[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14466-14473]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           POSITIVE SOLUTIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Perriello). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Graves) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I guess I rise at an appropriate 
time to follow the dialogue that we just heard.
  It amazes me, as I'm here now on my 44th day in the House of 
Representatives, and it seems like on each and every day I've heard the 
other side of the aisle do nothing but blame a previous administration 
for the failings of today. It is my hope that at some point they will 
begin taking responsibility for some of the policy actions.
  But what we're here to talk about tonight are positive solutions. 
We've heard a lot of blaming and name calling here over the past 
several weeks, and we're here tonight to talk about positive solutions 
to some of the difficult challenges.
  So to the colleagues that were just speaking, we're here to call your 
bluff. You said come call your bluff, well, here we are, and I've got 
some good gentlemen that are going to join me. But what I want to start 
out with today is we're going to talk about the kitchen table 
solutions.
  As you may have heard, we have had a program here where we've been 
actually going out and seeking solutions from the American people, not 
from our leadership, not from a political party, but from the American 
people; and it's called America Speaking Out. And there have been more 
than 12,000 specific ideas generated from the American people, more 
than 600,000 votes cast on these ideas as to what is most important.
  And so the top concerns from the kitchen table all across America: 
number one, jobs--and I think we've been saying, where are the jobs? 
Number two, spending. Why isn't the Federal Government balancing their 
checkbook? And then health care, ObamaCare itself. So that's what we 
are going to talk about tonight.
  As we move through this, I know we have some colleagues that are 
going to join me. My good colleague from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) is going 
to be with us and also Mr. Thompson from Pennsylvania. But first we're 
going to talk about the number one issue facing America: jobs, jobs 
creation.
  We have a few quotes here. One--this is, I guess, just from last 
year, it says: ``Our stimulus plan will likely save''--``likely,'' key 
word--``save or create 3 to 4 million jobs. Ninety percent of these 
jobs will be created in the private sector and the remaining 10 percent 
in the public sector.'' But now the public sector has lost nearly 8 
million jobs in the last 2 years; government has gained 656,000 jobs. 
So when our colleagues from the other side of the aisle stood here a 
minute ago and said jobs have been created, they were in fact true; but 
they were created in the public sector, not the private sector.
  And then it also says estimated unemployment without the stimulus 
would be 8.8 percent this year. Well, with all of the stimulus 
bailouts, buyouts, Cash for Clunkers, you ring it all up, unemployment 
in May was 9.7; far exceeded their expectations. So obviously the plans 
are not working.
  So what have been the job killers? Excessive taxation, insufficient 
liquidity, economic uncertainty, and red tape and government mandates. 
So over the last year we've seen nearly double-digit unemployment, the 
debt is continuing to grow, we've got a job-killing agenda, and 
according to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, one in 
six small businesses are concerned about the uncertainty of the future. 
Fifteen million people out

[[Page 14467]]

of jobs, out of work right now, unemployment at its highest rate in 25 
years, and the private sector, again, has lost 8 million jobs.
  So we heard a minute ago, stimulus: that was creating all the jobs, 
that was going to take care of America. Well, I think about stimulus 
and health care and all that we saw last year, and it brought Americans 
to the National Capital last year. If you will remember, on September 
12, Americans from all over this Nation rode on buses here, flew on 
airplanes to celebrate--was it to celebrate or to speak out against 
what has been done? And we all know the American people are not happy 
right now.
  So what is coming up next? 2011, 5 months away, under the leadership 
here in Congress, we will see taxes go up on each and every American. 
We heard ``middle class tax cuts'' just a few minutes ago. There aren't 
going to be any middle class tax cuts; in fact, every tax rate goes up 
for every American all across the country in so many different ways. 
Every individual tax bracket goes up. We have a marriage penalty, the 
Child Tax Credit will be cut in half. It doesn't sound like a tax cut 
to me; it's actually a tax increase. And then farmers, small business 
owners will see their tax rate go up to 55 percent in the States. And 
then of course capital gains and dividend taxes will rise as a result 
of the leadership here in Washington.
  So much to do, so much to do. The good thing is that we have positive 
solutions. That's what we are here to talk about tonight. I know my 
good friend, Mr. Thompson from Pennsylvania, is a good leader on job 
creation and is working hard in that area. I would love to have you 
join us, if you would like, to share with us some positive solutions 
here to get Americans back to work. And does that include public sector 
jobs or private sector jobs?
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I thank my good friend for coordinating 
this hour tonight, very important hour. This is about real solutions, 
not the types of policies we've seen over these past 19 months which 
has grown the size of government--bloated the size of government, 
actually. We have increased the deficit to the point that what we have 
is a legacy of debt. There is not a generation, I don't think, that 
ever wants to have it so that--we always want to leave this country 
better than what we found it, to pass it on to our children and our 
grandchildren. Yet with the trend that we have been on from the 
leadership, or the lack of leadership, from my colleagues across the 
aisle in terms of the taxing, the spending, the borrowing, what we have 
today for the generations to follow us is just a tremendous legacy of 
debt.
  I think the data that just recently came out showed the deficit 
pushing $14 trillion, $14 trillion. But you know what? There are better 
ways. We've been working on these. These are not new ideas. We've had 
bills that we have introduced. Unfortunately, the Speaker has control 
over what bills get to the floor. We have many solutions. What I call 
is, as opposed to Big Government solutions which we've been seeing, 
we've been working on smart government solutions, those that truly 
stimulate the economy--or would stimulate the economy if we were able 
to get moving on those.
  Many of those have to do with who the true economic engine is in this 
country, and frankly that economic engine is small business. There are 
over 20 million small businesses in this country. These are the folks 
who take risk. They're the ones that work 6, 7 days a week; they're 
putting in those 16- and 17-hour days. Many times they do that without 
taking a dollar back for themselves. They keep reinvesting in their 
companies. They're growing jobs. They've got that American Dream, and 
they are trying to live that dream. Unfortunately, what we've seen in 
the past 19 months is this government, the Obama administration and 
Speaker Pelosi, just crushing those dreams.
  On back home, I describe it as, if the economy is a football game, 
there are yellow flags flying everywhere for piling on the backs of 
small businesses. Actually, a former colleague here, Dick Armey, I 
understand once described it--it was a great description, I repeat it 
often--that if the economy is a horse race, and of course the economy 
is the horse and government is the jockey, at whatever point the jockey 
becomes larger than the horse, you know you've got problems. And that's 
what we have today.
  We've been working on things and looking at trying to reduce the 
costs for small businesses, and it has been very challenging to do in 
the 111th Congress with the folks that we have here.

