[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 8440-8446]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   UNPRECEDENTED TAXING AND SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to comment also with the 
preceding gentleman, my colleague from Oregon. I would agree with him. 
I think he is 100 percent right. We do need to have an investigation. 
The American people were outraged last week when they heard about these 
bonuses. I would agree with the colleague from Oregon. We do need to 
have an investigation. Who knew what when? And the fingers need to be 
pointed right here at Members of Congress, Members of the House, 
Members of the Senate, and also the administration. Who was it that 
negotiated these payments? We still don't have an answer. The American 
people deserve to know. We have a timeline. We have some facts in 
evidence out there. We had Mr. Liddy, the CEO of AIG, in front of the 
House Financial Services Committee just last week. I sat in that 
committee. Mr. Liddy, under questioning, I asked Mr. Liddy myself, did 
the Federal Reserve chair know about these bonuses? Did he acquiesce to 
them? The answer was ``yes.'' Also the Treasury Secretary. The Treasury 
Department was involved in negotiating the compensation contracts.
  Today in Financial Services Committee, the Treasury Secretary again 
was sitting at the table before the committee. The Federal Reserve 
chair was there as well. The questioning came before them. The Treasury 
Department was involved. The Federal Reserve was involved. And we know 
that the bill that was brought to this body and voted here in this 
Chamber, the stimulus bill, the $1.1 trillion bill with debt service, 
this tremendous historic-spending-levels bill that came before us, that 
was the smoking gun. Senator Chris Dodd inserted that amendment into 
the bill. He claimed that the Obama administration insisted that that 
amendment be put into the bill, the language that would protect these 
AIG bonuses. And as a matter of fact, you could call President Obama's 
stimulus bill the ``AIG Bonus Protection Plan'' because bonuses were 
simply protected by this bill.
  I would agree with my colleague from Oregon. We need an 
investigation. We need a special independent prosecutor who can look 
into this and find out the true facts. What did the Obama 
administration know? When did they know it? What did Members of 
Congress know? When did they know it? Clearly, this was a government 
cartel that was protecting these AIG bonuses.
  And why do we need to know this? Because the American people have 
figured out something that Congress is only just now beginning to 
figure out. Under President Obama's budget, we see that the 
administration is spending too much, they are taxing too much, they are 
certainly borrowing too much, so much so that the American people are 
saying ``I have had it up to here, I can't take it any more.'' And the 
economy is following suit.
  Well, our colleagues are here today to talk about this. They have a 
lot to say. Joining me right now is a colleague from the great State of 
Ohio. He represents the people in the 12th Congressional District of 
Ohio and the great city of Columbus, Mr. Pat Tiberi, the new father of 
triplets, and I defer now to my colleague from Ohio, Mr. Pat Tiberi.
  Mr. TIBERI. I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota for yielding me 
some time to talk about a very important subject. As you mentioned, as 
the new father of triplets, looking at this budget is pretty 
frightening, not just for me, but obviously what I feel for them and my 
older daughter as we have in this budget an unprecedented level of 
spending and also some policy issues that are going to cost them and 
many in my State of Ohio a tremendous amount of money.
  So this budget has real consequences on real people. In fact, the 
chart behind me demonstrates a little bit about that budget and what 
that budget does to our national debt. This debt, as you see in red, is 
representing the administration's budget, a staggering number that will 
go up considerably if this budget, which is being debated in the House 
Budget Committee this week, presumably on the House floor, next week, 
if it passes, as it is, this will be the result, a doubling of the debt 
held by the public. It is unbelievable.
  Who is going to pay that debt? It is going to be our children and our 
grandchildren. They are going to be saddled with unprecedented debt, 
debt as far as the eye can see.
  When I got elected to Congress in 2001, when I was sworn in, you can 
see where the national debt was. The Republicans and the administration 
during the last 8 years were criticized for not dealing with that debt 
in blue. And it went up. And it went up entirely too much. But not 
nearly as much as it is going to go up if this budget passes. The 
consequences are devastating to our economy.
  In fact, within that budget is something called ``cap-and-trade.'' It 
is an energy issue to deal with the issue of global warming. But in 
Ohio, what it will do is devastate our already ailing economy. It will 
cause people to leave and businesses to leave. In fact, within my 
district, there is a municipal power company. It will create the loss 
of jobs as well. Within my district and many other districts in Ohio 
there are municipal power companies, not investor owned, but owned by 
municipalities. And one such one has said that it will quadruple, 
quadruple the rates that their ratepayers pay. Quadruple. Now my mom 
and dad, who are on a fixed income, will see their electric go up. They 
will see their gas bills to heat their home go up. They will see their 
gasoline that they pay for in their 14-year-old car go up in cost. This 
will be a huge, huge tax increase on them not to even mention the goods 
and services that will go up, just the energy tax alone.
  We on this side of the aisle believe that an all-of-the-above energy 
approach to solving our domestic energy needs should be debated rather 
than a cap-and-tax program that will devastate economies like Ohio's 
economy. It will be absolutely a killer to jobs in our State.
  Now the other issue that you may hear about in the next week is 
spending, that my colleagues and friends on the other side of the aisle 
are going to constrain spending. Well, here are the facts, the 
Congressional Budget Office facts. The blue has been the spending over 
the last 8 years. The red is the spending over the administration's 
budget. Clearly, we are going to see an incredible amount of new 
spending.

