[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 100 (Monday, June 13, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H5476-H5482]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REVERSE THE CURSE: RESTORING FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Brown of Ohio). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Arrington) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Speaker, tonight we are going to talk about a
subject that gets too little attention in this Chamber and too little
debate and consideration among lawmakers. Yet the storm clouds are
gathering, and an epic crisis looms large over the future of our great
Nation. Our mountainous and unsustainable national debt is the most
significant, in my opinion, long-term threat to our economic prosperity
as well as our national security. We have sown the wind of fiscal
irresponsibility, and our children will reap the whirlwind of economic
calamity. We will rob generations of Americans of the freedoms and the
opportunities that we have enjoyed and have been so blessed with.
Madam Speaker, we all take an oath, but there is an unwritten
covenant between lawmakers today and our Founding Fathers and our
future generations of Americans, and that unwritten sacred promise that
all American leaders have subscribed to is to leave this Nation better
than we found it.
I believe the question is still hanging out there. The jury is still
out on whether our Nation's leaders today in this generation are
willing to make the sacrifices necessary to take on what I believe is
the greatest challenge of the 21st century, and that is this
unsustainable, unconscionable, and even immoral fiscal path that we are
on. It is a collision course with a disastrous future.
We have to do something. We have all the reforms and policy
solutions. But what we don't have and what I have not seen in now 6
years in this Chamber is the collective political will to do something
about it. It is very simple.
Madam Speaker, I am honored to be joined by fellow lawmakers who I
know share these sentiments. One such man hails from Ohio's Sixth
District. He is a dear friend, he is a patriot, and he is a veteran. He
has served on the Budget Committee. He is the co-chair of the Problem
Solvers Caucus, a task force on addressing our broken budgetary
processes and getting our arms around the debt and reining this in.
Madam Speaker, I am so glad he has joined us tonight. I yield to the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Johnson).
Mr. JOHNSON of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for
yielding.
[[Page H5477]]
This is such a huge problem. There are so many different paths we
could go down with this discussion. It is so big of a crisis that it is
almost impossible to get it all articulated well within one Special
Order series.
Madam Speaker, late last month, the CBO released its ``May 2022
Budget and Economic Outlook.'' This is the first time the CBO has
produced a baseline that properly incorporates the runaway, destructive
inflation that is ripping through our economy today.
According to the CBO report, inflation is not going anywhere anytime
soon except up. This is a dramatic change from the insistence of the
President, the Treasury Secretary, and my Democrat colleagues that
inflation is merely transitory and is nothing to worry about.
They are, in fact, so out of touch that they have begun to change
their narrative. They now claim that Americans are financially
prepared--get this--financially prepared to weather $5 a gallon
gasoline, skyrocketing energy costs, and grocery prices that would have
been unthinkable just 18 months ago.
Now, I am not sure what Americans they are talking to, but they are
not talking to Americans who live in Appalachia where I live--seniors
who live on fixed incomes and others who struggle to make ends meet in
this high inflationary period. But inflation is not just a sticker-
shock sensation. It will have ripple effects throughout the economy.
Debt will continue to rise to 110 percent of GDP over the next decade.
Don't be fooled by President Biden's propaganda claiming victory on
debt reduction either. CBO projects that deficits will be $2.4 trillion
larger over the next 10 years. The more President Biden continues to
pour gasoline on the inflation fire with his failed policies, the more
that number is going to keep growing.
Madam Speaker, we must get our fiscal house in order. The American
people have to live by a budget, and the American government should
live by a budget, too. The United States does not have a revenue
problem, we have a spending problem. And the first step in fixing this
problem is to fix our broken budget process.
That is why I am proud to be a cosponsor of H.R. 2575, the TRUST Act,
to establish special rescue committees to begin developing
recommendations and legislation to protect and ensure the longevity of
Social Security and Medicare. These are some of the country's main
drivers of our debt. They are mandatory spending programs that are
absolutely out of control. Doing nothing about it is not an option.
I am also, as was mentioned, the co-lead on a bipartisan debt and
deficit working group as a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, and I
am willing to work with anyone, Republican or Democrat, to find real
solutions to ensure Medicare and Social Security are around for our
children and our grandchildren to benefit from in the years to come.
Madam Speaker, this is a big problem. I look forward to hearing what
my colleagues have to say tonight. We need bold ideas to address the
fiscal crisis that looms in front of us.
{time} 2045
Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Speaker, I thank my dear friend from Ohio and
echo his sentiments. We must get our fiscal house in order.
It is shameful. I would say, a case in point, to the cries from our
citizens, citizens who say that this body and politicians in both
Chambers, in Washington, play by a different set of rules. Do you know
what? They are right. There is no further you have to look than at our
budget and appropriations process.
We haven't had a budget in the last 4 years under the leadership of
our Democrat colleagues, but quite frankly, both parties have been
guilty. I think, over the last 50 years, we have only gone through
regular order and passed a budget in all 12 appropriations and run the
people's House the way our States and local governments and our
families run their fiscal affairs.
