[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 161 (Wednesday, December 8, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H8248-H8255]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          PUTTING AMERICA BACK ON THE RIGHT TRACK ECONOMICALLY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to be able to join you and my 
colleagues this evening. We have had a busy day and dealt with a lot of 
different questions and issues. And, yet, on the minds of Americans I 
believe all across our country people are thinking about the economy, 
they are thinking particularly about jobs, and they are also thinking 
about what appears to be imminently approaching, at least the beginning 
of the new year, the largest tax increase in the history of our 
country.
  That's an odd thing to be approaching at a time when there is a high 
level of unemployment and a lot of uncertainty in terms of the economy. 
And of course that is a matter of some considerable debate and 
discussion and different political maneuvering. We won't talk so much 
tonight about political maneuvering, but try to stick more in the area 
of some understanding of economics and the things that we need to be 
doing to put America back on the right track.
  I think Americans really want Congress to fix it. They don't want to 
hear a lot of discussion and talk. They want to know let's just get 
things organized, get it straightened out, get the economy going, get 
people back to work. You know, there is a choice people really have in 
our country of two different things. One, you can have bureaucracy and 
food stamps, or you can have a job and a paycheck. I think most people 
in America really want a job and a paycheck.
  So that's what we are going to talk about tonight. I am joined by a 
couple of my esteemed colleagues, people that are very long on common 
sense, so they are my friends, but also people that I believe that very 
much are respected not only by their own delegations, the people that 
elected them, but increasingly known across the country.
  I am joined by my good friend Dr. Gingrey. I don't know how many 
careers he's had. That's why he got the

[[Page H8249]]

doctor part. He delivered a bunch of babies, I believe, down in the 
Atlanta area, and also has been a State senator, and now has joined us 
here and helped us on a lot of health care questions. But also pretty 
good on these economic things. And G.T., all the way from Georgia, all 
the way across over to Pennsylvania, and another small business man who 
worked in health care businesses privately, but also a Member of 
Congress and a good conservative friend of mine.
  I am going to start off, before I call on them to join our discussion 
here this evening, and just talk a little bit about something that when 
I first came to Congress 10 years ago seemed a little odd to me. In 
fact, as an engineer it almost seemed like water running uphill, 
because people were saying that if you cut taxes, the government can 
take in more money. Now, that seems like an odd thing, doesn't it, that 
you can cut taxes and have the government take in more money.
  Well, what's going on there is an effect that when you crank taxes up 
high enough, you stall the economy. When the economy stalls, you can 
keep running the taxes up, but you don't get any more revenue because 
things are not working right and the machine isn't churning out any 
money, so you actually lose money. I came up with a way of explaining 
it.
  And we had a chance to have Art Laffer, an economist back with the 
Reagan administration, who came up with this understanding. And he 
explained it in different ways the other night earlier in the week. But 
the point of the matter is that you can actually cut taxes and the 
government gets more money.
  Here is the way it might work. Think about a loaf of bread, and you 
are king for a day, and you got to tax the loaf of bread. What are you 
going to tax it, a penny or $10? You go back and forth in your mind and 
say penny, it's easy. I can get everybody to buy just the same loaf of 
bread that they do today. So we would sell a lot of loaves of bread and 
maybe get a penny for each one. But that doesn't add up very fast. 
Maybe I can charge $10 on a loaf of bread. Well, maybe people wouldn't 
buy very much bread, but boy when they did, I would get 10 bucks.
  Well, common sense would say there is someplace between a penny and 
$10 on a loaf of bread where you can collect the most taxes. And that's 
what's going on. When the government cuts taxes, it actually gets the 
economy going. And this chart shows that. It's called the Laffer Curve. 
This red is the tax rate, and then this here is the Federal revenues. 
So what we are seeing here is that you have a ratio. As you start to 
drop taxes, actually the Federal revenue goes up. And that's what's 
happened a number of times. We are going to talk about that.
  But would either one of my colleagues want to join in and talk a 
little bit about where we are going, what we ought to be doing? What do 
we do on the biggest tax hike in the history of the country? Are we 
going to let that go into place in January or not? What do you think?
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Well, first of all, I want to thank my 
good friend from Missouri for hosting this hour. This is a very 
important issue. We are facing, without action and intervention, the 
largest tax increase in the history of our country. And the Laffer 
Curve and the professor that put that together, very smart man. And I 
think it's very telling. I think that actually it could be named, take 
a little creative license, and in addition to being a Laffer Curve, a 
curve of uncertainty, or certainty.
  Because there is some point in there, and you have already mentioned 
that word, that you either have certainty in the economy, and jobs are 
created, and economic development happens, or you have uncertainty and 
things come to a screeching halt. And that's what we've seen over this 
past 2 years-plus in terms of the economy. And that's jobs.
  And the one thing I tell people, or what I hear when I go around and 
I talk with the people at home--frankly, I talk with the people who are 
the job creators--it's uncertainty in the economy. And a lot of that 
has to do with taxes. They don't know what taxes are coming. They have 
been not just these--and some people will call these the Bush era tax 
cuts. Frankly, I will call them the people's tax cuts. We have been 
enjoying them for almost a decade now. It's been money in the pockets 
of the people at home. They are making decisions.
  But it's not just those; it's all the taxes that have been layered on 
bill after bill by this Democratic Congress over the past 2 years. And 
I've talked with many people who are--normally every year they will 
take part of their profit--and that's not a bad word. That's a good 
word. That's what's made our country strong. And they will take that 
profit, and they will reinvest it in their businesses.

