[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13596-13604]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1800
                              THE ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. AKIN. Good afternoon, Mr. Speaker, and good afternoon, friends.

[[Page 13597]]

This evening we're going to continue in the discussion which has been 
ongoing.
  We've just been treated to a whole series of wonderful promises and 
all the wonderful things the Democrat Party is going to do for America 
and how we've created all these jobs and we're doing this and that and 
the other thing. The only problem is, it's not working.
  Now, Republicans, and myself particularly here on the floor, talked a 
year ago about the proposals to create jobs and what the Democrats were 
going to do with the economy, and we said it's not going to work. It's 
not that we're being naysayers; it's just that we understand how the 
economy works and the fact that the proposals that have been made don't 
work. The American public is starting to understand that they don't 
work because unemployment is still very, very high, much higher than 
the numbers actually show because after somebody has been looking for a 
job for a year, they're taken off the unemployment list. So when you 
see 10 percent or 9.5 percent unemployment, the actual number, because 
the people who are not counted, who are not working, is far higher.
  I think it's helpful to go back and just understand some basic things 
about economics. I was dazzled, I was amazed Monday of this week as I 
was going through the airport and I saw our President talking and 
accusing Republicans in the Senate of being hypocrites--I think 
``hypocrite'' was the word he was using--in the fact that they didn't 
want to continue people's unemployment. You know, the thing that 
strikes me as being odd is to have a whole series of policies that are 
well calculated to get rid of private sector jobs and then be surprised 
at the fact that there aren't any jobs. And you don't have to really be 
a wizard in economics to understand that the policies of the last 18 
months have killed jobs. In fact, there are Democrats that understand 
that. We're going to talk about one here in just a minute.
  I'd like to go back to 2003, when George Bush was President. I want 
to go back to September 11 of 2003, which was the date of an article 
that appeared in The New York Times, not exactly a conservative 
newspaper. This article said, The Bush administration today recommended 
the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finances 
industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. So here's 
2003, the Bush administration says something is wrong with Freddie and 
Fannie. What's wrong with Freddie and Fannie? Oh, they lost $1 billion 
here or there. Well, you're not supposed to do that. Economically it's 
considered a little sloppy on the books.
  Well, how did that happen? Well, it happened because of the fact that 
we had created a bunch of laws which said that you have to, if you're a 
bank, make loans to people who can't afford to pay the loans. Now, I 
suppose this might have been sold as compassion at one time, but 
somehow to me it seems like to put anybody in a loan that they can't 
afford is certainly not compassionate and is not a wise thing to do. 
But anyway, we did that over a long period of time, the idea being to 
get more and more Americans to own their own homes, which is nice if 
they can afford it.
  Well, what happened, under the last year of Clinton's administration 
they increased the percentage of the loans that had to be made that 
people couldn't afford to make. And what happened also at the same 
time, the Federal Reserve dropped the interest rate to almost zero and 
so there was this huge housing bubble starting up. Houses got more and 
more and more valuable and people could buy a house, get a loan from 
someone saying you don't have to make any down payment and you don't 
have to make any payments at all for 3 years. So you could let the 
government finance this new big house you built, and 3 years later it 
might have come close to doubling and you could sell it and just 
pyramid your money. It was a great deal as long as the music didn't 
stop.
  Well, President Bush said we need to have more Federal authority in 
Freddie and Fannie. Freddie and Fannie are quasi-public, quasi-private 
companies. And so what happened over this period of time is that 
Freddie and Fannie essentially went bankrupt. And when they did, boy 
did it hit the fan. So we are going to see, this is what Bush was 
saying he wanted to do. Here was the response of some of my Democrat 
friends. If they were so good at economics, they wouldn't have gotten 
it this far wrong.
  Here it is: Freddie and Fannie are not facing any kind of financial 
crisis. Oh, they're not facing a financial crisis, huh? Okay. Who is 
this? This is Congressman Frank, who is now in charge of fixing this 
problem, which he hasn't fixed yet. These two entities, Freddie and 
Fannie, are not facing any kind of financial crisis. They've got plenty 
of lobbyists with plenty of money to slop around on Capitol Hill, so we 
kind of like them. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more 
pressure there is on these companies, the less we'll see in terms of 
affordable housing. Interesting. They're not in any kind of financial 
problem, huh? They brought the entire world economic system down 
because of these policies.
  Now, people had the gall to say that free enterprise doesn't work. My 
goodness, it wasn't free enterprise when people are forced to make 
loans that they can't afford to pay. The loans were then cut and sliced 
in pieces and sold all over the world. So everybody had these things, 
and there was no market anymore for them. And so we were called in in 
Congress a number of years ago, a couple of years ago--not quite 2 
years--and told, hey, you've got to do this big bailout, $700 billion 
you've got to give to get the economy back in line. Why? Because of the 
fact that we didn't manage this thing correctly.
  Now, the interesting thing is, now with the economy going bad, the 
Democrats in power, with that going on, they came up with how to fix 
the economy. We're going to talk about that and why it is that--it's 
not that we're mean spirited, we're just saying mechanically, 
economically, it won't work.
  I'm joined tonight by a very fine Congressman from the State of 
Georgia. I think he may be the newest Congressman from the State of 
Georgia and just did very well in his election the other day. I think 
he's got one more election to go, and he'll be down here more 
permanently. But we're delighted to have Congressman Graves from the 
great State of Georgia. And I don't remember exactly where your 
district is. Could you give a little intro about where your district 
is?
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Sure. I am from Georgia's Ninth Congressional 
District, which is north Georgia, north Georgia mountains, a beautiful 
part of the State.
  Mr. AKIN. That's God's country up there. Is that the Blue Ridge 
Mountains?
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Yes, Blue Ridge. The city of Blue Ridge is 
part of the district. And I live in the small town of Ranger, a little 
bitty town, a little farm community.
  Mr. AKIN. How close is that to the Chattooga River?
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. To the Chattooga River.
  Mr. AKIN. That's about an hour or two drive from Atlanta.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Yes, that's not far away at all, you're right.
  Mr. AKIN. My brother is a ``rambling wreck from Georgia Tech.'' He 
used to go kayaking on the Chattooga and got up into that country. It's 
a beautiful area, and I think the citizens from up there are wise to 
have elected you, Congressman. We enjoyed a conversation last week on 
the floor.
  I'd like you to jump in if you'd like to about how this whole thing 
is going. I was coming through the airport on Monday, and I heard the 
President screaming and yelling at Republicans about the fact that we 
didn't want to continue year after year after year paying people for 
not working and screaming at us that we're insensitive to the job 
situation. And I'm thinking, this guy has done more to destroy jobs in 
America than anybody in the history of the country just about, and he 
has the gall to say that.
  And it made me think, it's so simple, I don't see how people can miss 
it. If