                              {time}  2230

  To start out with, I'll share one bill that I have that I've been 
working on, which I introduced some time ago. It was to allow 
individuals--entrepreneurs--who have this vision, who have this 
American dream, to be able to take some money and to be able to put 
that money into a tax-deferred savings account. It allows them to do 
that on a regular basis and to build that amount of money up. You know, 
they've got the dream. They've got the idea. They know what they want 
to do. When they've accumulated enough of the tax-deferred savings, 
they can use that money to purchase maybe physical property, maybe the 
resources, equipment or capital they need to start that business and to 
be able to stimulate a new business that grows jobs.
  That is just one of, obviously, I think, thousands of ideas that 
we've been working on as Republicans. You know, we are often accused of 
being the party of ``no,'' N-O. Well, that's a partial truth, actually. 
There are a lot of half-truths around Capitol Hill. The fact is we are 
the party of ``know,'' K-N-O-W. More importantly than that, we are 
listening to the American people.
  I thank my colleague for really emphasizing tonight America Speaking 
Out and the fact that we are here as public servants.
  We are here to work for the American people. That means we want to 
have a dialogue. That means we want to be communicating with the people 
we work for. So America Speaking Out is just a great program that has 
allowed Americans from coast to coast to be able to do that. That, to 
me, is so important. I look forward to it.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Well, let's get to some simple facts, because 
you're right. America has been speaking out. The main thing they've 
been asking is: Where are the jobs?
  Just in the last year, we know there have been 2.5 million jobs lost 
here in the United States. So, you know, I guess a great admittance to 
that is the fact that the Democrats were pushing through the expansion 
or the extension of the unemployment benefits. If, in fact, their 
policies were to work or were working, there would be no need to extend 
unemployment benefits. The truth is they had to extend them because 
their policies aren't working.
  Let's get to some simple facts here real quick. I'm a finance major. 
You know, the problem is not that difficult. The challenges are 
certainly great, but the facts are simple. There is a commonsense 
equation here.
  We have total employers in the United States of about 24 million. The 
unemployment rate is 9.5 percent. We have about 14.6 million unemployed 
Americans right now. So there is a simple equation, which is, if one in 
three businesses hired just one employee over the next year, the 
unemployment rate would be 4.4 percent. That gets it to reasonable, 
sensible, easy-to-understand ideas.
  Here is the equation: If one in three businesses adds one new hire in 
the next 12 months, unemployment is down to 4.4 percent.
  So the question is: How do businesses get to this point where they 
hire that next person? Right now, they're not doing it, and there is a 
reason for that. It is called ``uncertainty.'' It is the uncertainty of 
what is about to happen to them next--and I think we know the tax 
increases that are coming and things like that. It's certainly scaring 
businesses.
  So what are some of the solutions?
  I guess the broader solution is getting government out of the way of 
job

[[Page 14468]]

