[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 66 (Wednesday, May 5, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H3184-H3188]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WHAT GOT US INTO THIS ECONOMIC MESS?
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. Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to be able to join you and my
colleagues and others who are gathered here to talk about something
that has been on our minds for some considerable time now--many months,
even 1\1/2\ to 2 years--and that is the subject of the economy and jobs
and what's really going on in America.
I'm a person who is of that baby boomer-type cycle--I'm 62--and there
are many other people such as myself in America that have done a lot of
work and tried to save our money and all of a sudden something seemed
to go wrong in the economy. We lost a lot of money in 2008, and there
is a real concern out there about jobs, the economy, and what's going
on in the policies. And so I thought, in that we have 1 hour--we don't
have to do everything in 1 minute or 5 minutes, but we have 1 full hour
today--that I would open the subject. I will invite my other Republican
colleagues to join me. You may see some coming in before long. And I
want to talk about this whole situation, and because we have more time,
I can go back just a little bit.
I would like to go back to how is it that we were kind of cruising
along, things seemed to be going pretty well by about 2006 or so with
the economy, 2007, and then all of a sudden, in 2008, we really seem to
have come to ``grief on a reef,'' so to speak. So what went on?
Well, let's go back to an interesting article in the New York Times,
not exactly a conservative oracle. It was September 11--not in 2001,
but September 11 in 2003--the New York Times reported this, that there
is a new agency proposed to oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Well,
why would there be a new agency to oversee Freddie and Fannie? Well,
Freddie and Fannie were these quasi-governmental agencies, and their
job was to help provide Americans with affordable loans so Americans
could buy houses.
So here we have in this article, it says: The Bush administration
today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the
housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade
ago.
Oh, my goodness. So President Bush is saying we need to overhaul
Freddie and Fannie. They were quasi-private, quasi-public. Why would he
want to overhaul? Well, they just had misplaced a few hundreds of
millions of dollars and gave people a lot of concern that maybe Freddie
and Fannie were not in good shape economically. Well, then the question
becomes, if they're not in good shape, what would that mean? Well, that
would mean, guess what? The American taxpayer may be asked to bail out
Freddie and Fannie. So the President is saying, Hey, I need some more
authority to make sure that Freddie and Fannie don't do some dumb
things that cost us a whole lot of money. So that's what the President
is saying in this article. Again, this is 2003.
Following that, we read further in the article, and we have another
interesting situation here where we have the gentleman now who is in
charge of trying to fix these Wall Street institutions, that is, our
current Congressman Barney Frank. And this was his statement in the
same article in 2003: These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate
these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less
we will see in terms of affordable housing.
So this is something we have a clear party line difference. The
President is saying Freddie and Fannie are not managing things
properly, they were a risk to our economy, and you have a Democrat, who
is now the ranking guy on this committee, that's saying, no, they're
fine, Freddie and Fannie are just fine.
Well, of course, hindsight is always 20/20. It was obvious that what
was said here by Congressman Frank was completely wrong. Freddie and
Fannie were in trouble. They did mismanage things, and they have now
been taken over by the Federal Government, more or less. And guess who
has to pick up the tab? You guessed it. The American taxpayer.
Now, how did this whole situation develop and what happened? Well,
part of what happened was people came to the conclusion some number of
years ago that it would be nice if people could get loans to buy
houses. And what happens for the people who don't have very good credit
ratings? How about the people who are a bad security risk? What are we
going to do with them? Well, we're going to say, You can get a loan,
too. That's what he's saying in terms of affordable housing.
So somehow, in the name of compassion, we came up with this idea that
the government was going to allow people to get loans and not check
whether the person had a capacity to repay the loans. And at the height
of the big bubble that was going up on home prices, just about anybody,
regardless of their credit rating or anything else, what job they had,
could go in and get a loan to buy a great big house. And it worked
pretty well for a couple of years. You could go in, buy a house, and
then wait a couple of years. The price of the house would double, and
you would sell it and buy some other big house.
