[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 89 (Tuesday, June 15, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H4485-H4491]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REPUBLICAN CONFERENCE BILLS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2009, the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, tonight's discussion will be about bills
that Members of the Republican Conference have sponsored that have not
yet gotten a hearing that we still think are very good ideas for our
country at this time of high debt, high deficits, and when regulation
is being heaped on businesses that actually need the chains to be
broken so they can pursue the American Dream of hiring people, creating
jobs and fulfilling our role in the country and the world, which is to
feed people, clothe people, create jobs, create wealth, create
opportunity and so that all Americans have the opportunity to do so
without being shackled by the Federal Government.
With me this evening is Bob Latta, who is from one of the most
diverse districts in the entire United States. It has everything from
agriculture to manufacturing, and it has experienced every up and down
that is possible for one district to experience. During the course of
this evening, Mr. Latta and I hope that we will have the opportunity to
refer you frequently to www.americanroadmap.org, which is a draft of
the Budget Committee on which we both serve, an opportunity that
provides Americans the chance to get out of debt and to eliminate the
deficit, and to comprehensively do so without raising taxes.
It takes a long time, but it creates a very smooth landing for our
country. And we also want to refer you to www.americaspeakingout.com. Americaspeakingout.com is an official function of the Republican
Conference here in the U.S. House which allows you to weigh in on ideas
that you have for our country that will make it stronger, safer, more
efficient, more cost effective and will unshackle this Nation's economy
in a way that will allow us to once again pursue our role as a global
leader in terms of innovation and jobs.
So at this time I would like to yield to my colleague, the gentleman
from Ohio (Mr. Latta).
Mr. LATTA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentlelady for
yielding. This is a very important issue that we are talking about:
jobs, small businesses, and how we can get this country moving. I rise
tonight to discuss a bill that I have sponsored, H.R. 1763, which is
the Responsible Reinvestment Act of 2009. But before I do, I would just
like to make a couple of comments, as the gentlelady just said, about
the uniqueness of my district.
I have the number one manufacturing district in the State of Ohio. I
also have the number one agricultural district in the State of Ohio.
And about 2 years of this time, according to the National Manufacturers
Association, I had the ninth largest number of manufacturing jobs in
the United States House of Representatives. But because of the
recession that we've seen happen across the country, I have dropped to
about 20th, which is totally unacceptable because last summer we had
unemployment rates raging across our district and across the State and
the country. Two of my counties had over 18 percent unemployment. I had
four others over 16 percent. So we have to do something in this country
to get this country moving.
It's kind of interesting. We talk about having a district that's
number one in manufacturing and also a district that's number one in
agriculture. So how did that work? Well, I have so many of my farmers
that work full time off the farm, but they work full time on the farm.
So like my relatives who also live in my district, you know, they're
working a lot more than 40-hour weeks, and they are making sure that
the American economy keeps moving, they are making sure that Americans
are fed, but they are also making sure that we don't have to rely on
foreign countries for our food, like we have to do when it comes to
oil, relying on foreign countries for our needs.
So we need jobs. We need jobs that are created by the private sector.
We don't need any government jobs that are really just make-work jobs
out there. Small businesses continue to bear the burden of this
economic slowdown, and they need relief to be able to survive and
continue to remain in business. Currently, small businesses employ over
half the private sector workers in America. To assist small business
owners, I introduced the Responsible Reinvestment Act. Specifically,
this bill focuses on the following areas that I believe will not only
help small businesses grow throughout the country but also help put our
neighbors back to work.
The bill does the following: a 20 percent tax cut for small business
is equal to 20 percent of the total income of the business. It
permanently repeals the estate tax, or the death tax. You know, we have
to do something in this Congress because if we do not act by the end of
this session, the death tax will revert to where it was 10 years ago
without any adjustment to inflation, and that will hit small businesses
and farmers alike. So, again, this bill repeals the death tax; it
increases the expensing for small businesses to $500,000; a full first-
year expensing for farm and manufacturing equipment; and the full
deductibility for the self-employment tax in relation to health
premiums, which is extremely important for small businesses across this
country.
The items in this bill will also be very beneficial to small business
owners by freeing up capital for them to use to reinvest in their
business. And through doing that, it will bring stability back to the
communities in which they exist.
The future of our country depends on a proactive approach to creating
viable solutions for small business owners to exceed and remain
profitable. Small businesses are the lifeline and the heartbeat of our
Nation's economy, as these are the companies that we rely on for
products and services. As a Congress, we must absolutely stop passing
legislation that contains massive spending and, instead, pass
legislation like H.R. 1763 that will help small businesses rather than
hurt them.
President Obama submitted his administration's fiscal year 2011
budget proposal with a record-breaking cost of $3.8 trillion. This
budget proposal includes a $2 trillion tax increase over the next 10
years and projected record deficits. This proposal will double our
Nation's debt in 5 years and triple it in 10 years from fiscal year
2008 levels.
