[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 22880-22886]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE RULE OF LAW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, to my hall mate, Mr. Kennedy, that was a 
moving tribute and well deserved. I am glad we could yield the time.
  The subject of this hour that we have been talking about now for, I 
believe, about 14 or 15 weeks is we are talking about the rule of law 
and how the rule of law must prevail. It is the glue that holds our 
society together. And when we start to ignore rules or ignore others' 
laws, then we are ignoring what our Founding Fathers intended to rule 
us.
  When we established this Nation, the people who established it came 
from a monarchy. Yet they felt that a much greater society would be a 
society which would pledge itself to the rules, not to the authority. 
So they didn't want a king. They didn't want some powerful dictator. 
They wanted the rules to prevail in the Nation. And that's one of the 
secret parts of the society that was created that nobody can see, that 
over time has developed the most important and most powerful Nation on 
the face of the Earth that has ever existed.
  We cannot ignore that rule of law today. We cannot let personalities 
or concepts or attitudes change the fact that there are rules that you 
follow, and you must follow those rules. And there are laws, both civil 
and criminal laws, that have to be upheld. We as a society have created 
those laws. They have governed us in some instances since the beginning 
of the Republic. And to waive or to ignore those laws, we do it at our 
peril.
  So tonight we're going to talk about some legislation that addresses 
the issue of ignoring or not following certain laws or bending laws.
  We are going to start off with my good friend Roscoe Bartlett. I'm 
going to yield to him, and he's going to talk to us about a bill that 
he has, H.R. 2743, the Car Dealer Equity Act, in which he talks about 
the fact that he feels some laws, some contract laws, were either bent 
or ignored.
  I yield to my colleague.
  Mr. BARTLETT. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Before talking about this very interesting subject, I would like to 
spend just a few moments talking about why I think the rule of law is 
so important.
  We are one person out of 22 in the world, and we have a fourth of all 
of the good things in the world. And I ask myself how come we are so 
darned fortunate that this one person out of 22 has a fourth of all the 
good things in the world?
  I look around for people who are working, bending their back, and 
sweating. And I will tell you I don't see very many white faces, and I 
don't see an awful lot of black faces. I see Hispanics. So it's not 
hard work that's accountable for the fact that we're so lucky.
  And then I look at education and technical education. We live in a 
technical world today. But most of our bright young people are going 
into careers of political science and law. This year the Chinese will 
graduate seven times as many engineers as we graduate, and about half 
of our engineers are Chinese and Indian students. So it's not our 
commitment to technical areas that makes us so fortunate.
  Just what is it that is so different about this country that we are 
so fortunate, this one person in 22 that has a fourth of all the good 
things in the world?
  Mr. Speaker, I think that it's our commitment to the rule of law and 
particularly our commitment to those laws that protect our civil 
liberties.
  You see, there is no Constitution in the world, there is no bill of 
rights in the world that comes even close to ours in having so many 
civil liberties that are so protected. And I think this established an 
environment, a milieu in which creativity and entrepreneurship could 
flourish. And I think we put at risk who we are, and I think we put at 
risk this enormous privilege that we have, this one person out of 22 
who has a fourth of all the good things in the world, if we in any way 
violate these very sacred rights which are given to us by God, which 
our Constitution, our government, is supposed to protect.
  So I am very concerned about the rule of law because I will tell you 
if in one place you can rationalize that it's okay to violate the 
Constitution, what next? I think that our civil liberties could come 
tumbling down and I think with them our privileged status in the world 
today.
  Now, the thing you asked me to talk about, and that is this bill, 
H.R. 2743.
  Several months ago I was mystified by something that was happening in 
our country. We were shutting down auto dealerships. I thought at 
first, well, these are owned by the auto manufacturers and they're 
reducing their overhead, so this will benefit them. But then I learned 
not a single auto dealership in this country is owned by the 
manufacturers. Every auto dealership is an independent dealership 
hiring people, paying taxes, selling cars. And I looked at what they 
were doing. You know, in almost everything we do in life there are 
winners and losers, positives and negatives. And in this case I could 
see only losers. And I thought I must be missing something.
  So we held a press conference out in Frederick, I think one of the 
first ones in the country. We had some of our biggest dealers there. 
Dar Cars was there, and Tammy Darvis is up in the gallery, and I want 
to thank her for coming. Jack Fitzgerald was there, one of the biggest 
auto dealers in the area. And I asked them the question, What am I 
missing? I seem to see that everybody in this is a loser. Why in the 
heck would we do something where everybody loses?
  Clearly, the dealers that were put out of business lost, and clearly 
all the people that worked for them lost, and clearly all those 
secondary jobs that were created by those people were lost. And I 
couldn't understand how the auto dealers could benefit when there were 
fewer people selling their cars. It just made sense to me that the more 
people who are out there competing to sell your cars, the more cars 
you're going to sell and the better off you are.
  And I asked these dealers, What am I missing? I've got to be missing 
something because Americans don't do really stupid things. And this 
appeared to me to be a really stupid thing where everybody lost. I 
couldn't see anybody who was winning in this.
  So I came back to the Congress and I asked my colleagues, Who is the 
winner here? And from both sides of the aisle, and now this bill I 
think has 275 cosponsors, but from both sides of the aisle they said, 
We don't see any winners either. We really need to do something about 
this. We think that some fundamental laws were violated in this.