                              {time}  1630

  So the problem in Washington, D.C. is not a revenue problem. The 
problem in Washington D.C. is a spending problem. There is no such 
thing as a spending restraint.
  Ladies and gentlemen of the House, this is an eye-popping proposal, 
one that is going to have huge consequences to our economy, to our 
children, to our grandchildren, to our way of life. We must, we must 
put a stop to this proposal, and the only way we can do that is with 
the help of the American people because, quite frankly, this side of 
the aisle just doesn't have the votes. The other side of the aisle 
does, and we need the American people engaged in a proposal that will 
have a killer effect on our economy and one that will have a 
devastating effect on the future of our children and our children's 
children.
  I yield back to the gentlelady from Minnesota.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I thank the gentleman from Ohio's 12th district, Pat 
Tiberi. The remarks that he is making about the burdens that our 
children and grandchildren will bear are startling. I had a baby born 
to my husband

[[Page 8441]]

and I back in 1987, and I did a study on what the Social Security tax 
would be on that baby, who is now 22 years old, when he gets to be in 
his peak earning years. Now, I know that Mr. Tiberi has triplets that 
were born this year. We are looking at the debt burden on my son, now 
22. In his peak earning years, 25 percent of his income will have to be 
devoted just for the Social Security portion of his tax bill. It is 
simply unsustainable.
  And our concern is that, under President Obama's budget, which 
clearly spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much, we are 
looking at a legacy cost that is simply unsustainable. The President is 
putting together an unbelievable $3.9 trillion budget, trillion dollar, 
which, as Mr. Tiberi said, will double the debt limit for every man, 
woman and child in the United States. Double it. We are seeing these 
numbers go through the roof of the Capitol right now, like nothing we 
have ever seen. It is like a sugar high. It is as though the people who 
are putting together this budget in the Obama administration were all 
staying up late one night drinking 24-packs of 20-ounce Mountain Dews. 
They are on a sugar high right now. They can't spend enough of your 
money.
  And the message that everyone needs to send to Washington, D.C. is, I 
can't afford it. My family can't afford it. My small business can't 
afford the Obama administration's spending habit.
  We have this movie that is out now called Shopaholic. This is a 
shopaholic bill that we have got in front of us, and it is time to let 
the people know that those who are paying the bill, the American 
people, have enough debt. We don't need to take this on too.
  Joining us now, from the great State of Texas, is someone, Mr. 
Speaker, that all Americans are familiar with. His name is Ted Poe. 
Congressman Ted Poe is a former judge. He understands that that's the 
way it is in the United States.
  I yield now to Representative Ted Poe of Texas.
  Mr. POE of Texas. I thank the gentlelady for yielding, and her 
comments especially.
  Mr. Speaker, we are discussing the proposed budget. And disregard 
whether it has some good projects in it or not. It breaks the back of 
the American citizen. And we hear a lot of numbers about how much it is 
costing and, of course, it does cost too much. But I will try to put it 
in perspective.
  I have four kids, 7\1/2\ grandkids. Mr. Tiberi just had triplets. 
Mrs. Bachmann's got a handful of kids. And when kids are born, every 
parent remembers that they are given an arm band, and the arm band 
usually says who that child is. My kids all had an arm band that said 
``Poe kid.'' They're going to have to change arm bands on my grandkids 
from Poe kids to just poor kid because every child born after this 
budget passes will have to pay off the debt to the tune of $70,000 a 
piece. So when kids are born in America, if this budget passed, give 
them an arm band that says, you owe Uncle Sam $70,000.
  Mr. Speaker, that is disgraceful that we are saddling debt on kids 
yet to be born in this country. So much for freedom. They are going to 
be enslaved to the Federal Government to the tune of at least $70,000 a 
piece. And that doesn't count all these other spending programs that we 
are seeing going to come down the pike later this year.
  Maybe we should remember some of the things that Thomas Jefferson 
said. Of course he helped write, or he did write the Declaration of 
Independence. He wrote a lot while he was President. Here's a quote 
from Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Speaker. He said it in 1821, shortly before 
he died. He said, ``There does not exist an engine so corruptive of the 
government and so demoralizing of the Nation as a public debt. It will 
bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad.'' Wise 
Thomas Jefferson. Maybe we would do well to read some of the things 
that Thomas Jefferson wrote about saddling American taxpayers with 
public debt. It is worse than our foreign enemies we have got all over 
the world.
  We cannot afford to pay for this budget because we don't have any 
money. We have spent it all. We have given it to, you know, these banks 
that can't fail, and all these other special interest groups. So we are 
broke. So we are going to have to borrow the money. And we are going to 
have to borrow the money from foreign countries. Number 1 on the list, 
the Chinese. You know, our good friends, the Chinese. We are going to 
borrow their money.
  It was embarrassing to me, as a citizen, to see our Secretary of 
State go to China and beg to allow us to borrow money from them in the 
future. Even they are a little worried about whether we can pay off 
this great debt that we are incurring and putting on kids yet to be 
born. It is disgraceful, Mr. Speaker.
  And the second thing is, if we can't borrow enough money, the 
government's answer is, we will just tax them. Tax them to death. You 
know, the old statement goes, if something moves, regulate it. If it 
keeps moving, tax it. And if it stops moving, then subsidize it. We are 
doing all of the above right now. Things that aren't doing any good for 
the economy, oh, we are subsidizing those. But we are taxing the 
American taxpayer to death, those that work for a living. And we are 
also taxing those small businesses.
  I want to make one thing clear about jobs. We hear so much about the 
budget is going to create jobs. Jobs, jobs. Well, we have to define 
what a job is. There are government programs, and those are not jobs. A 
government program takes taxpayer money and gives it to different 
projects to build something. Now, that is not a job because that is 
subsidy by the American taxpayer to this entity.
  Jobs are not created by government. Jobs are not created by 
government. Small businesses create most of the jobs in this country 
because, you see, when small business has money, we call that capital, 
thus the term capitalism. When they have money they hire people. The 
taxpayers don't have to subsidize that worker, whereas the taxpayers 
have to subsidize the government program worker.
  So let's be clear about that. There are jobs, and then are real jobs. 
And so we should do everything in our power to help small businesses, 
because they create 70 percent of the jobs in this country.
  But this new budget, loaded down with borrowing, is also loaded down 
with taxes. And it taxes the producers of this country. Like I said, if 
something keeps moving we just tax it. And that is the plan.
  And it seems to me, this is just my opinion, this whole philosophy 
that we are moving to in this country is a government-controlled 
culture, government-controlled society; kind of makes us look like the 
French socialist society, in my opinion. And I don't think that is what 
liberty is all about. So maybe we should go back to some basics.
  Like most American taxpayers, they don't spend money they don't have. 
Maybe the government shouldn't spend money it doesn't have. Maybe we 
shouldn't be borrowing money because we have to pay the debt on it. And 
we are not going to live to see it, so we are passing that debt on to 
our kids yet to be born, to the tune of $70,000 a piece. And that ought 
not to be.
  But that's just the way it is.
  I yield back my time.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. Thank you to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. Speaker, it is clear President Obama's $3.9 trillion plan for the 
budget, for the American people clearly spends too much, taxes too 
much, borrows too much for our kids and our grandkids.
  There is a man that we respect and admire. He hails from West 
Chester, Ohio, the eighth district. He is the leader of the Republicans 
in the House, but more importantly, he is the leader on the issue of 
fiscal restraint for the American people.
  He stood right down here in the well, Mr. Speaker, he held up so the 
American people could see what 1,100 pages of a bill looks like. He 
held those 1,100 pages and made the incredible statement that not one 
person in this chamber had a chance to read this bill before we were 
expected to vote on it. There was no true debate on this stimulus bill 
that was passed earlier this year,

