Congressional Record, Volume 156 Issue 28 (Tuesday, March 2, 2010)

[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 28 (Tuesday, March 2, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H1018-H1024]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Heinrich). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's a privilege and an
honor to be recognized by you to address you on the floor of the House
of Representatives. Having watched the collection of colleagues from
the other side of the aisle over the last 60 minutes, a lot of subjects
were brought up and I think delivered in a professional fashion by my
colleagues, and I hope they know I'm always open to dialogue if they
have some things that they would like to exchange with me. I'm here.
And I have often asked my colleagues to yield, and if they should ask
me to yield, I'm happy to do so. I think it's important to have an
exchange, a dialogue.
First, we learned last Thursday that Republicans have a lot of good
ideas. We also learned that many of those good ideas are suppressed by
the iron-fisted gavel of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Also, as I looked at the event as it unfolded, Mr. Speaker, that 6\1/
2\ hours of discussion that took place last February 25, last Thursday,
at Blair House, on health care, a number of things came to me, but
looking at the data was quite interesting. Just to boil it down to raw
numbers and regular comparison, it was this: that for every 2 minutes
that a Republican spoke, the President spoke for an additional 2
minutes and another Democrat spoke for another 2 minutes. So it was
really two-to-one in the time that was used. As the President said,
well, it's okay if he talks a long time, even though the time was very
limited to the others that were talking because, after all, he is the
President. So the time doesn't charge against him. It's an interesting
concept that I think that heretofore has not been uttered by the
President of the United States and in any previous administration.
Another thing that struck me that appears to have not been mentioned
by the pundits or the people that observed this were the number of
times that the President interrupted those who were speaking. Now, I
can identify with what this is like. I have a number of times in my
legislative life run into the situation where there's a limited amount
of time to speak and maybe the clock has 1 minute on it, 2 minutes, or
5 minutes, or, as it does right now tonight, it's got 60 minutes on it.
So you watch the clock and you try to pack as much information into
that period of time as you can. When something happens to break that up
and change the rhythm and shorten the time that you have, you have to
adjust your message to compress it down into the time that you have
left.
I believe that the clock that was set for the Members of Congress to
speak was set at 3\1/2\ minutes. I don't know that. I believe that. I
was thinking of the moment that the Republican leader in the Senate,
Senator McConnell, introduced Senator Coburn for his 3\1/2\ minutes to
speak. I do remember the log on the time. It's pretty close to this.
Senator Coburn spoke for a minute and fourteen seconds. He was
interrupted by the President of the United States for something like 4
minutes and 20 seconds. And then he came back and he spoke again for a
little bit more than a minute and he was re-interrupted again by the
President of the United States. That happened about one more time in
that iteration. The time then that was left for Senator Coburn had
expired. And it was the thought and the concept that was driven by
Senator Coburn was completely split and delayed because the President
interrupted and burned up the time. And even though they may have reset
the stopwatch on Senator Coburn's time, it isn't the same as having 3
uninterrupted minutes.
The President claimed more than that on many occasions throughout the
entire day, to where it came down to this: the President spoke as much
as either Republicans or Democrats, altogether, and he interrupted
Members of the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, without
reservation. Apparently, he believes he's the President of the United
States and he can do that. That may be true on certain occasions and to
a limit. But there is a limit, Mr. Speaker. And the limit was this: the
President of the United States interrupted those who were there to be
heard 70 times, 70 in 6\1/2\ hours; a little more than 10 times an
hour. And of all those interruptions, he interrupted Democrats 20
times, Republicans 50 times. Fifty interruptions. And the kind of way
that it breaks up the rhythm and the flow of the message that's being
delivered and the fashion that I've talked about with Senator Coburn
whom, I have not had this discussion with, by the way. For all I know,
he has no objection to the process that was there. But for me, I do,
Mr. Speaker.
So it was not possible for a consistent, continual flow of cogent
thought to flow through with the President interrupted on 70 different
occasions over the course of 6\1/2\ hours. It's hard to get to the
bottom of something; it's hard to make your point when you're
continually interrupted.

