[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15816-15821]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           LET'S FIX AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to speak here on the 
House floor and have that opportunity that was provided by those 
willing to show the greatest love, according to Jesus, willing to lay 
down their lives for their friends, their countrymen, so that we could 
have these freedoms. And when you read the Declaration of Independence, 
it talks about we are endowed by a Creator with certain inalienable 
rights, and all men were created equal; now, not with equal talents, 
not with equal abilities, not with equal money or substances. That was 
not the point. In God's eyes, we are equal. In the eyes of the Creator, 
we are equal. And so we are supposed to do the best we can with what 
we've got.
  And as my friend from Missouri was talking about light bulbs, I 
couldn't help but scratch my head because here in Washington, we are 
told that the most environmentally friendly majority in the history of 
the country is in charge now. But I wanted a light bulb that was 
incandescent so I can see better, because it takes so dadgum long for 
those others with the curl in there to warm up where you can see. And 
sometimes, there's a tiny closet there, and I flip the light switch on, 
well, I just need to flip it on and off. Well, now I've got to leave 
the energy on long enough so the bulb warms up to where I can see 
what's in there. And it's interesting, you can't find, you will not be 
provided an incandescent light bulb. And we read in the past week that 
the last incandescent manufacturing plant in the United States proper 
has now gone out of business.
  So what have we done as the most environmentally conscientious 
Congress in history? We have got light bulbs that have mercury in 
them--mercury, the substance that does not go away. If you get mercury 
in your system, you don't get it out. If you get too much, it's lethal. 
It builds up over time. So what are we doing? We are raising the level 
of mercury as high as we can get it, this lethal substance, and you 
say, what is going on?

                              {time}  1930

  How can we be environmentally friendly when we are forcing everybody 
on Capitol Hill to have mercury throughout their offices? It is just 
one of those things.
  If we are all created equal, and the thing we are endowed with by our 
Creator, inalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness, nobody is guaranteed happiness, but the right to pursue 
happiness. Nobody is guaranteed, under our Declaration or under the 
Constitution, that everybody is going to share and share alike. That is 
called a socialist manifesto: from those according to their ability to 
those according to their needs. It is a lovely idea but it has never 
worked. It always goes bankrupt because as I found when I was in the 
Soviet Union as an exchange student talking to farmers who had not been 
out in their field all day on a great day, well, it was midmorning, but 
to that point, that was prime time to work. When I spoke a little 
Russian back then, I asked, When do you work in the field? They 
laughed. One of them said I make the same number of rubles if I am out 
there, pointing out in the sun in the field that really looked bad, or 
if I am here in the shade. So I am here in the shade. That is why 
socialism doesn't work. If you pay somebody the same thing to be 
working out in the hot field, sweating and wearing themselves out, and 
pay them the same as if they sit in the shade and cut up with their 
friends, they are going to be in the shade.
  The reason free market systems fail is not because a free market 
system doesn't work; it works beautifully. You do need a government to 
make sure that everybody plays fairly, not to take away from those who 
are able to produce more than others, not to kill the incentive for 
people to actually produce, but to provide a level playing field where 
everybody can compete equally. That is the job that we are supposed to 
have. That is the job of the government.
  And we have gotten too busy in this body trying to tell everybody 
what they can do, and as the President says share the wealth, spread 
the wealth, you kill incentive and you kill productivity. So when you 
get right down to it historically, what always brings free market 
systems to an end is when a governing authority begins to meddle and 
ruin the free market system and start converting it over to a socialist 
system. And once a governing authority is able to manipulate the free 
market system over into a socialist system where you are trying to 
spread the wealth, you are killing incentive and you are creating class 
warfare, you are creating all kinds of problems. You are trying to do 
the things that this government is doing right now, and then you kill 
the free market system. Not because it doesn't work, but because you 
have now converted it to a socialist system, which always fails by its 
own weight. And then that obviously requires a dictator, somebody who 
forces a sharing of the wealth, a killing of incentives across the 
board so people do all they can to sit in the shade and not do anything 
and not produce and not help out their neighbors because they don't 
have to.
  So it broke my heart to keep hearing our President talking about the 
rich, anybody making over $200,000. He is talking about small business 
people. He is talking about people I have had come pleading to me: Stop 
destroying what I have spent my life building. I had nothing. I had 
nothing, worked 20 hours a day, put what little bit I had at risk and 
eventually was able to hire another employee and another employee and 
another employee. And finally I have in some cases 20, 30, or 140 in 
one case, one man that was talking to me, 140. Now he is down to about 
60, I think he said. But you are killing me. You are killing my 
business. And you make people hate me because of how hard I worked and 
how much I sacrificed to build this small business. And in the process, 
you made me put 80 people out of work.
  We should not be about class envy. The reason a free market society 
works is because there is fairness. When you have a government that is 
about fairness, then people compete. Entrepreneurship springs up all 
around and people comes up with ideas. It is worth risking what they 
have to make things work. That is free enterprise.
  And when we have an administration that is so busy stirring up class 
envy and trying to get people to hate the people that have come to me 
and said, yeah, I have been making over $200,000 a year. I have been 
pouring every dime back into my business. It grows and grows, and we 
have been able to hire more people. Now I have to lay them off, and you 
have got people hating me because they think I'm rich. And now you have 
a President that says I don't deserve the same tax rate that everybody 
else does. That I deserve to be punished because I took risk and I 
sacrificed and I grew my business and I hired people and I was fair to 
them and they loved their jobs and they worked hard, and it grew bigger 
and better and we had a great product. And now I have a President that 
is getting people to hate me and saying I don't deserve to pay the same 
rate as other people? I mean, how much must a person despise those kind 
of entrepreneurs who have built a business and created out of nothing. 
They worked hard with ingenuity and sacrifice, created a thriving 
business, how much must a President or an administration despise those 
people to say, I am willing not to help the