[[Page 8442]]

$1.1 trillion. And now the President has a budget for $3.9 trillion 
that spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much.
  Leader John Boehner stood on this House and demonstrated to the 
American people just how massive this is.
  I yield now to our leader, a man that we respect and admire, from the 
eighth district of Ohio, leader John Boehner.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Let me thank my colleague for yielding, and thank the 
rest of my colleagues for participating in this discussion about the 
budget.
  Before we get to the budget, you know, when I held those 1,100 pages 
up and indicated that no one had read the bill, it was pretty clear no 
one had because if someone had read the bill they would have realized 
there were 50 words in there that protected AIG executives, to make 
sure they were going to get their bonuses; more proof that we ought to 
actually read what we pass here on the House floor.
  The discussion, though, is about the budget. And I have seen a lot of 
things over the years that I have been in politics, whether it be a 
Township Trustee in West Chester, or in the State House, or the 18 
years I have spent in Washington. But I have never seen a legislative 
document more audacious, more far reaching, and, frankly, more bizarre 
than the budget that has been submitted by President Obama, because it 
does spend too much. It is pretty clear, when you look at the giant 
increases in spending. But it is not just that it spends too much. It 
taxes too much. There are nearly $2 trillion worth of new taxes that 
are imposed on the American people in that budget. Whether it is the 
national energy tax, for those who would drive a car, or those who 
would produce something with electricity, or someone who would flip on 
a light switch, every American is going to pay a higher tax.
  But even with all the spending and the much higher taxes, look at 
what happens. Look at what happens to our debt. Even after $2 trillion 
of new taxes, the national debt will double over the next 6 years under 
this proposal, more than what has happened in the 43 presidents that 
preceded President Obama over the last 220 years.
  Now, there was a lot of criticism of President Bush, criticism of the 
Republicans, that we didn't have a big enough handle on spending. 
Frankly, I agree. We should have had a bigger handle on spending.
  But having said that, over the next 6 years, President Obama's budget 
is going to make President Bush look like a penny pincher. And look at 
the debt. And what is going to happen here, with all of this debt that 
is piled on the backs of our kids and grandkids, means that in about 10 
years, 70 cents of every tax dollar that comes to Washington is going 
to be used just to pay the interest on the national debt, just the 
interest. 70 cents of every dollar.
  So what happens to our national defense? What happens to our Homeland 
Security? What happens to Medicare or Medicaid, Social Security and all 
of the other government programs that we have? There is not going to be 
any money for it, because all of the debt that is going to get built 
up, interest has to be paid on that debt and the fact is, it won't 
happen.
  This budget, we need to start over. And I had a press conference 
earlier today where I suggested to the President, why don't we just 
start over? Why don't we sit down, as Democrats and Republicans, and 
build a budget that restores fiscal sanity and shows the American 
people we can work together for the good of our country.
  We can't buy our way to prosperity. And that is what this budget 
seems to believe. And I would hope my colleagues would help each other 
understand the enormous debt that will be piled up if we allow this 
budget to go into effect.
  And I yield back.

