[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3112-3118]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2310
                          DOT-COM BUBBLE BURST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Giffords). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for the remainder of the time until midnight.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the presenters of 
the previous hour that have come down here, especially my friend, Mr. 
Ryan from Ohio. They have been persistent and they have been 
relentless.
  At some point I think it would be very engaging for us to be able to 
actually share an hour and do that kind of point, counterpoint that can 
bring these issues to the top for the American people. And I want to 
say again, my highest compliment is for persistence. I am going to make 
some comments here on accuracy and on perspective.
  I think we need to take us back. Since we have gone back to the 
future in this last hour, Madam Speaker, I would take us back to where 
we were here in the United States of America on the date, and I will 
call it September 10, 2001.
  That was the date on which we were in the middle of the bursting of 
the dot-com bubble, the day before the September 11 attacks on our 
financial centers, the Pentagon and in the fields of Pennsylvania, 
which may have been the White House or this Capitol building itself, 
Madam Speaker.
  On that day, the American people were just beginning to understand 
what had happened to our economy. We had this growing economy that has 
been credited over here many, many times over to President Clinton. I 
want to tell you that the Republican Congress balanced the budget 
through the 1990s. And they might have done so because they did not 
approve of the Clinton policies. There might have been a measure of 
spite. But they balanced the budget.
  And the reason I will give that credit to the Republican majority in 
this Congress is because Bill Clinton vetoed their budget several 
times. That kept us from having a balanced budget until finally they 
had to reach a compromise, and those balanced budgets flowed forward.
  This economy grew, and it grew out beyond expectations. And the 
biggest reason, Madam Speaker, that it grew was because we had this 
economic phenomenon called the dot-com bubble. Well the dot-com bubble 
was that we had discovered in our research, in our technology and 
science and in information, that the microchip and the configuration of 
the microchip and the configurations of the software and our 
infrastructure that allowed us to put that all together, we found out 
in the middle 1990s that we could store and transfer information more 
quickly than ever before in all of history.
  And when that happened, there were companies that looked around and 
said, voila, we have a microchip. We can find a way to do something 
with that. Let's start up a dot-com company and we will go public and 
we will sell shares on our ability to store and transfer information 
more efficiently than ever before, Madam Speaker.
  And so those companies lit up and did that. And the stock market grew 
and grew and grew and grew. And there was a return on those 
investments, not because the companies were making money, but on the 
speculative value, Madam Speaker, on the ability to store and transfer 
information faster than ever before.
  That went through the 1990s and into the year 2000. And in the year 
2000, President Bush was elected. And about that time, sometime about 
the beginning actually of the year 2000, the market, the stock market 
began to understand that this dot-com bubble, which was this growth in 
the values of their shares on the New York Stock Exchange was really 
based upon the speculation that we could store and transfer information 
more quickly than ever before, and not based upon the economic value of 
the ability to be able to store and transfer information more quickly 
than ever before.
  And so the adjustments began to be made in that stock market. And 
when they were made, it took it down to, what is this information 
worth? Just because we can store and transfer it more quickly does not 
mean it has more value, it has to add efficiency to the productivity of 
companies, or it has got to have a marketable value to people that will 
say pay a higher price for a higher speed Internet, not just for their 
business reasons, that is legitimate, but also for their recreational 
reasons.
  Only two reasons this information age that had blossomed and grown, 
Madam Speaker, only had value because it added efficiency to the 
companies that we had and those that would be developed and grown, or 
that ability to store and transfer information could be marketed for 
recreational purposes.
  Well, about the year 2000 the market began making those adjustments. 
And the market decided there is too much capital invested in this. 
There is too much speculation invested in this. We really cannot turn 
out the kind of productivity that is necessary to justify the capital 
investment that had grown this dot-com bubble in our marketplace.
  And so astute investors began to divest themselves of their 
investments within those dot-com companies, some of them not all of 
them. Those that had the highest promise, at least on the measure of 
the capital invested, the money stayed with them. Those that had the 
least promise the money left them.
  As the market adjusted, we had this thing we called the bursting of 
the dot-com bubble. That took place in about the year 2000, 2000, 2001, 
as President Bush was being sworn in out here on the west portico of 
the Capitol for his first term in January of 2001, the bursting of the 
dot-com bubble was almost audible at that point.
  Well, as that bubble slowly burst and flowed across the year 2001, 
Madam Speaker, it took us up to September 11 of 2001, when, as we know, 
the planes went crashing into the Twin Towers and into the Pentagon, 
into the field in Pennsylvania.
  And the attack on our financial centers, and an attack on our 
strategic center over here at the Pentagon, of our military strategic 
center, was devastating. It was designed to take the financial center 
of the United States of America to its knees.
  Well, that did shut down our financial center the rest of that week. 
We were open for business, might have actually been on the following 
Friday, but we were at least open for business the following Monday 
after September 11. But we got our stock market up and going again, our 
financial centers started going again. We patched things in. We rigged 
them up so that we could work and we could trade. As we began to trade, 
the markets began to adjust the impact on them.
  That blow to our financial centers on September 11, on top of the 
bursting of

