[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 136 (Wednesday, September 14, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H6174-H6179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
OUR COUNTRY IS IN TROUBLE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it never ceases to be an honor for me to be
able to speak on this floor. The freedoms we have, the blessings, we've
received because of those who've gone before us.
The country is in trouble. People around the world cannot believe
that the greatest nation in the history of mankind just cannot make
itself live within its means. So businesses, manufacturing have flocked
away from America.
I know there are some who believe that the greatest thing that can
happen for America is for those manufacturing jobs to leave America
because they believe, gee, they hurt the environment because they
pollute, so just as well they go to some other Third World country or
China or other place, when the truth is, apparently, when those same
manufacturing companies leave the United States, they go to nations
that, on average, pollute, depending on the nations, 4 to 10 times more
than we do here in the United States. For those that understand the way
the world turns, as pollution goes up in Asia, we usually breathe it
here in the United States. So that hasn't worked out so well for the
environment of the planet. We're hurting the planet as we drive
manufacturing jobs out of America.
This administration has used the EPA as a sword, as a tool to drive
more and more manufacturing and production out of the United States,
hurting the country more and more, not because, necessarily, they want
to intentionally hurt the country. I'm not saying that. They just think
we're better off.
If they're not willing to have a draconian EPA being, as the
President said in his speech, working side by side with them in private
business, good riddance. Go somewhere else. Because, in the President's
own words, that's what he said, and it was the scariest thing I heard
that the President said last week, standing right here at the second
level in this Hall, the line, and I'll read from his speech directly.
He said, ``We need to look for ways to work side by side with America's
businesses.''
America's businesses do not need a government that wants to be their
partner. The government in this country, according to the Constitution,
metaphorically speaking, is supposed to be a referee--keep the playing
field fair, keep it level, make sure everybody has a chance to compete
and compete fairly, and stay out of the way. Do not interfere. Don't
try to be a partner with business. Stay out of the way and be a
referee.
It's when this United States Government has tried to be a partner
that so often it gets in trouble, and it kills businesses and it kills
jobs, and people flee and go to some other country where they're
allowed to produce things without the government trying to be their
partner.
Anybody that wants the government to be their partner should go to
Venezuela or Third World nations. They're more than happy to partner
with those businesses.
But some years back there was a group of us that went to China, and
we met with a number of CEOs of international corporations that have
taken their American jobs by the thousands, taken their businesses,
their manufacturing production and gone to China. I had the feeling
that when we talked to them and asked them the question, ``Why did you
move all these jobs to China?'' that they would say, well, they just
couldn't work with the labor unions. The price of labor was too high.
Regulations were too much. But the number one answer was because of the
corporate tax. The corporate tax in America, in the United States, is
the highest corporate tax in the world.
{time} 1610
Now corporations, those that understand business law, corporations,
directors, and officers, have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders to
try to make as much money as they can. Unless some, Mr. Speaker, do not
know who the stockholders are, more and more they're union workers;
they're American workers across their countries; they're small business
owners and operators, franchise operators; they're the rank and file
across the country--State employees, local employees, Federal
employees. But more than that, businesses across America, they have
retirement accounts that invest in these companies.
Those companies' officers and directors have a fiduciary duty that
they have to--or they could be sued--have the best interests of the
company and the stockholders at stake in the decisions they make. If
you go to law school--I hopefully have saved somebody a lot of money--
that's it in a nutshell.
So, when a group of corporate leaders is trying to decide how can we
avoid being sued by the stockholders by doing the best thing to help
them create the most revenue for their stock--what can we do? What will
enhance their dividends?--they have to look. When they see the United
States of America is taxing corporations at 35 percent and they see
that China taxes at 17 percent, you would think it was pretty much a
no-brainer. That's basically what they said.
I was gratified to hear that, whether it's union labor or nonunion
labor, across the board, the experience that the corporate leaders that
I talked to in China say really their best workers are right here in
the United States--union workers, nonunion workers--and that, generally
speaking, they have better quality control over products produced here
in the United States of America. So, when they move plants from here in
the United States to other
[[Page H6175]]
places like China, they have wonderful workers, but the quality control
is not as good as what they have here.
But if you think about it and you realize, gee, they would pay half
the corporate tax in China that they pay here by the billions, then
they could afford to build state-of-the-art facilities, where
facilities here in the United States, their manufacturing plants, may
be falling apart and getting older. Well, you could go build a state-
of-the-art facility in a place like China, and because of the
tremendously reduced corporate tax, by the time you really get around
to paying much tax, you've paid for the plant.