                              {time}  2115

  We think that this needs to be fixed. There is a Web site you can go 
to. It is YouTube, www.YouTube.com/rejected dealers. And you're going 
to find more than 11,000 dealers that have logged on to that to tell 
you their story. Some very, very sad stories are told by these dealers. 
Enormous losses.
  So I am very privileged to come here this evening to talk about this 
because

[[Page 22881]]

I think that in the violation of some of these very simple, obvious, 
commonsense laws, that a great many people in our country have been 
hurt.
  And I want to thank you for committing this hour to talk about the 
rule of law, because I think the rule of law is so important. And I 
hope that Americans will collectively call their Representatives, ``I 
know you probably signed on to that bill, but now make it happen. Bring 
it to the floor. Vote on it.'' You know, petition the Senate so they 
vote on it.
  So let's get this fixed. It's really bad. It's really wrong.
  Thank you for letting me have a few moments to talk about it.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, I thank you, Roscoe. You have hit on 
something that when that all happened to me, I just wondered what 
happened to the law of contract. Where did it go? When did our 
executive branch think it had the authority to just negate contracts in 
order for people to, through some threats that were made to settle a 
bankruptcy, to lose dealerships that--I talked to people in my 
district. It was not only did you lose your dealership, but your work 
product got handed to the people you'd been competing with. Just kind 
of free gratis. You get the win, and I get nothing. And of course, 
hopefully this will be resolved in the courts or something. I don't 
know what's going to happen.
  But Roscoe is on the right road. We can do something about it here 
because if you can't contract, you don't have freedom, and especially 
freedom of commerce. If you can't make an honest contract with somebody 
and depend upon that and have it be enforceable in the courts of our 
country--because the rule of contract is sacred. If you don't have 
that, which we'd had for the history of our Nation, then the rules of 
commerce come tumbling down.
  And we keep hearing people say, Do we want to be a banana republic? 
And nothing against our poor banana republic neighbors, but that's what 
happens when you don't have the rule of law. You can't make a deal that 
can be enforced and people become--go more and more to the dark side in 
their trading habits. And this is one of the issues that when we've got 
the world economy we've got to deal with.
  We've got multiple subject matters, and we are going to start with 
one that's all over the front page. Roscoe is going to fix the auto 
dealers, and I am on that bill and proud to be there.
  We've got a bill by Leader Boehner and Darrell Issa, Defunding ACORN 
Act, and my friend, Lynn Westmoreland from Georgia, is here to join me, 
and my friend Mr. King from Iowa is here to join me. And we've got a 
bunch of things to talk about here today.
  Let's talk about ACORN.
  I think those videos that the American public have now seen were a 
shocking wake-up when they had already heard about all of the ACORN 
violations. We'd already heard about this, and it didn't seem to be 
bothering anybody that there were all kinds of election law frauds, 
convictions, and so forth across the country. But then we saw advice 
being given to two people pretending to be into criminal activity, and 
you saw people that seemed to be encouraging child prostitution calling 
it a business, how to do your taxes, just like they weren't talking 
about criminal activity. And I think that shocked America into 
realizing that all of this was real, and that cheating on elections and 
cheating on voter registration and so forth was just as criminal and 
just led to further, more criminal activities. And now, all of a 
sudden, the folks at ACORN are all over the front page.
  So I will yield to my friend, Mr. Westmoreland from Georgia, to let 
him make a few comments on this. And you've got a sign there. What have 
you got, Lynn?
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you for yielding.
  I did want to bring the substance. We were talking about the rule of 
law.
  Speaker Pelosi, after the 2006 election, made a comment. She said, 
This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most 
ethical Congress in history.
  To my friend from Texas, we know we've been here many times talking 
about the Rangel rule where Chairman Rangel was found to not have paid 
his taxes and then had his accountant figure out what he felt like he 
did owe and sent it in without penalties and interest and other things.
  Then we had Secretary Geithner who did not pay his self-employment 
taxes and some other taxes on more than one occasion. And this is 
something that the American people are wanting to know where this most 
honest, most ethical Congress, most open Congress is at.
  I just wanted to kind of bring that up to remind the people that we 
are not special in this body right here. We need to be operating under 
the rule of law and be under the same consequences that every American 
is under.
  Let's talk about ACORN and what the bill is that Leader Boehner and 
Ranking Member Issa have introduced.
  We might want to remember that last week the House voted about 345-79 
for an amendment to bar the Federal funding of ACORN, but we need to go 
further than that. We need to pass a stand-alone bill. And that's what 
this H.R. 3571 does, the Defund ACORN Act.
  No Federal contract, grant, cooperative, or agreement or any other 
form of agreement may be awarded to or entered into with ACORN. No 
Federal funds may be given to ACORN. No Federal employee may promote 
ACORN, including some ACORN State chapters, organizations with 
financial stakes in ACORN, and organizations that shared directors or 
employees with ACORN.
  And Judge, my friend from Texas, I am glad to announce the great 
Governor of the great State of Georgia has canceled the contract that 
the State had with ACORN.
  So people are starting to understand that when you have an 
organization that not only these videos exposed, but even the Committee 
on Oversight and Government Reform found ACORN had committed a list of 
offenses: voter fraud, tax evasion, obstruction of justice, aiding and 
abetting embezzlement, investment fraud, use of taxpayer funding for 
partisan political activity, Department of Labor violations.
  You know, ACORN should not be allowed to get off with just an 
internal audit. They need to be looked at much deeper than that. An 
internal audit for ACORN is the same as asking Secretary Geithner to 
investigate Chairman Rangel. So we need to go further with that.
  ACORN has received hundreds of millions of dollars. We should be more 
responsible to the people of this country, the hardworking people of 
this country that pay their taxes that we would want to give it away to 
organizations such as this.
  Right now, I'll be glad to yield to our friend from--I'll yield back 
the time to you, Judge, and then you can yield. But thank you for 
giving me this time.
  Mr. CARTER. I'll yield time to my friend from Iowa (Mr. King). And I 
guess we'll talk about ACORN and then we'll shift gears to something 
else.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas and the general 
from Georgia for their leadership on these issues. And once a week, at 
least, we see the judge from Texas down here laying out the conscience 
of the Congress. And this ACORN issue is something that has burned 
within me for several years.
  I looked back through some of the Records, and I introduced an 
amendment to unfund ACORN in 2007. Back then, we couldn't get any 
traction. And as much as has been filled out on the case of ACORN, as 
much as we learned about ACORN during the last Presidential election--
and I think it was very useful because that was a time that America 
started to pay attention, Mr. Speaker. And we remember that ACORN 
announced that they had filed 1.3 million new voter registrations 
during the Presidential election cycle in 2008. And now they're 
advertising that people should send them a check and help fund their 
operation to go down there and demonstrate against Sheriff Judge 
Arpaio, the tent city, pink underwear Sheriff Arpaio. I think that that 
is a persecution that's going on. But they're trying to raise money to 
do that.
  And the mailing that they have--and it's an Internet document. They 
still