They don't get to waive pay-fors. They don't get to borrow infinitum.
This place is so broken, and it is going to catch up to us. You don't
feel the pain until you feel the pain.
When the dominoes fall, you cannot borrow and spend your way out of
that situation and that particular crisis, like we have seen with COVID
and others prior to it.
We have a champion for this issue, fiscal responsibility, restoring
that in our own Conference as well as the broader United States
Congress, a fellow Texan, a man who I am proud to serve with from
Texas' 21st District, and a member of the House Judiciary Committee and
Veterans' Affairs Committee.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy).
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for yielding. I
know that he cares deeply about this issue and spends a whole lot of
time working across the aisle and with our own Conference, trying to
get this body to focus on this issue of spending. Frankly, that is on
both sides of the aisle.
We are sitting here now, $30.5 trillion of debt. That is a number
that nobody in America can possibly understand what that means. We talk
about it. We say it. We put charts up, but nobody knows. $30.5
trillion, if you set out to count to that, one Mississippi, it would
take you 967,000 years. I mean, think about that. It is patently
absurd.
Yet, we are going to rack up another trillion and a half here in the
next year, and then another couple of trillion. We are just going to
keep piling it on. Interest rates are going up, and interest rates are
going to keep going up, so that debt is going to pile up even further.
The American people know this. They can't live their lives that way.
Yet, here we are in this body, this so-called people's House, and we
haven't had a single actual debate on spending in this body the entire
time I have been here, much less this year.
We just passed another milestone in this great body, the United
States House of Representatives, in which we just spent the sixth year
in which not one amendment was offered on the floor of this body in
open debate, not one amendment.
Has any rank-and-file Member of the United States House of
Representatives been able to come to the floor and offer an amendment?
You wonder why this place is broken?
I mean, we just passed that milestone yet again. You never get a
chance to have open debate here in the so-called people's House.
I gave a speech a little while back from this podium on this floor
that I called the United States House of free stuff because that is the
way people view this body.
Oh, we just got another check we can go write, another bill we can
pass. It sounds good. It has something great in the title. You are
talking about infant formula. Oh, you better vote for that. You can't
vote against a bill that has infant formula in the title. Doesn't
matter what it does. Doesn't matter if it will make it worse. Didn't
matter what the power of the government is.
If you put ALS in the title, don't vote ``no'' on an ALS bill. Well,
then you hate people with ALS, right?
Don't vote ``no'' on any bill that has something in the title. United
States House of free stuff.
Yet, this week, what are we going to vote on? We are going to have a
bill, H.R. 7606, which will likely come up, that will give $400 million
to ethanol producers. Never mind that that jacks up 30 cents a gallon
on the price of gasoline.
We are going to have a bill that has $12.7 billion over 10 years on
wildlife recovery. Man, we are really being great stewards of the
public trust here in the United States House of Representatives.
That is the problem. That is what is broken, and the American people
see it. They see that we are here not doing the work of the people
because we never actually debate, vote, and figure out something, roll
our sleeves up and say: ``Do you know what? We have X trillion dollars
of income so we can only spend X trillion.'' We never do that.
That fundamentally is what my friend from Texas is getting at, what
my colleagues are here on the floor talking about.
I would ask the Speaker where my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle are having any conversation whatsoever about only spending that
which we take in. But, no, we can never have that conversation in the
United States House of free stuff because it is a hell
[[Page H5478]]
of a lot easier to go out on the steps and go preen and posture to a
bunch of people in the media, saying about how evil people are if they
dare vote against spending money we don't have.
Madam Speaker, we should do our job, both sides of the aisle, to stop
spending money we don't have.
Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Speaker, I say a hearty amen to my fellow Texan
who has put his money where his mouth is. Certainly, he has put the
votes of his constituents where his mouth is and has taken a stand.
It is not fun to be voting against things that have these wonderful
titles that are going to do these grandiose things for the country. But
the question is, who is going to pay for it?
I don't even call the $30 trillion of debt ``debt.'' I call it what
Tom McClintock once mentioned in a budget hearing. It is a deferred tax
on our children. It is so easy for us to pass these bills and not
consider the incalculable cumulative cost.
But there will be a payday someday. As James Madison said, ``A public
debt is a public curse.'' We are not blessing our children. We are not
giving them the benefit of the quality of life that we have known as
Americans second to no other nation and society in the world and in the
history of the world. Yet, to do nothing and to keep this runaway
freight train of fiscal irresponsibility running off the cliff is to
curse them. Indeed, it is to curse them, as James Madison said.
Another friend and colleague and a new Member of Congress, but not
new to public service, is Peter Meijer from Michigan's Third District.
He serves on the Committee on Homeland Security and the Committee on
Foreign Affairs. We appreciate his deep concerns and convictions on
this issue facing our country.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Meijer).
Mr. MEIJER. Madam Speaker, I thank my dear friend from Texas for
yielding.