[[Page 15817]]

people that I call middle class if I have to give the same rate to the 
people that make above $200,000. I am willing to punish the middle 
class and not let them have the same rate as they do now. I am willing 
to let their tax rates zoom up with the biggest tax increase in 
American history come January 1, I am willing to let that tax rate go 
up if you try to make me allow those entrepreneurs who have built a 
business on their own, if you try to make me give them the same tax 
rate as the middle class, because you see I want to punish them. They 
have made too much money. They took risks, they laid it all out there 
on the line.
  One fellow talked about how he didn't even own his own trailer, those 
kinds of things. And he built a business, and now our President says he 
is rich and he needs to be punished. That is the way you end a free 
market system. You spread the wealth evenly from those who have risked 
it all and give to those who have been sitting in the shade watching 
them work. You kill the free market system. You kill the jobs.
  So we have an administration out there saying we are all about jobs, 
that is our main focus. But by the way, we are going to push through 
this health care bill that the majority of America says don't, don't, 
don't, and they pushed it through. And then you see people laid off. So 
many people have come to me about family members, themselves, cuts in 
pay, laid off because the cost of the health care that was supposed to 
go down when this administration ramrodded and crammed this bill down 
America's throat without letting people truly understand all that was 
in it. You lose your country if it is based on a free market system 
when an administration and a Congress tries to make it socialist.

