Congressional Record, Volume 156 Issue 107 (Tuesday, July 20, 2010)

[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 107 (Tuesday, July 20, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H5810-H5815]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

GET THE COUNTRY IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Heinrich). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Now, as always, it is a great
honor to speak on this floor where so many have given so much trying to
get the country in the right direction.
I do need to address some things that have come up. For one thing, I
would like to read an article from The Washington Examiner, June 9,
2010, written by Timothy Carney.
``As BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Senator
John Kerry, D-Mass, was on the phone with allies in his push for
climate legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate
climate bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil
companies--including BP, according to the Washington Post.
``Kerry never got to have his photo op with BP chief executive Tony
Hayward and other regulation-friendly corporate chieftains. Within
days, Republican cosponsor Lindsey Graham, R-S.C, repudiated the bill
following a spat about immigration, and Democrats went back to the
drawing board.
``But the Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-
and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim
of President Obama and his allies in the media--that BP's lobbyists
have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is
no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government
whenever it serves the company's bottom line.''
It goes on to point out that British Petroleum has lobbied for tax
hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, for the stimulus bill, the Wall
Street bailout and for subsidies for things like oil pipelines, solar
panels, natural gas and biofuels.
``Now that BP's oil rig''--this is the article written by Timothy
Carney, ``Now that BP's oil rig has caused the biggest environmental
disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick
it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire,
declare it the poster boy for the free market.
``As Democrats fight to advance climate change policies, they are
resorting to the misleading tactics they used in their health care and
finance efforts: posing as the scourges of the special interests and
tarring `reform' opponents as the stooges of big business. Expect BP to
be public enemy No. 1 in the climate debate.''

Again, this is the article by Timothy Carney, June 9 of this year.
Carney goes on, ``There's a problem: BP was a founding member of the
U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a
cap-and-trade bill. As the Nation's largest producer of natural gas, BP
saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading
Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired plants that switched to
gas.''
Well, it goes on, it talks more. It mentions that ``BP signed off on
Kerry's Senate climate bill, which was hardly a capitalist concoction.
One provision BP explicitly backed, according to Congressional
Quarterly and other media reports: a higher gas tax. The money would be
earmarked for building more highways, thus inducing more driving and
more gasoline consumption.
``Elsewhere in the green arena, BP has lobbied for and profited from
subsidies for biofuels and solar energy, two products that cannot break
even without government support. Lobbying records show the company
backing solar subsidies, including Federal funding for solar research.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a Federal agency, is currently financing a
BP solar energy project in Argentina.
``Ex-Im has also put up taxpayer cash to finance construction of the
1,094 Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to
Ceyhan, Turkey--again profiting BP.
``Lobbying records also show BP lobbying on Obama's stimulus bill and
Bush's Wall Street bailout. You can guess the oil giant wasn't in
league with the Cato Institute or Ron Paul on those.
``BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans. It employs the
Podesta Group, cofounded by John Podesta, Obama's transition director
and confidant. Other BP troops on K Street include Michael Berman, a
former top aid to Vice President Walter Mondale, Steven Champlin,
former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus, and Matthew
LaRocco, who worked in Bill Clinton's Interior Department and whose
father was a Democratic Congressman.''
``Two patterns have emerged during Obama's presidency: (1) Big
business increasingly seeks profits through more government, and (2)
Obama nonetheless paints opponents of his intervention as industry
shills. BP is just the latest example of this tawdry sleight of hand.
``Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool.'' Again, this is
from The Washington Examiner's lobbying editor, Timothy P. Carney.
Interesting.
Some of my friends come to the floor and talk about, make it sound
like the Republicans and BP are really tight. You look at the lobbying
records for BP, you look at the contribution records for the Wall
Street firms that benefited so dramatically from the ridiculous
bailout, yes, it was a Republican President, should have known better.
You don't set aside free market principles to save the free market,
because if only socialism works in a crisis, we got no business going
back to free market in the good times.

