[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 10 (Wednesday, January 21, 2015)]
[House]
[Page H438]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        A SQUANDERED OPPORTUNITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my deep disappointment 
in the address by the President last night in this Chamber.
  Twenty years ago, President Clinton was in a similar position. He 
realized his policies weren't working; they had just been 
overwhelmingly rejected by voters and he faced the first Republican 
Congress in 40 years. So in his State of the Union Message 20 years 
ago, President Clinton changed course, proclaiming: ``The era of Big 
Government is over.'' And he made good on that proclamation. He reached 
across the aisle to the Republican Congress, and together they achieved 
some amazing things for the American people.
  Together, they reduced Federal spending by a remarkable 4 percent of 
GDP. They reformed entitlement spending--in Bill Clinton's words, 
``ending welfare as we know it.'' They approved what amounted to the 
biggest capital gains tax cut in American history. They produced the 
only four balanced budgets that we have seen in 50 years.
  And the economy blossomed. We enjoyed one of the longest periods of 
economic expansion in our Nation's history.
  It wasn't a bipartisan lovefest. They clashed bitterly on matters 
great and small. Yet their accomplishments produced prosperity for our 
Nation and ensured President Clinton's popularity that endures to this 
day.
  President Obama thus has a working, proven model to salvage the last 
2 years of his failed Presidency, and instead, he is squandering it. 
The President says he wants to sock it to the wealthy by placing new 
and heavy taxes on investment. But the simple truth of the matter is, 
when you tax something, you get less of it. When you tax investment, 
you get less investment at precisely that time when our economy 
desperately needs greater investment for more and better-paying jobs.
  A smaller percentage of our people are working today than at any time 
in more than 30 years. Until last year, median family income had fallen 
throughout this administration. The American people don't want more 
government handouts. They need more jobs and better jobs, and that 
means more investment, not less. They need a job market that isn't 
flooded with millions of illegal immigrants undercutting their wages 
and opportunities. Indeed, it was recently estimated that the number of 
illegal immigrants working in direct defiance of Federal law is as much 
as the net increase in jobs throughout this administration. Most 
Americans are not getting ahead.
  We now suffer the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized 
world, and American businesses are fleeing from it.
  Who would have thought that socialist Sweden would today be 
considered a tax haven compared to the United States? Our people need 
those American jobs back in America.
  Yet the President seeks to raise taxes still further at a time when 
the Federal Government is already extracting record tax revenues from 
our people. The percentage of our economy now consumed by Federal taxes 
is well above the 40-year average. Our economic problems are not the 
fault of taxpayers for not paying enough taxes.
  The President says he wants to help the middle class, but the 
proposals he set before us last night would drag the middle class still 
further down the dark road of debt and doubt and despair that we have 
been on. If higher taxes and more burdensome regulations were the path 
to prosperity, we should be enjoying a new economic golden age today. 
If higher government spending and soak-the-rich policies were the 
antidote to income inequality, we should today be enjoying an 
egalitarian paradise.
  The reality is these policies have never worked. They have suppressed 
what should have been a robust economic recovery. They have increased 
the economic inequalities in our society. They have buried our children 
under a mountain of debt that will stalk them for the rest of their 
lives.
  The answer to income inequality and economic stagnation is genuine 
economic growth that requires reducing the burdens that government has 
placed on our economy. It worked when Bill Clinton did it, when Ronald 
Reagan did it, and when John F. Kennedy did it. In fact, Kennedy was 
right: a rising tide lifts all boats. Yet Barack Obama clings 
obstinately to the opposite policies. It shouldn't surprise us that he 
is getting the opposite results.

                              {time}  1030

  He had a fleeting opportunity last night to bend to the will of the 
voters, reverse these policies, and redeem his place in history. 
Instead, Whittier's words seem appropriate this morning:

       Of all sad words of tongue or pen, this saddest are these: 
     ``It might have been.''

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