But I listened to this last hour, and I think the gentlemen had an
opportunity to make their case. And there were plenty of them. I don't
know that anything was particularly stunning, except I looked at the
gentleman from Wisconsin's poster that was on this easel just a few
minutes ago. It showed the jobs that were either created or lost, not
by the President of the United States, President Obama, or President
Bush, but the jobs that were created or lost during their
administration, which is a far more accurate way to discuss it. That
span was over about a 2-year period of time.
It would have been hard to see the poster and understand it. I had to
walk up very closely and analyze it, but it flowed back through 2009
and through 2008, into December of 2007. The curious thing about that
chart, which showed an upside down parabolic curve of the bar graphs of
jobs lost on under those two administrations, appeared to be about
equal--the last year of the Bush administration, the first year of the
Obama administration.
The curious part was that on the chart there was only one month where
there were actually jobs that increased. That was during the Bush
administration. And we all know that if you would take that month and
then you would go back into 2008 and on into 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004,
2003, 2002, all the Bush years, one would see that there was some up
months and some down months. And an administration needs to be looked
at on balance. But here is what happened. These are the real viewpoints
on what happened with our economy. It seems to be ignored.
Now the gentleman that stood at this particular podium had on his
chart that under the Bush administration we had two wars, two tax cuts,
one drug entitlement, and an asterisk for the Wall Street bailout.
Well, okay. First, I will bring us up to these two wars, Mr. Speaker,
and I can do it fairly briefly, and that is this: when President Bush
was elected in the year 2000, after we went through all of the recounts
in Florida and the Supreme Court decision and the allegations that the
President was an appointed President, not an elected President, which
no recount or analysis would support, all of the reviews of the
elections in Florida and everywhere else in the year 2000 support that
George Bush won that election. It's too bad it was so close. It was too
bad we had to have such a fight. It's too bad it had to go to the
Supreme Court. But in the end no one has made a legitimate case that
there was anything other than a legitimate election, and every State,
including Florida, in a count that was 527 or 537--I think 537--was the
difference in Florida. Very, very close. And it wasn't so close, of
course, in 2004.
But in the year 2000, when George Bush was elected President, already
we had seen the bursting of the dot.com bubble. Now this was this false
sector of the economy that was created because the investors in America
and around the world saw that we had developed the microchip. And with
the microchip we had developed the ability to store and transfer
information more effectively, more efficiently, and more quickly than
ever before and more cheaply than ever before.

[[Page H1019]]

So the investors began to bet on the dot.com companies. As they
invested in the dot.com companies, there were companies out there that
had capital that they could utilize. And they invested it into the new
industry that was growing. It was the information age. The information
revolution. As that grew, it outgrew its ability of the technology we
were developing, it outgrew its ability to produce a good or a service
that could improve our productivity or efficiency.

{time} 2200

So when that happened, it created a bubble. It was the investors'
bubble created on the speculation that there would be a value that was
inherent in our ability to store or transfer information better than
ever before. There's more to be said about that, Mr. Speaker, but that
was a description of the bubble.
The bubble was bursting at the end of the Clinton administration.
That bubble was going to burst because the markets had to adjust to the
irrational exuberance of the investment in the dot-com bubble. So as
that bubble was bursting and George Bush was becoming President, we saw
a decline in our economy. Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Fed, saw the
bursting of the dot-com bubble and concluded that something needed to
be done to shore that up, to fill that hole that was created in our
economy because the bubble was collapsing and shrinking. And to fill
the hole, Alan Greenspan decided, with or without the support of
President Bush, that we should create a housing market that would help
shore this up. So we ended up with unnaturally low interest rates.
While that was going on, it played into the hands of the people that
were driving for lower underwriting standards, lower standards of
capital. And this was contributing to, later on, the mortgage crisis
that we saw unfold about a year and a half ago.
That builds us up to September 11, 2009, where I see on the gentleman
from Wisconsin's chart where he said two wars. Well, we had a dot-com
bubble that was bursting. We had a Chairman of the Fed and others who
had decided to shore up the hole created by the bursting of the dot-com
bubble. Which, by the way, that bubble was pierced by the lawsuit
against Microsoft. The bubble was growing. It was big. It was fragile.
It was going to burst, I believe, but the bubble was pierced by the
lawsuit against Microsoft that was brought about by a collection of
State attorneys general who decided to file a class action lawsuit and
took Microsoft to task and took them to court, and it cost millions and
millions of dollars. That accelerated the collapse of the dot-com
bubble. And as that accelerated and it went down, something needed to
fill that void or we would have seen a serious economic decline and a
real recession.
Well, we saw an economic decline. Some would argue--and honestly, if
look at the numbers, it technically probably was not a recession. But
to fill the hole, the effort was made to create a housing bubble to
fill the void that was created by the collapse of the dot-com bubble.
That's what was taking place when George Bush was being inaugurated as
President of the United States. He kept Alan Greenspan on, and I don't
object to that, Mr. Speaker. I just make that as a point.
So as these two things are happening, the bubble was deflating. The
dot-com bubble was deflating. The housing bubble was being created to
fill the hole. While this was going on, along came the September 11
attack on the United States of America, the attack on what may have
been this Capitol building or the White House. I think it would have
been on the Capitol building. That's the plane that crashed in
Pennsylvania. The attack on the Pentagon, where we lost our brave
service personnel there, and the attack on the Twin Towers in New York,
which causes us all to stop in reverent grief at the price that was
paid by innocent Americans at the hands of the evil al Qaeda.
But, Mr. Speaker, that happened on President Bush's watch. I don't
know that one could point to any act of omission or commission that
contributed to that on the part of the administration. It happened.
They found a vulnerability that had always existed, and al Qaeda
exploited it. So we ended up at war. As the gentleman from Wisconsin's
chart says, we were involved in two wars. We went immediately into
Afghanistan. We drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and teamed up with
the Northern Alliance, and with a very minimal number of troops in U.S.
uniform, liberated the country of Afghanistan and eradicated
Afghanistan of al Qaeda terrorists, these al Qaeda terrorists who
needed some kind of habitat if they're going to operate. It was a just
thing to do. It was a decision that had to be made early. It went very
well, with a minimum number of American casualties, and Afghanistan was
freed and liberated.
Then, because of intelligence worldwide, I found no one who disagreed
with, because of a decision that was made, we went into Iraq. And not
to deliberate on that, Mr. Speaker, and not to, let's say, kick that
dead horse, but once we put our troops into action and asked them to
put their lives on the line for us, for our liberty and for our freedom
and for the destiny of America and the free world, it is our obligation
to stand with them. And I have stood with our troops--not just our
troops but also their mission--continually since the beginning of these
operations as I came to this Congress and watched as the liberation of
Iraq unfolded before our eyes on television.
So the poster that was here on this easel that said, well, under
George Bush we lost all these jobs--well, the chart only shows the last
year of the Bush administration--and we were under two wars, and that
we had had two sets of tax cuts and a drug entitlement and a Wall
Street bailout. All of that blamed on George Bush.

