[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 81 (Wednesday, May 26, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H3849-H3855]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE DOING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Adler of New Jersey). 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, I'll be right with you as we get our charts 
adjusted here and get started for the evening.
  It's a pleasure to be able to join you this evening and to talk, once 
again, about subjects that are on the list of attention for many 
Americans, the kind of questions people are paying attention to, things 
that make people concerned, and overall questions regarding jobs and 
our economy.
  And if you step back a considerable distance and get way outside of 
Washington, D.C., one of the things that you can see if you look over a 
long period of time is that there's a big debate as to what the Federal 
Government should be doing--in fact, that is kind of the main political 
debate--and should the government be doing a whole lot of things or 
should it be doing a smaller, limited number of things.
  We have just heard over the previous 40 or 50 minutes from the 
Democrat Party, and they were very excited about all the things the 
government was doing. The government was involved in all of these 
handouts to different people and the different ways of trying to show 
compassion, and so they were very interested in seeing that the Federal 
Government was involved in a whole lot of different things.
  There's a different perspective on that, and that is that the Federal 
Government should be involved in a smaller number of things and that, 
in fact, the government should be limited, the Federal Government 
should be limited. We should leave a lot of things to the State 
government, and local governments also should be taking responsibility. 
The Federal Government should not be the big mother giving everybody 
whatever they want. And so this debate goes back and forth as to what 
should the Federal Government be doing.
  Now, if we take a look, there are some things we could learn from 
history. We do recall that there was a very famous, well-known nation 
that you've heard of, read of many times, and they had the philosophy 
that it was the job of the government to provide these basic 
necessities to their citizens. They believed the government should 
provide food and a place for people to live. They believed that the 
government should provide education and that the government should 
provide health care to the citizens. After all, if you don't have 
health care, you'll get sick. And they also believed that the 
government should provide jobs for their citizens. And so that nation 
operated under that principle that the Federal Government should be 
providing food and clothing and a place to live, education, health 
care, and a job.

                              {time}  2015

  Yet we watched that nation. It was a big threat to America, and over 
a period of time, it totally collapsed. The wheels fell off of it. And 
the nation doesn't exist anymore. It used to be called the Union of 
Soviet Socialist Republics. We in America in the meantime looked at 
their nation, and we said their economy is a mess. They don't know what 
they are doing. The Federal Government cannot afford to be giving all 
things to all people, and it is much better for the private sector to 
run the economy, for the Federal Government to be limited and just 
focus on the things that it can do well.
  So this is sort of the source of the large debate today, What is it 
that the Federal Government should be doing? And of course the problem 
with the Federal Government doing too much is pretty soon you run out 
of money. That is what we are starting to see all over Europe and the 
governments in Europe, but as well in our own government, particularly 
over the last year and a half.
  Now, we have just heard comments from the Democrat Party talking 
about the fact that the financial and economic crisis that we have 
experienced was the result of Wall Street. It was all Wall Street's 
fault. Unfortunately, their memories are selective. The fault lies more 
than anywhere else here in Congress. This was a government mistake. 
Republican and Democrat economists saw this thing coming, they saw it a 
long distance away, and politically we did not have the will to deal 
with it and solve the problem.
  How did this all happen? Well, we came up with a nifty idea a good 
number of years ago that it would be a nice thing if people who were 
very bad investment risks had the opportunity to buy their own home. 
And so what we demanded was that banks had to make loans to people who 
were a poor credit risk. So we said you got to make a certain 
percentage of your loans like that. So the banks are going, boy, this 
doesn't seem like a very good idea. You are demanding that we make 
loans to people who probably can't pay back their loan.
  I don't know how you could try to say that that's a compassionate 
thing to do. I don't think a family that has a loan that's too big for 
them to pay and that constantly is missing their mortgage deadlines and 
eventually gets evicted from their house, somehow that doesn't impress 
me as a picture of

[[Page H3850]]