{time} 2140

But the trouble is it was no free market. In this world in which
people are not perfect and you have some greedy people, you have some
people that lust for power, you have got to have a government
intervention to make sure everyone is playing fairly; not that everyone
has equal assets but that people have an equal opportunity. That's what
a free market is supposed to be about in this world. In the next, we
won't need a government. God will reign. But in this one, we need a
government, and it needs not to be a player on the field

[[Page H5811]]

and also the referee. We've had enough of that, got that going on in
the flood insurance program. We now have been told in this last year
and a half that, gee, we need the Federal Government playing in the
health care field just to give an option. That's what we heard in the
flood insurance program, and now the Federal Government is the only
flood insurance program because nobody can compete with a government
that gets to run in the red all the time.
So I appreciate my friends trying to lay BP at the feet of the
Republicans, but the fact is that the reason, apparently, that it took
so long for this administration to finally turn on BP was--they did
have to turn on them because they were together, working together on
the crap-and-trade bill because BP was right there with them,
supporting that crap-and-trade bill. And then you had Senator Kerry,
the administration, I mean, BP was their buddy. They were helping them
on the stimulus package, of all things. Most of the true free market
people that don't want the government taking over everything were not
supportive of the stimulus bill because they knew exactly what has
happened would happen. That's what people knew, that when the
government starts sucking all the capital out of the country for its
own uses and its own devices, then the great job creator, small
business, private business across the country, cannot get loans.
And I so agree with my friend Mr. Schauer when he talks about how
difficult it is for people to get loans in this country; it is just so
difficult. We've got regulators breathing down their throats requiring
them to hold more in reserve than the law requires, requiring them not
to lend money to people that have been with them 20 and 30 years as
great banking clients, threatening the full vengeance of the Federal
Government if they were to make loans that some regulators told them
not to make so that people can't get capital. The Federal Government is
sucking it up, and it is a terrible, terrible shame.
And I appreciated my friends across the aisle pointing out that, as
Mr. Schauer said, I think it's 600,000, 700,000 jobs were lost the last
5 months of the Bush administration, and then he went on and pointed
out that over the last 5 months the average has been 170,000 jobs a
month that have been added. My friend from Florida came in and didn't
realize he had said that. Her figure was 125,000 jobs per month. But we
won't haggle over 50,000 jobs average per month. We would love to have
those jobs. But unfortunately, to get to an average, whether it's
125,000 or 170,000, you have to have things like we did in June.
430,000 jobs created in the month of June. Great news. 431,000,
actually. Unfortunately, 411,000 of those were temporary census
workers. Oh, yeah, the economy is just booming, isn't it?
It gets so tiresome hearing my friends across the aisle talk about
that last year that Bush was in office and the damage he did to the
economy. It's deeply troublesome because the fact is, in November of
2006, our Democratic friends took the majority by promising America
that Republicans would not control spending but they would. They
promised that we will get rid of this ridiculous $100 billion, $200
billion deficit for 1 year of spending by the Republicans who
controlled Congress because, as anybody who has had any decent
education in this country knows, the President and the executive branch
can only spend money that is appropriated by the Congress. So we also
know, then, for the last 2 years of the Bush Presidency, every stinking
bill that passed only did so because the majority wanted it to pass.
There was nothing Republicans could do in 2007 and 2008 to stop any
bill in Congress that our friends across the aisle wanted to have
passed. We tried. We made points of order, objections when we could see
that the rules were not being followed and then would be ruled down
from the Chair in order for us to appeal the ruling, which was voted
down every single time that we appealed the ruling of the Chair because
they had the votes to do so, not because it was a violation of the
rule.
So we come to the point a fair analysis has to indicate that if the
spending was out of control in 2007 and 2008, obviously it wasn't
because of the Bush administration. They can't appropriate anything to
themselves. And if the policies of spending caused this great loss of
jobs in the fall of 2008, then it was either the responsibility of the
majority party, the majority party either caused the massive problems
in 2008 to our economy, or the majority party was the most incompetent
ever to be in the majority in this House. I don't think they were that
incompetent. I think they passed exactly what was intended.
We heard talk about the wonderful health care bill. It got pretty
tiresome over the last year and a half hearing friends across the aisle
accuse me and others of misrepresenting the real facts. How could we
not understand what the bill was about? Well, the truth is, for those
of us that read the ridiculous bills that were brought forth that were
not about health care but were about the GRE--``government running
everything''--we knew problems that were going to be forthcoming. Some
of us came to this very podium and other podiums here and talked about
what was in the bill because we were reading these provisions that
deeply troubled us.
And I note, General Electric is a big backer of this administration,
been so excited about the health care bill because they were going to
get to have the contract for bringing together all of the health care
records in the country, that the Federal Government was going to be the
repository, the depository for every health care record in America. The
personal, private, biological situations of every person in America
would be within the control of the Federal Government.

