[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 12, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H2588]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                        A GOVERNMENT THAT WORKS

  (Mr. BOSWELL asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BOSWELL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to continue a discussion 
started by a good friend and former Iowa Congressman, Berkley Bedell, 
in yesterday's Des Moines Register, page 9A.
  In Congressman Bedell's column titled, ``Those Who Own America Should 
Help Pay for Government,'' Congressman Bedell argues that Congress's 
budget focus on cutting costs instead of generating revenue is 
fundamentally skewed and not good business.
  He writes, ``Show me a company that ignores revenue and focuses on 
cutting costs, and I will show you a firm that is headed for failure. 
Show me a government that ignores revenue and focuses on cutting costs, 
and I will show you a government that is a failure.''
  Congressman Bedell writes that corporations and the richest Americans 
need to properly contribute to the government through taxes that are 
relevant to their wealth. For me, this means eliminating billions a 
year in subsidies to multibillion-dollar oil and gas companies; it 
means ending mortgage deductions for vacation homes and yachts that 
cost taxpayers billions a year in lost revenue; it means ending the 
Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent to increase our revenue 
by more than $40 billion a year.
  Americans deserve a government that works, and blindly cutting costs 
and services doesn't accomplish that.

             [From the Des Moines Register, Apr. 12, 2011]

  Guest opinion: Those who own America should help pay for government

                          (By: Berkley Bedell)

       I started a fishing tackle manufacturing business, Berkley 
     and Co., with $50 saved from my newspaper route when I was 15 
     years old.
       From the beginning, my main focus was on sales and revenue.
       The business was successful.
       In my 50s, I ran for Congress. I won and appointed a person 
     to run the company. He focused on cutting costs rather than 
     building revenue and the business was soon headed for 
     bankruptcy.
       My son, Tom, came back to Iowa to run the company. He 
     focused on marketing and research to build revenue, and when 
     he sold the company a few years ago, it was by far the 
     largest most successful fishing tackle manufacturing company 
     in the nation.
       Show me a company that ignores revenue and focuses on 
     cutting costs, and I will show you a firm that is headed for 
     failure. Show me a government that ignores revenue and 
     focuses on cutting costs, and I will show you a government 
     that is a failure.
       Today that is exactly what we have in our state and federal 
     governments.
       Like most people and most corporations, I would prefer not 
     to have to pay taxes. I am now 90 years old. I lived during 
     the middle of the 1900s when our top income tax rate varied 
     between 70 and 91 percent--more than double that of today. I 
     saw what we can do when we properly tax ourselves to build a 
     better nation.
       Today the top 1 percent of households have over 38 percent 
     of all privately held stock, 60 percent of financial 
     securities and 62 percent of business equity. The top 10 
     percent own 80 percent to 90 percent of stocks, bonds, trust 
     funds and business equities, and over 75 percent of non-home 
     real estate. Since financial health is what counts as far as 
     control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10 
     percent of the people own the United States of America.
       My wife and I are part of that 10 percent. We are heroes in 
     our hometown, just as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are 
     national heroes.
       Like them, we are not bad people, we want to be good people 
     and contribute so we have formed a foundation for alternative 
     medicine (FAIM.org) to try to do good with our money.
       But our government is all screwed up. Instead of using 
     everyone's wealth to build a better society as we did in the 
     1950s, we are cutting taxes to the rich and corporate America 
     while we cut back on services and jobs for the masses. You do 
     not create jobs by firing teachers and lowering wages.
       People are starting to rise up in Wisconsin, Ohio and other 
     states. They are correct to be disturbed and to protest. I 
     hope they will keep it up. I hope they realize the basic 
     problem. It is, revenue matters!
       Until we properly tax corporate America and those of us who 
     can afford it, and use those revenues to put our people back 
     to work, clean up the environment, replace fossil fuels, 
     reduce the deficit and bring back the prosperity we had in 
     the middle of the last century, I believe we all need to join 
     those protesters.
       Having served in Congress, I have seen how political 
     contributions from the wealthy, and now corporations, control 
     our government. It is time for the people--all of us--to do 
     as did the people of Egypt and join the street marches to 
     demand that our government bring back the time we had in my 
     youth, when we worked together, rich and poor, to contribute 
     the tax revenue needed to build a nation that was the envy of 
     the world.

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