The Congressional Budget Office has stated that under current
spending levels, by 2020 American taxpayers will be paying $2 billion a
day in interest on the national debt alone. And, again, let me
reiterate that--$2 billion a day. I think we have to understand what
this is going to do. It hasn't been all that long ago that we look back
to the late seventies and early eighties when we had 21.5 percent
interest rates in this country. And it wasn't very long ago I was
talking with some small business owners in my district, and they said,
Well, we even had problems getting a loan at over 26 percent interest.
Now, if the Federal Government is borrowing over $2 billion a day--
and you know, when you are talking about that, you are looking at the
Federal deficit or, I should say, the debt going to $20.3 trillion by
the year 2020, and now the U.S. Treasury is coming out and saying that
that could be at least $26 trillion, that $2 billion a day is going to
be much higher, and businesses out there are going to have to do one
thing--compete against government to borrow. That means the interest
rates are going to skyrocket again, and how are we going to get small
businesses moving again in this country?
Mrs. LUMMIS. Will the gentleman yield briefly?
Mr. LATTA. Absolutely. I yield to the lady.
Mrs. LUMMIS. That $2 billion a day you just mentioned, that would
only
[[Page H4486]]
take either 3 or 4 days for the entire budget of the State of Wyoming
for 2 years. That covers our whole budget. It's a stunning number.
That's how much money we're talking about.
And I yield back.
Mr. LATTA. I thank the lady for yielding back. Because again, you
know, when you are looking at these staggering numbers--I'm sure
Wyoming, like the State of Ohio, in our Constitution we have to balance
our budget. I was a county commissioner for 6 years when I was first
elected to public service. We went through the '91-'92 downturn at that
time. And what did we have to do? Well, we had to cut back. We didn't
just say we have to spend more. We had to cut.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. LATTA. I yield to the lady.
{time} 1845
Mr. LATTA. Well, what we had to do was when we did our budget for the
year, there are certain things in Ohio that the commissioners are
responsible for. You looked at things. You thought, we have to budget
for things like bad weather because you have to have more overtime.
One of the things that we always hoped we never have happen was a
capital murder case because we know how much that would cost. We had to
sit down with all of the other elected officials and say, We have to
make cuts across the board and scale back. If we didn't, we were going
to be in trouble. Again, our Constitution says you shall balance your
budget.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Are you aware of any circumstance since you have been in
Congress where the Members of Congress in the leadership have been
called to the White House to sit down and talk about how we are going
to cut spending?
Mr. LATTA. Again, this is a problem we are facing. Instead of saying
we are going to increase certain budgets by 12 percent over the year
before, we have to go back maybe a budget before that and say that is
where we need to start the cuts. One of the things that is happening
with small businesses across the country, or large businesses, when I
go across my district and when I have the opportunity, I try to go to
as many factories and businesses as I can. And when I am talking to
these individuals, I like to find out what is happening to them.
But they like to ask this one question: We have cut way back to keep
our doors open; what have you done in the Federal Government to help
along these lines?
I think one of the interesting trips I was in was at a factory in my
district. I went into the plant and they had to scale back. They had to
unfortunately cut employees. But at the same time they were in there
saying we had to reduce the number of hours people were working. So
maybe it was not 40-plus hours, but it was a 32-hour work week. Then
they said we have to make sure that management does their share. They
were cut 10-20 percent in their salary. And management was cleaning the
restrooms in the factory to try to help do anything to scale back on
costs that they would pay someone else to do.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Is there any instance where the Federal Government has
done the same thing? Has the Federal Government gone to its employees
and said, We need to cut you back to 32-hour weeks so we can keep you
employed, keep you on your benefits so you don't lose your health care,
but we need to save some money. Are you aware of that?
Mr. LATTA. Again, I think we would have heard it if something like
that would have happened. But at this stage of the game, the Federal
Government has a trump card some people think, and that we control the
printing presses for putting out money. The big problem is we watch
dollars being put out, but at the same time the United States Treasury
is out there at an auction, and at that auction you have the Federal
Reserve buying it, and all of a sudden we are monetizing our debt. We
are moving one IOU from one pocket to the other. We are not
accomplishing anything. We are not cutting anything. And we watch
expenses keep rolling up.
The American people understand that what we do at home when we sit
around our kitchen tables and you get out the family budget and say
these are the things that we are going to have to pay for. It is the
question of wants and needs. There is a big difference between what I
want and what I absolutely need. I think the Federal Government has got
to go to what is needed, and we are going to have to start scaling back
immediately.
I am sure you have students and constituents who come here. When I
had a group of students here today on the Capitol steps, and I look at
these kids, juniors or seniors in high school, I look at what their
future is for the next 10 years, and I don't care if it is $20.3
trillion in debt or $26 trillion in debt, according to the Treasury, we
are in trouble.