[[Page 3113]]

the dot-com bubble where there were two devastating hits on our 
economy, yes we were cruising along, Madam Speaker, with anticipated 
balanced budgets as far as the eye could see. But those balanced 
budgets did not anticipate the bursting of the dot-com bubble, nor did 
they anticipate the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City.
  And so we began to make our adjustments. And then following that, the 
obvious result was, that we had to spend hundreds of billions of 
dollars to protect us from the terrorists who were attacking the United 
States of America and western civilization itself.
  That took money, Madam Speaker. And this Congress pulled together in 
bipartisan effort, Democrats over here, Republicans over here, came 
together and said we are one people. We are the United States of 
America and our number one most responsible Constitutional position is 
to protect the American people.
  And so we set forth here in this Congress to protect the American 
people. And some of the things that we did were to provide that our 
military could, number one, go over to Afghanistan and into the 
mountains in Pakistan and go take out those al-Qaeda centers where they 
had been strategizing and planning these terrorist attacks on the 
United States.
  And in the process it was necessary to liberate Afghanistan and set 
up a government in Afghanistan that reflected the will of the people, a 
government of, by and for the people of Afghanistan. We did that within 
2 to 2\1/2\ months of the September 11 attacks in 2001, at the cost of 
billions of dollars, Madam Speaker.
  Now here we are, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the attacks on 
the Twin Towers, our financial centers, and the Pentagon and in 
Pennsylvania, and the necessity to engage in military conflict clear 
across the globe over in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which our glorious 
United States military did so successfully, and took out the Taliban 
and liberated the Afghani people. The Afghan people went to the polls 
there in that country for the first time in the history of the world. A 
magnanimous thing, all at great cost for a great cause.
  These three things that I have talked about, Madam Speaker, the 
bursting of the dot-com bubble, which brought our stock market down, 
the attacks on our financial centers at the Twin Towers took it down 
further, and the cost of supporting and maintaining and equipping our 
military to liberate the Afghan people all three things hit this budget 
hard.
  Now, I do not think there was anyone on that side of the aisle that 
made the argument then that we should have only done these things 
within the confines of a balanced budget. I did not hear them say that. 
I did not hear anybody say that. I did not even read an editorial that 
said, well, you know, it is a pretty responsible thing that we have to 
do here, we have to recover from the bursting of the dot-com bubble, we 
have got to recover from the attack on the Twin Towers, and we have to 
spend tens of billions, in fact more than a hundred billion dollars 
going into Afghanistan to take out the Taliban and al-Qaeda and free 
the Afghan people, but we should only do so within the confines of a 
balanced budget.
  No, nobody said that, Madam Speaker. Nobody on that side said that. 
Nobody on this side said that. We were unanimous in our judgment that 
we needed to protect the American people at whatever cost. And so our 
military went forth, under the command and order of our commander in 
chief and carried out their duty and liberated the Afghan people and 
took out the Taliban and took out al-Qaeda in the mountains in 
Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