                              {time}  1940

  Now, I realize some people think, oh, Socialist is such a horrible 
word. It's really a very nice concept, actually. If you look at it, you 
know, we want everyone to share and share alike. Sometimes we're told 
that growing up: we want to share and share alike. As a parent, I tried 
to make sure that all three of our girls shared and shared alike, but 
if one of those children could take what she was given and parlay that 
into something even better and more productive, that was hers. Whether 
she shared it or not was completely up to her. I would encourage her to 
use and develop the talents and what she has been provided.
  It is true, as an old preacher of ours used to say, that there are an 
awful lot of people around here who are born on third base and go 
through life thinking they hit a triple, and there is an arrogance that 
goes with that. Sometimes, if somebody comes from a poor family and has 
everything handed to him, then he thinks he has hit a triple because 
somebody else placed him on third base.
  Either way, we're supposed to never forget that the Founders 
believed--and most Americans according to the polls believe--that the 
blessings we have are a gift of God; and if we turn our backs on him 
long enough, though he is long suffering, patient and full of grace, 
eventually, he will say, Okay, you turned your back on me long enough. 
Now I turn my back on you, and you disappear. You head to the dustbin 
of history.
  Now, I wasn't going to bring up this matter. I was very pleased that 
the President was talking about the tax holiday concept. The problem is 
he is bringing it up over a year and a half later than it was brought 
to his attention by me. I told him at the time, Look, you promised 
everybody a tax cut. You know, of course you put a $250,000 cap on 
income. I don't think it ought to be there.
  Moody's did an independent study. They said the tax holiday idea, the 
way I read it, increases the 1-year GDP more than any other stimulus 
proposal if we pass this stimulus, a tax holiday idea that just said, 
you know, for the next 2 or 3 months, every dime you make stays in your 
check and does not go to the Federal Government. You get to keep your 
income tax in your check. Whether you want to make it 2 or 3 months, 
you keep it. If we passed it today and if the President signed it 
today, tomorrow they would have that money in their checks. It wouldn't 
go to Washington.
  At the time, it was going to cost so little money compared to the 
money the government was spending. In fact, that's where I got the idea 
in 2008. Of course, we had the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, which 
was a huge mistake, and I hope our leaders do finally realize that, but 
it was a huge mistake. Both sides of the aisle had about half of their 
Members buying into it. $700 billion. That could have provided 4 months 
of every worker in America getting every dime of their income taxes 
back, along with all of their Social Security money for those 2 months, 
and it would have let the employers keep the 2 months of matching money 
that they normally would have to put in to match what the workers put 
in. That would have given businesses a boost, and it would have given 
employees this tremendous boost.
  We did a little survey of people in our districts: What would you do? 
Look at your check and at how much money is going to Washington. What 
would you do with it?
  Some said, Look, we've got a gas guzzler, and it's worth less than 
what we owe for it, so we can't trade it in. We can't get another car. 
We're stuck. Yet, if we got 2 months of our own income tax in our 
checks, we'd be able to finally buy a good, fuel-efficient car. We'd be 
able to save money on gas in the future.
  The truth is that GM and Chrysler wouldn't have needed to have been 
bailed out because people would have been out there buying cars. 
Actually, the idea for the tax holiday, when I had it in 2008, came 
from seeing that $700 billion for the Wall Street bailout and then 
hearing here in Washington that, between the Federal Reserve and the 
things this government was going to do, it would probably end up 
costing between $3 trillion and $9 trillion just to try to get the 
economy going again. That's when I inquired: How much do we anticipate 
will be paid for the whole year of 2008 in Federal personal income tax? 
It was around $1.21 trillion. $1.21 trillion and $3 trillion to $9 
trillion over here, maybe more. I like the $1.21 trillion. It's at 
least three to 10 times cheaper, and it's people keeping their own 
money that they've earned. Then you wouldn't have needed all the 
bailouts, and everybody could have kept all of their income taxes for a 
whole year.
  I don't like a government's not paying its bills as it goes along. 
It's not a good idea, but to say no personal income tax for a year when 
that is so much cheaper than what the Bush administration pushed with 
the $700 billion bailout, with the $800 billion that is now a $900 
billion porkulus bill, from January of 2009 under President Obama, and 
with the $400 billion land omnibus bill the following week--all these 
stimulus packages, so-called--man, it would have been so much cheaper 
to have said, People, just keep all of your income taxes for a year.
  Well, there weren't that many people here on Capitol Hill who felt 
like they could politically risk signing onto a full year of no income 
tax. Especially after January when we had the $800 billion or the $900 
billion, my position was you could take the $800 billion stimulus 
package and what was left of the original $700 billion Wall Street 
bailout and pay for a whole year of no income taxes being paid. Just 
take the money from those stimulus packages and bailouts and use those 
to let everybody keep their own income taxes for a year.
  John Shadegg was one. He loved the idea of having a whole year of no 
income tax. Boy, you talk about a stimulated economy. People would have 
been buying cars. They would have been eating out. They would have been 
buying products, buying new homes. Even with 2 months of people's own 
income taxes, Newt Gingrich's folks ran the numbers for me. He was very 
helpful. As I recall, an average family, just an average household in 
America, in just 2 months, was going to have around $5,000 or so of 
extra money. Some people said, You know, we got behind on our mortgages 
when gasoline got to $4 a gallon the year before, and we just

[[Page 15818]]

have not been able to catch up; but you let us have all of our income 
taxes for a couple of months, we'll catch up, and then you won't have 
to do all of these ridiculous government programs to try and save 
people's mortgages.
  There are other things that need to be done, but I brought this up 
when I met the President back when he very first came to our Republican 
Conference, which was held down in the basement here in the Capitol. I 
said, Look, I don't care who gets the credit. You can put your name on 
it. Do it. Moody's says it will help the GDP more in one year than any 
proposal that has been proposed. Even our own leadership's proposal 
wasn't going to do that much good in one year in the Republican Party. 
I don't care who gets the credit.
  I wouldn't have minded if he had taken the idea back then and had 
used it, but he waited over a year and a half and then started 
describing, virtually almost verbatim, the way I described it over a 
year and a half ago and then in some of the same speeches said, But you 
know what? The Republicans don't have any good ideas. Well, I don't 
care that somebody's taking credit. The old saying goes--Reagan said it 
often--it's amazing what you can get done here in Washington if you 
don't mind who gets the credit.