                              {time}  2150

  They will build a new location or they will add a service line or a 
product line or maybe they are just repacking something, yes, freshen 
it up, and they hire people. When they do that, they create prosperity, 
they create jobs, and they are sitting on the sidelines right now. And 
a big part of that has to do, I believe, with these taxes, that with no 
intervention by January 1, the largest tax increase in the history of 
our country goes into place.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, I really appreciate your perspective, and I think you 
are right.
  I had a similar experience back in my district in the St. Louis area. 
We had a meeting that we had on Main Street. You know, you have got to 
have a Main Street. In downtown St. Charles, across the river from St. 
Louis County, there is a Main Street in downtown St. Charles. So we 
asked a bunch of small business owners, I think about 40 or 50 of them, 
to come to a meeting about a year or so ago.
  We just asked them. I said, Here's the deal. I am just collecting 
information, and I have my own opinions as to what you are going to 
say, but I want you to give me your best shot. What are the things that 
are going to create unemployment?
  And, of course, the converse of that is, if you don't do those 
things, then employment will come back. What are the things that are 
really enemies to just wrecking the economy?
  And they gave me a list of five things. We didn't actually put them 
in order, but the one that came to their mind first was taxes. It was 
just basically along the same lines as what you are saying, gentlemen. 
Because, if you are a small business man and you get taxed and taxed 
and taxed, it takes away the money you have to invest in new processes, 
new technology, new lines of equipment, adding a wing on the building, 
putting some machine tools in there, whatever it is. All those things 
create jobs. But if you take all their money away, then they can't make 
those investments.
  Now, if you do what FDR did and you do it over a sustained period and 
you keep lowering the boom on them, you will not just cause them to 
hunker down and not hire. You will just put them out of business. Then 
it will be a long time before that business ever comes back again. So 
far, I don't think we have shut them all down yet; although, a lot of 
businesses have had to close. There are still businesses out there.
  If they had the revenue, and if the Federal Government would get off 
of their case, I think we could see some jobs turning around. But the 
very first thing they mentioned was taxes, and the second thing you 
mentioned was uncertainty. They mentioned that about second. So you 
were exactly in line with the St. Charles people. People in 
Pennsylvania and the State of Missouri----
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania folks and Missouri folks 
think the same way.
  Mr. AKIN. Same way.
  Dr. Gingrey, I see you in a contemplative air there, and we would 
love to hear a little wisdom on the subject of free enterprise as well, 
my friend.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Well, Mr. Speaker, I thank my gentleman 
friend from Missouri for giving me the opportunity to join with him and 
with Representative Thompson of Pennsylvania in this Special Order hour 
this evening talking about taxes and job creation and the State of the 
economy.
  And certainly, as we look at his first slide and the Art Laffer curve 
referencing, of course, as the top marginal tax rate over the last 40, 
60 years, in fact, has gradually decreased, then the amount of revenue 
has, in turn, increased. And we have seen that, Mr.

[[Page H8250]]

Speaker. We saw it in 1960 with the Democratic President John F. 
Kennedy. We certainly saw the same thing occur in 1980 under our great 
communicator, President Ronald Reagan. The economist Art Laffer, talks 
about this often, presents it in a very simplified form with his Laffer 
curve.
  You know, I think one of the things our colleagues need to understand 
in regard to the so-called Bush tax cuts, and as Representative Todd 
Akin has pointed out, Mr. Speaker, it's really been 10 years ago, and 
so it's a Bush era.
  But in a time when those lower marginal rates were enacted back in 
2001, 2003, we cut the taxes on dividends from a marginal rate to 15 
percent, capital gains from 20 percent to 15 percent, even for the low-
income earners to 10 percent. I mean, these things had a profound 
effect, positive effect on revenue.
  And, of course, when you are faced in an 8-year period of the Bush 
administration with two wars, the 9/11 attack, the dot-com bubble 
burst, certainly deficits are going to go up, debts are going to go up, 
but revenue continued to go up. That's something that I think people 
need to understand to put it in the proper context.
  Certainly, as we continue this discussion this evening, I want to 
close my opening remarks, if you will, by saying this President, 
President Obama, I am very encouraged by the coming together with the 
Republican leadership in regard to deciding what is best for this 
country, what could best stimulate the economy, put people back to 
work, not have another November unemployment rate of 9.8 percent and 
over 14.5 million people unemployed--and not only unemployed but, Mr. 
Speaker, over 40 percent of them unemployed more than 6 months. So this 
is why the President, thank God, has been, it seems to be, trying to 
moderate his position.
  To say to a Republican leadership, I do agree. You have maybe dragged 
me crying and screaming to the alter of sanity in regard to fiscal 
policy, but we cannot, in a recession with these kinds of unemployment 
rates and this number of people unemployed for this prolonged period of 
time, we can't raise taxes on anybody, and we are not going to do that.
  And I thank God that the President kind of sold the wisdom--I mean, 
he has said many times in the past, elections have consequences. 
Indeed, I think he knows now that on November 2 the American people 
have spoken, and he is coming our way.
  I can only hope that the Democratic leadership and the rank-and-file 
membership of the Democratic Party will listen to him and will listen 
to Vice President Biden as they come over here and plead with this 
Democratic majority that it is time to get on board and to moderate, 
not for the sake of the next election, but for the sake of this and the 
next generation.
  Mr. AKIN. I really appreciate what you are saying, and I didn't think 
I was going to be saying anything complimentary about our President, 
because it seems like all his policies relative to the economy and jobs 
and all seemed like it was highly destructive. He was making the same 
mistakes that FDR made. He wouldn't listen to Henry Morgenthau.
  We on the floor came out here, both of you gentlemen, week after week 
after week now for the last couple of years. We talked about the idea 
of the stimulus bill and the idea that you can grab your bootstraps and 
lift and fly around the Chamber; it's about as reasonable as fixing a 
bad economy by a Federal Government spending money. It doesn't make any 
sense in a commonsense way, and it has never worked, never worked 
historically.
  But both of you have made references to what does work. And if you 
are Democrats, you don't have to listen to Ronald Reagan and Bush. You 
go back to JFK, as you have said, and he basically used this same 
economic principle. The idea is whether politicians like it or not.
  What has to be done is that you have got to stop the Federal spending 
and you have got to reduce taxes and you have got to create some 
stability and, if you can, knock that red tape down and then give the 
economy some time to breathe. And that money will eventually work into 
those businesses, and they will start to hiring people.
  Now, we saw that happen here. This is a--I have a couple of charts 
here, antiques. They are a couple of years old, but they are talking 
about when the second part of this Bush tax cut came in place in May of 
2003. I hate to admit it. I was here at that time and we saw this.
  So I have got a series of charts, but this May 2003 is in the center 
of these different charts. And if you take a look, this is job 
creation. In this case, this is job loss that goes down; job creation 
goes up. And the red is before the tax cut and the green is after.
  Now, what you see going on here is we are losing jobs heavily, 2001 
to 2003. Then by May of 2003 you have 1 month that we have lost jobs. 
But after that, it's all increases in jobs.
  So this is the kind of thing that I assume the President must have 
looked at and gone, Oh, my goodness. I have tried our stimulus bill. We 
have spent $787 billion.
  I think they spent it before they really thought the economy was that 
serious. So in that money, they had bailouts for the California teacher 
pensions and the Illinois teacher pensions. It wasn't even FDR 
stimulus. It was just basically pork; robbing other States to pay for 
the mismanagement of teachers' pensions that California and Illinois 
had done.
  So it had all kinds of stuff in it, but it really wasn't even much of 
a stimulus bill. They said it was going to generate, I think it was, 3 
point something or other million jobs, and the result was we lost 2 
million jobs and unemployment went all the way up close to 10 percent.
  So that didn't work for the President. And now he has got some true 
believers in the House and the Senate, the Pelosi and Reid gang. They 
still think that you have got to tax everybody out of house and home 
and you can have all these jobs, but the President has had 2 years and 
the jobs have been going down, going worse and worse.