                              {time}  2320

  They did their job. We all knew that we would be deficit spending 
here in this Congress to protect the American people because the 
decision of balancing the budget in a time of great national peril was 
not a hard decision. When you are in great national peril you go into 
debt.
  Can anyone imagine fighting World War II when we spent 38 percent of 
our gross domestic product on our military, fighting that war without 
going into debt? We sold war bonds over and over and over again. We 
ginned up Hollywood. Hollywood started running movies to raise the 
morale of the American people and to keep us together as one people. 
And strategy after strategy was designed here out of Washington and 
from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to pull us together as a people, to not 
be divisive, to unify in our efforts against the Nazis to our east and 
the imperialist Japanese to our west. That was the strategy of the 
United States, and we pulled together as one people, Madam Speaker. And 
we spent 38 percent of our gross domestic product in those years of 
World War II.
  And the zero unemployment that we have today at about 4.6 percent 
during World War II went to 1.3. That is closer to a full employment 
economy. It is still not a full employment economy, but that is a lot 
closer.
  And we sit here today, and I am hearing the argument that somehow we 
should have walked through this whole thing with a balanced budget. You 
know, if we had done that, there is something my friends on the other 
side of the aisle that know to be fact and, in fact, I think they are 
whistling through the graveyard crossing their fingers behind their 
back saying I wish that that had been the case. They know that if we 
had done so and balanced the budget then we would have gone into a 
tailspin recession, if not a hard core depression.
  But what happened throughout that, the bursting of the dot-com 
bubble, the attacks on the twin towers, the liberation of Afghanistan 
and subsequently the liberation of the Iraqi people, what happened, was 
our Commander in Chief, who also is the President of the United States, 
George W. Bush, came to this Congress with two financial proposals, two 
tax cut proposals, one in 2001 and one in 2003. And the vision was 
this, if we don't reduce taxes and stimulate this economy, the burden 
of this bursting of the dot-com bubble and the attack on the twin 
towers and the necessity to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq, the burden 
of all of that will fall on this economy, and the United States of 
America would certainly, and I don't mean, Madam Speaker, almost 
certainly, I mean the burden certainly would have fallen on this 
economy and it certainly would have put us in a recession, and perhaps 
a severe depression.
  Now, Madam Speaker, I would submit that if we were to consider what 
this country would have been like if we had not cut taxes, if we had 
not reduced capital gains, if we had not reduced dividend taxes, if we 
hadn't let people keep more of the money that they earn and allow them 
to reinvest it and get a return on that investment, if we hadn't made 
those changes in the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, this economy would 
have slowed to a crawl. It would have tail spun into a recession, 
perhaps a depression.
  But the President knew, and this Congress knew, and the Republican 
majority knew, and I thank you all of my colleagues for being part of 
that, knew that if we could cut taxes we could stimulate economic 
growth. If we can stimulate economic growth, we can grow our way out of 
this deficit spending that is necessary at this time of great national 
peril. And that is what we did. We did follow the leadership of the 
White House and President Bush. We did cut taxes in 2001. We did cut 
taxes in 2003. And the economy responded in kind. And there is no 
logical argument that the cutting of taxes did not stimulate the 
economy.
  If anybody over on this side has a disagreement, I would be happy to 
yield some time. But it did stimulate the economy, and this economy 
grew. And quarter after quarter after quarter, we saw the longest 
period of economic growth in the history of the United States of 
America flow forth through this economy, quarter after quarter. And 
most of those quarters were over 3 percent growth. And I would quote it 
all back to you but it has been so good that I have lost track the last 
two or three quarters, so I can't tell you exactly what those numbers 
are. But I

[[Page 3114]]

know there have many, many quarters that this economy has grown and 
grown significantly, perhaps grown dramatically. But this is a stable, 
long term growth just the kind you want if you draw it up on the chart.
  And so here we are. After a political campaign, November 7 election, 
after I have heard over here this economy is bad and it is not 
providing jobs for people, well, when has it been better? If anybody on 
that side of the aisle has an answer to that, I would be happy to yield 
to you. Just stand up. I would be happy to yield to you. When has the 
economy been better than it is now? When has it grown more 
consistently? When has it provided more jobs? When has the private 
sector had more stimulation than it has now? Not in my lifetime, Madam 
Speaker. This is the best economy that we have ever seen.
  And here we are, it is stimulated by the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 
2003, and we are faced with, now, a Democrat majority that wants to 
increase taxes. So I have a few charts here to help people out, Madam 
Speaker. And this chart says, having called the tax cuts beyond 
irresponsible, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee said, he 
cannot think of one of George Bush's first term tax cuts that merit 
renewal.
  Well, those first term tax cuts include all of the Bush tax cuts, as 
my recollection is. So if he can't think of one that merits renewal, 
Madam Speaker, I would point out, I can't think of one that does not 
merit renewal, that this economic growth and this economic recovery has 
been almost a historical miracle.
  But for the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee to not 
acknowledge an economic fact, Madam Speaker, is an astonishing thing. 
And as I listen to the debate here on the floor tonight, and as I 
listen to my colleagues here deliver their view and their opinion, 
which they are entirely welcome to, and I respect that, it occurs to me 
that their probably isn't one shred of empirical data that would pry 
them off of their political position.
  But I will say that we have the ability over here on this side of the 
aisle to deductively reason, and we know that there are incentives for 
people, and when there is profit involved, people produce more. When 
there is less profit involved they will produce less. And if there is 
no profit involved, even if they want to produce, they won't last long. 
Their business will go under and they will go broke.
  So in a free market economy, you have to have people that can make a 
little bit of money. And if they can make a little money, they are 
going to like it and they will make a little more money. And when you 
have a tax and a regulatory structure that allows for people to have 
some profit, they will continue to produce. And our gross domestic 
product goes up and the number of jobs go up and the wages that they 
can afford to pay go up and the benefits that they pay go up, which 
means the families are better off, that is more money, Madam Speaker, 
in the pockets of the families of the American people. And then we 
become a better place to live.
  And these Bush tax cuts have not reduced the revenue stream into this 
country. They have increased it by every measure imaginable. And it 
might be possible to do a static kind of a calculation that says, well, 
yes, if we just increase taxes 50 percent we will get 50 percent more 
revenue. Madam Speaker, I won't disagree with that. You can do that 
static calculation, and you may actually even get 50 percent more 
revenue the very first quarter that you increase taxes by 50 percent.
  But human nature has got to play into that equation too, and human 
nature says, well, taxes were too high. I don't think I really want to 
work those extra overtime hours. I don't want to do 60 hours a week. I 
am going to be happy with 40 because Uncle Sam takes too big of a cut. 
The taxes are too high. I am not going to sit there and make those 
extra sales phone calls at night. I am going to go home and see my 
family. I am going to settle for less income. Or the business owner 
that says well, the taxes are too high. I was going to add an extra 
line on to my manufacturing plant here and hire an extra hundred 
people, but, no, taxes are too high. The regulations are too high. I am 
going to be just satisfied with what I have. Or maybe shrink it down a 
little bit and maximize my profits and just stay here, hold the status 
quo.

