[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 137 (Thursday, September 15, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H6225-H6228]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           AMERICA'S SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gardner). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is 
recognized for 30 minutes.

[[Page H6226]]

  Mr. GOHMERT. We're at the end of another week of session here.
  You know, the President's been traveling around the country. I know 
that costs millions and millions of dollars to put Air Force One in 
motion, hopping all over the country. I've also seen what it takes from 
a security standpoint to prepare for a President to come anywhere. 
Because of the sniper weapons available these days, they have to be so 
thorough.

                              {time}  1500

  The Secret Service has to go along and check. Anything they can see, 
they have to check out. Well, that takes several days.
  So, to the average person, you think, Well, gee. The President just 
comes in. He's gone in 30 minutes. No big deal. But for those whose 
life's work it is in the government to make sure that things go 
properly, it is an extremely onerous task. We owe so much to those who 
protect those who are leaving the country, not so much the people in 
Congress. I know we had people in Congress who were advocating that we 
all ought to have our own security detail; but as one of my 
constituents said one morning at 2 a.m. in Wal-Mart, ``Wow, you really 
don't have any security,'' and I said, ``No. It's just you, me and the 
syrup here.'' I don't think we should have to have security. If it 
comes to that, this country is in such trouble that I'm not sure we'll 
have it back in any proper form anyway.
  In the meantime, I am an advocate of letting people in Washington, 
D.C., who aren't prior convicted felons and who meet the requirements, 
of being able to carry. Let folks carry. Not here in the Capitol, of 
course. You don't need one here. We've got the finest we could hope 
for, Mr. Speaker. I know you know the Capitol Police are fantastic. 
We've got some up in the gallery who make sure that things are orderly 
up there; and as we know from the last 20 years, there are times 
they've had to lay down their lives to protect the public here.
  So we are greatly blessed, but it all comes back to this, that we're 
talking about millions and millions of dollars for the President to go 
anywhere. Ever since 1 week ago, we were chastised by the President 
here on the House floor, as he spoke from the podium here, that we 
needed to pass his bill. Somebody else counted them. I didn't. We've 
got to pass this bill right now, right away, right now. Pass this bill 
now. It turns out the whole time the President was saying ``this 
bill,'' there was no such bill, which brought back memories of exactly 
2 years before when at that time the President demanded to come address 
a joint session of Congress.
  Under the rules of Congress, the laws of the land, no one can demand 
to come speak to the Senate or House unless they're invited, but that 
was overlooked back in September of 2009. The President was not doing 
well in the polling with his health care ideas. He figured, if he came 
and spoke here on the floor, because he is such a gifted reader, that 
he might be able to persuade people to support a bill they otherwise 
didn't like.
  So he came and he spoke. He spoke of this bill, my bill, this plan, 
my plan. I couldn't find a bill. I couldn't find a plan anywhere. It 
was even 2 weeks later that I asked the Cabinet member charged with 
Health and Human Services--it's her area--since the President was so 
accusatory and said, If any of you misrepresent my bill, I am going to 
call you out, I wanted to make sure I didn't misrepresent anything. I 
asked the Secretary of Health and Human Services: Where do I get a copy 
of the President's bill? She said these words: I think he was talking 
about a set of principles.
  Ah, it couldn't have been. He said this bill, my bill, this plan, my 
plan. He didn't have a plan. He didn't have a bill. He was talking 
about a set of principles? How could he condemn us for misrepresenting 
a bill or a plan that he didn't have? Not then. It turns out he didn't.
  So, as I heard the President say repeatedly to pass this bill, pass 
this bill, to do it right now, right now, I wondered if, yet again, 2 
years later, he was making the same error--demanding we pass a bill 
that didn't exist. It turns out my concerns were well-founded. He had 
no bill. He had no plan. He had a speech.
  But as we've learned from CBO, generally speaking, unless they're 
chastised sufficiently by the President or the White House, CBO cannot 
score a speech. If they're chastised sufficiently, then CBO will give 
them some sort of scoring because there are pressures that can be 
brought to bear from the White House that somehow, apparently, make 
them sensitive, which is another whole point. I really don't believe 
that we will be able to fix the problems of the massive overspending, 
the overtaxing, the dramatic problems with the overvexation, the 
overburdensome laws and regulations until we change a number of things.
  One of those is we eliminate the Congressional Budget Office and 
eliminate the rules under which bills are scored. Those rules were put 
in place in 1974 by the same Congress that forced the military to rush 
out of Vietnam, leaving, many report, around 2 million people who had 
helped us to be wiped out--murdered, killed--because the Congress 
didn't care. That same Congress put in rules that would require that a 
bill be scored as to the effect it would have on our economy, on 
spending, on revenue. It required it would be scored under rules that 
do not allow the scorer to take into consideration reality, history, 
facts. All they're allowed to do is to consider the formulas--the rules 
under which they're bound by that 1974 Congress. That's it.
  Now, we've gotten horrible scoring, and it can't be blamed on CBO or 
on the Joint Commission on Taxation. It's the rules that are the 
problem. But when a group comes back with a score of around $800 
billion and then later they have to confirm in reality it's more like, 
say, $1.1 trillion, then you realize on an $800 billion bill that the 
score really should put boldly that you have to consider that with a 30 
to 40 percent margin of error, plus or minus. So here is the score, 
plus or minus 30 or 40 percent, and that's about the best we can do.
  Since that is the best that CBO can apparently do, it's time to have 
some massive changes in this place. It's time to use reality. It's time 
to use history and not some 1974 liberal Congress' idea of how we get 
the government taking over everybody's lives. That's no way to run 
government unless you're in some country besides the United States of 
America.
  There's an old saying in this town, Mr. Speaker: No matter how 
cynical you get, it's never enough to catch up.
  In my 6\1/2\ years here in Congress, I've found that's certainly true 
because you want to trust everybody. You want to believe that when 
people say things in this town it's true, but then you find out, for 
example, that you can have a leader of the country tell everybody that 
we need to go after the Big Oil companies. They're having massive 
profits, and we're going after those companies. Then you find out that 
the bill that's produced to go after those companies has no adverse 
effect on those companies whatsoever, and in fact, it will make them 
even bigger profits than they might have ever imagined.
  Now, I know there have been some issues about the bill title, 
``American Jobs Act of 2011,'' and yes, I am the one who filed the 
American Jobs Act of 2011.

