[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 55 (Tuesday, April 17, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H1911-H1913]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TAXES, ENERGY, AND OTHER ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, these are interesting times we live in, and
I've appreciated my friends, my doctor friends. We have got two
physicians who would certainly like to help heal America, but we have
people in powerful positions in the Senate, as well as the White House,
that don't appear to be interested in their prescriptions. I sure am,
and I appreciate their observations. Also, they alluded to some of the
energy issues before us in the country right now, and that's certainly
worth noting.
First, I want to address something that we are hearing that the
President, over and over and over, he is spending millions and millions
of tax dollars running around the country telling people that the cure
to what ails us and the cure to all unfairness is the Buffett rule. We
are told that since Buffett may pay a lower percentage than his
secretary, Warren Buffett and the President are saying we need to tax
the wealthy more.
We found out the President pays, apparently, a lower tax rate than
his secretary, 20 percent compared to a higher percentage that his
secretary pays, and it leaves some of us baffled. If somebody really
feels that it's fairness or a moral issue for Warren Buffett and the
President to pay more taxes than their secretaries, then at least have
the morality to do it. Don't come to Congress and say we demand you
pass laws to force us to do the morally right thing because we're not
going to do the morally right thing unless Congress passes a law making
me, Warren Buffett, me, President Obama, do the right thing. We can't
control ourselves and make ourselves do the morally proper thing, the
fair thing, unless Congress passes a law.
Really? Is that what we have come to--that the leader of the free
world just down Pennsylvania Avenue has to have Congress pass a law to
get him to do what he says is the moral and fair thing to do? Come on.
Are we in that bad a shape now?
I have had one of the smarter economists in the country, Art Laffer,
Ronald Reagan's economic adviser--what a great guy. Served us good
spaghetti and meatballs at his home in Nashville. I personally got to
try them out. Wonderful family, delightful family, a brilliant
economist.
I have had him explain to me how anybody who says we're going after
the rich, we're going to go after the rich, and we're going to make
them pay their fair share, is probably not being honest. They're just
probably not being honest, because if they think through their
proposal, if they will look at current history, if they will look at
immediate past history and long past history, what they find is this.
If you're a union worker, if you're a mechanic, if you're working on an
oil well somewhere, if you're working as a waitress, you're working in
a restaurant, you're working in a pharmacy, you're working in any of
millions of businesses across America, and you're not rich, you're part
of the working middle class, you cannot move if you get taxed a higher
amount because you are reliant on that job.
Taxes, no matter what kind of tax you put in place, it's most likely
only going to affect those who are in the middle class, no matter what
else you do, because only the wealthy are not tied to a restaurant, to
a car company, to an auto manufacturer, to an auto repair place, they
are not tied to those. They can own them, and they can live in the next
State or the next country, but they don't have to actually live at the
place of business they're making money from.
When you go after the wealthiest in America and want to make them do
the morally fair thing because, without Congress passing a law, these
wealthiest among us can't make themselves do the moral and fair thing,
according to their own words--Gee, we can't do it unless Congress makes
us--what you do is tell the wealthy, we're going to slap a big old tax
on you, and the wealthy can say, no thank you. I look stupid, perhaps,
but I'm not that stupid. That's how I have either gained or been able
to hold on to my wealth. So I'm moving. I'm voting on where I want to
live with my feet, and they pick up and they go to where there are less
taxes.
We've seen it in the wealthiest moving from country to another
country, or island, or buying an island. We have seen that repeatedly.
If the government says, gee, well, we'll outsmart the wealthiest among
us. They've moved to another country, so we'll figure out a new way to
go after the wealthiest. And every time it fails to work.
So after a while you get the idea, wait, let's look historically,
every time a city, state, or nation goes after the wealthiest people in
the world to make them pay higher taxes, unless the whole world
collaborated at the same time to make it happen, they will simply move.
{time} 2130
The middle class cannot do that. The middle class does not have that
luxury. If you're very wealthy and gas goes to $4 or $5 a gallon, it's
an inconvenience and you can't be tied up with trivial details like gas
going up $1 a gallon or $2 a gallon or, like it has under this
President, go from $1.80-or-so up to $4. And now we're heading toward
$5. And in some places I have seen $5--certainly, over $5 for some time
this year in some of the premium gasoline lines.