                              {time}  2330

  That is what goes on in the minds of the people who are creating the 
jobs in America, especially America's small business people. For when 
they hear over here, Madam Speaker, that they want to increase taxes 
and punish the producers in America, the producers aren't stupid. They 
are going to decide I can take so much punishment but I can't take that 
much punishment; so I am going to back up a little bit and I am going 
to back off. I am going to quit creating jobs and probably lay a few 
people off. I am going to consolidate my business, and maybe I will 
just coast out the rest of my life. And you have lost that business 
owner for the rest of their life. And you have got to then rely on some 
young entrepreneur to come in and light this thing up. But why will 
they if you take away, in your perverse way, taxing the incentives of 
the entrepreneurs of America, which is a life blood of who we are as a 
people?
  So the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, having called the 
tax cuts beyond irresponsible, the chairman said he cannot think of one 
of George Bush's first-term tax cuts that merits renewal. Astonishing. 
Would you really want to back up and give up on the longest period of 
growth in history, and I have to be careful of that, at least in my 
history? And I know of no time in the history of the United States of 
America where we had more growth.
  Well, it is one thing, Madam Speaker, to take the position that the 
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee cannot think of one that 
merits renewal, but here is a statement that comes from the chairman of 
the Ways and Means Committee, and that is September 26 of 2006, where 
he vowed to put all of President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts on the 
chopping block.
  Why? Why in the world, Madam Speaker, would you take something that 
has proven success, this long period of growth that has run 3 percent 
and more for most of the last dozen quarters or more, dozen and a half 
quarters at least, and put them all on the chopping block and chop them 
off and let them go? Why? Why would that be the case? Aren't we looking 
forward to a chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that maybe is an 
economist or at least a well-versed, well-read amateur economist, and 
wouldn't an economist who is the chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee want to have reasonable growth, maybe even dynamic growth, 
here in the United States of America? What would be the merit in trying 
to kill the economy of the country that you have sworn to defend and 
that you love, and, in fact, in his case, has stood up and put his life 
on the line and defended, to his credit?
  It can only be one thing. I do not think he really wants to destroy 
the economy of the United States of America, but I think there is a 
political agenda, Madam Speaker. And this will be devastating to the 
economy of the United States if these tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 are 
put on the chopping block. And it isn't that they have to be put on the 
block and voted down. These tax cuts sunset. They will need action in 
the House and the Senate to be renewed. And they need to be renewed 
because we know what kind of growth they have stimulated.
  In fact, last September, and I believe the date was September 15, 
under these Bush tax cuts, the Federal Government collected more money 
on that day than any other day in the history of the United States of 
America. September 15, 2006. That would be the last time that happened 
under the Rangel plan.
  So, Madam Speaker, I would submit that these tax cuts do have a 
sunset and that sunset for them, the date that they expire, is 1,426 
days from now; 1,426 from now, Madam Speaker, and if this Congress does 
nothing, they expire.
  Now, I would ask why would it be that the chairman of the Ways and 
Means Committee, Speaker Pelosi,

[[Page 3115]]

