[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 111 (Friday, July 22, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H5389-H5394]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICA'S DEBT CEILING
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for
the remainder of the hour as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized
to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I
always appreciate the honor and the privilege.
I, like every Member in this Congress, and most Americans, have some
strong opinions about the workings and the necessity for this Congress
to step up and lead, as we have led, on the issue of the debt ceiling.
And I will start with this: Some weeks ago, the Secretary of the
Treasury, Tim Geithner, laid out a date; and he said August 2 is a hard
break deadline beyond which we can't extend our borrowing and our
spending and that the government will not be able to pay its bills, and
we will have to default on our debt. That, I think, Madam Speaker, is
an irresponsible statement on the part of the Secretary of the
Treasury, and we should keep in mind that his first boss is the
President of the United States.
So the things that come out of the mouth of the Secretary of the
Treasury often reflect the best interests of the President and perhaps
are explicit or implied directive that comes from the President. And I
happen to have this belief that when someone goes to work for the
President, their judgment becomes what they think the President would
do if he happened to be doing their job.
I have watched the transition of executive offices over the years, in
places like the Governor's office in Iowa, where I come from and have
served in the Iowa Senate before I came here. I watched as the
transition in the executive branch took place, and I watched as some of
the people that survived the transition did so by accommodating their
positions to that of their new chief executive officer, their new
Governor.
I watched as the United States of America has transitioned from a
George W. Bush administration to a Barack Obama administration. And I
have watched as some of the survivors of that transition accommodated
their positions to their new President, their new Commander in Chief.
So I'm a little cynical about the knowledge base and what is declared
to be the deep convictions of some of the appointees of the President.
When I hear the Secretary of the Treasury say, This August 2 date is
the date beyond which we can't go, we can't borrow beyond that, and so
we'll have to start defaulting on our debt, why does Tim Geithner say
that? I say he does because that accommodates the President's argument
that this ``we've got to put up or shut up date'' is a hard date,
August 2, beyond which is a financial calamity. I don't believe that,
Madam Speaker. I don't believe we get into a financial calamity if we
go on the other side of August 2.
It may be a fairly accurate calculated date, beyond which we won't
have the borrowing capacity to continue to pay our bills on time. I
think that's probably close to August 2. I don't know that it's the
accurate date of August 2, however. So I just caution people to think
about what it really means when you hear a Cabinet official take a
position and promise Americans that they can count on their word. You
know, they're sometimes falling on their sword for the President of the
United States.
In fact, the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, doesn't give me
a lot of confidence. Just a few weeks ago as he was under oath before
the Small Business Committee, I asked him his opinion on several of the
top economists that America and the world have
[[Page H5390]]
produced throughout history. A couple of those people would be Adam
Smith and John Maynard Keynes. And Secretary of the Treasury Tim
Geithner's response was--and I remind you, Madam Speaker, under oath--
his response was, he is not an economist; therefore, he wouldn't offer
an opinion on lead economists in the history of the country and the
world because he's not a trained economist.
So when Tim Geithner tells us that we have a deadline of August 2 and
it's a potential calamity, is he giving us an economic opinion? He
refused to give an economic opinion when he was under oath. So when
he's in front of the press, is that a different equation? Is he an
economist or isn't he? He says he's not. If he says he's not, then
should I accept his word that the Secretary of the Treasury is not an
economist?
Therefore, I would have to tell you, Madam Speaker, I would discount
his opinion because he's a self-professed noneconomist. And it seems as
though America wants to accept the word of the Secretary of the
Treasury even though he has put disclaimers out there on his own
credibility multiple times. And I will just put another disclaimer out
there on his own credibility by saying the President of the United
States impacts the opinion of his Cabinet members and his other
appointees.
So here's what the President has said, Madam Speaker, and that's
this. In so many words, speaking of it, he said, I can't guarantee that
the pensions of our military or that Social Security for our seniors
will be paid on time. That was a statement that he made a little over a
week ago. Yet I listened to that. Madam Speaker, I have to tell you
that it wasn't a directly factual statement made by the President. He
has to know this. He has to know the truth.
