[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 1913-1919]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               DEMOCRATS MUST ACT TO AVOID TAX INCREASES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight, as I have for the past 
couple of weeks, to remind the American people that if this Congress 
does not act over the next 2, over the next 4 years, in just 1,440 days 
there will be a tax increase in this country. It is going to happen as 
I said over the next 4 years if the Democrats do not extend the tax 
cuts that the Republicans have put in place over the last several 
years.
  It is going to amount to about $200 billion that the American people 
will pay more in taxes. And I appreciate my colleagues from the Blue 
Dog Democrat Coalition coming down to the House floor and talking about 
fiscal responsibility. They talk about the budget. But I hear very 
little about taxes and keeping taxes low on the American people.
  And one of the Blue Dogs mentioned in his remarks that he believes in 
smaller and efficient government and that we have to make tough 
choices. And that is true. We have to make very tough choices. But it 
is not our money.
  We need to make sure that one of the decisions is to not raise the 
taxes on the American people, because when we were here in the final 
hours of the Democrats' 100 hours, on that Friday morning, right after 
they finished the 100 hours, we were in session for all of about 45 
minutes, from 10 to 11 a.m. and most Americans did not see that 45 
minutes.
  So that is why I think it is important that I come to the floor and 
remind the American people what this Congress is doing and what we have 
done in the last couple of weeks or the 100 hours that the Democrats 
ran their six bills. And I have a number, 1,440. That is again January 
1, 2011, when our taxes will finally get up to that $200 billion tax 
increase if we do not act. All the Democrats have to do is run the 
clock out, they do not have to pass legislation, and those tax cuts 
that we put in place that have benefited this economy so greatly will 
expire.
  There is another number that you can put up, and that is how many 
days since the Democrats' last tax increase. And it has been just 4 
days. Now, little did I know and little did I think that it would take 
only 14 days of the Democrats being in the majority party in Congress, 
they worked for 13 years to win back the majority, and in 14 days the 
first tax increase passed this House and is going to move on to the 
Senate. I hope the Senate does not pass it.
  Because that is a tax increase on the American people. Now, the 
Democrats say that it is the oil company, the big oil companies that 
are going to receive this increase in taxes. And that is true. The big 
oil companies will pay about $6.5 billion of taxes over the next 
several years. But the reality is, corporations and businesses do not 
pay taxes in this country; consumers pay it. The tax increase will be 
passed along. And it will be passed along in the form of higher energy 
costs.
  We will pay more at the pump when we go to fill our cars up. Oil 
companies, they will have a competitive disadvantage. They will have to 
pay more when they go out to explore for oil. It will be the Venezuelan 
oil company, Citgo, or it will be the Iranian or some other foreign oil 
company that is going to be in a better position to be able to spend 
money to find oil, to sell it to the American economy, sell it to 
America, less expensive than our own domestic energy producers.
  Ladies and gentlemen, I just think if you are watching tonight that 
is not the right thing to do, especially in this time of high energy 
costs. We have got to make it more cost efficient, give our companies a 
better footing to compete, not only in energy but in manufacturing. And 
raising taxes on business is the wrong thing to do.
  And as I said, it has only taken the Democrats 14 days until this 
first tax increase has come down the road and has passed this House of 
Representatives. And that should not surprise anybody in America, 
because during the campaign, the new chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee, the Representative from New York, he told the Bloomberg News 
that he cannot think of one tax cut passed under President Bush that 
merits renewal.
  There is no question about it, he said, everything has to be on the 
table. And what we have seen already is a tax increase just 4 days ago. 
And as I said, I believe that is going to trickle down into the 
American public, and they will be paying that through higher energy 
costs, higher fuel costs.
  As I said, it is important that I think the American people, if you 
are watching this evening, are reminded that you are getting exactly 
what the Democrats said during the election. They said that they would 
raise your taxes. Once again, I hear the Blue Dogs come down here night 
after night talking about fiscal responsibility. I do not hear them, 
though, talking about taxes, making sure they keep the taxes low on the 
American people.
  I do not hear them talking about the biggest spending programs that 
our government has, and that is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. 
How are we going to improve and strengthen, reform those important 
programs important to the American citizens, important to our seniors 
in this country?
  So those are things that I do not hear them talking about. I am very 
interested to see what the Blue Dog Democrats will propose when it 
comes to the budget. We will come into budget season here I believe in 
March. And I know that when the Republicans were in the majority, the 
Blue Dogs offered a budget every time. There was a Democrat budget, 
there was a Blue Dog budget, and there was the Republican budget. So I 
am very, very interested in seeing what the Blue Dogs propose if in 
fact they are even allowed to propose a budget, because I think it will 
be different than their elected leadership will put on this floor.
  But back to the tax cuts and what it means to the American people. 
Over the last 4 years we have seen 7.2 million jobs created in this 
country from those tax cuts. Our economy is creating jobs month after 
month. Just in December 167,000 jobs were created in this country. The 
unemployment rate is down to 4.5 percent. It is the lowest average it 
has been in four decades. That is directly attributable to the tax cuts 
we have put in place over the last several years.
  Now, if we do not extend them, if we do not do the responsible thing, 
the American taxpayers are going to be penalized for their hard work by 
us taking money out of their pockets. When you look at a family of four 
that earns over $40,000, if we allow the child tax credit and the 
marriage penalty to expire, they will pay about $2,000 more that will 
come out of their pockets.
  That is money that they could use to save for college, to pay for 
health care insurance, to buy a new washer and dryer, or put a down 
payment on a new car. That is their money. They should be able to spend 
that money as they see fit. And the way to do that is to keep the tax 
rates low so that they can continue to determine how to use that money 
best.
  Small business owners, same situation. If we allow some of these tax 
cuts to increase, our small businesses in this country will be hurt. 
And I hope the Democrats take a lesson from history. President Kennedy, 
back in 1960,