                              {time}  2200

  So I think maybe he's starting to pay attention to this effect. And 
so this first chart is actually job creation. And I have a couple of 
the other ones as well that we can talk about. But I want to give 
either of you an opportunity. If you really want to talk specifically 
about jobs and tax cuts, here's an example of the tax cut, and here's 
what happens in terms of jobs.
  And I think the moral of this story is a very, very complicated 
economic principle which is frequently lost on my liberal friends, and 
that is, if you want jobs you've got to have employers. And if you 
don't have employers you don't have employees. It's complicated, I 
know, but try to grasp it. You have to have a business in order to have 
people working for a business. And if you destroy the business, you 
don't have any jobs. And that's the moral of the story.
  And that's why you're going to have to allow some people to have 
enough money to invest in their business. And it may mean there will be 
some Americans that achieve the American Dream. They're actually going 
to be rich. They're going to have a lot of money. And just because 
somebody else has a lot of money doesn't mean that they're having that 
much fun. But maybe they are.
  But that's okay because the American dream goes like this: you start 
poor and you have something to look forward to and before too long you 
actually make some money and come out okay. That's the whole point of 
the American Dream.
  The American Dream does not work. You're rich and the government 
taxes you into the dirt. That's not the idea. That's how the communist 
dream works. This is America. We've got to go from letting people who 
don't have so much to save and get wise and get smart and try these 
different ideas and pretty soon, by golly, they have some money. That's 
the way it's supposed to work.
  My good friend from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Well, I thank my good friend for 
dusting that chart off and bringing it out tonight. I think we need to 
reproduce that and get that in every one of the 435 offices because, 
you know, I've tried to lead my life by principles, and one of them has 
been the principle that the best predictor of future performance is 
past performance.

[[Page H8251]]

  And here we are looming days until we have this Nation's largest tax 
increase in history, and what a great chart to be able to show the 
practical impact on job creation that tax cuts make, because you've got 
the documentation right there. You show it, pre-tax cuts, and you show 
it post-tax cuts. And the results are astounding.
  We're talking jobs. And I don't--there's few issues and problems that 
we face, that our families face, and individuals in this country face 
that can't be solved by a good job. Period. Health care, economic 
issues, they're just so important. And I'm very appreciative, a little 
surprised, but I'm appreciative of the leadership that the President 
has shown in the past week or so in terms of really what appears to 
be--and I have to tell you in the first bipartisan real true 
bipartisanship that I've seen my first 2 years here in Congress.
  Mr. AKIN. I about forgot what that word meant.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Yeah. And the fact is, and it seems 
like he's embraced, he's figured out who those job creators are. I 
mean, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, they'll be the 
first to, and I'm sure when we get into, more into this debate, you're 
going to hear them talking about all we're doing is providing tax 
relief for the wealthy, and the top 2 percent of wage earners in this 
country fall into that category. It's, by definition, it's people that 
make $200,000 or more a year and file their taxes individually, or 
$250,000 and file jointly with their spouse. And you know, in my 
congressional district, and I suspect in yours, that's a lot of money.
  But when we really look and drill down a little further and see 
exactly who those people are, and it's amazing to me to find that it's 
the people that are reflected on that chart with creating, it's the job 
creators that created those jobs that showed up after those tax cuts in 
2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, because 60 percent of those folks or more 
are people who organized their businesses as a sole proprietorship, a 
limited liability corporation, or a sub chapter corporation. And they 
pay their taxes as an individual.
  So, yeah, maybe they make $200,000 as an individual or $250,000, but 
out of that, they make a payroll. They create jobs. They provide 
prosperity, both for themselves, and there's nothing wrong with that. 
That's the American Dream, to work hard, to take risk, to sacrifice and 
to achieve great things. That's the American Dream. And so that needs 
to be rewarded.
  But also they create prosperity for other people. Those are the job 
creators. And I am so thankful that President Obama has, in a very 
enlightened way, embraced that in coming together in this 
bipartisanship of his making, extending these tax cuts.