The wealthiest, they're not really bothered. It's an inconvenience.
They can choose to live in an estate out in the country. They can
choose to live in a town home worth millions in the middle of town, or
they can choose to live on an island. They can choose to live anywhere.
Because of the Internet, the telephone, Internet meetings, the
wealthiest among us can do their business from anywhere.
So it becomes very clear that the only reason somebody really
intelligent that understands what is going on and is willing to look at
historical precedent, anybody that's really going to be fair, will
realize the only reason they would say we're going after the wealthiest
among us is for political gain, because they're going to drive them out
of the country otherwise, or drive them out of the State or city where
the taxes are going to be raised dramatically.
The thing to do that's fair for those of us who want those making
more money to pay more and those who are making less money to pay less,
those of us that feel that way, many of us have begun to say, To do
that, let's have a flat tax. Some, like Steve Forbes, have been saying
it for a long time.
The Heritage Foundation has got a new flat tax proposal that looks to
have wonderful merit. There are a number of flat tax proposals. Steve
Forbes was at a 17 percent flat tax, it doesn't matter how much you
make. In my conversations with Art Laffer, he said you can have a flat
tax and actually even be lower than 17 percent--I'm looking forward to
getting the full details--and have two deductions, one for home
mortgage interest and one for charitable contributions. I'm not talking
about when you give underwear to some charity and say, Congratulations,
you've now got my undergarments. I'm talking about real charitable
contributions.
Make those things deductible, but otherwise eliminate all the
loopholes, whether it's 12, 17, and the economy would explode. There
would be more jobs available. And at this time when there are so many
that are just on the edge of desperation, when they don't know what
they're going to do, they can't keep paying $4 a gallon for gas, for
those who have been looking so long, the millions that are out of work
because they just got tired of looking so they're not counted in the
unemployment numbers.
So we realize, gee, the unemployment is probably much, much, much
worse than the administration is telling folks. For those folks, I
would like to provide a little hope. It won't be under this
administration; but if we have a different President and we get a
different majority in the Senate, it truly ought to be spring time in
America, figuratively, as it is literally right now.
[[Page H1912]]
We now know, many of us, we can be energy independent. Seven years
ago, when I got to Congress, I didn't think so. The natural gas we've
found is extraordinary. And how have we done it? The technology has
gotten so good at slanting holes, the technology has gotten so good in
sealing the hole and fracking a formation. And for those that
understand how it works, if you do not have a sealed formation there,
and you frack, then you have lost the formation. There will be no
pressure to bring the oil or gas up.
We've also had hearings in Natural Resources--and Chairman Doc
Hastings has done a great job there--we've had hearings and we've
discussed a lot of these things. And we have some Chicken Littles in
the Interior Department, Energy Department, and the EPA running around
saying, gee, hydraulic fracking keeps polluting drinking water. They've
shut wells down. And each time when they've brought in the scientific
study to actually analyze--because there has been some drinking water
polluted by something--but when they analyze, they find there is not
anything that was utilized in the hydraulic fracking process that was
able to make its way through the thousands of feet of rock formation to
get to the drinking water and that there is nothing in the polluted
drinking water that could possibly have come from the fracking.
Yet this President keeps saying, I'm for all of the above. And the
best I can figure is when he says I'm for an all-of-the-above energy
process, it means: I'm for anything we don't get out of the ground. So
we'll give hundreds of millions, actually billions, of dollars to dear
friends who have bundled money for the President's reelection and
original election and we'll give them those billions of dollars and
say, Go try to make solar panels, even though it's not financially
feasible. It's not a viable enterprise. Go do it and I will help you by
giving billions of dollars--42 percent of which we're having to borrow.
We'll give them all that money.
Some day we should be able to use solar energy; but for heaven's
sake, we should not be depriving our Social Security funds of money
while this President is giving away billions of dollars to cronies for
energy ideas that don't work and that are not feasible and that are
bankrupting America. And yet that's what's been happening. A 2 percent
payroll tax cut for workers to divide Americans.