When I was in middle school, we had a textbook for U.S. Government,
and it showed our debt. The line went up and the line went down over
administrations. It spiked in World War II. It was coming down in the
nineties. This is the debt, mind you, not the deficit, the debt. There
was a little dotted line anticipating we would have the debt fully paid
off by, I think, 2002.
Now, some things got in the way around the turn of the millennium,
and that number has spiked. Now, we are at those World War II highs.
As many of my colleagues have alluded to, this is a bipartisan
affliction. Deficit spending knows no party preference. But the idea
that, in just a few short years, we tripled that debt--well, added 50
percent, went from $20 trillion to $30 trillion, $5 trillion of that in
the last 2 years alone.
We were facing the COVID-19 pandemic. Those were dark and frightening
days, and this body reacted swiftly, reacted in good faith. Yet, the
good faith became a good excuse to just keep spending, keep spending,
keep going. That catches up.
The inflation that we are experiencing right now has many fathers.
You have the challenges of unwinding over a decade of quantitative
easing, and that money printer just rolling on and on.
We have the American Rescue Plan, which many of us in this body,
probably many of us here behind me tonight, were warning about the
inflationary impacts that were dismissed at the time, except for a few
brave economists on the left. Larry Summers was pointing that out, but
we just kept going.
Now, the American people, the consumers, are feeling that impact.
They see it every time they drive past the gas station.
I just filled up my gas tank. For the first time, it cost me over
$100. That has never been the case. I know many who have more than a
20-gallon tank are experiencing that even worse.
The question on behalf of constituents we talk to is: What are you
going to do? What are you going to do in Congress about this?
The challenge is inflation, debt spending. These are challenging
issues, right? You can't put the genie back in the bottle. I mean,
maybe we could accelerate the creation of a time machine and go back
and show what occurred and what the consequences were of those
policies, come back into this body to February 2021 with the American
Rescue Plan, or even go back to when that middle school textbook I had
was written, showing the dangers.
But just in the time I have been here, our cost to service the debt,
that 10-year Treasury bond, has tripled in terms of what this impact
will be on us fiscally.
We talk about the budgets that we pass, that spending. That is only a
third of how much money is going out the door.
I applaud my colleagues who are working on the TRUST Act and other
efforts to just come to some bipartisan consensus because this will be
something that impacts all generations.
I am acutely aware of that, looking at young families and the burden
this is putting on them, and just how much that debt very rapidly is
going to be a long-term drag on our fiscal growth, on our economic
vitality that underpins our standing in the world and our position as a
superpower.
If we don't get that house in order and get it in order fast, and
start laying down the groundwork--it doesn't have to be bold right
away. It will need to be bold eventually. But, by golly, we need to
start heading down that right path and that right path soon.
Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan, my
friend, for his comments. I am, again, proud to serve with him, and he
brings such reason and common sense. He is right to say that it is not
a partisan issue and that the debt and those things that have led to
this massive $30 trillion, over 120 percent of the size of our entire
economy, exceeding World War II with our entire debt--and by the way,
in peacetime. He is right.
We have to have an honest conversation with ourselves before we have
an honest conversation with the American people, and both parties have
contributed to this mess. Until we decide to accept that and take
ownership of it, we will never lead us to the path of restoring that
responsibility, that good footing, and the prospects of having saved
this country and our children and grandchildren from the disastrous,
calamitous future if we don't. I appreciate his approach to it.
We are reaching out to our colleagues, our Democrat colleagues, to
fix some of these broken systems, the perverse incentives that let us
get away with this reckless and irresponsible process that we call
budget and appropriations. Nowhere else in the world can you do what we
do.
But the results are indisputable. You get a broken process, a
dysfunctional system like we have, and you are going to get broken
outcomes.
Look no further than the debt clock, and look no further than CBO's
10-year forecast: $16 trillion more over the next 10 years of just the
public debt. It went from almost a trillion in annual deficits leading
up to COVID, and now the average will be $1.6 trillion in annual
deficits over the next 10 years, leading up to 2032, where we will have
$2.3 trillion in annual deficits. The interest we pay on the debt just
to service them, think about this.
{time} 2100
We will spend more to service the debt to pay the interest, which you
get nothing for. You get no infrastructure. You don't get a farm bill
with strengthening of the food supply. You don't get a better or bigger
army to put on the field against the threats around the globe.
We will see a tripling of the interest payments that will exceed in
10 years, cumulative, over $8 trillion, but the annual amount will
exceed what we spend on national defense. We get nothing for this
interest. It is the largest growing mandatory spending item in the
budget.
Woe to the country if we don't take a hard look in the mirror and if
we don't decide to muster the political courage to take this on for the
sake of our kids and for the sake of our country.
Now, one of my closest friends in Congress who claims to come from a
State that does more agriculture than the Lone Star State, which
already discredits him from the outset, but I don't want to see the
numbers because I would be afraid if he were right. I would be afraid
to go back to Texas. We are just going to say Texas is bigger in every
way, including ag production.