I was advised privately that it was possible the Chinese Government
would make deals with some companies if they were big enough, and it
might be, for example, they would say, Look, you move your
manufacturing plant, hire these thousands of employees here in China
instead of in the United States, and we'll make a deal with you. No
corporate tax for 5 years.
Then, depending on the company and the negotiations, they might say,
And then for the next 5 years, maybe 5, 7 percent, maybe 10 percent.
Maybe then it goes to 17, or maybe by 15 years you get to the 17
percent rate.
But in those kind of scenarios, they say, We paid for a state-of-the-
art facility by the time we ever get around to paying corporate tax.
Whereas, if we kept those jobs in America, facilities getting older, we
just can't produce dividends and returns on money for stockholders.
We're just treading water. Here, because the corporate rates are half
as expensive, then we can produce, we can compete anywhere in the
world. Our goods are that much cheaper.
Now, it is true our labor is more expensive, but, in general, we have
good laborers in this country, and there are Americans that are willing
to work, willing to do the jobs. From talking to employers, though, we
could use a lot more people willing to be employees who can pass a drug
test. That's kind of important.
Now, I have had so many constituents say, Look, you have to pass a
drug test in order to get employment for most important jobs nowadays,
whether it's with a grocery company back home or a small operator. I
was talking to an independent oilman this afternoon that drills wells
from Longview, Texas, and he was saying, We have to give people drug
tests.
He was telling me, because of the drilling that's currently going on
in east Texas, he's having trouble finding enough workers right now,
today. While people are unemployed around the country, he's having
trouble right now, today, finding enough people who can pass a drug
test and are willing to work hard on an oil well, and he would put them
to work.
In fact, he was telling me this afternoon, they'd start out at
$50,000 a year. They'd have health care. It's hard, dirty, long hours,
tough work, but it's a good living. But so many of the people that
apply can't pass a drug test. And because it's such difficult work
physically and it requires that you be alert because all of the other
people on the rig have to count on each other, kind of like in a
military operation, the equipment is so dangerous, if somebody has
taken drugs and is not at peak performance, they can get somebody
killed. It's happened far too many times. They have to have people pass
a drug test.
That's just this afternoon. Well, think about it. If we had
manufacturers coming back into America because the corporate tax rate
was less than 17 percent, then the manufacturing jobs show up like
crazy.
Now, I realize from hearing all of the news, apparently the big
emphasis of the national union leaders, who sure don't seem to be
speaking to all of the union folks I know, but their emphasis seems to
be basically we're not doing very well getting union members from
private corporations. So they've gone all after government employees:
Let's try to unionize government employees because maybe we can pick
them up.
And what I think eventually rank-and-file union workers for private
companies will begin to understand is it seems that they're being
thrown under the bus. The concentration seems to be for more government
workers, less private workers, which means they're driving for more
jobs in the government sector, which kills off the private sector,
which will kill off those jobs for the union members who have jobs in
the private sector.
So, as I sat back here listening to the President's speech last
Thursday night and as I struggled with what the President was saying--
because some of it didn't seem to me that it was going to create the
jobs he was promising, but I was willing to wait for the bill and not
judge from a speech, because it's been said around here before that CBO
cannot score a speech. Well, that was before, a couple years ago, when
the administration got on to them, and basically they did score a
speech, but that's because the White House is able to exert pressure on
CBO that the Republicans have not been able to see fit to do.
I know Mr. Elmendorf was not happy with my reference, but the fact
is, after Mr. Elmendorf met with the President in the woodshed, or the
Oval Office, he came back and was able to bring down the scoring of
ObamaCare by about a quarter of a trillion dollars or so. Then after
ObamaCare passed, they said, Whoops, looks like maybe we underestimated
by about a quarter of a trillion dollars.
That makes for a pretty big plus-or-minus margin of error when CBO
can't do better than that, but CBO and the rules were created by the
most liberal Congress in history until about 5 years ago. They created
CBO. They created the rules for scoring. They yanked us out of Vietnam
without a chance to make sure our allies there would not be killed, so
most of them were. They also created an automatic baseline for
government budgets that increases every year. They created a formula.
It increases every year.
{time} 1620
Now, I was here in '05 and '06, and I am embarrassed that, as
Republicans, our party did not have the nerve to eliminate the CBO, to
eliminate the ridiculous rules by which bills are scored. The actual
reality and history and recurrent numbers of what happens--when you do
this, you get this effect--you can't consider that. They have to use
rules that don't apply in the real world and without taking into
consideration the effects that have been had when an action is taken
every time.