{time} 2150

You know, there are people who have made incredible deals happen, who
have made the economy purr, and though they knew they were dying,
others didn't know. The Federal Government didn't know, and so they
made things happen because their biological lives were their own lives.
Their lives were their own business. As a result of the ObamaCare bill
that needs desperately to be repealed, if it is not, every man's most
private, personal lives will be under the electronic control of the
Federal Government.
We have noticed that, when someone stands up against this
administration, private information seems to surface from out of
nowhere about that person. So anyone who stands up against them is
liable to have the full power of the Democratic government come down on
them.
We know that in the days preceding the impeachment vote, or the vote
to remove President Clinton from office, the White House was found to
have over 1,000 FBI files in the White House. In the possession of
every one of those files was a felony, meaning years in prison to
anyone who possessed them, to anyone who was complicit in having them
brought over from the FBI, because they had to be physically brought
into the White House. They were, and you had to know there were a lot
of people involved. Yet not one person was prosecuted.
They could have certainly made the case against the person who had
them. I believe it was 2 years in prison--it could have been 4--and I'm
sure there are different ways to charge it so you could lump on
different Federal charges, but at least 2,000 years in prison minimum
for having those files. Any good prosecutor knows how you work that.
You go to the guy who has the files, and you say, You're looking at
2,000 years in prison. You'll never get out, but you know what? If
you'll help us successfully prosecute those who have caused you to get
those 1,000 FBI files--because we know you can't do it on your own--and
if you help us to know who it was who told you to get these files, who
went through these private FBI files--if you help us with all of that,
we can work a deal. Maybe you'll do 4 years.
That's the way prosecutions normally work, and you work up the food
chain until you find the highest person who was involved in bringing
those files to the White House. None of that happened. None of it. For
most prosecutors, they would see that as lay-down cases that are just
so easy. You know, you've got them dead to rights. Now it's just a
question of how far up the food chain you get to send people to prison.
It didn't happen, and that was with the physical possession of FBI
files.

[[Page H5812]]

Now we're talking about a private company overseeing this operation.
We're talking about the Federal Government's having control over all of
these records. I know I've heard people ask, Well, what makes you think
that anybody could ever get access to these private medical records of
each individual in America?
How could anybody be so naive when you see the kind of things that
have already happened in this country and the disclosure of secret
information? Do you think that if this Federal Government cannot keep
secret the identity of our most secret agents that they will be able to
keep secret the medical records of someone who has become an enemy of
the reigning party in the White House or in Congress? There are always
leaks these days, it seems. There are always leaks.
We've found out, in the past few days, that the government,
apparently, is going to require everybody in America to have a body
mass index because the Federal Government wants to know how fat
everybody in America is, and it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out
that, once the Federal Government knows what your body mass index is,
then they will be able to make decisions based on that information.
Now, I've been belittled; I've had blogs take all kinds of shots at
me; I've had people on the other side of the aisle belittle this
comment I'm about to make that I've made over the last year and a half;
but, boy, is it turning out that I was right and that the naysayers
simply hadn't read the bill and could not see what was going to be
allowed unto the Federal Government.
Here is what I would say:
Think about it. The Federal Government has all of your personal
medical records. We've been told that the Federal Government has the
capability of monitoring every credit card purchase, every debit card
purchase that anyone in America makes. We are also told it doesn't do
that, but that it has the capability. But once the Federal Government,
through tax dollars, is paying for people's health care, then it will
proclaim the right to know what you're spending your money on.
For example, if you have too high of a cholesterol rate and if you
have too high of a body mass index, then it's quite conceivable at some
point that you'll get an email or you'll get a letter from your
Federal Government, saying, We noticed your cholesterol was 160, and we
noticed that you bought bacon at the grocery store this weekend.
Accordingly, since you were on a Federal program, we are going to have
to increase the amount that you pay to participate in the Federal
ObamaCare program in which you're found.