compassion. But that was the desirable thing. And so we put that into 
the different regulations and the government mandates, and we created 
Freddie and Fannie, two quasi-public, but really private, firms which 
made a big business in home loans. They gave good prices to people, and 
through the years Americans had many of their loans put into Freddie 
and Fannie. But what happened was the very last year of the Clinton 
administration, they kicked up the percentage of loans that had to be 
made to people who were bad credit risks.
  So we are starting to create a bit of a problem because what happens 
when all the bad credit risks don't work? Who is going to pay? Well, 
the implied payer was, you guessed it, the poor old taxpayer. And so we 
see Freddie and Fannie moving along, and through a series of other 
circumstances, particularly Greenspan's keeping the interest rates low, 
the liquidity high, we see this big bubble in real estate bubbling 
right on up. From when I first came to Congress in 2001, the housing 
prices almost doubled in about 5 years. And you thought, boy, was I 
silly not to have bought a house, because if I would have bought a 
house it would have doubled in price. And then ker-pow, the bubble 
pops. When that happens, now all of this mischief that was created by 
Freddie and Fannie making bad loans starts to come due.
  Was this something that people understood? Yeah, there were people 
smart enough to see it coming. In fact, President Bush saw Freddie and 
Fannie, saw that they were in serious financial trouble, saw it was 
going to be a tremendous hit on our economy and asked the U.S. Congress 
for authority in the very smallest ways to regulate Freddie and Fannie. 
And that you can find documented in that great conservative oracle The 
New York Times. Take a look at September 11, 2003. This is 5 years at 
least before the big collapse of the economy.
  He is requesting permission from Congress to regulate Freddie and 
Fannie to take care of this problem that the liberal Democrats created, 
that is, making loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them. Now, 
they were assisted in this mischief also by different ratings firms 
like Standard & Poor's, who rated these different instruments that were 
created with these loans as AAA rated, which of course is a scam: they 
weren't. And the idea that Wall Street had was that if we would take 
one bad loan and we put it together with a thousand other bad loans 
that we have enough diversity that all these bad loans will not be bad 
loans, which was of course a bad assumption. Anyway, you know the 
story.
  The Republicans passed the bill to get more control of Freddie and 
Fannie. It went to the Senate. The Republicans, while they were in the 
majority, never had 60 votes, and the bill died over in the Senate 
because the Democrats refused to support it. In the meantime, the 
gentleman who is now in charge of fixing some of these economic 
problems was saying there is nothing wrong with Freddie and Fannie. And 
Freddie and Fannie had a great lobbying team, ran around the Hill here 
in Congress giving away hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars 
in PAC contributions.
  So first of all, let's not say that it was Wall Street that created 
this economic crisis. Let's go back to the fact that it was ACORN, that 
it was loans that were made to people who couldn't afford to make those 
loans, it was loans that were put into Freddie and Fannie and ended up 
the tab now being picked up by, you have got it, your grandchildren and 
your children. So that's where we are.
  Now, the big question is if we are going to give all this money away 
to different people the way that we have been doing for the last year 
and a half, how are we going to pay for it? Somebody once said the 
trouble with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other 
people's money. Well, so what've we been doing? Well, the last year and 
a half, boy, we've been doing some spending. But one of the things that 
anybody who runs a business knows is you got to have some kind of a 
budget. You have to have a plan as to where you are going so that you 
can somehow balance how much money you are spending with what's coming 
in. You have to have some sort of a sense of where you are going. You 
don't want to just float from month to month not knowing what you are 
doing.
  And so if you are going to have any kind of decent management in a 
business, you need to have a budget. Now, some families run without a 
budget, but to some degree what they do is they just take the money 
that's coming in, put it in the bank, and then they can take the money 
out until they run out, then they know they got to stop spending until 
the next month. But there has to be some kind of a plan of how you are 
going to proceed economically for any kind of a good management.
  I don't think there is hardly anybody that has stocks and bonds or 
whatever, or traded on Wall Street, that doesn't have a budget. And of 
course the Congress needs to have a budget too. In fact, the Democrat 
whip, Steny Hoyer, made this statement: he said that enacting the 
budget was the most basic responsibility of governing. The most basic 
responsibility, according to Steny Hoyer, was that we have a plan. Now, 
I agree with Steny. I do think having a budget is very, very important. 
You have got to have that.

  He was joined by Congressman Spratt, who is the House Budget 
Committee chairman. And he was even more specific: If you can't budget, 
you can't govern. He said that in 2006. So the Democrats, like the 
Republicans, are recognizing that you have got to have a budget. You 
have got to have some kind of a plan. If you don't, you are going to 
start really getting off the track economically.
  So, we then find this rather surprising article in The Hill newspaper 
just April 14, 2010: ``Skipping a budget resolution this year would be 
unprecedented.'' Wait a minute: ``Skipping a budget resolution this 
year would be unprecedented.'' In other words, we don't have a budget? 
You got it right. We don't have a budget this year. We don't have a 
budget. Any other business has to have a budget. Do we have a budget? 
No. ``Skipping a budget resolution would be unprecedented. The House 
has never failed to pass an annual budget resolution since the current 
budget rules were put into place in 1974.''
  We have never not had a budget resolution since 1974. So we are 
setting a record this year. We have got no budget. No budget. First 
time that's happened since 1974, according to a Congressional Research 
Service report. That's the research branch that works for everybody in 
Congress.
  So we have just marched off the edge of the economic world. We have 
decided rules don't apply to us. We have good intentions. We are going 
to have the Federal Government be all things to all people. Let's spend 
some money. Let's take care of everybody we want to take care of. And, 
hey, about this deal about having a budget, let's not have a budget 
because, you know, somebody could really beat you up if you had a 
budget.
  I am joined by a good friend of mine, Congresswoman Lummis. I don't 
know if you would like to take a minute or two to make a comment. I 
would be delighted to have you join us.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the Representative from Missouri and look 
forward to the opportunity to join you this evening. I am a member of 
the Budget Committee. And last year we had a lengthy budget debate in 
the committee, it was very robust, to discuss possible amendments to 
the budget. And even though the majority of the Republican amendments 
to the budget were not passed, we did pass a budget. It was over the 
``no'' votes of the Republicans. However it fulfilled a duty of this 
body to pass a budget.
  At $3.6 trillion, it was the largest budget in the history of the 
United States. President Obama this year proposed a $3.8 trillion 
budget. At a time of recession, he proposed a budget that was $200 
billion larger than the budget the year before. And the budget the year 
before included some astronomical increases, such as a 39 percent 
increase in the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency.
  Well, as you can see from a full day of hearings that were held today 
in the House Natural Resources Committee, that additional 39 percent 
increase in one agency's budget in 1 year, as now applied in the Gulf 
of Mexico to the oil spill, has not yielded the kind of efficiency that 
we expect from government.
  The United States is in charge of this cleanup. The President of the 
United