The truth is the President of the United States is the only person
who can guarantee that our military pensions are paid on time, and he's
the only person that can guarantee our Social Security is paid on time.
He's the only person that can guarantee that the revenue stream that's
coming in, which is $200 billion a month, on average, would be used in
a priority fashion to service our debt, to pay our military on time, to
pay the military pensions on time, to take care of our national
security interests, to pay the Social Security on time, and to pay the
Medicare bills on time.
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Take the seniors off the table, along with our military, as I have
clearly advocated when I introduced the Promises Act a little over a
week ago. The Promises Act pays our military first, services our debt
second; goes no further than that. We did a major press conference on
that issue--myself, Congressman Gohmert, and Michele Bachmann of
Minnesota. We laid that principle out.
There are others that have good bills out here. Tom McClintock has a
good bill that requires that we service our debt, pay the debt on time.
It's called the Full Faith and Credit Act. It's mirrored, I believe,
off of that of Pat Toomey in the Senate. It has a good number of
cosponsors.
Louie Gohmert has a good bill that guarantees that our troops are
paid on time every time. It doesn't go far enough. It's got a sunset
date on it. It doesn't happen to include hitting a debt ceiling. It
addresses the funding gap that came from the CR a few months ago, but
the concept of it is good, and he's led very well on it.
Dan Webster from Florida has a very good prioritization bill. His
bill, and should we send it to to the President and it becomes law,
services the debt first. That's about $20 billion a month. It pays the
military second. That's about $11 billion a month. And now that's $31
billion. If you divide 31 billion by 200 billion, 31 divided by 200
works out to be 15.2 percent. So 15.2 percent of the incoming revenue
stream is all that it takes to guarantee that our military is paid on
time every time, and that they, in harm's way, defending our liberty
with their lives on the line and sacrificing their lives from time to
time, should never have to wonder if their earned paycheck is going to
be transferred into their account for their family on time every time.
That should be a guarantee that this Congress makes, and it should be a
guarantee that lasts for all time. My bill does that.
I believe the language in Daniel Webster's bill does that as well.
But, in any case, his services the debt first, pays the military
second, provides that the President can direct funding into national
security issues third, pays the Social Security fourth and the Medicare
bills fifth. I actually think his is the best bill. I would take it and
massage it and flip a couple of things within it, but I am not taking a
deep objection to it, nor do I think that we wouldn't get the job done
with Dan Webster's bill. I think we would.
But I would like to see a prioritization bill be moved here in the
House of Representatives and send it over to the Senate. We've already
passed Cut, Cap, and Balance. We've said, Here's the debt ceiling
increase. You send a constitutional amendment to the States so they can
ratify an amendment that guarantees that this Congress would be bound
to a balanced budget.
The balanced budget amendment passed here in this House in 1995, and
it was messaged down that hallway to the Senate in '95. And it was
brought up on the floor of the Senate with the votes counted for
passage. One Senator flipped unexpectedly, and the balanced budget
amendment failed on the floor of the Senate that day in '95. Had that
balanced budget amendment passed, it would have been messaged to the
States for ratification.
It requires three-quarters of the States to ratify a constitutional
amendment, which clearly would have been the case for a balanced budget
amendment. Had the States had that opportunity, I believe they would
have ratified a balanced budget amendment. Had they done so, I believe,
Madam Speaker, that we would not be having this discussion today. I
believe that we would have enshrined in our Constitution a requirement
that this Congress be bound by the same standards that most of the
States are, balanced budget amendments. And if that had been the case,
we would not be having this discussion. We wouldn't have this
overspending. We wouldn't have more than $3 trillion in deficit
spending that's been driven by the President of the United States.
Some say Republicans are responsible, too. Republicans spent too much
money, too, and in that case, I'd agree with that.
