[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 17 (Tuesday, February 5, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H350]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FREEDOM LEADS TO PROSPERITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Bentivolio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BENTIVOLIO. Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to speak 
today. I have said it before, and I want to say it again: the job of a 
Member of Congress is to protect the rights of the people, not take 
them away.
  I want to explain what I mean by that. Those rights are outlined in 
our Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. These rights were not given to us by a King or developed 
after extensive debate by a Congress. They come from God. They exist in 
the same way that gravity exists. They are natural.
  But too often what gets left out is why we must protect those rights 
and why those rights are still relevant today. The reason is simple, 
and it's as practical today as it was in 1776: we protect those rights 
because in America we know that freedom leads to prosperity. Our 
country was built by Forefathers who believed in, and defended, that 
idea.
  Every generation that came after them has followed their lead, rising 
to tackle whatever challenge came before them in order to protect the 
freedom of this Nation. Every American generation has left the country 
a little better off than they found it and handed it to their sons and 
daughters with the hope that they would do the same.
  Thinking both about those who came before us and those who will 
follow us long after we're gone is in the very DNA of our country. 
That's why our Constitution's preamble explicitly states that it 
doesn't secure liberty for just the founding generation but also for 
prosperity.
  Generations don't simply disappear. Instead, like an aging 
photograph, they kind of fade away until they are all gone. Right now, 
one of America's greatest generations is doing just that. In World War 
II, hundreds of thousands of Americans risked their lives on 
battlefields half a world away while the rest of them worked and 
sacrificed at home to make sure our troops had everything they needed.
  The reason they acted so valiantly was because they understood the 
truth to American exceptionalism: that freedom leads to prosperity. 
They knew it, and they fought for it because it had been passed down to 
them from their parents, who had received it from their parents and so 
on. To them it was something worth fighting for, it was worth making 
sacrifices for, and it was worth dying for. Not a day goes by when I 
don't think about their sacrifices and remember what they did for me 
and everyone else in this great country.
  They deserve to be taken care of. That is why I urge my fellow 
Members of the House from both parties to join me in supporting the 
Full Faith and Credit Act. As we work to cure the government's 
addiction to debt, we must ensure that the Greatest Generation is 
protected. They have already made their sacrifices in the defense of 
our ideals. They have already passed down freedom to us and given us a 
country that is better off.
  We cannot be the first generation to fail America. We must follow the 
path of our Founding Fathers by preserving the American Dream for our 
children and grandchildren.
  One great idea to preserve our great Nation was developed by our 
Speaker, John Boehner. In the days before the midterm elections of 
2010, Speaker Boehner proposed ``taking a different approach'' 
regarding how Congress voted on budgets. He maintained that rather than 
having a ``comprehensive budget'' that encompasses all--or at least 
most of--government appropriations, the whole Congress should treat 
every budget for each Federal agency as an independent spending bill.
  Speaker Boehner said:

       Members shouldn't have to vote for big spending increases 
     at the Labor Department in order to fund Health and Human 
     Services. Members shouldn't have to vote for big increases at 
     the Commerce Department just because they support NASA. Each 
     Department and Agency should justify itself each year to the 
     full House and Senate and be judged on its own.

  That is the kind of leadership that Americans across this great land 
support. Those are the types of ideas that we need to enact in order to 
take on the challenges that are ahead. I urge my fellow Congressmen to 
appeal to the better angels of their nature as we spend the next few 
months talking about our government's addiction to debt. Let's solve 
this problem.

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