[[Page 22882]]

claim that they registered 1.3 million new voters. Well, the numbers 
are closer to 450,000 legitimate voter registrations. And ACORN has 
admitted to over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registrations. Now, 
one is too many for me. And we've seen the hue and cry of somebody who 
was in 2000 driving to vote in Florida, and perhaps they were going to 
vote for Al Gore, and a mile and a half away they went through a 
checkpoint to see if they were sober and had a driver's license, and 
they claimed that to be voter intimidation.
  If one person lost their nerve and didn't want to go through the 
police checkpoint because they were drunk or didn't have a license, 
that was a voter intimidation on the part of the folks that were on Al 
Gore's side back in the year 2000.
  ACORN can produce over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter 
registrations, and America can't get up in arms until we see child 
prostitution promoted in five ACORN offices across this city, in 
Baltimore, Washington, D.C., in Brooklyn, in San Bernardino, and in San 
Diego, California, and more to come.
  And now they're under a lawsuit. ACORN decides they're going to go 
out and punish people that have brought out the truth if they can and 
use the court to intimidate.
  Now, when ACORN makes a statement that, well, we only produced over 
400,000 false or fraudulent voter registration forms, never fear, it 
was all in the exercise of trying to get somebody's good vote in there, 
but no bad votes came out of that, no fraud came from that. Oh, really.
  They're being investigated. You say 12 States, then 14 States. Today 
it came out 20 States.
  Today the trial of ACORN started in the State of Nevada. ACORN, as an 
entity, has been indicted by the prosecution in Nevada, and they have 
their chief organizer in Nevada is testifying against ACORN saying, 
Here's our pamphlet, our policy. We were paying commissions and paying 
a bounty for voter registrations. And, additionally, it came out in the 
news that in Troy, New York, they have dozens of fraudulent votes that 
were cast on absentee ballot that were promoted by ACORN.
  Now, if there's anything that chisels away and cuts off the 
underpinnings of our Constitution it is fraudulent election process. 
And when the American people lose their faith that we have a legitimate 
process, the result of that will be, then, nothing holds together. You 
can't expect the President, the United States Senate, the United States 
House, or any system of government to be consented to by the people if 
the people don't believe they've consented in a national, legitimate 
ballot. That is the Banana Republic measure. And there is no entity in 
America that has been more active or aggressive in the history of this 
country and undermining the underpinnings of our Constitution than 
ACORN, a criminal enterprise and an entity in and of itself in many 
other enterprises than the fraudulent votes.
  But I think at that component of this, I would yield back to the 
gentleman from Texas. I have a little bit more to say about ACORN 
hopefully a little bit later.
  Mr. CARTER. We've got a lot of things to talk about, but ACORN is now 
all over the front page. The trial started in Nevada, and quite 
frankly, I see a very aggressive prosecutor that was talking on 
television today, and it's going to be an interesting case. We should 
all watch it very closely because wrongdoing is being put before the 
American public, and it's going to be interesting to see how that comes 
out.
  I want to shift gears now because our friend Dr. Ron Paul has 
introduced a bill which has been talked about now for years, and I 
think now the American public is starting to say we'd kind of like to 
know something about this.
  We have had, as we talked about before, more money spent since last 
summer supposedly saving the economy than just about has been spent in 
the history of the Republic, certainly before 1930. It clearly 
surpasses what we spent then. It is in the trillions of dollars now.
  The Federal Reserve, this mysterious thing that I would bet there is 
not one American in a hundred who can tell you even close to what the 
Federal Reserve system even does, where they come from, who sets them 
up. There is just very limited knowledge. Unless you get to graduate 
school, you don't even get taught it in universities as to what the 
Federal Reserve does. And yet the Federal Reserve, as Congressman Paul 
points out, is in charge of administering and keeping track of these 
billions and now trillions of dollars of money that we are going to 
have to pay back and our children, our grandchildren have to pay back.