But here's the real comparison, and it's this: During the height of
the Iraq war, with expenses going out in armed conflict in the Middle
East, when things were going badly there, this Congress came within
$160 billion of balancing the budget. A little bit more economic
activity, a little tweak here or there, and we would have seen a
balanced budget in the middle of the past decade, in the middle of the
Iraq war. We fell $160 billion short. All right. I'll take that on us.
We should have done a better job. We should have had enough cushion
that we achieved a balanced budget. We didn't get that done.
But today, the President's deficit is $1.65 trillion. And I no longer
have to say trillion with a ``t.'' I used to have to say billion with a
``b.'' Sometimes people were thinking million when you said billion.
But now we talk about trillions, and then the concept of we don't have
to say trillion with a ``t'' anymore. It comes out of our mouths. We're
discussing trillions of dollars.
So the President has given us a $1.65 trillion single-year deficit,
more than 10 times greater than the $160 billion deficit that
Republicans had during the height of the Iraq war. That's his
responsibility, over $3 trillion in deficit spending in two short
budget years.
By the way, no budget approved by Democrats during that period of
time. Nothing brought up in the Senate now. We did pass the Ryan
budget. We voted on an RSC budget. I stuck with the toughest and the
strongest budget that we could bring to this floor, one that balanced
in less than 9 years. I'm a little embarrassed to say that. I'm a
little embarrassed to say a budget that balances in less than 9 years,
but it's easier to say that than it is a budget that balances in 26
years. And that's the budget that Democrats voted against because it
didn't spend enough money.
The Ryan budget balances in 26 years, when my sons are ready for
retirement. That's too long. I want something much shorter than that.
I'd like
[[Page H5391]]
to find a way to balance this budget tomorrow if I could, but the price
to do that would be too many calamities across this country. So we need
to get there as fast as we can before the financial markets leave us.
We need to get there before we become the Greece of the world. This
isn't going to wait 26 years to be resolved.
And if you want to push the American economy and our credit over the
edge, just adopt the ideas that come out of the Democrat side of the
aisle or out of the Harry Reid majority in the Senate--the ideas that
we should extend the debt ceiling without restraint; whatever the
President asks for, give it to him; let him borrow and spend money--and
somehow or another, the magic of Obamanomics is going to create this
huge economic chain letter of spending. There's always another sucker
in a chain letter, isn't there? The President believes that. He
believes there's always another sucker in a chain letter. And so he
wants to borrow and borrow and borrow and spend and spend and spend and
take something like FDR's New Deal to the infinite power and apply it
to today's economy, and somehow the magic of the consumer-driven
economy will save us from our lack of discipline, and the economy will
start to grow again.
I'll submit, Madam Speaker, another viewpoint on this. I think this.
I think that last summer was not ``recovery summer'' as it was declared
to be by the President of the United States. Nobody is saying this
summer is ``recovery summer'' with 9.2 percent unemployment. I would
submit instead that we have to recover from Obamanomics before we
actually will be in recovery.
We may have already recovered from the downward spiral of the
recession that was the financial crisis that came to us in the fall of
2008. We may have already recovered from that, but we've not recovered
from Obamanomics. We've not recovered from the economic stimulus plan.
We've not recovered from the $3 trillion in unnecessary spending. We
have interest. We have to service this debt.
I think there are a good number of Americans by now that have lived
through this, and on the other side of this recession that we've been
in, they will be learning this again, this thing that I know from
experience, and it's this: If you are too highly leveraged, another
loan--borrowing more money with more interest to pay and more principal
to pay--doesn't sometimes help you. Sometimes when you're too highly
leveraged, you just simply have to go broke and declare that you're
insolvent, and now maybe you get a chance to start again.
But businesses have been beaten down, beaten down, beaten down, and
along comes a natural disaster, like, for example--to inject it into
this Congressional Record--the natural disaster of the Missouri River
floods of 2011 that go on right now. We have victims that are
underwater now and that are so far behind that a disaster loan at low
interest rates over a long term doesn't help them because they won't be
able to service their loan.