Well, now, as we hear these things come out, now that we are a few
months past the bill's becoming law, things for which I was belittled
are now appearing to be quite accurate in their projections.
I heard my friends across the aisle talking about Social Security. If
people are going to represent what I believe and what I have pushed for
my 5\1/2\ years here in Congress, I would wish that they would get it
right, because it wasn't. What I pushed with my Republican colleagues
the year I got here in 2005, what I continue to push today and what I
will continue to push next year, whether or not Republicans are in the
majority or not, is this:
Social Security tax dollars should go into the Social Security trust
fund. Statements I made back in 2005 are easy to find. I pointed out
back then that I had my staff do an experiment, which was to contact
the Texas Employment Retirement System, the Galveston retirement system
and the Social Security system and to pose this hypothetical:
Suppose somebody had worked for 30 years, averaging $30,000 a year.
What would be a person's retirement income per month?

{time} 2200

I talked about this in 2005, in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, this year. I
spoke of it recently back home in East Texas. Well, what we got from
Social Security was, well, you say average. A lot will depend on how
many years, it was at what level, how you ended, all these other
factors. So the best we can give you is somewhere between $600 a month
and $900 a month. Tragic. Six hundred dollars to $900 a month. After
someone has spent a lifetime paying into Social Security that's all you
get? My goodness, the prescription drugs can eat that up in a
heartbeat. And if you hadn't had your home already paid for, you are in
big trouble.
Six hundred dollars a month in your senior years, when you ought to
be a glory to your family? No, you become a drag, because this
government did not do what it said it would do--put that money in a
Social Security trust fund. You look at some societies throughout
history, and they point out that when you pay tribute to your seniors
because of their wisdom, because of what they've learned through the
years, and one society they always made, at any gathering, the oldest
person the center of attention. It gave people a reason to continue to
live longer, so people there did live longer. It's not what we do here,
and it's tragic. We relegate our seniors, who are our greatest source
of wisdom and experience and knowledge, to $600 a month for Social
Security.
Well, on the other hand, checking with the Texas Employment
Retirement System, they came back and said, well, because it's a
hypothetical and we don't have the exact years and how much was at the
end and all that, the best we can say is somewhere $2,700 to $2,800 per
month in retirement income. Wow. Several times the amount you would get
from Social Security in the same scenario. What's the difference? The
main difference is Social Security, since its inception in the 1930s,
has never had a dime go into the Social Security trust fund. I thought
it had until I got here. Come to find out this has been going on from
the beginning. I thought it was a more recent development, maybe since
the Great Society. Not true. Since the 1930s, never a dime of Social
Security tax money going into the trust fund.
How about that for a start? That's what I have been advocating. Try
to lay a privatizing label on me. I have been advocating this for 5\1/
2\ years. Put Social Security tax money into the trust fund. Now, we've
got people on our side of the aisle too, a tiny minority that say uh-
oh, if you were to do that it would make the government own too much in
the way of bonds. But some of them also voted for the Wall Street
bailout, so apparently they got beyond that concern in the 3
intervening years since they opposed my proposal.
But there are just not a lot of people in the majority, it doesn't
appear, who want to put Social Security tax dollars in the Social
Security trust fund so that we can ensure that it will be there for
years to come and it will draw interest. And we could do so much better
by the seniors, who are the Greatest Generation, the seniors who have
laid the groundwork, the foundation for this greatest advancement in
human history. And now we're treating them so poorly by giving them
$600 a month after all they've done because we won't put money in a
trust fund so it can grow and they could get more in their senior years
so that they don't have to worry whether they'll have to eat or get
their drugs. We owe them so much better.
And if my friends in the majority would want to do that we could do
it like that. And the President wouldn't have a choice. He'd have to
sign it because you would have more than two-thirds in both Houses that
would vote for that. What a great day for seniors that would be. What a
great day for people moving toward their senior years to know, finally,
money's going into the trust fund that will start growing. First time
in American history. That's the kind of thing we need to be doing.

