[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 264-269]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ECONOMY IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here as we start 
another 2 years in a new Congress, the 111th Congress. It is a humbling 
honor to get to follow in the footsteps of so many giants.
  I come today to talk a bit about the economy and what's been done so 
far and what is being proposed to be done in the future. Now, there is 
so much to be learned from people who have been around this place and 
been on this Earth for many, many decades. A fellow down in Nacogdoches 
had the wisdom, when he was told by a young reporter on his 95th 
birthday, ``Congratulations on your 95th birthday, I hope you're not 
offended, but I hope I never turn 95,'' and the gentleman said, ``Well, 
son, that's because you're not 94.'' But a man over 90 approached me 
there and said that he was sick and tired of hearing people say, oh, 
this is the worst day since the Depression, some people saying it's as 
bad as the 1930s Depression. And he said, let me tell you about the 
Depression. I was there. Sometimes we went for 2 days without eating. 
And I look around nowadays and I see people offended if they don't have 
three cars in their family. They've got a computer, they've got cell 
phones, they've got all these things, and they're trying to tell me 
that this is as bad as the Depression when my family couldn't eat, when 
unemployment, by some estimations, at times was going toward 50 
percent, but by most agreement was more like 25 percent or so. It was 
an incredibly rough time for America, but they managed to get through 
it.
  There is interesting literature out now that says, by government 
intervention all through the thirties, the economy never got better 
until after World War II started; that all the government intervention 
may have actually prolonged the terrible Depression rather than 
helping. Here in this day and time we have people with the best of 
intentions, they want, truly, to make it better. There are others that 
we have here in Washington, part of the government that perhaps want to 
reward their friends. And that is not a partisan comment, that 
apparently is a bipartisan comment because we've seen it on both sides 
of the party issue.
  But to be told repeatedly that this is a terrible depression, worst 
economy since the thirties, I was around in the late 1970s, I was 
around in 1980 and 1981. And so I gathered some numbers about those 
days. We had a 1973 oil crisis and a 1979 energy crisis. And we had, 
let's see, unemployment at 5.1 in January of 1974. And it rose, let's 
see, mild recession from January to July. But unemployment got to 7.5 
and eventually got over 10 percent. And I recall thinking, when this 
guy Reagan started talking about--and I was in the Army at the time at 
Fort Benning, Georgia--and I heard him, and he was just such a gifted 
communicator, and he communicated confidence and a good feeling about 
this country. And it helped make America stronger when America felt 
stronger. There is so much to the mental status of the people of this 
country. But by 1979, inflation had reached 11.3 percent. In 1980, it 
soared to 13.5 percent. And here we had a guy, Reagan, who was saying 
in 1980 that as President he could bring down double-digit inflation, 
he could bring down double-digit unemployment, he could bring down 
double-digit interest rates.
  I recall my wife and I bought our first house out near Fort Benning, 
Georgia. And my dad was concerned with the high interest rate being 
over 10 percent. And he said, you know, son, it just doesn't get any 
higher than that, why don't you wait until it comes down. And yet at 
the time we were selling our house after my 4 years at Fort Benning, 
there were people wanting desperately to absorb 12 percent loans 
because the interest rates had gotten so high. In fact, I've got some 
data gathered on that.
  The Federal funds rate was about 11 percent in '79; it rose to 20 
percent by June of 1981. The prime interest rate eventually reached 
21.5 percent in June of 1982. And here was this candidate in 1980 named 
Reagan saying ``I can help bring these things down.'' And I remember 
telling my wife at the time, ``I like this guy.'' As a member of the 
Army, I could not criticize a Commander in Chief because he was in the 
chain of command and that's a court-martialable offense. So you 
couldn't say anything critical about the Commander in Chief. But I was 
excited about this guy Reagan.