[[Page H5479]]
He is a Ways and Means Committee member, and this guy, he is
passionate about our debt, our deficits, and getting our fiscal house
in order. He is going to be helping lead the charge in the 118th
Congress when the people, I pray, give our conference, Republicans, a
chance to prove that we are serious on this: Ron Estes from the great
State of Kansas.
Mr. ESTES. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend, Mr. Arrington, for
hosting this very important hour on this very important topic. I will
concede that Texas is bigger geographically than Kansas and several
other States as well.
You know, it is important that we talk about this important issue,
and I really appreciate the work that he does, and I appreciate serving
with him on the Ways and Means Committee on so many of the important
issues that we have to address for our country.
Madam Speaker, tonight, as many Americans put their kids to bed, they
are checking their schedules for the next day and doing a quick review
of the bank accounts. They are deeply concerned about how they are
going to be able to live with the crushing price increases in Joe
Biden's America.
We are talking a lot about the debt tonight. We are talking about,
you know, how do you afford to make your payments on the issues that
you have to address today? But also, how do you have to plan for the
future, knowing how that debt is going to weigh down on people, weigh
down on Americans, weigh down on them as individuals, but also weigh
down on their kids and grandkids?
You know, there is a lot of noise that happens in this bubble we call
Washington, D.C., but everyday Americans have the same top concerns
about the economy and rising prices.
In fact, it has been a top concern for months now. Even last year
during a townhall in October, 98 percent of the respondents said that
they had seen an increase in the cost of regular necessities.
Last week, I had an opportunity to speak with Treasury Secretary
Janet Yellen about why it is taking the administration so long to
recognize inflation as a problem. She complained about other challenges
the Biden administration faced in January of 2021.
Let's look at what really has happened over the last 18 months. When
President Biden took office, he was met with a growing economy that was
already recovering from a global pandemic. We were already seeing the
debt being addressed and starting to work in that direction.
The COVID vaccine that had been developed from Operation Warp Speed
was being distributed around the world, as well as throughout the
United States. We were actually starting to see inflation stabilized at
a mere 1.4 percent, and filling up your gas tank only cost $2.39,
thanks to American energy independence.
Despite all the pandemic-related challenges that Americans have gone
through over the past year; consumer sentiment was relatively high at
79. But after a year of total Democrat control in the city, Americans
no longer have a positive outlook on the economy.
Our economy shrank in the first quarter. Americans are paying more
for everything they buy on a regular basis. Gas has skyrocketed to an
average above $5 per gallon, and consumer sentiment has dropped to a
record low of 50.2. It is bad news for our country.
Joe Biden and the Democrat policies are taking away the prosperity
and the American Dream from families and small businesses across the
country.
You know, on Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a
staggering higher-than-expected inflation rate of 8.6 percent, but that
is the year-over-year number. It really doesn't show the impact of
inflation that has come up during the Biden administration, what a lot
of people are calling Bidenflation.
If we go back to January of 2021 when President Biden took office, we
can see that month-over-month inflation is actually up a cumulative
11.4 percent. Think about that. If you bought something in January of
2021, it now costs 11.4 percent more than it did.
That is a marketplace average. Some products have been a whole lot
higher than that. You see it in gas. You see it in meat, bacon, and
milk.
Now, what does that mean for the average American? We are looking at,
for the average American household, an additional $635 in monthly
costs. As you can see, prices have continued to climb for American
families each month, meaning that on average, each household has
already paid an additional $5,000 for these failed policies under the
Biden administration. Even if inflation stays the same, households will
pay an additional $7,620 over the next 12 months.
My Republican colleagues and I understand how devastating this is for
Americans. We warned for months that kneecapping American energy
production, while flooding the economy with Federal dollars and deficit
spending, would create runaway inflation, as it has.
Today, right now, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle could
ease the burden on families by encouraging American energy production
and stopping their pursuit of Big Government spending sprees. We would
have a stronger economy and a stronger America through energy
independence, an ability to balance the Federal budget, and a smaller
government.
These are the keys that will reverse course on a disastrous economy,
and I would encourage my colleagues in the majority to disband this far
left, extreme agenda to face the crisis they have created.
As we have talked about tonight, the debt continues to increase, and
we need to focus on that. We need to focus on lowering the amount of
``free stuff'' that comes out of the United States Government and focus
on what we need to do to help everyday Americans with the things that
they go through and things that they have to deal with, their families
and their small businesses.
Again, I would like to close in thanking my friend, Jodey Arrington,
for hosting this so that we can talk about, you know, the fiscal state
of the country and what the problems are that we have to address going
forward.
Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Speaker, I couldn't be more proud to serve
alongside of Ron Estes. The people of Kansas are well served, letting
him be their voice in the people's House.
You mentioned the disastrous economic plan and policies of this
administration. It is hard to believe what you didn't mention that this
President and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle somehow
think that the largest tax-and-spend bill is the solution. More
spending. More spending. More flooding the market with Federal moneys.
More expansion of welfare without work.
We all want to take care of those folks who are working hard and
still struggling. But, for example, the refundable tax credit, child
tax credit, where we would be paying thousands of dollars per child,
per person, with no requirement to work, to contribute, to have
ownership in this society, it is reckless.