  Now, honestly, I would really like to see, if I had, if I was king 
for the day, and I think you all would agree, we'd make them permanent 
because that's the best way to provide continued certainty in the 
future. But this is Washington.
  Mr. AKIN. But, gentleman, you did mention the point that if you take 
a look at what it is businesses need, they need to have the taxes off 
their back. But they also need a certain sense of stability, because 
you're not going to make a decision that's really going to be with you 
for a long time if you're not, if everything looks turbulent in front 
of you. You want to kind of hunker down and wait and get through the 
not knowing where things are going to bounce. And you see if those tax 
cuts are permanent, that gives you that sense of, okay, now we know 
what the environment is that we're in. And people take some risks if 
they think, okay, things are going to be stable a little bit.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. They do that in forecasting, and they 
build their business plans and their business models.
  Mr. AKIN. I got an email before I left St. Lewis from one of those 
people. And the choices are really more bureaucrats and food stamps or 
more jobs and pay checks. You know, that's the choice. Are you on the 
bureaucrat/food stamp team, or are you on the jobs and pay checks? And 
most of the people I know, they kind of hold their head up and they'd 
really like to have a good job and a decent pay check. You feel better 
at the end of the day than a bureaucrat telling you what to do and 
giving you food stamps. And that's the choice.
  And this guy was complaining about all these tax cuts for the rich. 
Blah, blah, blah, you know. And the fact of the matter is that the 
people that this thing affects is the people who own the businesses. 
And if you don't allow them to have some of their own money to plow 
back into the business, you're not going to have the jobs. And people 
miss that.
  And then it's always this class warfare, rich and poor. This guy's 
too rich; we ought to take him down, you know. And it's because we 
forget the American Dream. It's okay for some that you have some money. 
It's okay for them to run a business and hire people. That's what we 
want. That's what we're trying to accomplish. And that's what this all 
shows, that when you ease off on the taxes, it's a blessing to 
everybody.
  And I know my good friend from Georgia is not going to let that talk 
about the American Dream go by without a comment or two, because I'll 
tell you, that Georgia delegation's looking like they're some pretty 
patriotic folks, and I'm proud of your State for who they're sending 
down here to Congress.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friends from the Show 
Me and the Keystone States. We Representatives from the Peach State are 
very proud of our colleagues and the commonsense discussion that we're 
bringing to the House floor this evening as part of this Special Order 
hour, pointing these salient points out to both our Republican and 
Democratic colleagues.
  And I join with my friends in saluting the President. I would only 
wish that I had the opportunity, not being part of either the current 
Democratic majority leadership or the current Republican minority 
leadership, to be in that room over at the White House, the Oval Office 
or wherever they've gotten together to sort of discuss these things.
  But I would love to be a fly on the wall and listen to some of the 
advisers. Of course Christina Romer's gone, Peter Orszag's gone, but 
people like David Axelrod and others are still there. And I can just 
hear them saying to President Obama, you know, Mr. President, we have 
given you some advice over these last couple of years and, indeed, 
you've gotten some advice from Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid and the 
members of the Democratic majority in the legislative branch that 
hadn't worked out too well. And, you know, Mr. President, you had said 
to the American people, elections have consequences and, indeed, you 
know, we're looking back on November the 2nd and seeing a net gain of 
Republicans, a net gain of 63 in the House of Representatives and a net 
gain of six in the United States Senate, Republican Members, and 
something like 600 Republican new Members in State legislatures across 
the country; 29, in fact, new Republican Governors.
  Mr. President, indeed, elections have consequences. It's time, sir, 
for you to maybe moderate, to get back to the middle a little bit and 
to listen to the American people. If it's so partisan that you can't 
listen to the minority party, listen to the American people.

                              {time}  2210

  They have spoken loud and clear. They are saying it makes absolutely 
no sense to raise taxes on anybody, especially those who create the 
jobs. You know, I had heard and have heard from my Democratic 
colleagues, Mr. Speaker, this mantra, you are going to cut taxes for 
the rich and it is going to add $800 billion to the deficit, totally 
ignoring if you cut taxes for everybody else making less than $200,000 
a year, that you are cutting $3 trillion of revenue out of the budget.
  So where is the concern. You are concerned about spending $800 
billion to extend the tax cuts for everybody, but you totally ignore 
the fact that keeping the tax rates in place for everybody making less 
than $200,000 a year, if you listen to this arcane way of scoring, CBO, 
that is a $3 trillion increase to the deficit. Our colleagues tonight, 
Mr. Speaker, are talking common sense, and that is what the American 
people want. They understand it. They understand when you have a 14.5 
million population out of work, an unemployment rate in November alone 
of 9.8 percent and over 40 percent of these people out

[[Page H8252]]