So we get terribly inaccurate scoring from a government entity, and
we also have this automatic baseline that increases every year. There
is not a business or home in America that can plan a budget by saying,
We're automatically going to increase our budget every year from now
on. No matter how much income or revenue we have each year, we're going
to keep increasing our budget. That is what has been happening for 37
years, since 1974.
The Budget chairman back in '05 and '06 was not willing to do it, but
I am extremely gratified that our bright chairman of the Budget, this
Budget chairman, is going to do it, in that this year he's going to
take up a zero baseline budget. I filed one in my first Congress back
in '05 and '06, in my second Congress in '07 and '08, in my third
Congress in '09 and 2010, and in this Congress. I am delighted. I don't
care whose name is on the bill; but when we finally eliminate the
automatic increases in the Federal budgets every year, that's going to
be huge, and it's going to be better than anything that the President
has proposed by way of producing revenue and balancing the budget.
I do appreciate the White House emailing their version of the
American Jobs Act.
Parliamentary Inquiry
Mr. GOHMERT. If I might inquire of the Speaker, a parliamentary
inquiry: If there are charts around on the floor, can anybody use
those?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman is free to use charts in
debate.
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, because I saw my friends across
the aisle using a chart that said the ``American Jobs Act.'' It makes a
wonderful chart if it's still on the floor, because that's what we're
talking about, an American Jobs Act.
The President kept saying, Pass it right away. Act now. Pass this
jobs bill. Pass it right away. Pass it again right away. Pass the bill
right away. They'll get back on their feet right away if we pass the
bill. Anyway, just on and on--pass the bill, pass the bill,
[[Page H6176]]
pass the bill. So I heard the speech. I got a copy of the speech, and I
like to highlight stuff where I can find it easier. So we've got all
this ``pass it now,'' ``pass it right away'' stuff highlighted.
Where is it? We were told to pass it now, to pass it right away. We
heard the speech Thursday night. We didn't get a bill Friday. We didn't
get a bill Saturday. Obviously, it can't be filed Saturday or Sunday if
we're not in session. We didn't get it, though, through email. They
send the stuff when it's needed, but nothing Saturday, nothing Sunday.
On Monday, we were inquiring of the White House by email, by phone,
Look, when are you going to let us see what this bill we've got to pass
last week is?
We finally got a copy, and I was up until 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning
going through it--tagging it, highlighting it, being staggered by the
stuff in here that will kill jobs instead of create them--oh, other
than the jobs that are created for the government that will help kill
the economy. I couldn't believe this was being called an American Jobs
Act, but it was not a surprise to me even at noon today when we
inquired and found that no one had been willing to file an American
Jobs Act in the House of Representatives. It had been available. The
President had been talking about it since last Thursday, but nobody had
been willing to actually file that bill in the House.
I have been through the President's American Jobs bill, and I am
absolutely convinced--absolutely no question--that this will hurt our
economy. It creates massive, bigger government intrusion. If you like
Freddie and Fannie Mae, you will love the new American Infrastructure
Financing Authority. What a wonderful government creation that is.
We're going to provide billions and billions of dollars to create this
new government entity. But not to worry--these are people who will be
running it who really know what they're doing--right?--because the
Secretary of Transportation is going to be in charge. I do know the
Secretary of Transportation right now, and I like him very much. He's a
good guy. Nonetheless, we're creating another government nightmare
called the American Infrastructure Financing Authority.
Unbelievable.
You would have thought we would have learned a lesson--but not to
worry. These are people who will be appointed by the President. Some
other people here in Congress can throw in some recommendations, but
they're appointed. The seven voting members are appointed by the
President. So that will be wonderful. They'll run all our
infrastructure requirements for us, and of course the President will
appoint the chief executive officer.
Having been a history major in college, I do believe that the best
indication of future performance is past history, past performance.
With the auto czars and the private committee composed of a bunch of
auto czars, I read somewhere that not any of them had ever worked in
the auto industry at all, and most of them didn't even own a car.
Nonetheless, they had put them in charge of our auto industry.
That kind of scares you when you think about it and when you think
this is the same guy who's going to appoint all these people to run the
brand-new American Infrastructure Financing Authority. That's AIFA, and
it is just another nightmare. It's going to help bankrupt America
quicker than this administration has already been doing.
I know people like to throw blame around. There is plenty of blame to
go around because I know, in 2006, I was on this side of the aisle,
hearing people stand up at the Democratic microphones, saying what I
knew to be true. They were right. We had no business spending $160
billion more than we took in. That was un-American. It was outrageous.