[[Page 13598]]

you hammer businesses, then you're not going to have jobs. If you 
destroy companies, then there are not going to be jobs because jobs 
come from companies. And if you hate companies and you hate the private 
sector, then how are you going to have jobs? So how can you, with a 
straight face, complain about jobs when you're trying to destroy the 
companies that make the jobs? It seems sort of straightforward to me. I 
don't even know how to explain it any simpler than that. Please join 
us.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Well, what you're addressing is free market 
capitalism. We know it works, and America was founded on that. And the 
fact that the administration today continues this crazy level of 
spending and then blames businesses for not hiring--and we've heard 
about hope and change and saved and created jobs, all these different 
theories out there. But the one theory we know they're using right now 
is that Keynesian theory of economics, and that is, the infusion of 
money through the government into choices of their own.
  So they're spreading that wealth that we all know that they said they 
would not do, but spreading wealth. And where does that money come 
from? Where does that wealth come from that's being spread? It's coming 
from the citizens of the United States, the taxpayers themselves, the 
small business owners.
  So if we're going to turn this economy around, we've got to apply a 
new theory of economics, the supply side theory of economics--free 
markets, capitalism, competition, all those things that just energize 
the economy. That's what I look forward to, a new governing majority 
here in Congress that is going to bring free market and capitalism back 
to the United States.

                              {time}  1810

  Mr. AKIN. Well, I'll tell you something. I sometimes wish the 
Democrats would just learn from themselves and from their own mistakes, 
you know, because here is a guy, Henry Morgenthau, who was a 
contemporary of little Lord Keynes, and he tries this idea. I think it 
is the equivalent of, if you're from Texas, having those boots with the 
loops in the back, and you reach down and grab those loops and lift 
hard and try to fly around the room.
  The theory is, if the government spends enough money, the economy is 
going to get better. Now, if any father of a family in this country did 
something as stupid as that, they'd probably lock him up and put a 
little white suit on him, you know? To think that if you're in trouble 
economically that what you should do is go out and spend a ton of 
money--I mean maybe the theory is to spend a whole ton of money, eat, 
live and be merry because tomorrow we die, but as an overall theory of 
economics, this is really silly.
  They tried it. FDR tried it. This is this guy, Morgenthau, who has 
come back after 8 years, after taking a recession and turning it into a 
Great Depression. This wasn't just harming free enterprise and 
companies. Literally, those companies closed their doors. It wasn't 
that they were just sort of hunkered down. It wasn't that they were 
just sort of lean and waiting for better times. They closed the doors 
and stopped the businesses. So this is what he said. In Congress, he 
said this:
  We have tried spending money. We are spending money, more than we 
have ever spent before, and it doesn't work.
  I wish the Democrats could just listen to their own people. It 
doesn't work.
  He says: After 8 years of the administration, we have just as much 
unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot.
  This is Henry Morgenthau.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Was that in 2010? It sounds like today, 
doesn't it? You know, it's interesting you bring that up because that's 
what we're dealing with here in the Congress. What the Senate is voting 
on, whether today or tomorrow, is the extension of unemployment 
benefits, right?
  Mr. AKIN. Right.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. If the policies of the Obama administration 
were working so well and if they were saving and creating so many jobs, 
then why do we need to extend unemployment benefits? Doesn't it seem 
like an admission to the fact that it doesn't work, that they are 
failed policies?
  Mr. AKIN. That's why I said I have a hard time understanding how you 
do this with a straight face.
  We've just heard of all these fantastic Democrat programs that are 
working fantastically, that are going along, and everything is fine. 
Yet we're saying, But we've got this little problem of no jobs. So the 
government spent even more money, and instead of understanding the 
nature of Americans--that ``can do'' spirit that makes America such a 
special place--and instead of trying to set a system up where people 
can have jobs and bites at the American dream, we say, ``No, we're just 
going to pay you not to work.''
  You know, that's kind of degrading to people.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. You hit on the solution, which is, if we 
empower the American people--empower the taxpayer, empower the business 
owners--they will drive us through these tough economic days without 
any problem because of that entrepreneurial spirit, that ``can do'' 
spirit, that grit, that willingness to dig deep and to work hard. We 
know that has pulled us through so many challenging days. You know, 
what we've heard for the last couple days--I've heard and I'm sure you 
have--is the Democrats blaming a previous administration over and over 
and over.
  Mr. AKIN. Oh, man. It wasn't just the Bush administration that 
brought Hurricane Katrina. It brought every bad thing that ever 
happened in the whole world.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. They failed to take responsibility for the 
fact that they took the majority in 2006, that they swore in their very 
own Speaker in 2007 and yet failed to take responsibility for the 
actions with the unemployment and with the job losses that we see 
today. Just blame it on someone else, a previous administration.
  Mr. AKIN. You know, there is one thing that is awful hard to argue 
with--just the plain numbers.
  In this year of 2008, Bush was President, but Nancy Pelosi was 
Speaker of the House. This was the worst spending year of the Bush 
administration. Did the Bush administration spend too much money? I 
would say, as a conservative, yes, he did.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Well, let me ask you this.
  Mr. AKIN. $459 billion right here.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Well, where does spending originate? We have 
branches of government, right? We have three of them.
  Mr. AKIN. Right.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. I believe spending and allocation of 
appropriations originates in the House of Representatives, not in the 
executive branch, but in the House of Representatives.
  Mr. AKIN. Right.
  In 2008, that was Bush's worst year--$459 billion. Now take a look at 
the first Obama year. I mean talk about a runaway deficit. This cannot 
continue without the Nation's literally falling apart economically. So 
what you are seeing is the result of this incredible level of Federal 
spending, and its effect is very corrosive to jobs.
  So how is it that you can say, ``Oh, Republicans don't want to keep 
paying people for not working, and they don't care about 
unemployment''? It's like you guys are the ones who are doing 
everything possible to create the unemployment.
  I am joined by my good friend, Congressman Bishop, if you would like 
to join us.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Thank you.
  I am actually very honored to be here with two friends who are 
talking about the significant problems we have in this country--simply, 
the lack of jobs. As we all know, government does not create jobs, but 
government can create a policy to discourage jobs, and that is 
specifically where we are today.
  If I could, I'll just go in a slightly different direction from where 
the two of you have headed so far.
  Mr. AKIN. Yes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I have my good friend here--the newest Member 
from

