit about the way I look at the last 100 days and 
actually farther back than 100 days, the way I look at the last 6 
months of what's going on in this country and where we are going and 
what concerns I have.
  Now, I want to make it very clear that I am not doing this to get on 
Ms. Napolitano's hit list. I am just doing this to express my opinion.
  The first thing, when you start trying to look at this new 
administration and the direction we are taking the country, you have 
got to start, I think, with our foreign policy. And I think, literally, 
the first thing or almost first thing that the President of the United 
States did when he became President of the United States was to order 
the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to be closed down and, of 
course, we are now having the debate as to what we are going to do with 
the prisoners that were there.

[[Page H4758]]

  As a result of putting the spotlight on Gitmo, we put a spotlight on 
the argument of whether or not certain behavior is torture or not 
torture. And, clearly, this is a matter of opinion. And then we, as of 
yet, have not had official release of documents that tell us what 
resulted from these various procedures like waterboarding, as far as 
information gained by our intelligence folks.
  But the argument is that this was a great thing to do, to close down 
Guantanamo Bay. I disagree. I actually think it was almost the perfect 
place for us to keep those folks because, quite frankly, I haven't seen 
anyone, certainly none of our European allies have stepped up yet and 
said that they were willing to take them. We have had a few that 
stepped up and their political leaders said, whoa, time out, we are not 
going to do that.
  A fellow has got a private prison somewhere in the country said this 
morning he would take them, and then--I am not sure who the official 
was, who said, oh, no, you are not going to take them. So right now we 
don't have anyplace to put them.
  I would volunteer the Williamson County jail, because I know that 
they would wish they were back at Gitmo, but I don't think they are 
willing to take them. So we are at a dilemma on that, and we are at a 
dilemma on whether or not what has happened to these folks that are in 
this detention facility is, in fact, torture.
  I think that the general consensus in the press is that it is. But 
did it result in something that saved the lives of Americans, that's a 
good question.
  Hopefully that information will be released in the very near future. 
I know the President and Senate requested it. And I hope that we get 
that full information so we, as Americans, can get a good picture of 
whether or not this is really a good thing that we did.
  We certainly closed down something that was all over the news, it was 
all over the talking points of the Democratic Party. And, of course, 
that being the President who was elected from the Democratic Party, and 
as he says, he won, and he gets the opportunity to do that, and that's 
the first thing that he did.
  Other things in foreign affairs that he has done, he has made some 
trips overseas to Europe, was very, very warmly received by our allies 
in Europe, and they cheered for him and patted him on the back.

                              {time}  2000

  But they didn't give him what he asked for. He asked for some help, 
some real help, in Afghanistan.
  Let me say, I just came back from a meeting with the EU myself, and 
there are a lot of folks over there that certainly are standing in 
harm's way in Afghanistan. Most of those are Eastern European 
countries, but there are a few, like Great Britain, who certainly stand 
in the gap. But the President didn't get what he was looking for in the 
way of assistance over there, and, quite frankly, I think the Europeans 
should step up for him.
  I do support their participation, and not just the participation, as 
I told them when I was over there. The way we look at it where I come 
from, when you are making ham and eggs, the chicken is involved, but 
the pig is committed, and we are looking for some folks that are 
committed. That means, if necessary, they will go there without 
restrictions in their ability to perform, as some of our allies have 
done when they have gone to the battle areas that we are fighting 
terrorists in.
  Oh, by the way, one of the things that the Obama administration has 
done through Mrs. Napolitano is we are not supposed to call these folks 
``terrorists'' anymore, but I have a hard time remembering what I am 
supposed to call them, so I am going to call them that until I can 
remember what the new politically correct term she invented is.