                              {time}  1510

  I think it will be a wonderful thing when we in this body can work 
together. We can have our disagreements. I found, in a deacon body, 
even though there was a lot of nasty, mean things said, that if we had 
prayer together and we came together, we had meals together, we could 
work together.
  One of the things that's so troubling on this floor is when people 
come so close to impugning the integrity of other people. I know some 
people that have diametrically opposed views of how this country should 
work, but I know in their heart they want the country to work well and 
succeed. I just believe from history they're wrong, but there are 
people in this body who you might think we were so far from each other 
politically that we wouldn't want to have anything to do with each 
other.
  Dennis Kucinich is one of those people that is quite far afield from 
me on so many political issues, but Dennis has never lied to me; he has 
always been up front. I find him to be a man of conviction, and I find 
him refreshing. Marcy Kaptur and I disagree on many

[[Page H6227]]

issues, maybe most issues, but I know she is a person of integrity. She 
has never lied to me; she has never been anything but honest with me.
  There are numerous people. Bill Delahunt and I would spar in 
Judiciary Committee many, many times, other committees, subcommittees, 
here on floor; but I always found Bill Delahunt--what I would call a 
liberal from Massachusetts, a Democrat--to be an honorable man, a man 
of integrity, and I believe with all my heart that he had a heart for 
this country and he wanted to see it work.
  We ought to be able to work together when people realize that we have 
got common goals, the common goal being the good of the country. So 
let's at least find things we could agree on.
  When I was engaged in trials--and I have been involved in many trials 
as an attorney, and as a judge, and then oversaw them briefly as a 
chief justice, but engaged as a lawyer--there were many times when we 
started in the discovery process that I told opposing counsel, We can 
do this one of two ways. We can fight, scrape and fuss over every 
question, over every interrogatory, over every deposition, but we both 
know the rules require certain things will need to be produced, that 
certain things will need to be disclosed.
  So I would prefer to do it that way, amicably, and the people that 
win are the clients because they don't have to pay near as much money. 
Because it doesn't take near as much time if you can agree on the 
things that you know you are going to have to produce and quit having a 
motion to compel, a motion to protect, all this kind of stuff.
  Sometimes we had attorneys that could work together well, and 
sometimes they would hit me with a discovery demand out of the blue 
that was so grossly unfair, but not illegal, that you would find out, 
okay, this is the way you want to go. I didn't want to go this way, but 
I believe so strongly in the interests of the person I am representing 
and believe so strongly in the process, itself, that if you want a 
fight, you will have a fight.
  If somebody is going to travel around the country, condemning me and 
other people in this body for refusing to pass a bill, knowing that 
that bill does not exist, it is not in existence because legally it has 
not been filed, then we are going to do some battle over that. If I am 
going to be condemned for a week for refusing to pass an American Jobs 
Act of 2011, well, after 6 days or so, it's time to have an American 
Jobs Act that we can pass or at least that I could go along with.
  I would certainly like, Mr. Speaker, the President and others to know 
I am flexible, but the corporate tax is one of the most insidious taxes 
that we have in this country because it's not an honest tax. 
Governments had represented to voters for years and years that we have 
got this tax over here. We go after the mean, evil, greedy 
corporations--and some do have greed as a material factor in their 
business--but the thing is, that's not what a corporate tax is about.
  A corporation cannot stay in existence if they don't have their 
customers or clientele pay the corporate tax. So a corporate tax is not 
actually a tax on a corporation. A corporate tax is, instead, requiring 
the corporation to be the collection agent. Oh, make no mistake, that 
tax will come from the rank-and-file people across this great country. 
They're the ones that are going to pay that tax. The corporations are a 
collection agent. They collect the tax from their customers, and then 
they pass it on to the Federal Government.
  The trouble is, in this country now, we have the highest corporate 
tax in the world, any developing nation for sure, 35 percent; in China, 
17 percent, and they do cut deals where they will reduce it to zero tax 