[[Page 13599]]

the good State of Georgia, so we've got a good southerner here. We have 
somebody from the Midwest, and I am actually from the West. With all 
due respect, I think my part of the Nation is taking a bigger hit in 
this economy, because of government decisions, than are the others. The 
unemployment rate in the West is actually higher than any other section 
in this country.
  Mr. AKIN. Wow. Why is that?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. It has been that way for the last 12 months. So, 
somewhere, somebody has to figure out what is unique about my State and 
about our area in the West that has given us this wonderful distinction 
of having the best joblessness in the Nation for well over a year.
  I think, obviously, there are a number of causes, but it is also, I 
think we can say for a certainty, that many of the new policies and 
regulations that have been adopted during this administration, coming 
out of Washington, are flat out not helping when we could be unleashing 
economic upturn as well as providing domestic energy independence for 
this country, which is a boon to economic development. Yet we're doing 
the exact opposite.
  Let me show you three charts, if I could, simply to illustrate.
  You know, every time I come here, I rant about the amount of public 
lands that we have. The Federal Government owns 650 million acres. That 
means that 1 out of every 3 acres in this country is now owned by the 
Federal Government. Unfortunately, in my area--the West--1 out of every 
2 acres is owned by the Federal Government.
  For example--and this is a different chart than I have used before--
if the amount of land owned in the West by the Federal Government were 
owned in the East, that is how much area, the area in blue, would be 
owned and operated and controlled by the Federal Government. If, on the 
other hand, we in the West had as much land owned by the Federal 
Government as you out in the East--and by that, I mean everything east 
of the Rocky Mountains, that is how much of our territory would be 
controlled.
  So, obviously, there is a unique element there, which simply means, 
of the 12 States that have had the slowest growth in their economies, 
the biggest joblessness increase--and I hate to say that--then 6 of 
those 12 are in the West. Georgia gets in there. I'm sorry. I didn't 
leave you out. Six of those 12 have to be found in the West.
  If you want to go one step further and look at the 20 largest 
counties with 25,000 or more inhabitants, counties which have the 
highest unemployment and joblessness rates, of those 20, 19 of the 20 
are found in the West. You have to go down to number 20 before you 
finally have somebody--in this case, it's Michigan--that breaks through 
with a higher unemployment rate than Western counties have.
  So I am going to make the contention that there is a reason the West 
has been hit very hard in what I simply like to refer to as an 
``inexplicable war on the West.'' I think the numbers bear it out, and 
part of it is because of policies. Without taking too much of your 
time, let me just list off a couple, a slew, of some of those 
administrative decisions.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, I am really interested in what you're going to say 
because it seems to me that there is a war on Missouri going on and a 
war on free enterprise going on, but I didn't know about the war on the 
West, so I am all ears. Please.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Well, we'll all join in the battalion because we 
are all faced with the results of these decisions.
  Let me just check off a couple of things that have happened in the 
West that have destroyed jobs in the West.
  Obviously, in my State, the first thing this administration did is 
cancel 77 oil and gas leases in the State of Utah, but what we don't 
know is they have also halted scheduled oil and gas lease sales in 
Montana, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Wyoming, because of the 
climate of this administration, only is able to lease about 5 percent 
of the leases that are put on bid because of what we are doing here.
  This administration banned uranium mining permits in the State of 
Arizona. They put multiple restrictions on oil shale development 
causes.
  In California, they blocked water that goes to ranchers in the 
central valleys there. So, in some communities in California, up to 40 
percent of those agricultural communities are now faced with 
unemployment. This administration tried to provide $400 million in 
stimulus to that area. Well, it's sad. They didn't need to do that. All 
they needed to do was to turn the water on, and it's free. 
Unfortunately, much of that stimulus money went to districts that voted 
to keep the water turned off, which created the unemployment in the 
first place.
  I spoke to the economic development director from the State of Utah, 
who is in charge of tourism and movies. The West is a great set for 
lots of movies, but one of the problems the movie industry is facing in 
the West is, when you go on government lands, the permitting process to 
just go on there and do this clean energy of companies is taking so 
long that we basically don't have the situation taking place.
  Mr. AKIN. So wait. Now you're really making a case. What I'm hearing 
you saying is there is a systematic series of decisions which literally 
creates unemployment. They are government decisions. It is worse in the 
West because the government controls more of the West, and those 
decisions systematically destroy jobs while the President comes on and, 
with a straight face, says that Republicans are hypocrites because of 
the fact that we don't want to keep paying people for not working.