                              {time}  1950

  So I don't mind other people taking credit for the idea. I do mind 
when it's followed or even preceded by the words, ``But Republicans 
don't have one good idea.'' I think we need to pray for the President's 
memory. I know the pressure is great. I know it's an awesome 
responsibility. It's easy to forget things. Boy, do I know that. My 
wife will sure tell you that. It's easy to forget things. But before 
you go alleging that Republicans have no good ideas, think for a moment 
where you got the idea you're proposing. That's what I would offer, Mr. 
Speaker. And we keep hearing the President and others here on the floor 
saying that Republicans have not one good idea. They're the Party of 
No. No good ideas. None at all.
  None at all? We need to pray for people's hearing, because there are 
a lot of fantastic proposals that are being tossed out there that would 
be wonderful. We do need major tax reform. I'll never forget how 
depressed I was after I left the Republican annual retreat in early 
2006. I had been elected, sworn in in January of 2005, and started 
Congress with all kinds of hopes and dreams of making the country a 
better place. A year later we're told, look, there's a tiny chance we 
might not have the majority next year. It's possible we could lose. We 
don't think it will happen. We know we had talked about major tax 
reform this year, but instead we're going to just try to get through 
this year, not do anything big that will make people mad one way or the 
other, keep the majority next November, and then we'll come back in 
January 2007 and do the major stuff like major tax reform.
  Well, we've lost a lot of people who have been defeated since then, 
because America wants to see us keep our promises. There have been a 
lot of promises made by this administration, this majority, of things 
that were going to be done. Even on the crap-and-trade bill that passed 
here last year, the promises were made over and over: Oh, no, this bill 
is not going to cost jobs. It's going to create jobs. Create green 
jobs. After seeing what the people in charge have done in taking away 
incandescent light bulbs, it makes me wonder, are those green jobs 
going to have to carry around mercury, too, or what?
  The American people are letting it be known, they're not happy with 
people not keeping their promises here. Actually the truth is, I have a 
real fear as a Republican that we only get the majority back one more 
time in my lifetime and if we do not keep our word this time, we'll 
never get it back again in my lifetime.
  There are some great ideas. There are things that should be done. 
We've talked about balanced budgets for years. And there are some in 
the prior administration that equated compassion with paying money. 
There are an awful lot of people in the current administration that 
equate compassion with giving away somebody else's money. But that's 
not compassion. That's hurting free enterprise, killing incentive, 
killing jobs. And when you take away somebody's job, you have hurt 
them. Psychologists say that's one of the most devastating blows to a 
person mentally, emotionally, to lose a job. Losing a spouse is up 
there. Losing a child is right up at the top. But losing a job is one 
of the most devastating things that can happen. And here we keep doing 
things over and over.
  The crap-and-trade bill is still hanging out there. The rumors are 
there could be a lame duck session and people that have lost their 
seats, who were afraid to vote for it before in the House or Senate 
will vote for it in a lame duck session because they've already been 
voted out, they've got nothing to lose, and maybe hoping if they vote 
for it in November or December, maybe the administration will give them 
a job if they really cater to them and help them do that. That would be 
disastrous. But if you go back and read the crap-and-trade bill, as I 
did, you find out that back there it seemed like--and I read from it, 
standing right over there--around page 900 and something, there was a 
fund that was created in the bill that would reimburse people or give 
them a little allowance for those people who lost their jobs as a 
result of that bill being passed.
  Now I know my friends across the aisle who stood up over and over and 
said, no, this isn't going to cost jobs, this is going to create green 
jobs, they obviously had not read the bill because I know them well 
enough to know, they wouldn't have stood up and intentionally lied. 
They wouldn't have done that. It's just that they had not read the bill 
so they were not aware that whoever's staffer or special interest group 
wrote that bill, they knew people would lose their jobs and that's why 
they were creating a fund in the bill to give an allowance to people 
that lost their jobs as a result of the bill. And as I pointed out 
then, the good news, I guess, to those that voted for that bill is that 
if it becomes law, no doubt in my mind, a lot of the people that voted 
for that bill will lose their job as a result of voting for that bill, 
and they've got an argument that they're entitled to funds from the 
bill for losing their job as a result of the bill. So they may have 
created a fund that will help them out.
  But we should have a balanced budget amendment, and it's a shame on 
the Republicans for not getting that done when we had the White House, 
the House and the Senate. We should have gotten it done. Shame on the 
Republicans for in the last administration when we had the majority 
agreeing to tax cuts that we knew would stimulate the economy and but 
for those tax cuts we would have gone into a massive depression. But 
the economy was stimulated, and we brought more money into the Federal 
Treasury than had ever been brought into the Treasury; but the problem 
is we spent more than had ever been spent in history--up until, of 
course, this administration. And whereas I can remember being over here 
on this side and hearing colleagues beat up on Republicans because we 
were in the majority and to have a $160 billion deficit was 
unthinkable, it was just so irresponsible--until, of course, the Obama 
administration, the Democratic majority, and then actually 10 times 
that much of a deficit is okay. It was not okay at $160 billion and 
it's certainly not okay at 10 times that.
  People in the American public were promised change, and yet what they 
got was not really change; they got 10 times more of what they had 
before. I don't know why President Bush is being demonized, because 
this administration and this Congress is pushing 10 times more of 
exactly what the prior administration did. So instead of condemning the 
Bush administration and the Republican majority, they ought to be 
rightfully saying, you know what, we thought you had a good idea when 
you ran up a $160 billion deficit, that was such a good idea, we have 
gone 10 times that, and we're really running up a deficit now.
  Shame on Republicans when we had the chance in 2005 and President 
Bush