  The President went to visit with the Central and South American 
leaders. He has opened the doors, or is attempting to open the doors, 
to a regime that has been a very, very evil regime since I guess I was 
a freshman in high school, and, believe me, that is a long time ago.
  Fidel Castro, we all thought he was going to be the savior of mankind 
when he came to the United States in, what was it, '56 or '57, until we 
got to know him and realized he was nothing more than what all 
dictators seem to be and they are, and that is a tyrant who totally and 
completely persecuted any opposition that might arise in his country of 
Cuba. He has slaughtered innocents for 50 years, and his brother 
doesn't seem to be moving in any other direction but backing up Fidel.
  Yet we have opened the doors now to Cuba. We are saying we are going 
to let tourists go down there. We are going to work with these people. 
Of course, we asked them if they would release the political prisoners 
down there, some of whom have been there forever, and President Obama 
thought that he heard Fidel Castro say yes, he thought we could work 
something out. But now they have come out and officially said they 
thought maybe the President misunderstood what Fidel said, so we didn't 
get anything out of that. But let's hope that maybe this will be good 
for us.
  But I always have a problem that when you acknowledge tyranny and you 
legitimize tyranny, then how do you fight against tyranny? It is an 
interesting dilemma to be in as a leader.
  We have got Hugo Chavez, who has been probably the biggest hater of 
this country since he came into power of anybody in my remembrance. I 
don't believe that the dictators of the Second World War that we fought 
against said as many bad things about the United States of America as 
Hugo Chavez has said.
  He has written a book called ``Open Veins of Latin America,'' which 
is a venomous attack on the United States blaming every woe that 
Central and South America has ever had on the United States of America. 
I think he gave an autographed copy of that book to the President of 
the United States when he was there, and they shook hands in agreement, 
not about the book, I am sure, about acceptance of the book.
  From a foreign policy standpoint, I don't think we laid a good 
foundation there, not a foundation of being the voice for freedom in 
the world. But then good men of good character can disagree, and I 
certainly think that the President of the United States disagrees with 
that position, and certainly he is an American citizen and is 
rightfully able to do so, just like I am.
  When the President, when we had visitors here from Great Britain, it 
was about the time we sent the bust of Winston Churchill back to 
England, which was supposed to be a permanent gift to this country, but 
somehow it got sent back. The President met the Queen. He shook her 
hands with both hands, and then bowed to the leader of Saudi Arabia, 
King Abdullah. The view of the world is just different from the heights 
that the President views it and from the lowly position here in 
Congress that we view it, at least from my standpoint.
  That is enough to talk about the foreign policy. But the truth is we 
are trying to be open and we are trying to reach out to folks and we 
are asking them to let's all be friends, and hopefully we all will be.
  If there is one thing that you have to look at this 100 days that the 
President has been President, that defines this 100 days more than any 
other thing, it is the new way we are going to handle an old problem 
that has been in the economic cycles of this country, that has been 
coming up for many, many years, and that is the idea of a recession and 
the possibility of a depression and how do you handle it.
  The best guidance that some think we have ever had is the guidance 
that was given to us by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected in 
1932 and served the longest of any President of the United States, 
which brought about the limiting amendments that we have had that 
limited us to two terms for President. He served many more than two 
terms for President, but he served from 1932 until basically 1940 when 
the world and the whole subject matter of the world at that time was 
the Great Depression.
  The Great Depression, however, got overshadowed by the German 
invasion of Poland in 1939 and the beginning of the Second World War. 
So the periods as you define the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, you 
take the Great Depression, '32 to '40, and then the next phase in which 
the American soldier did an excellent job and the American President 
did an excellent job of defeating tyranny around the world.