And, quite frankly, it is heartless because those policies trap
people in poverty. They don't lift them out. They trap them in a life
of dependency on the government.
We want Americans to be the very best that God has created them to be
and have the best quality of life and a chance for a better life for
their families. I thank my friend from Kansas.
I am reminded of some great warnings from our wise Founders. Ben
Franklin said, `` . . . when you run into debt; you give another power
over your liberty.'' We are talking about robbing our children of their
freedom, not just their economic opportunity and future prosperity.
Thomas Jefferson said, ``To preserve our independence, we must not
let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.'' Warning after warning.
One of my favorites, our great father of this country, our first
President, Commander in Chief George Washington, in his farewell
address--think about it, penning a relatively short set of remarks, not
only for those of his time, but for posterity, for future leaders of
the greatest country in the world.
{time} 2110
He gave three major warnings. He said: Be careful of foreign
influence, be careful of the factions that will divide you within our
own country, weakening our bonds of unity, as I stand under the ``e
pluribus unum'' motto, out of many one, that unifying spirit that made
this country exceptional.
[[Page H5480]]
But he warned about fiscal irresponsibility, and just to paraphrase,
he said: We must avoid the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning
occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to
discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not
ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden, which we ourselves
ought to bear.
I mean, we are ungenerously throwing upon posterity a burden of debt
that we are not willing to bear. We are not willing to take the tough
votes and pay for this and reduce our debt and deficit spending and
give the next generation a chance, a fighting chance to have what we
have had in this great country.
I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cloud), another freedom-
fighting Texan who serves the coastal communities in the Lone Star
State, Oversight and Reform Committee member and proud Texan, the lone
Texan on the Agriculture Committee. I have tremendous respect for him
and his love for freedom, his love for the Lord, and his love for the
people of this great country, from Texas' 27th District.
Mr. CLOUD. Madam Speaker, I thank Jodey for putting this together. I
have enjoyed sitting with him in many of the meetings that he has
called to work on fiscal responsibility, reaching across the aisle to
see about having those important conversations, realizing the heavy
task ahead of us, but also how important it is that we take it on.
We are $30 trillion in debt. I like how Jodey framed it because $30
trillion is a hard number for us to grasp, but the idea that it is a
deferred tax on our kids, it is nothing that we will have to pay, but
it is a burden we are passing on to our kids in the name of spending
today.
Right now what we see happening in our Nation is families are
struggling with inflation, inflation, and inflation. Right now many
families are having to make the choice between food and fuel. You have
families on a fixed income who suddenly their money doesn't go as far
as it went, and they are having to make tough choices, sometimes
between medicine and food.
You have others who have saved their whole life, worked their whole
life, thinking their money would stretch a certain distance, and
suddenly their life savings is not worth what it was.
The Washington solution, of course, has been to spend more money,
exacerbate the problem, put more money out there that causes more and
more and more inflation. Typically what we see happen from big-spending
politicians is they try to get away with selling this idea to the
American people that their personal compassion is defined by how much
of other people's money we give away.
That is the most absurd notion, the fact that we could spend other
people's money and somehow go back to the American people and say, How
much do I care about you? It is not our money to spend. Real compassion
would be doing the due diligence to make sure that we are not just
voting on a bill that has some warm and fuzzy title but that we are
doing the due diligence to make sure that it is actually accomplishing
the objectives it was set forth to do.
When we start a program or we start an agency, we come back and we
check and we see, are they meeting their benchmarks, are they actually
accomplishing it? A lot of times in Congress we will pass a bill out of
the best of intentions and find out later on that it is actually doing
the opposite of what we intended it to do.
Right now in Washington if you try to get a straight answer on how
many programs or agencies exist in Washington, in our Federal
bureaucracy, it is hard to get a straight answer, much less to know
whether they are doing a good job or not, whether we are being wise
with the taxpayer dollar or not.
This is one reason I have authored and introduced here the Federal
Sunset Commission Act. We have one in Texas. It has been effective at
helping rein in government. It would bring every agency, every program
before a commission and review it to see if it is something we should
keep doing. Maybe there are a couple programs that are similar that we
can consolidate, make them more efficient. Maybe there are some things
that are just not accomplishing what they were set out to do. They may
have been put out there with the best of intentions, but we need to
stop it and give the taxpayer back their taxpayer dollars.
You know, when you study how nations rise and fall throughout
history, usually they crumble from within. Right now that is where we
are at in the United States. We are not so much in danger of some
invading force coming across our borders, but we have not been diligent
to spend wisely. We have been irresponsible.
We are the world's reserve currency, but we have not acted like the
world's reserve currency. If we are not careful, we will lose that very
important standing that has helped us have the freedom and prosperity
and, frankly, to be a light, to be a city on a hill, to be a nation
that advances freedom and liberty not only here at home but, frankly,
across the world.