                              {time}  2130

  What Congressman Paul, Ron Paul, wants basically is that he would 
like to see an audit of the Federal Reserve so that we can know just 
what these guys do. And so I want to throw that out for discussion 
here, and I recognize my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Well, thank you for yielding the time, and I don't 
know if we're going to get back to ACORN.
  Mr. CARTER. We will.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Then I will save this for later. Let me just say 
that the Federal Reserve, think about this for a minute. Under the TARP 
program, the Federal Reserve got $700 billion. We gave them $787 
billion in the Obama stimulus package. As you mentioned, that's over $1 
trillion. Judge, a lot of people don't realize how much $1 trillion is. 
If you took $1 trillion and converted it into seconds, 1 million 
seconds is 11 days, 1 billion seconds is 32 years, 1 trillion seconds 
is 32,000 years, 32,000 years is 1 trillion seconds. And so we've given 
them over $1 trillion, and they don't want to be audited. I think that 
this is something that I hope that Chairman Frank, I'm assuming this is 
going through Financial Services on a hearing that they're going to 
have Friday, 290 cosponsors, that is enough to pass a piece of 
legislation here under suspension.
  So I certainly hope that the Speaker and the Democratic leadership 
will once again kind of honor her statement here: ``We will create the 
most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history'' by 
letting us have a vote on auditing the Federal Reserve.
  The American public deserves the same independent audit 
accountability from the Fed that they expect from their local bank. The 
Feds are going out and auditing our local banks every day, Judge, 
putting a lot of them out of business, putting them on notice that they 
need to change the way that they're doing business. If they're going to 
go out and audit our local banks, we certainly need to audit them to 
make sure that they're doing things by the rule of law and in a 
commonsense way and in the way that the American people expect them to 
do with their hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
  With that, I yield back to the gentleman.
  Mr. CARTER. I will yield now to my friend from Iowa (Mr. King.)
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  I was thinking about the description of what is big money and what is 
$1 trillion and how do you put that into a concept now. Some of us from 
the part of the country I come from, we think in terms of corn. So to 
put that into perspective, the State of Iowa, the lead State in corn 
production, is going to have a good crop this year. It's going to have 
the best average yields that we have ever had, probably a few less 
bushels than we have produced though in the past, and we are going to 
raise about $10 billion worth of corn, maybe a little less than that, 
but about $10 billion.
  Now all the corn that Iowa raises, just the value of that $10 
billion, if we do that for 10 years, that's $100 billion. We do that 
for an entire century, that's $1,000 billion, $1 trillion. So 100 years 
of all the corn we can raise in Iowa is $1 trillion. A full century of 
all the corn that we can raise in what it's worth today, or what it was 
worth when I figured this, the markets have gone down a little bit, 
that is $1 trillion.
  Now to take care of Obama's deficit created by his budget this year, 
that is $9.7 trillion. You can just think, 970 years of all the corn 
that Iowa could

[[Page 22883]]