                              {time}  1645

  Mrs. BACHMANN. Thank you to the gentleman from Ohio, Leader John 
Boehner. We have tremendous respect for Leader Boehner and have great 
admiration for his courage in leading this effort in fiscal restraint. 
The American people are begging for fiscal restraint, and Leader 
Boehner has emphasized that to our caucus, and is leading that charge 
here in the United States House of Representatives.
  Also joining us today, Mr. Speaker, is a brand new freshman also from 
the great State of Ohio, our third speaker from Ohio during this hour. 
Ohioans represent the heartland of our country. Hailing now from Ohio's 
Seventh District is Mr. Steve Austria, who has a lot to say. He 
represents the Dayton-Columbus area, and he is going to be speaking to 
us now as a small businessman himself. I yield now to Mr. Steve Austria 
from Columbus, Ohio.
  Mr. AUSTRIA. I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota.
  We are well represented here today here in Ohio in this Chamber. 
There is a lot going on in Ohio, and this budget directly affects us, 
and I appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak today.
  Let me just say, as a new Member of this Congress and having served 
less than 100 days, we have been faced with tremendous challenges and 
issues before us. I will start out with the second half of the bailout 
of the financial markets, the TARP bill, which was $700 billion that I 
felt did not have enough accountability and not enough transparency. 
The Treasury did not have a specific plan in place when we voted on 
that bill, and I had deep concerns with that, and I voted against that 
bill.
  The second bill I was asked to vote on was the $791 billion over 10 
years, $1.1 trillion stimulus bill that had a tremendous amount of 
government spending that I felt was not targeted toward where it should 
be, to small businesses, which are the economic engine of this country. 
Seventy percent of the businesses across this country are small 
businesses. We have 900,000 small businesses in the State of Ohio. Yet 
this plan did not focus on small businesses. It did little to nothing 
to help small businesses. It was focused on increasing government 
spending, which I felt was wrong.
  We just heard the leader talk about what happens when you don't read 
a bill, when you don't have accountability, when you don't have 
transparency, when you don't have a plan. When you don't read a bill, 
all of a sudden, you run into what we ran into last week with AIG 
bonuses being paid out of hardworking taxpayers' dollars. Then there 
was a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill that had an 8 
percent increase, or a $32 billion increase, this year when we are 
asking Americans to tighten their belts and small businesses to make 
sacrifices. There are almost 9,000 earmarks in it.
  Now we are being faced with a $3.6 trillion budget. I think the 
gentlelady has pointed out very well and right on target that the 
problem with this budget right now is that it contains too much 
spending, too much borrowing, which we have already seen in these other 
bills, but in addition, we are now talking about $1.4 trillion of new 
taxes that are going to be put on Americans across this country.
  There is a cap-and-trade, or what is being referred to as a cap-and-
tax, on anything that uses carbon or CO2. We are going back 
and are going to raise the estate tax. There is the raising of the 
capital gains tax, the removing of itemized deductions, the increasing 
of marginal rates. All of these tax increases concern me in this 
budget.
  Let me tell you, as a former small business owner and as a father of 
three, I did not come to Congress to begin major spending, running up a 
deficit, running up debt like we are running up, passing on debt to my 
three children at home. That is not why I came to Congress. I came to 
Congress to turn this economy around and to really begin to save jobs, 
to create new jobs and to be able to sustain those jobs over the long 
term. I believe it is our small businesses that can do this. I can tell 
you, as a small business owner, when I look at this budget that we are 
faced with, I have deep concerns about what is facing me--new taxes, 
taxes and taxes.
  I talked about the cap-and-trade--we have heard that, too--the 
increase of taxes on those who have incomes of over $250,000 or more, 
on the so-called ``wealthiest'' Americans of the country. Many of those 
are small business owners. Over half of those are small business owners 
in this country. If I am

[[Page 8443]]