Well, I would like to think they could get over this and quit
revising history, as a matter of fact. Yes, we have two wars. Which one
would they have avoided? Would they have avoided them both? Would
anybody say we should not have gone into Afghanistan? Would you have
just walked away and shrugged your shoulders and pointed your finger
and said, This is a job for the Attorney General? After all, it must be
a law enforcement operation. Surely there couldn't be a war against
people that would annihilate the lives of 3,000 or more Americans on a
single day. The worst attack on American homeland in the history of our
country, and I see it listed here on the poster as if it were something
we should not have been engaged in.
Mr. Speaker, it was nearly unanimous here in the House of
Representatives to grant the authority for the President of the United
States to engage in these operations. There was only one exception, so
that's the only person that would get to come here to the floor and
say, I told the you so. She'd be wrong. But there's only one person
that has the credentials to even make that statement in this entire
Congress. It's not the people that were down here tonight, Mr. Speaker.
Yes, two wars. The war in Afghanistan was necessary and unavoidable.
The war in Iraq was a decision that was made off of the intelligence
that we had, and that is a separate debate. But we engaged in those
operations, and once we did, I throw my lot with our troops and their
mission, and I do not believe, Mr. Speaker, that you can separate the
two. And I think it's hypocritical to state that you are for the troops
and opposed to the mission because you find yourself in a position
where you're arguing that you support the troops but you're asking them
to put their lives on the line for a mission that you do not agree
with. And that, Mr. Speaker, is a line of dichotomy and hypocrisy that
I cannot abide. So, yes, two wars. We know the reasons for each of
them.
And another little bullet point on this poster that was here from the
gentleman from Wisconsin is tax cuts, two tax cuts. Yes, we had them.
We had an economy that needed some help. I'm not a great fan of the
rebate that took place in 2001. I think it gives the economy just a
little sugar high, and then it goes on the way it was. But I am a fan
of the tax cuts that unfolded in 2003 that were signed into law by
President Bush on May 28, 2003. Those were real tax cuts. Those were
real economic stimulation tax cuts. They were the tax cuts that caused
people to free up capital and reinvest it again and get this economy
rolling again. Any data you look at supports that those tax cuts--those
cuts in capital gains, those cuts in dividends, those cuts that let

[[Page H1020]]

people invest money and with some confidence believe it was going to
improve their return on investment--were smart, and they were prudent,
and they were useful, and they worked. It is a far, far better thing to
stimulate our economy with tax cuts than it is to try to stimulate our
economy with debt, as this current administration is seeking to do.

{time} 2210

So the Bush administration had two series of tax cuts: 2001, which
was essentially a rebate--they realized it didn't work; by 2003, they
came back and asked for real stimulation tax cuts. We provided those in
2003, and they did work by any measure.
So when we look at the Bush administration, that little chart that
shows only the last year of the Bush administration is not indicative
of the Bush administration. Look at it on the balance. I don't have
those numbers in my head. I just saw the chart. But that chart is
indicative of the Obama administration. That is all we have to measure.
We are in March, so we have 13 months of the Obama administration.
There has been negative job growth every single month during the Obama
administration. Now I'm not laying that all at his feet. He inherited a
situation. The cycles of the global economy are part of this. The
decisions that were made in this Congress is part of this. President
Bush is not wholly to blame, if he is to blame at all. But what I saw
happen was the recently admonished Charlie Rangel, now chairman of the
Ways and Means Committee, was the anticipated chairman of the Ways and
Means Committee immediately in the aftermath of the Democrat takeover
of the majority of the United States House of Representatives when
Nancy Pelosi became Speaker. And Charlie Rangel, the ranking member as
I recall on the Ways and Means Committee, went on the national talk
shows and he went over and over again. He went everywhere all the time.
He talked about as much on the national talk shows as Newt Gingrich did
when he became Speaker-elect of the House of Representatives.
And all of America watched and listened to Charlie Rangel because
they wanted to know. And the question was continually asked: Mr.
Rangel, which of these Bush tax cuts would you keep and which would you
want to get rid of. And I don't recall a single straight answer, but I
remember by November and December and January and part of February had
rolled around, it had become clear to the analysts and pundits in
America there was not one single tax cut of the Bush administration
that Charlie Rangel wanted to keep, not one.
From that period of time in November of 2006 until December of 2006,
January and February of 2007, we saw industrial investment in America
drop like a rock. Mr. Speaker, it did so because capital is smart.
Capital is intelligent. It will do the wise thing. When capital
investment realized that the costs of investment were going to get
higher and higher, then it backed away from the marketplace and slowed
down dramatically in industrial investment. That industrial investment
that was lacking was the precursor to this economy that we are in
today. Now it is not the only factor. There are a whole series of
factors. People on this side of the aisle can make their arguments, and
people on this side of the aisle can make their arguments, too.
But I have laid out the scenario where there is a bursting of the
dot-com bubble, accelerated by the lawsuit against Microsoft organized
by some of the State attorneys general that started our economy down a
decline, and the chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, made a decision I
believe to try to prop it up by creating a housing market to help bring
this economy back up again with unnaturally low interest rates and
favorable terms and lower underwriting requirements, and that I believe
was a precursor to the subprime mortgage crisis that brought about this
economic decline, all of the while while this was going on, we saw the
majority change in the House, and then the Charlie Rangel position of
not being committed to preserving a single Bush tax cut. And the result
was capital left investment out of the industrial side of this
marketplace. It slowed down our industrial production.