for 5 years, I have been told by some people there. You get a deal--
zero tax for 5 years and then gradually work up to 17.
  Not here in the United States. We are going to slap a 35 percent tax 
on anything a company in America produces. That sure makes it tough to 
compete in the global market.
  Now that we have got planes, ships that move so quickly, rail that 
goes across borders, it is important that we be able to compete in the 
global market. And if we are going to slap a 35 percent tariff on 
everything an American company produces in this country, they are going 
to have to move and go to a country where there is not such a high 
collection fee that corporations are required to collect in this 
country. They are going to go to a country like China that charges a 
lot less for a collection fee from the customers.
  But if people could get their mind around the fact that it isn't 
making the greedy corporations pay, in fact, the greediest corporations 
are the ones that don't pay anything. You know, we found out that the 
close cronies of the President at GE are able not to pay any tax, but 
the mom-and-pop-type small business corporations, they are having to 
pay the tax.
  Gibson is employing a lot of people. I got a Gibson guitar when I was 
8 years old, a fantastic guitar. We are going to send in armed agents 
to harass those people. That's no way to draw business back into this 
country.
  You reduce the corporate tax. If you reduce it at all, the more you 
reduce it, the more jobs are going to come back because that means more 
and more corporations will be able to compete in the global market, and 
they'll be able to come back here, union members, not the government 
union members--and that seems to be where union leadership wants to go 
these days. Forget the manufacturing unions. We are driving those jobs 
out of America. But any historian will tell you, when a nation that is 
protecting other nations--and we are; we are protecting the free 
world--that requires that nation to have a military.
  Any nation that cannot provide its own military with the things it 
needs to protect itself--that means steel; it means all kinds of metal; 
it means gunpowder; it means, actually, uranium as we have nuclear subs 
and ships; it means wood products; it means tires. We are buying tires 
for Humvees from China these days. Excuse me? We have to be able to 
have no supply line to be able to provide the things that we in this 
country need to defend ourselves and provide them in this country. It's 
time to quit driving companies, including manufacturing jobs, out of 
the country. This bill drives more jobs out.
  You have got to have energy. Those that are familiar with the Battle 
of the Bulge can dispel the myth that some think, gee, the war was won 
before the Battle of the Bulge.

                              {time}  1520

  Some say they buy into the Russians' explanation that we had whipped 
the Germans all by ourselves, we didn't need the allies otherwise, but 
if you really study the Battle of the Bulge, what won that for the 
Allies was the fact that the Germans were running out of gasoline.
  So what does the President do to help us? He said go against and take 
the profits of these massive, big oil companies. Instead, page 151 
through 154, he rips the heart out of the independent oil and gas 
industry.
  In order to drill a well in America, you have to raise capital. If 
you're one of the majors like Exxon, like British Petroleum, the dear 
friends of the President, if you're one of those big companies, you've 
got enough money of your own. You're capitalized; you can do these 
things. But for over 94 percent of the wells drilled in the continental 
United States, they're raising money. They have to raise capital. Well, 
this knocks the fool out of their ability to raise capital. Not only 
that, it repeals the deductions that are not even available to any 
company that produces more than a thousand barrels of oil a day. That's 
the majors.
  So all this will do is eliminate over 94 percent of the wells drilled 
in the continental United States. The result will be a higher cost of 
oil. It will make even more profits for the President's friends at 
British Petroleum. British Petroleum is friends of the President, they 
love the cap-and-trade idea, and they're going to love this bill by the 
President.
  Also, we know, we've heard complaint after complaint from State after 
State, and they're saying, You are giving us so many unfunded mandates. 
We just can't take this any more. Stop already. We just can't stand 
this kind of help much longer.
  So if you look through this bill, you end up finding out there is a 
little provision--and, like I say, I was up until about 5 a.m. Tuesday 
going through this lovely thing, but there is a provision at the bottom 
of one of the pages, rather obscure, and my staff made copies. I've got 
the best staff in the world,