And you could pyramid your money up even though you were borrowing
money and you didn't have any way to pay it back, because these loans
were so good you wouldn't have to pay anything for a number of years at
all. You could get a loan that would say you don't have to pay anything
for a couple of years at least. So you could buy something. It would
appreciate. You could sell it, and then move on and do that. And so
people were starting to do that with houses. The trouble was, of
course, that the bubble burst, and all of the house of cards came
tumbling down.
Now, we understand what caused the problem originally was the concept
that the government requires the banks to make loans to people who
can't afford to pay. That's a bad policy, because when people can't
pay, somebody's going to have to pick up the tab. And guess what
happened? You guessed it once again. It was Uncle Sam passes it on to
the taxpayer to pick up the tab for this failed policy.
So you want to ask, How did we end up with this 10 percent
unemployment? How did we end up with a very weak economy? How did we
get into this trouble? The trouble was caused, about 90 percent, by the
U.S. Government. It was caused by people who meet in this Chamber and
various administrations.
At the end of the Clinton administration, the Clintons decided that
what they were going to do was to increase the percentage of those bad
loans that banks had to approve. What did the banks do with them? They
passed them on to Freddie and Fannie. What happened to Freddie and
Fannie? Well, Wall Street sliced and diced the loans up and sold them
all over the world, and Freddie and Fannie then get into a big problem.
Now, what was the political organization that forced all of these
loans to be
[[Page H3185]]
made to people who couldn't afford to pay it? You guessed it. It was
ACORN. ACORN was involved in a lot of voter fraud, but it also was
involved in forcing banks locally to take loans that they shouldn't
have taken. So this is a piece of what happened.
The other piece was the policy of the Federal Reserve. Because of the
recession that we came into in 2001 when I was first elected, the
Federal Reserve decided to increase liquidity. But particularly what
was happening, Greenspan decided to reduce the interest rate. Now, this
idea of increasing liquidity is the equivalent of the crack cocaine of
economics. What it is is it's a government--in the old-fashioned world,
you would say the government is running the printing presses.
Well, that's what we did. We ran the printing presses, but we also
reduced the cost of money to very low, to about zero percent, and held
it there for some period of time. By dumping lots and lots of dollars
into the economic system, people that had the dollars go, Hey, I'm
getting these dollars for a very, very low interest rate. What can I
invest in? Hey, why not invest in the housing business, because housing
prices are going up like a rocket. I can borrow money at a couple
percent, or even less, and I can double my money, almost, in the
housing business in a couple, 3, 4 years. So why not do it?
Well, everybody did for a while until this very low interest rate,
the high level of liquidity, and boom, you get another bubble. It's
like the high-tech bubble, because we're using liquidity to try and
pull ourselves out of problems. We'll come back to that in a little
while.
So what was it that really caused the economic crisis? Well, first of
all, it was lousy policy set right here in Congress about making loans
to people who couldn't afford to pay them and then not holding Freddie
and Fannie accountable for what they're doing. And by doing that, we
ended up with the beginning of the recession.
Now, following that, we start to go into recession. The idea then
was, just in Bush's last year or so and when I was here, we had Paulson
come to us and say, Hey, look, everything's in trouble. You guys have
got two choices: Either the entire world economic system is going to
melt down--I mean, the Earth is going to crack. Hailstones are going to
come from heaven. I mean, it's going to be terrible, and there's going
to be riots in the streets because the dollar bill won't work anymore
and the banking system will collapse--or your other alternative is,
give me $700 billion in unmarked bills in a brown paper bag. Those are
your two choices, Congress, and we're going to the public and letting
everybody know. And if you do the right thing, hopefully there will not
be this terrible calamity.
And so Congress was supposed to give $700 billion to Hank Paulson.
Well, did he really need that? No, he didn't need it. In fact, it was
part of the same mistake that we make frequently here, and that is that
every time there's a problem economically, the government has to jump
in and fix it, bailout fever. And this was, of course, the beginning of
the big Wall Street bailout.