[[Page H4759]]

  I guess going back to a little bit of the history of the Great 
Depression, the interesting thing was that in 1932 the unemployment 
rate, and I am not good at getting figures, but it was double digits, 
somewhere in the 20s or 30s, something like 25 or 30 percent of the 
population was unemployed. In 1940, that same number was still 
unemployed. Yet we had gone on, we had adopted the Keynesian version of 
economics and we had leaped forward with the Keynesian version, and the 
biggest spending spree in the history of the country took place from 
1932 to actually 1946.
  But this administration has managed to have spent more than all of 
that and more than all the other Presidents combined in the first 100 
days. Now, I don't want to be totally unfair, because part of that came 
at the tail-end of the Bush administration with the Democrat Congress, 
and so I don't think it is completely fair to lay all that off on 
President Obama. But the facts are just that the President's budget is 
going to create the largest single deficit a budget has ever created in 
the history of the Republic.
  You know, one of the things that we discussed, there is a long 
debate, it was debated out pretty heavily in the Presidential election, 
was whether or not we were going to have earmarks. We still debate to 
this day in this Congress what is an earmark, is it good, is it bad. 
Everybody has got an opinion. We haven't resolved the issue. But the 
President said he would veto any bill that had an earmark in it, 
because he didn't believe in earmarks, and he is in a large crowd of 
people that continues to believe that way. And we have this debate on 
this floor, in committee, and elsewhere right now we have this debate. 
It goes on continuously. But the President did sign the omnibus 
spending bill, and he signed it with 9,000 earmarks in it. So as we 
look at this 100 days, we have got some promises, promises made and 
promises kept that we need to look at, and there is just a lot of 
different ways to view what is going on.

  I will say this. I will tell you that the President has got as good a 
popularity rating as anybody that has ever held the office in the first 
100 days, so I will give him absolute credit for that. He certainly 
knows how to be popular, and he is popular. But, you know, we had 
thousands of people take to the streets, I guess it was last weekend, 
the weekend before last, with the TEA parties, and although it was 
probably targeting the Congress as much as it was targeting anybody, 
but they were certainly not happy with the state of affairs in the 
United States.
  We signed the stimulus bill with $787 billion. Obama's inauguration 
cost the taxpayers $49 million, which was triple the amount of money 
that was spent on the Bush administration's first inauguration. There 
is still a $50.5 million budget shortfall on the Democratic convention 
in Chicago. So spending has become something that identifies this 
Presidency; $1.5 trillion is this year's budget. Now we are looking at 
a new budget, $3.6 trillion. We talked about $1 trillion before on the 
floor of the House; $1 trillion is a stack of brand new $1,000 bills 
somewhere between 63 and 65 miles high. That is a whole lot of money, a 
whole lot of money.
  So as we look at this 100 days, you can look at it in different ways. 
I will say this: The President has certainly kept his cool. He is an 
excellent speaker. He dazzles our allies and he makes people feel 
comfortable, and that is a lot that we need in this country.
  My problem that I have with President Obama most of all is that I 
fear the kind of overwhelming expenditure that we have to deal with 
from the Obama administration. We are getting so far in debt that our 
great-great-grandchildren are going to have problems paying this bill.
  I see I am joined by one of my colleagues, Kevin Brady. He is one of 
the people that I look up to in this building because he has always got 
good things to say. I will yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Thank you, Mr. Carter. Again I want to thank you 
for your leadership in the Republican Conference here in Washington, as 
well as the fact that you bring out issues that I think average 
Americans, middle class Americans, want to talk about these days.
  To be fair, I don't know if 100 days into the administration is a 
very good gauge of how successful or unsuccessful they will be. It is 
sort of more like a PR date. It is like getting your high school 
graduation grade in the first grade. You know what I mean?