raise committed just to taking care of the deficit created by his 
budget would be just about right. And if you want to look at the 
deficit that exists today, and you add that to Obama's budget, that's 
over $20 trillion between the existing national debt and the debt 
created by President Obama's budget. So that would be all the corn that 
Iowa could raise at today's production in market values from the birth 
of Christ until today, and you would fall a little bit short. That's 
how much money the United States Government owes as a result of this 
profligate spending that is going on.
  And the Federal Reserve component of this, I am very happy to see 
there are 290 cosponsors of Ron Paul's bill, H.R. 1207. I am among 
them, and I'm confident that my colleagues on the floor are as well. 
There is a hearing coming up on Friday to dig into this. That is a step 
along the way. From my standpoint, I would be very happy to sign a 
discharge petition. I don't think that things move very quickly through 
this Congress. When you have the most ethical Congress in history, I 
don't know how that could be defined that way, but there's a lot that 
doesn't happen around here. There's a lot of deliberation that doesn't 
take place around here, a lot of debate that doesn't take place.
  The rules are written in the Rules Committee up there in that tiny 
little old room that doesn't leave room even for our staff to come in. 
We have to go up there and genuflect before the Chair of the Rules 
Committee and ask if we can bring an amendment down here to debate it 
on the floor of the House. They will say ``yes'' if they think it 
embarrasses Republicans. That's the only way they will say ``yes.''
  The deliberate destruction of the greatest debating body in the 
history of the world here in the United States Congress has taken place 
because of the rules that have been ripped asunder by the Speaker of 
the House after 221 years. And the gentleman from Georgia has a sign: 
``This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most 
ethical Congress in history, Nancy Pelosi, November 16, 2006.'' I don't 
know how you say that in Georgia, say what? This is the least 
deliberative body it has ever been.
  An open rules process that we had for 221 years that allowed every 
Members of Congress to force a debate and a vote on a subject matter of 
their choice within the appropriations process has been utterly 
suspended since 2007.
  The American people deserve better. We deserve, yes, a hearing on 
H.R. 1207, on the Federal Reserve. But we deserve also to have open 
debate and force votes so Members have to go on record, because the 
wisdom of America is processed through 435 congressional districts. And 
we all have our networks out there. If that debate is stifled here, if 
amendments are shut off by order of the Speaker, then the wisdom of 
America is shut off by order of the Speaker.
  This country cannot reach the next level of its destiny if it denies 
the wisdom of its people, and that is the wisdom of its people as 
processed through this Congress is how it was envisioned by the 
Founding Fathers. I yield back to gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. CARTER. To finish up this particular subject, let me just point 
out that I think most people know that the Fed has, as one of its 
things it does, it uses interest rates to micromanage our economy. It 
prints money. And the more money that it puts out there, the less value 
our dollar has. It has an affect on every part of our lives.
  Now if you have never contracted with the Federal Government, back in 
the 1970s, I did a lot of work for people who built section 8 housing 
projects. And let me tell you, because you're dealing with large 
numbers, this is what you would hear, you had to be looked at and 
relooked at and relooked at, which is the right thing, to make sure 
nobody is doing something wrong. When you're dealing with $8 million or 
$10 million, the government wants to look closely at how that money is 
being spent, are the subcontractors being paid, and so forth. Now, why 
do they do that? Because they know the nature of certain people is such 
that there can be wrongdoing.
  We are talking about trillions of dollars. And we ought to at least 
know a little bit that an audit would tell us about what's going on at 
the Fed. So that's Ron Paul's bill.
  I'm going to go to another bill. It's not really a bill, but just a 
comment. We've been talking about the Rangel rule. I've got a new one 
today. We are going to talk about Mr. Geithner again because he is back 
in the news because he says he has got this bank, UBS, over in 
Switzerland, to open their secret vaults and let him know what's over 
there. And he is being very magnanimous to the people he thinks have 
been hiding funds overseas. He is telling them that, I know you. I've 
made a successful raid. I know who you are. Now if you step up and pay 
your taxes, we're only going to give a maximum of a 20 percent penalty 
for your failing to pay taxes.
  Wait a minute. What about the Geithner gesture here? When he talks to 
these people, he owed $17,230, no penalty. He owed another $25,960, no 
penalty. He used bad child credits. He filed additional taxes with 
interested infrastructure, he had a faulty retirement plan, an improper 
small business deduction, and he was expensing utility costs that went 
for personal use. All these things he was doing to no penalty. We call 
this the fox watching the hen house; he says they've cheated the 
government. And maybe they have.
  Where I come from, if they cheated the government and there's 
penalties to be assessed, fine. Everybody ought to get the penalty. 
When I've been late on paying my taxes, and I have, I filed not on 
April 15 before, I filed on August 15 before, I filed on October 15 
before. I paid my penalties, and I paid my interest because that's what 
you're supposed to do. I think it is curious that this is the subject 
of Mr. Geithner's conversation when he has not. He, the boss of the 
IRS, has not been assessed any penalties.
  So I throw that out for quick discussion. I think it's interesting. 
The Geithner rule ought to be zero penalties on taxes paid back on 
unreported income until Mr. Geithner pays his.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. So if the gentleman would yield for just a second.
  Mr. CARTER. I do.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Are we going to introduce a new legislation called 
the Geithner rule?
  Mr. CARTER. We're working on it.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. We've got the Rangel rule, and I wonder how many 
people have, when they returned their money to the IRS and said, I'm 
claiming the Rangel rule, the Geithner rule is one that definitely 
people should be concerned about.
  Today in my office I had two of my dear friends, I had Coach Mike 
Pickett who came in and coached me in high school and another guy that 
I went to school with, Mike Sorrow that Coach Pickett coached, and they 
came in to talk to me just about some of the issues that we were facing 
up here.
  One of the things that Coach Pickett said was he said, I'm mad as 
heck. He said, they're cutting my Social Security, and they've got a 
plan to cut $500 billion out of the Medicare, he said, and we've got 
people in Congress that is not even paying their taxes. And of course 
he was talking about Chairman Rangel. We didn't bring up Secretary 
Geithner, but I'm sure that would have made him double mad. That would 
have made his blood pressure even worse to think that the Secretary of 
the Treasury has got this kind of tax concerns.
  I go back to this, what Speaker Pelosi said, you got to remember that 
the U.S. Senate approved this gentleman, confirmed him to be a member 
of the Cabinet.
  This is the thing, Judge, that the American people are tired of. And 
I had one lady tell me the other day at a town hall meeting, she said, 
I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I think the American 
people as a whole are sick and tired of being sick and tired of seeing 
how people in politics, in elected office feel that they're better than 
the average hardworking American person out there that is paying his 
taxes.
  Now, I've had penalties assessed on me before. I think that probably 
most Americans have had penalties and interest assessed to them for 
some reason

[[Page 22884]]

or another. This is unbelievable. In fact, we should be above even the 
least bit of doubt of what we're doing. He should have paid the 
penalties anyway. If he had been late, he should have paid the 
penalties and the interest.
  Many people may not know this, that when they hear this name on TV, 
they don't understand that he is the Secretary of the Treasury. He is 
somebody that is over IRS. And with these findings and the fact that he 
has not been able to have to pay some of the penalties and the 
interests that most Americans would have to pay if they were delinquent 
on their taxes, and especially using your child's time at an overnight 
camp in three different years, surely he was made aware of that in 
2001, but he did it again in 2004 and again in 2005. Surely somebody 
from the IRS must have told him in that 4-year period that that was not 
a legal deduction or either he didn't file his taxes.