[[Page 15819]]

ran on shoring up Social Security. Now there was all kinds of 
discussion of privatization; what does it mean, what is it really going 
to do? And by September of '05, it was obvious the President's 
political capital was gone and what he had hoped to do would not be 
done. But I still had hope, because I knew what had been done with the 
Texas employment retirement system. They took real money from people's 
checks that were supposed to go toward retirement and put it in a 
retirement account. Real money in a real retirement account. Now that 
was invested and it got hit pretty hard after 9/11. It got hit very 
hard after ``Chicken Little'' Paulson ran around and said the financial 
sky was falling if we didn't give him the $700 billion slush fund he 
wanted, and so the market fell 777 points in one day, a self-fulfilling 
prophecy, and the money lost by everybody that had anything invested.
  There was one Republican that I went to because he was so well 
respected for his business and financial mind, and I said, Look, I've 
talked to a lot of Republicans and I've talked to some Democrats. 
Something we could get through here even in September of '05 was a bill 
that had one thing in it that just said, Social Security tax money for 
the first time in the history of Social Security, since its inception 
in the late 1930s, will require that that Social Security tax money be 
put into the Social Security trust fund.

                              {time}  2000

  I don't want to hear any ridiculous talk about lock box. There's 
never been one. I want one. I want there to be Social Security tax 
money put into the Social Security Trust Fund and stop putting IOUs in 
there, markers that are noninterest bearing, and we have to borrow 42 
cents out of every dollar that we spend. Stop it already.
  Now, to put the Social Security tax money into the Social Security 
Trust Fund will require us to actually make some tough calls. And since 
this majority condemned us all the time for spending too much money, 
then I think a good idea would be to go back to the budget of 2006. I 
know some are talking about 2008. I think it ought to be 2006. We'll go 
back to that budget. And I think that would help us maybe take care of 
the issue and get us a good start of being able to put all of the 
Social Security tax money into the Social Security Trust Fund.
  Now, the Republican is so brilliant he told me that we could never do 
that. I was shocked. Why not? Because the government would probably buy 
bonds with it. They'd be the biggest bondholder. We could never allow 
that to happen. Well, not really. We could create a treasury note 
that's interest bearing. So it's not risky. It doesn't put the Social 
Security Trust Fund at risk. That money makes interest. And it's there, 
and we stop having a Ponzi scheme. A very simple idea, and a Republican 
has proposed it. But when we were in the majority, our leadership 
didn't go for it, but I hope and pray they will if we get the majority 
again.
  Health care. Boy, we've seen what the ObamaCare bill has done to 
health care. And even though people were promised there would be no 
rationing, then we put a doctor in charge of it who's talked about, as 
I recall, not whether there would be rationing but when and who would 
be rationed. So all of the promises about no rationing, apparently 
those were not true. And it could be going back to the problem I 
alluded to earlier. We need to pray for the President's memory so he 
can remember those things that were promised.
  Now, another Republican idea--and I think everybody on this side of 
the aisle has signed on to it, is in support of it, is an energy bill, 
an energy plan that says use what we've got. Make sure that when coal 
is used that it doesn't harm the environment. Put scrubbers on there to 
make sure that it goes in the environment clean and we don't harm the 
environment. We can do that.
  Use uranium. Use nuclear facilities like we do with our ships and our 
submarines. It works. That's why we have sailors who are able to go 
underwater on submarines and stay submerged for 6 months. I was told by 
some of my friends from A&M that went in the Navy and were on subs 
underwater 6 months at a time. And he said, You know why we have to 
come up every 6 months? I said, I assume, to refuel.
  Oh, no. Those submarines could stay underwater just on and on and on. 
We have to come up so that the crew doesn't go crazy, because the 
nuclear subs could just stay under there as long as they needed to from 
a practical standpoint.
  But there's a source. Most of America didn't notice when our 
committee voted to put the second-largest source of uranium in this 
country off limits. People in Louisiana, Republicans and Democrats 
alike, have been screaming out, You are doing more damage to our State 
with the moratorium on gulf drilling than the oil spill did.
  And when you hurt an economy and you put people out of work, 
tragically they don't care about the environment. They're just trying 
to survive. The only countries that can really do much about the 
environment are those who have such a prolific economy that they can 
take care of it. But when you have people out of work and they're just 
living hand to mouth and they're trying to get by, they don't care 
about the environment because their economy doesn't allow it.
  Now, I and, as far as I know, everybody on this side of the aisle 
wants to develop alternative energy sources. But what a great idea, and 
it's been proposed, and we pushed it over and over. Instead of raising 
taxes and--as the President's promise would happen when he was running 
for office--having energy prices skyrocket if we use coal to make 
power, instead of doing those things--and as one 80-something-year-old 
lady told me from east Texas, I was born and raised in a house with no 
electricity. We had a wood-burning stove. And now the price of energy 
has gotten so high, I'm going to have to let it go. I can't pay for it. 
And it looks like I may end up going out of this world the way I came 
in, in a home with a wood-burning stove and nothing else, no other 
power, because people are wanting the prices to skyrocket. And that 
poor woman, not to be able to pay for her energy bill. No, that's no 
good way to do it.
  God blessed this country with more natural resources than any other 
country in the world. Yeah, the Middle East, they may have more oil 
with things that are being found around the world, who knows. But we 
have massive amounts of natural gas, maybe the most coal in the world. 
We've got nuclear power. We've got wind power. We've got solar. We've 
got all kinds of things, so many things that can be harnessed.
  But if you use the energy with which we have been blessed and 
designate--I don't care if it's 25, 50 percent of the royalty that we 
get back from the energy or from the mining or whatever it is, 
designate that that will all be used to find and research and develop 
alternative energy sources, so that when we run out--it will be well 
before we run out. We've got over 100 years of natural gas that's been 
found and finding more all the time. Before we run out, we'll be able 
to convert to alternative energy without raising anybody's taxes, 
without making any 80-year-old women living alone have to go without 
power, keep the power prices down. That's a Republican solution. And I 
have friends on the other side of the aisle over here that would sign 
on to that if their Speaker wouldn't punish them for doing so.
  Another idea. I know it's not popular with the administration, but we 
call it the U.N. Voting Accountability Act. Very simple. It says, in 
essence, recognize the fact, first of all, that every country is 
sovereign. You can make your own decisions. We're not going to tell you 
what to do in your country. We shouldn't. But any country that votes 
against the United States' position in the U.N. more than half the 
time, the following year will get no financial assistance from us.
  As I've said before, you don't have to pay people to hate you. 
They'll do it for free. And there are some countries that we keep 
pouring cash into thinking they'll end up loving us because we'll buy 
it. Not only do they not love