[[Page H3851]]

States is in charge of this cleanup. And on occasion he has dispatched 
members of his Cabinet, members of the Coast Guard, members of other 
agencies to involve themselves in the cleanup. But the fact that they 
increased their budget 39 percent in 1 year has not contributed to the 
coordination efforts of Federal agencies in cleaning up the gulf.
  Mr. AKIN. I would like to reclaim my time for just a minute. I really 
wanted to inquire of you about some of these numbers that you just 
said, because I am not on the Budget Committee. And I was kind of 
shocked in a way. We haven't not had a budget since back in the 70s, 
and that was just since we put this current budgeting process. And 
we've always had a budget, and yet this year we don't have a budget, 
and we are spending money at a tremendous pace.
  Is the rapid rate of spending, is that part of the reason we don't 
have a budget, because we are just so embarrassed we are spending so 
much? Is it because by putting a budget down it acknowledges the 
complete fiscal irresponsibility that we have started down that path? 
Do you think that's what it is? Or is it just we can't figure it out? 
Why don't we have a budget?
  Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman for the question. His question is 
very relevant because Republicans are asking the same question. Our 
chairman of the Budget Committee, John Spratt, is an honorable man, and 
we have pursued with him frequent efforts to encourage him to convene 
the Budget Committee for purposes of passing a budget.
  Normally, the Budget Committee passes a budget by April 15. That's 
part of the traditional process of this House. And that budget sets the 
ceilings or the parameters by which the Appropriations Committee will 
act during its efforts to vet the line items within the budget, meaning 
really going through the budget carefully, deciding what to spend money 
on, what the priorities of Congress are this year.
  So it is unprecedented, as Mr. Akin pointed out, for this Congress 
not to consider a budget. And here we are at the end of May, fully 45 
days into the period of time during which we normally have a budget for 
the Appropriations Committee to work with; and, Mr. Akin, we do not 
have a budget. And it is becoming more and more apparent every day that 
the Budget Committee will not be convened.

                              {time}  2030

  I am certain that John Spratt, who is the chairman of the Budget 
Committee, finds this painful. But I am also of the impression that the 
leadership within his party has encouraged him not to convene the 
Budget Committee out of concern that passing a $3.8 trillion budget, 
the budget as proposed by the President, would set a tone for this 
election year that Democrats don't want to face up to. They don't seem 
to want to face up to the fact that we are at over $12.9 trillion in 
debt.
  Mr. AKIN. Let me just stop you for a minute here, please, because I 
would like to try and get these numbers figured out a little bit. Of 
all of the different complaints I heard about President Bush, the one 
that I think I heard the most was that he was spending too much money. 
I think the people didn't like the fact we were at war in Iraq very 
much, but I think particularly they were worried that he was spending 
too much money.
  And so I guess his last year in was 2008, and that was when the 
Pelosi Congress was here. And that was his worst amount of deficit 
spending that he did, which was about a $470 billion deficit that year 
in his spending. Now, that wasn't good; that was about 3.1 percent of 
gross domestic product, and that was his worst spending, and he was 
spending too much, and some of us said, yes, he was, and we didn't vote 
for some of the spending.
  He was followed by President Obama the next year, which is 2009, and 
the amount of deficit there was $1.6 trillion, that is three times more 
than Bush's worst year. And, boy, were we doing some spending. Then we 
went from 3.1 percent of GDP all the way up to 9.9 percent GDP, and so 
we just rocked into this. I will tell you, President Obama made George 
Bush look like Ebenezer Scrooge.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. Yes. Recall that President Obama, since he took office, 
will double the debt in 5 years, triple it in 10 years. This is 
absolutely unsustainable.
  When the Budget Committee met with Mr. Orszag, who is the director of 
the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, we asked him if this 
budget was sustainable. In other words, if there are adequate revenues 
being collected to pay for the budget that we have passed. And Mr. 
Orszag acknowledged that there are not.
  We cannot do that. Yet we do it year after year after year.
  Mr. AKIN. The thing that has, I think, other Americans, and myself 
included, concerned about, is you keep going out into this uncharted 
territory where we are spending more and more and more money that we 
don't have, and America is banking on our good credit. We have nations 
like China who buy our Treasury bills because the Chinese are very good 
at saving money, and they are taking their savings and buying our 
Treasury bills.
  You wonder how long can we keep spending money on all kinds of 
pension and welfare programs and feel-good programs and reward-people-
for-not-working programs and food stamp programs, and all kinds of 
other things that may be nice? How long can we continue to borrow other 
people's money to do that before it comes time to pay the fiddler?
  When we do, what is that going to look like? That is kind of a scary 
thing. This is a chart of some of these absolutely amazing items of 
spending. This is the Wall Street bailout at $700 billion. You have got 
the economic stimulus bill--I think it's closer to $800 billion, 
finally, which wasn't a stimulus bill at all; it was just paying 
various States that had exceeded their budgets so they could keep 
paying generous pensions that they can't possibly afford to sustain.
  Then you have got the appropriations, Obama appropriations and the 
IMF bailout, and now you have got the big health care thing. They are 
claiming that's a trillion. I think we will be lucky to get away with 
it only been being a trillion.
  You put all of this stupendous spending together, and the bottom line 
is they don't want to have a budget because they don't want people to 
see that we are really pushing the edges on things.
  I have a chart here that I think is a little bit spooky. I don't know 
if you can see it from where you are standing, but this is debt and 
deficit as a percent of gross domestic product.
  What I have got here, this is deficit as a percent of gross domestic 
product. The deficit that we have in the United States, as a percentage 
of GDP, is 10.3 percent. You take a look at Greece here and their 
percentage as a deficit of GDP is about 9.4 percent. Now Greece is 
about to crash the European Union because of their crazy financial 
situation, their socialized medicine and all. They can't make it work.
  And so deficit as a percentage of GDP is 9.4, and here we are at 
10.3. That doesn't make me feel comfortable that we are worse off than 
Greece is. Then coming across on the chart, debt as a percent of GDP, 
our debt is 90.9 percent of GDP. Greece is worse at 130, but Greece and 
Italy are the only two nations of Europe that are worse off than 
America is.
  So these numbers don't give us cause to be very comfortable with our 
economic situation. I am wondering whether that's not the reason why 
the Democrats don't want to put a budget in front of people, because 
they are going to realize somebody is going to get wise that we are 
just blowing the lid off of any kind of economic sanity by our 
excessive spending.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. It was not 3 weeks ago that the United States had a sale 
of the U.S. Treasuries that was undersubscribed, which means there were 
not enough purchasers of our debt for that particular bond issue of 
U.S. Treasuries that day, which is to say that in order to attract 
buyers of our debt, we are going to have to pay a higher interest rate 
to the people who are willing to lend us the money, which is to say 
that our interest rate payments are going to go up, which means a 
larger portion of the annual Federal budget will have to go towards 
paying the interest on our national debt, which is to say that it is a 
potential trigger for inflation.
  Inflation is a job killer. We have asked the Japanese, who had a 
period