Unfortunately, some Republicans supported that idea, along with most
of the Democrats, and we took $700 billion away from the American
taxpayer to buy these supposedly troubled assets that had been created
by Wall Street. Well, it's pretty hard to buy something when there
isn't a market in it, so we took $700 billion out of the market--about
$350 supposedly spent during Bush's last year, another $350 in Obama's
first year--and that was the beginning of our big spending. And again,
it's based on this concept that the government should jump in and fix
everything and that the government is going to be able to fix the U.S.
economy. That turns out to be a troubling assumption, and it continued
to get us in trouble over the last year or two, which has then made the
economic situation even worse.
The next thing that happened was, after we did this Wall Street
bailout, we decided that what we had to do next was a stimulus package.
The proposal was that we're going to do this stimulus. Now, the whole
concept of stimulus is pretty much like the idea of, if you had a pair
of boots on, what you're going to do is to reach down, grab your
bootstraps and lift hard, and if you lift hard enough, you can float
around the room. And this is the concept in economics that was known as
Keynesianism. It was the idea that if the Federal Government just
spends a whole lot of money, it will make the economy better when you
have a tough economy.
If you think about that from a commonsense point of view, picture
you're trying to run your family and you realize, hey, there's really
some economic problems our family is having, so the solution is go out
and just spend money like mad. Now, would you think that would be a
very smart idea? Well, most commonsense people--certainly people from
my State, the State of Missouri, would say that's not very smart just
to go out and spend a whole lot of money. Has that idea been tried
before? Well, yes, it has. It was tried by Henry Morgenthau back when
Little Lord Keynes was first proposing this theory. It's a lovely
theory if you're in government, because the theory says you can just
spend lots and lots of money that's not your money.
People in politics think that's nice because people like it when I
spend lots of government money. The problem is that Henry Morgenthau,
who was Secretary of the Treasury under FDR, managed to use this policy
to take a recession and turn it into the Great Depression. And so he
came, at the end of 8 years, before the House Ways and Means Committee
here, and Henry Morgenthau says that we have tried this theory of
spending money. We've spent and spent and spent, and we have not seen
any change in unemployment. We have terrible unemployment and a huge
debt and deficit to boot. So this is the guy right alongside with
Little Lord Keynes that said this didn't work. We tried it for 8 years,
and it just created the Great Depression in America.
We should learn something from history, but, no, we decide what we're
going to do is we're going to come up with the ``stimulus bill,''
another 700-and-something billion dollars, $787 billion. And here we
have our new President here. He says, like any cash-strapped family, we
will work within a budget to invest what we need and sacrifice what we
don't. The things on this side of the chart sound pretty good. If I
heard somebody say that that was my President, I would say, Hah, this
is a pretty good idea.
This is what the President said at the beginning of the year.
{time} 1645
The only trouble is there is this huge gap between what is said and
what is done. So what we do, we start with: Is it any real serious
budget reform? No, it is not really budget reform at all.
In fact, what has happened in terms of the Federal spending? Have we
learned anything after the stimulus bill? What should we have learned
from the stimulus bill? Well, we were told that if you do not pass the
stimulus bill, if you don't pass it, here is what is going to happen,
so you better look out. If you don't pass the stimulus bill, that is
what is going to happen to unemployment, this line here. But if you
pass a stimulus bill, here is what is going to happen, it will keep
this unemployment down. So we were told that if you don't pass the
stimulus bill, unemployment could go as high as 8 percent. And if you
pass it, it will bring it on down.
Well, that was all based on this silly idea that if you spent lots
and lots of money, everything would be okay. This really wasn't even a
good FDR stimulus bill because if he had been doing it, it would have
had a lot of concrete in it. It would have been hydroelectric plants
and roads. This had much more food stamps and aid to States that
overspent their budgets and things like that. So we spent $787 billion
on the stimulus bill, and here is what happened. This red line. So you
think a whole lot of government spending is going to fix unemployment?