and the leadership on the Democrat side of the aisle would want to see 
the Bush tax cuts expire. Well, it is because if that does not happen, 
they cannot balance their budget. They can't balance their budget 
without an increase in taxes. And this brings about, when those dates 
expire, a real increase in taxes. Regardless of how it is voted, 
regardless of how the bill is brought forward, regardless of what might 
be amended, in the end if these tax cuts are not extended, the result 
is a tax increase. A tax increase will temporarily fund their spending 
increases, and they will be able to claim that they have a balanced 
budget for a little while.
  But that won't last long, Madam Speaker. But the temporary timing of 
this comes together in such a way that the expiration of the Bush tax 
cuts in 1,426 days is nice and handy because they can use that to claim 
that they are complying with PAYGO, the pay-as-you-go plan, the not-
going-to-spend-any-more-money-than-you-have-coming-in plan, the plan 
that says if we want to spend more money, we will just increase taxes 
on the backs of the American people, the hardworking American people. 
And I believe the government takes enough out of their paychecks, Madam 
Speaker.
  I believe we have hardworking Americans who are still working hard 
and struggling to make ends meet. They have to have a budget. The 
American people have to meet that budget. When they look at what they 
need to do in order to live within their means, they make those 
decisions, Madam Speaker. And they don't have the option to decide in 
1,426 days I am going to raise taxes. I am going to kick that up to the 
point where now I can raise spending.
  No. The American people have to be responsible. They have to look at 
the paycheck they have coming in and make decisions on what they can 
afford, what standard of living they can afford to have. And so they 
will decide if they can have that cabin at the lake or that new SUV or 
that boat or whether they are going to plastic their windows and try to 
keep their heat bill down so that they can live within their means. We 
all have to make those kinds of decisions to live within our means, and 
when a decision is made to take money out of the pockets of the 
American people, those people that are out there putting plastic over 
their windows in one of the coldest winters that we have had in a long, 
long time, Madam Speaker, and we are taxing them, raising their taxes 
so that this government can spend more money to buy more votes and 
influence more people across this country, it is a travesty of justice.
  I have been with some of the Democrats, Madam Speaker, and some of 
them said they want to balance the budget. And when they say that, you 
can't get them to admit that they want to increase taxes to balance the 
budget. Some of the Blue Dogs will say they want to balance the budget 
in a responsible way. I can't get them to say they would do so without 
increasing taxes. In fact, whenever they have offered a balanced budget 
here on the floor, it always has had an increase in taxes as part of 
their balanced budget.
  So I have taken a look at our budget, Madam Speaker, and decided what 
needs to happen. If we are going to balance the budget, the American 
people ought to know what it takes to balance the budget here in the 
United States of America. About $2.8 trillion is our budget, and we 
have a lot of revenue coming in, and the revenue increase has been 
double digits the last 2 to 3 years because this economy has been so 
strong and the unemployment has been so low and the new jobs created 
have been so dynamic. All of this seems to be a secret to the American 
people, but that is all fact, Madam Speaker. But still we have this 
growth in entitlements. The entitlements of Medicare, Medicaid, Social 
Security, and you add to that the cost of interest that is going up, 
and as interest goes up, of course, the more national debt that we 
have. No one in this Congress aside from myself, Madam Speaker, is 
talking about how do you balance the budget, how do you balance the 
budget without increasing taxes.
  I want this dynamic economy. I want to see double-digit increase in 
our revenue stream. I don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden 
egg. The people on this side of the aisle, Madam Speaker, have a belief 
that there is something evil about that goose that lays the golden egg, 
and they want to kill that goose by increasing taxes. But as for me, I 
will submit that I am willing to cut some spending. Let us take this on 
down to the point where we can balance this budget and then balance the 
budget without increasing taxes, Madam Speaker.
  And I have done a little calculation on this, and this is nothing but 
a little napkin calculation with a calculator off of my belt, and the 
final numbers will be coming in in the next couple of days, and if all 
goes well, I will be able to introduce a bill and we can have a debate 
on this floor on a real balanced budget, Madam Speaker.

                              {time}  2340

  But if we were to hold defense spending harmless, let defense 
spending grow the way it needs to, because we have to protect the 
American people, set that part aside, and then put into it non-defense 
discretionary spending, that is the spending that is not including the 
entitlements, being Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, also the 
necessity to pay for the interest on the national debt, those things 
all tied together, plus non-defense discretionary, all of that 
together, if we would look at the 2007 fiscal year budget and make 
adjustments in that for 2008, it would be necessary for us to cut about 
8 percent across-the-board in all of those categories if we were going 
to balance the budget.
  So when the American people clamor for a balanced budget, they need 
to understand what they are talking about. They need to understand the 
impact on their own budget, what happens to their Social Security 
benefits, their Medicaid and Medicaid benefits, and, of course, we have 
to pay the interest bill, and then how we have to shrink down some of 
the discretionary spending in this Federal budget.
  All of that can happen with the support of the American people. An 8 
percent cut seems to me to be a bit Draconian. But if we had frozen our 
Federal spending when I came to this Congress in 2003, we would have a 
balanced budget today, Madam Speaker, with a minimal amount of pain, 
and we would be able to have a debate for the American people that 
would be focused on what is the future of this country going to be?
  We can't make these adjustments to Social Security if we are not 
willing to make those changes that were called for by President Bush 
with personal retirement accounts. If we can't give people a percentage 
of their Social Security that they are contributing into their own 
control so that they can have some investment in their own destiny, 
while we guarantee those benefits to our seniors, if we can't make 
those changes, the inevitable result is, Madam Speaker, we will have to 
cut the benefits to our seniors.
  I want to keep that pledge to our seniors. Because of that, I want to 
configure a kind of Social Security reform that will allow for a 
measure of that to go into personal retirement accounts so that we can 
get people with their own accounts down the road a ways that can be 
independent and stand up and take care of their own retirement. That an 
essential component of this.
  If we don't do that, we are going to have to look the American people 
in the eye and say we didn't have the will to do the right thing. Now 
we are going to have to do the necessary thing. The necessary thing 
then would be to reduce benefits or increase contributions. In either 
case, increasing contributions at a time when we have fewer people 
working and more people collecting, as the baby-boomers come on line, 
and I am one, Madam Speaker, it is no time to put more burden on the 
workers in America. That will be the inevitable result if we are not 
able to bring reform to the Social Security plan.
  So, 8 percent across-the-board, holding defense spending harmless, 
that will get us pretty close to a balanced budget. That is 8 percent 
plus or minus about half a percent. Closer numbers are coming in in the 
next few days.