[[Page 15820]]

us, they have even greater contempt because they know we know they 
don't like us and yet we're just pouring money into them. It makes them 
not only not like us; it makes them have no respect at all for us. It's 
so unnecessary.
  Something that should have been passed in 2006 when we had the 
majority and we had the chance and some of the people that said they 
would not let it go through are no longer here--some are--it's a zero-
baseline budget bill. It just says there are no automatic increases in 
any Federal departments' budgets. There's a Republican solution for 
you. If you want your budget increased in the Federal Government, you 
have to come justify it, and we ought to put those budgets online where 
people can watch them like--I think the President put it this way, that 
he was going to go through the budget line by line with a fine-tooth 
comb. He was going to put Joe Biden in charge of doing that, too. They 
were going to get rid of everything that was waste.

                              {time}  2010

  Well, that hasn't happened yet. Since he is an honest man, I am sure 
it will eventually happen. But it sure hasn't happened yet. But it 
would sure happen if you let Americans see every Federal department's 
budget, how they were spending their money, put it up online, make them 
put those purchases online the way Congress is now doing. There would 
be people watching all right.
  And if we had a tax holiday and people saw for a couple months how 
much money they were actually sending to Washington, they would demand 
it. And they would be watching to see how every Federal department was 
spending money.
  And hey, I got another one for you. This is a Republican proposal 
from this Republican. Our leaders have not endorsed this. I am just 
tossing this out. But you know, we had to come in here in August, it 
cost an awful lot of money to turn all the lights back on, do 
everything to go back into session, but we did just so that we could 
get $10 billion extra to go to the Department of Education to help so-
called teachers. Well, it turns out across America only about 50 
percent of all the public education employees are teachers.
  Well, if you did away with the Department of Education here in 
Washington and kept that, $68 billion I believe is what we are spending 
this year, and divided it among the less than 14,000 independent school 
districts in America, I am open to a good formula how to do that, just 
average it would be between $5 million and $6 million dollars for every 
school district in America. Most school districts could really use that 
money. And boy, that would help education. You wouldn't need near as 
many bureaucrats because there wouldn't be as many decrees from on high 
here, Mount Olympus here in Washington. The local school districts 
would be able to comply with the Constitution, because the Constitution 
does not enumerate education as a power in the Constitution, which 
under the 10th Amendment means it's reserved to the States and to the 
people, the local folks.
  Another idea--they say we've got none--another idea, after having 
been to China years ago and having talked to CEOs about why you went. 
The corporate tax here is 35 percent. You lump on some of the State 
income taxes, you lump on local property taxes, all of the taxes, some 
of them are paying 40 percent, 50 percent in tax for their companies, 
competing with countries like China that don't exceed 17 percent. And 
if they are a big enough company moving over from anywhere in the U.S. 
to China, they'll cut you a deal, no income tax for a while, because 
they get it.
  If we dropped our corporate tax to 12 percent, I have had CEOs with 
major companies say we would be rebuilding a plant in the U.S. almost 
immediately when we went to a 12 percent corporate tax. And what would 
happen? More and more people would go back to work, and more and more 
people would be able to pay their taxes. And more and more revenue 
would come into the Federal Treasury. And then we would be able to buy 
more and more of those mercury lights that are going to create such a 
problem for the environment.
  There are a lot of very good solutions. And so I don't mind somebody 
taking my idea. I love it. I think it's the highest form of flattery. 
But I don't appreciate it when it's followed up with a comment that we 
have no ideas, no solutions. We've got a lot of them. We just aren't 
allowed to make amendments on the floor to get those to the floor where 
they could pass.