                              {time}  1315

  But I said to my wife, let's face it, there is no way one man, even 
the President of the United States, could bring down double-digit 
unemployment, double-digit inflation, and double-digit interest rates. 
I mean one man just can't do that. And these things started peaking 
through the late 1970s, 1980, 1981, and 1982; and lo and behold, he was 
able to turn things around. We had a massive tax cut, and the economy 
turned around and started going the other way. And lo and behold, 
double-digit interest rates fell below 10 percent, unemployment rates 
fell below 10 percent. Interest rates, inflation, all of those things 
came down, and I was wrong. Apparently one man could make that much 
difference.
  Now, some of the folks know here, Madam Speaker, I like President 
George W. Bush. I think he is a good man, an honorable man, despite 
what some folks say. I like him. He's smarter than people give him 
credit, but as Jeff Foxworthy says, often when people who are not from 
the South hear a southern accent, they immediately deduct 50 IQ points 
from what they think the IQ of the speaker is. But when our Secretary 
of the Treasury convinced him to say, as the Treasury Secretary said, 
that we're about to have this terrible depression and we could have a 
stock crash like '29; in some of the private meetings, it could be that 
once the first bank fails, they'll all fail. We'll have a worse 
depression than the 1930s. We'll have all these terrible things. Those 
kinds of things when said from the highest people in the country can 
become self-fulfilling prophesies. You need to have Presidents that 
will come forward and say ``The only real thing we have to fear is fear 
itself,'' as