Now, we keep hearing about this financial reform bill. It's a
financial deform bill, pure and simple. It still continues this
ridiculous notion of a systemic risk panel, so that the government gets
to pick and choose which companies will live and which will die.
Because the way it's set up, that's what's going to happen. We already
saw that with Goldman Sachs and AIG, two companies that had
historically given contributions four to one to the Democratic Party
over Republicans. But boy didn't George W. Bush do them a favor? He let
Hank Paulson talk him into bailing out his buddies, all these big
Democratic donors, to the tune of billions of dollars when they got
their own cart in the ditch.
Some of us realize it's nice when you help somebody get their cart
out of the

[[Page H5813]]

ditch, but you sure shouldn't let them run over you with it once they
do. And that's what's happened. Goldman Sachs had their biggest
profiting year in their history. So you can bet they'll be able to
donate lots and lots of money this year to keep their friends that have
done them the most good in office. And it won't be Republicans.
Another problem in this financial deform act is that it creates a
system of bailouts as far into the future as anybody living today can
see. When anyone says that a company or a bank is too big to fail, then
it is absolutely essential that they be allowed to go through
bankruptcy, be declared a failure, reorganized, sell off some of their
attractive assets, and reorganize so never again will they be so big
that they will pose a risk to our economy. That's not what happened
with the Wall Street bailout. It's not what has continued to happen.
And one of the things that has grieved so many of us, that we could
not believe that any White House, Republican or Democrat, could appoint
a task force, a bunch of czars, and they make decisions about who lives
and who dies in the automotive industry. They picked the winners and
losers. They take property from people without due process of law. They
force dealers, who owe money to the banks for buying the dealerships,
into losing their dealership, take it away from them without any due
process of law, without a chance to go to the bankruptcy court and say
we have an alternative plan. Without a chance to come to the courts and
say, you know what, you're not going to sell more cars by having so
many less dealers.
They didn't have a chance to come to the bankruptcy courts or to the
courts of America and say why in the world would you have some idiot
proclaim that in a terrible recession we're going to close down tens of
thousands of jobs and put them out of business, put them out of their
jobs, put their families out wanting and begging because we felt like
it?