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They won't have the cash flow to do it. They will just have another
interest payment; they will just have another principal payment, and it
weighs them down to the point where they can't recover.
This Federal Government could find itself in the same position. The
Federal Government has to pay the interest; the Federal Government has
to pay the principal. Who's going to pay that? The American people. It
has to come out of the profits of the private sector in order for that
to happen.
And when we look at the growth in government spending and government
spending-created jobs when it's created from borrowed money, it's got
to come from somewhere. Where does it come from? It comes from the
private sector. What does the private sector produce that can be tapped
and taxed by, let's say, Tim Geithner, the IRS? Well, first of all, the
Federal Government taxes all productivity in America. Every single
thing that's productive the Federal Government has figured out how to
tax.
If you punch a time clock in the morning--let's say Monday morning, 8
o'clock, Americans by the millions step up and punch that time clock.
From that instant forward, Uncle Sam has his hand out. It just comes
out automatically. He hears the time clock, and his hand goes out. It's
like a Pavlovian reflex that comes from Uncle Sam. There's a mystical
little image of Uncle Sam there beside that time clock, and when he
hears that noise, it's like Pavlov's dog. When he heard the bell ring,
he salivated because he got fed when the bell rang. And when the time
clock kicks in, Uncle Sam's hand goes out.
And all the money that you earn from that moment forward until he
gets his fill goes into Uncle Sam's hand for that day. And some time--
oh, maybe, if you're lucky, before noon--he gets enough of it that he
can put his hand in his pocket and walk away for the day. Uncle Sam has
taxed--he has punished, actually--your productivity because there is a
disincentive to produce if the government is going to take your
production from you and put it in its pocket.
Now, we don't mind sharing some of this. I mean, we go to church and
provide our donations there, and Americans are very generous people
when it comes to charity. There is no one more generous than Americans
when it comes to that. But it is discouraging to have the Federal
Government take the first dollar from the first hour and every dollar
from every hour until they get all that they want. But that's what
happens.
But out of that, out of that first lien on all productivity--and by
the way, Madam Speaker, it's not just those people who punch the time
clock; it's those people that work on commission, too. If your
commission check is, say, 10 percent of what you sell, Uncle Sam is
going to get his out of that before you get your commission. You all
know that. If you have earnings, savings or investment, Uncle Sam is
going to get his tax out of that, too. It is a punishment for
productivity.
The Federal Government taxes all productivity in America, and they
tax it first. They have the first lien on all earnings, savings and
investment in America. And then out of that--and by the way, that
private sector that I'm talking about produces goods and services that
have a marketable value here in this country and abroad. That's our
export market. That's what has value. And the rest of all of this is
just what supports it and what runs off of taxes on it, but you have to
increase the productivity of your goods and services that have a
marketable value domestically and abroad if you're going to recover
from this economy.
The private sector in America has to produce those goods and services
in a volume and in a competitive way adequate to recover now from
Obamanomics, to recover from the more than $3 trillion in irresponsible
spending. And it has to have enough confidence that the government is
not going to step in and punish that productivity and tax that
productivity by increasing taxes on it or putting that heavy burden of
regulation on it, and someone put out a number here a couple of weeks
ago that the annual burden of regulation is something like $1.7
trillion a year in America.
I can tell you, Madam Speaker, what it was like for me when I started
a business up in 1975. I didn't have any money, I didn't have any
capital, but I thought I knew how to do something that had a marketable
value, and I had enough confidence to step up and do that; but my fear
was, not that I couldn't do the work or that I couldn't market, sell my
skills or that I couldn't manage the books or fix the equipment or get
it moved to the location or do the job, do all the things that were
part of the function of the business that I started.
My fear was that the government would come in and punish me in a way
that I didn't expect, that the government would come in and maybe do an
IRS audit at a time that--we all feared the IRS then. I think we do
now. That happened. It happened over and over again. It looked like the
IRS wanted to haunt me there for a while. And to this day, I don't
think that I did anything other than comply with all of those laws. I
was punished anyway.