of work more than 6 months, no wonder they are begging for an extension 
of unemployment benefits to the 99 weeks for these additional workers.
  But the bottom line is when the President comes together with 
Republican leadership and says: I agree, it is a give and take. It is a 
check and balance, and I am going to sit down with you guys and gals 
and I am going to agree that we are going to keep those marginal tax 
rates just where they are for everybody, we are not going to let the 
taxation on dividends go back up to 39.6 percent. We are going to keep 
it at 15 percent so mom and pop can get a decent return on the 
dividends, we are going to let capital gains stay at 15 percent. And, 
furthermore, we are going to cut the payroll tax one-third on Social 
Security, from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent for the individual, for the 
employee.
  It is a little contradictory to do that at the same time under 
ObamaCare that we raise the payroll tax 3.8 percent on the so-called 
high earners, but that is a whole other story.
  But I think we are coming together with the President. I am pleased 
with that. I am pleased with him. I think we need to look very closely. 
Obviously, it is not perfect. I know there are Members on our side of 
the aisle, Mr. Speaker, who are very concerned with the fact that 
extending unemployment benefits for another 13 weeks to 99 weeks for 
those who have been unemployed for more than 6 months is not paid for, 
and that is a concern and we need to address that.
  But again, this opportunity to come together on the floor tonight to 
talk in a bipartisan way to all of our colleagues, to say yes, the 
American people want us to do this now. They don't want us to wait 
until after January 1. They want us to get this accomplished now.
  I thank my colleague for giving me an opportunity to weight in.
  Mr. AKIN. I appreciate your perspective. One of the things, when you 
keep looking at this from the poor people/rich people kind of 
continuum, that is really the wrong question to be asking. The question 
should be: What do we need to do to put the economy back on track? That 
should be the question. What do we do to provide jobs and paychecks? 
That is our objective, not to discuss whether somebody is paying too 
much or their fair share of taxes.
  I forget the exact numbers, but as I recall, I think it is the top 10 
percent of people who pay income taxes, pay something like over 70 
percent. All of the tax money that is paid to the Federal Government 
comes from only 10 percent, and the bottom 40 percent pay zero. Now 
that is a pretty graduated income tax, that you have only the top 1 
percent paying a very, very high amount, I am trying to remember if it 
is as much as 50 percent but it is quite a lot. But all of this stuff 
about the rich and the poor and the pay, it really should be about 
America. It should be about the American dream. And it should be common 
sense that when the economy is in bad shape, the one thing you do not 
hear anyone with any common sense saying is that you want to increase 
taxes. That is just plain nuts. And yet that is exactly the train wreck 
that is about to happen January 1 if this Congress doesn't take action.
  I at least credit the President for getting the message. He got it 
late. I don't know whether he has true religion or not, but he appears 
to be on the right track. At least they are going to keep these things 
going for a couple of years so in the middle of a recession we don't 
hammer the economy with another shot.
  But let's look at this from a logic point of view. Here is another 
chart. This is the GDP after the tax relief. This is the same tax 
relief in 2003 May. In May 2003, we did the tax cut here for dividends, 
capital gains, death taxes. Take a look at what the GDP is then doing. 
This is gross domestic product before the tax cut. You can see, it is 
kind of a shaky line. The GDP not up to 3 percent, dropping down so we 
are actually losing it on a couple of different quarters here.

  Then you put this tax cut in place and look what happens to GDP. It 
looks like you just gave it a shot of fertilizer all of a sudden. So 
you can see there is quite a difference in the average. So not only 
from the first chart that we saw here, not only did the tax cut affect 
job creation, job creation is much better. It doesn't surprise you, 
when the job creation is up, so also your gross domestic product is up.
  These are a couple of charts that show this effect, that tax cuts 
don't really lose the government money. They actually get the economy 
going. That is why JFK did it. That is why Reagan did it. That is why 
Bush did it. It worked in all of those instances. That is what we 
should be doing.
  In this case, unfortunately, what we are talking about is not a tax 
cut. What we are talking about is a tax increase which we are trying to 
prevent. It is a very different thing. If we prevent an increase, it 
means that the damage won't be done. But these things economically, 
they work both ways. If you do one thing it makes it better; if you do 
the reverse, it makes it worse. So why do we want to do a big tax 
increase? It doesn't make any sense.
  My last chart, this kind of completes it. Here is the tax cut right 
here. This is Federal revenues. This seems to be an odd chart, doesn't 
it? You have 3 years of decreases. As we are going into this recession, 
you have capital gains, dividends, and death tax, and all of a sudden 
you have cut taxes and what is happening? Federal revenue is going up. 
That is why the deficit under Bush, even though we had a couple of wars 
going on, things were looking better because we had 4 years. This chart 
was made back in 2007, I guess, because we had 4 years of straight 
increases where we did this. So do you want to reverse this thing now? 
Do you want to put the biggest tax hike in the history of the country 
and have that effect go the other way so Federal revenues plummet, jobs 
plummet, and GDP plummets? Is that what we want to do for January 1? I 
don't think so.
  I appreciate you gentlemen being out here on the floor tonight and 
standing up for the commonsense Americans who know. We say if there is 
a recession going on and the economy is not strong, we say what you 
have to do is cut taxes. You have to cut government spending. You have 
to cut redtape. You have to create certainty.
  The average person on the street in our districts understands that. 
The average business person says of course. Even an awful lot of people 
who are carpenters, machinists, they are people who work with their 
hands. They are people with a lot of common sense. They understand when 
you are in a recession, when you have economic problems, you don't go 
out and just bust the budget spending money. They look at what goes on 
in this city and they think, what in the world is wrong with that 
place? We need to get some people in there that will talk some common 
sense.
  Fortunately, we think that the President is, whether it is because he 
really believed or because he just felt the political heat, has put us 
back in the right direction not to reverse this very thing that worked 
so well for us. Now this doesn't solve the problem we are in; it just 
prevents an evil from happening. But right now that looks good.
  I see my friend from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey, has joined us again, and I 
yield to Dr. Gingrey.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  I wanted to at this point interject once again my thoughts as a 
physician Member of this body about the enactment in March of this past 
year, almost 10 months ago now, of the Patient Protection Affordable 
Care Act of 2010, or what we refer to as ObamaCare.