{time} 2210

We wanted our friends to be in business, didn't want our enemies to
be in business. Well, the Founders were scared to death that a
government might ever have that kind of power, so they took pains, they
fought for, they died for the chance to have a government with not just
one House in Congress but two. So if one got too far afield, the other
could rein them in, keep them from doing something stupid. And if both
of them did something stupid, then the executive branch, the President,
could stop them with a simple veto. And if both of them got out of
hand, you had a judicial branch, and they could cancel out what the
others did.
And if the executive branch gets too far afield and appoints an auto
task force that's going to violate the Constitution by taking property
without due process of law and they're going to just run roughshod over
the laws passed by the Congress that says this is the way bankruptcy
proceedings go and you don't violate that, that if an executive branch
ran roughshod over both the law and the Constitution, then the Congress
would be upset and they would say, Wait a minute. The Congress passed
those bankruptcy laws. We don't care if you did get a bankruptcy judge
who wants to be reaffirmed as a judge in a few years or be a district
judge down the road. We don't care if you got them to sign that bill.
We're going to cut off funding for all of these czars, all of these
task forces you've appointed who have no accountability to us. We're
going to cut off your money. We'll cut off your task force at the
knees. We'll cut off your czars at the knees because we're going to
defund them.
That power was given to Congress to make sure that you don't let an
executive branch appoint a bunch of czars without the consent of the
Senate and then make rules and decide who loses their property without
any accountability to anybody.
The Founders knew that with people in Congress in numbers in the
House and Senate, they would never let the laws they passed be run over
in such a fashion. They would stop the executive branch from doing
that. But, unfortunately, it didn't happen.
Congress let the executive branch, through the auto task force,
disregard the Constitution, disregard the law, disregard creditors'
rights in the law, disregard the rights of secured creditors, promote
unsecured creditors and make them owners, put secured creditors down to
getting pennies and tell the secured creditors, if you say anything
about it, you'll have the full force of the Federal Government
executive branch come on you and you will be done in business for good.
Don't you dare stand in our way. There were threats that we heard were
made. And so they couldn't fight. Their only hope was that Congress
would protect the power that it was entrusted with to keep the
executive branch from running over the Constitution.
Congress let it happen.
But the Founders were so clever. They knew they didn't trust
government, so they had this third branch, the court. And of course the
Supreme Court was the only court actually created in the Constitution.
Every other court in America owes its existence to this body. But the
Supreme Court, thank goodness the Founders had the foresight to create
that third branch. They'll stop the auto task force from disregarding
the Constitution and disregarding the laws passed by Congress. Even
though Congress didn't, they will. And God bless Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
to her credit, put a 24-hour hold on that whole deal.
But the executive branch scared the Supreme Court sufficiently into
thinking that if they extended that 24-hour hold any further, then
apparently they made the Supreme Court believe that they would be
responsible for the loss of every job related to the auto industry and
all of those lost jobs would be on the Supreme Court's head. Why else
would they let the Constitution be trampled on in such a fashion? Why
else would they allow the laws to be trampled on in such a fashion?
None of the safeguards worked and people lost their businesses.
And then we get this article, July 19, from Bloomberg of all sources,
and I'll read: ``The Obama administration's push to accelerate General
Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC's dealership closings aimed at
helping the companies compete may not have been necessary and added to
unemployment, a U.S. watchdog said.
``The Treasury Department should have considered whether speeding up
the closings was worth the potential loss of tens of thousands of jobs,
according to a report released yesterday by Neil Barofsky, special
inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.'' TARP, of
course.
The article goes on, ``The U.S. had rejected reorganization plans
from the carmakers in March 2009, in part citing a `slow pace' for GM
to scale back its dealer network.
`` `Such dramatic and accelerated dealership closings may not have
been necessary and underscores the need for Treasury to tread very
carefully when considering such decisions in the future,' Barofsky
concluded.
``The report made prompt congressional criticism of the
administration's handling of the automaker bailouts. Lawmakers have
already complained about the job losses in their districts from
dealership closings and the process by which retailers were selected
for shutdowns.
`` `This sobering report should serve as a wake-up call as to the
implications of politically orchestrated bailouts,' Representative
Darrell Issa, a California Republican and ranking member on the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said yesterday in a
statement.
``Obama's Treasury Department, which has spent $80.7 billion on auto
assistance under the TARP program, criticized the inspector's audit and
said without government aid both companies faced failure and possible
liquidation.
``The Department's auto task force in early 2009 found Detroit-based
GM's plan for closing 1,650 dealers by 2014 too slow, according to
Barofsky's report. In response, GM identified 1,454 dealerships to be
shut down by October, Barofsky said.
``Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler, which planned to shut almost
1,200 dealerships by 2014, instead decided to immediately close 789 in
bankruptcy after Treasury's urgings, according to the report.
``The Treasury Department, using advice received from industry
experts,

[[Page H5814]]

had encouraged smaller dealership networks to help the carmakers boost
sales and better compete with Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda
Motor Co., according to the report.
``GM, which later moved to trim the closers by about half, said in a
statement that events described in the report `have since been
overtaken by a new GM and a stronger dealer network to match,'. The
statement added, `The new GM is also moving forward to improve dealer
relations and has already reinstated several hundred.' ''
Reinstated several hundred? After the executive branch forced these
people to lose their property without due process of law?
Continuing on with the article.
``General Motors Co. was formed last year out of bankruptcy from the
best-performing assets of General Motors Corp. while a group led by
Fiat S.p.A. purchased most of the bankrupt Chrysler LLC assets, forming
Chrysler Group LLC. Taxpayer aid made the reorganizations possible.''
Not bad enough to put tens of thousands of people out of business and
take millions and millions of dollars without due process, we also took
taxpayer money. This administration and this majority let it happen.
``Dealer complaints about closures prompted lawmakers, including
Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, to ask Barofsky to
investigate.