Another fear I had was: What about government regulation? How could I
possibly know which government regulator would come swooping in on me
and shut my business down and punish me with penalties that I couldn't
anticipate? Fortunately, I was never really at that point where the
regulators
[[Page H5392]]
came in and shut me down in that fashion, but many businesses have
been. The weight of this regulation--if that's the number, $1.7
trillion a year--is a tremendous amount of American capital that is
consumed in trying to comply with regulators.
I would pose this question, Madam Speaker: Out of the millions of
businesses that there are, let's just say, does anyone know of a single
business in America that has ever uttered a statement or put up on
their Web site or printed a business card that would say words to the
effect of: ``We are in compliance with all government regulations''?
Can anybody think of a single business that has made such a statement
or taken such a stand? I'd say not.
Now, I ask that question because it is a good question that calls us
to examine why it is that no business claims that they're complying
with all government regulations. The reason is because it's impossible,
Madam Speaker.
Years ago, I had a task of doing seminars in five different States at
State conventions. And one of the things that I began to do was ask my
colleagues who were in similar business--and these were self-employed
people. Most of them started the businesses themselves. Sometimes they
were second- and third-generation businesses as King Construction is
today, a second-generation business.
But I would ask the question, How many agencies regulate our trade,
Earth-moving business? How many agencies regulate our trade? And so
they would say, well, the EPA does and the DNR does and the IRS does
and the DOT does and the tax man does. And as we began writing that
down on a--it was a chalkboard in those days--we came to this
conclusion that we were directly regulated by 43 different agencies. So
I would begin to ask the question--in a closed room, no press--are you
in compliance with these EPA regulations? And then we would have a long
discussion about how hard it was.
And they were never comfortable, even back then in the eighties, that
they were in compliance with the EPA regulations, because they could
always be read in a different way by the next generation of
environmental extremists that would get a job. Where would you go? What
if you're genetically born to be an environmental extremist? Where
would you look for a job? The EPA. And wouldn't you think that you had
a cause that was as worthy as the cause of your father or your mother,
who advanced the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act and a
number of the other environmental legislation that passed through here
without a lot of restraint in the seventies, and had some justification
then, and did clean up our waters and our sewers and our landfills and
continue to do so to this day?
They had a cause. They were on a crusade of environmental clean-up
back in the seventies, and now their children have jobs working for the
EPA, and they have a belief and a conviction and a crusade that is as
powerful to them as it was to their parents or their successors, the
earlier generation.
But we've cleaned up the environment a lot since the seventies. Most
people now enjoy clean water and good sanitary sewer systems and a
pretty good system of handling the waste that comes out of society. But
the people that are involved as regulators don't see it that way
because they have a cause, and now they think they need to trudge
forward on a cause. They will never be satisfied because that's what
they do.
So regulations are never going to be all complied with; they keep
changing the rules as you go forward. Now they want to regulate anybody
that has a 1,000-gallon fuel tank, that it has to have a storage levee
or dike built around it or some type of a structural containment for
that, as if there's going to be a spill in every location and it can't
be cleaned up. Well, we know they can be cleaned up. We don't have a
problem, but they have a solution for us regardless. That's just the
EPA. And we can go on down the line.
Is anybody in compliance with every IRS opinion?
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The old story goes this way. If you want an argument, just ask two
lawyers their opinion. Well, if you want an argument, just ask two
representatives of the IRS their opinion and you will get two different
opinions, almost as a rule. Anything that's halfway contentious, you'll
get two different opinions, which means no one can be confident they
are in compliance with the IRS rules because the rules aren't clear
enough. Even the people who enforce them can't agree what they are. We
can go on down the line.