Absolutely not. We have already tried it. One more time, if we didn't
learn our lesson from Henry Morgenthau, we have another chance. Here we
go. Same dumb idea, still doesn't work. You can try it as many times as
you want. It is not going to work. So the unemployment now jumps up. In
many places it is more than 10 percent. These numbers are pretty
conservative. If you have been looking for a job for more than a year,
you are not counted anymore in these statistics. So people without a
[[Page H3186]]
job for a year--maybe some have given up in despair of ever getting a
job--they are not even counted in these numbers. So this idea of a
whole lot of government spending didn't work, and so we have
unemployment.
I am joined by a good friend of mine, Dr. Price, who is really on top
of some of these things. I would ask if he would like to join in the
conversation a little bit here this afternoon.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for his leadership on
this and all issues, and especially for highlighting the challenges
Americans face all across this land.
But pointing out, as this chart so aptly does, that the ``solution''
which has been put in place by this administration has, I would argue
and I know you would, has in fact made things worse. So here we are
with the Nation being promised a little over a year ago that if we
spent hundreds of billions of dollars in an effort to try to get the
Nation back moving from an economic standpoint, that we wouldn't see an
unemployment rate of 8 percent.
Mr. AKIN. Right. If we didn't pass it, 8 percent.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. That was going to be the high point. And here
we are at 9.7 percent, and it has been higher than that. And the take-
home message on that is what they are doing doesn't work.
I told a fellow the other day, I said, They are thinking about doing
a new stimulus bill, a new jobs bill. You know, they tried millions and
then they tried billions, and I guess we are going to move to
gazillions next.
Mr. AKIN. Don't forget the trillions. We are working on trillions
right now.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. And as you well know, it is money we don't
have. It is money that we don't have, and that is the troubling thing
for the American people all across this land because they know the
policies that have been put in place not only haven't worked, they have
been destructive to job creation, which is what is frustrating to those
of us on our side of the aisle who know that fundamental American
principles, if you follow them, actually can allow you to create jobs.
So what does that mean? It means spending less. You've got a great
chart right there, and people rail on the amount of spending that was
done at the end of the last administration, and we did as well. But if
you might share with folks the numbers that have happened since Speaker
Pelosi and her crowd have taken over.
Mr. AKIN. Right. You know, I appreciate your bringing that up because
one of the things that Americans intuitively understand, they are not
really buying this idea that by spending tons of money the Federal
Government is going to make everything better. Maybe some ivory-tower
people, but most people on the street know that doesn't make any sense.
They also know we as Republicans did the wrong thing; we spent too
much money. And the worst year in terms of spending too much money was
Bush's last year in office and our deficit was $459 billion. That is
this box here. The reason it is red is because this is when the Pelosi
Congress took over, so it was George Bush with the Pelosi Congress. And
of all of the years that President Bush had spent too much money, this
was his worst year right here. We follow that up with 2009 and this
$459 billion jumps to $1.4 trillion. Now when you really think about
it, that is really a tripling of the amount of deficit.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. It really is astounding. And the picture--they
say a picture is worth a thousand words. That picture is worth over a
trillion words, and that is because that is money we don't have. It is
money that puts greater deficits and debt on the backs of our kids and
our grandkids. It is mortgaging the future.
Right now we are seeing the consequences of reckless and
irresponsible spending at a national level in another nation--Greece.
And if you look at the trajectory, the spending path we are on, and the
debt and the deficit path we are on, we are not far behind the
incredible irresponsibility that is now being addressed in the nation
of Greece.
Well, the American people know that is wrong. They know they can't go
to the garage and print money, and that is what the Federal Government
does. That is what the Obama administration has done. Those red columns
there, those red lines there, demonstrate clearly that the deficits and
the debt that are being run up by the Obama administration and Speaker
Pelosi and the majority party right now are unparalleled in our
history.