                              {time}  2145

  So, Judge, I appreciate you bringing this back up, and I look forward 
to being a cosponsor, as I was with the Rangel rule, on the Geithner 
rule.
  Mr. CARTER. Do you wish to be heard on this, Mr. King?
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  I would submit this idea, I would rather call it the Geithner 
corollary than the Rangel rule because it gets deeper, and when you 
think about how much deeper it gets, it doesn't quite show on this 
poster. And I'm reaching back and dusting off my memory
  But it strikes me that the employment that Tim Geithner was involved 
in reimbursed him for the taxes that he was going to have to pay from 
income tax liability, for the payroll tax, the Social Security, 
Medicare, and Medicaid taxes, for the several years that are listed 
there. The reports that I have read--I believe it will also include The 
Wall Street Journal report--that Tim Geithner was written a check by 
his employer to be reimbursed in advance for the tax liability he would 
incur and signed an agreement multiple years in a row that he 
understood that he had this tax liability.
  So not only did he not pay the taxes until the pressure was on--and 
they waived the penalty which, apparently, they pre-applied the Rangel 
rule with Tim Geithner, but he had actually profited by not paying his 
taxes because he had been reimbursed by his employer in advance for the 
liabilities that you see on the poster that Judge Carter has put up.
  So this is a bridge too far from my standpoint. If you have a tax 
liability and your employer's writing you a check to pay those taxes, 
you cash the check, put it in your kids' retirement fund--I'm going to 
presume that's what happened. That's any equity that we don't spend 
when we die goes into our kids' retirement fund. And so you profit from 
this and avoid the taxes; that's a double operation there.
  So I will label that Geithner corollary to the Rangel rule, and that 
would be if you're nominated for a high position of, let me say, 
confirmation position before the United States Senate, and you find 
yourself, you have a tax problem, if you are able to settle this issue 
out of court and do so without interest or penalty--he owed $17,230 in 
taxes but they waived the penalty, so apparently he paid the interest, 
not the penalty, from that language. I want to make sure that is clear.
  If you get that all done, and if America's patience and appetite will 
believe the idea that Tim Geithner is so smart that we can't get along 
without him regardless of whether he could remember to pay his taxes 
and regardless of whether it was an ethical decision or not, if we 
remember America's appetite for that was completely satiated by the 
time Tom Daschle was appointed and his tax problem emerged, then 
America said, Enough, I can't tolerate anymore of these appointments by 
the President that will be confirmed by the Senate that have people 
that have been avoiding taxes.
  So now we have the lead tax writer in the United States Congress, 
Chairman Rangel, that has stimulated a bill that's been introduced by 
Congressman Carter, the Rangel rule, precedent that if any taxpayer 
admits their mistake and pays their back taxes, no penalty or interest 
should be assessed, especially if you're up for an appointed position 
to be confirmed by the United States Senate, especially if America can 
be convinced that your skills are so valuable that out of 306 million 
people there isn't a single soul that can match up to the job that you 
might do, regardless of the problem you might have of being paid in 
advance to pay your taxes, cashing the check, putting into the equity 
account for your kids' inheritance, and then along comes the old ``uh-
oh'' from Georgia, that is, the ``I guess I better pay my taxes'' 
Geithner corollary.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, it's kind of interesting that, back 
to our other subject, talking about holding the Federal Reserve 
accountable, one of the suggestions was that the Secretary of Treasury 
Tim Geithner be able to review the books of the Fed. Probably the 
smartest thing the Fed said was, No, I don't think that's a good idea, 
and maybe there's something to that. That may be the smartest thing the 
Fed has done in a long time.
  We have got another issue that's been an issue for many of us, and 
Greg Walden and John Culberson and Brian Baird have introduced a bill, 
House Res. 554, and they're asking that each bill have 72 hours before 
you take action. And this is not hard for us. We know what they're 
talking about because we have seen in this Congress bill after bill 
after bill spending billions and billions and billions of dollars that 
we get in the middle of the night to vote on the next day. And all 
they're saying is, let's do what, when Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules 
of this body, still follows. He said they need 3 days before voting. 
That's in Thomas Jefferson's rules, which he wrote for this House, and 
they're basically the same rules we follow now, with some changes that 
have been made.
  All they're asking to do is let's do what Jefferson said we ought to 
do in this House, and what they did in this House for a century, well, 
let's do it.
  I yield to Mr. Westmoreland.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Well, I thank you and my congratulations go to Mr. 
Baird and to the Chair, Mr. Minnick, for pushing this, along with Greg 
Walden, the gentleman from Oregon, and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Culberson).
  In full disclosure, my friend from Texas and Iowa, in full 
disclosure, when the Republicans were in charge, we did the same thing. 
We rushed things through, and Mr. Baird, the gentleman from Washington, 
I think has had this 72-hour resolution in before when we were in 
charge, and so my hat's off to him for continuing to do this. I think 
he now has about 178 signatures. Mr. Walden who has a discharge 
petition has got signatures. We need 218.
  So if anyone were watching this, if anyone were watching this and if 
we could speak to them from this floor, I would say make sure your 
Congressperson has signed this, because I think this is very important 
that not only the people voting on this have 72 hours to look at it but 
the people that it's going to affect.
  I think sometimes we lose sight in this body that when we pass a law, 
it doesn't just affect the Members in this Chamber. It affects all 300 
million people in this country, and so we need to make sure that the 
people that are going to be affected by the legislation that we're 
passing has an opportunity to read it.
  Is everybody going to read it? I doubt it very seriously. Are all the 
Members of this body going to read it? I doubt it very seriously, but 
at least they can be held accountable and we can be held accountable 
for our votes, and people saying, Well, you had 3 days to read it, 
don't tell me it was something you would rush through. They've got 3 
days to read it, and so I commend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Culberson).
  I commend Mr. Walden for trying to do the discharge petition, and I 
think we have about five people from the minority party that has signed 
that discharge petition, and I want to commend them because that's a 
courageous

