[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 159 (Tuesday, December 11, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H6683-H6684]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TIME FOR LEADERSHIP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Woodall). The Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I hadn't planned on talking, but as I 
conclude my service here in the United States Congress, every time 
somebody comes down to the well and says that they want to set the 
record straight, the record winds up looking like the hind legs of my 
dog: very crooked.
  Knowing a little bit about this and caring about this issue, as 
everybody that serves in this Congress does, I

[[Page H6684]]

really feel compelled to talk about where we are. And I'm heartened by 
the fact that both the Speaker and the minority leader spoke today 
about the need to come up with a solution.
  Last spring, a guy named Jim Cooper, a Member from Tennessee, and I 
offered in response to the budget resolutions that were going on, 
something called ``Simpson-Bowles.'' Simpson-Bowles is also known as 
the fiscal commission appointed by President Obama to look at the 
Nation's fiscal problems and come up with a set of recommendations.
  The fact is that, even though it was President Obama's commission, he 
has not sought to implement one of the recommendations. Why? Because 
the recommendations are tough. There's a lot of tough love. You don't 
get into a situation as a country where you owe $16 trillion and not 
have a solution that involves some difficulty and some sacrifice.
  Included in there--and sadly, as you listen to the news accounts and 
you listen to some of the comments on the floor--the rhetoric is that 
those mean, nasty, nasty, mean Republicans are so interested in 
protecting the rich people in this country that they're not willing to 
increase and ask them to give just a little bit more. As one Republican 
who, in fact, says give the President the 2 percent of the rate 
increases that he's looking for--that still doesn't solve the problem, 
as Mr. Woodall so eloquently indicated--I would come at it a different 
way.
  If you let the Bush tax cuts expire on the top 2 percent of wage 
earners in this country, by the President's numbers--not my numbers, 
not some number that was pulled out of the campaign--it raises about 
$900 billion over 10 years. Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer 
when it came to math when I was growing up, even I can do that. If you 
divide $900 billion by 10 years, you wind up with $90 billion a year. 
That $90 billion a year is enough to run the Federal Government for 11 
days.
  The fiscal year around here ends on September 30. The President's 
proposal, in terms of sticking it to the rich people, making them pay a 
little bit more, gets you from the end of the fiscal year on September 
30 to Columbus Day. Then what? It completely ignores the fact that two-
thirds of the Federal budget--the Federal budget is $3.6 trillion.
  Two-thirds of the Federal budget is what is called the ``middle class 
entitlements.'' It's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the 
interest on the debt. Those checks go out automatically. There is 
nothing that any Member of Congress has to vote on, unless you have a 
proposal, which Simpson-Bowles was and is.
  You may hear the ads playing on the radio from the Nation's CEOs and 
others saying, We can't play small ball. We've got to come up with a 
package that actually heals the country.
  If there is a sadness that I have and one of the reasons I'm leaving 
is, if you listen to the people talking, the President's advisers are 
saying, Well, you know, going over the fiscal cliff, we're putting the 
Republicans in this box and the 2 percent, that's good for the 
President. And you hear the Democrats saying, Listen, if we can have 
this discharge petition, make people not like Republicans, that's good 
for the Democratic Party as we go forward.

                              {time}  1230

  Some people, quite frankly, in my party--the Republican Party--are 
saying, Hey, listen. If we can paint the President and the Democrats as 
tax and spenders, then that's good for our party.
  Mr. Speaker, when are people going to stop thinking about what's good 
for themselves or good for their parties and start thinking about 
what's good for America?
  What's good for America is that we've got to come together and solve 
this problem, not just with taking that $90 billion, which really is 
not much, but with reforming our Tax Code. We have to look at the 
programs of Social Security and Medicare, not to eviscerate them, not 
to throw Granny out on the street, not to not have health care for 
people in this country, but to make those programs not only viable 
today--but what about the people in their forties and thirties and 
twenties?
  They did a survey a little while ago of high school seniors, and 
asked: What are you more likely to see, a Social Security check or a 
UFO, an unidentified flying object? More seniors picked the UFO, and 
with some of the leadership around here, I'm not surprised that they 
picked the UFO.
  The fact of the matter is that we can't play small ball. When Cooper 
and I put this thing on the floor last spring, it got 38 votes; 26 
Democrats and 12 Republicans were willing to stand up and do this. It's 
time for the big deal, and it's time for leadership.

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