Seniors have been told, You don't have to worry. This Democratic
administration is going to make sure we take care of our seniors. And
the very times that's being said, they are gutting the Social Security
trust fund. Even though it's IOUs going in there, there's Social
Security tax money that has been coming in since the 1930s in enough
sufficiency to pay for the outgoing checks. It was not supposed to be
for many years that we were supposed to reach that point where there
was more Social Security money going out than Social Security tax money
coming in.
Well, this President doubled down, and in what is a divisive--I
guess, to use his terminology--divisive, dismissive gesture from this
administration, we have undercut our seniors. This administration has
been pushing to gut the Social Security trust fund. And it has done so.
Now, the friends in the mainstream media, trying to cover for the
President, are not talking about the fact last year there was 5 percent
of Social Security payments that we didn't have money to pay from the
Social Security trust fund payments coming in. So we had to borrow
around 42 percent of the rest, and we had to take tax money to make up
the rest. And there's projections that though it was a 5 percent
shortfall last year, it will likely be 14 or 15 percent this year.
That's not a good road to stay on.
{time} 2140
It is a road to Greece. It is a road that will so undercut our senior
citizens, who deserve better from every administration, including this
one. Seniors have been hurt by this administration, 5 percent last
year, 15 percent this year, and if we don't get a different
administration and a different majority in the Senate, it's going to be
worse after that. It will be 45 percent the next year. If it triples in
1 year, it could triple again. We're in trouble if we continue the
policies of this administration.
Now, since hydraulic fracking has brought us 100 to 300 years of
natural gas, even at vastly expanded rates of usage, we could be energy
independent, we could put not merely city buses on natural gas, but
move cars to natural gas. At the same time, the Bakken play up in North
Dakota has found a huge amount of oil we didn't realize we had. And in
northeast Utah, northwest Colorado and southwest Wyoming, we are told
there are tremendous amounts of energy. We're told there's clean coal
technology.
And what's the answer from this administration? Let's shut down any
use of coal. Why? Because this administration has ``all of the above''
as their energy policy, which means they're not going to use coal
because it comes from underground.
We in the United States have been blessed beyond measure. We have
more natural resources and more energy than any nation in the world.
China, Russia, you name it--we've got more natural energy than
anywhere. And this administration has continued to put our energy off
limits. The second-largest coal deposit in the world is in Utah, we are
told, and it was put off-limits by President Clinton.
This administration, of all the campaign promises you would hope the
administration would break, you would hope they would break the promise
to see energy prices ``necessarily skyrocket.'' I would love to have
seen that promise broken, yet that seems to be one of the very few
that's been kept. Energy prices have necessarily skyrocketed. And then
we find out today, because hydraulic fracking has delivered the ability
for this Nation to become energy independent, today, the EPA has
declared war on hydraulic fracking.
People are desperate. The rich--we've seen how this works. The
President calls the wealthiest among us, the Wall Street folks ``fat
cats.'' All they have to endure is a little name calling from the other
end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and in return, they get richer than they've
ever been. Most people can endure a little name calling by an
individual when they know the individual is going to see that they're
wealthier than ever. Wall Street has done pretty well under this
administration. It's done a lot better than most of America.
Americans deserve better. The President says he's going after Big
Oil, declaring war on Big Oil. Well, this is one of the few areas where
the President actually does have a substantive plan to go after what he
calls ``Big Oil.'' Well, we've learned from the way Wall Street has
been handled, call them names but make them richer than ever. Say
you're going to war against Big Oil, and what happens? We get this
proposal in writing from the President, this is his Jobs Act, and
subtitle D of the President's job act is entitled, ``Repeal Oil
Subsidies.''
Well, that word is extremely disingenuous. The President uses it all
the time, but the word, if you look it up, means a grant or gift of
money. There is no grants or gift of money. There are tax deductions
for expenses. So he says he's going after Big Oil, but if you look at
the specific deductions that he now has in print that he is going after
Big Oil with, what do you find? You find out these deductions don't
help Big Oil companies. It's so marginal, it's a drop to them. Who it
will devastate and put out of business are the independent oil and gas
operators who drill 95 percent of all the oil and gas wells in the
continental U.S. There is a repeal in here by the President of the
deduction for intangible drilling and development costs in the case of
oil and gas wells. There is a repeal of the percentage depletion for
oil and gas wells, there is a repeal of the deduction for injectants,
and there is a repeal of the oil and gas working interest exception to
passive activity rules.