{time} 2220

`` `There is substantial confusion, even among dealers themselves, as
to how GM and Chrysler selected dealerships for termination,'
Rockefeller, chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation
Committee, said in a letter to Barofsky.
``The report found that Chrysler, which made decisions on a case-by-
case basis, followed the criteria for targeting dealers for
termination. GM was inconsistent and retained more than 1,300 dealers
who would have been shut based on sales, consumer satisfaction and
profitability, according to the report.''
`` `The fact that Treasury was acting in part as an investor in GM
and Chrysler does not insulate Treasury from its responsibility to the
broader economy,' Barofsky said. `Treasury should have taken special
care given that the auto team's determinations had the potential to
contribute to job losses.' Herbert Allison, assistant Treasury
secretary for financial stability''--isn't that a misnomer. Anyway, he
``said in a letter included in the report that the restructuring
process `was not easy' and required `deep and painful sacrifices' from
all parties.
`` `We strongly disagree with many of your statements, your
conclusions and the lessons learned,' Allison told Barofsky.
``President Barack Obama signed a law in December that required the
automakers to offer binding arbitration to dealers whose outlets were
being closed. GM said in March it planned to reinstate 661 dealers
after the company began reevaluating the closing of 1,100 retailers.''
And who's going to pay them back for all the property that was stolen
from them by this administration? But I have to add stolen legally
because Congress didn't stop them; the Supreme Court didn't stop them.
So, accordingly, it must have been legal. They weren't stopped by the
people that could have.
Well, back to the article: ``Chrysler said that same month it was
offering new franchises to 50 dealers who applied for arbitration, in
addition to 36 previous offers or new agreements. Chrysler terminated
789 dealers last year and said in January that 409 had applied for
arbitration.''
I tell you what, we've heard from dealers who were some of the most
profitable, who were doing well, and this administration took them away
from them and got a bankruptcy judge to sign off, to his shame. Should
be eternal shame, the damage that judge and those auto task force
people caused. Shameless.
And yet when the House and Senate asked for information, notes from
their meetings, they said, We're not accountable to you. We're a rogue
government, is basically what they, in essence, were saying. We're a
rogue government; we're czars. We do what we want. You can't touch us.
Only the President who put us in these positions can get rid of us, and
he likes what we've done. That's the message in essence.
When I hear my friends across the aisle talk about the importance of
PAYGO, I was a Republican that voted for that in the previous term
because I supported that, and then I come to find out it was a joke. It
didn't mean what they were talking about with PAYGO, because every time
there's a big bill, including extending the unemployment benefits, they
have no intention of paying for that, just creating an exception over
and over. Here it comes with a rule. Well, PAYGO suspended, we're not
going to apply here.
Well, what good was it ever passing it in the first place? I learned
my lesson. I thought that I could believe my friends across the aisle:
yeah, we need to vote for PAYGO. People on this side of the aisle said
don't believe them. I said, no, they're pushing this PAYGO bill; I'm
going to vote for it. I did, and boy, did I learn. There was no
seriousness about following through on that.
And it still blows my mind to hear people say over and over that tax
breaks for the wealthiest Americans are wrong. They're right. If you do
nothing but have tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, it is wrong,
should not happen. But how about when you have a tax break for the
people paying taxes? That's fair. When it's an across-the-board tax
cut, evenly cut across the board, that's fair.
Unfortunately, we are quickly approaching the point where 50 percent
or more of Americans will not pay income tax. Historians have warned
about this point, that it is the point of no return. It is the line of
demarcation. Once you pass it, you can't get back. Only with a miracle
from God can a Nation be saved once a representative government has
more than 50 percent of its voters not paying the taxes that run the
government. When you get past that point, you're done.
It's one of the reasons I came here. It's one of the reasons I don't
sleep much, keep working away, trying to figure out ways to hold this
place together until we can have a fair deal for everybody.
Heck, I'm the guy that came up with the tax holiday idea. When the
Bush administration and Obama administration were talking about, you
know, really trillions of dollars to get the economy going, heck, I
found out you're talking about trillions, Federal Reserve, trillions,
to get the economy going. $1.21 trillion was all that was expected to
be paid in personal income tax for year 2008. That's when it hit me,
wow, we'd be a whole lot better off if we just said no income tax for
2008. It'd be a lot cheaper than all these bailout programs, and the
American public would get their own money, and they would get to decide
what car to buy. They would get out of trouble on their mortgages.
But now, this administration--and they can only do it with this
Congress getting it done because Congress passes the money bills. This
administration, this majority have spent trillions and trillions of
dollars; and we are so obligated, there's no way to have a tax holiday
right now. We've got us so deeply in debt we can't do that now. It sure
would have spurred the economy a whole lot more cheaply than what we've
done.
I want to finish tonight by taking, Mr. Speaker, one back to 1755. We
know that there are those, including the President, who have said this
is not a Christian Nation, and I will not debate that point whether we
are or not now, but I know where we came from.
In 1755, George Washington was in his early 20s, 6-foot, three and a
half, at least that's what he was measured when he died. Some books say
six-two, six-four, six three and a half at his death, big, strapping
guy, full of emotion, powerful man, athletic man. He was riding a
horse, leading 100 American militiamen. They were accompanying 1,300
British Red Coats in the French and Indian War. They were heading up to
Fort Duquesne in Pennsylvania. And the British generals--there were 82
officers including Washington on horseback.
The British generals had decided to go take the path of least
resistance, through the woods, through this low area, sort of a ravine,
passing through that area. Well, Washington got concerned they could be
walking into an ambush. So he asked the general, Let me send some of
the men ahead that