Mr. Speaker, there is a person in the gallery that is making gestures
up there that are inappropriate. I would like to ask him to be removed.

announcement by the speaker pro tempore

Mr. KING of Iowa. I request that he be removed.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Iowa will suspend. The
Chair will remind all persons in the gallery that they are here as
guests of the House, and that any manifestation of approval or
disapproval of proceedings or other audible conversation is in
violation of the rules of the House.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your attention
to the decorum in the Chamber. I do revere this institution that we all
are a part of. And to pick up where I left off if I may, there is a
flow to this economy that is impossible to discern with the definitive
analysis on how much of it belongs on this side of the aisle and how
much belongs on this side of the aisle, and how much of it is the
organism that is the free enterprise economy we have, coupled with the
politics that churn back and forth.
So we make our arguments. We make them in the media, and when we go
home to our districts, we trust that the American people will sort this
out and that they will then come to a decision that will elect the
people that come back to this Congress in the next cycle of our
elections and be able to make even better decisions than in the past.
So when the argument here is that even though the people in this
Chamber and those who happen to be watching on C-SPAN have seen these
bullets, the bullet points, to make it clear, on the chart of the
gentleman from Wisconsin, who is a friend and who I actually have a
good personal relationship with, two wars--this side will argue that
they were both necessary, and on this side they will argue only one was
necessary. And the tax cuts; I have argued that one was only a sugar
high and the other one was very effective and necessary. Apparently the
people on this side of the aisle will argue that neither one of them
was effective and necessary and we should follow the Keynesian
approach.
The drug entitlement language--as I recall, there were a number of
Democrats who voted for that bill, and the argument was, would you
actually set up a Medicare proposal that would not include prescription
drugs today, as much as prescription drugs are involved in providing
health care to everybody in America. You wouldn't imagine that the
pharmaceuticals that are so much a part of the stability for our health
care would not be part of Medicare. So that argument, I think, stands
pretty clear.
Then we have the other bullet point that was on the chart, Wall
Street bailouts. Well, I was not a fan of Wall Street bailouts, Mr.
Speaker. I, among about half of the Republicans, voted ``no'' on the
$700 billion TARP legislation which, by the way, was only $350 billion
worth of TARP legislation, only $350 billion, and that is a relative
term, when you are looking at $750 billion, you can say that. But this
$750 billion TARP proposal that came from the Secretary of Treasury,
Henry Paulson, his request was for immediately $750 billion with no
strings attached and he would spend the money as he saw fit, and he was
the only one who could save our economy from going into a downward
spiral and the global collateral and global currency from crashing.
Well, this Congress pulled it back, held it to $350 billion. I voted
``no'' on each component of that because I believed that there wasn't
any entity in this country that was too big to be allowed to fail, that
we should simply let them fail because if we do so, it would remove the
implication, the inference that the Federal Government was going to
provide a guarantee. And if they believe it is implicit that the
Federal Government will bail out companies that are too big to fail,
then they take greater and greater risks and the markets don't work any
more because they are propped up by the government.
So Wall Street bailout, I stand here, Mr. Speaker, and about half of
my Republican colleagues stood with me each time opposed to the $750
billion TARP fund bailout.

{time} 2220

And maybe about the same number of Democrats stood in opposition and

[[Page H1021]]

