[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 64 (Wednesday, April 29, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H4973-H4980]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE FIRST 100 DAYS

  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. Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to be able to 
join you, my colleagues and friends this evening.
  The topic for our Wednesday evening discussion is ``the first 100 
days.'' It has become kind of a tradition for people to take a look 
back at previous Presidents and at the current President and say, 
``What happened in the first 100 days? What kind of records were set?

[[Page H4974]]

What sort of tone was set? What were the accomplishments? What was sort 
of the pace of how the new President has approached the office?''
  It's quite interesting. Obviously, there are very different 
Presidents, different political points of view, different things that 
they're going to focus on, and there are different times and different 
challenges. Tonight, we're going to take a look at that. We're going to 
take a look at those first 100 days. There were some records that were 
set, and there was a record that was set in a unique situation because, 
unlike any other time and for a long time, the Democrats have been 
totally in charge in Washington, DC.
  In the case of our own House here, this is a body that, as to 
whichever side has the majority of votes, it pretty much does what it 
wants without too much regard for the other side. That has been fairly 
traditional, but it is even more so now under the Congress of Speaker 
Pelosi. They can do what they want, and they do do what they want. In 
fact, a lot of the legislation is written directly with the staff, and 
it comes to the floor and is voted on.
  The Senate is a different matter. The Senate has always required 60 
votes to get a bill before the Senate for just a regular vote. So you 
have 100 Senators. If you have 51 Senators voting in favor of 
something, you can pass a bill, but unless you have 60 votes, you can't 
get it to the floor to get it passed. It's kind of an odd rule. Many 
people don't know that. Of course, the Democrats almost have the 60 
votes they need to control the Senate as well, and of course they have 
the Presidency. So we have here on the flip chart ``100 Days of 
Democrat Dominance.'' It is certainly the case.
  Now, as to one of the things that the President challenged Americans 
to do when he came to office, he said, ``I want you to hold our 
government accountable. I want you to hold me accountable.'' So we're 
going to take a look at these first 100 days and see accountable and 
what regard and what sort of records have been set.
  One of the records that we set was accumulated debt. That's kind of 
an interesting number. If you take a look at President Clinton, in his 
first 100 days, he managed to rack up $86 billion of debt. This is 
President Clinton. President Bush didn't rack up any debt at all. In 
fact, he had $70 billion of surplus at the end of his first 100 days. 
The clear winner in this regard is President Obama with $564 billion of 
debt. That's half of $1 trillion of debt. So the clear winner in the 
accumulated debt contest has to go to President Obama.
  Now, in coordination with this, if you take a look at National Debt 
Day--and we have a National Debt Day. That's the time when we have 
finished spending all of the money we've collected that year in taxes. 
As you know, we get the taxes in on April 15. People send their taxes 
in. The government gets its money, and it has been spending since the 
beginning of the year.
  The question is, ``How far do you get into the year before you run 
out of money?''
  A lot of families have that problem in terms of the family budget, 
but usually what happens is we get to about, you know, August, 
sometimes to July in a bad year or to September. Not so this year. We 
have set another record in terms of debt day. It's already gone. It was 
2 days ago. It was April 26. By April 26, we'd spent all of the money 
that was coming into the Federal Government in taxes this year. That's 
not a good sign. That says we're creating a tremendous amount of debt.
  Therefore, that leads to another record. We have a clear winner in 
terms of who can pile up the most debt in a very short period of time. 
If you take all of the Presidents added together from George Washington 
to George Bush--the two Georges--you have a total of $8.5 trillion in 
Federal debt. With President Obama--with his own numbers and with his 
proposed budgets--you have $8.7 trillion, so he beats by 1\1/2\, just 