                              {time}  2015

  Here's the very beginning. We'll see how it goes. I guess some things 
that worry me are that so much of this administration has been 
basically designed, or the foundation is to blame President Bush for 
everything. And it just seems to me that this is President Obama's 
stimulus. It is President Obama's budget. It's President Obama's 
bailout. And at some point, you have to start taking responsibility for 
your own leadership. And I think that's important for our new President 
to do.
  And I also take issue with the often-stated fact, supposedly, from 
the White House, that President Clinton inherited a surplus and 
President Obama a deficit, which is only partially true. What they 
don't say is that President Clinton inherited a surplus from a 
Republican Congress. And President Obama inherited a deficit from a 
Democratic Congress.
  I was here in 1997 on this floor, about this time of the night, when 
Republicans sat down with President Clinton, worked out the balanced 
budget agreement that led to that surplus. And Democrats voted 
overwhelmingly against that balanced budget agreement. So the surplus 
that President Bush received didn't come from Democrats; it came from 
Republicans.
  Admittedly, Republicans, especially led by the President, spent way 
too much. But I'd point out that the deficit when the Republicans left 
the majority in Congress they had whittled down to about $160 billion a 
year; still way to high, but the compass was moving in the right 
direction.
  Here we are 2\1/2\ years later, under Democratic control of the House 
and Senate, the deficit is now 10 times that much, $1.18 trillion, the 
most in American history. And that's what worries our folks, 
Congressman Carter, the most, you know, that we are on the biggest 
spending spree in American history; trillions and trillions and 
trillions of dollars of debt that seemingly can never be repaid; $1 
billion extra new funding an hour in the first 50 days of this new 
administration. And the question they have for me is, who's going to 
pay for all this? I mean, they realize there is no free lunch. There is 
no free money. Someone somewhere is going to have to pay for it. And it 
won't be the wealthy. It's going to be middle class families and small 
businesses, our children and grandchildren, who ultimately will pay for 
all this massive spending.
  I serve as the ranking House Republican on the Joint Economic 
Committee, and our economists pointed out that the stimulus bill really 
was a spending bill, had very little to do with creating jobs, would 
have very little to do with the economy recovering and may, in fact, be 
a drag on our economy in the out-years as we attempt to pay back where 
interest rights rise to catch up with all the monetary policy and 
fiscal policy occurring in Washington today.
  We also worry, our economists believe that our debt, national debt, 
may not just double in the next 4 years, may well triple in the next 4 
years, in that inflation could go to 8 to 10 percent a year, which 
really eats away at people's pocketbooks, families' paychecks, really 
is one of the greatest, I think, damagers to our economy.
  And we see this spending. We see this national debt, all of it again 
blamed on President Bush. And I look forward to the day when our new 
President says, you know, this is my administration, this is my 
leadership.
  And I see the mistakes that are being made on proposing tax increases 
on professionals and small businesses, tax increase is major on our 
independent energy producers in America. Tax increases, utility 
increases on every American as a result of this cap-and-trade scheme.
  We see taxes on people who want to give charitable deductions or 
deduct their own mortgage rates from what they owe Uncle Sam, higher 
taxes on capital gains and dividends, which a lot of our seniors rely 
upon in their retirement days as well. And it just seems to me you 
cannot tax, borrow and spend your way to prosperity; that we're