[[Page H3852]]

of time in the 1990s called the forgotten decade, how we can avoid, in 
the United States, having a forgotten decade? They have told us, don't 
raise taxes during a recession.
  So we are in a conundrum. If we raise taxes, we will increase the 
length of the recession, potentially. If we don't raise taxes, the 
deficit will grow, potentially leaving us, in my opinion, with one good 
choice. The good choice is to cut spending. How does this Congress cut 
spending? This Congress has never cut spending.
  I am delighted to be a Member of Congress at a time of economic 
turmoil because I come from the State of Wyoming.
  Wyoming is a State where we have had boom and bust cycles because of 
our dependence on the economies of oil, gas, and coal. As commodities 
go, the State of Wyoming goes. When I was a Wyoming legislator, I 
experienced both a boom and a bust cycle, and what we had to do was 
reduce spending.
  Recently, the Wyoming Legislature reduced spending to the tune of 
over 10 percent. In Wyoming, it is customary to adjust to these types 
of belt-tightening, and expenditures during times of largesse.
  So when we have money, we have invested in the University of Wyoming, 
invested in the bricks and mortar of our K-12 system, invested in our 
technology, in our economy. Yet, when we have to tighten our belts, we 
do it across the board. You know, it's not the best way to budget. We 
in Wyoming acknowledge it's not the best way to budget.

  But I do believe that if we could cut spending across the board, 
domestic spending, that is, we would have an opportunity to reduce 
those expenditures. But I would also acknowledge that without 
addressing the entitlement situation we can never get a handle on our 
budget concerns.
  That is why I commend, to the attention of everyone within earshot, a 
plan that was developed by Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of 
the Budget Committee. It can be reviewed at www.americanroadmap.org. It 
provides the path, the glide path, towards our economic recovery 
without raising taxes. It takes a long time, it's not without pain. 
There are, as Paul always likes to say, sharp knives in the drawer.
  But, nevertheless, it does it in a responsible fashion, without 
raising taxes, and addresses, long term, the consequences of 
overspending and of our potential of becoming a European-style social 
democracy and a culture of dependency.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, I very much appreciate the expertise that you bring 
from Wyoming. The idea of cutting spending here, that's got to be the 
closest thing to a swear word you can say in Washington, D.C., the idea 
of cutting spending.
  Yet I just heard less than an hour ago the Democrats just raving 
about the wonders of Social Security and their Medicare and Medicaid 
programs, the three major entitlements, all of which a Democratic 
economist, a Republican economist, all agree that they are on a train-
wreck path in a fairly short period of time. Because these entitlements 
are just like starting a robot, some machine that gets going. You 
create the law, the law gives out money to people, and it just runs. If 
you don't touch it, it just keeps giving out money.
  And the trouble is, it's giving out more money than we have. What's 
going to happen is you are not going to have anything to spend any 
money on for Defense or any other program because Medicare, Medicaid, 
Social Security, will eat the entire budget up.
  What you are saying is correct. We need some of that common sense 
that says, wait a minute, we just can't keep running more and more and 
more government giveaways.
  It gets back to the question, do we really want to follow the model 
of the Soviet Union down the primrose path into just economic collapse, 
because we know it didn't work. It's not working well for Europe, and 
we know what the models are that make for a prosperous and healthy and 
good economy.
  And it's what you are saying; one of the main things you have to do 
is to cut taxes. The interesting thing is that the Democrat, JFK, 
figured that out. He cut taxes because we were in a recession. He cut 
taxes and found out a very fascinating thing: That the recession 
stopped, the economy got stronger, and he actually collected more tax 
revenues with a lower tax rate. It seems like it's like making water 
run uphill, but it's not.
  What happens is you have more economic activity. Because of that 
there are more taxes that are generated because there are more 
transactions and, therefore, the government actually raises more money 
by cutting taxes. JFK figured it out. Ronald Reagan did the same thing, 
and it worked like a champ for him, and George Bush did the same thing. 
He did some serious tax cuts and moved us from recession to recovery.
  Because he understood this basic principle: There are certain things 
that are job killers, and one of the worst ones is excessive taxation. 
Why is that true? Well, because, the people who make jobs are 
businesses, and the business people have to have some of their own 
money to plow back into the business to put a new wing on a building, 
to buy a new machine tool, to start a new process, and to get a new 
plant going somewhere.
  They have to have some money. If you tax it all away from them, then 
they are not going to have money and they can't make jobs. FDR found 
that out the very hard way. They kept driving and driving and driving 
the taxation of business owners. Instead of just creating, business 
owners that were hiding and hunkered down inside their businesses--they 
closed them down. The businesses closed, and all the employees were 
laid off.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. One of the great ironies of being a freshman in Congress 
is you see who people quote. It is so ironic that we Republicans, as 
Mr. Akin and I are, frequently quote JFK. JFK never disavowed American 
exceptionalism.