[[Page 1914]]

did just that. He cut taxes. And when he cut taxes, revenues to the 
Federal Treasury rose as they have today.
  Ronald Reagan did it in 1980. He had to fight a Democratic majority, 
but finally was able to cut taxes. And what happened was the economy 
grew, one of the greatest expansions of our economy in history, and 
revenues to the Federal Government grew as well. That is the same thing 
we did in 2001 and 2003, cut taxes, the economy rebounded, it was 
coming out of a recession, coming out of the terrible attack of 9/11, 
and now our economy is growing very strong. And we do not want to turn 
that back.
  I do not think the Americans, although they did vote in many part of 
this country for a change, they did not vote to change to slow this 
economy down. They did not vote to increase taxes. I know that none of 
my constituents is coming up to me and saying we voted for a change, 
increase our taxes. That is not what they voted for.
  I think it is very important that we in Congress have a very clear 
voice talking about the need to maintain these tax cuts that as I said 
we put in place in 2001 and 2003.
  I see I am joined tonight by my colleague from Kentucky, a former 
Army Ranger and a great Kentuckian and also a small business owner who 
has six kids. So he knows the effects of when you are running a small 
business how important it is to have a low tax rate so that you can 
invest back in your business, and also with six children the importance 
of having money to be able to raise your children and save for their 
college and make sure that they have a better tomorrow than we have 
today.
  So with that I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Davis).

                              {time}  2145

  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania. One of the things I do want to share is I appreciate his 
leadership on this critical issue that often gets lost in much of the 
noise that we hear in politics of the moment.
  As you and I have shared before, what happened on election day, 
unbeknownst to the vast majority of Americans, is that with the change 
in majority, every working family in the United States of America voted 
themselves, or what was voted for was a tax increase of over $2,000 a 
year for families making between $30,000 and $50,000 a year.
  We have been in the business world and worked out there creating 
jobs, and we understand the issues relating to health care. In fact, 
when we look at the bigger picture from the standpoint of job creation, 
I think about my oldest daughter who is in her third year of college 
and has started her practicum now as an education major. She is working 
2 days a week in a local high school in our home county teaching. Where 
is the revenue going to come from to pay for her health insurance, to 
provide for her future as she teaches students in the generation coming 
behind? Ultimately, it is going to be job creation and economic growth 
that comes from policies that will stimulate that and focus on making 
our economy more competitive for the long term.
  One of the things that I think you have emphasized is that the 
government is the best steward of money. The American people should be 
able to keep more of their own money, and we have proven time and time 
again, by allowing people to keep more of their own money and creating 
taxpayers instead of raising taxes, we actually get more revenue into 
the Federal Government.
  One of the things I would like to read into the record tonight which 
is very important for some of these policy discussions was an editorial 
in the Wall Street Journal regarding surging revenues, and I think it 
is important to note when we create taxpayers and don't raise taxes, 
government will have the revenue that is necessary to function. There 
is a fundamental world view difference between the parties on the role 
of government. Liberal Democrats believe the government needs to be 
paternalistic in telling us how to run our lives to make these 
decisions.
  The reality is that by allowing people to keep more of their own 
money, which is a bedrock Republican principle, we will make sure that 
people can make the decision on the spot, they understand the impact of 
that.
  I look back at the time when I started my business. I look back on 
the decisions we had to make, and we understood everything in terms of 
the cost that we had, the obligations that we had to our employees, the 
commitments that we made to each other to keep that money, moving 
forward to keep us employed to strengthen the business. At the same 
time, that was when President Clinton in 1993, our first full year in 
business, allowed us to make an investment in the government that 
dramatically increased the taxes not for me and the company, but for 
every member of our team. I think about all of those literally hundreds 
of thousands of dollars over the following decade. Had those been 
allowed to stay there, that would not have been simply revenue that the 
government lost, it would have been more employees, more people who 
would have been out there generating revenue and creating jobs and 
helping to keep our economy strong.
  This editorial that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on January 17 
highlights this and talks about the surging of revenues. What we need 
to do from the standpoint of Congress is to empower people, not to 
constrain them.
  It says, ``The myth persists in some media circles that the Federal 
budget deficiency is surging or ballooning or something terrible, all 
of which is served up as ammunition for those in Congress who want a 
tax increase.''
  As an aside, I make a parenthetical statement and say we are now a 
little over 1,400 days away from a very, very large tax increase that 
will happen unless Congress takes action.
  ``At the risk of being drummed out of the guild, we thought you'd 
rather have the real story.
  ``The deficit has in fact declined by some $165 billion over the last 
2 fiscal years, and according to the most recent data has continued to 
fall in the first quarter of fiscal 2007. The latest Treasury estimates 
for January show that tax receipts in December were $18 billion higher 
than a year earlier, helping to boost the budget surplus for the month 
to $40 billion, up from $11 billion a year ago. December is typically a 
good month for revenues due to year-end tax payments.
  ``Meanwhile, for the first 3 months of fiscal 2007 through December, 
revenues climbed 8.1 percent, building on double-digit revenue 
increases in the previous 2 years. Corporate income taxes were up a 
remarkable 22.2 percent in the first fiscal quarter, showing that the 
government continues to grab a nice chunk of rising business profits 
that so many of our politicians like to deplore. Individual income 
taxes rose 8.8 percent, thanks to strong wage and salary growth. Much 
of this revenue comes from `the rich,' believe it or not.
  ``In the most surprising budget news, Federal spending was nearly 
flat in the first fiscal quarter. This was despite a 22.1 percent 
increase in Medicare spending due largely to the new prescription drug 
benefit, and a 10.7 percent increase in defense spending. Those 
increases were offset by lower spending for flood insurance and 
disaster assistance compared with the peaks of post-Katrina payments a 
year ago. So the first quarter deficit was $85 billion, down sharply 
from $119 billion a year earlier.
  ``All in all, despite huge outlays for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
the Nation's fiscal picture is brightening. We hate to ruin the press 
corps's day with such cheerful news, but there it is.''
  That article shows clearly this contrast between the perception that 
is created with the politics of fear, the politics of class warfare, 
and what I would like to call the politics of reality and truth. The 
one thing that we need to remember is the ultimate key to the economic 
success to our children and their children in the future is not going 
to be big government, it is not going to be large solutions and 
increases in taxes, taking away that extra benefit that working 
families have, but it is going to be allowing them to keep more of 
their own money.
  I think it is critical that we do this. It is critical to funding 
many of the