by his own spending alone, all of the other Presidents combined. So we 
have another great record that was set.
  There have been other kinds of records, but I notice my good friend 
is here, the gentleman from Texas, Judge Carter, a highly respected 
judge. There's something about judging, and there's something about 
Texas which sort of combines common sense and not putting up with a lot 
of flowery kind of stuff.
  Judge, you're known as a man who gets right to the point, so I'd like 
to yield you time. Help us and join in. Take a look at these last 100 
days. Let's talk about records. Let's talk about holding people 
accountable. What has been going on?

                              {time}  1900

  Mr. CARTER. These are really not the kind of records we like to have. 
We don't try to set these kind of records. These are records that we 
will be paying for for generations to come.
  I want to remind you that this is 100 days of Democrat dominance. So 
the President had some help on these things, and that is the Democrat 
majority and the House and Senate certainly helped to move this along--
in record time, I might add. Sometimes those things just completely 
almost bypassed the whole process and just came popping up on the floor 
kind of like a Jack-in-the-Box surprise. ``Here we are. Let's vote.'' 
And sure enough, we managed to break all kinds of existing records.
  And I have to point this out because my daughter, I promised her I 
would. The last time I talked about this Debt Day, I failed to say that 
was my daughter's birthday. Danielle Carter. Her birthday is on the 
26th day of April. And she probably, in her lifetime, has probably not 
gotten the biggest present in the world because it was so close to tax 
day that maybe she didn't get it. So she understands how close her 
birthday is to the day we pay our income taxes.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, she really did get a present on Debt 
Day in a sense because that debt is being unloaded on her, isn't it?
  Mr. CARTER. Oh, yes. It's like that college debt. It's going to go on 
forever. That's something that we ought to be thinking about as we run 
these things up.
  I find it phenomenal that we can, in actually less than a hundred 
days, spend more money than everybody else spent in 200-and-some-odd 
years, including George W. Bush. Add them all together and sure enough, 
this Democrat Congress and this Democrat President managed to outspend 
them all. I mean, I tell you what, that's breaking some records right 
there.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, there are some records being broken, 
aren't there? What we've seen is a lot of complaints over the last 
years about the high cost of the war in Iraq, the high cost of war in 
Afghanistan, President Bush just squandering and spending way too much 
money. And a number of us voted not to spend some of that money. But 
there were a lot of complaints.
  And then you take a look, you add up the entire cost of the war in 
Afghanistan and Iraq, add it together, and within the first 5 weeks 
here in the Congress, the Democrats passed a bill at $840 billion that 
was more than those two wars combined over a 6- and 7-year period.
  This is a record-setting Congress when it comes to spending. If 
spending is going to make the economy strong, we're going to have the 
best economy the world has ever seen.
  We're joined by a good friend from Louisiana, Congressman Scalise. 
Comment on this first hundred days. Let's talk about records and what 
kinds of things we've seen here.
  Mr. SCALISE. I thank my friend from Missouri for continuing to host 
these discussions where we can really talk about the policies, what 
happens here in Washington, how it affects people across the country.
  But as we stand here today on the 100th day of President Obama's 
administration, it's going to become a tradition, as you said, going 
back to FDR--which there are a lot of ironic similarities to FDR in 
this administration--but that's when they started measuring Presidents 
by their first hundred days. A lot of people like doing letter grades 
for a President's first 100 days.
  Mr. AKIN. What you're saying is A to F, is that what you're 
suggesting?
  Mr. SCALISE. Some people stop at F. I actually use a different 
rating, and I have been asked, How do you rate President Obama's first 
hundred days? And I've said that I rate President Obama an ``L'' for 
``liberal.''
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, that's cheating. I thought it was A to 
F. You're going all the way to ``L'' for ``liberal.''