[[Page H4760]]

going to see massive tax increases, but even then, you cannot tax your 
way back to a balanced budget.
  In fact, I think and I believe that this budget that will be rushed 
through Congress this week, Congressman Carter, if it is allowed to 
pass, I don't know if we'll even have time to read it, just like the 
stimulus bill may be rushed through Congress. If it passes, we may well 
not see a balanced budget again in our lifetime. It sets the path so 
far from what a balanced budget is.
  In fact, you could double the taxes on every American, every 
taxpaying American in our country, you still wouldn't balance the 
budget under the Obama budget that we're looking at here this week. So 
all this debt, all this spending is scary, the direction we're headed.
  I'm convinced there are some issues, perhaps, that the President 
would like to work with Republicans on. I know that we're anxious to do 
that. So far it's been highly partisan in Washington. But I think there 
are issues that, if the President says to the Speaker and the Senate 
majority leader, I really do want to find consensus, rather than just 
jam everything through, I can tell you there are a lot of Republicans 
who are willing and eager to sit down with him. That's not been the 
case so far. As a result, I think our country is worse off for it.
  And I'd yield back again to the leader of this discussion.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, the issue of bipartisanship is one 
that every American wants, including every American, I believe, in this 
House. But the facts are that you have situations where some things are 
just so diametrically opposed to what you stand for that there's no 
place you can go there.
  When you're talking about bipartisanship, you've got to come in and 
try to move to a compromise middle position. Most of the legislation 
that we've seen in Congress in the first 100 days hasn't really even 
been vetted with the committee system. It just almost comes directly 
from the Speaker's Office to the floor. So we don't have any input into 
all that. To get bipartisanship you've got to sit down and talk things 
out, work things out. That's why we have committees. That's why we have 
the smaller units that discuss these things.
  You know, I was on, when I was, my first term in Congress I served on 
the then called Education and Workforce, now it's called Education and 
Labor Committee. And we had a group of African American women, and 
mostly women, but a few men, mostly grandmothers, but a few mothers, 
who came to express their desire to make sure that the voucher program 
that had been created before I got here for the D.C. schools was kept 
in place because, and they testified over and over and over how it was 
saving the lives of their children and grandchildren; that it was 
allowing them to select the school of their choice, and to put an 
effort forward to excel and be a superior student, because they were 
able to have gotten into the lottery system to get one of these 
vouchers for 1,700 students as an experimental program.
  But I had never, I've never been up here where I saw just ordinary 
folks come in and, I mean, I saw a grandmother stand up there and cry: 
Please don't take this program away. This program is saving my 
grandchild's life. Please don't take it away.
  And we didn't.
  But, unfortunately, the administration has eliminated that program. 
Now, this program was just what a bunch of poor people wanted. It's 
just a shame we couldn't expand that program so that we could do 
something about the failed D.C. school system, to make sure that good, 
hardworking kids, no matter where they live or what their circumstances 
in life are, would have a place to go to have a chance to have a better 
education. I don't understand that. I don't understand why that would 
happen. But it has to do with, something to do with politics.

  But when you're talking about little kids and their chance to go to a 
safe school and their chance to learn something, and you have a program 
that's giving them that chance and every one of their supervising 
parents and grandparents are there saying it's the greatest thing that 
ever happened to us, why in the world would you take that little token 
thing away, when you're spending trillions of dollars on other things?
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. And if the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. CARTER. I will yield.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. I think you make an important point there because 
that issue wasn't decided on what was best for the children. That was 
just a political agenda that was being exercised. And yet you have--I'm 
one of these believers that we need to invest in and lift up public 
schools all across this country with accountability, with resources, 
helping them do their job.
  But while we're improving the very worst of these schools, like in 
Washington, DC, you have to give those parents a choice, an option of 
getting their kids into a school, because if you're going to take, 5, 
6, 7, 8 years to get a school up to standards, look, when you have 
little kids like we do, in kindergarten and fourth grade, my wife and I 
do, every year matters. You can't have them in a school that's still 
failing for 5 or 6 or 7 more years. And those parents who last week 
were told, yes, we're going to continue it, and then a day later it was 
yanked out from under them, you know, all they said was, all they were 
saying is, while you improve our schools, give us a chance to get our 
kids a better education while you're doing it. So trying to do it both 
at one time. But we've seen this a lot. Common sense, I think, 
principles and values, that seem to be ignored.
  Last week, the Joint Economic Committee held a hearing with the 
Special Inspector General over the bailout funds. And he's very direct. 
And, basically, Barofsky, former prosecutor, respected, a lot of 
credibility, he said--he made two points at the hearing, Congressman 
Carter. One was that he said, despite their repeated requests to the 
Treasury Department that all the money from the bailout be accounted 
for, and then banks put in place controls so you can continue to 
monitor, again, Treasury Department, time and time has said no, we'll 
not do that. We don't want to know and hold accountable where those 
bailout dollars are going.
  And, secondly, they had just finished this, Inspector General, 
Special Inspector General, just finished a review of this new, some of 
the new programs, including taking these bad loans off the banks' 
books. And they said, it is ripe for abuse, collusion, conflict of 
interest, money laundering. They made a series of commonsense 
recommendations on how to prevent that from occurring. And to date, the 
Treasury Department still has not agreed to those commonsense 
protections of our tax dollars.
  And we're seeing that, whether it is in lower income people who want 
their kids to have a good education, whether it is taxpayers who just 
want to know where their bailout money went, and they want to prevent 
abuses before they begin, whether it is--a lot of Americans are not 
convinced that a government-run health care system is the way to go in 
America, but they already feel like it's being shut, they're being shut 
out and it's being rammed through.
  Same with this global warming cap-and-trade scheme. Again, rushed to 
the floor, rushed through Congress. We know, from the AIG bonuses and 
that fiasco of legislation that was on the House floor, when Congress 
rushes these things to the floor, when there is no debate, when it's 
shut off, when there's a gag rule where we can't even read the stimulus 
bill, and the public doesn't know about it, at the end of the day, 
America loses.
  And I think that that's one of the reasons, Congressman, that this 
President, for all his personal skills, for all, I think, his sincere 
desire to do a good job, his poll numbers, while high, are the most 
polarizing in four decades. The country has never been this divided 
over what direction we're going. He can play, I think, a more important 
role in leading. And I just hope that he's not, you know, manipulated 
or directed by those around him; that he's able to step forward, 
because I think there is an opportunity to work together. But so far, 
the first 100 days have been very, very disappointing from that regard.
  And I would yield back.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, and I thank the gentleman for his 
comments. And let me say, so that everybody understands where I come 
from, when this all started, President Bush