a small business owner and I know I have these taxes coming at me in 
2011, I doubt if I am going to be looking at investing in my business 
and in expanding my business and in taking a risk. I am going to be 
preparing for that new tax increase that is coming right at me, and I 
don't believe that is good for our economy. I don't believe that helps 
our small businesses.
  Again, in Ohio, we have over 9,000 small businesses. Seven out of ten 
of all new jobs are created by small businesses. America's small 
businesses are the world's second largest economy, trailing only to the 
United States as a whole according to NFIB. According to a Zogby poll 
released last week, nearly two-thirds of Americans, 63 percent of 
Americans, said that it is small businesses and entrepreneurs that are 
going to lead this country, lead the U.S., to a better future. Well, 
you know, while we look at what is going on within this budget, it does 
not make sense what we are doing.
  I had an opportunity on Monday to meet with many of our business 
folks at a luncheon that was sponsored by the U.S. Chamber. We had the 
rotary there, and we had the local chambers there. I had a chance to 
talk with some of our small businesses about this budget and what we 
are facing, and they had deep concerns. I mean they are struggling 
right now. Americans are struggling right now. They are making 
sacrifices. Businesses are struggling to make it from paycheck to 
paycheck, payroll to payroll. They cannot get financing. They cannot 
get the credit necessary to keep their businesses moving forward. What 
are we going to do? We are going to go out and propose a budget that is 
going to increase spending, increase borrowing, run our debt up to $3.9 
trillion on the conservative side, and increase taxes by $1.4 trillion 
on all Americans. I believe it is the wrong way to go. I think we can 
do better. I think the American people expect better and deserve 
better, and we can produce a better bill than what we have before us.
  I thank the gentlelady. I yield back my time, and I thank her for the 
opportunity to speak today.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I think, Representative Austria, those are wise words, 
and thank you for sharing those with us this afternoon. I appreciate 
your work.
  Mr. Speaker, we are joined now by a great gentleman and a longtime 
advocate for the people in his district, the Second District in 
Tennessee. He has been serving as a faithful Member of Congress for 21 
years, Mr. Jimmy Duncan, who is a tremendous gentleman, serving the 
people of Knoxville and the surrounding community. I yield now to Mr. 
Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Well, Mr. Speaker, thank you very much.
  I first want to thank the gentlelady from Minnesota for giving me 
this time. She has been a real leader in this battle to try to restore 
some type of fiscal sanity to this government, and I can tell you this:
  I represent a little over 700,000 people in East Tennessee. Fortune 
magazine said in 2000 that the Knoxville area had become the most 
popular place to move in the whole country based on the number moving 
in in relation to the fewest moving out. For many, many years now, we 
have had a tremendous movement in of people from all over the country 
and, in fact, of many from around the world. About half of the people I 
represent have moved from someplace else, so I have got a real cross-
section of people from almost every State in this country. Over these 
last few weeks, I can tell you, from spending more time at home than I 
do up here, that people in East Tennessee think we have just gone 
almost crazy up here, throwing around trillions just almost in a 
meaningless, haphazard way.
  The gentlelady from Minnesota showed this chart a while ago which 
says President Obama's budget spends too much, taxes too much, borrows 
too much. No truer words, Mr. Speaker, were ever said on this floor.
  The Congressional Quarterly just yesterday came out with a chart, 
showing that we are going to add $1.840 trillion to our national debt 
just this year, and then we are going to add another one $1.370 
trillion next year and another $970 billion the year after that. In 3-
years' time, we are going to add over $4 trillion to our national debt 
under the most optimistic scenario by the estimate of the Congressional 
Budget Office.
  That comes on the heels of several weeks ago when this Congress--most 
of us in the Chamber right at the moment voted against it--voted to 
raise the national debt limit to $12.104 trillion. That is an 
incomprehensible figure. Nobody can humanly comprehend that much, but 
we are going to hand over $4 trillion to that. What it means, Mr. 
Speaker, is this:
  In just a few years, we are not going to be able to pay all of our 
Social Security and veterans' pensions and all of the things that we 
have promised our own people. I used to say--and I have heard many 
people say in the last few weeks even--what we are doing to our 
children and grandchildren is terrible--and it is--but actually, I 
think now we are doing it to ourselves because I think that, in 10 or 
15 years, if that long, we are not going to be able to pay all of these 
things we have promised our own people. So I think it is really sad 
what we are doing to the American people because we are spending too 
much, taxing too much and borrowing too much.
  Joe Scarborough said on his national television program just this 
morning: We are like a doctor who has diagnosed diabetes in a patient 
but who has then prescribed a diet of cotton candy. He said: We are 
like somebody making $100,000 a year who has suddenly gone out and 
bought ten $1 million houses. He said repeatedly something that I have 
said many times over these last couple of months: We can't afford it. 
We are spending money that we do not have, and every place in this 
world and throughout history, when a government has gotten in the 
position that we are in, you either have staggering inflation or 
staggering deflation, and one is just about as bad as the other. I 
don't have a crystal ball to know which one we are headed into. My 
guess would probably be staggering inflation. What we are doing is 
reckless, and what we are doing is dangerous. We passed a stimulus 
bill, and it had some good things in it, but once again, we were 
spending money that we did not have.
  The Washington Post, which favored the stimulus bill, had a front-
page story in which they said it was going to mean a massive financial 
windfall--those are their words--for Federal agencies. Then they had 
another story a couple of days later in which they said tens of 
thousands of new jobs would be added on or new hires would be added on 
by Federal agencies. That is who is going to benefit from this stimulus 
package--first Federal agencies, then State agencies. So bureaucrats 
all over the country are going to come out just fine, and maybe a 
little bit is going to trickle down to everybody else, but this is not 
who is hurting. This area is one of the wealthiest areas in the 
country, this Washington, D.C., northern Virginia, southern Maryland 
area. Yet they are going to receive a massive financial windfall 
according to The Washington Post.
  On Lou Dobbs last week, he said 4 million jobs had been lost in the 
private sector in the last year alone. Four million jobs lost. Yet 
government payrolls had expanded by 151,000. Now, because of what we 
passed up here, government payrolls are going to expand once again.
  There have been so many exaggerations over what is going to be done 
with this money. A couple of weeks ago, a daily newspaper in Montana 
reported that the two Montana Senators had put out a press release 
saying that 40 jobs were going to be created because of a $1.3 million 
portion of the stimulus package. The paper went to that agency, and 
that agency said: No, we have already got almost full employment. We 
are going to add two people because of this, and the rest of it is 
going to be spent on the employees they already have. So I think a lot 
of people are going to be disappointed over some of this money that we 
are spending, and we are spending, as I said, money that we do not 
have.
  Now, two of the Members from Ohio--my colleague Mr. Tiberi and the

[[Page 8444]]

new Member, Mr. Austria--both mentioned coal and utility bills and 
things of that nature because it has such a great effect on their 
State. We have powerful people in this body who are attempting to cut 
way back and who are attempting, hopefully, to even eliminate coal in 
this country. Well, I can tell you this: Anybody who is supporting that 
is going to really hurt the poor and the lower income and the working 
people because coal provides over 50 percent of our energy in this 
country today. If we cut way back on coal, we are going to double or 
triple or quadruple our utility bills, and we are going to hurt a lot 
of poor and low-income people.