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Roosevelt did. You need to spread calm and confidence. And there are 
obviously many issues on which I disagree with President-elect Obama, 
but one of the things we see about this man, as he prepares to take 
over the Presidency, he has a real gift for spreading confidence, 
spreading calm, and spreading hope, as he likes to say.
  Now, we've been hearing a lot lately people trying to set the bar so 
low that anything he does will pass the bar, but the fact is we need 
all of our national leaders to be spreading confidence. You don't do 
that by saying, ``Oh, we're in this terrible depression,'' because we 
are not. When you actually look at the numbers, we are in so much 
better shape as a Nation than we were in 1980. We don't have hostages 
being held in Iran and looking just so helpless to the rest of the 
country. President Bush has certainly made clear, and I think by some 
of President-elect Obama's appointments he has made clear to the rest 
of the world, you don't attack us or we will respond. And so I hope 
that will continue. It's an important message. But we should not claim 
that things are worse than they are because that becomes self-
fulfilling.
  Though I have to say, by scaring Congress enough, there were about 60 
Republicans and about three times that many Democrats who voted for the 
bailout bill mainly because the Secretary of the Treasury scared them 
enough into doing so. That's not a basis for making good judgments to 
help direct this ship of state.
  Now, there's another $350 billion of the original $700 billion in 
TARP funds that were in that bailout bill. All that is required--and I 
know there are some who say, oh, no, in Congress we will get to have an 
up-or-down vote. The bill doesn't say that. The bill says all the 
Treasury Secretary has to do is file a plan. I mean, goodness, his plan 
could just say ``I want to spend $350 billion and send it all to my 
friends,'' and under the law if there is no vote disapproving within 15 
days, he can take the money and spend it.
  We have already seen $350 billion squandered. Now, I know that 
Secretary Paulson had his department issue a report last week that says 
we have studied what we did and we think we did--no, they don't say 
``we think.'' They said, we did a great thing. We saved the economy.
  Well, one of the things they were doing was spending hundreds of 
billions of dollars, we were told, to get more credit, to loosen up the 
credit. I have been sent copies of letters from banks that received 
billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer money and the letters say 
we're not going to be able to make car loans anymore, we're not going 
to floor plan dealers anymore.
  Now, one of the things Congress has done that's been a problem is to 
force lenders to lend money to people who could not afford to pay it 
back. So I'm not in favor of doing that. I don't want to force lenders 
into making bad loans. But when billions and billions of American 
taxpayer dollars are extended to these huge banks, and at the same time 
I've seen press releases from those banks that say, oh, this will 
really help us to extend more credit, lend more money. This will help 
with the credit crunch, and then follow it up shortly thereafter by 
saying, we're not going to lend like we used to and we're holding money 
in reserve. It had absolutely the opposite effect of what it was 
supposed to have. So that causes great concern. It has not opened up 
lending. And the fact is this Congress could allocate $2 trillion to 
Detroit auto makers, but if people cannot buy cars from the dealers and 
the dealers have all the banks pulling back floor plans saying, we're 
not going to help you get cars in to sell to other buyers, then it will 
be wasted money. You've got to have people able to buy cars or any 
money given to Detroit is absolutely wasted.
  There was some criticism of Secretary Paulson, and I was one of those 
who was appropriately critical, for not having more restrictions on the 
money that was given away. Some of it went to bonuses. Instead of 
extending more credit, some banks actually bought up competition, which 
means there will be less credit extended because there are fewer 
lenders out there to extend that money in the way of credit. So it had 
the exact opposite effect it was supposed to. And with all due 
deference to the Secretary of the Treasury patting himself and his 
department on the back for doing such a great and noble job, I just 
don't see it in what we've had happen here.
  I've been joined by one of my colleagues from Georgia, a man I have 
the utmost respect for. He is someone in whom I have the greatest of 
confidence and admiration, and I know that when I have an idea, I'm 
better off running it by him before I float it out publicly. And so I 
would like to yield to my friend Lynn Westmoreland from Georgia.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank the gentleman from Texas. It might not be 
your accent that hurts you with the points IQ, but it may have been 
your introduction of me. But it is good to be here with you to talk 
about the stimulus package.
  I voted against the stimulus package, or the recovery bill, as I know 
you did and many others did, because we didn't see any real plan out 
there. And the only plan that we really heard, Madam Speaker, if you 
will remember, they said there was a bad automobile wreck, that this 
credit crisis was like a bad automobile wreck clogging up the 
expressway and that behind this accident there were trucks carrying 
student loans, automobile loans, mortgage loans, all different types of 
credit, and that because of this accident that those loans were not 
getting through to the people that needed them; so we need to spend 
$700 billion. And I think at the time they said it was about a 5 
percent bad mortgage of home loans, and there are about 80 million 
mortgages; so that's roughly 4 million loans. So this credit crunch was 
caused by these 4 million loans to spend $700 billion. So we cleared 
the accident, or at least we were told that we were clearing the 
accident.
  But the accident is not cleared, or if it is cleared, nobody has let 
the traffic through because there are people every day being foreclosed 
on because the banks that are getting this money, and one bank in 
particular that does business in Georgia got $4 billion of TARP money 
and they are foreclosing on people every day. They are not giving 
people an opportunity to restructure their loans. They are calling more 
principal due on these loans. And I'm not telling a bank to make bad 
loans, but the reason that we are in this situation is because they 
originally made bad loans. What I think we're telling them is they need 
to clean up the bad loans that they made. They need to clean up their 
own mess. But now that they've got taxpayers' dollars, they especially 
need to be using that for the intent that Congress gave it to them.
  There was an article, and I think it was in the New York Times, this 
is the name of the article, December 17, ``Fed Cuts Key Rate to a 
Record Low.'' It says: ``Of much greater practical importance, the Fed 
bluntly announced that it would print as much money as necessary to 
revive the frozen credit markets and fight what is shaping up as the 
Nation's worst economic downturn since World War II.''
  And you addressed that. We're not necessarily in that economic 
downturn, and we're going to continue to print money until we unfreeze 
the credit market. Well, this first $350 billion should have done 
something to help fall it out in the least, but people every day--I 
have got builders and developers, small business people in my district, 
the Third District of Georgia, every week calling me saying, we're 
going out of business.
  A good friend of mine has been in the grading business. His family 
has been in the grading business for 57 years. He's been running it for 
the past 30 years. His father started it. He called me and he said, 
``Lynn, today is the last day we're going to be in business. I've got 
employees that have been with me for over 30 years that I have got to 
let go. What do I need to tell them about the bailout?''
  This money is not getting through to these small businesspeople, and 
we need to make these lending institutions accountable. I talked to 
Chairman Frank, and he said that they're going to come up with a bill 
in about