creation and fighting the efforts here, you know, that we've seen as 
they're pushing through the largest tax increase in the history of this 
country, and it is coming in 5 months.
  Yet today, here tonight, right before us, stood Members of the other 
party, saying, Oh, middle class tax cuts. That's not what is happening.
  In 5 months, we will have the largest tax increase in the history of 
this Nation. We need to return to spending levels that were from the 
2008 levels and then roll back taxes. You know, we often hear them say, 
Oh, those big corporate tax breaks. Well, guess who hires Americans? 
Businesses. Wouldn't it be sensible to relieve them of some of the tax 
burdens here in the United States instead of increasing taxes like 
they're going to do? Then, of course, there's rolling back the 
regulatory burdens that we see. There is so much to do, so much to do.
  We heard them a few minutes ago say, Well, Republicans have voted 
against these job-creation packages. Well, I don't know that any of 
those packages have been successful, so it's probably a good thing that 
Republicans have voted against them.
  The fact is they have a majority that is far greater than the 
Republicans. They can push through anything they want to push through, 
and they have certainly been doing that against the will of the 
American people.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Will the gentleman yield for a question?
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Yes, sir.
  Thank you for joining us.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I love having a new Congressman here who's so good at 
math.
  The question is: We have heard repeatedly that the majority wants to 
have a green economy like that in Spain. Now we've heard from Spain, 
and it turns out they're having to abandon their green effort at a 
green economy because they have determined that, every time they 
created one green job, they lost two regular jobs in the economy.
  I was just wondering if the gentleman from Georgia would make a 
calculation and figure out how long it would take us to get to the 4 
percent unemployment rate if we were to lose two jobs for every one job 
the majority were to create under their green plan.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. I think we'd be going backwards a little bit. 
You're right.
  I mean the fact is we need to empower the business community. We need 
to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit. We need to equip them with lower 
burdens of regulation, and we need to lower tax rates. We do not need 
to be creating jobs as a government. Instead, we need the private 
sector to be creating jobs. It's a zero sum game. There are only so 
many employees in the United States, and if more of them are shifting 
to the public sector, it is only taking intellectual capital and wealth 
out of the private sector.
  I would love to turn it over to my good colleague from Georgia (Mr. 
Gingrey).
  Thank you for joining us on this late evening to talk about getting 
this country back on track.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Ranger in Gordon County. It's almost my district. We have contiguous 
congressional districts, and we have the privilege, actually, of 
sharing Gordon County.
  The gentleman from Ranger, Representative Graves, has done a great 
job in a short period of time, Mr. Speaker, in the House of 
Representatives, and he knows of what he speaks. I mean this is the 
kind of work that he did in the Georgia House of Representatives, and 
he represented us extremely well at the State level. It is really 
interesting to see him on the floor of the House of Representatives 
now, here to explain to the American people and to our colleagues, Mr. 
Speaker, what truly is going on here.
  He and I had the privilege, I guess you could say, of watching the 
previous hour, of watching our colleagues from the Democratic majority. 
It seems, Mr. Speaker, that they spent an hour whining about 
competition from other countries, particularly from China. They wanted 
to focus in on China and talk about, you know, all of these unfair 
trade practices and what China is doing in regard to their currency and 
dumping and all of these things. You'd think there were, indeed, no 
World Trade Organization to police anything. Yet it was, you know, a 
whole hour of blaming other countries for the woes that we have in our 
country.
  As Representative Graves pointed out, the fact is that we have an 
unemployment rate of 10 percent, and 16 million people are out of work.
  I even heard from the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, the 
Representative from Wisconsin, the distinguished Dr. Kagen, say that 
the problem is that the economic stimulus package of February 2009 of 
$862 billion--that's right, with a ``b''--was not enough, that they 
just simply didn't pour enough money into this problem.
  Of course, we all know on this side of the aisle that we conservative 
Republicans are going to continue to fight this plan the Democratic 
majority has of just spending more money. You cannot spend your way out 
of debt. Every family in this country understands that and understands 
that very clearly. We'll talk about this in the ensuing hour as we 
proceed with the colloquy.
  As Representative Graves points out, Mr. Speaker, the problem is not 
them. The problem is us. We can blame other countries all we want for 
our own woes. We can blame Greece. We can blame Spain. They spent an 
hour blaming China. How about blaming our tax policy that has a 
corporate tax rate of 35 percent? It is one of the highest rates of any 
industrialized country. While all of the other countries in Western 
Europe are lowering their corporate tax rates, we just leave it alone. 
We don't do anything about it.
  As the gentleman from Calhoun and from Gordon County just said, we 
are about to let--not ``we,'' but you, Mr. Speaker, and the Democratic 
majority--the Bush tax cuts expire.
  Representatives Graves talks about marginal rates. He didn't have a 
chance yet--and I'm sure he will--to get into the estate tax and, 
instead of there being a 15 percent tax on dividends, letting it go up 
to the marginal rate, indeed up to 39.6 percent, and letting capital 
gains go back up from 10 or 15 percent to 20 percent.

                              {time}  2240

  These are the job killers. All of these regulations, union wages, 
kowtowing to them, giving them special deals, paying them, in many 
instances far more, and, indeed, even letting them work Federal jobs 
and negotiate union activities while they're supposed to be working for 
the taxpayer.
  I could go on and on, but I want to yield back to the gentleman 
controlling the time and look forward to my colleagues as we go through 
this hour.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Well, let's take a quick glance at where we 
are from a perspective financially, and then the positive solution of 
balancing the budget. Imagine that, balancing the budget, balancing the 
checkbook here at the Federal Government.
  Well, here's the truth of where we are. And we heard earlier when our 
friends from the other side were talking about how good it was since 
the new administration has taken over. Well, here's some facts. The 
facts don't lie. I mean, the truth is that the deficit under this 
current administration and leadership has just blossomed tremendously 
since they've taken charge.
  Now, we've heard a lot. In my 44 days, I've heard so much about 
President Bush, President Bush, the last 8 years, his administration. 
But you know what? I think they've had a little bit of amnesia, because 
they took the majority in 2006, swore in their Speaker in 2007, and 
look what happened. From that point forward, the deficit bloomed and 
unemployment increased.
  It all works together simultaneously, but yet they want to look back 
over the full decade and forget that, You know what? They're 
responsible. They were in a governing position, and yet they don't want 
to accept the responsibility of governing.
  So that leads us to where we are right now, at a point of lack of 
governing, because for the first time since 1974 no budget has been 
presented here.