[[Page 3116]]

  Now, the question is, over here as I listen to the people on the 
other side of the aisle, they don't seem to trust the free markets. In 
fact, I don't know that they understand the free markets. But the 
question for the American people, Madam Speaker, is do you trust 
government or do you trust free markets? Do you trust them when it 
comes to who is going to do the best job of managing and controlling 
your money?
  I will submit that the people that earn the money ought to have 
control of the money, and they will spend it better than government 
spends it almost every time. When it comes to health care, they need 
control of their own health care. They have to be able to control their 
own destiny, to have the freedom of choice to decide where they want to 
invest their health care dollars.
  I appreciate the President coming here to this floor and speaking 
from the location where you are, Madam Speaker, about the need to 
provide for full deductibility for health insurance premiums, at least 
for those with under $15,000 in health insurance premiums.
  We have had a pretty good and healthy history with employer-based 
health care plans, but it is not enough. We have too many American 
people that are not insured for health care. If we can give them full 
deductibility of their health care benefits so they can make that 
deduction and make the calculation on their bottom line and determine 
it is better for them to be insured than not be insured, we will have, 
instead of having 47 million people uninsured, we will have far less 
uninsured, and this country is better off and people will be making 
more decisions individually between them and their doctor.
  I want the American people to negotiate with their doctor, every 
individual American to have that personal relationship and be able to 
control that account and have an insurance policy that they know and 
understand and one that is fully deductible and one that is portable; 
one that even though the employer may contribute to the premium, they 
can take it with them when they go from job to job, which there is more 
job moving now than in the history of this country.
  I want the American people to have a Health Savings Account, Madam 
Speaker, that they can invest money in; that goes in tax-free, and then 
as the money rolls out that is spent back into premiums, in major 
medical health care and having regular annual tests to monitor their 
health situation, so that we have a healthy America with all the right 
incentives that are set up, rather than the perverse incentives being 
set up.
  Then one day, having those Americans that are young today, they could 
put a little over $5,000 into their Health Savings Account annually and 
manage their health care and get the tests done, watch their weight, 
exercise, abstain from tobacco, minimize their alcohol use and have a 
healthy lifestyle, those Americans will arrive at retirement with six 
figures times something in their Health Savings Account.
  Madam Speaker, it is my view and my vision that that day will come 
when there are hundreds of thousands of dollars wrapped up in 
individual Health Savings Accounts that haven't been used because they 
have a healthy lifestyle, and they have been insured for catastrophic 
insurance and had enough money to take care of the deductible in order 
to do that, and saved hundreds and thousands of dollars in their health 
insurance premiums. When they arrive at 65 and qualify for Medicare, we 
can look at them and say, well, Joe and Sally, you have done pretty 
well. You have taken care of your health and you have got this nice 
nest egg in your Health Savings Account. And let's just say it is half 
a million dollars, just to put a big number up there on the board, and 
let's just say at age 65 they can negotiate for a paid up health 
insurance plan, Madam Speaker, for the balance of their life that would 
substitute for Medicare.
  Let's just say the Federal Government can step in there and say, you 
know what we are going to help subsidize that? We would like to buy you 
down on that. We can get together on that. Out of your $500,000 and our 
Federal Treasury, we will put together some money so that we can 
provide a paid health insurance plan, and that paid up health insurance 
plan would substitute for Medicare, and the rest of your life you would 
be covered under that, kind of like an annuity that takes care of your 
health care.
  Then, let's just say that that takes $250,000 out of the $500,000 
that happens to be in the Health Savings Account by the time Joe and 
Sally, who are now at the young age, arrive at 65 and qualify for 
Medicare, now they have a quarter of a million dollars left over. What 
we would they do that? My answer would be whatever you so choose. You 
have managed your lives well. You have been fortunate. You have a 
strong Health Savings Account. You provided a paid up health insurance 
plan for the rest of your life, you and our Medicare funding has 
supplemented to create that. Now we want to reward you and let you take 
the money out of your Health Savings Account, travel the world, will it 
to your kids, do whatever you would like to do.
  Madam Speaker, who could be opposed to such a thing? I would submit 
there will be many on this side of the aisle that will be opposed to 
such a thing because they don't want independence for the American 
people. They don't have confidence in the judgment of the American 
people. They want dependence for the American people. They want the 
American people to be dependent so they can come back to Congress and 
say I need you. Set me up a health care plan and tax my neighbor, tax 
that rich person, punish them for their productivity. Give me some of 
the benefits of that. They set up this class warfare which empowers 
them politically. That is the side of the aisle, the psychology that 
comes there.
  Then, Madam Speaker, as I watch this clock tick down, there are a few 
other pieces of subject matter that need to be addressed. One of them 
was brought up by our group here in the previous hour, and that was the 
issue of energy.
  I know that we have disagreed consistently on what we should do to 
develop American energy sources. My view is we need to develop our 
American energy sources. Every place where we can legitimately do so in 
an environmentally friendly fashion, we should open up American energy.