                              {time}  2220

  Mr. AKIN. I thought that was socialized medicine. That's what I call 
it.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Well, there are a number of terms to describe 
it. I think, if you do look at a Canadian system or if you look at a 
British system or many other countries across the world, certainly it 
is a national health insurance program or, certainly, a march in that 
direction, and some people do refer to it as socialized medicine.
  When I joined the Energy and Commerce Committee at the beginning of 
the 111th Congress, when President Obama took office, I had the 
opportunity to serve with our Governor-elect of the great State of 
Georgia, Nathan Deal, who was the ranking member on the Health 
Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce. We saw that, as this bill came 
forward, you know, right

[[Page H8253]]

after several months of trying to pass and, indeed, passing in the 
House so-called ``cap-and-trade,'' not all of the above, that there was 
this great emphasis on a carbon tax and on an energy bill that would 
end up costing every family in this country about $3,000 extra a year 
in utility bills.
  So we spent all of this time on this. Why? Was it because elections 
have consequences or because this was near and dear to the hearts of a 
Nobel laureate for Vice President Al Gore or our very liberal Speaker 
of the House of Representatives, Ms. Pelosi, from Haight-Ashbury? You 
know, I don't know. They were determined, since they had these giant 
majorities, Mr. Speaker, that we were going to do these things come 
heck or high water.
  Then, all of a sudden, you come with this health care bill that costs 
in a very conservative--I don't know--almost ``cook the books'' 
estimate by the Congressional Budget Office of only $1 trillion at a 
time when, as the gentleman's charts depict, we were suffering. The 
American people were suffering. People were out of work. There were 16 
million who were out of work. If you had asked them after 6 months of 
unemployment, Hey, you can have your job back, but we're not going to 
be able to offer you health care, they would have taken it in a minute.
  So it is a matter of priorities, Mr. Speaker, and that is what I want 
to point out to my colleagues. We wasted a lot of time spending a lot 
of money while people were suffering and couldn't support their 
families, while they didn't have jobs and while they were becoming 
frustrated, depressed and angry. By golly, the result was the election 
on November 2.
  I think the President got a wake-up call, and to his credit, he has 
awakened. What we are talking about a lot here tonight is to say we tip 
our hat to him in order to be able to come together, to be willing to 
moderate and to do something to get us back on track.
  Now, I don't know at what point he might, if ever, admit that 
ObamaCare was a mistake, but come the House majority of the Republican 
Party in the 112th Congress, we will, as depicted in our Pledge to 
America, do everything in our power to repeal that expensive 
monstrosity that failed on every promise: if you like what you have in 
health care, you can keep it. It's going to lower the cost of premiums, 
and on and on and on.
  So I yield to my colleague as we continue to have this spirited 
discussion.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, you know, I really appreciate your perspective, 
particularly as a medical doctor.
  As to the whole medicine thing, you know, the public just isn't 
behind it. We have had enough trouble with the government running 
Medicare and Medicaid. As to those things, all of the economists--
liberal and conservative--say that, at the rate they're growing over 
time, because of the changing demographics of the population, they are 
going to put us in the poorhouse nationally in terms of spending.
  Well, if the government can't manage Medicare and Medicaid, how are 
they going to manage the entire medical system?
  The public does not want the Federal Government running our health 
care system, and that's what was shoved down our throats. That $1 
trillion price tag, as you correctly point out, gentleman, that is a 
very optimistic trillion-dollar price tag. It is going to cost much, 
much more than that.
  You're right. The Republican leadership and all of us are committed 
to trying to stop that bill. That's not so easy to do, but at least we 
will try to de-fund it. Eventually, if there are enough votes, we will 
try to repeal it. There are certainly things that need to be done to 
health care in America to improve it but certainly not just throwing it 
under the bus and having all of health care taken over by the Federal 
Government. That has to be repealed, and then we can start with what we 
are going to do to the existing system.
  So that's just one of a whole series of these things, which is just 
runaway Federal spending. Boy, is that ever a recipe for disaster.

  You know, you mentioned your constituents were upset and angry and 
worried and scared and all those kinds of things. The three of us here 
on the floor have been feeling that way also for 2 years. I was ready 
to move away to some island somewhere if the election results hadn't 
come along the way they did. Now, at least, I think there is a little 
ray of hope.
  Today, we've been talking about the fact that we want to change the 
way things are done down here. We've taken a few steps even today, 
announcing how the House is going to be run in a much more businesslike 
kind of way. We're going to know what our schedules are, and we're 
going to know when the last votes of the week are so we'll actually be 
able to plan our time and schedules and do a better job in visiting 
with our constituents. I think that is a very encouraging first step.
  I think the other thing that was very encouraging to me--and I don't 
want to get too much into the touchy-feely department. You know 
engineers don't do well in the touchy-feely department. But I remember 
our first meeting a couple of weeks ago. The Republican Party got 
together in a conference, and we had won the biggest election since 
1946, which I don't remember. I was born in '47, so it was a year 
before I was born. We had the biggest victory we have ever had, and the 
tone in that room was dead sober, and the attitude was:
  We've been given another chance, and it's time for us not to do the 
same old things. It's time for us to really do what is right and to use 
some common sense. Let's get this mess under control. Let's stop the 
Federal spending. Let's start cutting the things that need to be cut, 
and let's start backing off on the taxes in order to get this economy 
back on track.
  We don't think that the American Dream is bureaucrats and food 
stamps. We think it's jobs and paychecks. That's the course that we 
think the public has told us to take. Common sense, a good bit of hard 
work and good management is what is required--and also learning a 
little bit of something from history. That's where we have to be going. 
There is a strong commitment now. Even the President has seen this, and 
we are encouraged.
  Congressman GT, I just really appreciate the fact that you run your 
own business and that you have that just commonsense kind of experience 
to know what it takes to make it work. A lot of Americans understand 
that; but somehow or other, for a couple of years, the majority down 
here just hasn't gotten that.
  The fact of the matter is we are, right now, kind of sitting at this 
precipice. You know, we're just a week or two away from January 1; and 
the question is: What is going to happen on this massive tax increase? 
Are we going to get, after these last 2 years of not only socialized 
medicine, but the idea of cap-and-tax or cap-and-trade or whatever it 
was about the global warming thing?
  You know, I asked my constituents a question on a survey: Are you 
more concerned about global warming or about our dependence on foreign 
oil? Do you have a guess as to what the results on that were? About 80 
percent said, We're worried about being dependent on foreign oil. Let's 
keep this conversation somewhere in the reasonable zone.
  Anyway, I yield to my good friend GT.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I appreciate that.
  For my whole life as a young boy, I grew up in a family-owned 
sporting goods business. It wasn't a very big operation. It really was 
my mom and dad, a brother and a sister. The store was open 7 days a 
week and for 12-hour days. As a teenager, I remember I had the 6 a.m. 
shift on Saturday mornings.
  Mr. AKIN. Whoo, what did you do wrong?
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I felt like I was getting up in the 
middle of night back then. In the hunting season, there was ammunition 
and supplies. In the fishing season, it was bait and minnows; but it 
was a wonderful way to grow up and to be able to see and to live the 
private sector, because that's what it was. We were immersed in it, and 
it was very positive from that standpoint of interacting with the 
public.
  At the same time, it was a front row seat on just how many burdens 
the government can layer on business and on jobs. Whether it was taxes, 
whether it was regulations, they were just incredible, incredible 
burdens.
  You know, I guess I have very fond memories, but I have some very 
useful