This body had no business authorizing expenditures of $160 billion more
than we took in. They were right. The Democrats were right when they
said we should not spend in a year $160 billion more than we took in.
Nowadays, people like to say, Well, it's Afghanistan and Iraq that
have broken this country and have made us bankrupt. That's not the
case. We were in Afghanistan; we were in the worst part of the
expenditures in Iraq during those days, and we overspent what we had
coming in by about $160 billion. If anybody back then had told me that
within 4 years those same people who condemned this side of the aisle
for overspending by $160 billion would be just fine with overspending
by $1.6 trillion, I would never have believed it.
{time} 1630
There is no way, with the speeches that were given here in '05, '06,
'07 about the Republicans' irresponsibility in '05 and '06, my freshman
year, over $160 billion more being spent than we brought in, that they
would have any nerve or ability to stand up and say I'm voting to spend
$1.6 trillion more than we're going to take in. I just didn't think, I
wouldn't have believed that anybody would be willing to do that. Well,
they have, and we as a country have.
But I went through the President's bill. Yesterday I went through
much of it, but there is a little more that needs to be said, for
example, to illuminate the President's comments about he wants to go
after the profits of Big Oil; and he does that in his bill, we were
told. He was going to fix it for Big Oil.
Well, I was a little cynical, I was a little leery, because I have
heard the President call the Wall Street executives fat cats. He has
called them names, said we wouldn't be letting them do that, that we
ought to go after them, that kind of stuff.
Yet I knew that, while he was calling them names, at the same time
his governing made sure that an entity like Goldman Sachs made more
money than they've ever made in their history. They should have had to
file for bankruptcy. Instead, now they're making more money than
they've ever made in history, and this President is presiding in such a
way it's bad for America, but Wall Street is doing great, and some
would say that doesn't make sense because we know that Wall Street is
mainly Republicans.
But if you look into it, as the Heritage Foundation has--my friend
Mike Franc there has done the research--you found out that, in essence,
corporate executives on Wall Street, when you include their immediate
family that donates with them, donate about 4-1 or donate about 4-1 for
Obama over McCain. And Mike had said, when he first saw that, he
thought, wow, that's intriguing. That may be different from prior
years, But as he checked on it, it wasn't that different from prior
years, donations from Wall Street.
Then you get to realizing, wait a minute, Democratic Presidents,
Members here in this body are constantly deriding these greedy, evil
people on Wall Street; and yet they're generally giving 4-1 to
Democrats over Republicans. There are 4-1 Democrats on Wall Street in
executive positions than there are Republicans. Well, no wonder. It
starts making more sense that they would do much better under
Democratic administrations since it helps to know people in those kinds
of positions.
But we were told by the President he's going after Big Oil. The
provisions in this President's bill--it's at page 151--repeal the
deduction for intangible drilling and development costs in the case of
oil and gas wells. Now, the bill has a dishonest word here. It says
repealing oil ``subsidies.''
A subsidy, you can look it up, Webster, wherever you want to, but the
definition will basically be the same wherever you look it up. A
``subsidy'' is a grant or a gift of money. There are no grants or gifts
of money, and there wasn't anybody that wanted to go after British
Petroleum more than I did around here when we found out 800 violations
or so and when all the other majors were having maybe one or two in the
gulf.
Yet they were involved in crony capitalism. So the administration
looked the other way over and over and over again until the Deepwater
Horizon blew out. People were killed, you know, not only lives lost but
fortunes lost. The Gulf of Mexico was devastated all because this
administration and those inspectors that were sent looked the other way
to all of this pitiful way that drilling was done because they were
buddies, crony capitalism.
So when you look here at what the President actually has in his bill,
who it's going to help and who it's going to hurt, what you see are
these deductions here that he's repealing--the repeal of deduction for
tertiary injectants, the repeal of the percentage depletion allowance
for oil and gas wells. Section 199, the deduction attributable to oil,
natural gas or primary
[[Page H6177]]
products thereof, the repeal of oil and gas working interest exception
to passive activity rules.
I read through these, checked with experts and find out, CPAs, people
that do the tax returns for independent oil companies, and I was
reminded, this stuff basically applies only as a deduction for an oil
company that produces less than a thousand barrels of oil. All of the
majors that this President says he wants to go after and go after their
profits, they're majors.
All of the deductions that he is trying to repeal, they're not going
to affect, they're not really going to hurt the major oil companies.