Some years ago, it was actually under the Bush administration, there
was an intelligence report that came out that said basically the
greatest transfer in all of history of wealth and power is happening
right now from the Western countries to the Eastern countries. They
said it was almost inevitable. It was a virtual certainty is the way it
was phrased that this transition would happen.
They said it was happening for two reasons. They said it was
happening because we are sending oil and gas revenues overseas and we
are sending manufacturing overseas. So basically the elites were taking
the wealth and hard work of the American worker and sending it to
nations that have our not best interests in mind. And they call that
good, sound policy.
They said it was virtually inevitable. Well, in the last
administration, we saw that we could, indeed, bring those oil and gas
revenues back. We saw that actually brought peace and security to the
world. We saw that we could begin to bring manufacturing back.
If we release the American worker to do their job, to innovate, they
can meet the challenges of the supply chain we face now. Let's get
government out of the way and let them do their best work.
There is a story in Scripture of a good king Hezekiah, and history
will record that he was a good king, but later on in life he made a big
mistake. He invited an enemy country to come see the storehouses, to
see where the temple treasuries were, to see where all the gold and
weapons were stored up. A prophet came to him a couple days later, and
he said, guess what, everything that your ancestors have stored up will
be taken away one day because of what you just did. And that was a
tragic thing to hear. But what was even more tragic was his response
when he said: Well, what you are saying is good because at least it
will not happen in my lifetime.
We have too many people in this House who when it comes to
legislation are willing to sugarcoat, willing to acquiesce, willing to
vote on that good and fuzzy bill because they know that the damage will
not come in their lifetime, it won't come in their political career.
We have got to do what is right by the American people; do what is
right for generations to come; and do what we need to do to save this
great bastion of hope and freedom for the world, the United States of
America. Thank you for hosting this. God bless you.
Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Speaker, wow, I have to really hold back here
because I have other colleagues that have important things to say, but
when I listen to my friend Michael Cloud, I am inspired because he is
a man driven by conviction. I have watched him, and I admire his drive
for truth, his seeking out what is best for the country. That is his
measuring stick.
In an institution full of so much baloney and so many, pardon me,
partisan hacks, it is nice to have somebody that just says, I want to
do right by the Constitution, my constituents, and my kids. And that is
what drives Michael Cloud. I am proud to serve with Representative
Cloud. I thank him for joining us for this discussion.
We have another Kansan. I think we have had three Texans and two
Kansans, so we are still winning, we are still up one. Tracey Mann is a
new Member of Congress but not new to public service. He has led his
great State as Lieutenant Governor.
[[Page H5481]]
Now, he might boast more wheat and sorghum there in his district, but
he will never be able to produce more cotton than Texas 19. I love that
he is a champion for our producers, our ag producers, and I love that
he is equally concerned about making sure we live within our means, we
rein in our spending, and we reduce our national debt and get back to
the fiscal footing that we all have confidence will be a gift, not a
curse, and that we will, in fact, reverse the curse.
We are going to get a chance in the next term. God willing, I think
the people are going to give us the chance to lead. And lead we must,
which will require courage, and I know you have it.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Mann), from
the First District of Kansas.
{time} 2120
Mr. MANN. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Arrington for doing this
tonight. I thank him for being such a champion and continuing to raise
this issue, which is incredibly important to all of the Midwest, the
West Coast, the East Coast, our entire country, vitally important.
I enjoyed the trip to west Texas the other day, and, yes, they grow
more cotton than we do in Kansas, without a doubt.
As mentioned already, we are more than $30 trillion in debt. We have
added almost $6 trillion in the last 2\1/2\ years, mostly in the name
of COVID. We spent more money in the name of fighting COVID than we
spent to win World War II, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Let that sink
in. It is absolutely mind-blowing.
The debt is now $92,000 per American. For every American, your share
of the American debt is $92,000. For my wife and four kids, our
family's share is $552,000.
When you rack up this kind of debt, you really only have two choices.
When you spend out of your means, you can pass it on in debt or you can
raise taxes. I am really concerned with the potential tax increases
that this out-of-control spending will lead to.
That is why I rise today, because America is facing an economic
crisis, and Democrat leaders are failing to provide the American people
with any real solutions. Instead, they are just making things worse.
Two aspects of this administration's budget proposal will cause
irreparable harm to the economy and health of rural America.
House Democrats, for their part, want to distract the Federal Reserve
with social policy while inflation is at a 40-year high. We have to
solve this problem by decreasing spending, not by increasing taxes.
In America today, farmers, ranchers, and ag producers are coping with
problems that this administration has caused, like a broken supply
chain, rampant inflation, and labor shortages. Now, the administration
is threatening the stepped-up basis again and seeking to impose new
capital gains taxes on the people who feed, fuel, and clothe us all.
When the assets of family farms transfer to the next generation, the
Federal Government should not jump in and impose taxes on the
unrealized gain of these assets to pay for this out-of-control
spending. This principle is called the stepped-up basis. It has a long
precedent in the tax code, and President Biden wants to dismantle it to
pay for all of this spending.
