[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 10356-10363]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, thank you for the recognition. I want to 
thank the minority leader, Mr. Boehner, for granting me the privilege 
of speaking here this evening.
  What prompted us to come forward this evening is an announcement that 
took place before the Memorial Day weekend by the majority in the 
House, the Democratic majority leader and others, that it was not 
anticipated that they would be producing a budget. This is my 16th year 
in the Congress, and I know that that has not happened in the previous 
15 years that I've served here. And in checking, I'm not aware, since 
the Budget Act of 1974 was enacted, that the House of Representatives 
hasn't put forth and produced a budget.
  Just like at home, the reason that a budget is important is that it 
allocates resources and says what you're going to spend on what and, in 
the case of the government, what you're going to overspend and are 
going to have to borrow from places like China to finance the deficit 
and the debt. As a matter of fact, the news reports indicate that we 
are projected to have a budget deficit--that's just spending more money 
this year than we have--of about $1.4 trillion, which is certainly 
significant.
  The thing about that debt, it's not money that we just have laying 
around or we borrow from the guy down the street. Most of it is 
borrowed from the financial institutions on Wall Street that we spend a 
lot of time bailing out and also foreign countries. China and others 
own a good portion of our debt as well.
  So it was alarming that the announcement was made that we wouldn't be 
producing or the majority would not be producing a budget. Alarming 
because you wonder, maybe we've been really busy here and we haven't 
had time to get to something as important as the budget. And then, of 
course, after the budget is passed, that leads to what's called the 
appropriations process where the Appropriations Committee gets together 
and determines what we're going to spend on defense, what we are going 
to spend on education, what we are going to spend on the environment 
and so forth and so on. So, until you have the budget trigger, there's 
no allocation to the Appropriations Committee so they can begin their 
work.
  So it's not just a matter of not having a blueprint, not having a 
budget; it's a matter of them not having the spending bills in place. 
Although, again, we're sometimes late in delivering those, it's pretty 
unusual that we don't even start the process with a markup in the 
subcommittees of Appropriations, certainly preparing the bills for 
floor activity.
  In thinking about it, the President of the United States, President 
Obama, he's also charged with delivering a budget, and I think we all 
know that President Obama has been pretty busy. I mean, there's a lot 
going on. There have been a lot of things happening since he became the 
President of the United States that require attention. Some have been 
disasters; some have been financial difficulties. We've seen Greece go 
bankrupt on the other side of the ocean. But even as busy as President 
Obama has been, he discharged his statutory obligation and delivered to 
Capitol Hill in a timely fashion a budget. Now, you may not be crazy 
about the budget. You may think that the budget spends too much as I 
do, the President's proposal, but at least he did what he was supposed 
to do and present a budget.
  That caused me to sort of examine what it is that we've been doing 
here in the House of Representatives or, more correctly, what the 
majority has decided we should be doing in the House of Representatives 
here since the beginning of the year to determine what it is that we 
have been so busy doing.
  It's particularly important to talk about that a little bit because 
the first 12 years that I served in the Congress--I happen to be a 
Republican--there were more Republicans in the House of Representatives 
than there were Democrats, and so we were the majority party and we 
determined what came to the floor, when it came to the floor, just like 
the Democratic majority does today. And we were doing such a bang-up 
job that in 2006 the voters replaced us and made the Democratic Party 
the majority party.
  But one of the central themes of that campaign that the Democrats 
made all across the country was you need to put us in charge because 
the Republican

[[Page 10357]]