They're going to devastate the independent oil companies. That will be
the result here.
So he says he wants to go after the majors, but that's just not what
he is doing in his bill, and I know that, being a community organizer,
he's not that well up on what he's going to hurt and what he's going to
help. But the fact is there are figures that indicate American
production activities are dominated by independent producers, who drill
95 percent of the Nation's natural gas and oil wells, accounting for 67
percent of total U.S. natural gas and oil production. That's the
independent oil companies of America. Ninety-five percent of the
drilling, 67 percent of the production is not ExxonMobil. It's not
Shell. It's not British Petroleum. It's the independent oil companies
in America.
And who are they? They're people that cannot go to the banks, for the
most part, to get a loan. Any bank that would loan an oil company money
to drill a particular well is probably going to get shut down because
the chances are, in most cases--certainly in the investments I have
had--you are more likely to have a dry hole than you are to hit
anything that's really going to be of a sufficient, productive nature.
So, of course, once you have established a field, the odds go up
dramatically, but most of these wells, when it's not an established
field and it's just helping produce more from a known field, you can't
get loans. The only way independent oil companies have to be assured of
being able to drill oil wells is not to go get a loan, and they also
know that if they invest and pay all of the 100 percent of their own
drilling and they hit a few dry holes in a row, they're going to be
bankrupt, if there were so many of them.
What most independent oil companies do, they do studies geologically.
They have to hire geologists most of the time. I am told they were
independent geologists. I know a great number of those. They do great
work. They will study an area, and they will hire a landman to come in
and study who owns what interests in the minerals, who owns what rights
that they're going to have to acquire in order to do drilling, and then
they hire people that are involved in drilling.
They're not like the majors where they've got all they need to go do
all the drilling. They hire independent mud companies, independent wire
line companies. They will often have to have people come out and feed
them, and if they don't, they're going to have people who need to go
eat somewhere.
It is hard, nasty, 24-hour-a-day work. You don't stop 8-5. You have
to do shifts because you can't afford to get somebody too tired for
staying on a rig too long. But they employ millions of people. They
cause the employment of millions around America even though there
aren't that many that actually work on the wells, themselves.
{time} 1640
They create jobs. They don't just save them like this President says
he's been doing. And so what's the President doing? He, in his bill, is
not touching, he's not going to hurt the Big Oil companies. They're
going to apparently do as well as his good friends at General Electric.
So what we have seen is, if you're really friends with this
administration, or to be fair, the parties in power, then odds are
you're going to get your tax bills through and you are going to be like
General Electric, you're going to be like Warren Buffett, and you're
going to be able to skate through without paying virtually any tax.
I loved the way Art Laffer explained to it me in his living room
after a Sunday lunch one day last year. We talked about these taxing
concepts. I just love the guy. He is so brilliant. He's charming and
funny. He sure got us out of a mess back in 1980-1981 because he was
the adviser to Ronald Reagan. Art Laffer was his economic adviser.
Many people have heard about the Laffer curve because for people in
government who want to maximize the amount of revenue to the Federal
Government so they can spend more, how do you do it? Well, if you don't
have any kind of tax at all, the government has no tax at all, then the
revenue of the Federal Government would be zero on this end. If the
government taxed a 100 percent tax, very, very quickly nobody would
work. Nobody's going to work to produce 100 percent revenue for the
Federal Government unless the whole Nation is enslaved, and God forbid
that that will happen.
So on the two ends of the graph, you have zero revenue to the Federal
Government, if it is zero percent tax altogether, and on the other end
you have zero revenue to the Federal Government if there's 100 percent
tax. So somewhere in between, you reach the maximum efficiency for
bringing in revenue to the Federal Government. If you tax too high,
then you start hurting the amount of revenue percentage-wise coming in,
and so you actually get less revenue when you pass that maximum point.
Before that point, you can continue to raise taxes and actually
increase revenue. Beyond that, the revenue starts coming down. So as
Art has described it, you need to cut taxes 30 percent, and you will
get us out of this horrific doldrums of an economy.
I was back at Fort Benning, Georgia, at the time, and things were not
good. The military was not respected at all. I liked Ronald Reagan a
lot. Of course, when you're in the military, you can't say anything
negative about the Commander in Chief or you've committed an offense
under the UCMJ. You can't criticize someone in your chain of command,
including the Commander in Chief. So we just had to bite our tongues,
but we could see Jimmy Carter was doing such damage to this country
economically and in the foreign arena. It was just tragic.