                              {time}  2045

  He acknowledged American exceptionalism and he harnessed American 
exceptionalism. And it is fascinating that we find ourselves frequently 
returning to his speeches, as Republicans, to review the importance of 
American exceptionalism in stimulating the economy and growing the 
economy and acknowledging what Ronald Reagan acknowledged, that we are 
a shining city on a hill and that we are to be emulated, but only to be 
emulated when we deserve to be emulated.
  And it is at this time in our country's history when we need to 
review those great leaders and our great Constitution and the 
Declaration of Independence and our founding principles in a manner 
which provides the roadmap to our future. And, indeed, it does.
  When we return to our Constitution and our Declaration of 
Independence, we are reminded that we were endowed by our Creator with 
certain inalienable rights, not by our government, by our Creator, and 
that we chose and consented to be governed and that we chose and 
consented to be governed pursuant to a Constitution that provided 
limited obligations to the Federal Government and reserved the 
remainder of the rights to the States and to the people. If we in 
Congress would vet bills pursuant to that model, we would return to 
that shining city on a hill and we could turn over to our children and 
grandchildren the Nation that we inherited from our parents.
  It is stunning--and Mr. Akin has seen these numbers--that people in 
America today, when you ask them, Do you have a higher standard of 
living than your parents, acknowledge that indeed we do. And then you 
ask those same baby boomers, Do you believe your children will enjoy a 
higher standard of living than we do? They say no. They're concerned. 
They see a path, a pattern, a culture of dependency forming.
  But I'm convinced that this year being another election year and 
another opportunity for government of the people to rise up, to take 
control, and to consent to being governed in the way they wish to be 
governed, that we will see an opportunity next year to return to 
government of the people and to our founding principles.
  Now, Mr. Akin and I both know that that will all be for naught unless 
those who are in a position to govern next year take seriously the 
messages of the people of this country. And I can assure you, based on 
what I have heard as a freshman Member of Congress, that

[[Page H3853]]