Now, if anybody is interested in really finding out the truth, they
can go to major oil companies and ask them, would these repeals of
these deductions really hurt you as a major oil company in the world?
And the answer would be, no, not really. You can go to the accountants,
as I have, for independent oil and gas operators and say, if these are
repealed, would it affect independent oil and gas operators who drill
95 percent of the oil wells in the continental U.S.? And the answer is,
it will
[[Page H1913]]
devastate them. Not only is he going after the deductions that keep
them afloat, they're going after the investment in oil and gas wells by
the mainstream public.
Now, if you're British Petroleum or Exxon, you don't put out a
proposal that says, we're drilling a well, and here's the proposal,
here's the geology, here's the other wells in the area, here's what we
think it will do. And if you invest X amount of dollars, then we will
give you X percentage amount of the working interest in this well.
That's the kind of proposal independent oil and gas companies have to
make to get investments for people to invest in their oil well. If they
hit a gusher, hit a huge well, then those who invest and take a
percentage of the well will do very well. If they hit a dry hole, then
they lose money. And when you invest in a dry hole and it costs you
money, you would hope you would be able to deduct your expenses of the
investment that failed.
What this President is doing not only is going to destroy the
independent oil companies by taking away deductions that keep them
afloat and keep them able to keep drilling another well, he is going
after their investments.
So once you begin to see these specifics, you realize--and there are
some other things in here, repeal marginal well production, repeal of
enhanced oil recovery--when you see the specifics, you realize, oh,
wow, maybe he doesn't know that he will destroy oil and gas independent
operators. Maybe he doesn't know. But it doesn't take a genius to
realize if you put oil and gas operators out of business who are the
independents, who are not big enough to have all the employees they
need to do the drilling, who have so many subcontractors who go out and
eat and go to the entertainment places and they go invest in things
around town, and they go buy clothes--those people, those
subcontractors, their subcontractors, all of those people will be
without anything to do because this administration says he's declared
war on major oil, but instead, it's really a war against independents.
If he stops 95 percent of the drilling for oil and gas in the
continental U.S., then what happens to major oil? You've eliminated all
of their competition among the small independents. Well, what does that
mean? Well, there are only a small number of massive international oil
and gas companies comparatively, and you've wiped out their competition
in America. It means they will charge more for gasoline, more for
diesel, and there's nothing we can do about it because they're the only
ones that have any energy.
{time} 2150
Right now, before this President finishes driving or trying to put
independents out of business, we've got to stop this train wreck that's
coming.
This should be springtime in America. It should be a time of
renaissance. People shouldn't have to pay $4 a gallon. And as soon as
this President takes substantive actions, just to announce that he's
going to take substantive actions, not to declare war on hydraulic
fracking as they have now, not to declare war on oil companies in North
Dakota because there have been eight mallards that died that had some
oil on them and, therefore, they have the Justice Department under the
President's thumb who is prosecuting the oil companies for violations
of the Migratory Bird Act even though they've got windmills they
support that are chopping them up by the thousands and thousands.
No, don't go after the windmills. They're above. So when the
President says he's for all of the above, that includes all of the wind
being generated here in Washington and other places where there are
windmills that are driven by the hot air.
It's time to start saying what we mean, so that when this President
tells the leader of Israel, ``I have your back,'' the leader of Israel
doesn't realize he's got to put on something that will stop a knife
coming from the back. It's time for our allies to know we support our
friends, and we're going to stop supporting and trying to buy off our
enemies. It's time to bring peace and prosperity back to the
continental U.S., all 50 States, all our territories, by truly having
an all-of-the-above energy policy. And if we want to pursue renewables,
don't be letting the Social Security trust fund or the tax money dry up
and leave seniors so vulnerable. Don't take away $500 billion from
Medicare and hurt the seniors like that as ObamaCare has done. Don't do
those things.
If you want to go spend billions giving it to your friends in solar
energy, for heaven's sake, let's start leasing the Federal land like it
used to be done, and then use 25 percent royalty, use part of our
royalty, to throw away on the President's friends, not be borrowing
from China, not be taxing people to give to his buddies, and we can
return to springtime in America.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I yield back the balance of my time.
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