In my State, the Department of Natural Resources, they do enforce the
EPA rules. There are conflicting opinions there, and the conflicting
opinions go on and on and on. But, Madam Speaker, it's not just 43
agencies. Those are the 43 that we identified that regulated my trade
back in the 1980s. Now there's a Web site called Constitution Daily
that counted these all up a couple of years ago, and they came up with
682 different agencies. Now, I'll admit, these are departments and
divisions of agencies, but 682 entities that regulate in America--682.
No one person could memorize them all. It's impossible to know all of
the regulations that they have written.
We have ObamaCare now coming at us, grinding up and consuming
American liberty. And what do we get out of that? 2,600 pages of
legislation, and the regulations at this point have reached over 8,700
pages of regulations just on ObamaCare. And we saw here the other day
that the CEO of Home Depot said he believes that ObamaCare, itself,
will generate over 150,000 pages of regulation.
Now, it makes it real clear, even if you are a huge, huge
corporation, you cannot analyze all of this and be sure that you are in
compliance with regulations. So what do businesses do? One is they
don't start up because of fear of all of this. Who in their right mind
would start up a business right now that employed 51 people, for
starters? They would be under the requirement to establish the health
insurance plan that the government would approve for every one of their
employees. So instead, they sit on their capital and they don't invest,
and part of it is the tax burden.
Another thing we know is if this Congress doesn't act between now and
the end of 2012, we will see a huge tax increase. That was part of the
negotiations last fall that bridged us over until we get past another
Presidential election. So we have a huge tax increase ahead of us when
the Bush brackets expire, and it triggers back in all of those
brackets--all of that going on--while there is $23.6 billion that is
automatically appropriated, that $23.6 billion of the $105.5 billion
that is automatically appropriated, and I say deceptively appropriated
in ObamaCare, itself.
So we have ObamaCare regulations going in place. The roots of
ObamaCare are going down. The American people are starting to think
that we don't have the determination here in this House to repeal
ObamaCare.
I come here, Madam Speaker, to remind you and anybody that might be
listening to this deliberation here on the floor of the House that this
House has passed the repeal of ObamaCare. Every Republican voted to
repeal ObamaCare. We sent it over to the Senate. The Senate also held a
vote, and every Republican in the Senate voted to repeal ObamaCare.
However, they didn't pass the repeal in the Senate, and so the repeal
failed. Well, that had something to do with the President, who has a
lot of belief in his signature piece of legislation. His future and his
destiny are wrapped up in ObamaCare.
However, we know that the American people have said that they want
all of ObamaCare ripped out by the roots. They want it gone, lock,
stock, and barrel, with not one shred, not one DNA particle of
ObamaCare left behind. The American people understand that ObamaCare is
a malignant tumor that is metastasizing and consuming the liberty of
the American people, and it must be repealed. This House is resolute in
their repealing of ObamaCare.
We have also passed out of this House with a significant majority the
legislation that cuts off all funding that would be used to enforce or
implement ObamaCare. We did that as a part of the CR that came out of
here that finally the President signed. They stripped the funding out
of it and voted it out in the Senate at the direction of Harry Reid.
So, Madam Speaker, this House is resolute. The American people are
resolute. And I will make this prediction
[[Page H5393]]
that I think needs to be understood, and that is this: If President
Obama is reelected in 2012, that will guarantee that all of ObamaCare
will be implemented and enforced. That operation of its implementation
will be completed by 2014. That's kind of the schedule that it's on
now. If the President is reelected, we get ObamaCare as the law of the
land in perpetuity.
If he is not and we elect another President, a different President,
that will be on the foundation that we will repeal ObamaCare under the
signature of the next President of the United States.
I see that the Speaker of the House has arrived on the floor, and I'd
be happy to yield to whatever cause that might be.
Mr. BOEHNER. Let me thank my colleague for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, there is a huge gulf between Washington, D.C., and the
American people. They are dealing with tough times. They're struggling
to pay their bills. They look to Washington, and they see politicians
who can't stop spending money, their money.