we will indeed take seriously the messages of the people in this 
country and that we will restore for the American people our first 
principles and that we are going to be able to be a strong, vibrant 
country and proud to hand the reins to our children and grandchildren.
  I yield back.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, I very much appreciate the little history lesson and 
also the shot of inspiration that you have shared with us, the idea of 
the shining city on a hill.
  I think that there are a lot of people that can be quoted. I'm 
thinking of good old Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman who traveled 
around America, took a look at our system and said he looked for the 
secret of America's greatness. And he had a great quote along those 
lines, but one of the things he said was: You have a weakness in 
America, and that is, if the public realizes that they can vote 
themselves largesse out of the public treasury, you're really going to 
be in trouble.
  There's another name for that. It's called socialism; the idea that 
voters can demand the Federal Government to keep giving them more and 
more stuff. The problem with that system is that eventually you run out 
of other people's money. That was one of the great weaknesses that 
Alexis de Tocqueville saw with our system, that because we are a self-
governing people, because people have the right to vote, they can also 
make irresponsible votes and they can perpetuate a socialistic system.
  A lot of Americans don't really know what socialism means anymore. 
They don't understand that the concept of American law was that people 
are all equal before the law, that Lady Justice is not supposed to give 
a special deal to a rich person or a poor person or anybody else, that 
people are all equal before the law.
  The Pilgrims experimented with socialism. It was demanded of them by 
the agreement that they made with the loan sharks of London that 
financed the expedition to send the Pilgrims to America. So it was 
forced on them and they agreed to it, to have everybody take all of 
their corn that they grew and everything they produced over at the new 
colony in Plymouth and divide it equally and then send the shares back 
to London.
  Well, that lasted less than about a year or so. And Governor Bradford 
saw everybody starving to death, and they pitched socialism, and he 
wrote in ``The History of Plymouth Plantation,'' he said: As though men 
were wiser than God. And he said: This is an experiment that's been 
tried among godly, hardworking people, and everybody can take a look at 
our example and see that this isn't going to work.
  So the Pilgrims understood it. Unfortunately, our Congress today 
doesn't seem to understand it, and that's why you see these kinds of 
things.
  Here's the Federal Government employment numbers. We're trying to 
create employment. Well, that's one way to do it; go hire everybody. 
What's the trouble with this theory? Well, every time you hire somebody 
in the government, you lose two jobs in the private sector. So now 
after we've passed this wonderful stimulus bill--which we were told if 
we didn't pass it, unemployment might get to 8 percent. We're now close 
to 10 percent unemployment, and we continue to do the very things which 
kill jobs, particularly worst of which is taxation.
  But this is an alarming trend as well, government employment going 
up. And I think a recent study just indicated that the average 
government employee makes twice as much money as the average civilian 
employee in America. That is not a good trend, because pretty soon 
everybody is going to be working for the government--that's not very 
hard to break that equation--and then who's going to be paying?
  I see my good friend, Congressman Gohmert from Texas, coming to bring 
us a little bit of Texas wisdom, perhaps.
  Lou, would you join us, please.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you for yielding.
  Actually, I was going to bring a bit of John Adams' wisdom because, 
to follow up on my colleague's wonderful quotes and references to 
history, John Adams, toward the end of his life, said: The longer I've 
lived, the more I've come to understand that one worthless man is a 
shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.
  I yield back.
  Mr. AKIN. Hey, let's do that one again. One worthless man is a shame, 
two is a law firm, and three is a Congress. Congress was smaller in 
those days, I suppose.
  Well, thank you for that bit of Texas wisdom.
  Here's another chart that runs along with it. This is private sector 
employment, government employment. You can see what's happened here. 
We're doing some employment, all right. It's the government that's 
doing the employment. But you take a look at the blue line--this is the 
private sector employment--you see jobs going down like a submarine. 
And that isn't just a statistic, that isn't just a fact, that is 
suffering--suffering in our economy, suffering with lots of people who 
don't have jobs, a lot of younger people moving back with their 
parents. The house is full of people because we're having trouble with 
not having the jobs.

  Now, what kills the jobs?
  Well, first of all, excessive taxation is a big deal. Insufficient 
liquidity is another problem. Our banking regulators are so tough that 
it makes it very, very hard for businesses to get loans. A third big 
job killer is economic uncertainty. Boy, oh, boy, do we have some of 
that. Who knows what we're going to do next.
  We just passed this socialized medicine bill, and everybody who has 
employees is going to get whacked for having employees. There's a huge 
incentive we've created to get rid of any excessive employees on your 
budget because you're going to get taxed heavily for socialized 
medicine.
  And then, of course, the old standby. If you can't get them with too 
much taxes, no liquidity, and uncertainty, then you hit them with red 
tape and government mandates.
  You put this together, and you've got a great formula to destroy jobs 
in America, and we have been doing this in a massive kind of way.
  Here's kind of a list of some of the Obama plan taxes:
  Cap-and-tax. That's that tax on energy. Do you remember how the 
President said, I'm not going to tax anybody who makes less than 
$250,000? And then he comes up with this deal, that you get taxed when 
you flip your light switch. I don't know how in the world you can keep 
those two things separate, that you're going to only tax people making 
$250,000, and then nail them with a tax when you flip your light 
switch.
  Did you want to make a comment? I would be happy if you want to jump 
in, Congresswoman.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you, Mr. Akin.
  Would you be so kind as to pull the chart up that you have behind 
you, the one that displays what has happened to private sector 
employment versus public sector employment?
  As you can see from the chart, private sector employment is an upside 
down U, in that in the year since the majority party has switched hands 
and Democratic control of Congress has been in place, we have seen 
private sector employment decline dramatically. At the same time, we 
have seen public sector employment increase to the tune of about 
188,000 public sector workers increase. At the same time, we've lost 
about 12 million private sector employees.
  Now, I have a bill that I believe will begin to address this serious 
problem that we see with regard to employment. It is the Workforce 
Reduction Act, but it does it without firing anyone. It does it through 
attrition. The bill provides that for every employee who vacates a 
position due to retirement or moving on, that that position would be 
moved into a position pool. In fact, for every 100 retirements that 
occurs in the Federal Government, 50 positions would be moved into a 
position pool, the other 50 positions, vacant, would be eliminated. And 
then agencies would need to apply for reinstatement of a position based 
on necessity.
  Those agencies who critically need employees, such as possibly the 
Minerals Management Service, in its enforcement functions in the Gulf 
of Mexico, would be likely recipients of employees in order to meet the 
obligations of the Federal Government to protect our borders with 
regard to the encroachment of oil that is seeping into the Gulf of 
Mexico. For other positions which are less mission-critical, those 
agencies would downsize.