[[Page 1915]]

programs that we do, be it defense, be it education, ultimately comes 
from somebody who has a job who is not a government employee, somebody 
out there in the economy creating a job to make that difference and 
provide that revenue by adding that value that funds all of the 
critical infrastructure.
  Our goal must be to create taxpayers, not raise new taxes. And I 
think the one thing that we see, and it is one thing that I appreciate 
my colleague from Pennsylvania taking great leadership on this issue, 
is to shine a light of truth onto the fact that the Democrats are going 
to raise taxes. They are committed to that. We are a little over 1,400 
days away from that taking place if Congress does not act, and it is 
critical that we act to preserve this one thing that has generated so 
much revenue for the government that allows us to bring the deficit 
down and control spending and ultimately provide a future for our 
children.
  Mr. SHUSTER. I would just remind the gentleman, it has only been 4 
days since the Democrats raised taxes because of their repeal of 
section 199 for oil and gas which was enacted in 2004 to help 
manufacturing companies. It took them 13 years to win the majority, and 
in only 14 days they raised taxes.
  What you are talking about in that article, this is what is going to 
happen. It is wrong for us to raise taxes, those tax increases that 
they put in place just 4 days ago, placed squarely on the domestic 
energy production which will encourage companies to move jobs overseas. 
When you raise taxes, when you raise the regulatory burden, that is 
what companies do, they want to go someplace where they can make a 
profit. And they are going to encourage the domestic energy industry, 
which employs 1.8 million Americans who have an average salary of $30 
an hour with great benefits, this is going to cause these companies to 
look to go offshore to produce their product, in this case energy.
  Shifting the energy industry and facilities overseas will make 
America more dependent on foreign oil, not less, as the Democrats 
claim. So the refining of fuels and, again, exploration is going to 
occur off the coast of America and not on the coast of America, driving 
jobs out of this country.
  The higher taxes on the oil companies will hurt retirement security 
because as I have found out in some of the research we have done, 41 
percent of the shares of oil and gas companies are in retirement 
accounts and pension funds. So when Democrats are helping to drive 
their profits down to make less money to drive them offshore, it is 
going to hurt those folks who are retired today. Again, 41 percent of 
the shares of oil and gas companies are owned by pension funds and 
retirement funds. Once again, this is a wrong-headed plan. It only took 
them 14 days.
  I see the CPA from Texas joins us to remind me of that. It is only 4 
days since the Democrats last raised taxes, and we see it is going to 
come. We talked the past couple of weeks about how they made it easier 
to raise taxes with the PAYGO rules going from three-fifths majority to 
a simple majority to raise taxes.
  Now the Speaker and her party want to give the vote to the American 
Samoa here in Congress. They want Guam and the Virgin Islands, they are 
territories of the United States and wonderful people, but they don't 
pay taxes. They are going to allow them to vote, so these folks that 
don't pay taxes are going to have the ability to raise taxes on 
Americans.
  American Samoa has a population of 60,000, which is 91 percent of the 
average congressional district. My district is 650,000. The delegate 
from the American Samoa is going to have the ability to vote to raise 
taxes.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. And I would add one point on that. We have 10 
times that number of folks in my district in Kentucky. I think there is 
a bit of a double standard on Samoa, too. Though they would be given 
the vote on the ability to raise taxes, they were denied the fairness 
on the minimum wage that the Speaker had programmed in for a large 
company in her district to ensure there would be a double standard.
  I think one of the things that is important to understand from 
somebody who worked in manufacturing after my military life is, and I 
have talked to many workers in the energy industry in my own district, 
they are dismayed, regardless of their party, be they Republican, 
Democrat, union, nonunion, to find out that this legislation that the 
Democrats passed last week, I would say forced through without regular 
order and debate, without discussing the impact on working families, to 
find that the energy industry is not manufacturing.
  Mr. CONAWAY. If the gentleman would yield, not only did they kick 
them out, but they have now defined all workers in the oil and gas 
industry as foreign workers. Isn't that the effect? Every one of these 
jobs are no longer American manufacturing jobs, but get the same 
treatment that the jobs for foreign workers. I know my colleagues in 
the oil business in West Texas are not excited about that.
  I yield back.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. To the gentleman from Texas' point, my 
constituents, who are members of the International Boilermakers, from a 
bipartisan standpoint, we have a positive and proactive relationship 
with our boilermakers and our professional trades in the Fourth 
District of Kentucky. But it is my boilermakers, my pipe fitters, my 
millwrights and steelworkers, ironworkers, my operating engineers, my 
Teamsters, anybody who is affiliated in the energy industry is no 
longer considered in manufacturing.
  What that means for the average working family is a hidden tax 
increase, because the tax credits that would go for training and 
professional development, that would relate to a provision of health 
care, nearly 80 percent of manufacturing employees are covered with 
full health benefits. In my company we covered every single family with 
health benefits. The economic incentives are now removed, and it is no 
different than treating those in our critical bedrock base industry 
that drives not only manufacturing, drives the automotive industry, 
drives utilities, drives the transportation infrastructure of this 
Nation, is now being told they are not manufacturing, they are not 
value added. Somehow they are a nemesis.
  Again, I come back to the fact of this issue of class-warfare 
politics. Who gets affected by the tax increases that are buried in 
that bill? It is not a simple issue of trying to say these are tax 
breaks for some nebulous, super-rich oil executives. Here is what 
happens: The entire supply chain is affected. This does not hurt the 
large international global energy producers, the international oil 
companies. Who does it hurt? It hurts our wildcatters for natural gas, 
our small natural gas producers, our small oil producers, the 
investors. It hurts the supply chain of manufacturing and fabrication 
industry that supports the oil industry.
  Outside of any refinery, one will find a very large base of welding, 
fabrication, machine tool operations, toolmaking, maintenance. Then we 
have around that circle there the provision of parts, the supply chain 
of manufacturers' representatives for components that come into the 
industry. And then who else is affected by that? It is the small 
business owner. It is the distributor of gasoline and oil and energy 
products. It is the parts manufacturer for vehicles. It is the 
convenience store operator who is affected by that.
  And ultimately all of these people who I have mentioned so far in the 
chain are taxpayers. They are contributing to the public welfare and 
public infrastructure. Who is going to be lost when we lose those 
taxpayers because we eliminate those jobs by what seems to be a good 
thing on the surface but is very hurtful? We are eliminating funding, 
in effect, that provides for law enforcement, provides money for 
education, and provides money to deal with transportation and 
infrastructure, that funds the operation of government. And ultimately 
it is a regressive issue and it comes back it your fundamental point: 
When we leave money in the hands of taxpayers, they will invest it, 
they will save it, or they will spend it in such a way that we create 
taxpayers and we don't need to raise