[[Page H4975]]

  Mr. SCALISE. Congressman Flake from Arizona, when we first had this 
conversation, and I agreed with him, and really, it's a 
characterization based on policy.
  I think in terms of personality, clearly President Obama is one of 
the more articulate speakers in Presidents that we've had. I think 
President Reagan still rates up there as probably the top. 
Unfortunately, I don't think we have had anybody like Reagan since he 
left office and unfortunately passed away.
  But in terms of policy--and I think this is really what really 
matters and that is what the American people are watching--it's this 
reckless spending. Spending at record levels. A budget that just passed 
today here on this House floor that all of us opposed but unfortunately 
passed, the largest budget in the history of our country, a budget that 
would double the national debt in 5 years, triple the national debt in 
10 years.
  I think if you look at what happened just a few weeks ago with these 
TEA parties, these taxpayer TEA parties, where hundreds of thousands of 
people showed up around the country. They weren't necessarily revolting 
against this President or revolting for a party or against a party. A 
lot of people really don't understand what happened in the media who 
were covering the TEA parties.
  What really happened on that day back on April 15 was people across 
the country said--maybe some of them voted for the President, some of 
them voted against--but they said, We're very concerned about the 
direction of our country because of the reckless spending and borrowing 
that goes with it and what it would do to our future generations, to 
our kids and grandkids, where, literally, we will be borrowing this 
money from China, from India.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I also had a chance to go to the TEA 
party in St. Louis, and parking in St. Louis is a real pain in the 
rear. And yet you had 7,000 people jammed into this square, and they 
were exercised. I mean, this was not politics-as-usual in America. And 
I think you're right. I think the high level of spending, but I think 
there were other things that were getting them energized.
  There are some of these sort of interesting juxtapositions. Here's 
one that caught my attention.
  The Obama administration announced a $1.4 billion cut to missile 
defense, and the same week, North Korea launches their missile. That's 
the sort of thing people go, Wait a minute. I don't understand this. 
The North Koreans just launched this big missile. They are obviously 
working on nuclear devices and developing the technology through a 
missile to deliver a nuclear device and so they are shooting off their 
missile and we are cutting missile defense. That's the kind of thing in 
our TEA party, people were really mad. When I went down there they said 
to me, By golly, you've got courage to even show up down here because 
you come from Washington, D.C.
  Judge Carter.
  Mr. CARTER. Not only has this administration cut missile defense, but 
they are also cutting the F-22 fighter, which, by all analysis, we need 
a new fighter because of some real technological advances that the 
Russians and the Chinese have made in their fighting planes. And we 
have had fighter pilots telling us this for years. The F-22 has now 
been scrapped, the missile defense, as you point out, has now been 
scrapped.
  So you can't accuse this budget of overspending in the area of 
defense because it actually is going less in the area of defense and is 
spending in other areas. Many of which, I would argue, are some sort of 
voodoo economics. But that's my personal opinion.
  But make it clear, missile defense we need.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, the argument is going to be made as we 
slash the defense budget, we see a lot of things that are being axed, 
being on the Armed Services Committee, I am seeing those. And the 
argument is going to be made, Hey, you know, you can't just afford 
everything.
  And what struck me was when we came here after the first 5 weeks the 
Congress had been in session, we're going to pass this, quote, 
stimulus--which I still call a porkulus bill--and I came across this 
floor--we just smoked $840 billion. I started dividing that thing out 
because in the committee that I serve on, the biggest thing you spend 
money on is aircraft carriers. I mean, even the average person on the 
street knows aircraft carriers are big and expensive. They have got a 
whole wing of airplanes on them and thousands of people on board. 
Aircraft carriers, that's a substantial investment.
  So we have 11 aircraft carriers. You take the average cost of that 
and divide that, about $3 billion, into $840 billion. Oh my goodness. 
You picture this. You're looking at 250 aircraft carriers end-to-end. I 
don't know how long they would go, but you're talking about a lot of 
aircraft carriers.
  So we start talking about, well, we're going to cut missile defense 
right at the time when the North Koreans launch their missile. And then 
the other thing--talk about juxtaposition in timing--the Obama team 
sent a video to the Iranian people talking about a shared hope, and the 
Iranians responded by opening a plant to produce weapons-grade uranium. 
Somehow or other it's like ships passing in the night here. It's like, 
wait a minute, what are we talking about here?
  We've been joined by another great Texan, a Congressman from the 
Brady district. Kevin, we would be happy if you want to join us in our 
little discussion. We're taking a look at the last 100 days and 
different things, records that are being set, things that are a little 
unusual, distinctive characteristics.
  I yield.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Thank you. I appreciate you leading this 
discussion tonight with the American public. I'm glad to join my other 
friends, conservative friends, who, frankly, are worried about what the 
first 100 days mean to our country. I didn't move to Washington. I live 
in Texas with my family and just commute to work each week to 
Washington. Continental has given me my 1 million miles flown card, 
which is a lot of keeping in touch.
  Sometimes you wonder, you know, the people up in Washington, they 
seem to be in a bubble. It's just so disconnected from the real world. 
I asked some of our Facebook friends what they thought of President 
Obama's first 100 days, sort of an out-of-Washington look at the 
Nation.
  Rachel, who is a Sam Houston State University alum, said she was 
really disappointed to see all of the spending on unnecessary programs 
that do not help the economy but, rather, put a further strain on it.
  Norma expressed her disappointment to the taxpayer-funded spending 
spree. She said, It's a disaster. She wrote, At the current spending 
rate, the deficit is going to be an anchor around not only our necks 
but our grandchildren's as well.
  Norma, you're right.
  Melody said if she were to grade this President, it would definitely 
be a flunking grade. In the debates, he promised to cut spending and 
reduce the size of the deficit. Ha. I am sickened by the wasteful 
spending. It is like watching a train wreck happen.
  I will come back in a minute and tell you a little more about my 
thoughts. But that's just an inkling of what real Americans think about 
this first 100 days.
  Mr. AKIN. I appreciate you sharing that and particularly asking that 
question of just regular people. I am the same as you are, flying back 
and forth to Missouri, the Show-Me State, or some people like to call 
it the Great River State. And I am not sure that their perspective is 
quite the same as it is in D.C. as well.
  Judge Carter, did you have a thought or two about other kinds of 
records or unique circumstances? I think there are quite a few things 
as we start to think about it.
  Mr. CARTER. There is so much to talk about, but the one that just 
pops off the page is the promise that was made that I will cut taxes on 
95 percent of the American people. That's what the President of the 
United States told us during the campaign. ``I assure you I will cut 
taxes on 95 percent of the people.''
  He also said he was going to raise taxes on the wealthy. You may have 
heard me talking earlier--one of the indications of social Democrats is 
class warfare, the hardworking American worker versus the rich man. How 
many times have we heard that?
  But now we've got this great energy tax that they call cap-and-trade, 
which