[[Page H4761]]

was President of the United States. And we had a Treasury Secretary 
come running in here and say, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord, the sky is 
falling. I need you to give me three-quarters of a trillion dollars, 
roughly, and I need it now. Don't ask any questions. Trust me.
  Well, when that all happened, I thought to myself, now, the folks in 
Round Rock and Georgetown, Texas, are pretty decent, hardworking, 
honest people. But I don't believe, if a guy came running into their 
place of business in a big hurry and said, the sky is falling, the sky 
is falling, the world's going to hell, I just gotta have a couple 
hundred bucks. Give it to me. I'll pay you back. Trust me. I think 
they'd say, whoa, wait a minute. What do you need this $200 for in such 
a big hurry?

                              {time}  2030

  At least they'd say that: What are you going to do with it if I loan 
it to you, and I'm not going to get it back? That might be their best 
friend to whom they might be able to do that; but I believe any normal-
thinking American would ask that kind of question.
  We were talking about three-quarters of $1 trillion that he was 
asking for, and all he was saying was: Trust me. It's too complicated 
for you to understand. Trust me. So I voted against it because, quite 
frankly, I think that the man on the street manages his money with more 
commonsense than the Congress does in managing that money.
  Now I hear this story from you, and you would know because you're on 
the Ways and Means Committee, which looks into these things. It shocks 
me to think that we are being told very clearly that the use of this 
money could be used for money laundering--that word jumps off the 
page--and they're not even doing it? Something is wrong. There's 
something wrong.
  I've got friends who have arrived. My friend Phil Gingrey has arrived 
here from the great State of Georgia. He was the first one here, so 
let's let him talk a little bit about the first 100 days.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate very much the 
gentleman from Texas for yielding and for giving me the opportunity to 
join with him on the floor tonight as we talk to our colleagues about 
our impression of the first 100 days.
  I was actually on ``Fox News Sunday,'' just yesterday, basically 
talking about the same thing, and my comment then was: well, you know, 
what bothers me more than the first 100 days and the performance of the 
President is the fact that yesterday was National Debt Day. It was the 
day on which the Federal Government had spent every bit of the money 
that we've taken in. All of the revenue has been spent on expenses, on 
discretionary spending and on mandatory spending, and now, for the rest 
of the year, it's borrowed money. We're going to be spending borrowed 
money for the rest of the year.
  The striking--shocking almost--thing about that, Mr. Speaker, is that 
this is occurring 3\1/2\ months earlier this year, the gentleman from 
Texas, than it did last year. So, yes, there's no way that I could 
stand before my colleagues and say that I would give the President a 
good grade on this.
  My worthy opponent in the majority yesterday, as we always have a 
Republican and a Democrat on these television shows, said: Well, you 
know, the President ought to be scored on a curve. I guess he meant 
compared to the last President--President Bush and the previous 
administration. In the opinion of this gentleman, the President should 
get an A on the curve. Now, he's a Harvard-educated lawyer, an 
accountant, and I think he, maybe, even has a Ph.D. In the Ivy League, 
I don't think they give anything, Mr. Speaker, but A's and B's. I went 
to Georgia Tech, and there is no curve. There is no grade inflation at 
Georgia Tech. I hope my friends at Georgia Tech won't get on to me 
about this. I'm a Georgia Tech graduate, and I speak only for myself, 
but I would give him at best a C-minus.
  One of the things that bothers me the most is this recent release, 
this declassification and release of these memos that were written by 
attorneys in the previous Justice Department in regard to enhanced 
interrogation to try to make sure that anything we did as a country was 
done legally and within the bounds of the law and within the bounds of 
our great Constitution. I'm sure they struggled--it was a difficult 
thing to do--and in good conscience said to the President: This is what 
you can do. This is what you cannot do. We're in a desperate situation. 
We have just been attacked. Three thousand or more people were killed 
when the Twin Towers came crashing down after the Islamic extremists--
the terrorists, global terrorists--I guess we call that overseas 
contingency operations now.
  Mr. CARTER. That's the word. That's the word.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. I guess we can no longer talk about 
terrorism.
  We were in a desperate situation, Mr. Speaker, and to think that the 
President--I read this in the paper about how he spent 5\1/2\ hours 
with his top-level people over in the West Wing, debating pro and con 
whether or not to release these memos--to declassify them and to 
embarrass, I guess, the previous administration and our country to the 
world. After 5\1/2\ hours of debate, pro and con, the President made a 
decision to release those memos, and then of course said: But now, you 
know, we need to move forward. I'm a leader--and I hope and pray that 
he is--who wants to look to the future.
  We've got a lot of problems. This economy is terrible. With 
everything we've done, we're just right back to where we were, you 
know, as far as the Dow goes and as far as continuing to lose jobs. So 
we need to move forward and not focus on the past. We're not going to 
be prosecuting these people because what they did they did in good 
faith. Then, what, 6 days later, all of a sudden, he said: Well, maybe 
I'm not so sure about that.
  Mr. Speaker, this is dangerous stuff, and I think the President 
really needs to rethink this. This business of gotcha and saying that, 
you know, everything is the fault of the previous administration, I 
think, has got to stop. If he wants to get a good score on his first 
100 days, well then, let's start thinking about the next 100 days. I'm 
ready to give him a good score if he--the President, Mr. President, the 
44th President of the United States--doesn't try to take over our 
health care system and doesn't bring us towards socialized medicine and 
a single-payer system, if he doesn't tax the middle class to death with 
this carbon trade scheme, regime, European Union idea, that, I think, 
is crazy in these economic times. If he wants a decent score in the 
next 100 days--and I'll yield back to my colleague--then hopefully he 
will and this Congress will and this majority will reject these ideas 
as we move forward.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, I thank my friend from Georgia. 
That's exactly what I was talking earlier about. It's easy to talk 
about bipartisanship, but when you just really believe the policy is 
wrong, that it's the wrong policy at the wrong time and for the wrong 
purpose, how can you work in a bipartisan manner on something like this 
cap-and-tax system that's being proposed by the majority?
  I mean, I'm going to tell you: unless I just don't understand it--and 
I'm not saying there's not a chance I might not understand it--but it 
seems to me that if your purpose is to keep people from putting carbon 
dioxide in the atmosphere and you've got a plant over here that's 
pouring out carbon dioxide and you've got a plant over here that's 
clean and that's saving carbon dioxide and planting 1,000 trees, then 
you say, well, this guy can loan to this guy some of his cleanness, and 
this guy will be in compliance, but, hey, he's still putting the stuff 
in the air. So how does that do anything?
  Oh, by the way, there's a tax that goes with this that's estimated to 
raise about $1.5 trillion for the United States, a brand-new tax. Well, 
that's okay. That tax is going to be on the big oil companies and on 
the utility companies and all of those people. That's okay. Who cares 
about them. Do you think those people pay that tax? Go down and get out 
last month's utility bill. Open it up, and see whose name is on it. 
Then see what they tell you you've got to pay, and look at the 
bottom line, and see what it is, and write it down someplace because 
it's going up, and it's going up by the amount of that tax if they pass 
this bill. So it is a new way to tax Americans. Believe me, that bill 
is not going to say, oops, you're middle class, so we're not going to 
put it on your bill. It's not going to