Mr. AKIN. It seems like people think politics is complicated, and all
this economic stuff is complicated. It doesn't have to be nearly as
complicated as people think it is. For instance, take a look between
the parties. The Democrats, their basic idea of a solution to a problem
is that the government has to get bigger and spend more money. That's
the way they always look at it. They think that the solution is the
government, and we think that the problem is the government. This thing
here is an indication that with a completely Democrat House and Senate
and President, this is what happens. We triple this amount of deficit
to the point now when the Federal Government spends $1 today, 41 cents
of that $1 is borrowed.
Aside from this just insane level of spending money that we don't
have, which is basically taxing our grandchildren--I have some
grandchildren, I've gotten old enough, and I don't like the idea of
taxing them any more than paying taxes myself.
My background is engineering and the manufacturing business. You
know, this idea about unemployment is not that complicated. It is
really very basic. Anybody who has tried to run a little lemonade stand
knows more or less how businesses work. What I have done, I have
created a list that if you want to kill jobs, if you want to declare
war on business in America, these are the things that you want to do to
create unemployment. And the tragedy is we are doing all of the things
that are well calculated to create unemployment.
Now, I guess the good news is that the jobs that would have been
created here by American businesses and American ingenuity are simply
going to be done in plants that are overseas, and so those jobs go to
other countries. We will still use our intelligence. In my own city of
St. Louis, we have a guy who is the president of Emerson Electric, it
is a big company, and it has all kinds of divisions and it has all
kinds of technology. They create tons of jobs. The president of Emerson
says, Look, when you do all of these things to us, you are forcing us.
We will still grow. Our stock will do well. We will create jobs, it
just won't be jobs in the U.S., they will be somewhere else. So what do
you do? If you think about this, it is not very complicated.
The first thing is, if you have a tremendous amount of uncertainty,
you don't know what nutty thing the government is going to do next; if
you're a businessman, you're going to say, I think I'm going to hunker
down. I'm not going to make any big decisions because I'm not sure
whether the last couple of dollars I have in reserve I am going to need
for some other harebrained idea that these guys in Washington come up
with.
So if there is economic uncertainty of any kind, that is going to
tend to undermine job creation. And then if there is a slowdown, that
is what we have been seeing, that doesn't help because you don't have
the orders coming in. And here is the big one, excessive taxation,
because what President Obama has promised is that he is going to tax
those people in the $250,000 bracket. Well, I'm glad he is going to do
that because I don't make that much money, so I don't need to worry,
right. Oh, no, I do need to worry. I need to worry because the people
who are making $250,000, a lot of those are the guys owning these small
businesses that make all of the jobs. And the guy who is making
$250,000, you say, I don't feel sorry for him. But you better, and here
is why: because that guy is going to put that money back into his
business to put a new wing on a building, put a new machine tool there,
or develop a new process. Which is going to hire more people. So if you
kill him, if you take all of his money away through excessive taxation,
he won't invest in his business.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. You mentioned how our good friends on the other
side of the aisle look to government as the solution to everything, and
they do. They believe that Washington and government has a better
answer. We sometimes get criticized for
[[Page H3187]]
saying government can't do anything. There are some things that
government ought to be doing, but they ought not be owning banks, they
ought not be owning automobile companies, they ought not be running our
health care system, they ought not be deciding whether or not there is
any risk at all in the market.
Our friends on the other side of the aisle believe that the
government ought to control all of those things. And when they control
all of those things, what happens is that you decrease all of the
ingenuity and entrepreneurship and genius of the American people.
So what I like to say is, when you have big government, you have
small citizens. When you have small government, you have big citizens.
And we believe in big citizens as opposed to big government.
Checks and balances are what is necessary. You wouldn't have these
kinds of crazy things going on up here in Washington if there were
checks and balances here in the Federal Government. And the people
across this land know that. They know that runaway government on either
side, frankly, is not what they desire. So they look to Washington and
say, My goodness, what the heck are they doing? We have to put some
checks and balances in place.