[[Page 1916]]

taxes, and I think the numbers bear that out.
  Mr. SHUSTER. The gentleman is correct. All Americans want to pay less 
at the gas pump and less for heating oil. As we have seen in the last 
month alone, prices have come down to about $50 to $52 a barrel.

                              {time}  2200

  But the answer is not to increase the cost on the oil and gas 
producers. The answer is to have more supply. The answer is for us to 
conserve more, to use it in more efficient ways. The answer is to come 
up with alternative fuels, which I hope to hear the President talk 
about that initiative tomorrow night.
  But when you talk about the oil industry and you talk about dollars 
and cents, there is nobody better to talk about it than the gentleman 
from Texas, our resident CPA, who can keep us on the dollars and cents.
  And with that I would like to yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania's hosting tonight and allowing me to participate in it.
  Let me kind of flesh out what our good colleague from Kentucky said 
about the mechanics of those impacts on tax increases. He talked about 
a variety of manufacturing and some service industries who may or may 
not be directly impacted by section 199, but here are the mechanics of 
what happens:
  The small E and P companies, the exploration and production 
companies, those companies that are out there trying to find crude oil 
and natural gas, on average in 2005 spent 617 percent of their profits. 
In other words, for every dollar that they earned, they spent $6.17 
reinvesting in the ground. And here is how they are able to do that: if 
you are a successful oil and gas finder, you find reserves in the 
ground that have a value. The value is based on the price and the 
length of time you expect it takes to get that crude oil and natural 
gas out of the ground; the lifting costs, depending on what that costs; 
lease operating expenses. All those expenses go into that, and they 
make a reasonably scientific guess as to the future value today of 
those reserves in the ground. Proved oil and gas reserves.
  In other words, you take the life of that well, those cash flows. You 
discount that back to today's number, and that creates a value that in 
many instances these E and P companies go to the bank. They take the 
reserve report that shows that they have got a cash flow stream over 
the next 10 years, as an example, to their banker, and they say, Mr. 
Banker, we want to borrow against those reserves because we want to 
replicate what we have done. We want to put those dollars that we 
borrow from you back into the ground to find additional reserves for 
oil and gas or develop additional wells that are currently in the 
proved undeveloped category that they will continue to expand our 
reserve base, in other words, continue to expand the cash flow stream 
that we are going to earn as that oil and natural gas is produced over 
the next 30, 40 years, whatever the life of the well is, 10 years, 5 
years, whatever the economic life of that well may be.
  The large companies, to my recollection off the top of my head, 
reinvest about 175 percent of their profits. So everybody in the 
exploration and production food chain spends more money than they make 
going back in the ground.
  So this tax increase that this Congress, and some of our good 
colleagues on the Republican side joined in, passed last week, a mere 4 
days ago, what that does is it reduces the cash flow, reduces the 
profits of all of these companies. And as you reduce those dollars, 
like in the small E and P company, if you reduce them a dollar, you 
have really cut expenditures in the oil business by $6. So for every 
dollar of taxes that are increased as a result of this action, we have 
eliminated $6 out of the reinvestment in the ground. And it is that 
reinvestment that my good friend from Kentucky was talking about, 
because that money goes to all of these suppliers, goes to all these 
subcontractors, goes to all the folks who actually do the work and try 
to find this business.
  So when that doesn't happen, then there is less work for them to do. 
There is less need for employees, less of everything. So just the 
mechanics of the tax increase has that effect.
  Here is the twisted logic that our colleagues on the other side have 
used, and I have been thinking about this for all of last week when we 
found out what that bill was going to do, as well as over the weekend. 
I think one of the things we can all agree on is that we want to be 
less dependent on foreign sources of crude oil and natural gas, sources 
that we pay our good hard-earned money for. These are foreign sources. 