                              {time}  1700

  I have noticed throughout the years that most of the environmental 
radicals and environmental extremists in this country come from very 
wealthy or very upper income families, and perhaps they don't realize 
how much they hurt the poor and the lower income and the working people 
when they destroy jobs and drive up prices. But if they cut way back on 
coal, that's exactly what is going to happen.
  Our leader, Mr. Boehner, mentioned another thing. He said that this 
bill--and we heard a presentation from the ranking member of the Budget 
Committee just this morning which said that the President's budget has 
$1.9 trillion in tax increases in that budget. Jim Cramer, the famous 
stock man--he's on television every night, and he has been a six-figure 
contributor to the Democratic Party--he described the President's 
budget as the greatest wealth killer in history. And I will tell you, 
that is a pretty serious charge coming from that source: the greatest 
wealth killer in history.
  And we just don't have enough people who understand--there is waste 
in the private sector but a business who continually wastes money 
cannot stay in business very long. But a government agency that wastes 
money, they use that as a justification for getting increased funding 
the next year.
  So every dollar we can keep in the private sector is going to do more 
to create jobs and hold down prices because money in the private sector 
is spent so much more efficiently than this money that is turned over 
to government. Governor Edward Rendell, who is a former chairman of the 
Democratic Party, when he was mayor of Philadelphia, he testified 
before a Congressional committee and he said government does not work 
because it was not designed to. He said there is no incentive for 
people to work hard, so many do not. There is no incentive to save 
money, so much of it is squandered. That pretty much summed up the 
reason that money in the private sector is spent so much more 
efficiently than money turned over to the government. So every dollar 
we can keep in the private sector will do more to create jobs and hold 
down prices.
  So we certainly don't need a budget that increases taxes by $1.9 
trillion. It has been proven all over the world that when you let 
government get too big, what you do is you create this elite class at 
the top, you wipe out the middle class, and you create this huge 
starvation, or underclass, and certainly we have all traditionally in 
this country had the biggest middle class in the world because we kept 
our government--it has been very difficult, but throughout history we 
have kept our government one of the smallest in proportion to the GDP 
in this Nation.
  I know there are some other people who want to speak. So once again, 
I want to thank the gentlelady from Minnesota for her hard work and her 
leadership in regard to the fiscal condition of this government. We 
need more people like her in the Congress, and it is an honor to serve 
with her, and I thank her for giving me her time today.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I want to thank Mr. Duncan for standing strong for 
restraint. When you have got donors to the other party who are standing 
up and saying this is a wealth killer, that is a wake-up call. As a 
matter of fact, we just had one of the former commerce secretary 
appointees, Senator Judd Gregg, say of this budget that it clearly 
spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much from our kids and 
grandkids. He said himself that this spending bill will bankrupt 
America. It will bankrupt our country.
  And it caused me to think--I was writing some notes down. I was 
thinking about the very first Congress. We are the 111th Congress. And 
I was thinking back to the very first Congress and the founders of our 
Nation. And I was thinking that they are here in this Chamber, 
symbolically, and we, as Members of Congress--Mr. Duncan who served for 
21 years; myself, this is my third year--I think of the first Members 
of Congress who are here as we symbolically stand on their shoulders 
and observe their example from the rear-view mirror of history.
  And I think about these founders who wrote our Nation's Declaration 
of Independence to get away from a mother country who abused its taxing 
authority against the American colonists who then went on to write our 
great Constitution which was clear as to the limits on government 
authority. That was the greatest fear that the Founders had was a 
government that would be tyrannical and reach too far in the pockets 
and in the freedom of the American people.
  The very same day that our founders, the first Congress, passed that 
Constitution, known across the world, they also passed the 10 
amendments to that Constitution. And those amendments were written for 
one reason. It wasn't to limit the freedom and the power of the 
American people as individuals, it was written to limit the power of 
the Federal Government over the individual. And the 10th Amendment, the 
last of those 10, reserved to the States all power not expressly given 
to the Federal Government in the Constitution.
  This spending bill that President Obama is putting forward to the 
111th Congress would shock the founders of our Nation. I believe it 
would shock them because they might say that they bled and died and 
sacrificed their fortune and their sacred honor so that what? So that 
we could selfishly consume material wealth sufficient to bankrupt our 
Nation? That hardly seems what America is about or what America was 
founded upon.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, joining us now is Dr. Paul Broun. He is a great 
patriot hailing from the State of Georgia. I appreciate Dr. Broun. He 
represents Athens, Augusta, and northeast Georgia hailing from the 
Tenth Congressional District.
  I yield now to a great physician, a great friend, a great patriot, 
Dr. Paul Broun.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
  Promises made, promises broken. This administration has made many, 
many promises to the American public and has broken promise after 
promise after promise.
  We were promised that wasteful spending would decrease and be 
eliminated. But what do we see? We see a huge increase in the size of 
the Federal Government. We have been promised that those wasteful 
programs of the Federal Government would be cut and eliminated. What do 
we see? We see a bigger growth of the Federal Government, and we see 
more wasteful spending and a huge increase in the size of the Federal 
Government.
  We were promised that any bill that has earmarks in it would be 
vetoed. Well, the omnibus bill--I call it the ominous omnibus bill--was 
nothing but earmarks. The whole bill was nothing but paybacks to the 
folks who elected the leadership here in Washington today, and that 
promise has been broken.
  And now we have a budget. Leader Boehner was here just a few minutes 
ago and spoke about the increase of the Federal debt. And I want to 
make it clear something that he said that is very important to the 
American people, should be important to the American people. The 
deficit spending, the debt that has been created with this budget 
alone, is greater than all presidencies combined. Every one of them 
combined. This one budget is greater than all of those. We can't 
continue down this road.
  This budget bill is a steamroll of socialism that has been shoved 
down the