  I want to finish tonight with a tribute. It is a great honor for me 
to recognize one of America's greatest songwriters in our Nation's 
history, who turned 70 years of age this week. He is a man to whom we 
are indebted for many of the songs that lifted us, especially those of 
us who are baby boomers, from our low points because his songs spoke 
our feelings. They spoke our despondence, our hopes, our joy, and 
especially the joy that comes from loving other people.
  I had not met Paul Williams until recent years, but I knew the man 
well through his lyrics. I have known the man through his lyrics for 
decades. The hauntingly clear and comforting voice of Karen Carpenter 
shared some of his songs and expressed our hearts that we had only just 
begun to live. White lace and promises. A kiss for luck and we're on 
our way.
  For those of us who have loved, he expressed for us to the one we 
love that we won't last a day without you. And that all we needed was 
just an old-fashioned love song coming down in three-part harmony, one 
I am sure they wrote for you and me. Or that we had so much in common 
because we were all building a home for the family of man.
  Paul Williams expressed for us through the voice of Barbra Streisand 
that wonderful love could be soft as an easy chair, love fresh as the 
morning air, one love that is shared by two, I have found with you. 
Like a rose, under the April snow, I was always certain love would 
grow. Love, ageless and evergreen, seldom seen by two.
  Even though Paul had not yet recognized that he had a drinking 
problem, he forecast years down the road as a recovering alcoholic in 
that song with the words every day a beginning. Paul has now done that 
for over 20 years, as he has made each day a beginning. He knew for 
many of us that rainy days and Mondays always get us down. And some 
days it truly did feel that it was, through Helen Reddy's voice, you 
and me against the world. Sometimes it feels like you and me against 
the world. When others turn their back and walk away, we could always 
count on you to say just the right thing, Paul Williams. But for all 
the times we cried, you always felt the odds were on our side, and we 
found consolation in that.
  Paul Williams asked the ongoing question through the voice of Kermit 
the Frog as to why are there so many songs about rainbows? And what's 
on the other side? Well, someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, 
because Paul is a lover, a dreamer like me.
  Paul, of course, is widely considered one of our most prolific, 
talented, creative singer-songwriters. He has won awards called Oscar, 
Grammy, and Golden Globe on multiple occasions, and was nominated for 
these awards--more than 20 times he has been nominated over the span of 
his illustrious musical career. Even though he also wrote the theme for 
``The Love Boat,'' he nonetheless is deeply loved by so many like me 
who carry his lyrics in our hearts for life.
  As a further attestation of his talent and wide-ranging artistic 
scope and appeal, his songs have been recorded by a diverse array of 
our most famous classic and modern musicians such as Elvis, Frank 
Sinatra, Willie Nelson, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Tony Bennett, 
Sara Vaughan, Luther Vandross, R.E.M., and Jason Mraz, among so many 
others, in addition to the ones I mentioned already tonight. But this 
House has time restraints, so there is not enough time to mention all 
of them.
  But additionally, Paul has appeared as an actor in many movies and 
has been a favorite on television shows. He

[[Page 15821]]

was one of the most frequent guests on Johnny Carson's ``Tonight 
Show.'' I used to love to watch him. Always he had the most contagious 
sense of humor that caused viewers instantly to smile when he was 
introduced as a guest, because you just knew you were going to laugh. 
You always knew you were going to laugh with him in the room.
  On one such occasion he was a guest on ``The Tonight Show'' with Burt 
Reynolds. The chemistry was extraordinary and hilarious. It was only 
days later when Burt Reynolds called Paul, impressed with how much fun 
they had had together. He wanted to get with Paul, with Johnny Carson's 
beloved writer Pat McCormick, plus a few other favorites like Sally 
Field, Jackie Gleason, and Jerry Reed and others and make a movie. They 
did. And the fun they had making that movie came across from the screen 
to the audience, which made it one of the most successful movies in 
history.