[[Page 266]]

the next 2 weeks or so to make these people accountable. And they need 
to be held accountable.
  These are taxpayers' dollars. These are people's individual dollars 
going to this bailout, and they are not having the ability to even 
access any of the money. These banks are holding the money, and they're 
holding the money so they can buy small banks. I've had community 
bankers call me and say, we applied for TARP but we can't get it. We 
can't get the TARP money.
  So do you think that some of the Big Nine are going to go into our 
communities, into Grantville, Georgia; or Griffin, Georgia; or 
Thomaston or Greenville, Georgia; and make somebody a loan that wants 
to open up a barber shop or wants to have a nail salon or wants to do 
an automotive repair shop? No. We depend on these community bankers, 
and right now these big banks are sitting around waiting on these 
community banks to fail so they can go in, gobble them up, and do away 
with our community banks. These community banks, some of them told me 
they voted not to get them. The gentleman from Texas, they voted not to 
take the TARP money. The Federal regulators came in and said, you need 
to take the TARP money. And then they applied for it and couldn't get 
it. We have got to stop this nonsense, and we need to let the free 
market work. It will work.

                              {time}  1330

  It has worked. It will work again if we will just quit muddying the 
water.
  Now I hear about this new stimulus package that the President-elect 
is going to come up with. He is going to create about 3 million jobs, 
and I heard today on the news, before I came over here, of 1.2 
trillion, which means that each one of these jobs is going to be about 
$400,000.
  Now, I don't know about you, but that's pretty expensive for the 
taxpayers to create 3 million jobs at $400,000 apiece. I would think 
that we might create, with that kind of money, we might create a lot 
more jobs than that at $200,000 apiece, twice as many jobs. In fact, I 
know a lot of people today that would just love to have a job.
  But the government creating jobs, 600,000 new government jobs, that's 
50 percent of the people, exclusive of the Postal Service, that we 
employ right now. We are fixing to employ 50 percent more people.
  Now, that's great that we are creating these jobs, but that means 
that this 600,000 people are going to have to continue to be paid every 
year and their insurance and their benefits. I am telling you, we are 
going down a real rocky road.
  I am glad that the President-elect has realized that this economic 
situation that we are facing in our country today needs some attention. 
This Congress has tried to give it the attention. The current President 
has tried to give it the attention, but I think there has been too much 
love and not enough firm discipline that everyday citizen is out there 
facing, the firm discipline of not being able to pay your bills. They 
don't have the ability to print more money, and they are out there 
suffering.
  We are not doing the suffering here. We keep printing the money and 
keep throwing it out there, and it keeps going to the big dogs. It 
keeps going to the people that made these major mistakes that leveraged 
some of these mortgage investments 45 and 50-1.
  We are bailing them out, and the average guy is not getting bailed 
out. I have got a real good friend of mine that called me yesterday, he 
is in his early 50s, he has been in the real estate business and the 
building business along with me--he and I have been in it together for 
a long time--he is going to the police academy. He is starting the 
police academy. He is starting a new career because he cannot make a 
living doing what he's doing.
  We need to wake up and to realize that if we are going to clear the 
wreck, if we are going to unfreeze this credit market, these lending 
institutions need to be accountable to us, the taxpayers, and make sure 
that they are taking this money and doing what they are supposed to do 
with it and not just paying their top dogs, their bigwigs, all this 
money going to the resorts, sponsoring championship football games, 
buying banks in China for $6 billion, but they are lending the money 
out.
  I don't care if you have got a credit rating of 835, you are not 
going to be able to borrow a dime, because they are afraid. They don't 
want to lend it, and they are saving this money to help their balance 
sheets. This is no way to run a railroad.
  It's not the intention that this Congress had. We need to do 
something to make these people that are receiving this TARP money 
accountable. We need to make them go back and correct the bad loans 
that they made and to make sure that the everyday guy out there that's 
furnishing this $700 billion can have some type of benefit from it.
  With that, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to do this.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Westmoreland, for participating. You have 
made some great points.
  You know I have talked to a number of builders there in east Texas, 
where I represent, back in September. I know things were tough in a lot 
of places in the country back in September, but the contractors were 
telling me they are doing okay, you know, it's just not fantastic, but 
they are doing okay.
  As soon as we started hearing all the gloom and doom, I started to 
hear people say, you know, we were going to buy a house, we were going 
to build a house, we were going to buy a car. But since we are told we 
may be headed for depression, we are going to hold up and wait and see, 
you know, maybe sometime next year. We don't want to be buying a new 
house, or building a new house, or building a new building for our 
business if we are about to hit a depression.
  So what happens? People quit buying cars, they quit building. 
Contractors say, you know, we always love when the phone rings, that 
means it may be somebody that's about to build another building. But, 
lately, they cringe every time the phone rings, because it means 
someone else may be calling to say we had talked to you, we were 
planning on building something the first of the year, but let's hold up 
and wait and see if this depression really is coming.
  Let me tell you a little more about the 1980s when people say, oh, 
this is the worst since the 1930s. Actually, in 1980, there were 
approximately 4,590 State and federally chartered savings and loans 
institutions with total assets of over $616 billion. Let's see, between 
1980 and 1983, 118 S&Ls with 43 billion in assets failed.
  Things were going badly in this country. Banks, S&Ls failing, S&L 
crisis, all kinds of things that had been built up, ready to start 
happening during the 1970s and in the early 1980s that began happening. 
Were it not for the foresight to have tax cuts, stimulate the economy, 
then things never would have turned around, but Ronald Reagan did a 
good job of doing that.
  Now, as my friend, Mr. Westmoreland, read the quote, the Fed is 
printing money. They are printing money like crazy. There are 
consequences to doing that, for those of us that really believe so many 
solutions can be found in history, because you can go back 
historically.
  As Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. There is new 
technology, but there are not new issues. These things have all been 
tried and failed, succeeded. So you go back and you say, okay, this is 
what was done this year, that failed. This was done here, that 
succeeded. Let's go over the things that succeeded.
  And we have seen over and over that if you want to create inflation, 
as we saw in the late 1970s and the very early 1980s, just print money 
like the Fed is doing now. We are very fortunate that we haven't hit a 
huge inflation rate in the last 2 months. And why would that be? Well, 
back last summer, we were paying $4 a gallon for gasoline and now many 
of us are paying $1.40, that kind of thing, for gasoline.
  We are very fortunate that the price of energy failed at a time when 
we were printing money like crazy. But we cannot keep doing that. To 
print $1.2 trillion over the next 2 years will devastate this country 
with inflation. We