                              {time}  2350

  We have at least 406 trillion cubic feet of natural gas offshore, and 
most of that is offshore around Florida and some in the gulf that is 
not Florida. 406 trillion cubic feet of natural gas; and yet we sit 
here, and last fall, last minute in our lame duck session we opened up 
a tiny little sliver of offshore drilling.
  We have mineral rights out to 200 miles, and yet the idea is if we 
would put a gas well down at 199 miles out, somebody that was planning 
on going to Florida to sit on the beach would hear about that and 
decide, well, I know I can't see 199 miles out offshore, but somehow I 
would know that was out there so I don't want to sit on a beach that 
has somebody drawing natural gas off a platform that is invisible to me 
and environmentally friendly.
  And, by the way, there has been no gas well that has ever polluted 
anything anytime. If there has ever been a gas well eruption, it went 
off into the atmosphere. And so it is not an environmental issue; and 
because they are out so far from the shoreline it is not a scenery 
issue, which is no excuse anyway, Madam Speaker. It is a political 
issue.
  Here in this country we have people who are environmentalists who 
jump on the environmental band wagon and then they oppose anything that 
they decide could have an argument that would be against the 
environment, and they do so so they can raise political money and they 
can support political candidates, and they do so in defiance of 
rationale and they do so in defiance of logic.
  Again, they have set aside this Western Civilization tenet of the age 
of reason, deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning says, well, if you 
have a lot of natural gas offshore in Florida and if