                              {time}  2020

  It was called ``Smokey and the Bandit.''
  There were other Smokey sequels, but that first one was the best. 
Paul said, Billy Bob Thornton told him that in the South ``Smokey and 
the Bandit'' is not considered a movie, it's considered a documentary. 
Though some identify him in the movies as the short guy, I personally 
know him to be a full 10 feet tall.
  In recognition of Paul's significant and long-lasting musical impact, 
he was inducted in 2001 into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and he is 
currently serving as the president and chairman of the board of the 
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, ASCAP.
  But Paul will tell you that having hit rock bottom through his 
drinking, God blessed him even still, He lifted him and gave him new 
life with an even more infectious joy. He became a Christian and 
although some alcoholics fear that they will not be nearly as creative 
without drinking, Paul showed that's absolutely not the case.
  Like virtually all creative geniuses, though, he has known times when 
he had trouble writing. On one such occasion he went to Nashville, 
collaborated and out came one of the most touching and autobiographical 
songs which became a huge hit for Diamond Rio. The words reflected a 
part of his own struggle with alcoholism and his recovery, though the 
woman who made him face the truth was not waiting for him when he 
completely sobered up and dried out. The words say it better than I 
can:
  ``I said, Hello, I think I am broken, and though I was only jokin', 
you took me by surprise when you agreed. I was trying to be clever, for 
the life of me I never guessed how far a simple truth would lead. You 
knew all my lines; you knew all my tricks; you knew how to heal that 
thing no medicine can fix. And I bless the day I met you, and I thank 
God that He let you lay beside me for a moment that lives on. And the 
good news is I'm better for the time we spent together. The bad news is 
you're gone.
  ``Looking back it's still surprising, I was sinking; you were rising, 
and with a look you caught me in mid-air. Now I know God has His 
reasons, but sometimes it's hard to see them when I awake and find that 
you're not there.
  ``You found hope in hopeless; and you made crazy sane, you became the 
missing link that helped me break my chains. And I bless the day I met 
you, and I thank God that He let you lay beside me for a moment that 
lives on. And the good news is I'm better for the time we spent 
together. The bad news is you're gone.''
  And Paul knows, however, that all things work together for good for 
those who love God and are called according to His purpose. But that 
doesn't mean that everything is good; it's certainly not. But 
thankfully things have worked out so that Paul has been a gift to this 
planet and to the millions that he has touched.
  Paul has a true driving passion for his family, for his work as a 
drug rehabilitation counselor with Musicians' Assistance Program, a 
nonprofit program created by and for the benefit of musicians to help 
them overcome their substance abuse issues. In 1989 Paul obtained his 
certification as a drug rehabilitation counselor from UCLA and has for 
the last 20 years been actively imparting the lessons to others that he 
had to learn himself the hard way.
  He has been given a number of awards for his humanitarian efforts and 
remains a shining example of someone who has used fame not for self-
centered ends but to promote the well-being of others. He is indeed 
devoted to his church, to the Lord, and just as I found out after I got 
dumped in college by my girlfriend, God had something else waiting that 
was supposed to have been all along.
  One of the great mysteries in this world, though, is that it is only 
after a broken heart so often that our hearts are stretched enough and 
then mend even bigger with a greater capacity for loving others. And so 
it was with Paul. Subsequently he met and married Mariana. They are 
happily married and have the deepest love for and pride in their 
wonderful family.
  Though he is a Democrat by political affiliation, he, just as Jesus 
did, can mingle and feel right at home even with the least of these, 
like me. His favorite anonymous quote, apparently he is one we can all 
take to heart with our interactions with one another, ``Care deeply; 
give freely; think kindly; act gently; and be at peace with the 
world.''
  One of my favorite quotes is: ``Before the rising sun we fly; so many 
roads to choose, we start out walking and learn to run. We've only just 
begun.''
  We are so grateful that the good Lord led Paul down a road of 
expressing what we felt, though Paul expressed it in a way we never 
could. But we can certainly sing, even though some of us should do so 
only privately.
  But it is also true, as Paul wrote, ``Time won't change the meaning 
of one love.'' And though 70 years of age this week, Paul Williams is 
ageless and ever, ever green.
  Here in the Congressional Record for all the world to read, as long 
as there is a United States, it will ever be recorded that Paul 
Williams lived, laughed, loved, and was immensely helpful to those 
around him doing the same thing; and hopefully he will be around the 
rest of my life to add the music to my life.
  And, yes, to borrow from another of his songs: ``As a traveling boy, 
Paul was only passing through, but we will always think of you.''
  God bless you, Paul, for blessing us. Happy birthday.
  I yield back.

                          ____________________