[[Page 267]]

are talking about the 1920s. For those of you who remember your 
history, going back after World War I, Germany was in very, very 
difficult circumstances. Their economy was a real problem. They had 
elected officials, they were trying to turn things around.
  They thought they could print money and print their way out of their 
economic troubles. And some people remember the illustration of people 
carrying wheelbarrows of money to the supermarket--wasn't supermarkets 
back then--but to the market just to buy essentials and food.
  That's where this leads, when you just keep unabatedly printing 
money, like is being done now, the inflation will come. It will 
devastate this country. It is silly to be doing that when we know from 
history what happens.
  If you really want to get scared, look what happened in Germany in 
the 1920s and going into the 1930s. The economy got so desperate 
because of all this inflation, they ended up electing a little guy with 
a funny mustache that was such a bigot and such a mean-spirited man, he 
devastated the planet.
  Israel is having difficulty now, having rockets fired on them each 
day from the Gaza Strip from Hamas. During that little man with the 
mustache's regime, over 6 million Jewish people were slaughtered. Why? 
Because good people in Germany got desperate because of inflation, and 
they elected a man who was going to help with their economy, not 
realizing just how mentally unbalanced the man was, and millions and 
millions and millions, the entire world, suffered as a result.
  This Nation has been the defender of freedom around the world. This 
Nation has been the most solid economy around the world. The world 
depends on us to make good judgment in this body. And when we fail, 
it's not just those of us in this body that suffers, it's the Nation, 
it's the world that suffers.
  It is so touching, and the older I get, the more I turn into my late 
mother, who just got teary-eyed and emotional about all kinds of 
things, it was deeply touching to see all the children, Madam Speaker, 
gathered up here around the Speaker's rostrum yesterday as we were 
sworn in, cute children, all races, both genders, just really neat, 
great, wholesome, bipartisan, Democratic kids, Republican Members' 
kids. But the thought that went through my mind is, if we don't change 
our ways, these are the sweet little children that as adults will pay, 
literally pay, for what we are doing.
  We are running debt up on those little kids that they should never 
have to pay. For us to live now, that is so wrong. We need to be 
helping our children, not saddling them with more debt, and that's what 
an overzealous stimulus package will do.
  That's why yesterday the first bill that was laid down on the desk 
over here to be filed was a 2-month tax holiday bill. I filed it in 
December, and I filed it again yesterday with this Congress.
  It takes the 350 billion still remaining of the bailout bill, and 
section 4, it's not a long bill, it just has 5 pages, section 4, 
``Immediate Termination of TARP Purchase Authority.'' That is an 
important principle. It is time to end the authority that we gave to 
one person, the Secretary of the Treasury, with all of this unfettered 
ability to just squander money.
  I mean, the main restriction in there was he couldn't bail out 
central banks of foreign governments. But, basically, you read through 
the bill--and I am afraid there weren't enough people that did--and it 
just goes on and on as the Secretary determines.
  I tried to point out to people, we have never, since we had a 
Constitution, given that kind of authority to one man. We should never 
give that kind of authority to one man. It was a mistake. You don't 
give unrestricted authority like that to just go out and squander 
money.
  No matter which party is in power, it doesn't matter in this country, 
the principles that made us great, the principles that caused the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence to pledge their lives and 
their fortunes and cause many of them to lose and give up their lives, 
their families' lives, their complete fortunes, was the principle that 