I liked Ronald Reagan. He said he was going to be able to help bring
down double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment and double-digit
interest rates. As much as I liked him, I recall telling my wife,
Kathy, back at Fort Benning, I like him, but I don't care who the
President is, there's no way a President can actually help do all that,
really have that kind of effect.
He proved me wrong. With Laffer's guidance, taxes were cut 30
percent, and the economy took off. Because the economy took off and
there were more jobs, unemployment dropped dramatically. Interest rates
were able to come down dramatically. We had a 12\1/4\ percent or
something loan on our first home in Georgia just off post in Fort
Benning. It may have been 12\3/4\ percent. Some folks told me that was
crazy--it was too high--but it wasn't long before interest rates some
places were 18 percent, so 12 wasn't so bad. Now, interest rates came
down under Reagan, but it was Laffer who said bring down the taxes by
30 percent, and you'll do dramatic work on creating a better economy.
I love the story Art Laffer tells about getting a call from President
Reagan. He said, Art, great news. We got your tax cut.
Art said, in essence, this is my paraphrase: That's great, Mr.
President. Congratulations.
Art, you don't seem excited. Why aren't you excited? This is great
news. We got the tax cut with the Democratic House and Senate. They're
going to cut it 30 percent.
He said, Congratulations, Mr. President. That's great.
President Reagan said, Why aren't you more excited?
He said, Mr. President, I understand you're going to cut it like half
a percent the first year, 10 percent the next year, and another 20
percent the third year.
He said, Well, that's the deal we had to cut with Congress. We
couldn't get all 30 percent at once.
As I recall, he said something like, Mr. President, if you were going
shopping and the place you were going to go shopping had a half of one
percent sale this month and then 10 percent sale next month and then 20
percent sale the next one after that, when are you going to go
shopping?
He said Reagan was quiet for awhile and then finally said, Are we
going to have a couple of bad years?
[[Page H6178]]
He said, Yes. Now it's going to be 3 years before the economy heals.
We could have had it this year.
President Reagan got the best he could in 1981 and 1982, and those
were not good years. In 1983, the economy surged, and more money was
brought into the coffers.
The problem, though, is that the Democratic Party got so excited
controlling the House and Senate--Reagan and Laffer had set up such a
situation here, and there was so much more money coming into the
coffers, the Federal revenues--that they started spending like never
before. They can blame Reagan, but the Constitution makes very clear,
Congress spends the money.
So really, this year, we are still working off of what Congress did
or didn't do last year under Speaker Pelosi. Next year, beginning
October 1, will be the first full year we are back at least as
Republicans being in control of one House. So I think it is very, very
important what we try to do to generate jobs and when you know that
these provisions are going to devastate independent oil companies that
do 95 percent of the drilling in continental America and won't hurt
Exxon, British Petroleum, and, in fact, because 95 percent of the
drilling will not get done in the continental United States.
I guess that's why the President was trying to do this. They
apparently don't like drilling. They don't like mining. They don't like
any of this stuff occurring on our soil. They would rather it go
somewhere else where they pollute a lot more. But we are talking about
millions of jobs that will be lost because of the devastating effect of
destroying independent oil and gas businesses--and all of that when
we've gotten such great news over the last few years. We went from
having basically no natural gas reserves to having 100--some say 200,
some say 300--years of natural gas reserves.
Some fleets of trucks are starting to convert to natural gas. If we
converted cars and trucks--you can't order them from Detroit yet that
come equipped with natural gas. You can get them done after they leave
the factory. But if we started getting natural gas vehicles like some
fleets have done, travel is a lot cheaper. You don't have the pollution
you have with gasoline. It burns clean. You do have CO2.
So look out. We're going to grow more plants, because plants have to
have CO2 in order to have photosynthesis, in order to
produce O2 as a byproduct from growing as a plant. So, gee,
if we use more natural gas, we may end up with more healthy plants. So
that may be a difficult thing if people don't like green plants.
I couldn't help but notice on page 155--and I have read through
here--the President has things like eliminating deductions. He says
this bill is paid for. In his speech he says--and I want to read it
correctly. He told us back 2 years ago during his health care speech,
if you misrepresent my bill, I'm going to call you out. So let me read
what he says.
He says, ``And here is the other thing I want the American people to
know. The American Jobs Act will not add to the deficit. It will be
paid for.''
That's what he said.
What he's counting on, what he references on page 4 of his speech--
and it's on page 155--yes, there is elimination of deductions. In
reality, it's going to cost this government revenue. It's not going to
create more Federal revenue.