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you can only see about 12 miles offshore, and even if you could see 
those rigs out there, it doesn't matter to me, I could sit on the beach 
with a rig out there, it is something to look at. But it is beyond 
where they could see.
  Would you not in a deductively reasoning way, Madam Speaker, go in 
there and explore for that oil and the gas and open that up and bring 
that natural gas into the United States and produce all the things we 
do, plastics and fertilizer? I mean, the cost of our fertilizer is the 
cost of our food. The nitrogen fertilizer that goes in, 90 percent of 
the input comes from natural gas. So you can't grow anything without 
nitrogen. And our corn that produces our ethanol is founded in a 
nitrogen base.
  So if we are going to be able to reduce our dependency on foreign 
oil, we have got to have more natural gas to produce the fertilizer. 
And we can go out there and explore for that and have American energy 
coming up out of the bottom of the ocean and pumping it into the United 
States and turning it into fertilizer and heating our homes and our 
factories and using it to produce all kinds of a myriad of products. 
But somehow the environmentalists have blocked that all down, not 
because it is rational, not because they can deductively reason that it 
makes sense, but simply because there is some visceral instinct that 
says we think we can raise some campaign dollars and we can get some 
people to oppose that.
  And, by the way, if we are emotional about it, they won't even stop 
and think. Which is the truth, Madam Speaker. They didn't stop and 
think about ANWR, either. And I did. And I thought, well, if this is 
perhaps today's largest energy reserve that the United States of 
America has, and if I am seeing commercials that show the Sierra Club 
and they put out this commercial that shows this pristine alpine forest 
and they say don't go up there and explore in ANWR because you will be 
destroying this pristine alpine forest, and I looked at that and I 
thought some of that doesn't add up so good for me, Madam Speaker.
  So I went up there to ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 
ANWR, traveled all over it, flew over it, down low, looked for 
everything, looked for wildlife, hours in the air at the lowest 
altitude they let us fly looking out the windows trying to find massive 
caribou herd or maybe reindeer herd or a lot of polar bears or maybe 
some seals swimming around out there. And in all of that flight back 
and forth and looking down and all of us looking out the windows, Madam 
Speaker, we saw two white birds and four musk oxen. And those four musk 
oxen were standing there with their heads down doing nothing, of course 
it was cold, and they weren't disturbed by anything going on.
  Madam Speaker, I would submit that some of the environmentalists on 
the other side of the aisle, and one comes to mind would perhaps be my 
friend Dennis Kucinich from Ohio, go up there with me sometime and 
let's look out the window of the plane and fly along and see if you can 
point out the oil fields that are there in the North Slope, the North 
Slope that went through all the court action back in the early 1970s, 
the beginning of the Alaska pipeline, and point out there on the North 
Slope where are these oil wells; where is this desecration to our 
environment; where is the desecration to the scenery. Show it to me.
  I will fly you over the whole thing, Madam Speaker, and look down. 
And I can point them out now because I have been there and I have been 
to school, and I will tell you there is not a single derrick sticking 
out of the air like you imagine, no Texas oil rig from the 1930s. There 
is not a single pump jack sitting there cranking out the oil out of the 
ground and leaking a little oil back into the ground. It doesn't exist. 
The only thing you will see, and now I will tip you off if you want to 
go, you might be able to see it as I tell you what you are going to be 
looking for, and that is a rock workover pad maybe 50 feet wide by 100 
feet long, maybe a little longer, that sits up about 3 feet above the 
arctic tundra, white stone like limestone, probably is, a pad that you 
can bring a workover rig on if you need to work the well in the 
wintertime.
  And as they come in to work those wells, they will come in on ice 
roads, ice roads that will melt in the summertime that don't damage the 
tundra, and they will set the rig up. And the pumps are all 
submersible. You can't see the well, you can't see the casing, you 
can't see the pump, and you can't see the collection tubes.
  That is all out of the sights and minds of the people that are up 
there because this is an environmentally friendly development of the 
North Slope.
  Madam Speaker, we can do better in the development, even better in 
the development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We have 
technology to do directional drilling, and that will reduce our 
footprint considerably.
  So why would we, the American people, insist upon going over to the 
Middle East and buying oil from, some are friends, many are enemies, 
enriching them, making us more dependent on Middle Eastern oil while we 
have these massive supplies of energy within our own country? Why would 
we not, Madam Speaker, develop American energy supplies. Why would we 
not go down into the Gulf of Mexico and open up the Chevron fields down 
there that have been found that might increase the supply of our energy 
by 50 percent, just what is found offshore in the gulf south and west 
of New Orleans, the Chevron fields. Why would we not do that?
  Why would this Congress, Madam Speaker, pass legislation that would 
change the deal that these companies have with the United States of 
America and say to our best friend oil companies who are developing 
this energy: we are going to have to renegotiate your leases. We 
thought it was a good deal when we made it, but now we know something 
that we didn't know then. So we want to scrap and tear up the leases 
that you had, the ones that gave you enough profit that you put some 
incentive into research and development and the exploration, and we 
want that money, we want that profit. We as a Federal Government want 
to tax your income more. And then if you don't do that, then we are not 
going to let you ever sign another lease with the Federal Government or 
the United States.
  What are you going to do, Madam Speaker, if you are Chevron or if you 
are Exxon or if you are Shell or any other company that is one of those 
great oil companies here in the United States if you get that kind of 
message from this Congress? I will submit, Madam Speaker, that what you 
would do is you would take your investments over to foreign countries. 
You would go offshore in Australia, you would go somewhere else, you 
would go up in the North Sea, you would go somewhere offshore in West 
Africa and put your investments there where they are safer. They might 
be nationalized by some tyrannical government, but they are probably 
not going to come in and change the deal. They are probably not going 
to come in and confiscate your investment like this legislation that 
passed off the floor of this Congress last week or the week before. 
When the United States of America makes a deal, Madam Speaker, they 
have got to keep the deal.
  We saw oil prices go up, we saw barrel price go up to $75 a barrel. 
We watched it now drop down to the low $50 a barrel. The reason for 
that is because the supply has gotten greater on the marketplace. The 
biggest reasons for that is because there was profit in it, that 
companies that were making money were reinvesting that profit in 
research and development and producing more oil and putting more of it 
on the market. We need to thank those companies that have provided this 
supply for the United States, not punish them for the extra taxes, 
because these American companies have made us less dependent on Middle 
Eastern oil, not more dependent. And the actions of this Congress in 
this past month have made the United States of America more dependent 
on Middle Eastern oil, not less dependent on Middle Eastern oil. And 
that is the difference.
  What we have passed has hurt America's economy, and what we need to 
do

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is allow the companies that invest in research and development to make 
some profit so they will do more of the same. And if there is more 
energy on the market, then energy will be cheaper.
  So I will submit, Madam Speaker, that we need more BTUs in the 
marketplace; we need to grow the size of the energy pie. The more 
energy there is in the marketplace, the cheaper it all will be. And we 
have to have incentives for business to step in and do the right thing. 
That is the natural part that we should understand when we understand 
free enterprise capitalism.
  If anybody has a little difficulty handling that, they should pick up 
a copy of ``Wealth of Nations'' written by Adam Smith published in 
1776. He was an economist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, and 
he laid out the principles of free enterprise capitalism, free market 
economics, and he understood human nature. And all of those things have 
to be tied together to make these work. We can't defy human nature, 
Madam Speaker. We must respect and honor human nature.

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