                              {time}  1820

  It just amazes me.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Let me throw a couple more statistics at you, and 
then I want to do some dialoguing here because the numbers are good, 
but we have to put them in context eventually.
  This administration is always big about saying, well, we need to have 
alternative energy sources to help our economy grow. I think we need to 
have all kinds of energy sources. But the Chamber of Commerce has 
identified 380 renewable energy projects that have been blocked or 
stalled over the past 4 years. The total cost of those stalled projects 
is $560 billion in lost economic activity and approximately a quarter 
of a million jobs that were not allowed simply because--it doesn't 
matter whether we're talking about fossil fuels or wind power or solar 
power or nuclear power--we're not doing anything to develop new energy 
sources.
  Western Energy Alliance did a survey to find out what would be taking 
place in the West, these areas that I'm saying have been heavily hit. 
Seventy-four percent of the respondents to the survey by the Western 
Energy Alliance said their companies are downsizing capital investment 
in the Rocky Mountain area. That's $1.1 billion of investment that has 
been shifted from the Rocky Mountains to other parts, simply because of 
the inability of the government to try and help us to develop energy 
sources. That is $2.8 billion in infrastructure that would have come 
into the West and has not.
  And it has a ripple effect. If you stop an oil lease or a gas lease 
or a wind power project or a solar power project in the West, you also 
stop projects that are on private lands abutting that area, and you 
stop the need of having truckers bring the equipment in and bring 
people in. And then you lose the mechanics jobs, and you lose the jobs 
from the hotel industry where they are surfaced.
  Ninety percent of the respondents say that their company will 
continue to divert investment in the Rockies until there is a change in 
the regulatory process.
  We don't have to have this joblessness. This government is creating 
it by policies that are not intended to build jobs but actually prevent 
jobs from being created.
  I yield back.
  Mr. AKIN. The question I have is: How does the President think he can 
get away with doing this? I mean, all of these people that work in 
these different companies, when those decisions are made and they get 
rid of jobs--we were doing the same thing, weren't we,

[[Page 13600]]

with telling people they couldn't drill for oil in the gulf? Didn't 
that put lots of people out of work? I don't understand why people 
don't see that and realize that you can't have a war on private 
business in America and, at the same time, say you're worried about 
jobs, because it seems like, to me, people get jobs in businesses. And 
if you destroy businesses--of course, their concept of jobs is, We'll 
hire more people for the census workers, I suppose.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. If I might interject real quick here, and I'm 
going to have to leave the conversation in a few minutes, but what 
we've seen for over 12 months now is unemployment at, what, 9.5 
percent, and we've heard a lot about saving and creating jobs. We've 
seen a lot of bailouts, buyouts, stimuluses, cash for clunkers, 
financial reform, TARP 1, 2, and I'm sure there will be many more. The 
fact is they're not working.
  But we're going into January of this year and taxes are going to go 
up on every citizen of the United States. Every tax bracket will be 
raised. Capital gains will go up. The dividend tax will go up. 
Inheritance tax goes up. The marriage tax goes up as well.
  And I'm curious, how does this administration, how does the 
leadership of this House face the American people this November and say 
that is going to create jobs, that's going to get you back to work? 
Taxing you more to fund failed programs of the last 12 months is going 
to get you back to work. I don't know how they're going to do it.
  But I'm going to stand before my constituents with a positive message 
and let them know that there are men like you and me and others in this 
Chamber that are going to stand up daily and stand up and put forth 
positive solutions to get this country back on track. And we're going 
to get it back on track, but it's going to take a lot of work, and it's 
going to take pushing government out of the way and empowering the 
American people to once again dream and dream big.
  Mr. AKIN. That is such a refreshing breath, or a little breeze 
anyway. We're hoping it will be even more refreshing in November.
  But what you're saying is, and the bottom line is, the government is 
not the thing that creates the jobs. And what we've seen is, for 18 
months, a policy that says the government is going to take over 
everything. They fired the President of General Motors. They're going 
to take over insurance companies. They're going to take over banks. 
They've decided not only are they going to take over the insurance of 
flood insurance, they're going to take over the loans for students. 
They're going to take over whatever it is, one-sixth of the economy 
with their socialized medicine.
  If they could have, they wanted to take over the energy sector with 
their cap-and-tax bill, which would do nothing for global warming 
except for more taxes and more big bureaucratic government. And the 
solution to every problem is more taxes and more government, and they 
don't learn from the people, from their own party. You know, JFK 
understood that you've got to back off on taxes.
  I thank you very much, gentleman, for joining us, the Congressman 
from--Mr. Graves District, I think it's the Ninth District of Georgia, 
and really a fine addition here. And I appreciate the fact you have 
some business sense and some common sense, because America really needs 
to get back on that.
  And I also appreciate my good friend, Congressman Bishop from Utah. 
We'll get back to him in just a minute. But the talk about it was the 
largest tax increase in history. This is the dumbest thing in the world 
to do when you have a bad economy and no jobs. JFK understood what to 
do. He cut taxes and cut government spending.
  And what are we doing? We've got the largest tax increase in history 
coming up here. Those paying 10 percent will pay 15 percent. Those 
paying 25 will pay 28. Those paying 28 will pay 31; 33 goes to 36; 35 
goes to 39. That's the biggest tax increase in the history of our 
country. It's exactly the wrong thing to do.
  It's not that we're being naysayers. It's not that we're being 
critical. It's just that it won't work. And the solutions are 
straightforward. What you want to do, you want to cut spending and you 
want to cut taxes.
  And here, this is this wonderful recovery plan. The Democrats said, 
if you vote for this $800 billion jobs bill, if you vote that, this is 
what's going to happen is this blue line. They said, if you don't vote 
for it, this light blue line is what's going to happen. You could have 
unemployment as high as 9 percent if you don't vote for us spending 
$800 billion, supposedly get the economy back and going.
  And so, on a strictly party line vote, the Democrats put in their 
nifty plan, and here's what happened, actual unemployment. And they're 
saying the economy is so good and so strong that we now need to extend 
people's unemployment benefits. There's something about that that just 
doesn't add up.
  My good friend from Utah.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. And I appreciate that. I think if you keep--I 
don't know if they can keep the cameras on that particular chart, but 
it is a telling chart. And it's one of the things that I think you are 
trying to say, that we have yet to learn lessons from history.
  It is very clear that we are trying with the stimulus bill, a few of 
the other bills, right now, creating jobs by having tax-funded jobs 
being created. Unfortunately, that's a sector that's growing, but 
that's not a sector that will continue and build and has a multiplier 
effect in the economy. To do that, you have to have the private sector 
involved.
  I hate to say this, but when we went into the Great Depression, there 
was the history. We'd already learned after the end of World War I how 
lowering tax rates actually increased the amount of revenue and spurred 
the economy. Same thing you mentioned also that took place in the 1960s 
that President Kennedy clearly understood, and it's happened several 
other times in the history of this country.
  But at the beginning of the Depression, there were many people within 
the business community who had money to invest in business that could 
have spurred the economy, created jobs, and grown our economy out of 
the Depression. But they did not invest that money, primarily because 
they were afraid of what the tax and regulatory policies of the 
government would do, and, therefore, they simply sat on it. That's what 
happened as part of the problems we had in the Depression. People with 
investment opportunities did not do so.
  Unfortunately, I think we find ourselves in that same situation.