[[Page H4762]]

say that. Oops, you're poor, so we're not going to put it on your bill. 
It's only going to go on the rich people's bills. It's not going to say 
that. It's going to be on everybody's utility bill and on everybody's 
gasoline bill and on everybody's fuel bill. It's all going up by the 
amount of that tax, and you, the American people, are going to pay 
this.

  We--my friend Mr. Westmoreland and my friend Mrs. Bachmann--we're all 
going to pay this.
  I'd better recognize Mrs. Bachmann. She's one of the bright lights of 
this conference. We're glad to have her with us.
  Mrs. Bachmann, I will yield to you such amount of time you wish to 
consume.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. Judge, I thank you, and I thank you for holding this 
Special Order hour this evening on the first 100 days of the Obama 
administration.
  This has been a great leap that we've seen. We have different 
historical shifts that occur in our Nation's history. This one has to 
be at least, not a shift but, I think, more a great leap that we've 
seen. To me, the question shouldn't be as much How is President Obama 
doing? as much as it should be How are the people doing? How are the 
American people doing after these first 100 days?
  We were made great promises of hope, great promises of change. Yet I 
was listening over the weekend to the President's man, Larry Summers, 
and to what he was saying. He was saying it may be next year, 2010, 
before we see any shift in this economic climate. We were led to 
believe that we would see great change, immediate change, and all we're 
seeing is a prolonged effort, which is just what happened in the 1930s 
with FDR.
  The more the government spent, the more the government regulated, the 
more the government put up tariff barriers--trade barriers--and the 
more government intervened, the longer the recession occurred. As a 
matter of fact, the recession that FDR had to deal with wasn't as bad 
as the recession Coolidge had to deal with in the early twenties. Yet, 
from history, the prescription that Coolidge put on that is lower 
taxes, a lower regulatory burden, and we saw the roaring twenties where 
we saw markets and growth in the economy like we had never seen before 
in the history of the country. FDR applied just the opposite formula--
the Smoot-Hawley Act, which was a tremendous burden on tariff 
restrictions, and then, of course, trade barriers and the regulatory 
burden and tax barriers. That's what we saw happen under FDR. That took 
a recession and blew it into a full-scale depression. The American 
people suffered for almost 10 years under that kind of thinking.
  Here we are now, boosting forward to the year 2009--the beginning of 
hope and change. So, again, the question is: How are the people doing?
  Credit is tight. Banks aren't lending the way people had hoped they 
would lend. Job losses are going into the double digits. We have 
college and we have job losses approaching 20 percent in their 
districts. Minnesota, the State that I represent, is a fairly diverse 
State economically. We tend to have low unemployment. In areas of my 
district, I have unemployment of 10 percent. That may not seem like a 
lot, but that's a lot in the State of Minnesota.
  I wrote down just a couple of things, Mr. Carter, that we've seen 
just in the time that President Obama has been in office. He said quite 
often after he came into office that he inherited this mess. Now, one 
thing that we remember is that President Obama actually voted for all 
of these measures that got us into this mess. He voted for the bailout. 
He voted for all of these expenditures whether it was for Freddie and 
Fanny or Bear Stearns. He was voting for all of these measures all 
throughout 2008, but just since the time of his election in November of 
2008 to the present day, he has increased the burden, and he has 
increased spending by 75 percent on his watch. So it's one thing to say 
you've inherited a mess. It's another thing to increase that mess by 75 
percent. How has he done it?
  Well, he passed an over-$1 trillion stimulus measure that he was only 
too happy to sign. He also proposed that we spend $75 billion in direct 
foreclosure money. Then he proposed $200 billion to banks for more 
mortgage bailout money. Hey, I thought that's what that $700 billion 
was supposed to go for. That wasn't enough. He proposed and passed 
another $200 billion.
  Then we saw our Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, go over to Europe 
and before the G-20 say that we needed to get behind another $1 
trillion of spending for the International Monetary Fund--$1 trillion 
of spending--and also have an international financial regulator so 
perhaps, for the first time in the history of our country, the U.S. 
would subsume our economic system under an international regulator. 
This is unheard of. Then we also heard talk about global currency 
called ``special drawing down rights'' on the International Monetary 
Fund. The Treasury Secretary assured me, personally, in the Financial 
Services Committee that he would categorically renounce taking the 
United States off of the dollar and moving us toward international 
global currency. Within 24 hours, the Treasury Secretary went 180 
degrees different and said he would be open to an international global 
currency.
  Then we saw the firing of the president of General Motors, and we saw 
the changing of the board of directors of General Motors. We saw this 
administration tell Chrysler they had to get married to another 
company, Fiat, and they had to have this all happen before June.

                              {time}  2045

  We saw yesterday again, as Dr. Gingrey said, national debt day, and 
again, what this means for the people back home, is that the United 
States, as of Sunday, as of April 26, we spent it all. We've spent 
everything that we planned to bring in. It's like you made out your 
household budget for the year for a hundred thousand dollars, and you 
have already spent it by this point. So at this point, now it's the 
credit card. And it's not a credit card that you and I are paying; it's 
a credit card that our kids are going to be paying. That's why I am 
concerned.
  And that's why I am so glad you brought this up about this first 100 
days with President Obama, because I think it has more to say, Judge 
Carter, about what the kids under 30 years of age will have to live 
with than even more what you and I will have to live with, because this 
is a pretty big spending spree that we've seen happen in this last 30 
days, one so big we can't possibly bail ourselves out of it even this 
year.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time for a couple of other facts.
  It's so nice to have people that are on Financial Services and Ways 
and Means come in here because you get to see so much more of this 
stuff than we do. And we're supposed to be seeing it in Appropriations, 
but when it comes to spending, they sort of bypass Appropriations most 
of the time when it comes to spending.
  The 10 days before President Obama was inaugurated, he said there 
were two different economic scenarios that were coming down the pike, 
and one was good and one was bad. The good one was the passing of the 
stimulus bill. The bad one was doing nothing. He said that if we did 
not pass the stimulus bill, that unemployment rate would go above 8 
percent; but if we passed the stimulus bill, we wouldn't see 8 percent 
unemployment at any time until 2014.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. What happened, Judge?
  Mr. CARTER. Today, unemployment is 8.5 percent going on 9.
  And in addition to the spending we're spending, the Fed is printing 
trillions of dollars into the economy.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I guess, according to that thinking, then, they ought 
to spend more money. Do you think that's what the prescription should 
be for the American people?
  Mr. CARTER. That's what they're trying to do.
  But the reality is our spending is not working, and now the worry we 
have to be worried about is the fact that we may be looking at 
inflation, maybe 10 percent a year. Now, young people who have lived 
through the last--grown up since the 1990s, which would fit a great 
deal of the young people that are out there today, they really don't 
know what we're talking about when we say ``runaway inflation.'' They 
really don't get it.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. They didn't live through the Jimmy Carter years.
  Mr. CARTER. They didn't live through the Jimmy Carter times.