So all of us agree on that. The road forward or how we get that done is 
a multidecade journey.
  While we are on this journey, it would make sense to me that the more 
domestic production we can produce, the more domestic barrels, the more 
domestic Mcf of natural gas that we produce means that that offsets or 
reduces in and of itself the crude oil and natural gas that we are 
importing. So the logic that our good colleagues used last week was if 
we can reduce the domestic supply of crude oil and natural gas, then we 
have also reduced our dependency on foreign crude natural gas.
  Well, that doesn't make any sense. I grew up in Odessa, Texas, and I 
am just a country boy from west Texas and grew up in the oil fields. 
That is twisted logic. It does not make any sense whatsoever.
  It would seem that we would want to promote the production of 
domestic supplies so that we could increase the domestic supply and 
therefore offset, in some small way, the need for foreign imports. Now, 
that does make sense. So a bill and a mechanics that reduces directly 
the domestic production seems awfully weird to me and a convoluted 
logic that I have been unable to kind of work my way through that.
  Now, you and I and many of our colleagues have stood at these 
microphones and bemoaned the fact that that happened. Will we be able 
to point specifically at last Thursday's vote 5 years down the road and 
say, okay, had we not had that tax increase, had we not abrogated those 
contracts, if we hadn't done the things that the Democrats decided were 
in the best interests of this country, production would be some 
percentage greater than it currently is? We will not have that 
analysis. We just won't be able to do it, partly because the industry 
that we hit upside the head with a big old stick last week is 
incredibly resilient.
  These are tough, independent, self-sufficient folks, and whatever 
hand they are dealt, they are going to go back to the drawing board and 
try to find domestic crude oil and natural gas. That is what they do. 
We have just simply made their job harder. We are going to force them 
to do a little bit less of it, or we are going to force them to go to 
other sources for their backing. But whatever it is we did, it will 
have an impact on the volume of crude oil and natural gas produced in 
this country over the next decades.
  The bad news is we won't be able to quantify that. We won't be able 
to come to these microphones and say, as many of our colleagues did 
over the last 2 years, I told you so, Monday morning quarterbacking. We 
are telling you ahead of time that this will happen, and we will be 
more dependent on foreign sources of crude oil and natural gas than we 
would have otherwise been, and that is really the differential here. We 
didn't have to be that dependent. We are going to be dependent on it, 
but we could have helped ourselves just somewhat by every increased 
barrel of crude oil produced and every increased Mcf of natural gas 
produced domestically and whether those restrictions come and where we 
can explore for crude oil and natural gas, the resources that companies 
have available to them after they comply with all of the regulatory 
schemes and the tax schemes that we have put in place.
  And just to whine the most, the contracts we abrogated last week, you 
saw some of the estimates of why that is important to the folks on the 
other side, which is that money stolen from those oil companies is big 
dollars. The

[[Page 1917]]

leases signed in 1998 and 1999 when the price of crude was 10 bucks a 
barrel, when that seemed to make sense, if it did at that point in 
time, it takes 5 or 6 years to get that crude oil to market, as it 
were. By the time you get the rigs put in place and all the things that 
have to go on when you drill in deep water, it takes awhile. And now we 
are beginning to see the fruit of all that hard work, the fruit of the 
risks taken by those companies.
  There is a particular company I am aware of that, along with one of 
the major oil companies, has recently discovered what looks to be a 
very large oil discovery in the gulf, and it is off of one of those 
leases in which they were incented to buy and pay the lease bonus on at 
a time when it really didn't make a lot of economic sense, 10 bucks a 
barrel. They are estimating the cost to themselves, if this process 
that went through last week is sustained, that it will cost that one 
company $1 billion. And as you mentioned earlier, 41 percent of the 
stock is in individual retirement accounts. But I wonder if you picked 
up in addition to retirement accounts mutual funds owned outside of 
retirement accounts, individuals who owned stock directly in these oil 
companies.