                              {time}  1830

  The future tax policies, and you just mentioned we don't know what 
will happen at the end of this year, but it could be catastrophic in 
raising taxes. But in addition to the regulatory policies that we have 
placed in effect, the effort of the continuous deficit spending that we 
have done, all of those have added to a portion of unrest within the 
business community and it simply says, ``I'm going to wait to see where 
I'm going to invest to see what actually happens eventually.'' That is 
why the government doesn't actually create jobs, but the government 
policies can destroy the ability for those jobs to be created at the 
same time.
  So I appreciate what my good colleagues have been saying, because it 
is true. Our regulatory policies and our tax policies have created so 
much nervousness within the system, we are not doing that which could 
encourage a multiplier effect within our economy, and that is exactly 
what we need at this particular time.
  Mr. AKIN. So what we have seen, according to what you're saying, is 
very clear. First of all, you've got the tremendous, tremendous level 
of spending, which is exactly the wrong thing. And what is happening 
with that tremendous level of spending, you're getting what you would 
expect, you're getting a lot of unemployment, and that's making it 
worse and worse.
  As you do that spending, of course, we have a question of who owns 
our debt. In 1970, the foreign debt holdings were 5 percent. It doesn't 
seem like 1970 was so long ago to me. In 1990, 20 years later, foreign 
holdings had gone

[[Page 13601]]

from 5 to 19 percent. Now 2010, another 20 years later, total foreign 
debt is now 47 percent. Those are not numbers that make people who 
understand business and understand economics comfortable with where we 
are in this country.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Before you actually put that chart down, I think 
you understated that sentiment. It's not just people who understand 
business are not comfortable with that. I don't understand business and 
I look at that chart and I'm not comfortable with that. Any normal 
American would look at that and say something is desperately wrong with 
what we are doing.
  Mr. AKIN. What we have is foreigners basically bailing us out. As 
long as they're willing to do that. But pretty soon they're going to 
say, If you want us to bail you out some more, you're going to have to 
pay me more interest. And boy, it's going to be a problem then.
  This is a comparison. Sometimes it's helpful because when you start 
talking about billions and trillions of dollars, you say, man, the only 
thing I can understand is a hundred or a thousand dollars. And so here 
we are compared to other countries. This is deficit as a percent of 
gross domestic product. This is the United States here. We are third 
only to Spain and the United Kingdom in terms of our deficit. The 
United States is third only to Greece and Italy.
  You take a look at these European countries, and they're not just in 
nifty economic shape. In fact, I heard a statistic today, I don't know 
if you had heard this before, gentleman, but I was told that if you 
take a look at what we call the poverty level in America, a person in 
America living at the poverty level is doing better than a person in 
the middle of the middle class in Europe. That's what socialism buys 
you.
  I will say that again. A person at the poverty level in America is 
doing better economically, right at the poverty level line, than 
somebody who is a middle class person, an average middle class person 
in Europe. That says that all of this Keynesian socialistic stuff is 
terribly inefficient. And here we go right down the line trying to 
imitate the examples of Greece and Italy and the United Kingdom with 
the fact that we're just overspending radically.
  We go back to this thing. It just seems like, I've talked about this 
a lot of weeks, you've joined me, and this isn't that complicated. 
There are things that kill jobs. One of them is excessive taxation. 
When the government takes too much money, the people that have the 
businesses can't invest because they're giving their money away. So 
what are you going to do? You tax all the well-to-do people. It's well-
to-do people who own the businesses. You can't have it both ways. If 
you want to destroy the businesses, you're not going to have any jobs. 
It can only be one of two ways.
  Insufficient liquidity. We have the wrong laws in terms of that 
policy. You have just given us an incredible example of red tape and 
government mandates just destroying the job market out west. Those are 
amazing numbers.
  Did your office pull those numbers together, gentleman?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Actually some of them we did, but the one 
especially about renewable energy products, the 380 renewable energy 
products that have not been allowed to go forward, which would be 
another quarter of a million jobs and $500 billion in economic input, 
that was done by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That actually happens to 
be nationwide; not just in the West.
  Mr. AKIN. Wow.
  And then, of course, the economic uncertainty as you're saying. When 
you see the government taking over the auto industry and the insurance 
industry and then going to take over the health care industry, that 
makes people that understand economics very uncertain. They're not 
going to put a lot of money into trying to create jobs. They'll make 
jobs. There's a president of a company in St. Louis called Emerson 
Electric. Emerson Electric says, we'll make jobs; we're just not going 
to make them in the United States because we can't afford to.
  We have created a set of policies that are so toxic, we have done so 
well with this list of job killers and doing every one of these things 
very well that he said, Yeah, we'll create jobs, but they're going to 
be in foreign countries because we can't afford to do business in this 
country because we've made the environment so toxic.
  And yet we talk about saying, oh, my goodness, we've got 
unemployment, we've done all this wonderful stuff, but now we've still 
got to do more to help the unemployment, if what we're doing was so 
wonderful.
  Take a look at these policies. Sometimes a picture is worth a 
thousand words. Here we have the President saying, ``Now give me one 
good reason why you're not hiring.'' You've got the government taking 
over health care, the cap-and-trade, the global warming thing, and all 
these other taxes that are coming along. As it turns out, health care 
has got a lot more hidden taxes than we realized in it.
  Here's the poor shop owner of the china shop with these bulls 
marching around; he feels like hiding behind his desk here because of 
the fact that we just can't seem to understand some very, very basic 
economics.
  Here is what we're doing. One of the big killers, of course, is tax 
increases. These are the corporate tax rates across the entire world. 
You see the green line over there, it says the United States has the 
second highest corporate tax rate. We say, gosh, I can't figure out why 
we don't have more jobs. But look at what we're doing. It's foolish 
policy.
  And then you can take a look at the largest tax increase that we're 
looking at starting in 2011 unless Congress acts. Married people; the 
standard deduction is going to be changed.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Would the gentleman from Missouri simply restate 
what that first line in black actually means. Unless Congress acts, 
taxes will go up.
  Mr. AKIN. Yes.
  Well, if you recall, in 2001, the Republicans inherited a recession. 
So they had to do something about it. As President Bush was running for 
office the first time, he said, what we've got to do is cut taxes and 
cut spending. So what they did was we cut taxes three different times 
in different ways. Those taxes, because of the way the Senate worked, 
they were going to go along until 2011, so it was a 10-year tax cut. At 
2011, the taxes were going to revert back to the way they were at 2001 
when we were in the middle of a big recession.
  So we did those tax cuts, particularly a tax cut in 2003 or so, and 
that was dividends and capital gains. What that did by cutting those 
things, we allowed those businessmen to invest in their own business. 
And we saw employment jump up. We saw the economy jump up. And 
ironically by cutting taxes, the Federal Government raised more money 
than they had when the taxes were higher. And that worked fine.
  So now with the economy in the pits, what we're going to do is raise 
these taxes, which is just plain crazy. I don't know how long we have 
to stand on the floor and say, look, the idea of continuing to spend 
and tax is not what's going to create jobs.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. So what the gentleman is telling me is that if 
Congress does nothing, there will automatically be a marriage penalty 
increase. Child deductions will go down. There will be another death 
tax increase. There will be a capital gains tax increase; a dividend 
tax increase. Unless we do something proactive, it will automatically 
happen.
  Mr. AKIN. That's correct.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. And so far we're a half a year away from the 
deadline and we have yet to do anything proactive about it.
  Mr. AKIN. Not only have we failed to do anything proactive, but the 
Democrats have made it absolutely clear that they will not renew these 
tax cuts. They're not going to do this. So we know that we're going to 
end up with the biggest tax increase in our history right on top of 
this huge unemployment and a recession going on. This is not wise.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. While you're there, if the gentleman wouldn't 
mind for just a minute, let me talk about another concept of taxes 
which I don't