Mr. AKIN. The President says here that families across the country
are tightening their belts and making tough decisions, the Federal
Government should do the same. Yes, we should do the same, but what are
we doing? Let's take a look at the policies: Wall Street bailout, $700
billion; stimulus package, another $700 billion; then in this House we
passed that goofy cap-and-tax bill which is going to put the government
in charge of trying to reduce CO2 in the country by making
the Federal Government in charge of all of the building codes for
houses. You can't even add an addition to your house without making
sure that it is safe from a global warming point of view. And there
goes another number of billions of dollars in taxes. And then, of
course, socialized medicine that we just got done with, which is
absolutely the biggest government takeover. It is one-sixth of the U.S.
economy. The government can't run Medicare and Medicaid and keep them
in the black, so what are we going to do, take over all of health care?
The families are tightening their belts, so what is the Federal
Government going to do? They are just absolutely going to go on another
spending spree. So what does that do? Excessive taxation. What's that
do? It kills jobs. What does that do? It takes away freedom because it
makes you little and Big Government big.
Here is a question for you. Thinking back about what phenomenon in
all of human history should human beings be most concerned about,
should it be the problem of war or should it be the problem of Big
Government? It is an interesting question. Why do we have this faith,
why do the Democrats have this faith in Big Government? Is there
anything historical to suggest that they are a solution or is it more
to suggest that they are a problem.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. In the area of health care, which I know a
little about, having practiced medicine for over 20 years, what we have
seen is the intrusion of the Federal Government into the practice of
medicine, into health care, is only destructive to all of the
principles that we hold dear for health care.
So whether it is affordability, or accessibility, or quality, or the
responsiveness of a system, or innovation, or choices, all of those
kinds of things that we as Americans hold dear in health care, they all
get destroyed with the Federal Government. You know that. That is what
results in that kind of economic uncertainty for the businesses of
health care.
I can't tell you how many letters I have received that have told me,
from my colleagues, my former medical colleagues who, since the bill
has been passed and signed into law--these are people in the prime of
their career, those who are taking care of literally thousands of
patients across this land--who have said, Look, with the oppression of
the Federal Government at this point, I'm going to do one of three
things. Either I am going to close my practice, I'm leaving, and that
challenges the accessibility problem. Or I am going to limit the number
of patients I see that have some type of government health care because
of the intrusion. In fact, virtually all of us will have government
health care when this crowd gets done with their plan. Or third, and
something that you've touched on, which is the alternative for
business-minded individuals in an economy like this where the
politicians are picking the winners and losers: They are heading
elsewhere. They are going offshore.
Mr. AKIN. A little island in the Caribbean, come on down. A big
hospital and a landing strip.
{time} 1700
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. There are actually hospitals being built in the
Caribbean right now.
Mr. AKIN. In expectation of this thing. So what you are saying is
really not very outlandish, from a commonsense point of view. It is not
like you are speculating and saying this thing is not going to work.
We have seen European socialized medicine. We have next door the
Canadian socialized medicine model. And I think it was about 10 years
ago the head of Canada, their prime minister said, We have got the best
health care system in the world, as long as you are healthy. It was
that little ``as long as you are healthy'' piece that is the problem.
If you are not healthy, you go down to America to get it taken care of.
So we have seen it not work in Europe.
I am a cancer survivor. I see what the cancer rate statistics are in
England. I don't want to be a cancer guy in England. I wouldn't want to
be a cancer guy here. So you see it hasn't worked in England, it hasn't
worked in Canada, as well as our system currently works.
Then, of course, we saw Massachusetts and Tennessee take bold forays
into this socialized medicine field, and they got hammered by it. So
what do we do? We do the same dumb thing.
I was going to jump to something even more basic, though, if you
think about it, and this was a statistic that kind of surprised me--
some of them are in the Congressional Record--and that was the number
of people that were killed by their own governments.
If you take a look, you know, at the good old communists. You look at
Stalin, he basically had murdered about 40 million people. Now, he was
pretty good at murdering people, but not nearly as good as Chairman Mao
in China, who has credit for killing about 60 million Chinese.