in favor of it. So it was both parties, in roughly equal numbers--
although not precisely--that supported the Wall Street bailout.
But, Mr. Speaker, then-Senator Obama--and now President Obama--did
support the TARP bailout. He was in support of the $700 billion. And
when it came back, as the vote of $350 billion now and $350 billion to
be requested by the next administration and approved by the next
Congress, President Obama--then-Senator Obama--voted for that
legislation; he was in favor of it.
When they went to the White House, John McCain and Senator Obama, to
sit down with Speaker Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, the leader in the
United States Senate, and Roy Blunt was there as well--and the list of
people on the House side goes on--at that table, then-candidate Obama,
Senator Obama was in agreement with the request for $700 billion and
voted for it. So it doesn't work very well for a Democrat to come to
the floor of the House and point his finger at George Bush when he can
clearly see that his President--and, by the way, my President--was in
support of TARP. I was not. I stood in opposition to TARP.
The Wall Street bailout was approved by then-Senator Obama, the first
half at $350 billion, and then later on the other $350 billion that was
requested by the President to be elected later, which was President
Obama, and approved by the Congress to be elected later, which was the
Pelosi-Reid Congress, sent Henry Paulson another $350 billion to go to
the new Secretary of the Treasury. That Secretary, by the way, had tax
troubles of his own.
So we can spin this a lot of ways, but what happened was at the end
of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama
administration and with the cooperation, support and assent of then-
Senator and later on President-elect and then President Obama, here's
what we saw happen. We saw that TARP funding approved in late
September, early October of 2008 with the support of Obama and McCain
and President Bush--not mine. We saw three large investment banks begin
to be nationalized as the flow of this election came through. We saw
the huge insurance company, AIG, nationalized, taken over by the
Federal Government. We saw Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nationalized,
taken over by the Federal Government. And then, pretty soon we saw
General Motors and Chrysler nationalized and taken over by the Federal
Government.
We saw the bankruptcy court accept the deal that was proposed by the
Obama White House without one jot or tittle amended no matter what the
testimony was before the bankruptcy court. A proposed package that was
endorsed by--and for all I know shaped by--the White House to put these
car companies through bankruptcy was, verbatim, approved by the
bankruptcy court. Now, what a curious thing that the White House can
write a prescription for a bankruptcy and a takeover of private sector
companies, two proud American companies, and the bankruptcy court
couldn't find a single flaw in that proposal, no matter what the
testimony to end back up with exactly the language of the agreement
that was proposed by the White House, and which, by the way, was
supported by Speaker Pelosi. And the language that she used was: I am
not going to allow the automakers to get bargaining leverage over the
unions.
And so the secured creditors and the car companies lost their
investment completely--lock, stock and barrel, wiped out, Mr. Speaker.
And shares of stock were handed over to the United Auto Workers Union.
How could that happen in a Nation that believes in the rule of law? How
could that happen in a Nation that allows for collateral to be held for
secured creditors? The people that held the collateral for those
companies lost their collateral, and part of the reason was because the
large investment banks that had been invested in those shares had also
received a bailout from TARP--the Troubled Asset Relief Program in case
there is anybody that needs to know that.
When that happened, then it was leveraged against these large
investment banks to capitulate, give up their secured interest in that
collateral for General Motors and Chrysler so that it could be
transferred over to the unions, whose concession was they conceded
claims, insurance claims in the future. That's it. No real-time, now
transfer of anything; simply some concessions down the line that looked
like--if they're able to pass socialized medicine will be irrelevant
anyway.
That's what I saw happen. TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program,
$350 billion under Bush, $350 billion under Obama, three large
investment banks nationalized, AIG, the insurance company,
nationalized, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, one of them lost $16 billion in
the last quarter, $16 billion, Mr. Speaker, all of that out of the
pockets of the taxpayers.
The taxpayers are on the hook to ensure that these now wholly owned
government entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose liabilities have
been accepted by executive order of President Obama last December in
the amount of contingent liabilities of $5.5 trillion, and still the
taxpayers continue to go to work every day and send their money into
the Federal Government, and still this Federal Government's heart is
hardened and can't seem to come to grips with the massive
responsibility that they have accepted and transferred over onto the
people of America.

And while all of this is going on, the Community Reinvestment Act,
which was passed in the late seventies, ``modernized'' in the early
nineties under Bill Clinton, that Community Reinvestment Act that was
designed to put an end to redlining around districts in our inner
cities--mostly inner cities, wouldn't have had to be exclusively that,
Mr. Speaker--and it was an activity that I disagree with and object to,
but there were lenders that could see that there were neighborhoods
where the asset values were going down, inner city neighborhoods. Any
of the inner city properties where the asset value was going down, they
took, more or less, a red pen and drew a line around those areas in the
inner city whose asset values were going down, they were redlining
them. They would draw a boundary around them and then make a decision
that they were not going to loan any money into that area because the
collateral value was diminishing rather than appreciating.
So when that happened, and it became apparent here in this Congress,
the hearts of the Members of Congress went out to the people that were
trying to make a living and live in those areas and passed the
Community Reinvestment Act, which essentially said if you're going to
make loans and if you're going to expand your operations with branches
or continue to go into other neighborhoods, then you need to comply
with the Community Reinvestment Act, which means, in short, that
lending institutions had to make bad loans in bad neighborhoods. That's
the short version of what it is. There are a lot of nicer ways to say
it, but that is the blunt version, Mr. Speaker.
So these lending institutions were having trouble defining what that
meant. Well, ACORN was there to help them. They were there to shake
down these lenders and push the lenders into making more bad loans in
bad neighborhoods. But the problem was that the lenders couldn't make
any more loans because they were having trouble selling these mortgages
off into the secondary market, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because the
underwriting requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not loose
enough to allow those mortgages to be sold into the Fannie and Freddie
secondary loan market.
And so this wonderful organization called ACORN came to this Congress
in the early nineties and lobbied the Congress--they weren't the only
ones, but they were a very, very active and forceful organization--they
lobbied the Congress to lower the underwriting and the collateral of
down payment standards for the borrowers so that Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac could buy up these loans on the secondary market. And the loans
that would be made by the lending institutions that were seeking to
comply with the Community Reinvestment Act, make those loans, bad loans
in bad neighborhoods, sell them off to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, shed
themselves of it, take their profit and their margins out and let
Fannie and Freddie worry about that as they rolled them forward. All of
that was going on, and it wasn't going fast enough.