Listen, we're broke, and we need to stop the out-of-control spending
spree that's going on in Washington, D.C.
The House has acted. We passed a bill that raised the debt limit,
cuts spending, puts real reforms in place, and requires that Congress
send to the States a balanced budget amendment. It's called Cut, Cap,
and Balance. We've done our job.
The Democrats who run Washington have done nothing. They can't stop
spending the American people's money. They won't, and they have
refused. The Senate majority leader says that they won't offer a plan
to cut spending or a plan to raise the debt limit. Frankly, that's
irresponsible.
Mr. Speaker, where is their plan?
President Obama talks about being the adult in the room. Where is his
plan to cut spending and raise the debt limit?
Listen, we're in the fourth quarter here. We're fighting for jobs;
we're fighting for the country's future, and we're fighting for the
American people.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, may I inquire how much time I
have remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gardner). The gentleman has
approximately 12 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am very happy that the Speaker arrived on the floor to make that
point. The point is this: We have passed Cut, Cap, and Balance. We have
done our job. Now the challenge is for the United States Senate and the
President of the United States to do their job.
I would prefer they just accept the model that has been messaged down
that hallway over to the Senate, and I'd prefer that the President
would endorse that and step up in the next few minutes and say let's
get this done. This can be done in a very short period of time. All we
have to do is agree. Instead, the President and the Democrats in the
majority in the Senate seem to want to insist upon tax increases being
part of any package that might come through.
Well, this goose that lays the golden egg is the free enterprise
private sector goose. This goose has to live off of some profits, and
they have to have profit in order to have jobs.
I would add to the Speaker's statement the question about it has been
about jobs. We've done our job. This is about jobs. But I think we fail
to remind the American people that wages are what pay for jobs. Nobody
is going to say, I have a job, but it doesn't pay. The money has to
come from somewhere. Where does it come from?
That needs to be stated and restated that the money for wages that
pays for jobs has to come out of profit. Nobody can operate at a loss,
so companies have to make some money. If they don't have an opportunity
to do so because of the burden of taxes or because of the burden of
regulation or the burden of the indecision in not knowing what the
government is going to do next, which keeps a lot of that capital on
the sidelines, they are not going to expand or do new hires. In fact,
they're not going to provide wages and benefit packages of increases
unless they have profit.
{time} 1220
So I'm one of those people that thinks I want businesses to make
money. I want them to make money, and I want them to expand the jobs,
and I want them to invest the money with confidence they can make more.
If it goes to their head too far and they become too vertically
integrated or too monopolistic, then it's up to the entrepreneurs out
there to take a look and say, I think I can gather the capital together
and compete against them and provide a good or a service that has a
better value--and make money doing it. And in doing so, that profit
turns into jobs.
I am one who has met payroll for over 1,440 consecutive weeks. I made
it every week on time. There were times that we didn't do very well in
our household because I paid me last. I paid the employees first
because they're the frontline troops. I paid the interest at the bank
second because I had to have the capital to operate. You set those
priorities when you go through those things. But jobs come from profit.
And let's have a scenario that allows businesses to invest and to have
confidence in the future. And Cut, Cap, and Balance does lay out the
right scenario.
I know that Speaker Boehner has been concerned about hitting this
August 2 deadline that I think is not as hard a deadline as Tim
Geithner believes it is. I think the Secretary of the Treasury is
carrying water for the President of the United States and putting
statements out there. I think the President of the United States is
willfully scaring seniors.
I think he's doing so when he says that he can't guarantee that
military pensions or Social Security would be paid on time. Mr.
Speaker, yes, they can. The only person on the planet that can
guarantee they would be paid on time is the President of the United
States. So you couldn't be any more wrong than when he says he can't
guarantee it. Yes, he can. Does he know this truth? Can he not
understand his job? He seems to exert his power where it doesn't exist.
Doesn't he know that he can exert his power where it does exist?