[[Page 14469]]

And the question is: Where's the budget?
  And right here you can read the quote. It says, Skipping a budget 
resolution this year would be unprecedented. And we've seen a lot of 
unprecedented things over the last several months, but this, in itself, 
is unprecedented. The House has never failed to pass an annual budget 
resolution since the current budget rules were put into place in 1974. 
And that's reported here back in April.
  But budgets are necessary, according to the leadership here. Steny 
Hoyer, our current majority leader, said, enacting a budget was the 
most basic responsibility of governing. That was the year they took 
over, the year they took over. And since then, look what's happened.
  And then, of course, from the House Budget Committee chairman, if you 
can't budget, you can't govern. Right there it is.
  Well, that leads us to today. I believe it's time to let the American 
people know that we have solutions to balance the budget and actually 
have a proposal in place, and that, I can tell the American people, 
hasn't got a hearing. I wonder why. I wonder why.
  H. Con. Res. 281, which I know many of the colleagues here have 
signed on to it--I'm not sure if one would want to speak to it in its 
specifics, but it provides tax relief, returns to 2008 spending levels, 
makes no changes to the Social Security laws as they currently are, 
provides spending increases equivalent to the inflation growth in 
Medicare and Medicaid, requires each committee in this House to find 
savings equal to 1 percent of the mandatory spending, repeals the 
Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, repeals TARP, repeals ObamaCare, 
and then also provides medical liability reform, freedom to purchase 
health care across State lines, repeals Davis-Bacon, so many other 
things, great concepts there. And I'm sure you'd like to speak to some 
of those and the need, the importance of balancing the budget here in 
the United States Congress.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my new friend for yielding.
  And going back to a comment from good Dr. Gingrey from Georgia about 
the $862 billion stimulus package, because I know he recalls and others 
recall that CBO told us that it was a $787 billion stimulus package. 
And lo and behold, we get here a year later, and they say, Oh, you know 
what? We blew it by about 15 percent. We just blew it.
  Most statistical analysts say, you know, it's within the margin of 
error, 2 to 4 percent. Not with CBO here. You know, maybe we can blow 
it 25 percent, in this case, 15 percent or so. Whoops.
  In a year's time, we were $100 billion off the mark. Really, to be 
fair, $80 billion off the mark. But still, that points out just how 
irresponsible things have gotten.
  And when you look at the numbers, too, you find out that CBO really 
has been a bit of a willing ally, an accomplice, complicit in what's 
been going on. They told the country, okay, this ridiculous health care 
bill that's going to bankrupt the country, we're already finding, 
they're already starting to tell people we're going to have to ration 
your care. And, by the way, it's going to cost about $250 billion more 
than we thought it would. We just misplaced some numbers somehow, 
because if we had found them before the bill came for a vote, people 
had said they wouldn't vote for it if it was more than $1 trillion.
  Well, what difference does another $250 billion make when you're 
putting us in debt $1 trillion? But the CBO just magically forgot, 
misplaced, you know, 200, $250 billion or so until after it passed, and 
then within a matter of a couple of months they found it.
  We're in trouble here and we need to get rid of CBO. We need to get 
some kind of independent group, whether it's Moody's or some other, 
that can do an adequate statistical analysis.
  But the games that are being played with jobs would be comical if it 
weren't representing real people hurting, real people hurting. And I 
proposed a year and a half ago that instead of spending $1 trillion, 
and we were told that we may be spending $3 to $9 trillion just to try 
to get the economy going. Hey, spend $1.21 trillion and you would let 
everybody in America forego paying any income tax for the year. You let 
people keep their own money and they would jump-start this economy.
  Yet, what our friends across the aisle are saying, ``No, no, no. Our 
friends across the aisle want to give tax cuts and allow the lower 
rates only to go to the wealthy.'' Because the way they identify it, 
the 53 percent of adult Americans that will pay all of the income tax 
this year they consider to be the wealthy. And so what they're, in 
effect, saying is the Republicans want to give tax relief to the only 
people paying the taxes.
  ``We, on our side of the aisle, we want to give tax relief to all the 
people that aren't paying any tax.'' Well, there's another name for 
that. It's called redistribution of the wealth. It means those who have 
not been able to earn anything will have money taken away from those 
that earned it and given to those who didn't.
  We need to help those that can't help themselves, no question. But we 
do not need to become a government that did what I saw as a judge, 
where the government lures people into a rut they can never get out of 
and gives them no hope, no way out, just still feeding them a little 
unemployment check, feeding them a little check here and there just to 
keep them in a rut with no help getting out.
  It's time to blow the lid off this thing and get an economy going 
where small businesses create the jobs. Yes, the small businesses are 
the ones that need the tax cuts. They certainly don't need the biggest 
tax increase in American history that's coming in January. They're the 
ones that are going to provide the hope for creating the jobs.
  And so I hope and pray we'll be able to help the small businesses 
create the jobs instead of just doling out these little temporary 
census worker jobs, which, as my friends know, was all that happened in 
June. 411,000 out of 431,000 jobs created in America were temporary 
census jobs.
  I yield back to my friend from Georgia.