Adding insult to injury, the President's budget imposes capital gains
taxes on farms that have been in families for more than 90 years. Think
about that. In 1940, the average cost of Kansas farmland was $50 an
acre. Now, irrigated land is over $4,000 per acre. Imagine the capital
gains tax implications on that history of ownership. This proposal
would impose hundreds of thousands of dollars in new capital gains
taxes on farmers, killing most farms overnight.
In March, I introduced a bipartisan resolution, along with 82 of my
colleagues, that supports the preservation of the stepped-up basis and
opposes any efforts to impose new taxes on family farms and small
businesses.
The President's budget is an attempt to extort money from rural
Americans to pay for his party's Big Government, socialist spending
spree. The farm-killer tax and the elimination of the stepped-up basis
aren't game changers for American family farms; they are game enders.
Congress owes unwavering support to the American farmers, ranchers, and
ag producers.
A few days ago, the Department of Labor released yet another report
of record-breaking inflation for the month of May, the highest in over
40 years. House Democrats are responding this week by forcing a vote on
a bill that would handcuff the Federal Reserve and force them to focus
on social policy in addition to their statutory mandates of fighting
high inflation and dealing with the unemployment rate, the missions for
which the Federal Reserve was created. As if the economists at the Fed
don't have enough to worry about, House Democrats now want to assign
them the task of setting social policy. Unbelievable.
President Biden and Washington Democrats are completely out of touch
with the American people on this issue of inflation, and they are out
of touch with the needs of rural Americans. They need to wake up to
reality and get to work on providing real solutions to the problems
that Americans are facing.
Record spending and debt will lead to America's demise, and we cannot
allow that to happen under our watch.
Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Mann for
bringing up the stepped-up basis repeal. Republicans didn't get a vote
in this largest tax-and-spending bill that was called Build Back
Better, that some have not so affectionately referred to as build back
broke. Really, it adds, even according to CBO, trillions of dollars in
new debt.
Worst of all, the Democrats negotiated some of these provisions out
before they passed it out of the House. One of them was the repeal of
the stepped-up basis. Then, this President puts it back in the ``Green
Book'' and says to the American farmers and ranchers, who put food on
the table and give us food security, which is national security--we
talk about energy independence; you wait until the pain is felt by the
food shortage, a whole other level of concern when it comes to supply
chain. Less than 1 percent, a fraction of a percent, we spend as a
nation to have ag independence and have a stable ag economy through
farm policies and a farm bill. This stepped-up basis, as I told
Secretary Yellen, would create the largest fire sale of farm assets in
the history of our country.
Farmers are cash poor. If the next generation of farmers inherits a
death tax, after paying taxes out the wazoo on every level--income,
sales, franchise, you name it, they have paid it. It is an unfair, un-
American double tax, and they don't have the cash for it. It amounts to
selling off the family farm because the vast majority will be forced to
do that to pay more taxes.
Mr. MANN. Which will lead to hungry Americans. When you are well fed,
you have a lot of problems. When you are not well fed, you have one
problem.
Mr. ARRINGTON. Amen.
Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Mann for his contributions to
this important conversation with the American people.
I am proud to have also met and befriended a gentleman from the great
State of Utah. The first time we met, I talked about this bipartisan
effort to get at the root causes of this broken budget process and
reach across the aisle and simply force us, through the right
incentives, to be responsible stewards, to get budgets out on time with
budget outcomes that would reduce the debt. I remember that
Representative Moore lit up at that dinner meeting and said: Sign me
up.
Ever since then, he has been on a mission. He has worked with his
constituents, put a task force together. He is prepared, as he looks at
joining the Ways and Means Committee, which, by the way, when you look
at 70 percent of our budget on auto-spend--that is, entitlement,
mandatory programs. The vast majority of those, certainly the big
drivers of our debt, are under the auspices and the authority and
jurisdiction of the Ways and Means Committee. I will heartily welcome
him to the team in that regard. I appreciate his passion for this
issue.
Again, we will get an opportunity to serve and lead and govern, and
we are going to need people like him to not only sound the alarm but
assemble the team of people, the coalition of the willing, on both
sides of the aisle, to do the right thing by the American people.
[[Page H5482]]
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Moore), who
represents Utah's First District.
Mr. MOORE of Utah. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Arrington
for yielding. I am so appreciative that he brought up the night that we
broke bread and the excitement that I had. I did, I lit up knowing that
there was a real concerted effort to be able to forge a path forward to
solve our Nation's biggest problem.
Make no mistake: This is our Nation's biggest problem. This is a
national security threat. This is something that affects every single
American. I am looking forward, and I owe it to every constituent, to
make sure that I am working on solving the problem.
{time} 2130
I will not go back every couple years when we run for reelection and
complain about how much debt we have. I put the task force together so
I could explain where we are at, what the ideal State looks like, what
it should look like, what we need to strive for, and what are some
near-term recommendations for us to be able to accomplish.
You heard from Representative Cloud. I have a provision that he put
forth. I have numerous workforce ideas. We have 11 million jobs. That
is a participation rate that would create an enormous amount of revenue
if we could get all of those jobs filled.