                              {time}  2210

  My guess is the percentage ownership would be much higher than the 41 
percent.
  Mr. SHUSTER. Retired folks that have mutual funds.
  Mr. CONAWAY. That is right, separate and apart.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. If the gentleman would yield on one point to 
emphasize this. Again, I come back to the issue of the politics of fear 
versus the politics of hope and a practical and truthful vision of what 
the future is.
  Again, I come back to my real-world experience in manufacturing, 
which wasn't as a Democrat or a Republican, it was simply as an 
operations person. The average manufacturing company in this country, 
gross profit is about 7 percent per year if they are successful. That 
is an important thing to understand, if they are successful.
  The oil companies who right now are achieving record profits and are 
being portrayed as these great robber barons, and I am going to come 
back to my district here in just a minute, are making slightly over 8 
percent gross profit. So they are 1 percent higher than the average 
manufacturing company in terms of truthful and real numbers versus the 
hype, versus the rhetoric and the emotion.
  Who actually gets hurt by this foolish bill that was passed last week 
on a motion without regular order? Democratic friends of mine shared 
privately they are extremely upset about the fact of adverse economic 
impact that it had on their districts. I can tell you the impact on our 
district. One of our larger employers in the Fourth District of 
Kentucky, the Marathon refinery, which has many, many first- and 
second-tier vendors that do work with them, this was a huge tax 
increase on their ability to refine and produce oil that directly 
affects our transportation industry. Their largest customer in Kentucky 
is the worldwide air hub of United Parcel Service, a great job creator 
in the Louisville area. It is one of the largest employers in the 
Commonwealth of Kentucky, really in the tristate area.
  So what was done by this seemingly well-meaning issue to support 
energy independence has actually hurt a local job-producing entity and 
affected the entire supply chain. And I think the one thing that to me 
the reality is not the hype, not the emotion, not the class warfare, 
but it is the old comment: Do the numbers. What are the real numbers? 
What is the impact?
  A job-creating manufacturing entity, a job-creating technology entity 
will have a 3-1 multiplier for its community on average. That is the 
convenience stores, the retail outlets, the personal service companies. 
It is the other types of businesses that supports the public 
infrastructure, law enforcement, education, transportation and public 
works.
  Mr. CONAWAY. The property tax base.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. The property tax base that pays for the 
schools. In my home county, which has got a growing and thriving 
manufacturing industry, that payback is 7-1. One of the reasons we have 
some of the top schools in the Commonwealth of Kentucky is the fact 
that we have a tremendously powerful economic engine that ironically is 
directly affected by energy prices and access.
  One of the issues in this so-called bill, which was really a tax 
increase. Calling it energy independence is not only disingenuous, and 
maybe that points back to the discussion which took place earlier this 
evening in the House, but it really misrepresents the entire reality of 
what is happening.
  Barack Obama from Illinois, someone that would not be considered a 
strong conservative by the standards of human events, but is a very 
committed Senator, and Jim Bunning, who is the junior Senator from 
Kentucky, cosponsored a bipartisan bill for energy independence that 
focused on an alternative source which is one we really have; instead 
of building lots of windmills and solar generators in the colder areas, 
was to use the resource that we have. And coal is environmentally 
friendly, it is a proven technology, and he was attacked from the left 
from environmental groups that strongly supported this bill that hurts 
jobs for being bad on environmental issues because he would support 
this very thing that he sees the facts on that would create a second 
industrial revolution in this country.
  And it all comes back to the reality of what the role of government 
would be here in the long run, missing the truth that we need to allow 
people, those who create the jobs, to keep more of their own money, to 
allow working families to keep more of their own money to invest.
  Mr. SHUSTER. And you look at another measurement when you look at 
investments and profitabilities. In 2004, a 10-year period ending in 
2004 shows that the return on investment the refining marketing segment 
of the oil companies are in was 7.7 percent return on investment, which 
was well behind the 13.9 average of the S&P 500. So I think, as our 
friend from Texas was talking about, huge investments, huge 
investments. They are certainly making returns, and they are certainly 
making profits, but it is far behind what many of the other 
manufacturing and the other companies in the S&P 500 are making.
  So this is a capital investment industry. We have got to encourage 
them to keep on going out and looking and looking and finding the 
reserves. But it is also important, I think, as you pointed out, coming 
from Kentucky, I come from Pennsylvania, the importance of that other 
natural resource we have from coal and how we utilize that to truly 
make us energy independent or move toward energy independence, not this 
wrong-headed tax increase.
  And, again, I believe that it is just the first of many we are going 
to see, statements by the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee over 
the last several months, the rules that the Speaker and the Democrats 
put into place to make it easier to raise taxes, not harder, to make it 
easier. And I think the American people need to know that the 
Democrats, the majority in the Congress, are going to raise your taxes. 
And when it happens, as it happened 4 days ago, this was a targeted tax 
increase, they think, just to one industry, but it is going to flow 
down through the economy, and every American is going to feel it. But 
we are going to see tax increases. They are not going to control 
spending, they are going to continue to increase spending. And they 
said they are going to pay for it, and they are going to pay for it by 
taking away hard-earned dollars from Americans.
  I was talking today, I went to see my accountant to prepare myself 
for tax season this year. And I wonder if the gentleman from Texas 
would comment on it. My accountant told me that just the sheer 
difficulty, the complexity, of keeping up with the Tax Code, he said to 
me that he thinks he produces a reasonably correct, he can't assure 
anybody that it is correct because it is so difficult. We passed the 
extenders last