I'll just tell this anecdote that was part of a political commercial,
and I'll let people draw their own conclusions on this. Back in 1996,
when Bill Clinton was up for reelection, there was a commercial that
was run, and it was the face and voice of--a lot of us think of him as
Moses since he passed away--Charlton Heston. He looked into the camera,
and he was speaking presumably to President Clinton when he said, Mr.
President, when you say something that's wrong and you don't know that
it's wrong, that's a mistake. But when you say something that's wrong
and you know that it's wrong, that's a lie. That was what Charlton
Heston said back in 1996.
I reflect upon those words today, and I make this point that I know
the truth. The American people need to know the truth. And that truth
is the President of the United States can set the priorities on how to
spend the $200 billion a month on average that comes in in revenue
stream. All he has to do is step outside the Oval Office, step up to
the microphones in the East Room or outside in this nice, beautiful,
warm summertime we have in Washington, D.C., and say, I'm going to set
those priorities.
If we can't make a deal with Speaker Boehner, who was just here on
the floor, and with Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell and all the folks
that have to vote in the Senate--and by the way, the people that have
to vote here in the House--if we can't make a deal, here's what I'd do.
The President could do this in the next minute. I'm going to make sure
our troops get paid first--on time every time. He can say that. He can
say, And right behind that $11 billion a month comes $20 billion a
month out of the funding stream we have. Whether we borrow or not, I'm
going to guarantee that we service our debt, $20 billion. And then, I
want to make sure to take care of the national security issues. Those
things will change, but I'll work those priorities. Right behind that
we'll pay Social Security, and right behind that we'll pay Medicare.
If the President stood up and said that, we would have confidence
that he isn't going to be in the business of scaring seniors or putting
doubt into the minds of our military while they are dodging bullets in
places like Afghanistan. We would have confidence. But instead, he says
he can't guarantee. Mr. Speaker, we know he can.
[[Page H5394]]
We know he can guarantee. We should push that on him out of this House
to let him know where we stand so the American people understand there
is a moral standard here. One is: Tell the truth. The second moral
standard is: Pay our military. The third moral standard is: Guarantee
the full faith and credit of the United States Government. I've laid
out the rest of these priorities, Mr. Speaker.
Cut, Cap, and Balance is an important position to stand on. This
leverage that's here now must be used or we shirk our responsibility.
Had the leverage been stronger back in 1995, that extra vote in the
Senate that I spoke about some minutes ago would have been there, I
believe. I believe the balanced budget amendment would have been sent
to the States, and I believe the States would have ratified it. If that
had been part of the Constitution the day I came here in January of
2003, I wouldn't have had to walk around on this floor and go find the
chairman of the Budget Committee and say, Where's our balanced budget?
And I wouldn't have gotten the answer back that I did get that day, We
can't balance the budget. It's too hard. Well, if it was too hard in
January of 2003, how hard is it now? It is a lot harder.
Yes, we can balance the budget. The States do that. The question
becomes: When we send a balanced budget amendment to the States, do
they ratify it? A lot of them would right away. Some of them would hold
a special session to ratify a balanced budget to send that message as
quickly as possible. But then you get out there to some of those States
that have decided that they want to do irresponsible spending.
California and Illinois come to mind. A lot of States went to
austerity. They decided, We're going to borrow money, and we're going
to ask the Federal Government to bail us out. In those States, if
they're needed for ratification, there will have to be a changing of
the political guard within their State legislatures. That means
constitutional conservatives will step up, step out of their normal
walk of life, advance themselves as candidates to run for State
legislatures on the agenda of: I will go there, and I will push to
ratify a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget. Those
candidates that stand on that position will be elected in significant
numbers in the States where they're needed. And over a period of time
we have a chance that the State legislatures would ratify--three-
quarters of them--a balanced budget amendment. If that happens, it
would be a wonderful gift for our posterity. It would be one of the
best things that we could do in a generation, Mr. Speaker. And I urge
that the American people weigh in on this and demand that the Senate
and the President embrace Cut, Cap, and Balance.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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