[[Page 22885]]

act on their part because, as we know from being in the majority at one 
time, leadership does not like you signing those discharge petitions.
  But this is something that needs to be brought to the floor. This is 
something that I think the American people are entitled to have some 
accountability for from their Members of Congress, and so this goes 
back to that I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.
  And so we need to do this, and again, I hope that this is something 
that we can get the discharge petition through or, if not, that Speaker 
Pelosi would just bring this bill to the floor and let us vote on it.
  Mr. CARTER. I yield to my friend from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  If this is going to be the most open and ethical Congress in history, 
this Congress has got to have an opportunity to read the bills. This 
leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical 
Congress in history: Nancy Pelosi, November 16, 2006.
  I will say this: Yes, there were bills that were hustled through this 
Chamber when Republicans were in the majority, but I have never seen 
anything quite as egregious as the cap-and-trade bill that came through 
this House of Representatives. That bill was presented to the floor of 
the House, scheduled for debate the following day, and at 3:09 a.m., a 
316-page amendment--
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. A.m., a.m.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Did I say a.m.?
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. No, you said p.m.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I'm sorry, I meant to say 3:09 a.m. I appreciate 
that correction. I must have had some kind of chronological dyslexia in 
order to come up with such a thing.
  However, 3:09 a.m., 316-page amendment, and I can say with great 
confidence that no one read the bill. I don't have to ask anybody in 
this Chamber if they read the bill. I know no one read the bill. I was 
here on the floor engaging in the debate when Congressman Gohmert from 
Texas asked a parliamentary inquiry and he said, Madam Speaker, is 
there a copy of the enrolled bill in the Well? The answer was kind of, 
maybe, sort of. And we looked at the kind of, maybe, sort of stack of 
paper that was there, and there was a basic bill of around 1,100 pages, 
but the kind of, maybe, sort of didn't include the 316-page amendment.
  And so after a few more inquiries, they pointed to another stack of 
paperwork, and Congressman Gohmert went down to look at that paperwork, 
and he came back and said, Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry, that 
is not even the amendment. It was a different stack of paper.
  And so after 35 minutes of turning this thing around, the most 
significant question was again asked by Louie Gohmert of Texas, and 
there was a lot of dialogue going on. Joe Barton of Texas was engaged 
in this thing; I give him that. And anyway Louie Gohmert asked the 
question, after about 35 minutes of suspension of the debate on the 
cap-and-trade bill, he said, Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry: If 
the House of Representatives passes a bill that doesn't exist, is it 
possible to message a bill that doesn't exist to the United States 
Senate?
  Well, today we know it must be possible because we passed cap-and-
trade, a bill that didn't exist, and it got messaged to the Senate, and 
I think it probably began to exist sometime after it was messaged to 
the Senate. It was an appalling thing that the American people would 
have to watch, and Thomas Jefferson has to be rolling over two or three 
times. He spoke about a lot of things, 72 hours, 3 days to read the 
bill.
  I also put out a great big pat on the back for Congressman Brian 
Baird for leading on this, as well as Greg Walden and John Culberson, 
and I have signed the discharge petition and the bill, and I'm looking 
for the rest of the signatures on the discharge petition so it can come 
to this floor. That is a piece of bipartisanship that this Congress can 
pass that will leave a legacy for a long time to come.
  And if we're so afraid of the legislation that might get passed that 
we can't give anybody an opportunity to read it and we wonder why 
people go to TEA parties in America, that's why. They're really uneasy 
about what they've seen: $700 billion in TARP; eight large private-
sector corporations nationalized; along with then a $787 billion 
stimulus package rushed through Congress--it had to happen right now--
and sat on the President's desk for 5 days before he signed it, and 
still most of it is not spent.
  And with that, they watched cap-and-trade move through here in a 
hurry-up, rush job, when not one soul in this Congress or across this 
country read the bill before it passed. And then they see a hurry-up 
rush for a national health care act that takes away our freedom.
  No wonder we have TEA parties. No wonder the American people come 
out. It's just a wonder that they could be so peaceful, and we've ended 
up with almost no, let me say, almost no violence of any kind in all 
the TEA parties that we had. Respectful people that exercised their 
right to freedom of speech and assembly and a right for redress of 
their grievances, and they did so in the traditional fashion envisioned 
by Thomas Jefferson himself.
  So many generations have taken place since Thomas Jefferson, but his 
wisdom remains, and I certainly support H. Res. 554. Encourage 
everyone, including the Speaker, to sign that discharge petition. Let's 
get that thing out here on the floor, do the right thing for Democrats 
and Republicans.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, the previous discussion that took a 
little over an hour before we came to the floor commending Senator 
Kennedy and his legacy, it seems to me that when we're talking about 
civility, which is one of the things they talk about, if we can get 
back to civility, I think the 72-hour rule would have something to do 
with that.
  Very quickly, I want to go to one more thing and then I want to come 
back and talk about ACORN.
  We're the czar champions of the world. We have got more czars than 
the Romanovs had in the entire history of their dynasty, and our friend 
Steve Scalise, who was going to be here tonight but he got tied up and 
couldn't come, he's got a bill to sunset these czars.