government does not need to have this kind of unrestricted authority. 
And yet the market dropped 777 points, and all of a sudden people who 
knew our history, knew the principles on which this Nation was founded, 
were all of a sudden ready to come rushing in here and give one man 
that kind of authority.
  George Washington, before the Constitution, December 27, 1776, was 
given that kind of authority. He didn't ask for it. He hardly used any 
of it. He used his leadership to persuade the soldiers to reenlist. 
That's why the bill was passed December 27, 1776.
  The Continental Congress knew if these guys don't reenlist in 
January, we are all dead, and so will our families be dead. So that's 
why they passed the bill giving Washington this unfettered authority to 
spend money. He used his leadership to persuade them to reenlist, even 
in that terrible winter. That's leadership.
  But as Washington said, a people unused to restraint must be led, 
they will not be driven. And too often in Congress we try to drive 
people instead of leading people. So that's one part of my 2-month tax 
holiday bill. It ends the authority.
  Now, Madam Speaker, people need to understand that in this bill, the 
bailout bill that was passed in September, there was $700 billion 
appropriated. To give another $350 billion, all he has to do is file a 
plan, and we don't vote for 15 days.

                              {time}  1345

  My bill is funded by bringing that $350 billion back into the 
Treasury. So, what did we learn historically from the tax cuts that 
President John F. Kennedy did, President Ronald Reagan did, and in 2003 
President George W. Bush did? We will just overlook the last 4 months 
where we forgot our principles here in this administration. But you go 
back to those tax cuts, the economy was stimulated. And each time the 
revenue into the Federal Treasury did not decrease. It increased 
dramatically, because the economy went strong.
  So there are two ways to raise revenue in this country. One is 
raising taxes, and then you have an immediate increase in tax dollars 
coming into the Treasury, but the long-term effect repeatedly we have 
seen it is to kill the economy. Or you can lower taxes and immediately 
stimulate the economy, and then as a result of the economy being 
stimulated, then more tax dollars than ever come in than even when you 
raise taxes.
  So it is all what you want to happen long-term for the sake of our 
children and those to follow us, and that is why this bill says instead 
of the Treasury Secretary squandering, it doesn't use that term, of 
course, but that is what has happened, squandering $350 billion, it 
allows the people who earned the money to keep it for two months. So, 
that is about $101 billion a month that individuals pay into the U.S. 
Treasury in individual income tax.
  Now, we really need long-term tax reform. We need to drop the capital 
gains rate, like Ireland did, to 12 percent, which has really helped 
their economy. I think their corporate tax rate is 11 percent, so 
businesses are flooding into Ireland.
  I am sick and tired too of hearing people say we will never get 
manufacturing jobs back into America. That is hogwash. Look around the 
world. Some of us went to China. What was the number one reason 
industry was moving to China, they told us, why they moved their 
industry? Yes, they said labor is cheaper, but we have better quality 
control back in the U.S. Our workers produce better products back in 
the U.S. But the corporate tax rate is less than half of what it is 
here. Lower the corporate tax rate. You will see manufacturing jobs 
flood back into the United States. That is what it is all about.
  Some of them said, you know, they cut us a deal on corporate tax 
rates in China so we were able to build a brand new facility with 
state-of-the-art equipment and it basically was paid for very quickly 
out of money we didn't pay in corporate taxes, and now we are 
competitive again because our aging factories in the U.S. were costing 
us, and now we are state-of-the-art. All you have to do is lower the 
tax rate. Jobs will instantly appear.