[[Page H8254]]

lessons that I take from those early years. I then went on into health 
care and created jobs and managed rehabilitation services and worked 
within a skilled nursing facility.

                              {time}  2230

  We're talking taxes tonight and the impending, looming taxes that 
will go into effect here January 1.
  Probably about 2 months ago, I was in Titusville, Pennsylvania; it's 
where one of my district offices is. We just happened to be having an 
event there one evening. Titusville may sound familiar to those who 
remember their history. That's where we drilled oil for the first time 
anywhere in the world in Titusville, Pennsylvania, 150 years ago. We 
are very proud of that. We call it the valley that changed the world 
with the discovery of oil. But I was talking----
  Mr. AKIN. Would that have been about 1870s or so?
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Yes, absolutely. This is our 151st 
anniversary.
  But I was talking with an individual whose family actually had roots 
maybe going back 151 years. I was talking with this gentleman, and he 
has a family business. His family has been in this business for at 
least 100 years or more. And he talked about how just during his 
lifetime--now this is just his lifetime--he has had to purchase his 
family business from the government three times, every time a 
generation has passed away. That's just morally wrong, and it's 
economically stupid. The fact is this is a company that has, for over a 
century, created and provided really good jobs for that community, for 
that part of Pennsylvania.
  Mr. AKIN. And yet he's having to buy his own company back from the 
government.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Because of the--I guess the official 
word is the ``estate'' tax.
  Mr. AKIN. It's a death tax.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I like to call it what it is: it's a 
death tax. And we know that today, as a result of these tax cuts, the 
schedule that was set up almost 10 years ago, for someone that passes 
away in 2010, the death tax is zero percent.
  Mr. AKIN. They've already been taxed all through their lifetime. They 
have saved something up for their kids and they die.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Which is a part of the American Dream.
  Mr. AKIN. And they want to pass it onto their kids. So the death tax 
is going to tax them, whereas if they had gone out and got drunk and 
gambled it away, they wouldn't have to pay any tax. So what sort of 
incentive is that? It's immoral, you're right. I'm sorry, I didn't mean 
to interrupt.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. No, you're making great points. And I 
think those are points the American people understand, that the 
American Dream is you work hard, you sacrifice, you take risk, you 
accumulate wealth, you make profit, and you want to pass it along to 
your children or grandchildren. You want to provide for them. That is 
the American way, it's the American Dream. And what does the government 
do? The government comes in and takes a large portion of it back.
  There have got to be a lot of people right now thinking that it would 
be much better, more convenient to die between now and December 31 
because the estate, the death tax is zero percent. But if you are 
unfortunate enough and you die 1 minute after midnight on January 1, 
it's 55 percent. If you think about someone that owns a business like 
that gentleman, or a family farm for that matter, I mean, what part of 
a business or a farm do you sell, do you liquidate in order to come up 
with 55 percent? If it's a farm, do you sell the livestock? Do you sell 
the barn, the outbuildings, the acreage, the crops, the equipment, the 
resources, the inventory? If you sell any of those, you don't have a 
business or you don't have a farm. And frankly, people don't have jobs 
because we drive those jobs out. I think there are many taxes like 
that, but that is just one of the most egregious ones and it's coming 
back.
  Mr. AKIN. That death tax is a killer, isn't it?
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. If the gentleman would yield back to me. And 
I would claim time from my friend on this same point that I think we do 
need to elaborate on this.
  I would, Mr. Speaker, suspect that all of my colleagues--certainly 
most of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, the Republican Members 
of the Congress--would philosophically agree that there should be no 
tax on death. Death should not be a taxable event. I think Steve 
Forbes, the brilliant owner, editor and publisher of Forbes magazine, 
said a number of years ago when he was running for President--I will 
always remember this--``no taxation without respiration.'' I love that 
comment. And as a physician, I certainly can relate to it. And again, I 
would prefer that there be no death tax, estate tax, as our friend from 
Pennsylvania, Representative Thompson, has just said. This year there 
is none, there is no taxable event if you die in this calendar year of 
2010; but you better hurry up and do it because come January 1, all of 
a sudden the estate tax goes up to 55 percent with a little old 
exclusion of $1 million. Well, there are many, many, many small 
business men and women and farmers who paid for that investment with 
after-tax dollars that would get hit with that.
  So as part of this compromise, as my colleagues know, Mr. Speaker 
knows, the President sat down with the Republican leadership and said, 
you know, you guys passed a bill on the House floor and it would be a 
45 percent tax on everything above $3.5 million, but we will compromise 
and agree that there will be a $5 million exclusion and the tax on the 
overage would be only 35 percent. In fact, that's what soon-to-be-
former Senator Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas had proposed on the Senate 
side, along with our Republican colleague, John Cornyn from the great 
State of Texas. They wanted to do that. That was the bill in the 
Senate. So basically, again, the President has recognized that.
  So we get down to the point where .03 percent--a very, very low 
number--of estates have any tax at all. Well, do our colleagues on this 
side of the aisle, do the American people say, oh, well, the principle 
is no double taxation, no taxation without respiration, or do we accept 
this compromise where hardly anybody pays an estate tax? Again, these 
are tough questions. They are going to be tough for our Republican 
colleagues in the House and Senate and I guess tough for our Democratic 
colleagues as well because they want the 55 percent and they want the 
exclusion to be $3.5 million or less.