[[Page H4763]]

  But when you see your paycheck, you get a paycheck and you realize 
that your dollar gets--in a year gets worth 10 percent less, and the 
next year 10 percent less again, and just like interest compounds, so 
does inflation.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. Pretty soon your money is worth half.
  Mr. CARTER. So if it would have cost you $1 to buy this clip when you 
first started, it will end up costing you $2 to buy that clip--it's the 
same clip--because inflation is running away.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. And your dollar is worth half of what you thought it 
was worth.
  Mr. CARTER. President Obama promised the people at Caterpillar that 
if the stimulus bill passed, they would start hiring soon. The reality 
is they started laying off again because it wasn't the solution to the 
problem.
  I have got another friend that's here to join us, Mr. Westmoreland 
from the great State of Georgia, and I am going to yield him so much 
time as he may wish to consume.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you to the gentleman from Texas for yielding 
and for having this hour.
  I think if I was going to grade President Obama on the first 100 
days, that I would have to give him an ``A'' in public perception.
  Mr. CARTER. Amen.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I think he is a great orator. I think he does a 
great job of reading a speech, and he has--his message, and he's still 
been on the campaign trail, has made the public's perception think that 
we are getting somewhere. But the gentleman from Texas makes an 
excellent point. I thought he said it would not rise above 7.5 percent.
  I would also have to give him an ``A'' on blame shifting. And the 
gentleman from Texas mentioned that, too, that this seems to be all of 
our problems--all of our problems seem to be from the prior 
administration and the prior Congresses when the Republicans were in 
the majority.
  Now, I am here to confess that I was only here one term while we 
were--the Republicans were in the majority and we spent too much money. 
And we did. And we were at fault. And the American people said, ``No, 
we're going to stop this train. We're going to make a change.'' And 
Republicans, we got what we deserved, but the American people did not 
get what they deserved.
  In this last election, they were promised change, and we have had 
quite a bit of change. And Judge, the gentleman from Texas, I know you 
have talked about quite a bit of that, but we need to go forward.
  And I have learned something in the past 3 or 4 months that 
bipartisanship means doing what the Democratic leadership in this House 
wants you to do. It doesn't mean getting different opinions or 
different proposals put into the legislation. In fact, I would have to 
say that this Congress has been one of the most closed Congresses in 
the history of this country, as far as bipartisanship.
  So, the public perception is an ``A.'' He has sold his agenda in a 
way that the public has bought it, and one of those parts has been the 
bipartisanship. But the people that can create the real bipartisanship 
in the atmosphere of working together is Speaker Pelosi and Leader 
Reid. And the gentleman from Texas knows we have not seen that. We 
have, in fact, been closed out of the process. So that's not a reality.
  The reality is, as my colleague from Georgia mentioned, yesterday was 
debt day. After yesterday, we go forward spending our children and our 
grandchildren's money. We're putting everything we're doing on a credit 
card. I sat here for 2 years in this Congress and I listened to the 
minority, the Democrats then, complain about deficit spending, about 
going into debt, on and on and on. Yet today, that seems to be okay. 
That seems to be the way of this country: We're just going to put it on 
a credit card. If we don't have enough credit, then we will print the 
money.
  But I want to thank the gentleman from Texas for doing this and for 
bringing about a report card, I guess, on what the first 100 days has 
been about in this administration. I hope the next 100 days will be 
better. I wish this President great success. I wish this country great 
success.
  But I believe in order to achieve that success, we're going to have 
to get away from the blame shifting. We're going to have to get away 
from the public perception. We're going to have to get away from 
selling the snake oil that's sold here, and we're going to have to get 
down to working together, listening to ideas, and being able to come 
together and give every Member of this body, the people's House, an 
opportunity to put forth their ideas into making this a better country 
that we live in.
  So I want to thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding that time 
and for his willingness to come down and to bring this forth to the 
American people.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank you. Those were wonderful comments.
  You know, when you were talking about bipartisanship, I wanted to 
point out to you that you had it exactly right. It seems that 
bipartisanship means ``do what we say.'' You know, the worst 
demonstration of wanting to be bipartisan occurred in February when it 
was announced that the 2010 census would be moved out of the Department 
of Commerce and into the White House to politicize the accounting of 
the American public.
  Now, why would I worry about that? Well, because we, Members of 
Congress, are the branch of this government that is represented by a 
number of people. We have a number of people that we represent. And we 
divide the population of this country by a number that is expected to 
be somewhere around 800,000-850,000 people, I understand it, after the 
next census. And then that decides how many congressmen and -women we 
get from each State.
  This has always been done by independent people as nonpartisan as 
possible because the count matters. And so say you're moving it out of 
the department that it has been in and into the White House, there is 
nothing bipartisan about that. Absolutely nothing. The center of the 
universe of one party is the White House.

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