Mrs. LUMMIS. What do you hear from your constituents? Do they believe
that they are ready for the kind of reforms that you believe are
necessary to save our country?
Mr. LATTA. I thank the gentlelady. I think what you are looking at is
from the small business owners. They understand right off the bat that
something has to be done. They understand that they have had to make
deep, deep cuts.
Until recently, I served on the Budget Committee, and you are still a
member. Sitting through those hearings with the Congressional Budget
Office director or the Office of Management and Budget director or
Secretary Geithner or when we heard from Mr. Bernanke, we heard the
same thing: we are on an unsustainable growth of spending in this
country. It has got to be stopped. They don't offer a solution, but it
is a very simple solution: you don't spend what you don't have.
I was one of 19 grandkids on my maternal side. I will never forget my
grandmother, the good German farm woman she was, she had a simple
saying, that he who goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing. She pretty much
made sure that all 19 of us understood that. Again, you don't spend
what you don't have because we cannot spend our way out of this mess.
If we are going to be doing that, all we are doing right now, and have
been doing, is mortgaging the future of the next generation of
Americans.
You know, the question when you talk to parents out there and say are
your kids going to be better off than you are, most parents don't
believe it. They think that their kids are going to have a harder time
of it than they have, and that is a bad sign for America's future.
Mrs. LUMMIS. The chart I have to my left, the viewer's right, is
exactly illustrating what the gentleman has just been discussing. If
you look at the spread between spending and taxes that occurs on the
far side of the dotted line, that shows you what is projected into the
future. That spread between spending and taxes going into the future is
enormous and consistent. And if you look at what that produces in terms
of deficits, look at the bottom line, the red line again on the far
side away from me from the dotted line, and you can see that deficits
are projected into the future. When we say unsustainable, that's what
we mean. The long-term consequences to this country is that our
children and grandchildren will inherit the consequences of our
reckless behavior. How do we resolve this?
Mr. LATTA. Well, when you look at these budget projections, you have
to have people working. When we are looking at an unemployment rate of
9.7 percent in this country and a little under 11 percent unemployment
in the State of Ohio, and we all know what is going to happen later
this summer when all of those people who were hired to be census
takers, working for the census are going to be back on unemployment,
these numbers are going to go right back up because it kind of is a
false data time that we are in right now when we are looking at these
numbers.
Of course we saw what happened when the unemployment numbers came out
and only 41,000 jobs had been created in the private sector, what Wall
Street thought of that. They are looking at things are not going well
for this economy.
I know you heard these same statements that were projections from the
Congressional Budget Office director when he was before the Budget
Committee. We are looking at probably 2014 or 2015 before we get back
to, and I don't care if you want to say normal employment or normal
unemployment
[[Page H4487]]
in this country. The question is for areas that are hard hit like a lot
of parts of Ohio and a lot of parts of the Midwest where manufacturing
takes place, what are we going to do in our areas for the next 4 or 5
years with these high unemployment rates? Where are people going to go?
Mrs. LUMMIS. This chart illustrates exactly what the gentleman is
discussing. If you look at the blue line, that is private sector
employment. That is employment in the entrepreneurial economy. This is
employment that comes from the employer class of Americans. If you look
at the red line, the skyrocketing government employment, that is just
that. It is the Federal Government attempting to replace the private
sector with public sector jobs. The only problem is a public sector
employee pays the same taxes that a private sector employee does.
However, the public sector employee's salary comes entirely from
private sector employment and the taxes generated by it. There is no
way that we can sustain an economy of totally government employees when
we have lost the private sector jobs, the kinds of jobs that Mr. Latta
has been referring to this evening in his district.
Mr. LATTA. One of the things that we are talking about, those jobs,
and it goes back years ago when I was a county commissioner. You wanted
to make sure you had as broad a tax base as possible in your county or
State or country. It is like a pyramid. You want as big a base on that
as possible. But the thing we were worried about, what happens if? We
were losing jobs and we had fewer and fewer people. All of a sudden
that starts shifting that base, and pretty soon you have a very small
tax base out there of individuals, and you have a lot of other people
up on top. It doesn't work.
What we can't have in this country is killing the entrepreneurs. When
you look at all of these different scenarios out there, the bills that
have come before this Congress, and these are the same people that I
talk to in my district. And again, when you are dealing with the
largest manufacturing district in the State, 20th largest in the
Nation, they are concerned. I hear all the time about the issues out
there that will help bring them down, is about the best way to say it.
You know, we have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world.
What are we doing about that here? When we talk about the health care
costs, a lot of them are saying when they hit that certain magical
number, when they get above it, they are asking why do I want to expand
if I will be paying more. It won't work. Folks in business understand
it. It gets to the point of economics 101 from your first year of
college which is the law of diminishing returns. It is the more I work,
the more I get taxed, and the less I have; why do it? People aren't
going to do that. It is against human nature to do something like that.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Would you recommend reducing the corporate tax rate?