[[Page H6228]]

but I don't believe they got my tag back on that page. The title of the 
little section is Federal and State Immunity, but then you read the 
section, it has nothing to do with Federal immunity. Under the law, the 
Federal Government and the State government are immune from being sued, 
but in that provision it actually says that, gee, if a State accepts 
any money at all from the Federal Government, any money at all, then 
they have effectively waived their sovereign immunity and are therefore 
subject to suit.
  I just found it. It's page 133:
  ``A State's receipt or use of Federal financial assistance for any 
program or activity of a State shall constitute a waiver of sovereign 
immunity, under the 11th Amendment to the Constitution or otherwise, to 
a suit brought by an employee or applicant for employment of that 
program or activity.'' It goes on.
  So at a time when States say we can't afford any more unfunded 
mandates, the President proposes a bill to let them get sued a bunch 
more by people who are unemployed. That's just got to be great news.
  And we're seeing the hearings go on about Solyndra. This 
administration, it appears from the evidence, we'll get the final 
verdict later, but they rushed in to give them $500 million of stimulus 
money so crony capitalism could occur and certain people could engorge 
themselves, and all at the taxpayers' expense, and it turns out that 
probably future generations will be paying for that.
  If you like the way that was handled, you've got to be reassured, 
because in this bill there are a number of references that green 
programs, like Solyndra, will have priority, and we'll rush a lot more 
money out there.
  There are a lot of things we could agree on in that bill that the 
President never had anybody willing to file. There was a provision for 
a payroll tax holiday. Well, you would figure I'd support that. I'm the 
guy who proposed it 3 years ago and personally explained it to the 
President and Larry Summers in January of 2009. But it sure would've 
been better if we did it before this administration squandered $4.5 
trillion more than we brought in. We could've given everybody in the 
United States who pays income tax a tax holiday for 3 years, and it 
would've only run up $3.6 trillion. We would have saved $900 billion. 
If you don't think that people having all of their own income tax from 
3 years would've stimulated this economy, then you need to embrace this 
President's bill because you'll love it.
  Nonetheless, there are things that we could agree on. Both Houses, 
both parties, I think, agree that we were willing to sell some more 
broadband spectrum. That's there in the bill, but then he uses that as 
a platform to create another bureaucracy, a Big Brother coming into 
your computer, because it's the Public Safety Broadband Corporation 
that's created and will just really make sure that Big Brother 
government intrudes in your life.
  When you boil it all down, we have a moral problem in America. The 
Founders continually pointed to God and said that's where we need to 
have our focus. As Ben Franklin said, without His concurring aid, we 
will succeed in our political building no better than the builders of 
Babel. We'll be confounded by our local partial interests, and we, 
ourselves, shall become a byword down through the ages.
  So whether anybody believes in God or not, as the Founders did, over 
a third of the Declaration of Independence signers were not just 
Christians, they were ordained ministers, to take one's eyes off of 
self and put them on something higher and greater avoids the kind of 
engorgement, the self-satisfaction, the self-emphasis that we've gotten 
into. That's the reason you run up trillions of dollars of debt without 
any regard for the children, the grandchildren, and the generations to 
come.
  I have to make this personal note reference. It breaks my heart to 
see that in college football. Nobody loves college football more than I 
do. I attended Texas A&M, and I know a lot of people are excited about 
Texas A&M perhaps going to the Southeastern Conference for money. All 
about money. The traditions of Texas A&M make it unique and I think the 
greatest public institution of higher education in the country. I'm 
very proud of it, but it's the traditions. And now we see that over a 
hundred years of tradition, going back to 1876, are ready to be thrown 
away for money. Just money. Greed money. Forget tradition that makes 
your institution great. Forget it all. Forget the State rivalries. 
Forget it all. We're talking about cash.
  Isn't that what got us in trouble in this country in the first place, 
when we put cash, greed for ourselves above the interests of the 
country or the institutions we represent?
  To close with this example, my senior year in the Corps Cadets, I was 
the second level below the Corps commander. I was one level right below 
the commander. There were four of us at that level, major unit 
commanders. There was a Corps commander. He didn't get along very well. 
He didn't play very well with others. And the first meeting we had, all 
of the senior leaders in the Corps Cadets, he had his staff put 
together tables end to end. He got up there with a corncob pipe like 
MacArthur, walked up and down and condescended and cajoled all his 
classmates like they were 2-year-olds.

                              {time}  1530

  I approached him after the meeting and I said, Man, these guys have 
seen you naked. We're all classmates. We're all friends. You need to 
try to work together. Don't just condemn everybody. And I think if we 
could get to that level in here--not that we run around naked 
together--but just where we can work together as friends, disagreeing 
on issues.
  But unless one person has a 100 percent lock on God's truth 100 
percent of the time, we should listen to each other, not condemn each 
other; and we can get these things worked out, put greed aside and help 
this country last 200 more years.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________