[[Page 8445]]

throats of the American public. It is going to strangle the American 
economy. It is going to choke the American people economically.
  We have been promised that 95 percent of Americans were going to get 
a tax cut. We saw that in this recent stimulus bill where the tax cut 
is $1.10 per day. That's it, $1.10 per day. I'm a physician, and I 
don't believe in smoking. I think everybody should quit. But you can't 
even buy a pack of cigarettes for that amount of money.
  And not only that, but this cap-and-tax issue that's being proposed 
in this budget is going to tax every single American family by over 
$3,100 per family. Let me repeat that. Every single family is going to 
pay an increase in their cost of living by $3,100 per family. We can't 
afford that. It is going to hurt the poorest of people in this country. 
It is going to hurt our seniors who are living on a fixed income. It is 
going to hurt small business because of this class envy and class 
warfare that's being proposed by this administration.
  We have seen promise after promise broken by this administration. And 
not only that, we are creating a debt for our future generations so 
that their standard of living is going to be much less, much lower than 
ours today.
  As Mr. Duncan was talking about, we are either going to have 
hyperinflation or deflation. I think we're fixing to head for 
hyperinflation. We have seen in the past that gross deficit spending by 
governments has created hyperinflation to the point that people almost 
literally had to have a wheelbarrow to take the currency to the grocery 
store to buy one loaf of bread. That's where we're heading today. 
Warren Buffet just 2 weeks ago said that we're off the cliff.
  I think we're headed towards a marked prolongation of this recession, 
a deepening of this recession, and very probably a severe depression.
  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he was spending taxpayers' dollars 
like a drunken sailor, did nothing but prolong that Depression. That's 
exactly what this philosophy that's being promoted here in this House 
and in the Senate across the way and by this administration is going to 
do.
  In fact, the only thing that got us out of the Great Depression was 
the creation of a manufacturing entity in America to supply the needs 
for World War II. Are we going to need a world war to get us out of 
this depression that we're headed towards? I hope not.
  But this deficit spending is totally irresponsible. It is 
unconscionable that we would have this kind of philosophy promoted in 
this Congress. It is going to hurt the people who can stand to be hurt 
the least, and that's the poor people, the retirees, those on fixed 
incomes.
  This cap-and-tax policy is going to raise the price of all goods and 
services: medicines at the drug store, which is going to hurt our 
elderly; it is going to raise the price of groceries at the grocery 
store for everybody, and that's going to hurt all of us.
  We cannot continue down this road. We have to put a stop to it. The 
steamroller of socialism that's being shoved down the throats of the 
American public that's being driven by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and 
Barack Obama, it needs to hit a speed bump. It needs to hit a stop 
sign. And the only people in America that could put up that stop sign, 
that speed bump up is the American public to cry out, No, we're not 
going to put up with this. We want bipartisanship. We Republicans and 
Democrats to come together and solve the problem.
  And small businesses are going to be hurt markedly by the tax 
increases, and that's going to cost jobs. We're not creating jobs.
  We have been promised by this administration that we were going to 
invest in our infrastructure. Well, the stimulus bill had only a 
miniscule amount of the--this huge deficit spending geared towards 
infrastructure which would, at least, create some jobs in the private 
sector.
  But where are the jobs being created by bigger government? Bigger 
socialism. Taking our freedom away, taking our money away, taking our 
future away and taking our children and our grandchildren's future 
away. Because this budget spends too much. It taxes too much. It 
borrows too much. And we've got to put an end to it. It is up to the 
American people to cry out to Members of Congress to say, No, 
absolutely no. We're going to stop this.
  So I encourage people to contact their congressman, contact their 
senator and say ``no'' to this budget.
  And I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I thank the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Paul Broun. I 
have such great respect for Dr. Broun. I appreciate his words. He's 
made the hue and cry that the American people need to know that this 
budget is historic by any measure. We would agree. The Obama presidency 
is historic, Mr. President. It is historic in the amount of debt that 
will be accumulated.
  Leader Boehner stood on this floor just a few moments ago and stated 
that the debt in this country will double in just 6 years. It spends 
more than all the previous Presidents put together. And Leader Boehner 
said this: He said that when a dollar flows in to the Federal 
Government, 70 cents of that dollar will be needed just to pay for 
interest.
  This is absolutely unsustainable. Pretty soon we will have currency 
equal to Zimbabwe's if we continue down this road because of currency 
devaluation. This is what we're seeing. We're looking at essentially a 
doubling of the debt under what the Obama administration wants to put 
together. But what we hear over and over again from the Obama 
administration, they say this is a debt that we inherited. Is it 
really? We need to look at the facts.