Mr. LATTA. We have to go across the board. If we are going to compete
against our foreign competitors, and that is who is out there today.
Because when we look at a lot of these regulations that are coming down
on businesses, you look at the corporate tax rate and you look at what
has happened here with health care, we have seen these numbers coming
out today of what is going to happen on the health care side. They are
saying you get to keep what you want; well, that is not going to happen
for a lot of individuals.
When you look at the regulations, companies are saying we don't have
to worry about that if we are someplace else. I have had companies that
are located in a village or city, and when the EPA puts a mandate in
for water or sewer, but the parent company is some place outside the
State, and they are told if their rates go up to a certain amount and
they are no longer profitable in their area, well that company is going
to be moved. When you are looking at losing 300 jobs or 400 jobs or 600
jobs, that is totally unacceptable.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Are you aware of any employers in your manufacturing
district that have pulled up stakes and moved their businesses
elsewhere?
Mr. LATTA. That happens all of the time, unfortunately. We have
situations where we are competing. I know years ago when I was a county
commissioner, we were competing against many other parts of the State
of Ohio or maybe someplace in southern Michigan or eastern Indiana. In
a short 20-year period, now we are competing with somebody 8,000,
12,000 miles away. If they are in a situation where they have lower
labor cost, and if they have lower cost for their electricity or other
fuel costs, and we are all for clean air and clean water, but if they
are in certain areas where there is no concern for that, and we have
heard under the cap-and-trade legislation, if we did everything that
was asked for under this piece of legislation that passed out of the
House, in 8 years there would be absolutely no difference in
CO2 emissions. Why, because China and India would be making
that amount up. But at the same time, we would have lost all of those
jobs in this country. Those jobs would have moved someplace else.
{time} 1900
Mrs. LUMMIS. Are you aware of any manufacturer that has moved into
your district from a foreign country, saying this is a better place to
do business? It's more economical here? I can make a better profit
here?
Mr. LATTA. I thank the lady for yielding.
This is the problem you run into. In my opinion, I truly believe that
the United States has the greatest workforce in the world. We have the
best trained workforce. We have the best educated workforce, but we
just need to be put on an equal footing. And when companies understand
that--you know, it's just like with that small entrepreneur.
If they toil day after day--I knew somebody that, to get their
company started, they had a small bed that could roll up in their
office. And his wife would come in and help work, and she slept on the
couch. But, you know, they put hours and hours and hours into that
business, first of all, to get it off the ground, to grow it, and then
to make it successful.
But if you put the roadblocks in front of these people, you know,
some folks aren't going to be as steadfast as they were, and they are
going to say, You know what? It's just not worth it. Why kill myself?
And I think that, again, it's the spirit of entrepreneurism in this
country that makes this country work.
It's like when I talk to these kids on the Capitol steps. You know,
why did a lot of our relatives ever get on--some people's relatives
came on the Mayflower. Most of ours came on the Poorflower. And when
people got off that boat, and my relatives came down by barge on the
Ohio River, and they came up the canal system, and they cleared the
land, and they started farming in Putnam County in Ohio. They had a
desire. They wanted land. They wanted to grow that land. They wanted to
make sure that they had something not only for themselves but for their
kids. They wanted a future. And I think that's what we are losing track
of in this body and in this Congress, that what's happened is that it's
no longer about the future, but too many are thinking, ``It's about
me.'' And the problem with ``me'' is we are not growing it. And we have
to grow the ``we'' and the ``us'' to make this country successful.
Mrs. LUMMIS. My daughter did a study for an economics professor about
externalities, meaning decisions you don't necessarily see in black and
white on a business plan, that might affect a Wyoming rancher's
decision to stay in agriculture or leave agriculture. Because we know
that in Wyoming agriculture, especially beef production agriculture--of
course, there are no subsidies in beef production agriculture in
Wyoming, and other States as well.
So the largest group in Wyoming are those that make from 0 to 4
percent profit. The second largest group are those that make from 0 to
minus 4 percent profit. And after looking at many factors of what would
motivate a person to stay in a business where the profit margin is that
low, the answer for especially second, third, and fourth generation
ranchers was the ability to pass it on to my children, to give my
children a better life, to give my kids the ranch.
Now, Mr. Latta has mentioned two things that are of concern if a
person's motivation is to give their children a
[[Page H4488]]
better standard of living, a better life, an opportunity, a shot that
maybe they didn't have or that they have enjoyed and they just want
their children to have as well. You mentioned that next year the estate
tax is going to go back up to a maximum amount of 55 percent of the
value of the estate, with only a $1 million exemption; whereas, this
year there is no estate tax whatsoever.