[[Page 268]]

  Go after our own energy in this country. We know the energy rates are 
going to come up, and we need to do something about it now to produce 
our own energy so that we are doing that and this inflation cycle 
doesn't kill us.
  Going back to my 2-month tax holiday bill, it says as far as the tax 
cut part, in the case of wages received for services performed during 
the period beginning in the first full month after the passage of this 
bill, the percentage of tax will be zero.
  Now, I heard from some self-employed people who said, well, it is not 
going to help me being self-employed. I work just as hard or harder 
than anyone else, and yet I am not included. Yet that is not accurate. 
That is included. It says clearly in the case of self-employment income 
for service performed during the 2-month period, the percentage of tax 
will be zero. So there will be no withholding during the 2-month period 
for income tax, there will be no withholding for FICA.
  I have gotten good suggestions. Newt Gingrich has been extremely 
helpful in suggestions and spreading the word, as Jed Babbin and Neal 
Boortz and Steve Morton, so many, many great thinkers have been 
helpful.
  But President-elect Obama promised that if you make less than 
$250,000, you will get a tax cut. Some of us have been concerned when 
we give tax cuts to people that don't pay taxes that that is not a tax 
cut, that is welfare. Under this bill, the tax cuts go to people that 
pay taxes.
  There are, we know, people who do not pay income tax. They don't make 
enough. They work hard, they earn a wage, but it is not enough to get 
to the level of paying income tax. They still have FICA withheld from 
their check. Under this bill, no FICA will be withheld from their bill, 
and because the employee has no FICA taken out, then the employer who 
is struggling to make sure they keep people employed gets a 2-month 
holiday on paying FICA as well.
  Some have said, well, this will hurt people on Social Security. No, 
it won't, because it specifically says that, and this is in section 3, 
funding of Social Security trust funds is with repealed TARP funds. It 
is covered. The $350 billion doesn't get to be doled out for bonuses 
for the Nation's wealthy who have mismanaged their banks or their firms 
and then reward themselves with bonuses. It doesn't go there. It goes 
to the people who have earned it. So everyone who is working will get a 
tax break.
  Some have said, well, I would appreciate having the withholding not 
taken out for 2 months, that will really help me for those 2 months, 
but it will hurt me at the end of the year when I have to pay that. 
They miss the point. There is no Federal tax for 2 months under this 
bill. Everybody gets a tax cut. So actually what this very short, very 
efficient bill does is exactly what President-elect Obama promised 
would be done, with the exception it doesn't have a $250,000 cap on it.
  Now, there are those I know who are doing well and are able to live 
off the dividend income and the interest income, and that is harder, of 
course, after the stock market went down. And God bless those folks. I 
am thrilled to death that you are in a position where you can live off 
of dividend and interest income. I would like to see across-the-board 
complete tax reform. But under this bill, this does not give tax breaks 
for unearned income like interest and dividend. This is only for wages 
earned during this time.
  So if you are a hardworking American, you are going to get a tax cut 
under this bill. It does exactly what President-elect Obama promised. 
For anyone who pays any FICA, income tax, for 2 months you get that tax 
break.
  Now, it is so ironic that the bailout bill was partly under the guise 
that we are going to give all these billions or hundreds of billions to 
banks so they can increase credit, make more loans, so people can 
refinance their loans and finance into the new refinance money what 
they are behind on so they don't lose their homes.
  Well, I have talked to people who say if they could have their 
withholding from their check in their check for 2 months, they can 
catch up. A lot of people fell behind last summer when gas prices were 
$4 a gallon. They get their withholding for a couple of months. I have 
seen figures that estimated if your family income, household income is 
in the $60,000 range, you could get $2,000 or $3,000 over that 2-month 
period. So they could catch up on the mortgage and you wouldn't have to 