                              {time}  2250

  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. You know what's so exciting about this America 
Speaking Out program is that we're getting ideas from Americans that 
are sitting around the kitchen table and they're talking about what 
would they do if they were in charge. What would they do if they were 
making these decisions. As they're watching the TV, and oftentimes in 
disgust seeing what comes out of Washington, D.C. The ideas that they 
have proposed and the thousands of connections that have been made.
  And I took that to my district and somewhat implemented a program 
much like that and developed an economic advisory council of business 
and community leaders from each and every county in my district to seek 
input from them to tear down that wall. Because for far too long 
Washington has not been listening. And so we just took that wall down 
and said, hey, we want your ideas so we can push them up and present 
them here to the full House as the ideas from Main Street itself, not 
from Capitol Hill. But we need the ideas from the hills of north 
Georgia, are where the ideas come from, and the hills from all over 
this great Nation.
  But you know, balancing the budget is a great start. Every American 
family has to balance their checkbook. But yet right now, here, leading 
by example, a terrible example is a Federal Government that is so far 
outside of its bounds with deficit spending and increasing its debt, 
it's unsustainable.
  So I guess the Republicans have a solution right here. House 
Concurrent Resolution 281 balances the budget, cuts taxes, and cuts 
spending, something that's unheard of here in Washington, D.C. When 
every State and local government all around this Nation's cutting 
spending right now, every family's cutting spending out of their 
personal budget, here on the Federal level we just keep spending, 
spending, spending.
  Mr. Thompson, you looked like you had something good to add to the 
conversation here.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Well, I thank my good friend. And I

[[Page 14470]]

want to come back to one word I think that really describes what is 
suppressing jobs, what is killing jobs, what is keeping jobs from being 
created. And that is uncertainty. Uncertainty is the direct result of 
all the policies we've seen piled upon the American economy in the past 
19 months. And you know, as I travel around in my district, just like 
you do, you talk with the job creators, you talk with the people who 
take the risks, that every year take their profits--and no, that's not 
a bad word, that's a good word. That's how we've grown and built this 
wonderful Nation, on the backs of entrepreneurs and small business men 
and women.
  And they take their profits and they reinvest them back in their 
company. And they add a product line or they build a new site. They 
hire people. Well, they're not doing that right now. They're sitting on 
the sidelines. And that's a direct result of just all the terrible 
policies that have been crushing our small businesses.
  When I think over this past 19 months, and I'm in my first term here, 
you know how many times taxes have been raised? Now, we're looking at 
the largest tax increase ever that's looming. And we should talk more 
about that. But we should not lose sight of the fact that taxes have 
already been raised tremendously on these job creators, these small 
businesses.
  Now, my colleagues across the other side will say, well, we only 
taxed the wealthy, those folks who made somewhere around $200,000 or 
more a year. And you know, where I come from, yeah, that's a lot of 
money. Absolutely. But when you really drill down and you look at who 
those people are, 60 percent of those folks are small business owners 
whose small businesses are organized as a limited liability corporation 
or an S corporation. They pay their taxes as individuals. And out of 
that maybe $200,000, if they are lucky, that they generate, they're 
paying a payroll, they're employing people, they're providing family-
sustaining jobs. And, you know, I've lost count of how many times 
they've raised taxes on those folks since January 2009. It's crushing.
  And you talked about the largest tax increase ever. And this has been 
my fear all along, that 2009 was a really tough year. 2010's a tough 
year. But it's been--you know, there's almost like an anesthesia that, 
Doc, that's been applied. You know, all this government money's been 
thrown at people so it makes folks feel a little bit better because 
unemployment went down. But as my good friend from Texas noted, a lot 
of those were temporary government sector jobs that drove down 
unemployment nationally for a short time. Never went down much less 
than 10 percent, but it took the edge off.
  Well, my greatest fear is in January 2011 we're going right off the 
cliff. Because that's when these new taxes, these new regulations--
we've tripled the size of the Environmental Protection Agency, although 