[[Page H4976]]

makes no sense at all. Even the name makes no sense. But the reality 
is, it's a tax on energy, all sorts of energy. And it's a tax on 
existing energy that's going to make everybody's bill go up because the 
American people are going to pay that tax, and that means the middle 
class.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, let's take a look. What you're talking 
about is some of the promises that the President started out by saying, 
``I want you to hold our government accountable. I want you to hold me 
accountable.''
  So what we've done here, I've got some slides, and these are things 
that are quotes out of the President's speeches and all.
  This one, as you recall, he says, ``I can make a firm pledge under my 
plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of 
tax increase.'' Now, when I heard that, I breathed a sigh of relief. By 
golly, I don't make $250,000. I don't need to worry about any tax 
increase because he promised me that. Not your income tax, not your 
payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

                              {time}  1915

  Now, he repeated this promise to all of us in this Chamber before, 
saying, hey, if you're making $250,000 a year, don't worry about paying 
any taxes. And now you're getting me very upset, judge, because what 
you're telling me is he's going to put a tax on energy. And my family 
doesn't make $250,000 a year, but we turn on light switches. We burn 
propane gas, and we also burn gasoline in the cars.
  Mr. SCALISE. Will the gentleman yield.
  Mr. AKIN. Yes, I yield.
  Mr. SCALISE. I sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and for the 
last 2 weeks we've been having hearings on President Obama's cap-and-
trade energy tax. A number of things have come out that Judge Carter 
and that you've mentioned that are very frightening that have not been 
conveyed to the American people, in fact, go directly against President 
Obama's pledge there that people making less than $250,000 would pay no 
new taxes. The President's own budget, again, a record budget, the 
largest in the history of our country, a bill that passed this House 
today, his budget has a line item in it that allocates $646 billion 
that would come in the form of new taxes from this cap-and-trade energy 
tax. Now, that is a tax on energy that every American family uses.
  A few of the things that have come out in committee that have not 
been denied by anybody: Number one, the President's own budget director 
just a year ago was testifying before Congress, when he was the head of 
the Congressional Budget Office, he said this cap-and-trade scheme 
would roughly add $1,300 per year more to every American family's 
energy bill, their utility bill. That's a low estimate. We've had 
revised numbers that have gone over $3,000 per American family that 
they would pay in higher energy taxes if this cap-and-trade energy tax 
passed.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I thought I heard the MIT professor say 
it was $3,100 per average family.
  This is something that's a little upsetting because first we have 
this promise. It couldn't be any more clear: If you're not making 
$250,000, you don't have to worry about this tax increase.
  Now, the energy tax hasn't been passed yet; right?
  Mr. SCALISE. Fortunately, it has not. It's in committee still.
  Mr. AKIN. So in that regard, he hasn't broken a promise. He's just 
proposing it. But then how about this SCHIP that we voted on? This 
thing has got a tax increase in it for people making less than 
$250,000.
  You know, this kind of thing, saying one thing, doing something 
different, is what creates some of that tension, that frustration that 
we saw in the people with tea bags wanting to dump them in the 
Mississippi River.
  I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. I agree exactly with what has been said today. 
And I can tell you from the Ways and Means perspective, from the tax 
perspective, the President isn't keeping that promise. We saw that 
right off the bat. The second bill he signed was an increase on a lot 
of low-income and middle class families to the children's insurance 
program. And the budget that was rushed through Congress today that I 
will bet not one Member who voted for it actually read this multi-
trillion dollar budget--again, this first 100 days has been a rush to 
bad legislation--it includes tax increases of $1.5 trillion, the 
highest in American history.
  As the gentlemen from Louisiana and Texas and as you pointed out, in 
addition to the national energy tax, you're looking at increased taxes 
on professionals and small business people; increased taxes on 
independent, small energy companies, the ones that drill 90 percent of 
the wells here in America; so we're going to outsource our American 
energy jobs. The climate change national energy tax. Increased taxes on 
capital gains and dividends, a source of a lot of revenue for our 
seniors in America and a source of capital. New taxes on real estate 
partnerships. On U.S. companies headquartered here who are trying to 
sell their products around the world, we're actually going to penalize 
them for selling American-made products around the world. It is crazy 
the number of tax increases.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, how do you explain this promise in the 
context of what you're saying?
  I yield.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. The promise was: ``Under my plan no family making 
less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.'' That 
promise has already been broken. And the budget we passed today ensures 
that it will be broken even further.
  What everyone knows is with this spending, there's no free money. 
Someone is going to have to pay for this record deficit. It's going to 
be middle class families. It's going to be small business people. It's 
going to be people that make a whole lot less. And a good example, look 
at the stimulus bill. It started phasing out all of these benefits if 
you make $80,000 a year. That's what it started to do, including the 
Making Work Pay tax credit, that measly $1.10 in your paycheck. They 
start phasing it out at $80,000. That's who this White House believes 
is wealthy. We've already seen the model.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, it seems to me that pretty much 
everybody in Washington, D.C., and across the country, as we started 
this 100 days, if you asked what do you think the main deal needs to 
be? What does Washington, what does our political leadership, what does 
the President have to be paying attention to? Wouldn't you agree that 
that would be the economy? I mean I think everybody, regardless of your 
political stripe, would say you've got to pay attention to the economy.
  And so if you take a look, one of the ways we measure the economy is 
the gross domestic product. That's how are things working? Is the 
machine oiled properly? Is it tuned properly? Is it running smoothly? 
And we got a number today. As I understand it, we set another record. 
We have a lot of records we've been setting. Unfortunately, they 
haven't been very good ones. And that was that the gross domestic 
product number for this quarter, the first quarter of the year, was 
that we had shrunk the economy by over 6 percent, which is how much the 
economy shrunk in the previous quarter. When you put those two 
together, it's the biggest shrinking in the economy in 60 years. Now, 
that's a record. I'm 61 years old. That's a record for me. But that's 
not a very good record.
  And some of you who are on committees that deal immediately with the 
budget might want to comment. What does it mean to have the gross 
domestic product in this country shrink by 6 something percent? That 
never happened under President Bush's leadership. Anybody want to 
comment?
  I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.
  Mr. SCALISE. What you're talking about, and we touched on it a little 
earlier, over the last few years we've heard a lot of complaints about 
previous Republican Congresses and the spending. I was definitely one 
of those people that was not happy with some of that level of spending. 
In fact, if you look back in 2006, the last Republican Congress that we 
had, I was not here, but in that 2006 Congress, the deficit, the 
Federal deficit, was about $160 billion, a number I think that was too 
high, $160 billion. Today, just 3 years later, with a Democrat Congress 
and the White House, that deficit went from $160 billion in 2006 to 
what it is today, $1.9 trillion.

[[Page H4977]]

  So for those of us who had concerns about the deficit 3 years ago 
that are voting against this reckless spending today, what I think is 
hypocritical is you hear some people complaining about the spending 
that went on 3 years ago when it was $160 billion, but yet they're 
voting for the spending today when it's $1.9 trillion of deficit just 
this year.