Think about that and how that will affect you if you have spent your
entire life building something with the one motivation of giving that
to your children or your grandchildren. That is going to be
devastating. Many people I know would accept a smaller estate tax with
a higher exemption, but no one I know is going to be satisfied that a
55 percent tax on your life's work that you wish to pass on to your
children is anything but a taking. And takings are unconstitutional
under our Fifth Amendment. I mean, that's how people look at it.
And, you know, if you worked your whole life for something 7 days a
week, not 5 days a week, not 40-hour weeks, but every minute of every
day that you are awake, growing your family, growing your business,
growing their opportunities, creating a community, creating the kind of
American Dream that so many people came here with nothing and then
built over their lifetimes or their parents built over their lifetimes
and want to pass on to their children.
The other point you made that I think is going to affect that
American Dream is our debt, is these running deficits that are
unsustainable over time. Because if we mount our children and our
grandchildren with debt, it will crowd out private investment. If we
are spending the entire Federal budget, all of our tax dollars on the
combination of entitlement programs and interest on the national debt,
we have crowded out the opportunity for private investment as well as
for discretionary spending within our economy.
I yield back to the gentleman to tell us more about the consequences
of these bad policies and the kinds of bills that he has proposed to
change all that.
Mr. LATTA. Well, you have touched on something when you are talking
about the death tax, the estate tax. And, you know, when you are
talking about something going from having zero death tax this year,
which won't ever happen because, you know, there will be a retroactive
clause put in somewhere saying that they are never going to let people
off the hook, and they are going to say anybody that passed away this
year, somehow they will try to bring them back up, and I am sure the
lawsuits will begin.
But you are right about a couple things right off the bat. You know,
family businesses, family farms, I know it's difficult for some folks
when you are only looking at a very small percentage of about less than
2 percent of Americans now that make their livelihoods from the farm.
And when you go to your local county fairs and you go to look at these
implements and the costs, and when you are talking about a $425,000
combine with one head, or you are looking at a couple hundred thousand
dollars for a tractor, and you start adding all these pieces of
machinery up. People say, well, if you have got a couple million
dollars you are rich. Well, most farmers that I know are land rich and
cash poor.
And what happens in a lot of cases or a small business, what do they
have to do? Well, number one, okay, they have to start doing estate
planning early on. And I am an attorney by trade. But when you start
talking about that we have to tell the American people they have to
expend millions and billions of dollars when it comes to estate
planning or doing the taxes every year, we should simplify this. But,
also, we shouldn't be taking what they have worked hard for. And when
people are out there thinking, Is it going to be worth it in the end?
Because this will be--you know, if we get to a point in this country,
people are going to say, You know what? If the government's going to
take it in the end and I can't pass it on, what are they going to do?
Either, A, I am not going to work that hard, or, B, I am just going to
spend it. And if they spend it, what's going to be the result of that?
They are going to say, Government, you take care of me now. I am not
going to worry about my livelihood or I am not going to worry about
down the road when it's time for me to retire. Just have the government
take care of me. And that's not going to work.
So, you know, we have got to keep this entrepreneurship. We have got
to make sure that people in this country have the ability and the
thought that they can succeed. You know, a lot of people sometimes are
jealous of people that come here as new immigrants to this country, but
the thing that they know is they come to this country like a lot of our
ancestors did. They want to make something of themselves. They want to
make something of their future. They want to have something for their
kids. But when you kill that entrepreneurial spirit, that's when the
beginning of the end becomes.
And you know, it's kind of interesting. There used to be a saying
years ago before the fall of the Soviet Union that the people pretended
to work and the government pretended to pay them. And we never want to
have that happen in this country, where people get to the thought that
there is this hopelessness, that there is no reason to do it. We want
to make sure that the people have the ability in this country to get
ahead.
And I yield to the lady.
Mrs. LUMMIS. The gentleman has mentioned a couple of things that are
important to recreating a vibrant economy and to taking the shackles
off of American business, and tax policy is high on the list. The fact
that we could have an estate tax that is much smaller in terms of its
impact on a family, and the American people would accept that is in
fact the case. I hear it over and over in this country. We have also
heard that it would be helpful in terms of American competitiveness for
us to reduce our corporate tax so we are more globally competitive.
Among the provisions that anyone can read about is in
americanroadmap.org, and that is the proposal to create a flat income
tax. That would be a rate, such as 10 or 11 percent, that you would pay
on all of your income, regardless of source, regardless of whether it's
active or passive, whether it is capital or income from a job, whether
it is rental income, royalty income, or, again, active income. All
sources of income would be taxed at 10 or 11 percent.
So you take all your income annually times 10 percent or 11 percent.
Maybe you have a deduction of $20,000, so your first $20,000 worth of
income isn't taxed. And then whatever that amounts to, you just write a
check and send it in to the IRS. You don't need to have CPAs help you
fill out your tax returns. And I can tell you, if we did that, it would
save the American people a lot of money. We would garner a lot of tax
revenue that we aren't collecting now because of the efforts and
machinations that people go through to try to protect as much of their
income as they can from being taxable because, A, there is no way to
avoid it, whether you are rich or poor; and, B, it's predictable. You
know that the person across the aisle from you at work or at church is
also paying 10 or 11 percent, whatever it is, of their paycheck.