around home I refer to them as the Excessive Punishment Agency. You 
know, all that takes effect beginning January of 2011. And then you put 
on top of that the things that you've talked about, the largest tax 
increase ever, $3.8 trillion. What will that be? Well, we are going to 
see the marriage penalty is going to return. The child tax credit's 
going to be halved. The death tax, which I think is just double 
taxation at the least. We put a tax on somebody's death.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Let's stop there for a second. You're talking 
about the marriage tax. Now, those are the people, the wealthy married 
people or is that all married people? That's everyone, right?
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. That's everybody.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. And now the individuals with children are the 
ones getting the penalty here, the ones who are the wealthy, or is it 
everyone who has children?
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. It's everyone.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. It is everyone. So the fact that they stood 
over here, what, 40 minutes ago and said, oh, these are tax cuts for 
the middle class, that's not the case. The largest tax increase in the 
history of this Nation will occur in 5 months. But we have a bill that 
we've introduced, and I am sure y'all have cosponsored it, I 
cosponsored it, to block that, to block that tax increase, and to allow 
the taxes to remain at the level they are today. And of course we would 
want to see them lowered. But it's not a tax cut. We're just saying, 
hey, keep it at the level it is. Don't raise them. Because that's what 
they are doing. They're raising taxes.
  Let me finish this balance the checkbook thing real quick, and we'll 
talk about confidence in a minute. So balance the checkbook. 
Republicans, we're saying let's cut spending. Let's stop this excessive 
spending that's going on here in Washington. We can do that by 
repealing the unused portions of the stimulus bill. They talk about how 
great it's been, the grand fanfare of the stimulus, when in fact a 
third of it hasn't even been spent, which means, again, it's not 
working.
  We need to end the bailouts. And then of course the big one, repeal 
ObamaCare, which is a nearly $600 billion tax increase on all Americans 
and businesses all over the United States.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. If the gentleman will yield.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Billion, right, that's nine zeroes.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. In regard to America Speaking Out, the 
poster--if you don't mind, Mr. Speaker, have the gentleman put that 
America Speaking Out poster back up so our colleagues can take a good 
look at it. I was just, as I stood here, thinking about our colleagues 
from the majority side of the aisle who had the previous hour. There 
was a Member from Ohio, there was a Member from Wisconsin, and there 
was a Member from California.
  And I will just bet you, Mr. Speaker, if the folks in those great 
States will take the opportunity of going on that Web site, 
www.AmericaSpeakingOut
.com, and input what their concerns are, it would probably mirror what 
is on that poster that Representative Graves has presented to our 
colleagues this evening in regard to balance the checkbook, cut 
spending, repeal the stimulus, $862 billion. Indeed, the Representative 
from Wisconsin said that wasn't enough spending; we need to spend more.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. This is what Americans are saying right here. 
Americans did not go to AmericaSpeakingOut.com--and this is 
nonpartisan, it's confidential--Americans did not go to that Web site 
and say increase spending. They did not say increase the stimulus and 
do another one. They did not say continue the bailouts or keep 
ObamaCare. They actually said stop all this stuff. Stop it. That was 
America speaking out right here.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. If the gentleman will yield, I would say that 
the gentleman is absolute, Mr. Speaker, right on target. And he said a 
key word. And that is that this is a nonpartisan Web site. Yes, it is 
created by the Republican minority for all of America to let us know, 
whether they be Democrats, Republicans, independents, libertarians, 
whatever. Let them have the opportunity to tell us, and let's have a 
bubble-up-from-the-bottom contract with America, not a top-down driven 
government-knows-better-than-anybody-else kind of plan that it seems 
the Democratic majority is heck bent and determined to force on the 
American people, just as they tried to force a year-and-a-half ago cap-
and-trade, an energy policy that was run amok, that would result in 
probably $1,500 minimum a year per family in increased energy costs.
  And then of course they come right back after that with this 
ObamaCare that Representative Graves is talking about. He mentioned the 
$600 billion worth of increased taxes to pay for it.