  So I think the American people are watching all of this. Clearly they 
were watching it when they took to the streets on April 15 in those TEA 
parties and said enough is enough. We have got to stop this reckless 
spending because of what it's going to do to future generations. I have 
got a 2-year-old daughter, and my daughter, Madison, she's going to be 
the one, her generation is going to be the one, that's going to have to 
pay these bills.
  And those of us that were here voting today, this is my voting card, 
and this is the card that Members of Congress use to cast their vote. 
Some people up here think that this is a credit card, that they can 
just rack up trillions of dollars of debt that the future generations 
of this country are going to have to pay. That's not responsible. 
Obviously that's what we are trying to stop.
  Mr. AKIN. I would like to get back to that before we close tonight 
because I want to contrast that mentality with the mentality of what 
has been called the Greatest Generation, the generation of our parents 
and what they did.
  Judge Carter.
  Mr. CARTER. You asked what that two consecutive quarters of 6 percent 
negative growth means. That means, I believe, and I know my friends 
talk about this all the time on the Ways and Means Committee, I believe 
that means recession. Two consecutive quarters is the definition of 
recession. So we are now in the Obama recession. So it's one of those 
things you've got to think about. As we keep blaming other people, at 
some point in time you have to take credit for what happens on your 
watch.
  I heard two Members arguing today, an interesting argument: How long 
is it going to take us to pay off this debt we are accumulating? One of 
the Members said, well, it's estimated 3,000 years.
  The other one said, no, that's not right. It's maybe perpetuity.
  He said, how do you get that?
  He said, the only way you get that 3,000 year number is you've got to 
show a surplus. And there is no surplus projected within a couple of 
lifetimes, based upon what we are doing right now. So, therefore, it's 
like this never-ending debt.
  And another one said, well, that's like a Ponzi scheme. You get one 
bunch of investors to invest in your product, and this is like our boy 
that's in jail right now, and then you get another bunch of investors 
and you pay these investors from these investors, and then you pay 
these investors from these investors. Why isn't this a Ponzi scheme?
  Mr. AKIN. What do you do when people do that? Don't you put them in 
jail?
  Mr. CARTER. That's what we are supposed to be doing with them.
  We have got to wake up and realize what we're creating. We're 
creating another generation paying for this generation and then another 
generation will pay for that generation. And at some time when you get 
numbers like these, it becomes so overwhelming, what are we going to 
do?
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, the trouble with the Ponzi scheme is 
sometime the music stops and there aren't enough chairs and then the 
proverbial stuff slides down the wall and then there's a big problem. 
That's part of what started this whole thing, what was effectively a 
pyramiding scheme in a sense.
  But some people want to say this is a failure of free enterprise, the 
problem that we're having in the economy. It's not a problem of free 
enterprise; it's a problem of socialism. It's a problem of this 
government telling Freddie and Fannie that they had to make loans that 
weren't going to work. If you tell someone you've got to do something 
and they're saying to you economically this isn't going to work and you 
force it and you keep doing that and then you have a bunch of other 
people playing along with the scheme and give it a AAA rating and sell 
it all over the world, pretty soon the music stops. And now what's 
happening is it's affecting the entire economy.
  I yield to my friend from Texas, Kevin.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. I wanted to answer the question, what does this 
double quarters of 6 percent mean? What it means for average Americans 
is that America is going to go much deeper into debt and our kids are 
going to have a burden that they can barely carry.
  What's interesting is that the President's budget, the one that was 
rushed through the House again and Senate today, it based its 
assumptions and its huge deficits on a contraction this year, a 
shrinking of our economy, of 1 percent. They've used such rosy economic 
indicators.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, you're saying the budget today that we 
passed said the economy is going to shrink by 1 percent. Is that per 
year?
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. By 1.2 percent this year.
  Mr. AKIN. This year. And then how much did we just shrink in the 
first quarter?
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Six point one percent and on top of 6.3 percent 
last quarter.
  Mr. AKIN. I've heard of optimists before, but this stretches the long 
arm of conscience.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. I'm glad you raised that. The President said this 
is the most honest budget ever presented to Congress.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, the President made some promises. One 
of them was there weren't going to be any tax increases if you made 
less than $250,000. For ``Show Me'' guy from Missouri, that's puzzling, 
that promise.
  Here's another promise: He promised transparency. He says, ``I will 
not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an 
opportunity to review and comment on the White House Web site for at 
least 5 days.'' So we are going to have some transparency here.
  Now, I wonder how much transparency there was in that budget you're 
talking about that says we are just going to assume it's going to 
contract 1 percent when this quarter it has already contracted 6 and it 
contracted 6 the last quarter. What kind of numbers are those?
  I yield.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Well, they're bad numbers. And I think that's why 
it was rushed through Congress so that people couldn't ask those 
questions. But the truth of the matter is the result of that, of 
cooking the books with rosy numbers that don't exist that no one agrees 
with, is that we will face close to a $2 trillion deficit just this 
year.

                              {time}  1930

  There are trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. So when 
Judge Carter said we may not see another balanced budget in our 
lifetime, that's no exaggeration. We may not see a balanced budget in 
our lifetime.
  Let me make one correction that I hear, I guess if you repeat 
something often enough people believe it, but you often hear up here 
Democrats who say President Clinton gave President Bush a surplus, and 
President Obama inherited a huge deficit.
  That's awfully misleading. The truth of the matter is that the 
surplus that was given to President Bush wasn't created by Democrats in 
Congress but by Republicans in Congress who sat down with President 
Clinton and said we are going to balance this budget. And I was here on 
a night like this night where we passed the balanced budget agreement.
  And guess who voted against it? Democrats.
  And then, when you talk about the deficit President Obama inherited, 
that didn't come----
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, let me just summarize and see if I got 
what you said. What you are saying is we kept hearing from the 
Democrats that President Bush inherited all of this surplus, and it was 
somehow because, I guess, President Clinton had done something right.
  But, in fact, those years, the Republicans controlled the House and 
they forced President Clinton to balance the budget, and that's why he 
got his surpluses because you guys made him have a surplus. Did I 
understand that correctly?
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. And congressional Democrats voted against the

[[Page H4978]]