{time} 1650
It's going to cost jobs. There will be fewer people paying as much
income tax. That will hurt the Federal coffers more. We'll have more
deficit spending. We can't get that under control. But we just passed a
deficit bill I didn't support because it didn't have adequate cuts in
there. There was no restraint on spending that was really adequate. If
you only cut $1 trillion over a 10-year period, and we all know--
everybody in here knows--you can't bind future Congresses. So all the
cuts that do not occur within the next year or year and a half, there's
no reason to think that they will happen. You can't bind future
Congresses.
Anyway, even if we did cut $1 trillion--not much the next year, but
it gets heavier toward the end of the 10 years. If we were to cut $1
trillion over 10 years and we were to do that every 10 years, within
exactly 150 years we will finally balance the budget, and we will have
only added $120 trillion to the $14.3 trillion or $14.6 trillion that
we've run up in deficit spending now. If we were able to reach this
wonderful goal of $2 trillion in cuts in the next 10 years and do that
ever 10 years, then we can balance the budget in only 80 years. We'll
only add around $72 trillion in additional deficit spending to our
deficit.
So the joint committee was charged: Find $1.5 trillion somewhere
between now and basically Christmas, the end of the year. Actually, we
found out today they're really going to need to find it by the 1st of
November. This is how the President pays for his $450 billion spending
spree, where we create the American Infrastructure Financing
Authority--a new Fannie and Freddie on steroids. We create a new
massive government bureaucracy.
The FCC wanted to have a fairness doctrine and control what people
said on the airwaves. They want to dictate everything that gets done in
the media on the airwaves, but they were realizing more and more people
are going to broadband and less and less to the airways. They're losing
control of things. So the President addresses that. It's not a jobs
bill in the private sector, but it creates a brand-new authority,
government entity. Well, actually, he describes it in his bill as a
private nonprofit group. He appoints the directors, of course, and it's
called the Public Safety Broadband Corporation. Wow, it's going to kill
the private sector. But more government jobs. Good news there.
And here's the pay-for. If we had a drum roll, Mr. Speaker, we could
ask for it. The Budget Control Act of 2011 is amended by striking $1.5
trillion that they have to find in cuts in the next month or so and
inserting $1.95 trillion in cuts. That's it. Magically, he just found
$450 billion in cuts, but it's because he told the supersubcommittee:
Go find this extra money. What a great revenue-enhancing deficit
spending cut that is.
This bill is a disaster. It sets up a program that will allow people
who have their hours reduced by 10 percent to start collecting
unemployment compensation. It requires State agencies to start
mandating that those employers involved certify that even if they cut
an employee's hours, they're going to still have the same health care
benefits, retirement benefits. I talked to some employers today about
it. They said, We'll have to give up providing health care and
retirement benefits because we need the flexibility. If we're all
taking a cut, then let's take a cut.
I want to challenge my own Republican leadership, Mr. Speaker. Most
of America is not even aware that this year we put our mouth where our
money is, and we actually voted to cut our own budgets by 5 percent.
And next year we're cutting our own budget by 6 percent. Well, we
haven't done enough with that. I would challenge our own leadership,
and I hope that we'll seize the day--seize the moment--and be able,
because we would have the right to do this since we're cutting our own
budgets. America doesn't know that, but we are.
Okay. All Federal Government, here's the deal. We're cutting our own
budget in Congress by 5 percent this year, 6 percent next year, and
we're doing it to every department In the country. We have the moral
authority to do that since we're cutting our own. We should do that.
Let's get spending under control. But the President uses, apparently,
Rahm Emanuel's own philosophy about: Don't let a good crisis go to
waste. So he's got this 155-page bill that he finally made available
Monday night but that nobody has filed here in the House.
We need American jobs. We need American jobs now. I am convinced that
if we eliminated the corporate tax altogether, you would hear a
gigantic sucking sound, I believe Mr. Perot used to say, of
manufacturers leaving other countries and flocking back to America,
making more income than they had in the past, because for the first
time--Donald Trump is a sharp man. He has made a lot of money. He has
advocated that we put a 25 percent tariff on everything we buy from
China.
If you studied the situation and understand the treaties--I don't
like most of them, but if you look at what we've done, if we set a 25
percent tariff on everything America buys from China, we
[[Page H6179]]
have violated a number of contracts and agreements. There's penalty
phases to that. We start a trade war. I don't think China wins, but I
know we don't either. I don't think anybody wins a trade war that that
would start.
So inspired by Donald Trump saying, Why don't we put a 25 percent
tariff on everything we buy from China--and I've talked to Art Laffer.