We have the opportunity ahead of us. There is a strong bipartisan
collaboration going on led with your motivation, and I believe in it,
and I am willing to work tirelessly because it is our Nation's biggest
problem.
Among all my comments today, what I want to make sure that I
highlight is that we have to look at the data at what works. We have to
look in 2017--didn't solve every problem; we still have a spending
issue that Republicans weren't able to address with the Tax Cuts and
Jobs Act, but it got our taxes on a globally competitive scale. That
allowed for us to keep companies and workers here in America, growing
the economy, growing that revenue that is needed so badly.
What we did in 2017 was actually empowering Americans. What we have
done in 2021--I greatly fear is what President Biden and the
administration has focused on--is empowering government. In 2017 we
empowered Americans. We empowered ingenuity. We empowered that to drive
us forward. And in the last year we have been empowering government.
The massive amount of government spending has directly led to the
inflation that we are seeing today.
Few things impact the lives of our constituents as directly as the
state of our economy. Utahns I know are desperately hurting. Grocery
prices are out of whack. Gas prices--I will talk about that--they
continue to skyrocket, reaching $5. I filled up for $5, the national
average, in Utah, and it is predicted we could be at $6 a gallon in
July.
The Biden administration's blatant economic mismanagement has put us
on the precipice of a recession. We are seeing the effects of that. The
indicators are already there. From the Consumer Price Index to the
stock market to confidence indicators. We are seeing a recession come
about as we have to raise interest rates to solve the self-inflicted
mess that was created a year and a half ago when Democrats put in the
American Rescue Plan masqueraded as the COVID bill, suppressed our
workforce and rampant inflation. This has been mishandled at every
turn.
The administration claimed that inflation posed a small risk and that
the effects would be short lived, but Friday's Consumer Price Index
report, which stated that the price of goods has increased 8.6 percent
in the last 12 months, validated what I have been hearing for months
from my constituents, that inflation is hurting us, and it isn't going
away.
Due to inflation, the average household pays an additional $460 per
month for the same goods and services that they purchased just a year
ago at this time.
Last month, we experienced the highest inflation in 40 years, yet
again breaking the Biden administration's inflation records.
Republicans sounded the alarm last year when Democrats in Congress
rammed through trillions in partisan spending priorities. According to
the Congressional Budget Office's ``May 2022 Budget and Economic
Outlook,'' over the next 10 years our total deficits will equal $15
trillion with a deficit of $2.3 trillion in 2030 alone.
This isn't free money. Sooner or later, reckless spending like this
will force tax increases on hardworking Americans. Inflation is already
a tax on hardworking, lower-income Americans that we say we are trying
to help, and it does not help. That is an extra $460 a month on
average.
To reverse our poor economic outlook, I organized a debt and deficit
task force, and I already spoke about that a little bit, but it is with
a group of really concerned citizens. These are experts in their field,
across industry, a group of people that want to do this because they
have fear, they have seen this in their lifetime with stagflation
before, and they want to be a part of this and advise me in my role and
how I can share that with all of my colleagues in Congress to be able
to do four simple things: Grow the economy; save and strengthen vital
programs; focus America's spending; and fix Congress' budgeting
process. That fourth piece is something that we have to come together
on immediately, and I know there is bipartisan support to be able to do
that.
This task force will continue to develop a clear vision for how we
can best bring Utah's fiscally sound policies to Washington to relieve
inflationary pressure on hardworking families. I will continue to share
our framework of solutions with my colleagues in Congress.
The United States has a flexible economy with a wealth of natural
resources and competitive demographics. We are the envy of the world,
and we need to continue to remain the envy of the world.
For the sake of each and every Utah family, we must get our fiscal
house in order. Our plan will help do just that. I sincerely thank the
gentleman from Texas for the encouragement. As I entered into Congress
to find a niche of something that I am so passionate about, I will
continue to beat this drum until we make it work.
Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah (Mr.
Moore), beating the drum and sounding the alarm is a big part of it. I
think at some point it is hard to calculate and get your mind around
the trillions of dollars that are amassing.
We have added $7 trillion in additional debt since COVID alone. And
what happens, I believe, is when you do that and there is no
consequence, there is no trade-off, we are not hitting them in the
pocketbook saying, we need more of your hard-earned dollars to pay for
this stuff, and we are not cutting the favorite programs of our fellow
Americans, so there is no pain.
Mr. MOORE of Utah. Moral hazard.
Mr. ARRINGTON. Moral hazard. We are sleepwalking off the cliff. The
problem with this crisis is, as I said, when Humpty Dumpty falls and
shatters it is going to be difficult to put him and the exceptional
nature and the superpower leadership of this great country back
together. There is just not a lot of time and heads up and warning
before you go over the precipice.
It is incumbent on us, as young fathers and young family men, to be
able to take this on head-on with the courage that our Founders had who
gave birth to this great country.
Madam Speaker, I hear you rattling the gavel, so God bless America,
and I yield back the balance of my time.
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