[[Page 1918]]

year, and he told me that the IRS has informed him he cannot file 
electronically until February 1. So he is going to have a backlog; he 
is trying to figure it out, but he doesn't get an extension from April 
15 to May 15 because he doesn't file electronically.
  So I think that the time has not only come to continue to keep tax 
rates low, but to change our Tax Code. He had on his wall, I am going 
to get a copy of it, 1913 was the first year that we had the income 
tax. It was three pages long, it was pretty simple, and basically it 
was a graduated flat tax. And, again, I am going to bring that in here 
next week and have it blown up to see how simple it was, and I think 
the time has come that we go to some different kind of tax.
  But if the gentleman CPA from Texas would like to comment on that.
  Mr. CONAWAY. I thank the gentleman.
  I think it is Money Magazine every year or so runs a contest where 
they will present a set of facts, the same set of facts to a variety of 
tax preparers. And it is interesting the variety of taxes due number 
that comes up. You would think, the same facts because everybody is 
working off the same codes, the same set of regulations, that all these 
tax return preparers would come up with the same answer. But it is very 
rare that even two out of the group come up with the same answer 
because of the complexity of the code.
  I spent 32 plus years of my professional career helping clients 
comply with the code or a company that I was working for and attempting 
to do my own tax return, because most folks really wouldn't understand 
a CPA screwing up his own tax return. So if I couldn't do mine right, 
why would I hold myself out for doing somebody else's right? And every 
time you signed one of those returns, it gives you a pause, because 
this is complicated stuff. And the legend at the bottom where you sign 
doesn't say, I have got this as close as I can to the right answer, 
sign your name; it requires you under penalties of perjury to say you 
have got it right. And that does give you some pause, because it is an 
incredibly complex code, unnecessarily complex.
  And we will have hopefully another night where we can talk about ways 
that we ought to be looking at how we collect the minimum amount of 
money needed to fund this Federal Government in a fair, 
straightforward, easy-to-comply-with way that most Americans would buy 
into, because I think our voluntary compliance in that arena would be 
far greater than it currently is with this incredibly complicated code.
  If you want to file manually, your client, you can file manually. I 
am trying to remember, I was reading one of those tax credits that was 
extended.

                              {time}  2220

  There is no line for it on the form, and so the services said if you 
want to claim this credit or deduction, one of the two, since we did 
not put a line item on the return for it, stick it on a different line 
and tell us what that is. So you can go ahead and file manually if you 
would like to, but you are right. I thought it was February 4 maybe.
  Mr. SHUSTER. Beginning of February.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Electronic filing before the IRS will have their 
computer systems ready to be able to receive that information coming in 
as a result of the late-breaking changes that we Republicans made in 
December to extend many of the tax credits that some had already 
expired and others that were set to expire with the close of business 
in 2006.
  Mr. SHUSTER. My accountant also told me that he believes this year 
the AMT that is starting to catch more and more people in the AMT to 
pay higher tax. He said he believes next year he will see for the first 
time dual income husband and wife that are teachers that are making in 
central Pennsylvania about 110, 120 combined income, he thinks for the 
first time they are going to be caught up in the AMT and they are going 
to pay several hundred to a thousand dollars or more in taxes.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Could I give the gentleman a quick history lesson?
  Mr. SHUSTER. Absolutely.
  Mr. CONAWAY. The alternative minimum tax was put in in 1969 at a 
point in time where our marginal tax rate, upper marginal tax rate was 
like 70 percent, and it was a point in time where there were a lot of 
gimmicks and tax loopholes, not loopholes because the code was written 
that way, but there were a lot of deductions and a lot of activities 
that folks could deduct against that 70 percent number.
  So consequently you had a lot of folks incented to do that, to take 
risks they might not have otherwise taken. So, as a matter of fairness 
and equity, the Congress put in an alternative minimum tax. In other 
words, they felt like everybody in America ought to pay something and 
that these folks were taking advantage of tax shelters in a way that 
was keeping them from paying any tax at all. Congress and the 
President, Johnson I guess, at that point in time felt like everybody 
ought to pay a little something.
  This was targeted at the really larger tax returns, really big 
investors, the big folks who made a lot of money. It was never intended 
to catch those two teachers who make together, what did you say, about 
$110,000, $120,000. The spirit of that was never intended to catch them 
in this loop.
  In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I had to pay the 
alternative minimum tax this year which irritated me.
  So the AMT is something that we did not do a good job of it. As 
Republicans, we kind of kicked the can down the road for a couple of 
years, a year at a time. This Democrat-led Congress is going to have 
that issue wrapped around their neck, and we will see how they go about 
trying to propose a fix for it, but it is an issue that is going to 
catch millions and millions of new taxpayers through the alternative 
minimum tax scheme each year that we move forward.
  Mr. SHUSTER. We seem to be wrapping up, so if the gentleman from 
Kentucky has any closing remarks.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. I think one thing to put into perspective is 
the real question, what I like to do is come back to the facts and the 
numbers.
  There is a lot of talk about, again, the politics of fear, the 
politics of class warfare, who actually will be rewarded or hurt by 
these tax cuts or tax increases. Here is the reality in a practical 
sense.
  The tax cuts that have been put in place have created record revenues 
for government because of job creation. Millions of people were taken 
off of the tax rolls all together. The floor for tax payments was 
pushed upward. The 10 percent tax bracket was created for those who are 
just starting out, those who are just in transition, so their burden 
would not be unduly high. All of that goes away. What are some other 
things that go away?
  One of the things that I think is kind of interesting, as somebody 
who is the grandson of a teacher, the husband of a teacher and the 
father of a soon-to-be-certified teacher, how does it impact education? 
Well, let us look at this.
  We passed an extension in the last Congress, carrying on above-the-
line deduction for higher education expenses. The provision allows 
taxpayers to deduct up to $4,000 depending upon their income for higher 
education expenses to improve their lives in lieu of claiming the hope 
or lifetime learning tax credits. The deduction can be claimed by all 
individual taxpayers regardless of whether they itemize and use 
specific deductions or do not itemize, and it is extended for 2 years 
through 2007.
  The incoming chairman of the Ways and Means Committee put this, along 
with an entire bushel basket of tax incentives for working families, 
for people to improve their lives, and that goes away. For teachers, we 
passed an above-the-line deduction that became law for teacher 
classroom expenses.
  I remember when I was a young officer in the Army and my wife was 
teaching school. She paid for a tremendous amount of classroom expenses 
out of her own pocket because she cared about her students and wanted 
to invest.
  What is the response of the Republican Congress to that was to give