[[Page H1022]]

But once the underwriting requirements for Fannie and Freddie were
approved here in this Congress in the early nineties, then ACORN went
to work and accelerated their effort to promote more and more bad loans
in bad neighborhoods. While that was going on, the shakedown was being
accelerated. But it wasn't enough to have a, let me say, lobbying
operation here in Washington that was pushing to lower the standards
for Fannie and Fred, but there was an activist shakedown operation
going on out there in the neighborhoods where ACORN's people were
proudly saying that they went into lending institutions and they would
shove the banker's desk over against the wall and all surround the
lender and chant and scream at him to intimidate him into making more
and more bad loans in bad neighborhoods.

{time} 2230

So what did they do?
In an attempt to please or placate, the lenders made more bad loans
in more bad neighborhoods. Then ACORN found themselves in a position
where they could actually score the lenders as to whether they were in
compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act.
Well, think about what that means--an outside organization that
emerges today as a criminal enterprise, scoring lending institutions as
to whether they're in compliance with the very vague language of the
Community Reinvestment Act, and encouraging more and more bad loans in
bad neighborhoods. Alan Greenspan is up there, lowering interest rates,
extending the terms, lowering the standards for a downpayment. All of
this accelerated bad loans in bad neighborhoods. Subprime mortgages
made that all happen, and you had this snowball that was rolling along
underneath the radar.
We saw this start to break apart a year and a half or so ago, Mr.
Speaker. That's when Henry Paulson came to this Capitol and did his
Chicken Little routine.
He said, The financial sky is falling, and I can prop it up with $700
billion.
What's your guarantee?
He said, I have no guarantee, but it's the only thing that has any
chance of working. You'll have to give me the money, and I'll do what I
can with it.
That's the picture of what happened: The Community Reinvestment Act,
the shakedown of lenders, ACORN engaged in the middle of this, ACORN
finding themselves as the broker for bad loans and the approver of the
lending institutions that are making enough bad loans that it meets
their standard. That's what we saw happen, and we saw this economy
start to crack apart again. When it cracked apart and when the economy
started to spiral downward, yes, that was under George Bush's watch,
but it was also, Mr. Speaker, under Nancy Pelosi's watch, and it was
under Harry Reid's watch.
I have stood here on this floor, have sat up in these seats and have
listened to enough debate from this side of the aisle when, over and
over again, Democrats in this Congress have said, Give us the gavels.
We will make it better. We can fix this economy. We can grow this
country. We will take care of our national defense. Everything will be
right again. This is before President Obama was even elected to the
United States Senate. There were declarations from this side of the
aisle that you could fix everything if you could just get the gavels.
Well, you got the gavels. You got the gavels in 2006, and we saw
industrial investments spiral downwards, and we saw the subprime
mortgage crisis spiral even further downwards. By the way, in 2005, I
stood on this floor and I supported raising the standards of
underwriting for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, requiring them to have
similar, not exactly the same, capital requirements as the other
lending institutions and similar regulations of the other lending
institutions.
What happened, Mr. Speaker, was that the now chairman of the
Financial Services Committee, Mr. Frank, came to this floor and
vigorously opposed an amendment that was offered by Mr. Leach of Iowa,
on October 26, 2005, which would have fixed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Jim Leach understood what we needed to do. I understood what we needed
to do. There were several dozen others who understood what we needed to
do. Yet the defender of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would later on
become the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, and he would
continue to defend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and he would open up
authorizations to fund ACORN and to accelerate the downward spiral of
our economy.
I come to this floor tonight, and I hear it's all George Bush's
fault. Well, as you may know, Mr. Speaker, I'm having a little trouble
with this logic.
So I'll just fast-forward to another circumstance that took place
yesterday and the day before and the day before and the day before and
that will be taking place tomorrow. It is the position that Senator Jim
Bunning has taken with regard to the extension of unemployment
benefits. He has taken the position that, if you really believe that we
should pay as we go, then the people who are promoting that we should
extend unemployment benefits should find a way to pay as we go. That's
their pledge.
They passed PAYGO here. Of course it's a sham. They just simply
bypass it, ignore it, or put a little language in the bill that says
PAYGO doesn't apply, and they move on. They do whatever they want to
do. There is no standard anymore. The integrity has diminished
substantially.
Jim Bunning said, Hold it. Before we extend unemployment benefits,
find a way to pay for it.
This is an administration that has spent way out of proportion to any
other. This is in the trillions of dollars. We have a President who is
a Keynesian economist, if he is an economist at all, and he is on
steroids. He has a voracious appetite to spend our grandchildren's
future incomes.