                              {time}  2200

  A czar is someone who heads a task force, a council, is appointed by 
the President without the consent of the Senate, is excepted from the 
competitive service and does not have an existing removal date. 
Appropriated funds can't be used to pay for salaries and expenses of 
task forces or councils established by the President and headed by a 
czar.
  This is what he's trying to do. He's trying to put a sunset on the 
czar policy, because it seems to an awful lot of people in this 
country, the term ``czar'' means absolute power, and they've created 
these positions of absolute power without any oversight.
  I will start with my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank my friend from Texas for yielding.
  A czar is something that I've been getting a lot of questions about 
lately. Everywhere I've been in Georgia's Third Congressional District, 
I'm starting to get questions about the czars. People are wondering who 
these 34 or 35 czars are. We have already had one exposed to the extent 
that he eventually resigned.
  People are starting to understand more and more that these czars are 
being appointed by the President with no confirmation by the Senate. 
And they're beginning to say, hey, how is this happening? What's going 
on here? How long are they going to serve? Do they work directly for 
the President? Who are they accountable to? What if they have some type 
of job that's under Mrs. Napolitano or under Geithner, or whatever? Who 
do they report to? What's the deal? They would report directly to the 
President.
  And so we need, really, sunshine on all the appointments, but 
especially, as the gentleman from Louisiana said, H.R. 3569, at least a 
sunset on all these czars. This is something that the American people 
are very inquisitive about.
  I think that because of the number of these czars and because of some 
of the

[[Page 22886]]

really Communist views and really ultra left-wing views that some of 
these czars have that are being exposed is just bringing more and more 
attention to it. And I think the American people want some 
accountability. I'll go back to the statement, they're sick and tired 
of being sick and tired of more government being stacked on.
  We've got 10 percent unemployment nationwide. We've got some areas 
with 15, 16, 17, 20 percent unemployment. The only jobs that are 
growing right now are in the Federal Government. That's the only thing 
that's growing.
  With that, Judge, I hope that anybody who could be watching might 
encourage their Representative to look at H.R. 3569.
  Mr. CARTER. We're just about to run out of time. We had a surprise 
guest come from the back of the room. Would you like to tell us about 
the czars? Did we stimulate you?
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. You sure did, Judge. I want to thank 
you for bringing this up. It's just not who these folks are that we 
don't know; it's what they step on. I look at this as sort of the 
fourth or the stealth branch of government.
  I came here, I know all my colleagues here, certainly the freshmen, 
we came knowing that we have a serious responsibility to fulfill on the 
different committees of jurisdiction that we're appointed to. I bring 
up just one example, the car czar, and what has happened to the auto 
industry in this country.
  As I could tell, I expected when we had these issues, that we have a 
committee, I believe it's called Energy and Commerce, that would have 
dealt with the issues surrounding that industry. And yet everything 
that has happened in the car industry, of firing an executive from a 
private organization, to taking over ownership of General Motors, to 
dictating winners and losers in terms of the auto dealerships, all 
directed under the leadership of a czar.
  Frankly, I know that that's the responsibility of Congress. We have a 
responsibility to approach that carefully and judiciously and make 
those types of decisions. The Constitution provided us that authority 
and that responsibility, and the czars are just stepping all over the 
Constitution.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, thank you. We feel real good when we 
can call a colleague out of the dark. We're glad you're here. We are 
just about to wrap up our time.
  Before we stop, I'm doing something different today. We've been 
talking about an awful lot. This is probably the most we've talked 
about in a single hour. As soon as this is over with, as soon as I walk 
across the street to my office, if you go to www.house.gov/carter, 
we're going to have a live Webcast for the next hour-and-a-half where 
you can ask questions and make comments about what we've talked about 
here, or anything else that's bothering you or that you're concerned 
about, I want to have it, so that you can tell Congress what you think. 
I've already started doing this. I enjoy it. I've already got 300 
questions waiting right now. I'm going to advertise a little bit and 
welcome people to come to this Webcast.
  Mr. Speaker, how much time have I got left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. One minute.
  Mr. CARTER. Thank you, everybody, for participating. It's most 
important you remember the subject of this conversation, and that is 
the rule of law that holds this society together. Never forget. We're 
all talking about rules and laws and how they seem to be stretched and 
violated. We've got to get back to the rule of law governing this 
Nation.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________