[[Page 13602]]

think many people are aware. These are things that will automatically 
happen. But there are bills that will be coming to the floor sometime 
soon that deal with tax increases on our form of energy production.
  Now one of those things listed in there in the cost of doing business 
is also the cost of energy that takes place. There is a bill that 
passed the Natural Resources Committee, it's called the CLEAR Act, 
which purportedly dealt with what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico 
which is a terrible crisis and needs to be changed in some way.

                              {time}  1840

  But deep within the bowels of this bill is a $2 per gallon tax 
increase on all oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico, and a 40 cents I 
think it's per trillion cubic feet of natural gas that will be produced 
in the Gulf of Mexico. And one would assume, if we are dealing with the 
Gulf of Mexico, that money could be for restoration work, for cleanup 
work, for those who have lost jobs and lost income during that period 
of time. Unfortunately, that's not what that money will be used for if 
this bill passes.
  That money is all going to go to the Federal department into a 
specific fund which would now bypass appropriations and be just under a 
billion dollars a year to buy more land in the Federal inventory. So 
the amount of blue on this chart could grow in every section of this 
country, but once again primarily I get the fun of it in my State, 
where most of the public land is.
  That is a tax increase on business solely so the government can grow 
its hold on the amount of property we own here, and in so doing will 
infringe upon the ability of producing better energy in the future. And 
like I say, if we were actually moving forward in alternative energy, 
as we say we want to, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. But this 
administration is also shutting down alternative energy projects at the 
same time it is shutting down traditional energy projects. And that's 
another tax that goes onto that multitude of taxes you are talking 
about, and actually goes on to compound the amount of spending that 
we're doing.
  Mr. AKIN. I think that what you are saying is the list I gave you 
before is incomplete. I said the government wants to take over autos, 
they want to take over insurance, they want to take over student loans, 
they want to take over flood insurance, they want to take over whatever 
it is, a sixth of the economy with socializing medicine, but it's not 
enough for them to own all that. What they also want is they want to 
own the land.
  So they're going to tax businesses with some sort of a pretext this 
is a little tax because of the gulf oil spill, and they're just going 
to use it as a slush fund to buy up more land. It goes back to Rahm 
Emanuel, he is chief of staff for the President, his incredible 
statement that let no crisis go without taking full advantage of it.
  So we've got a crisis that is largely perpetrated by the Federal 
Government in the gulf. Certainly BP was culpable for doing some things 
wrong. But their poor decision-making seems to be eclipsed by the total 
failure of the Federal Government to deal with something that's fairly 
fundamental. It's called a hole in the bottom of the ocean. And if you 
were really going to be on top and show people that the Federal 
Government was something you could really trust, you would put a fusion 
cell together, you would get people to make decisions, instead of 
Governor Jindal asking the Federal Government for permission to dredge 
up a little sandbar to stop the oil and waiting more than a month, as 
the oil comes into his wetlands, to get an answer.
  I mean the Federal response to this thing, and a lot of the problems 
on the oil rig, were because of all kinds of Federal regulations as 
well. So we have this idea of the containment dome. Here's another 
containment dome that's not working. We're spending some money, and 
we're spending it at an unusual rate, a rate that would destroy our 
country if it continues that way.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the gentleman expressing I think the 
frustration that many of us in Congress are feeling in the direction in 
which this country is going, and that we can look at concept after 
concept of either outrageous spending, poor policy that deals with tax 
policy, poor regulatory policy, poor energy development policy, put 
those all together, and it still spells a lack of jobs. And what was 
supposed to be a time period where we were going to be creating all 
sorts of jobs is simply one where we have lost jobs.
  Unfortunately, what we are also finding unique about this recession 
is people who have lost their job are staying unemployed longer or 
taking part-time jobs instead. The length of the joblessness is 
unusually long in this type of recession. And I think part of that goes 
back to the policies that this country is pushing forward that do not 
encourage investment in our economy and do not multiply our economy 
impact, when we have historical evidence of how that could easily 
happen. We are ignoring that.
  Mr. AKIN. I think we need to make sure that given a particular period 
of time--and I appreciate your joining me here. Thank you very much, 
Congressman. I am so thankful for some of the very, very fine people 
that are good thinkers, very thoughtful, coming from all areas of our 
country that have a deep interest in America.
  What you have going on here is a systematic attack on the fabric of 
what America really is. And you have a belief system if there is a 
consistency in Federal policies, and that consistency is that the 
government is taking everything over, and the American public, at least 
a certain percentage of the American public, is really getting 
concerned about that. They are concerned because they feel like we're 
losing our country. The government is not our friend, the government is 
not our servant. The government is becoming our master. It's becoming a 
tyrant. And it's taxing us to the point and it's spending to the point 
that it's going to destroy our country.
  You take a look at what's going on in Europe, and you see that we're 
competing with some of the most fiscally irresponsible nations in 
Europe in terms of our numbers, in terms of our spending, in terms of 
our taxation. And this has got a lot of people scared, a lot of people 
scared. And they have very good reason to be. And the fact of this 
matter is you can hear all kinds of economists talk about fancy 
theories, but it's not very complicated. It's as simple as a lemonade 
stand.
  If you tax that lemonade stand too much, the guy that runs it can't 
afford to keep it going. If you tax it just less than too much, you 
make it so he is never going to add any new lemonade stands, because 
that takes extra money, and you took all his extra money away. So when 
the government takes money and creates jobs, or hires more people, now 
the government--supposedly, the rate of pay of a government employee is 
twice what it is of an employee in the private sector. If the 
government keeps doing that, what happens is it pulls money out of the 
economy. That creates the unemployment, and then you start to go into 
this joblessness situation.
  So here we are. These things are not complicated. Too much taxation. 
JFK understood that you can't do that. You've got to cut taxes. Ronald 
Reagan understood that. George Bush understood it. And when they cut 
taxes, what happened was we pulled out of the recession.
  Insufficient liquidity. This is one of those policies just like 
Congressman Bishop was talking about, where the Federal Government is 
making bad business decisions, making it hard for businesses to get 
loans. And most of the businesses don't even want loans because the 
environment is so toxic for business there is what we say in Missouri, 
they are hunkered down like toads in a hailstorm. Because they're 
saying, oh, my goodness, we've got all this economic uncertainty and 
all this red tape that's being generated, we don't know what's going on 
next. And as that happens, they're not investing the money. So what 
happens? We don't have jobs.