Today, by my numbers, a baby born in America owes Uncle Sam for the
birthright of being a natural born American citizen $44,000. Somebody
else's number is $46,000. I'll stick with $44,000. It's a conservative
number. By the time that child starts the fifth grade, if the
President's budget is approved, authorized, and appropriated, we will
see that child owing the Federal Government $88,000 when he walks in to
meet his fifth grade teacher. $88,000.
At the same time, this same administration laments the college debt
that they have. Now, if you have a student who walks out of college and
who gets his degree with $88,000 worth of debt, that seems to be more
than he wants to bear. The hardest thing is to come short of a degree
and still have the college debt because you don't have the sheepskin to
help you with the revenue stream, and you've got to find another way to
do it.
I will say that I empathize with those college students who have high
debt, but I even greater empathize with those American babies who are
born every day in this country with a huge debt over their heads that
they had nothing to say about. They don't really have a means to take
that and call it an investment and a return on that investment. It is
unconscionable that we would put our children and grandchildren in debt
in the fashion that we have, and it is trillions of dollars, Mr.
Speaker. The numbers work out to be something like this:
We've had something like an $11.3 trillion national debt. That
national debt has now been raised to around $14 trillion. If you look
at the Obama budget, when you project it out over a 10-year period of
time, that takes it up to $28 trillion. Now, this is a massive burden
that we have. How do we work our way out of it?
We are going the wrong way--raising up mandatory wages. Let's say we
raise minimum wage a high percentage, 30-some percent or so. We have
got a Davis-Bacon wage scale, the federally imposed union scale on
every construction project in America that has 2,000 or more Federal
dollars invested in it. It unnaturally inflates the cost of every
project that has Federal dollars in it someplace between 8 and 35
percent. The most recent data shows an average of a 22 percent increase
because of Davis-Bacon wage scales, which truly are union wage scales.
Then on top of that, while the Federal Government is managing minimum
wage, managing imposing a union wage scale even on competitive
contracts--and by the way, the Davis-Bacon wage scale is the last Jim
Crow law in America. I know of no other Jim Crow law left in America.
This is one.

[[Page H1023]]

It is the remaining Jim Crow law. It was designed to lock African
Americans out of the trade unions in New York City back in 1932. There
was a Federal building contract that was let in the Depression era, and
a contractor from Alabama was the low bidder on the project. He brought
a lot of African American workers in from Alabama up to New York City
to build that Federal building. They'd work cheaper. They came in.
The unions got together and lobbied. Somebody said they were both
Republicans, and if so, I don't identify with them at all. Two New York
legislators--a senator and a representative--called Davis and Bacon
decided that they were going to impose a prevailing wage on America,
which turns out to be the union scale on America, which is an increase
of 22 percent.
So the decision we have is: Do we want to build 4 miles of road or 5?
Do we want to build four bridges or five? Do we want to build four
schools or five? Do you want to build 4 miles of bike trail or 5? Name
your project. Do you want to build four buildings or five? How many
shovel-ready projects do you want to go to work if they are of equal
value--four or five? That's the difference between the non-Davis-Bacon
merit shop and Davis-Bacon wages.
I am confronted with the chairman of the Financial Services
Committee, who has consistently made the argument with many of his
colleagues over on this side of the aisle that the Federal Government
has no business injecting themselves in between two consenting adults.
The two consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want to
do. It doesn't hurt anybody else. That's their argument. What business
is it of ours in this Congress if two consenting adults want to carry
on in any fashion whatsoever, whether we can discuss it here into the
Record or whether we can't, Mr. Speaker?
Well, the same individuals who make that argument seem to think that
the Federal Government should inject themselves into every transaction
between two consenting adults, provided there are some 2,000 or more
Federal dollars involved. So now we have Uncle Sam's telling David King
what he has to pay his employees on a construction project in Iowa: If
I want to go climb in his excavator on a project, and I say, Hey, Dave.
I want to do this for nothing. I just enjoy doing this work. It takes
me back to my roots, and I want to help this company, or if I say, Will
you just pay me $10 an hour? That'll make it work. It'll give me a
little spending money and make it work.