borrow more money to catch up on your mortgage. You could catch up.
  I have had some people tell me, I want to get out from under this 
gas-guzzling car I have got, but when energy prices went up, the value 
of any car went so far down, now I owe more on my car than it is worth, 
so I can't trade it in, because I don't have a down payment for another 
car. I would be without a car, so I have to keep paying on this gas-
guzzler. I would like to get a more efficient car.
  This would allow those people to buy a new car, a more efficient car. 
It is good for everybody.
  But we come back to what I said earlier: If people cannot buy cars, 
then it doesn't matter how many trillions of dollars we give to the 
auto makers, they are going to still ultimately go out of business. And 
the trouble with bailouts is once you start giving money to anybody, 
whether it is a bank, an insurance company, whoever, once you start 
that process, you will always be able to find someone more deserving of 
a bailout than those who have already gotten money, and there becomes 
no good place to stop.
  Well, when you love someone and you see that they are getting 
addicted to some substance, and as a judge I saw it, you see them 
getting addicted to something, then it is time to have an interdiction 
and say I love you too much to allow you to continue this addiction. We 
are not going to let you have any more of that.
  Now, I was upset when we were talking about an auto bailout, because 
I knew the auto makers had been withholding hold-back money, rebate 
money, that they contractually owed dealers. They were putting dealers 
in a bind just because they weren't abiding by their own contracts. As 
I understand it, they have begun to catch up on that, and that is 
appropriate.
  But to see then letters from major banks who have gotten billions of 
tax dollars who are now saying we are not going to be lending money for 
cars, we are not going to be lending money to dealers anymore, even 
though they are wonderful dealers, they have a good business, it looks 
like they will stay in business for good, we are just not going to lend 
anymore, that is such an abuse and 180 degrees from what was promised.
  Now, some would say we should not get the Federal Government into the 
business of telling lenders what to do with their money, and I am one 
of those. However, the danger that every bank should have been told by 
their attorneys is, keep in mind if you take Federal money, the Federal 
Government is going to have their hand in your business and they are 
going to tell you how to run it, because they are a partner with you. 
And I happen to believe if we are going to put Federal money in 
something, we should have restrictions and tell people like a bank that 
this is what you can and can't do. Secretary Paulson did not do that.
  But my preference is don't give away any more bailout money. Let's 
let the people that earned it keep it and let them decide who deserves 
to be bailed out and who deserves to have their products purchased. 
That is how a free market works.
  When you look back, you see that an open government is a good thing, 
a free market is a good thing. To my way of thinking, being such a 
student of history, it looks like from our founding documents the most 
important job that we have as a Federal Government is to provide for 
the common defense. Then, beyond that, this Federal Government should 
create a level playing field, punish cheaters, make sure everybody 
plays fairly, and then let them play. That is what we need to be doing, 
and we have gone so far in excess of that.
  This government, when I heard that we were going to encourage a car 
czar,

[[Page 269]]

I couldn't believe it. I mean, we can't even do a good job of designing 
our own I.D. card. Can you imagine what we would do with cars? Good 
grief. We should not be in that business.
  So I would encourage people, Mr. Speaker, who believe that they would 
do a better job of spending their own money, to contact their 
Representative, contact their Senator, call the Capitol Hill operator 
and they can be connected to their Representative, their Senators, and 
that would go a long way toward getting this bill to the floor and 
getting it passed. Because it is not an issue of if the money will be 
spent, it is an issue of will the Treasury Secretary squander it on 
your behalf, or will you be able to use your own money to help get this 
economy turned around.

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