  So these are the things that we are debating. I think the American 
people need to know about it. Mr. Speaker, our colleagues need to think 
about it. But again, I will take the opportunity this evening to 
commend the President to be willing to come that much closer to what 
the American people want.
  Mr. AKIN. Right. I think what Congressman Thompson said earlier about 
it being permanent, that would add a tremendous amount of stability to 
what's going on, particularly if you're trying to think about doing 
estate planning and things like that and it's zero this year and 55 
next year--unless it gets changed to 35 and there is this exemption. 
But how in the world does anybody plan what's going on and how in the 
world can a small business survive?
  You know, if you've got a multitrillion-dollar business and armies of 
accountants and people like that, you've got the flexibility that if 
the tax rules change, you move your business overseas. You don't want 
to create jobs in America, fine. We'll create jobs overseas. You show 
us the rules, we'll play the game. Big business can do that. But those 
small businesses that have most of the jobs in America don't have that 
flexibility.
  And when we hammer them with a 55 percent death tax--which is what's 
fixing to happen, as they would say in Missouri, on January 1, that's 
pretty tough. You could picture a farm and, as you said, what are you 
going to do? Are you going to sell the fields? Are you going to sell 
the tractors and the equipment? Are you going to sell the sheds? What 
are you going to do? You inherit the farm from your dad, you've worked 
it, he's worked it all his life, you've got the homestead there. Are 
you going to sell that, liquidate the whole thing and sell half of your 
farm just so you can pay the government for something that you already 
paid taxes on that you bought with your money?

[[Page H8255]]

  I just can't imagine your discussion, G.T., with the family that 
bought their own business three times. You can see why people get a 
little hot under the collar.
  And then what are we using the money for? That's another big 
question. To bail out the California teachers' pension when they can't 
manage their pension? That makes me mad. In the State of Missouri, 
we've got teachers too. They've got a pension, and they're expected to 
manage the pension properly. If they don't, it goes bankrupt and they 
don't get their pension money. So why are we bailing out the teachers 
of some State that can't manage their own pension? I don't understand 
that. That's why I don't like that great big old bailout. It was a 
scam, and it didn't work and a whole lot of people are hurting.

                              {time}  2240

  I was asked by a very liberal talk show host, What are you going to 
say to somebody that lost their job? I told them, I can't say anything. 
These are the policies that this liberal Congress allowed to happen, 
and this isn't what we need to be doing. We need to be getting back on 
to some good solid economic footing.
  I think we've probably got about 3 or 4 minutes, but I would be happy 
to yield to my good friend from Pennsylvania. Congressman Thompson, if 
you would like to add a couple of finishing comments.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Sure. Just real briefly, you had a 
chart there that showed a lot of different spending schemes, health 
care, IMF bailout, the bank bailout, the omnibus. We're talking 
billions of dollars are being spent and all in the name of supposedly 
good causes. I question many of those as being very ineffective.
  Mr. AKIN. You've got your Wall Street bailout here, economic 
stimulus. Boy, that was a doozy. Here's that socialized medicine at $1 
trillion. That's the Optimist Society's version. They are not going to 
get by with $1 trillion on that. And the IMF bailout. Yeah, there are 
some winners there.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I think the absolute best economic 
stimulus that we could have is extending these tax cuts. I think that 
what happens as a result of that is it provides some certainty back 
into businesses, especially those 2.1 million small businesses that 
create 60, 70 percent of our jobs that you referenced, Mr. Akin. And I 
think if we create that certainty, we're going to see a lot of business 
plans take off. And what we're going to see is unemployment will go 
down because jobs will be created, and people will have more 
prosperity, and that will solve a lot of problems that we're 
experiencing currently.
  Mr. AKIN. Yes. We're saying, Jobs and a paycheck beat bureaucrats and 
food stamps.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. If the gentleman from Missouri would yield, 
and I thank him very much.
  I am going to ask him to give me permission to speak and to shift 
gears just a little bit. I know we're talking about the economy, and 
that's the main point of the Special Order hour this evening. But we 
had another vote this afternoon that was pretty important as well, 
barely passed on the House floor maybe an hour or so ago, the so-called 
DREAM Act.
  Mr. AKIN. The nightmare act.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. The DREAM Act which people in the 11th 
district of Georgia, northwest Georgia think is a nightmare. It may be 
a dream if these students want to go back to their own country and 
attend one of their great universities. But bottom line is, Mr. 
Speaker, I wanted to say, and I will put in the Record, that I came to 
the floor and, with my electronic vote card, voted a resounding ``no.'' 
I had to step out quickly, only to come back in and find out that it 
wasn't recorded. That was very disappointing to me because I think that 
vote was to allow about 2.5 million people in this country illegally to 
ultimately be granted amnesty, and I think it was a very boneheaded 
wrong vote.
  And with that, I will yield back to my gentleman friend from 
Missouri.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, you brought up a tender topic here basically. And I 
appreciate you gentlemen joining us. I appreciate your commitment to 
the American Dream. And God bless you and the American public.

                          ____________________