[[Page 1919]]

them the incentive to invest and to know that that will not be a 
personal penalty for them to make that investment in their children, to 
make that investment in their future. It is a provision that allows 
teachers to deduct up to $250 of out-of-pocket costs incurred to 
purchase books, supplies and other classroom equipment. It is available 
to all individual taxpayers, regardless of whether they itemize their 
deductions or not.
  This provision was extended for 2 years through 2007. That is in that 
bushel basket of things that go away when we enact these tax policies, 
these tax cuts that ultimately will be in full force in 1,440 days.
  As a former small business owner who helped companies to create jobs 
in the manufacturing industry and operations, we dealt with many entry-
level people. People would come in with difficult tasks or in 
transition. We passed a welfare-to-work tax credit that would incent 
small business owners and employers to create jobs, to give people a 
leg up, to give them an opportunity to create value, to become a 
taxpayer, not a burden on the system, to create a future for their 
children.
  Employers can claim that welfare-to-work tax credit if they hire 
individuals who receive public assistance to help them move from a 
receiver to a giver. The maximum credit is $3,500 during an employee's 
first year and $5,000 during the second year. That incentive for small 
business owners goes away with this.
  All of these small things, these numbers that are hidden from the 
American people out of this politics of fear get lost in this whole 
issue, and ultimately, we need to allow people to keep more of what 
they earn to create that future.
  I appreciate your leadership on this issue greatly.
  Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman for joining us tonight. The 
gentleman from Texas, if he has any closing remarks?
  Mr. CONAWAY. I do. I wonder how many words have been spoken from 
these microphones over the almost 160 years that we have been just in 
this chamber.
  Mr. SHUSTER. Too many.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Too many, clearly. There are not a lot of lines created 
or spoken here that many people quote. The inaugural address produces 
great lines. It is not what you do for your country, all those kinds of 
lines that come out. I do not know of anything spoken here that many 
people quote.
  Lincoln said, and I will butcher this, but I think he said in his 
Gettysburg Address, the world will little remember what is said here. 
As it turns out, he was wrong, but I think that is exactly what 
happened here.
  In West Texas, I suspect, and in central Pennsylvania as well as 
Kentucky, talk is cheap, but what we do here is important and it is 
remembered. When we vote, as we did last week, to abrogate contracts 
with the Federal Government, when we vote, as we did last week, to tell 
people who have business deals with this Federal Government you really 
cannot trust the contract because if it begins to look like you are 
making a little money off this contract, some Member of Congress will 
think that is a bad idea and they will convince a party, maybe both 
parties, to take and redo that contract.
  When we vote, as we did two weeks ago, to say there are some lives in 
this country, they are not particularly important, lives on the front 
end of creation, that is remembered. That is important. That has an 
impact on what we do.
  When we vote here to do things to protect America, as I suspect over 
the next coming couple of weeks we will vote as to how we think this 
Congress ought to be commander-in-chief, that is important what we do.
  The good is important and the bad is important just as well. It is 
long remembered and long noted by the people of this country, the 
people in West Texas in District 11, and many instances, the people 
around the world.
  As I hear tonight our good colleague from Maryland talking about 
flaws in the bill that we will vote on tomorrow with respect to 
pensions, that I think all of us would love to support, when he says, 
well, guys, do not worry about it, this is just the House version; we 
will fix it in conference or we will fix it in the Senate.
  Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. Heard that before.
  Mr. CONAWAY. We said it, our guys said it, but today was a particular 
one where our good colleague from Maryland just seemed to pooh-pooh the 
idea that there were some flaws in this bill that we did not need to 
worry about because we are the House of Representatives. I challenge 
that. We are the House of Representatives, and what we do here is 
important. I do not know that what we say here is of particular 
importance, but what we do here is important.
  I appreciate being with you tonight.

                              {time}  2230

  Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman is absolutely 
correct. What we did here in 2001 and 2003 by reducing the tax rate on 
American people, it is going to expire in 1,440 days, unless this 
Congress acts.
  You need to look at the numbers that the gentleman from Kentucky 
pointed out. Record revenues are flowing into the Federal Government. 
Since August of 2003, we have created 7.2 million jobs. In December 
alone, 167,000 jobs were created. The October and November numbers 
increased by 29,000 jobs. In 2006 alone, there was an increase of 1.8 
million jobs. In the 2003 period to today, 7.2 million have been 
created. That is more jobs than the European Union and Japan combined 
have created.
  Our economy has added jobs for 40 straight months, and I believe it 
is going to do that with an unemployment rate of 4.5 percent. That is 
well below the 5.1 percent rate of 2005, and below the average of the 
past 4 decades. So these tax cuts have worked.
  We need to make sure that we act in this Congress and not run out the 
clock. The American people need to know that if this Congress does not 
act, if it just sits on the ball and runs out the clock, come 1,440 
days, January 1, 2011, the American people will have seen a $200 
billion tax increase, and that is not good for America.

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