That sounds so fair to me. It sounds so logical. And yet that is
something that is so hard to change with all of the interest groups
that affect the appearance and shape of our Tax Code.
I do want to encourage, as we go along, everyone to go into
AmericaSpeakingOut.com and weigh in on ideas that we have proposed to
reduce the Federal debt and deficit and stimulate the economy and take
the shackles off the American entrepreneur. And also to just weigh in
and give your own thoughts about how we might do it.
I would like to talk about one of the bills that I have sponsored,
and it's a way to reduce the number of Federal employees without firing
anybody. It is a bill that would provide that if you look at the curve
off here to my left, your right, you will see Federal employment in the
year 2010, which is the farthest bar away from me, has absolutely
skyrocketed. And this is Federal Government employment full-time
equivalents excluding the Postal Service. So it has just grown leaps
and bounds.
Now, how do we soften the landing for those people that were hired in
a way that will allow our economy to return to normal so we can begin
to reduce all this deficit spending? And the
[[Page H4489]]
answer is for every person who retires or voluntarily vacates a
position, that vacated position, that vacant position would be moved
into a position pool, and only half of the positions would be moved in
the position pool. Then the executive branch of government, run out of
the President's office, would have to determine whether that position
was essential to that agency and needed to be placed back in that
agency and then filled with an employee, or whether that position
should be moved to another agency that had a more impactful mission on
our American economy and on our government regulatory needs.
So it's a way over a 10-year period to reduce the number of Federal
employees through attrition. They leave. Their position becomes vacant.
Half of those positions go away. That saves about $70 billion. Not a
small amount of money.
Some of the other ideas that Republicans have filed go way back to
the stimulus package. We sponsored a bill that would have stimulated
economic growth; in fact, it would have created twice as many jobs at
half the cost of the majority party's $787 billion stimulus package.
How did we do it? We did it by investing in infrastructure instead of
earmarks and by cutting taxes. This is something I believe, Mr. Latta,
that you and I both supported.
{time} 1915
Mr. LATTA. Thank you very much for yielding, and again, you go back
to the Responsibility Investment Act again, you were talking about
cutting taxes here and what we can do to really get things moving.
Again, if you get rid of and make permanent the repeal of the death
tax, well, what happens? People are going to say, now I can invest that
money back into the business instead of going out saying, how am I
going to try to soften the blow when the taxes finally come, you know,
through buying insurance or, you know, going to multiple years of tax
planning on how you're going to get this thing done?
And I'm sure everybody this year is going crazy with the thought that
the death tax comes screaming back at the $1 million level at the end
of this year, and you have a lot of folks with their A and their B
trusts already funded where they're supposed to be, and they're going
to say, now what am I supposed to do? So it's right back doing what?
You know, it's not just the money that people invest, it is also the
time. If you think how much time is invested by businesses to try to
figure out how they have to cope with all these taxes and regulations
out there, I think that that's one of the important things out there.
Again, in a piece of legislation that I have on the Responsibility
Investment Act, again, repealing that death tax, we're talking about
what we can do on the small business side. You know, if we're doing a
20 percent cut for small businesses and 20 percent tax cut for
businesses, that's going to allow those businesses to take up to a 20
percent deduction equal to their income. And it's regardless of whether
they're paying corporate or personal income tax.
So those are things we have to do to try to make sure that we get
businesses back moving in this country again, and again, we just can't
expect folks out there to say, you know what, I'm going to work like a
dog 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for X number of years to try to get
this off the ground and then have to watch it all be taken away from
me.
Mrs. LUMMIS. You know, among the other pieces of legislation that
Republicans have sponsored includes reducing our salaries or freezing
our salaries, freezing government salaries, reducing spending across
the board. There have been Republican proposals, anything from 1
percent to 5 percent to 10 percent. There have been Republican
proposals that would take spending, as Mr. Latta referred to earlier,
back to 2008 levels or even 2006 levels. You know, we had enough
government then. There were not a lot of complaints that, my gosh, we
don't have enough government; we need to spend more on government.
So we could take spending back to 2006 or 2008 levels, and I don't
believe the American people, other than those who have benefited
specifically by being employed by those Federal agencies and Federal
programs, would notice the absence of that money, and in fact, they'd
probably benefit mightily because it would save so much money that
interest payments on the debt and the deficit would be reduced, and we
would not have to borrow so much money.