Now, this is government-on-citizen crime. This was not a war. In
fact, if you add just the people killed in various communist countries
that killed their own population, the governments killing their own
population, you have more people killed by just communism alone than
all the wars in history since the time of Christ.
So the question is, is it really rational for human beings to put so
much trust in government? That is not talking about Nazis or the other
types of dictators that killed lots of their own citizens.
So why do we have this great faith in government, when we see it
doesn't work for health care, yet we have the government in charge of
that? We are putting government in charge of student loans and in
charge of insurance for flooding, and we have got the Federal
Government in charge of housing and in charge of education. We have got
the Federal Government in charge of car companies, insurance companies
and all.
Let's see, the Soviet Union, what was their model? The government was
in charge of, well, let's see, education, health care, your house, your
food and your job. It didn't work for them. Why do we want to do the
same thing here?
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. It is very concerning. And I think that is
exactly the picture that is being painted for folks all across this
land and why they have the kind of frustration and anger and angst and
anxiety about the future of their country. It is why they are saying,
look, to Washington, are you not listening to us? Can you not hear us?
They know. They know that the government ought not to be owning
banks. They know that the government ought not to be owning automobile
companies. They know that the government ought not to be running health
care.
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And they know that not because it is just not right; they know it
because it doesn't result in the highest quality of opportunities and
choices and dreams realized for individuals.
Remember, big government, small citizen. Big government, small
patient. Big government, small consumer. You've got small government,
you've got big patients, you've got big citizens, you've got big
consumers, and more dreams realized.
Mr. AKIN. And that is really what you are saying, is basically you
are losing your freedom; a little bit here, a little bit here. You are
losing your freedom, and pretty soon you feel frustrated, you feel
angry, because you have some common sense, and you know what it takes
to make jobs, and we are doing all the wrong things.
But there are so many people on the street, and they are looking to
you, they are looking to me, to try to help turn this thing around and
get jobs going. And, of course, we don't have enough votes to turn
these policies around.
Another one of these things that is really tough on jobs is
insufficient liquidity. What that means is that a business needs to be
able to borrow money. But the banking regulators are so tight now that
a lot of businessmen can't get the loans they need to make their
business go.
Of course, excessive government spending, we have been talking about
that, and excessive government mandates and red tapes. Boy, talk about
that. And this health care bill, of course, is leading the charge and
damaged all these areas. And the end result is what? Well,
unemployment. Not a big surprise, particularly, because we are doing
everything wrong.
And yet here is an interesting question. Apparently what is happening
is Wall Street seems to be doing a lot better. Is it because we have
turned these bad policies around and are doing the right thing in D.C.?
No. We are still doing everything wrong, and yet Wall Street seems to
be doing better. Well, what is the logic of that?
Well, you know, to some degree it goes back to that same problem that
got us into this housing bubble, and that is the crack cocaine of the
government Federal system. That is, they can create unlimited
liquidity.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. And unlimited amounts of money is what that
means.
Mr. AKIN. Unlimited amounts of money and very low interest rates. So
you have got lots of money with very low interest rates, and it comes
down and starts to create these bubbles. So we really haven't fixed the
job problem.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. You are absolutely right. I think that is so
important because when people look to the items that need to be fixed
from a financial standpoint, they look and they see that Washington has
had its hand in some things that have been very destructive.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for example, are really at the epicenter
of the challenges that we have had in the economy. And the bill that is
being proposed and the bill that came through the House earlier to
assist in ``fixing'' things, their solution doesn't address Fannie and
Freddie at all, which is so frustrating because the American people
know that there are positive solutions. And you with the Republican
Study Committee, we have been working diligently on putting forward
those positive solutions to all of the challenges that we face that
embrace those fundamental American principles.
So whether it is health care, whether it is energy, whether it is the
economy, whether it is jobs, all of those things have fundamental
principal solutions that don't require putting the government in
charge.
Mr. AKIN. You are absolutely right, and it doesn't involve the
government taking everything over.
We're going to take a break and yield because I believe there is some
business that needs to be taken care of.
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