[[Page 13603]]

  So this is all very predictable. It's about as simple as a lemonade 
stand. If the government red tape tells you that you've got to test 
every glass of lemonade you make, and you have to put 10 different 
tests on it, it makes it so expensive that you can't sell the lemonade. 
This stuff is not that complicated.
  What's happened is the government is no longer the servant of the 
people; the government is taking over massive sectors of the economy, 
and they are spending way beyond what there is any possibility that we 
can maintain. And most people, when they take a look at this level of 
deficit spending, they realize that something has to change.
  Now, there's a couple different ways that you can change it. The 
first you could do is you could just take everything the Federal 
Government's doing and try to freeze it or reduce it. The problem is 
that's not going to get it. The second thing you could try to do is get 
rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse. Well, there are no line items that 
say waste, fraud, and abuse. And you're not going to fix this problem 
by getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.
  What has to happen is we have to go back to some sense of sanity and 
realize that the Federal Government's job is not to play God, not to 
try to be all things to all people, but have the Federal Government 
become limited once again and do the things that it must do. Most of 
the things we're trying to do now could be done by States. We should 
send those decision-making policies back to the States. And what we 
need to do, instead of spending this much money, we need to do the few 
simple things that the Federal Government can do and must do.
  What are those things? Well, first of all national security. States 
are not going to be able to run our military. That's not the job for 
State government. That's a job for Federal Government. And the other 
thing is, of course, our law enforcement system, the fact that we don't 
want terrorists running around inside our country. So the justice that 
the Federal Government should be rendering is external, that is our 
military, and internal in the sense of our police, and laws, justices, 
courts, et cetera, and jails.