A couple weeks ago here in Washington, some U.S. Treasuries were
issued. They are issued every day that we are working, Monday through
Friday. There's a sale of U.S. Treasury bonds because we are going into
debt so much we have to sell Treasuries every day. This particular
issue was undersubscribed. That means there were not enough buyers for
the money that we attempted to sell, and the reason is that for the
risk that the buyers were taking, they wanted a higher rate of
interest. They wanted a better return. When you take more risk on an
investment you're purchasing, you want a higher rate of return.
As soon as we have to start paying higher interest in order to
attract buyers to our debt, we are ensuring that our children and
grandchildren are going to be saddled with higher interest payments
once again, crowding out other investments in our economy. These are
the kinds of things that absolutely stifle economic growth in our
country and encourage some businesspeople, as was mentioned by Mr.
Latta, to move their businesses elsewhere.
We do know that, for example, in the Gulf of Mexico right now, with
the moratorium on drilling and no end in sight to when it might be
lifted, that there are drill rigs that are considering moving to that
tremendous oil and gas find off the coast of Brazil. If one of those
enormous rigs is moved off to the coast of Brazil, it will be 5 years
before it comes back. It's not going to move back at a moment's notice.
That takes so many thousands of jobs away from workers in Louisiana. So
they're doubly punished. They're punished because their shores are
polluted by oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig which exploded,
destroying the fishing industry and retarding the tourism industry. And
then they're adding insult to injury; the oil and gas employees lose
their jobs in areas where you could drill at a shallower depth or a
medium depth in a much more safe and well-understood manner. This is
the wrong reaction.
You know, the President is speaking later this evening about the
situation in the Gulf, and what I would note about that is, we can't
legislate our way out of the damage and the devastation to the Gulf. We
have to clean it up, and we have to make BP pay for it. Those are our
alternatives: Clean it up; make BP pay for it.
The President, if he had had executive experience, would likely have
called the head of BP within 48 or 72 hours of that oil spill and said,
I want you on a conversation with me every single day at a specific
time. I want you and me and the Coast Guard and the Governors of the
affected States and anyone else who is able to help us clean up this
mess, and they could get on the call every day at the same time. The
President could have opened a call, and he could have said, I'm not
going to stay on this call for more than a minute, but I'm going to
tell you that the people on this call are responsible to the people of
this Nation to make sure that that oil does not get to our shores, and
I want you to do everything possible. BP has said they will pay for it.
BP is on this call, and are you assuring us you will pay for it? I
mean, under which circumstances, they would have said, yes. And it
could have proceeded that way every day with the President's full
support for the Governors' requests, for the Coast Guard's requests,
for repealing the effects of the Jones Law, which inhibited our ability
of getting other countries to help us in the response. All of that
could have been handled if it would have begun earlier enough.
But the fact that there was an effort to run away and avoid the
problem and deal with it not until it was just completely out of
control is, I believe, an indication of someone who had legislative
skills and not executive skills. There is such a difference. We cannot
legislate our way out of the situation, and we should not have a cap-
and-tax bill as a response to a devastating accident that may be the
worst ecological disaster we've ever had, because taxes are not going
to change it.
[[Page H4490]]
BP has said they're going to pay the bill. To do otherwise would be
to impose taxation on the people in this country who can least afford
it, those of low and moderate income who are trying to make ends meet
at a time when unemployment is still 9.7 percent, at a time when we
should be helping them find jobs, not imposing a moratorium on safe
drilling, that takes jobs away from them. The Gulf is just one example
of where that's true.
And I yield back.
Mr. LATTA. I thank the gentlelady for yielding and a couple of your
earlier points, you know, you were talking about pay here in
Washington. I've got a bill that hasn't had any hearings, and what that
bill says is that there are no COLAs anymore for Congress. If you think
you deserve a pay raise, then you should introduce a piece of
legislation saying that, and what this bill would do is say no more
COLAs, period. We wouldn't have a 1-year freeze or a 2-year freeze;
this bill would say no more COLAs.
Again, going back to what you said on that interest on that debt, and
I mentioned a little bit earlier about going back to the early 1980s,
with that 21.5 percent interest rate that people experienced. I was
first starting to practice law that year, and I'll never forget, we had
to do land contracts. And what a land contract, of course, is, say you
want to buy my house, well, you couldn't go to the bank and get a loan
because you couldn't borrow any money. So I would have to, as the owner
of the home, would sell you the house. We would have a contract that
you pay me the principal and interest over about a 3-year period of
time, and hopefully, at the end of that 3 years, then you would find a
bank that you could go out to and get a loan from.
We don't want to see this go back, like I said, to where we had 21.5
percent interest. We don't want to go back to have some businesses out
there at over 26 percent. When the Federal Government is out there, as
you said, you know, if they have to start raising the interest rates to
make it more profitable or for either the country--of course, right
now, we know $3.7 trillion of our debt is owned by foreign countries,
and you know, we're only seeing that only grow, where they will control
more of our public debt than anybody else.
So it's important that we get this under control because we cannot
have interest rates that high into future. Businesses will stagnate.