{time} 2240

He can't do it. It would be a violation of Federal law. I cannot
enter into an agreement with my own son, two consenting adults, and
work for $10 an hour or $20 an hour or nothing, because the Federal
Government has decided they want to tell two consenting adults what
they can do, what they will be paid for work that is done.
By the way, it changes dramatically from district to district. You
might go across the road, the center of the centerline of a highway,
and find out there is a 20, 30, or 40 percent difference in this thing
called prevailing wage, which actually is union scale.
The Federal Government is messing up the works. The free enterprise
system has got to be allowed to operate and flourish. There needs to be
a floor that is established under labor that is supply and demand.
There needs to be a wage and benefits package that is reflective of
supply and demand, and the skills of the employee. That, sadly, is not
the case when the Federal Government is involved.
So, Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of distortions that have been taking
place here, and our Keynesian economist on steroids who is in the Oval
Office has further distorted this. We need to take this country back,
back to our roots, back to our origins, and let the free enterprise
system work.
There are a series of flashcards that have been made available by the
USCIS, Citizenship Immigration Services. Those flashcards are little
red things about like this. They will ask you a question when you study
to be a naturalized American citizen.
On one side it will say, Who is the Father of our Country? Snap it
over and it will say, George Washington.
Who saved the Union? Snap it over, Abe Lincoln.
What is the economic system of the United States? Snap it over, free
enterprise capitalism.
Mr. Speaker, it is hard to believe that would be a question that
would be answered accurately in the White House today, given the
nationalization of one-third of the private-sector profits in the
country, given the effort to nationalize our bodies.
Now, there is a concept, Mr. Speaker, that has some people raise
their eyebrows. Now they are ready with their fingers on their
keyboard, because they think that Steve King has said something that is
completely outrageous. Well, it is completely thought through.
Here is the point. Ever since 1973, a significant percentage of
Americans, albeit today in a minority, have continually made the
argument that abortion should be available electively because no one
has any business telling a woman what she can or can't do with her
body. That is the argument.
The pro-choice crowd has continually argued you can't tell a woman
what she can or can't do with her body. It is her body, a decision for
her and for her doctor and for her pastor, priest, or rabbi. Funny that
the father is not in this equation. But that is the argument; you can't
tell a woman what she can or can't do with her body. It is a decision
for her, her pastor, and her doctor.
Well, the same people, the same people that have been making that
argument since 1973 that you can't tell a woman what she can or can't
do with her body, it is her body, after all, are the ones that are now
making the argument that the Federal Government should have the
authority to tell everybody in America what we can or can't do with our
body.
This is the nationalization of everybody's body. It is Uncle Sam
taking over our bodies. The most private, personal thing we have is
this physical body that we should be managing, taking care of,
respecting, and be grateful and reverent for. And even in the
legislation we see language that would tax your pop if it is not diet,
or outlaw or tax trans fats, and try to manipulate behavior so that
your body treats you in a fashion that is less of a demand on health
care. This is the Federal Government telling us what we can and can't
do with our body.
We have heard some talk about death panels, and I have not
embellished that very much. But those panels would be a component of
the thought process that I am discussing. You would have a Federal
panel or committee that would be run by the Health Choices
Administration czar who would determine when you could have tests, when
you couldn't have tests; when a woman was too young for a mammogram,
when a woman was too old for a mammogram, when she had had too many
mammograms; tell you when you needed to be checked for colon cancer.
They would put you through all these paces. It is the Federal
Government managing our health care.
Why would we do that? Why would we give that up? Why would we let the
Federal Government nationalize our bodies and decide what we will pay
for health insurance premiums, what health insurance policies will be
offered to us, and by those decisions they would decide then the cost
of the premiums, the benefits of the premiums, from what would be
offered. The Federal Government takeover of the most personal and
private thing that we have, and in fact are, would be the
nationalization of everybody's body in America.
Now, what does that mean? Well, it is we the people. The people get
their rights from God. We take those rights and we confer them upon
government and they derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed.
But if you look back at the old monarchies that were the precursors
to this country, those subjects existed for the monarch, for the king.
They were the king's subjects. He controlled them. He managed them for
his own benefit at his own will. Some were benevolent and some were
not. We have rejected the monarchy, and that is very clear if you read
our Constitution.
But also the Communist state, where the individual exists for the
benefit of the state and everybody's work and labor's for the benefit
of the state. There isn't any system out there that respects and
reveres the power of the individual and our individual rights that

[[Page H1024]]

come from God, and how people confer, the people, confer their powers
that come from God and the consent of the governed, and pass it over to
our elected representatives. That is the system that we have.

Why would the people of the United States of America give up their
sovereign rights to control their own persons in spite of all the
things that are in the Bill of Rights that define our individual
rights? Why would we give that up and hand over the management of our
health care to the Federal Government? Why would anybody propose such a
thing?
I will submit, Mr. Speaker, they would only propose such a thing if
they were anti-liberty, if they were anti-freedom, if they were pro-
some other form of government that didn't respect the sovereignty of
the individual and the God-given liberties that are invested in all of
us. So, this is an important debate that is before us.
Tomorrow, President Obama will unveil, as he has announced, another
series of bullet points. The last time it was 11 pages, no legislative
language, of principles he thinks that we all should agree to. And he
would give some opportunity for Republicans to accept a few more
dictates, and he has indicated he would be interested in a couple of
changes. But, in the end, they have created a toxic stew that started
with that tainted old soupbone of HillaryCare of 15 years ago, and they
have added bells and whistles to it that are designed to try to attract
more people into this.
But if you start out with something toxic, whatever you add to it, it
dilutes it, but it is still toxic. This is a toxic stew, this National
Health Care Act. It needs to be thrown out, and we need to start fresh.
Three out of four of the American people agree with me that we can't go
forward with what we have in front of us. We have got to start all over
again.
We need to start with tort reform and the lawsuit abuse, and allow
people to really and truly and honestly and openly buy insurance across
State lines. We need full deductibility of everybody's health insurance
premiums. We need to expand Health Savings Accounts. We need to allow
people to use HSAs. We need to set up a portability, so people can take
their health insurance policies with them every time. And we need to
address preexisting conditions in a fashion that doesn't turn out to be
socialized medicine.
All of that we can do, all of that we should do, but we should do it
one bill at a time, standalone, very clear. Tort reform first; take
this money out of the pockets of the trial lawyers, give it back to the
ratepayers, and the taxpayers, and the patients. If we do that, that
will be a powerful sign that this administration would finally be ready
to work in a bipartisan fashion.

{time} 2250

Until I see that, Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that that is the
case. I think the effort is socialized medicine. I don't think it's
about the liberty of America, nor do I believe it's about the
efficiency and the quality of health care.
So, with that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence, and I would
yield back the balance of my time.

____________________