                              {time}  2300

  What he didn't mention was the additional $525 billion cut to the 
Medicare program, which we all know, all four of us know, is $75 
trillion of unfunded liability over the next 50 years, and you're going 
to gut it 12 percent a year and then have the unmitigated gall, Mr. 
Speaker, to spend taxpayer money and send out these brochures, these

[[Page 14471]]

glossy, fancy Medicare brochures assuring seniors that it's going to be 
better for them to cut their programs 12 percent a year and Medicare 
Advantage 18 percent a year.
  I think the American people know better, and I think that the folks 
in Wisconsin, the folks in Ohio, and the folks in California are going 
to let those three Representatives know and give them a sure earful 
when they get back to their districts come August recess.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Thank you, Dr. Gingrey. You are absolutely 
right.
  Now, let me summarize. We've been talking about solutions here 
tonight. First one we were talking about was job creation. Certainty 
was mentioned by Mr. Thompson there. Uncertainty being the problem; 
certainty being the solution. So some certainty would be let's pass 
this legislation that blocks the largest tax increase in the history of 
our Nation. Let's get some of this regulation out of the way. Let's 
empower the small business owners and just embrace and ignite that 
entrepreneurial spirit. The solutions to job creation.
  The second component we were talking about is the spending and 
balancing the budget. It's time to cut spending. Let's say enough is 
enough here in Washington. All of America, all businesses, all State, 
all local governments are cutting spending, whereas here we are, we're 
raising spending. But we've even gone a step further, taken a bold step 
and said, we've got a plan to balance the budget here for the Federal 
Government.
  And now the third category, which I think really involved the 
American people last year, not in a positive way because they weren't 
engaged in the process, because it was a process that was behind closed 
doors, but it raised the awareness of the abuse of the process and the 
abuse of the rules and abuse of the system right here, and that was 
health care.
  As we've talked about America Speaking Out, repealing ObamaCare was 
one of the top items mentioned or indicated out of the--what did we 
say, nearly 12,000 respondents, 12,000 specific ideas and 600,000 votes 
cast for different ideas. We've got an interesting chart here, and this 
will be the debut I believe of it publicly to show the health care plan 
as passed, the health care plan as passed.
  It was approached or presented as a plan that was patient friendly, 
right? Isn't that what it's called, the Patient Protection Act? This is 
the ObamaCare health care plan in a schematic of what occurred out of 
the 2,000 pages of legislation. They're still today figuring out that 
portions of it were in there that they never expected or knew were in 
there, including new additional taxes.
  But let me point out as we discuss this, and I know, Doctor, you've 
probably got a lot of insight into it because we do have an alternative 
plan. We had one then, it was presented then, but it's still in 
committee right now.
  But let me point out to those watching. Here's the physician at this 
point. Here's the patient down here at this point, and all of this 
government is in between. How is that better for the American patient, 
for the young boy that's needing care? How is this better for that 
young single mom who's just trying to get care for her child? This is 
not better. This is a mess, a governmental nightmare right here, and 
this is as it's passed and has been signed into law, the Obama health 
care plan.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, 
this is absolutely astounding. I have seen that chart before, not maybe 
in quite such a vivid highlight and outline, but Mr. Speaker, my degree 
is in chemistry. And when I first saw Representative Graves put that 
chart up for all of our colleagues to see, I thought that was the 
periodic table. Really, it took me back to my chemistry days and the 
periodic table of the elements. It's probably changed some now because 
it has been a long time since I attended Georgia Tech and got that BS 
in chemistry, but this is more complex than the periodic table.
  And I'm sure the gentleman from Ranger will agree with me, it's 
something like 130 new Federal agencies that were created by this mess, 
all between the doctor and the patient. Maybe my colleague will point 
out where the doctor is on that chart and where the patient is.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. You're right. This is the doctor. There's the 
patient. You would think the patient and doctor would be in the center, 
right? That should be the center of this diagram, but it is not. It is 
this newly empowered Secretary of the Health and Human Services that is 
in the center of which all of this spirals off of, and all of this is 
documented and all the code sections are outlined on here how it was 
created, and it indicates new mandates, new taxes, new programs, new 
processes. All of this is in this new health care plan that is going to 
be a mess for Americans right here.
  The great thing is, though, that as we stand before America tonight, 
we don't stand here without an alternative, without another idea. We 
come before America boldly with another alternative, and the first 
step, in my opinion, is we have to defund this mess. Let's just put the 
brakes on it. We don't need another, what, $600 billion in new taxes. 
We need to defund this, and we have introduced legislation that is H.R. 
5882, which each of you are probably cosponsors of and I'm the sponsor 
of the legislation to just defund it altogether, and let's start over 
because the process was broken. The policy is flawed.
  Let's get a patient-centered, patient-driven health care plan in 
place of which we've got good alternatives. Would you like to share a 
little bit about the proposal that's out there, or do you have some 
ideas yourself?
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Thank you so much for looking at this. 
What a nightmare this is. I spent 28 years managing a rural hospital, 
and what I see there, when I look at that chart is not the periodic 
table. I see bankruptcy for hospitals, physicians, health care 
providers.
  I mean, my health care career goes back to the beginning of the 
1980s, and I am a proud survivor of the first prospective payment 
system, diagnostic related groups that were rolled into hospitals all 
across the Nation. I was there in the 1980s. I was there in the 1990s 
for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA.
  HIPAA would just be one of those circles on that chart, but let me 
tell you the experience of health care, and it's health care 
everywhere, but it really hits hard in rural health care and 
underserved urban areas.
  The bureaucracy that was required to implement HIPAA in the 1990s was 
tremendous. It took dollars from actually providing what I thought was 
compassionate and cost-effective care, and you had to hire clerical 
staff, you had to hire compliance individuals, you had to hire people 
that never saw a patient, never did anything to directly touch that 
life of somebody that was facing life-changing disease and disability 
in the health care work that I was privileged to participate in for 30 
years.
  You take that experience of HIPAA in the 1990s and now multiply that 
by the complexity of that chart. You know we have worked hard, I know 
Dr. Gingrey has, all health care professionals work very hard to make 
sure that health care is patient-centered. It's about the patient. And 
this is not about the patient. This obviously is government. This is 
not patient-centered health care. This is government-centered health 
care, and there's many different proposals out there.
  Let me just touch on two of those because I think it's very important 
that as we show the negative impacts of this, that we show the 
alternatives, the things we are working on that are better solutions, 
what I like to call smart government solutions.
  Going back to July of 2009 when we introduced the Putting Patients 
First Act. That's an act that addresses people with preexisting 
conditions and makes sure they're able to purchase affordable health 
care insurance. It's about providing greater access to care. It was 
about bringing down the cost of health care for all Americans. It was 
about preserving and even increasing the innovation quality of health 
care that comes out of this country and certainly about preserving that 
important

[[Page 14472]]

decisionmaking relationship between the patient and physician, not 
allowing the government or bureaucrat to do that.