Businesses will not have the ability to go out and borrow money. And
that's what we're going to be looking at. We'll be staring that in the
face in a very short period of time, and what we need to make sure is
that businesses can go down to that local bank on the corner, that
people can go down to that bank on the corner and draw money and also
loan money from that bank because, again, if we're in a situation that
we were, you know, having learned that a lifetime ago already, not too
many years, but back in a situation that we would be in where we were
before, we can't compete.
And something else I guess we're kind of forgetting, when you look
back on some of these statistics, maybe 10, 20, or 30 years ago, the
United States was pretty much at the top of the heap. We could make
some odd, dumb mistakes along the line, but we could correct them
pretty quick because we controlled about everything. Not anymore. When
you're looking where the Chinese want to be in the next 10 to 15 years
and where other global competitors are, we're not going to be there. So
that's why the United States and this Congress cannot misstep at any
time, from now or into the future, because our future, not only for
this generation but the generations to follow, are at stake.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Latta has announced a call to action for all
Americans, and we are attempting as a Republican Conference to solicit
ideas and priorities from all Americans, regardless of party
affiliation.
Please visit americaspeaking
out.com.
This will provide an innovative online forum for policy debate and
idea generation. It gets us outside of Washington to talk about policy
solutions at town hall meetings across the Nation. It allows us to
discuss how our principles of freedom and smaller government could be
applied to the priorities of the American people.
In time, we will produce a new governing agenda for America guided by
this open process and built on our conservative principles, and we want
to demonstrate that Congress should pursue different policies and
operate this House more responsibly than both Democrats and previous
Republican majorities. And if I hear something all the time on the
Republican side of this room, it is that we don't want to treat the
Democrats the way we used to treat them, and we don't want to be
treated the way the Democrats have treated us.
I really believe that the 112th Congress that begins in January could
be a new beginning for our country. It will only be so if the American
people say it will be so because the American people are the ultimate
governors of this country, and they govern with their vote, and they
will have an opportunity in November to vote.
So please visit americaspeakingout.com. Give us your ideas. We want
to know. We want to build a working, bipartisan majority with the
American people so we are legislating what the American people want,
not what liberals want, not what conservatives want, what the American
people want.
So americaspeakingout.com is a state-of-the-art Web site that allows
individuals to suggest ideas of their own or weigh in on ideas offered
by others. Everyone can see the ideas that are on the table, make
comments on them, and register their approval or disapproval.
{time} 1930
This Web site brings the Halls of Congress into American homes and
uses the best of social media to allow America's many voices to be
heard.
And we would conclude by saying, to change the way Washington works
and the policies it pursues, it will require Washington to listen when
America speaks out, and we hope all Americans will join us in this
unprecedented process of engagement.
For concluding remarks, I yield back to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. LATTA. I would just like to conclude on a statement that was made
as you talk about Americans getting re-involved.
Again, when I speak to the students on our steps here at the United
States Capitol, I can't think of a better place to tell kids what they
have to do. But one of the interesting things, especially when I have
seniors in high school and I say, how many of you are registered to
vote, I remember one day we had about 100 students out there, and I
probably had maybe 20 percent of the kids sheepishly start trying to
raise their hands. They were going to put them down and I said, wait a
minute, leave your hands up. I said, I want everyone to look at who has
their hands up because they're going to be making the decisions for
you. I said, if you want to participate in this great experiment, you
have got to be registered, you have got to be involved.
It kind of goes back to what Benjamin Franklin said. It was reported
when he left the Constitutional Convention--it was very contentious--a
lot of people think it was just fine and dandy. They showed up in
Philadelphia starting in May of 1787 and they wrote this great
document. But it was hard-pressed, hard work, and they got it done. And
when Franklin left, a woman asked him as he left, she said, Mr.
Franklin, what have you given us? And he said, ``A republic if you can
keep it.''
I yield back.
Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman from Ohio for joining me this
evening.
I look forward to hearing the remarks of the next group. They are our
Democratic colleagues from across the aisle. This group will be led by
Representative Wasserman Schultz, who I had the privilege of visiting
Israel with earlier this year. She led a congressional delegation to
Israel. And for this neophyte in international policy, it was a
fabulous experience. We had the opportunity to meet Israeli President
Shimon Peres. We visited with Benjamin Netanyahu, with the minority
leader, Tzipi Livni, and also with Palestinian Authority leaders. We
visited Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and some of the fabulous farming
communities near the Sea of Galilee.
[[Page H4491]]
For someone who had never visited Israel--in fact, I had never seen
the Mediterranean Sea in my entire life, and to get to visit it with
people who are steeped in the history, the politics, and the worldwide
consequences of our relationship with Israel, it was a tremendous
experience. So I want to thank the gentlewoman from Florida,
Representative Wasserman Schultz, for including me on the congressional
delegation that she led to Israel.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________