[[Page H3854]]

  Now, this is not going to be dramatically harmful to Federal agencies 
because, as I said, since the Obama administration took office, 188,000 
new Federal employees have been added, and this excludes people that 
were hired pursuant to the decennial census. Consequently, we know that 
somehow we survived without these employees prior to President Obama 
taking office.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, all of these things are really 
indicators that we've got a Federal Government that is out of control. 
We're hiring too many Federal employees, spending too much money. We 
don't even have a budget for the first time since the seventies. This 
is not a good picture.
  Congressman Gohmert.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, I appreciate you yielding, and I appreciate the 
gentlelady mentioning the Minerals Management Service. I know she was 
present for hearings today that the Director of the MMS was testifying. 
We had the Secretary of the Interior for a while testifying and his 
Deputy Secretary testifying. We had a Coast Guard admiral testifying. 
But I'll tell you what, after hearing the testimony about MMS, I'm very 
concerned that adding more jobs there is just creating more problems. 
There is so much mismanagement, so much impropriety, it sounds like, 
that that would be a disastrous mistake to add to the MMS.
  But let me point out, as the Director of the MMS testified, they have 
decided that the MMS would be better nonexistent, so now they're 
dividing it into three different groups. And you talk about Texas, back 
home, if you have a pond that has become stagnant and it has begun to 
stink and become rancid, it doesn't matter how many ways you divide 
that pond, it still stinks. And they're not going to address the 
management problems. They're not going to address the fact that--and 
get this, the only entity within the Minerals Management Service that 
is unionized--and if we were out somewhere else I might expect a 
drumroll--but it is the offshore inspectors, the only entity within MMS 
that's unionized.
  And we come to find out that as critical as those offshore inspectors 
were to protecting our country, to protecting our environment, to 
protecting all of those thousands and thousands and thousands of 
livings that were gained off of the coast area, the protection was an 
appropriate offshore inspector. And yet when I asked the Director of 
MMS was there a good way to have a check or balance so that somebody 
ensured the offshore inspector was adequately doing their job and 
making sure that when they finally bothered to go out and watch a 
blowout preventer be tested that somebody made sure they were really 
doing their job because, as I'm sure you all know, there's an 
investigation currently going on about some of the gifts and perks and 
things that were provided by peopl being inspected to those doing the 
inspection.

                              {time}  2100

  Well, how do you guard against improprieties?
  The director said, Well, we had a system that fixed that. We had two 
offshore inspectors who would go out at the same time to an offshore 
rig. That way, they could kind of watch over each other's shoulders and 
make sure they were doing the right thing.
  So my question was then, Would it have been a good idea that the last 
inspectors that you sent out--a union team that went out to the 
Deepwater Horizon rig, who were ordered to watch each other and to 
carefully make sure that they did their jobs--were a father and son 
union team?
  She was not able to comment because that was under investigation.
  Folks, we've unionized people, which means there are going to be 
restrictions on how much travel they can do and on how many hours they 
can spend, and that's normally part of the union contract. There are 
some areas in the country where we need unions to make sure that things 
are done fairly; but we're talking about the government, our United 
States Government that is supposed to protect us. I mean, these guys 
out there are protecting our lands, our livelihoods. It's almost like 
the military. They're on a mission.
  Can you imagine if the military were unionized and if they said, 
We'll only work so many hours a day, and we're going to restrict the 
amount of travel we're going to be able to do. What kind of union 
contract would you get for the military? The offshore inspectors and 
the MMS are supposed to be protecting us and our country.
  I yield back.
  Mr. AKIN. I'd just like to jump in if I could, gentleman.
  I'm detecting a certain level of skepticism on your part whether or 
not this government agency was really very effective in protecting us 
and in preventing a massive environmental mess. I guess the question I 
have is--you're suggesting that maybe a government agency isn't that 
reliable. Yet we just trusted the government with all of America's 
health care. Does that make you feel comfortable now that you see how 
the government is working in the MMS area?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Actually, I'm not just skeptical of the MMS. I'm telling 
you it's a disaster. It was a disaster with MMS, and it was a disaster 
that their performance was allowed to happen.
  We're going to find out there is somebody responsible--maybe one, 
maybe many--at British Petroleum, but we know for sure--and it came up 
in the hearing today as well--that the President had previously 
mentioned that he wanted to end the coziness between inspectors, or 
people with the government, who were supposed to manage the oil 
companies and make sure they were doing the right things, the Big Oil 
companies.
  So that inspired some double-checking. We had hearings before about 
the 2 years, 1998 and 1999, during which the Clinton administration had 
employees who pulled the price control adjustment language out of the 
offshore leases. Originally, I was thinking it cost millions. It cost 
hundreds of millions, and now there are billions of dollars that have 
gone to Big Oil that should have gone into the Federal Treasury.
  When we had a hearing a couple of years ago about that, I asked the 
Inspector General--and this was a Clinton----
  Mr. AKIN. Appointee.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Appointee. Originally, he was the Inspector General. He 
is now in another capacity.
  I asked him, Did you not interview these two people who had the most 
knowledge about why that language was pulled out?
  He said, Well, they left the government. They're not with the 
government, so I can't do anything about it.
  He could call them. He could see if they wanted to talk. He didn't 
even bother to do that.
  So, after the President's comment about the coziness, I had to go 
back and check. Whatever happened to those two people the Inspector 
General couldn't talk to?
  Well, one of them, when she left the Clinton administration, went to 
work for a company called British Petroleum. Perhaps you've heard of 
them. She had three major officer/director positions with British 
Petroleum, but as of June of last year, Secretary Salazar and this 
administration hired her to come to work for the Minerals Management 
folks, so she is now----
  Mr. AKIN. So, when we're talking about a cozy relationship here, it's 
very cozy.
  Mr. GOHMERT. It's very cozy.
  Mr. AKIN. So Obama's person in charge, Salazar, who is in charge of 
this thing, basically hired somebody out to basically do this 
oversight?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Who had been working for 9 years for British Petroleum--
that's correct--in high capacities. So it's interesting to hear about 
that cozy relationship.
  Mr. AKIN. What was her name, gentleman?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Her name is Sylvia Baca, B-A-C-A.
  It was interesting, though, to learn--and I didn't really realize 
this--but nobody with the Minerals Management Service goes through a 
confirmation process in the Senate. This is completely an extension of 
the White House. Whatever the administration is, the Minerals 
Management Service is part of the administration. The Congress has no 
authority to confirm, to say ``yes'' or ``no'' to somebody who is 
appointed. This is an extension of the President's own hand, his 
running the Minerals Management Service; and we have absolutely got to 
clean house. The trouble is it's not our house. It's the President's 
house and that of the Minerals Management Service.