                              {time}  1850

  So those are the basic things the Federal Government has to do.
  When the country started a long time ago, Washington, D.C. was a 
boring place. They only had a couple of laws on the Federal books. One 
of them was against piracy on the high seas. That was something that 
the States weren't having to deal with. That was a Federal job. Piracy 
on the high seas. Another one was counterfeiting. The Federal 
Government makes the money supply. You don't want people 
counterfeiting. That was a Federal law. And so you had a few Federal 
laws, but all kinds of other things were done at the local and State 
level.
  But here what we've got going on is the government is trying to be 
God to everybody, trying to be all things to all people; and what's 
happening is it doesn't work. It never worked in other countries. I'm 
amazed that we would be foolish enough to do this level of spending.
  We saw a country, it was called the US--It's something that I recall 
historically, called the US, and they had a philosophy of government in 
this particular US that said the government is going to give you food 
and housing and education and a job, and it's also going to give you 
health care. That country was called the USSR. That country 
economically failed and collapsed. We all saw it coming. We were 
frightened of it because of their nuclear weapons, but we saw that 
their economy didn't work.
  And what are we doing with this? Every single thing the Soviet Union 
was doing, which is the government is going to take care of your 
housing, it's going to take care of your food, it's going to take care 
of your health care, going to take care of your education, and your job 
because the government is taking over all of these businesses. We're 
repeating the same thing that didn't work. And Americans all across 
this country--I'm not talking about just Republicans, Democrats, and 
independents--it's just people are starting to get it that we're on the 
wrong track.
  So it led to the bumper sticker that said, Had enough change yet? I 
think that's one of the things the President promised was change. And I 
think he's certainly keeping his promise in that regard, if in no 
other.
  So these are things that are really upsetting people; and when you 
take a look at the combination of what's going on, these are really, 
really serious. The comparison of these other countries I think is 
really telling. When you see deficit as a percent of GDP and the United 
States is third worst in terms of deficit--debt is a percent of GDP; 
United States is the third worst. You go, This is not good at all.
  Then you find out the statistic that I just heard about today, which 
says that the poverty level, the line that says you're in the poverty 
level in America, that line is the average of the middle class in 
Europe. The average person in the middle class in Europe lives below 
our poverty level.
  So do we want to go down the direction of what these European 
countries are doing with the government taking everything over, all 
kinds of rules and regulations that hamstring the free enterprise 
system? I think not.
  I'm going to close this evening by talking a little bit about the 
America that I love.
  The America that I love was populated by these crazy people that came 
here, and they had dreams to do amazing things, things that a lot of 
people would have said in Europe that you can't do that. And yet these 
people came to this country with these dreams, and the dreams as they 
worked on them became a vague possibility and then even a possibility. 
And finally they became a reality. And so America was built one dream 
at a time by different creative people that came to our land.
  I think first of all of my favorite historic group of people, the 
Pilgrims coming to this land; and just over a hundred Pilgrims came. 
They had a dream of creating a civilization different than anything in 
Europe. You know, the teachers always say the Pilgrims came here for 
religious freedom which, of course, is silly. They had religious 
freedom in Holland. They didn't come here for that reason. They came 
with a much more grandiose idea. They wanted to build a new 
civilization unlike anything they'd seen in Europe.
  And so they gave us certain ideas. They separated church government 
from civil government. They wrote a written Constitution called the 
Mayflower Compact, the first time in all of human history that a group 
of free people under God created a civil government to be their 
servants. The civil government servant, not master. That piece of paper 
signed on the great table of the Mayflower. In ye name of God, Amen. 
Goes on to say, We do covenant and combine ourselves together into a 
civil body politic for the glory of God, the advancement of the 
Christian faith, and to frame such just and equal laws would be meet 
and necessary.
  The first time there was a written Constitution under God of a group 
of free people making a civil government to be their servant, the 
entire foundation of the American civil government founded in 1620 
because these people dared to have a dream, and when they came here 
within the first 3 months, half of them died. And the Mayflower going 
back to England said, You guys better give up. You started here as a 
little over a hundred, 103 people. Now you're down to barely just 50. 
You need to come back to England and give up. They said, No. We believe 
God called us here for a purpose.
  So they said as they were dying as they got older and as Plymouth 
Colony survived and did well, they said they thought that they were 
stepping stones for people who were going to come after to build a new 
nation because they had a dream in their hearts of what this country 
could be. By the way, they threw out Socialism in Plymouth Colony 
because they knew it was unbiblical. They understood in 1620 what we 
don't understand in 2010.
  They were followed by other kinds of people, all of the diversity of 
these people that came with all of these crazy ideas. One of them built 
a hundred

[[Page 13604]]

light bulbs and not one of them worked. And his attitude was very 
cheery. He said, Now I know a hundred ways to not make a light bulb. He 
kept trying and pretty soon Thomas Edison made his first light bulb.
  So America was built this way on free enterprise by people having the 
courage to take a try at something and fail and try again. But it 
wasn't built by the government trying to give everybody jobs and the 
government taking everything over. They were trying to get away from 
those big kings of Europe. They wanted the government to be simply a 
servant, just a facilitator, a facilitator so people could enjoy what 
they believed were their God-given rights, to life, to liberty, and to 
the pursuit of happiness. They could pursue happiness. They knew the 
government could never guarantee happiness. But they just new that they 
could try.
  And so it was for generations and generations. America became one of 
the most unique and exceptional countries in the world because it was 
based on a new idea, a new set of principles. Some people call it free 
enterprise. Some people call it the American Dream. Some people talk 
about it as the can-do attitude. And what we're doing is we're killing 
that dream.
  And that's why we stand here on the floor and talk about these 
policies. What we're trying to do is to turn America back into Europe. 
We left Europe. We don't want to go back to Europe. Some people may 
want to go back to Europe. Be happy if they'd take a one-way ticket 
over there. Don't turn us into Europe with the socialistic policies of 
the government taking over everything.
  We've seen so many examples of the Federal Government being lousy at 
doing what it does. We think about the efficiency of the post office, 
the compassion of the IRS. Think about the Energy Department. The 
Energy Department--people aren't aware it was created so that we 
wouldn't be dependent on foreign oil and ever since the Energy 
Department was created, we're more and more dependent on foreign oil. 
Talk about something totally failing in its mission.
  And we've just seen what happened in the gulf oil spill. We've seen 
taking the President 50 days before he even contacted the head of BP. 
The President having the authority to put a team together of the best 
resources not only in the country but in the world and being unwilling 
to take these big ships that foreign countries owned that could come 
and suck up all of that oil and process the oil and spit the water out. 
But no, we're not going to do that. Dithering around with more and more 
government bureaucracy. Is this the sort of thing that we really want 
to put more trust in our Federal Government?
  We've seen historically that federal governments of foreign countries 
have killed more people of their own citizens than all the wars of 
history since the time of Christ. If you add up all of the people 
killed in wars since the time of Christ historically, there are less 
people killed by war than there are by governments killing their own 
citizens. Do we not have some natural fear of excessive government? I 
don't understand why we have this irrational faith in the efficiency of 
big government. It seems to me that it's just a very, very unwise place 
to be putting our faith. Why do we want to go back to Europe? It 
doesn't make sense.
  I think we need to think, rather, in terms of the bright light and 
the freedom that comes from people being allowed to succeed or to fail, 
for people to be able to pursue their dreams. The Bible tells us that 
for every single human being in this world, God made a special job for 
them to do. And when people have the courage to just chase after what's 
in their heart, the dream that's in their heart, that's what makes 
great civilization. That was one of the things that distinguished 
America that made it such a unique and different Nation because people 
were able to follow the dream that was in their own heart.
  And how can you do that if the government starts to keep taking 
everything over and taking more things over and taxing you and making 
it impossible for you to do the kinds of things that Americans for 
generations have done?
  There are two views of America that we see. The view that you see now 
is the view that reflects the Democrat Party. What you have seen for 18 
months is total Democrat decision-making. The Republicans on most of 
these issues vote ``no,'' and we are totally ignored because we are, 
quite frankly, 40 votes short in this Chamber. And ignored in the 
Senate as well.
  So what you see is Democrat policy, what you see is European policy, 
and what you see is the destruction of the American Dream. And that 
must stop.

                          ____________________