[[Page H5815]]

know this area, make sure we're not walking into a trap. He was
belittled by the general. You think you know more about military than I
do? This was a guy that was described as self-taught, described himself
that way, George Washington.

{time} 2230

So they didn't send Washington's men. They had to check, they walked
into an ambush. The Indians, the French opened up, for 2 hours,
firefight.
After 2 hours, over 713 British redcoats were dead, they had gone
shoulder to shoulder, back to back. They were getting wiped out. The
Americans, none were killed, some were wounded, but they had
immediately taken cover.
Washington, at the end of 2 hours, was the only officer still on
horseback, still fighting. He had had one shot out from under him, at
least one. He is still on horseback fighting. Brave, he is fighting, he
is calling out orders, incredible man.
All his men were amazed at this gallant, brave, courageous 20-
something year old. After 2 hours, he could see the rest of the British
were going to be wiped out if they didn't retreat. They retreated.
Two days later he wrote to his mother and brother, he hadn't met
Martha yet. He said, in essence, when we got to a place of safety and
camped for the night, I took off my hat, shook out my hair. Bullet
fragments flew everywhere, had not a scratch on my head. Took off my
jacket, I had bullet holes through and through, had not a scratch on
me. Truly, divine providence. God protected me.
Fifteen years later, George Washington, he became a hero out of that,
because word spread from all the Americans about how courageous and
brave this young man was, big, tall, strong, strapping guy, how brave
he was, what a fighter he was. He never lost his head. He kept his
cool, kept fighting, calling out orders, just a leader of leaders, a
man who was quoted as saying, men unused to restraint must be led; they
will not be drove.
Fifteen years later, he was going with a friend, Larry Craig, up
through that same area. Dr. Craig was with him when he died,
unfortunately, but he was going to show him the area that was so famous
where this occurred. They got up there where there were Indians there
that wanted to sit down and meet with him. The Indian chief, the lead
chief, said, we were in these woods 15 years ago, you and I were here.
I ordered my men to fire at you before they fired at anyone else, and
they did that. We came all this way to meet the man that God would not
let die. It used to be in history books and every American history book
until 1910 and began to disappear.
I won't debate whether we are a Christian nation now, but Washington
knew what we knew, knew what we were.

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