[[Page H3855]]

  Mr. AKIN. As to my understanding, doesn't the law require that the 
President in a major environmental disaster like this--I've been told 
that the Federal law requires that the President take charge of the 
situation.
  Has he been down there basically running it and calling the shots?
  Mr. GOHMERT. I understand he has been there, but as some of our 
friends from Louisiana have pointed out--and Governor Jindal has been 
fighting the President through the MMS and through his responders--they 
gave full authority to British Petroleum to make all the calls. So the 
Louisiana folks, the people along the gulf, who are wanting to mitigate 
and who are trying to get protection and protect themselves, had to get 
permission from British Petroleum, which was not giving it.
  We heard in the hearing today that there were people in Louisiana, 
along the gulf, who wanted to build barriers to this oil coming in. Yet 
all we heard from the administration's representatives was, Well, we're 
still discussing those to see--we're worried that could end up creating 
more problems than it solves because when they build the little 
barriers to the oil coming into those marshes, it might actually pull 
more oil in.
  They're discussing it. The oil is in the marshes. It's killing 
animals and killing wildlife right now, and we heard today in the 
hearing that they're just discussing it, and they're trying to figure 
out if they may do more good than harm or if they may do more harm than 
good. It's outrageous what's going on.
  The President does need to take charge. It is a disaster of massive 
proportion. British Petroleum is at the helm, but the White House 
should not have given them the authority to just make all the calls. 
It's unbelievable the disaster that occurred and now the disaster that 
is being created by the failure to respond.

  I asked the admiral in charge of the Coast Guard, you know, How many 
ships have you moved into the area in the last 37 days? They've moved 
four major boats into the area. That's it. That's it. We could have 
moved the Navy. We could have had all kinds of response. The President 
has all kinds of resources, and he is just basically letting all this 
happen.
  Now, British Petroleum needs to be made to pay, and it shouldn't be 
limited to $75 million--absolutely not--but we've got to have a better 
response. People are losing their livelihoods. They've already lost 
their lives. It has got to come to an end.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. AKIN. I do yield, lady.
  Mrs. LUMMIS. It is the power of the purse that this Congress holds 
that allows us to gain control of situations like this, and that is why 
this discussion is so important. I thank the gentleman from Missouri 
for including us.
  I yield back.
  Mr. AKIN. I thank you, lady.
  We've been talking about a broad range of different topics today; but 
in general, it is the condition of our economy.
  The thing I would like to be sure that we don't do is to leave with 
the impression that there aren't solutions to these problems, but the 
solutions include, one, we're going to have to back off our just giving 
away money to everybody. We're going to have to reduce Federal 
spending. What we're going to have to also do is to use the power of 
reducing taxes to increase government revenues. So we have to reduce 
taxes in order to get the economy back and going and to start creating 
jobs.
  Now, if we want to continue the formula of destroying jobs the way we 
have been, what's going to happen is that it's going to be harder and 
harder to get the economy back on track, but there is a solution. It's 
not complicated. It involves doing tax cuts selectively to allow those 
small businesses to start creating jobs again, and we have to get off 
their backs with regulations and red tape. We have to increase their 
ability to get liquidity, but we also have to stop taxing and taxing 
and taxing. All of the talk about concern about jobs is just a bunch of 
lip service because every one of these things is a job killer:
  Cap-and-Tax. They're going to tax energy.
  Health care taxes, a massive effect of destroying jobs. There are all 
kinds of businesses now that are asking, How can I get my employees 
under 50 so I don't have to get involved in this?
  The death tax. Taxes on inheritances. This is another thing that is 
going to tie up money that could be invested in business and that could 
create jobs.
  The capital gains tax. This is one of the big things that helped 
create jobs before. This is going to expire next year. So there are 
solutions to these problems, but the solutions require some grown-up 
leadership in Washington, D.C.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence this evening. I yield 
back.

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