balanced budget agreement. So that's the first part of the equation. 
The second one is President Obama did inherit a big deficit, but he 
inherited it from congressional Democrats who held power for the last 2 
years. They didn't even send President Bush a budget because they knew 
he would spend less.
  And so my point of that is that you can't take credit for a surplus 
you didn't create and avoid blame for a deficit you did. That's one of 
the big, I think, misperceptions, the big lies in Washington, D.C.
  I agree with other conservatives that Republicans, I think, got fired 
because we didn't control spending well enough, even though we whittled 
that deficit down, and we are learning from those mistakes. That 
deficit now is 10 times greater, and we are in a mess we may never 
recover from.
  Mr. AKIN. Gentleman, you just said that you are talking about a 
deficit, was it $2.1 trillion just for the next 2 years?
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Almost $2 trillion just for this year.
  Mr. AKIN. To put that into context, if you go from George Washington 
to George Bush, and you add up all of the debt that's been accumulated, 
you are looking at $5.8 trillion. So what you are saying in 1 year, we 
are going to do not quite half of that, everything since 1770s to now, 
we are going to burn that in 1 year? My goodness.
  Judge Carter.
  Mr. CARTER. And that's the deficit. The debt is worse than that, 
because we are borrowing all this money that we are spending right now.
  And so when you look at all these packages that we put together, and 
you total them up, that's where your $8.7 trillion comes in right there 
that you have got demonstrated there. It's the debt.
  In addition, as Kevin points out, they made false assumptions of the 
growth of this economy. Based upon those false assumptions, everybody's 
already told them they weren't going to work. They were told by all the 
authorities that look at these things, these numbers don't work. They 
went ahead with them, anyway, and now we're looking at a $2 trillion 
deficit. So the debt gets even worse.
  I heard somebody say this morning, somebody ought to tell every 
graduating senior this year that they can add $156,000 to their school 
debt, because that's what they are going to have to pay off. That's 
going to be their share of what they are going to have to pay off in 
their lifetime.
  Mr. AKIN. You said $156,000?
  Mr. CARTER. That's what the guy said. I don't want to take credit for 
that number. I am just telling you I heard it on the television this 
morning, and it shocked me.
  Mr. AKIN. Some of these numbers do involve making certain 
assumptions, and if you doctor the assumptions, the numbers may look 
better than they really are. We just talked about one where they said 
the economy is going to contract by 1 percent, and we have already gone 
through 6 in the first quarter.
  I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.
  Mr. SCALISE. You know, when we throw all of these numbers around, 
obviously the massive amounts of money--and when you talk about 
trillions of dollars, it's such a large number that it's hard for many 
to grasp just what that really means.
  When we talk about the budget, and ultimately you look across this 
country, we are in tough economic times. Families across this country 
are actually cutting their budget. They are tightening their belts to 
live within their means.
  And I think what frustrates most people is when they look at what's 
happening in Washington, whether we are talking about hundreds of 
billions in deficits or trillions in deficits, which, unfortunately, we 
are in today, they look at these numbers and they say, what's happening 
up there in Washington when we are tightening our belts, we are cutting 
back, Washington is actually mushrooming spending.
  There is a lot of blame to go around. But when you look at what 
happened just a few weeks ago when the first budget came up for a vote 
here on this House floor, it didn't get any attention, but there was a 
balanced budget amendment that was proposed that day. Many of us 
proposed that amendment and voted for that amendment.
  Mr. AKIN. All of us standing here voted for it.
  Mr. SCALISE. What's ironic is over 100 Republicans just 3 weeks ago 
voted to balance this Federal budget, to balance it.
  And this is during the cries of many on the other side who were 
criticizing all the spending that went on. And as they were criticizing 
the spending, they were raising spending by 10 times what had happened 
under Republican administrations, not one Democrat voted for that 
balanced budget amendment that was proposed on the House floor while 
many of them turned around and voted for the largest budget in the 
history of the country.
  I say that because people don't want to hear about the partisan 
politics. But what many people are being told by this administration, 
incorrectly, is that there are no alternatives proposed by the other 
side, and that the Republicans are the Party of ``No.'' They don't 
propose any alternatives, which is clearly disingenuous because we have 
proposed many alternatives. They have been the party, not only of 
``no'' because they have opposed those alternatives, they have been the 
party of fiscal recklessness, fiscal irresponsibility, of spending 
large amounts of money that literally will double our national debt in 
just 5 years. That's what I think has gotten most Americans frustrated 
now is that they know what they are doing to take care of their 
business. They are cutting back, and they are watching this Democrat 
leadership in Congress and this administration spending record amounts 
of money, running up the debt and the deficit at record levels, and 
money at record levels that we know nobody can sustain. So I think when 
people look, they say, this has only been 100 days. We have already, 
today, as we stand here, added 20 percent to the national debt, money 
we can't even get back.

  The stimulus bill alone added almost $1 trillion of new debt, and we 
are still seeing some of the wasteful, frivolous spending.
  Mr. AKIN. There is this transparency promise, that what's going on in 
Washington D.C., the public should be able to see it. You see this kind 
of transparency promise. And then when you take a look at what 
happened, the President first broke the promise of transparency in 
January when he signed this legislation which was the Lilly Ledbetter 
Fair Pay Act. It was passed January 27. And he since continued the 
problem with the State insurance, the SCHIP bill. It wasn't 5 days.
  And the reason I mention this is when we came to that supposedly 
stimulus bill, our staffs got that thing at 11:30 at night, and we're 
supposed to vote on a 1,000-plus page bill the next day. Now, I am not 
a speed reader, and my staff doesn't sit around at 11:30 just waiting 
for some announcement from the Democrat Party.
  Now I don't understand the transparency in that situation. But I do 
understand a little bit, because I don't know what $780 billion is. I 
started to put it in terms of aircraft carriers, because I understood 
that. I understood that it was more than the war in Iraq for 6 years 
and the war in Afghanistan added to it for 7 years. I understand it was 
more than 250 aircraft carriers. We only have 11 of them. The debt 
service on it was nine aircraft carriers, and it's all money that we 
don't have.
  So we have got a series, again, going to this 100 days, there is a 
lot of new records that are being set, particularly in the debt area. 
But there are other kinds of things, I think, that get these people at 
the tea parties upset. One is, have you ever heard of the President 
firing the president of General Motors? I have never seen that before.
  I yield to my friend from Texas, Congressman Brady.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. There is so much truth in what you say. I was 
referring back to, again, one of our Facebook followers, Melody from my 
district in east Texas, that she wrote that if she were to grade our 
new President and Democrats in Congress, she said it would definitely 
be a flunking grade. It is like watching a train wreck happen.
  It's interesting. President Obama is very sincere when he says, I was 
elected to change the direction America could go, and he is very up 
front about it. I give him credit for that.
  But from my way of thinking, in the Eighth District of Texas, we 
believe he

[[Page H4979]]