                              {time}  1715

  The facts tell us something different. January of 2007 is when 
Congress was run by the Democrat majority. Republicans ran it up until 
2007 January. At that point, both the House and the Senate took over 
and were run by the Democrats. At that point, we saw the Federal 
deficit begin to rise and skyrocket. Discretionary spending was rising 
and then skyrocketing, and mandatory spending was rising and 
skyrocketing. We had the stimulus bill that was passed, an over $152 
billion.
  Speaker of the House Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and Senator Obama 
all voted ``yes'' for every one of these spending measures that has 
gotten us into the place we're in. Did they inherit this mess or did 
they help create this mess? The American people need to decide.
  We have been down this road before. As a matter of fact, President 
Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary said it best when he said, ``We have 
tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent 
before and it does not work. I say after 8 years of the administration 
we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous 
debt to boot!''
  Mr. Speaker, we've been down this road before. We've all heard the 
saying that, if you don't learn from history, you are doomed to repeat 
it. Unfortunately, the Obama administration appears to making that same 
mistake.
  Now, to speak to the American people is great man, a wonderful 
physician, a man I'm just getting to know. His name is Dr. John 
Fleming. He's serving the people of Louisiana's Fourth District from 
the big city of Minden, Louisiana. He's a freshman, and Dr. John 
Fleming has been a physician for 32 years and also a small business 
owner.
  And I yield, Mr. Speaker, to Dr. Fleming.
  Mr. FLEMING. Well, I want to thank the gentlelady from Minnesota. 
Thank you for your work and leadership, particularly in this area. And 
by the way, I love watching you speak because I think I can learn a lot 
of tips from you. So I do appreciate that.
  I also want to reflect on my colleague from Georgia that just spoke, 
a physician, who made a lot of good comments about the tilt that we 
have right now going towards socialism, certainly liberal socialism at 
the very least.
  You know, it's true, Mr. Speaker, that we've spent in this bill and 
prior bills over the last 2 months, it's evident that our government is 
spending

[[Page 8446]]

too much, taxing too much, and borrowing way too much. Remember, that 
the Congress just passed a $787 billion stimulus package, $410 billion 
omnibus appropriations bill loaded with over 9,000 earmarks, and 
remember, our President promised that he would not support earmarks. 
Now the administration has unveiled a $3.6 trillion Federal spending 
plan, a spending plan that the nonpartisan CBO, Congressional Budget 
Office, has now determined will produce $2.3 trillion of more red ink 
than the President initially predicted.
  I want to turn the camera and the people across America to this 
picture here and explain really what it is. These are kids in Germany 
in 1923, and they're stacking what looks like bricks. What they are, in 
fact, stacking is their currency. That's Deutsche notes right there, 
and in 1923, the value of the currency in Germany as a result of 
cranking out money, cranking out money, printing paper to pay back war 
reparations they couldn't pay back, it made the currency so dilute that 
it took a wheelbarrow, literally a wheelbarrow of cash just to buy a 
loaf of bread. That's just how bad inflation can be, and we all know 
the end of that story. It ended up into Nazi Germany.
  I also bring your attention to this. This is, believe it or not, a 
$10 billion bill. It can be found in Zimbabwe, the same problem, trying 
to solve their fiscal problems by printing more money. And if you keep 
printing more, you get a situation like this where a $10 billion bill 
is required to buy an egg. Yes, Mr. Speaker, that's what this bill will 
buy. However, that's only a few weeks ago. Today, they have something--
in my hand, you can see a $100 trillion bill, believe it or not. And 
what is it worth? The same value as confetti.
  Now, we might think, well, these kind of tragedies cannot happen to 
us in America. Well, is that true? Just today, the Chinese announced 
that they do not like our dollar. They feel like that even though 
they're one of our largest debtors, they no longer trust us in our 
debt.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. Reclaiming my time, I yield to the gentleman from New 
Jersey's Seventh, Mr. Leonard Lance.
  Mr. LANCE. Thank you very much, and thank you for taking the lead on 
this extremely important issue.
  Overspending and over-taxation are terrible factors in the American 
economy today, but from my perspective the worst factor is levels of 
debt, and I think that this is, in effect, generational theft.
  The Congressional Budget Office, in calculating the proposals of the 
Obama administration, indicate that spending will hit about 28.5 
percent of GDP during fiscal year 2009, and this is a record amount. 
CBO also estimates that next year spending will be 25.5 percent and at 
23 and 24 percent over the course of the next decade.
  As someone who tries to be a student of American history, over the 
last 40 years, the level of debt has been roughly 20 percent, and this 
is an historic average. And yet over the course of next several years 
we increase this dramatically. Let me repeat the figures: 28.5 percent 
in this fiscal year, and similar amounts in the next 2 fiscal years.
  I believe that this spending is too great, and I hope that the 
administration will review its budget and working in a bipartisan 
capacity to bring this amount down.

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