He likes the idea. He's got some other alternatives as well, but one of
them is you eliminate the corporate tax altogether. I really think it's
one of the most insidious taxes in America because people have had to
be sold a bill of goods to believe that you won't have to pay it. We're
going to make these evil, greedy corporations do it.
And I will admit to you, sometimes unions are very helpful because
greed does take over. But the thing is, if you eliminate the corporate
tax, who's been paying that? The consumers and lower wage earners in
those corporations. In some cases, there are studies that have
indicated that. But it's the consumers that have to pay the corporate
tax. If a corporation doesn't pass that tax on, they can't stay in
business.
If you eliminate the corporate tax, you'll have jobs flooding back
into America, and you'll have more people paying income tax. The Laffer
curve won't be zero taxes on this side with zero revenue. It will be
zero corporate tax. But even at the same tax levels, you will have
dramatic increases in the Federal revenue because so many more people
will be employed, things will be going well, and the economy will have
a jump-start like we've never seen before.
So after nobody else would file an American Jobs Act, as the
President proposed, and having examined it over and over in the last
couple of days, having checked today at noon to see if anybody had the
nerve to file this disastrous bill that will kill jobs, run up the
price of gasoline and oil and make everybody's life more miserable,
more government intrusion into broadcast, more government intrusion
into financing things--not Fannie or Freddie because we've still got
them around, but a new infrastructure financing authority--I realize
this is a disaster for America.
So I filed not a 115-page bill but actually a 2-page bill today at
about 1:20, and it says: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to
repeal the corporate income tax. Be it enacted by the Senate and House
of Representatives of the United States of America and Congress
assembled. This Act may be cited as the ``American Jobs Act of 2011.''
It repeals the corporate income tax, repeals the alternative minimum
tax, and there will be so many more people paying income tax, people
will not believe the kind of money that will flow into the Federal
Government, not that that's a good thing, but we can at least pay down
our debt if we're responsible.
{time} 1700
I'm so excited that the Tea Party is getting fired up. I see people
from all races, all walks of life in the Tea Party. The one thing they
seem to have in common is they're paying income tax, and they're tired
of carrying half of the country on their backs. So this is a start, I
believe--it is a jobs bill--and you will see jobs flood this country,
and we'll get on track.
In the few minutes I have left, let me just tell you about a man that
probably had the most influence on my life behind my father. His name
was Sam Parker. There have been wonderful men in my life, women in my
life, teachers in my life that affected me.
Sam Parker was hired by the Mount Pleasant School Board in 1952 to be
a coach and to teach history. He was the head coach of the Mount
Pleasant Tigers football team. In 2 years' time, in 1953, he had led
them to being undefeated after the first nine games. He turned the
program around. He was a devoted Christian, belonged to the Methodist
church there, started teaching Sunday school. His wife, Norween, was
the librarian at the junior high.
After nine games, we went to play Sulphur Springs, and people were
saying, This looks like the best team in 3A, in Texas; they very well
could win the State. They went to Sulphur Springs. Some team members
told me it was their fault; they didn't take it serious enough, and
they lost by one touchdown. That was Friday night. Monday morning, the
school board fired Sam Parker.
Then he and his wife had a tough decision. They believed that God had
called them to Mount Pleasant to plant their roots, invest their lives,
and change America from that small place. Well, he did the unthinkable.
He stayed and taught American history after being fired as head
football coach.
And 7 years later, I met him in a park recreation program he put on
for young kids in the public park down there each summer. I worked with
him one summer as a teenager with the kids. He taught more kids how to
play baseball in Mount Pleasant during those years than anybody else in
town. He was my scoutmaster. He had a troop there. He was my
scoutmaster through my becoming an Eagle Scout there at Mount Pleasant,
and he taught me American history. He continued to teach Sunday school.
The man that coached 2 years at Mount Pleasant High School changed
Mount Pleasant in an incredible way. He was still alive in 1991. Before
he died, they renamed the football field Sam Parker Field. He taught me
American history. He served in World War II. He loved this country. His
son was my best friend--is still a dear friend.
Those are the kinds of people that have changed America. Those are
the kinds of people who are the reason we have been blessed like we've
been blessed, And if we don't have more people willing to put pettiness
aside, goofy ideas that enrich their cronies, goofy ideas that increase
power for some people and get back to what made America great, we're
going to lose this country. As Ben Franklin said in 1787, we will
become a byword down through future generations because we had the
greatest country ever given to mankind, and we became irresponsible and
lost it.
It's time for major changes.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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