is wrong on spending. He is wrong on nationalizing so much of our free 
market. He is wrong on Guantanamo. He is wrong on the CIA memos. He is 
wrong on this new national security threat of our veterans and our pro-
life and our States' rights people.
  I think just generally he is wrong in the belief that you can tax and 
spend and borrow our way back to prosperity. It won't work. I would say 
this. You always want to be helpful as a Member of Congress, so my 
advice to the President on this 100th day is, one, stand up to Nancy 
Pelosi and the Senate leaders in Congress. Be your own man and don't 
let them run the show as they have done for your first 100 days.
  Extend a hand to Republicans who have got some great ideas on how to 
lower taxes, how to help small businesses create jobs, how we really 
get out of this economy and we are willing to work with you.
  The final piece of advice is do less press conferences like tonight 
and more working meetings with Members of Congress who want to work 
across the aisle to solve these problems without going into a debt so 
staggering that we can never hope to get out. There are some great 
ideas up here, but so far for the first 100 days, it's been the 
congressional Democrats show.
  Really, it's time for the President to follow through on his promise 
to change the way we work in Washington.
  Mr. AKIN. I sure appreciate your making some positive comments. And I 
think it's important that when we are critical that we also offer a 
better idea.
  I was taught that as a kid growing up. If you want to be critical of 
something, okay, but then say how would you do it better. I think 
that's an honest way for us all to proceed, and we certainly have a lot 
of ways to do that.
  I would like to just take a few minutes and talk about what are some 
of the better ways to do things. You just mentioned Guantanamo. The 
numbers I have is that our best estimate is that 61 of those detainees 
are now fighting against us. After we let them go, they are back again 
in the battle fighting against our sons and daughters. My 
recommendation is when you get people that dangerous, don't let them go 
so easily.
  Let's talk about some solutions. Let's just talk about how would we 
approach this situation. The economy has now been shrinking. We see 
this debt that is really skyrocketing, excessive spending on the part 
of all the Democrats.
  Let's just say that working for the day, or we are President, we are 
responsible for turning this around, what are the steps we are going to 
take. I think it's fair to ask that question.
  I will go to my friend from Texas, Judge Carter.
  Mr. CARTER. You've hit upon something that everybody needs to think 
about. First, you have to start with the premise that the government 
doesn't make any money. The government takes the citizens' money. 
That's the way it works. They are not a creator of wealth. They are a 
taker of wealth and a distributor of wealth. But they are not a creator 
of wealth.
  So all this stimulus we have looked at, its purpose is to give a shot 
in the arm to the economy, if you believe in the Keynesian theory of 
economics, a shot in the arm to the economy, and make it start creating 
wealth again. But, in reality, we have seen no real indication. Japan 
can tell you for 10 years they did that and failed miserably. Most 
people will point to the Great Depression and say it failed miserably.
  So the real solution is real wealth for America. You do that by 
putting more money in the American people's pocket, making it easier 
for people to be entrepreneurs. For small businessmen, don't tax them. 
Give them a chance to grow their small business. They employ the vast 
majority of the American people.
  What we have got to turn around is real wealth from real jobs from 
real businesses for real people. That's what we've got to have.
  Mr. AKIN. Summarizing what you said, Judge, what you are saying is, 
first of all, the Federal Government does not create wealth, other than 
we print money, which just waters down.
  We tax people, slop the money around. But we never create it. We just 
redistribute it.
  So how do you actually take an economy and help everybody to do 
better? And what you have to do is you have to allow the private 
sector, the entrepreneurs, the investors, the inventors, the small 
business people, to get out there and do that, the American dream.
  Let freedom work and let people go and use their ingenuity and 
ability to actually create wealth.

                              {time}  1945

  Wealth is not static. It grows if you fertilize it the right way. So 
what you are talking about is doing things that are going to help small 
business.
  Just an interesting number that someone tossed to me, and that is you 
take a look at companies with 500 employees. That is what is called a 
small business, 500 employees. Half of Americans work in a business 
with 500 or less employees, and those companies create 78 or 79 percent 
of the new jobs in America.
  So if you are worried about the people not having jobs and you really 
want to turn the economy around, what you want to do is you want to 
fire that engine of small business, you want to get those 80 percent of 
the new jobs, you want to start getting those things going. And what do 
you do to do that? You have to have liquidity for those companies to 
work.
  I recognize another good friend of ours and an expert on small 
business, Congressman Brady.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Well, thank you, sir. Most people in my district 
know that I was raised in a small business. I was a Chamber of Commerce 
manager my whole life. So I ran a small business, made payroll, had to 
cut staff in the recession and work with other small businesses. So I 
know how hard it is for them these days.
  But there are three ideas Republicans came forward with, I think 
better ideas. In the stimulus, in that stimulus bill, billions and 
billions of dollars, there was more money to buy public art in America 
than to help small businesses survive.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, reclaiming my time, you are saying that porkulus bill 
that we passed, it had more money to buy artwork than it did to help 
small business that creates 80 percent of the new jobs in our economy?
  I yield.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. The line item for the National Endowment for the 
Arts was $50 million. The line item to help small businesses to buy new 
computers and equipment was smaller, $41 million.
  What we said as Republicans was, we said, look, let's create a 20 
percent income tax reduction across-the-board for small businesses so 
they can keep more of their money, keep good workers on the payroll, 
maybe buy that new computer or piece of equipment, or just survive 
through this recession. We thought that was a better idea.
  On housing, the government has come up with this new $2 billion pool 
of money to buy foreclosed homes in your neighborhood and mine. The 
Republicans said wait a minute. Given a choice between having the 
government buy a home in our neighborhood or our neighbors buy that 
home, maintain it, keep it up and sell it once the market recovers, we 
created incentives that said, look, if you look around your 
neighborhood and community and you buy one of these distressed homes, 
foreclosed or someone who is in trouble, it is abandoned, we will treat 
it just like your own home. If you keep it up and maintain it, when you 
sell it, you can keep the profit.
  Now, who is going to keep better care of a home in your neighborhood? 
Uncle Sam, or one of your neighbors?
  Mr. AKIN. That is a no-brainer, gentleman. Keep going.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Absolutely. Then on health care, they are looking 
at this big government-run health care system. Many Republicans, 
including me, are proposing this backpack, where for the first time 
workers get an option where they can choose a health care plan that is 
right for them, just like Members of Congress do. They can put it in a 
backpack and take it with them throughout their life, from business to 
business or to home to raise the kids, or if you are going to start 
your own small business. Basically you get the same tax breaks 
businesses get. But you have one that you choose. It is your doctor, 
your relationship, the hospitals you choose to go to.