                              {time}  2310

  Putting Patients First Act, I encourage people to check that act out. 
You know what, it doesn't raise taxes a dollar. No cuts to Medicare, 
and yet it achieves all the things it needs to achieve.
  You know that's the kind of thing, when we repeal this, that's what 
we need to replace it with. And I would tell you there are things we 
need to surgically repair right now, because I don't expect that 
President Obama--I would expect a veto on any general repeal any time 
soon, so we need to surgically repair, certainly working with an eye to 
repeal.
  And I am sure all my colleagues on the floor here are also cosponsors 
of H.R. 5141. It goes right back and it deals with the health care 
bill, but the impact's directly on small businesses.
  Under the ObamaCare plan, every small business, for every exchange of 
business, a vendor, a contractor, just buying resources, anything more 
than $600, they are required to file a 1099 form today under the 
ObamaCare plan. For some businesses, that's thousands of 1099 forms. We 
are talking more clerical staff. We are talking more overhead cost. We 
are talking about complying with bureaucracy that is just raising the 
cost on small businesses.
  I am proud to be a cosponsor of H.R. 5141. It puts an end to what I 
call death by a thousand paper cuts. And that is where health care 
buries small businesses, in paperwork.
  That's another example of a Republican, smart government solution 
that we have put forward and it has been introduced. It's out there 
and, frankly, it would be good for America.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. You are absolutely right. So you presented a 
solution. H.R. 3400 would be the Empowering Patients First Act. We have 
talked about deauthorizing the funding for this mess here, and you talk 
about surgically removing some items here. I mean, this is a mess.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. It's going to be a whole lot of 
surgery, though.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. You wonder why this component would be in a 
health care proposal. The IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, is part of 
a health care plan; although, I think we all know that the American 
people do not want to have to go through this maze in order to get 
their health care taken care of here in the United States.
  We have a couple of opportunities. One, H.R. 5882, for those whom are 
viewing this tonight, could encourage their Members to sign on to, and 
that would not allow any funds to be authorized or spent towards this 
here. Then there is the Repeal It proposal that repeals this 
altogether, and there are two of those out there. There is a letter or 
petition to have one voted on here on the floor, and that's H.R. 4972, 
by Mr. King. That's the Repeal It legislation.
  Then you have spoken about the alternative, the replacement. So you 
have defund it, repeal it, and then replace it with H.R. 3400, which is 
a free market, capitalistic solution to health care for Americans to 
allow them to be empowered, empowering them.
  Would you like to add some more to this? I know we are getting close 
here before we need to stop sharing the truth here.
  Mr. GOHMERT. It should be noted in all those little areas, you talk 
about all the new parts of government that are created and brought 
together in this--it's not a health care bill. It's a GRE--government 
running everything--bill. But they all have little references to the 
specific areas within the law that created them and created the 
relationship. That's one thing.
  Another thing is, you know, all of the records, the medical records 
that people consider so personal and so dear will be in the Federal 
Government control. I think they are contracting out to their dear 
benefactors and contributors at General Electric, but they will have 
all that information, and the IRS could have access to your most 
personal information.
  Can you imagine the debt collectors of America being able to have 
your most personal medical records? Well, that's what will occur here, 
and there's a great quote from Patrick Henry. People remember, ``Is 
life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of 
chains and slavery?''
  He had one quote where he said, ``The Constitution is not an 
instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an 
instrument for the people to restrain the government--lest it come to 
dominate our lives and interests.'' When I look at that board and I 
look at all the new government that is just going to be overwhelming 
people, they don't need the doctor after they start dealing with all 
this stuff.
  Is that quote ever more appropriate that the Constitution should 
restrain the government lest it come to dominate our lives and 
interests? Will it ever?
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Last August, the American people were pretty 
upset about that. They were fired up 1 year ago as the leadership of 
this Hall went out all across America and avoided town hall meetings 
because they could not defend this 2,000-page spaghetti plate here of 
mess, because the American people know that the government taking over 
their health care is not the best option. The best option is the 
patient, the individual that is being empowered.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. You know, you talk about there is a 
temptation to try to surgically repair. But, Mr. Speaker, when you look 
at that chart that Representative Graves is presenting and you realize 
the complexity and there is so much wrong with this bill, I am afraid 
that by the time that you tried to surgically repair, there would be 
very little left to say grace over. That's why so many of our 
colleagues on this side of the aisle feel like that we need to repeal 
this bill, this monstrosity, this omnibus of 2,400 pages, government 
takeover of one-sixth of our economy, 16 percent, and start over, and 
start over.
  Just this past week in the Energy and Commerce Committee--but we deal 
with a lot of health care issues, and this monstrosity, indeed, started 
over a year ago. We passed, this week, eight separate health care-
related bills, none of which were more than five pages long, and we did 
it in a bipartisan way.
  We can certainly come back and, with four or five really good solid 
ideas, and maybe we can present those in a subsequent town hall meeting 
or Special Order hour here on the House floor, but that's what we 
really need to do. I think it's important that people understand that.
  I thank the gentleman for having us here and this colloquy so that 
our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, and the American people can better 
understand what we truly need to do to repair this.
  Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I want to thank 
you for joining me tonight, because here at this late hour here on the 
east coast, we are standing before the American people presenting 
alternatives, solutions to these challenging days.
  We started off by talking about the economy and jobs and job 
creation, and that's empowering the private sector, not empowering 
government, creating certainty in the marketplace as opposed to the 
uncertainty that is out there today by standing in the way of the 
largest tax increase in the history of this Nation, which is about to 
be unfolded here in the next 5 months. And then also the reduction of 
capital gains. The reduction of the corporate tax rate and just 
igniting that entrepreneurial spirit once again to allow that 
entrepreneur, the American business owner, to dream, and to dream big 
and to go work hard.
  Then next we talked about spending and spending cuts, balancing the 
budget. Very difficult items here on the Federal level, it would seem 
by the majority party. But, instead, we have proposed positive 
solutions to balance the budget like has never been seen before.
  Then lastly, the health care. And all of this comes as a result of 
America Speaking Out, the Web site in which 12,000 responses were given 
and over

[[Page 14473]]

600,000 votes were cast on different ideas and concepts. Listening to 
the American people about jobs and the economy, about spending, about 
balancing the budget and the health care proposal, which leads us to 
defunding it, repealing it and then replacing it with a patient center, 
patient-driven concept that provides affordability, portability, and 
accessibility to Americans.
  But this is not a time in which we stand and point fingers as we have 
heard over the past several weeks. My 44 days being here, the other 
side has pointed fingers back, back in time. But we are not here to do 
that. This is not about Republican and Democrat. This is about America 
right now and this is about getting our economy back on track. It's 
about creating the confidence once again in the marketplace and then 
providing true health care solutions.
  So I appreciate my colleagues in joining me tonight on this late 
hour. I know it means a lot to your constituents that you would do that 
and that you would be working at this late hour in the evening because 
you know how important it is.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back.

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