[[Page H4980]]

  Mr. AKIN. That sounds like freedom working, doesn't it?
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. It is. Instead of government one-size-fits-all, 
why don't we give more freedom and more incentives for people to have a 
health care plan that fits their needs?
  We have great ideas. My colleagues here tonight I guarantee you could 
spend a lot of time with these new ideas. But we need a President who 
will be open. We need a Democrat Congress who will quit rushing bills 
through this Chamber and give a chance for those good ideas to come 
forward.
  Mr. AKIN. Just reclaiming my time, if I were to list off some things 
for small business, and you have run a Chamber and run your own small 
business, it seems like to me there are some things we are doing that I 
just wouldn't do.
  The first thing is the death tax. That is a bad idea. We are having 
that death tax come back so some poor guy loses his business, I mean he 
dies, and his son is going to run the business, but now he has to sell 
half the business to pay the tax on it. What is the logic of that? That 
destroys jobs and destroys small businesses. So first the death tax.
  The next thing it seems to me like dividends and capital gains, boy, 
did we see the economy jump when we limited that and allowed people to 
keep more liquidity in the economy. So that is another thing we could 
to.
  Another thing, it seems to me, is when you say you are going to tax 
people making $250,000, a whole lot of money, those are the guys that 
own the small business. Do you want them to create jobs, or do you want 
to suck all the money away from them like some sort of leech until they 
are so dry and withered up they can't hire anybody anymore?
  I think there are some things that we just didn't do. Just leave them 
alone and let them do what they do so well, which is follow the 
American dream.
  I yield to my friend from Louisiana.
  Mr. SCALISE. I thank again my friend from Missouri. You know, there 
are very critical areas of our economic problems that we have proposed 
alternative solutions to, three in particular I think that are critical 
to what is happening today that we presented to President Obama. 
Unfortunately, he hasn't taken them in the first 100 days. Hopefully he 
will take them in the next 100 days.
  But if we talk about the overall economy, number one, the banking 
system, which is still holding back our economy; number two, energy 
policies, where we still don't have a comprehensive national energy 
policy; number three . . .
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, are you saying that hugging Chavez is 
not really a national energy policy? Is that what you are trying to 
say?
  I yield. I couldn't resist that.
  Mr. SCALISE. Well, if you start with the overall economy, one of the 
biggest things we can do, rather than just massively growing the size 
of government and adding trillions of dollars to our national debt, we 
can empower our middle-class families and our small businesses. We 
presented a bill to do just that, a bill that would actually cut taxes 
for middle-class families and for small businesses, who create the bulk 
of our jobs.
  What some people on the other side have said is, it is the tax cuts 
that have gotten us into this problem. What they fail to recognize is 
history. Every time we cut taxes, you can go back to when John F. 
Kennedy cut taxes or when Ronald Reagan or George Bush cut taxes, 
revenues to the Federal Government actually increased. What was always 
wrong was that the Congress spent more money than came in from those 
tax cuts.
  So tax cuts clearly have worked. It is the fiscal discipline in 
Congress that has always failed us. So maintain fiscal discipline, cut 
the taxes to get the economy back on track, go into the banking 
system--we had proposed alternatives that would actually get the banks 
working again.
  Mr. AKIN. You are talking so fast and what you are saying is so good, 
you are really referring to three different times in history, where 
instead of doing what FDR did and Henry Morgenthau tried to do, and 
came before Congress and said it failed, it doesn't work, this stimulus 
idea, this Keynesian idea, what has worked was what JFK did, what 
Ronald Reagan did, and what George Bush did, three separate times at 
20-year different intervals, and that was they actually cut the taxes, 
and this seems like water going uphill, and the revenues of the Federal 
Government went up.
  That is kind of an interesting phenomena, but it has happened time 
after time. And the reason behind that, I will go ahead and yield and 
let the gentleman explain that.
  Mr. SCALISE. The problem is fiscal discipline hasn't been maintained 
by Congress. For all of the new revenue that came into the Federal 
Government, Congress always went on to spend even more money. So that 
is one area you can address.
  On the banking system, we still have major problems in our banking 
system, a lot of it created by irresponsible lending by groups like 
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who gave loans to people with no ability to 
pay, and they were encouraged by government. We need to end that.
  On a comprehensive national energy policy, we can actually use our 
own natural resources, continue drilling for oil, natural gas, cleaning 
coal up and using nuclear power and take that extra revenue with those 
millions of jobs we would create and fund the alternative sources of 
energy, like wind and solar, to get us to that next level of jobs, 
rather than a cap-and-trade energy tax that would run millions of jobs 
out of our economy and also raise taxes on American families.
  So we have presented these alternatives. In the first 100 days, 
unfortunately, President Obama has not worked with us to embrace any of 
these ideas, but hopefully that will change as more people become 
concerned about this record level of record spending.
  Mr. AKIN. Congressman Scalise, I really appreciate your positives and 
giving very specific kinds of things that can be done to turn the 
economy around, to reduce this level of spending.
  We are just about out of time. I appreciate your expertise and 
joining us tonight. I am going to just recognize my friend Judge Carter 
for a minute, and then we are going to have to wrap things up and I 
will come back to you.
  Mr. CARTER. I just want to point out there are a few things we 
haven't talked about, like apologizing to the terrorists; labeling 
enemy combatants, they are now foreign detainees; labeling the war on 
terror as international contingencies; labeling the terror attacks as 
man-caused disasters; hugging up to the Castro brothers, who tried to 
make their island a launching platform for intercontinental ballistic 
missiles within my life; and hugging up to Hugo Chavez, the man who 
hates this country more than anybody, and taking his book, which is all 
about venom against this country.
  These are just a few of many, many other things we haven't talked 
about tonight.
  Mr. AKIN. It was basically labeled a Communist rant and an idiot's 
Bible, I think, by various people that reviewed that book.
  Going last to my good friend, a very senior and distinguished 
Congressman from Texas, Kevin Brady.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. Well, I think the way you started this, and the 
issue is freedom, Thomas Jefferson said a government big enough to 
supply all your needs is big enough to take everything you have. It is 
important we keep that in mind as this country grows deeper, deeper, 
deeper into debt.
  Mr. AKIN. I appreciate all of you joining us in this nice family 
discussion and hope that it has been of interest to our colleagues. I 
just ask us please to do a little better in the next 100 days.

                          ____________________