Congress is a do-nothing Congress, they're just not doing anything. 
And, as a matter of fact, they indicated that we weren't working full 
time. Now, anybody that's been here knows that that's really a specious 
argument, a false argument, but it sold newspapers. It looked good on 
the talk shows when people would say, well, we're not even working a 
full week. Well, you know, some of the work is done here on the floor, 
a lot of the work is done in committee, a lot of the work is done back 
in our districts, but to say that we weren't here five days a week and 
they were going to change all that was an interesting campaign slogan.
  But just walking over here, Mr. Speaker, I got a notice from the 
majority leader. We've just come back from our work period back in the 
district for Memorial Day. We didn't have any votes on Monday. We've 
done something called suspensions that I'm going to talk about the last 
couple of days, together with a bill that I guess we'll try and finish 
up tomorrow. But I just got an email, courtesy of the majority leader's 
office so that we know what our schedule should be, that we're not 
going to have any votes on Friday.
  So, despite the fact that the Republican majority in 2006 was labeled 
as the do-nothing Congress and we didn't work 5 days a week, we have 
accomplished a whopping 3 days of floor activity here in the House of 
Representatives after being at home for Memorial Day for an entire 
week.
  I thought to myself, well, maybe we should look to see what it is 
we've been doing because, clearly, if we're not producing a budget--and 
we're going to talk a little bit about other things that haven't been 
occurring around here--maybe we've been preoccupied with really, really 
important matters that needed to be addressed.
  What I found out was, as I examined it, that there have been 337 
recorded votes on something known as suspensions, and, you know, Mr. 
Speaker, but just so the record is clear, a suspension is a 
noncontroversial bill where it's cleared, usually by the majority who 
says to the minority, We'd like to do this on suspension. Most of those 
things are by agreement.
  The way that works, it's called a suspension because you're 
suspending the rules, you're not bringing a bill to the floor pursuant 
to the regular order. You're bringing it in a way that's debated for 40 
minutes. Each side gets 20 minutes, and then there's a recorded vote if 
it's requested. And rather than the simple majority, it takes two-
thirds of those Members present and voting to pass a suspension.
  Now, the interesting thing about suspensions is that both parties 
file legislation that becomes suspensions, and there have been more 
suspensions than 337, but the 337 that have occurred since January of 
this year were those that actually required a recorded vote. So, for 
each one of the 337 suspensions with a vote, you had 40 minutes of 
debate, so 40 minutes of floor time plus a 15-minute vote.
  Now, to be fair, when they put a series of the suspensions in a row, 
not every suspension gets a 15-minute vote; some get 5-minute votes. 
But also, there are very few, simply, 15-minute votes around here 
because Members have to come from committee or their offices or 
wherever they happen to be to cast their votes, and so at least the 
first vote in the series, it's not unusual, even though the clock runs 
down beginning at 15 minutes, that the actual time consumed is closer 
to half an hour.
  So, just for a rule of thumb with that sort of asterisk, so you have 
337 suspensions debated for 40 minutes apiece and each one getting a 
15-minute vote, and we'll do the math in a little bit, but clearly, 
that's a significant amount of floor time in a Congress that's really 
only here 3 days a week discussing noncontroversial bills.
  In looking at the suspensions on this side, first of all, we have 
named 19 post offices or public buildings. And so, in each of those 
instances, a Member put forward a piece of legislation--and I don't 
make any observation about that these weren't worthy honors to name a 
public building after someone or a post office after someone, but 19 
times the majority has put on the floor a suspension, consumed 40 
minutes of time in a debate about whether or not we should--let's see, 
for instance, we designated a post office called the Roy Wilson Post 
Office, as an example, one time this year. So that bill was called up, 
debated for 40 minutes, and then there was a 15-minute vote. So, all 
told, just shy of an hour is consumed naming a post office after Mr. 
Wilson, and I will tell you that if you look up the recorded vote on 
that, I doubt that anybody that was present that day voted against it.

                              {time}  2045

  As a matter of fact, we just named two post offices earlier this 
evening, one after Ronald Reagan and the second one, I believe, was 
after a couple of Marines. Again, both are worthy designations, but 
there were no ``no'' votes.
  So you sort of say to yourself, well, okay, then why did we have to 
have a recorded vote? Why did we have to consume 40 minutes of debate 
and then consume another 15 minutes on a vote when nobody was opposed 
to it and everybody thought it was a good idea?
  As a matter of fact, you know, Mr. Speaker, that you could call up a 
post office bill and say, you know, ``I want the post office'' in 
wherever this happens to be--I apologize, I don't know--``but I want 
this post office named after Mr. Wilson,'' and ask everybody to vote 
for it and sit down.
  And then the Speaker would say, ``All those in favor, say, `Aye.' All 
those opposed, `No.''' And the ayes would obviously have it because 
everybody thinks it's a good idea. You wouldn't have a recorded vote. 
And I don't know how long that took, but it was a lot less than 55 
minutes.
  So, 19 times we consumed 55 minutes naming either a public building 
or a post office in honor of somebody.
  The other thing I found was, in those 337 noncontroversial bills that 
each require 55 minutes, on over 30 occasions, I think it's 36 
occasions, we congratulated a university or a college in this country 
for doing something like winning the lacrosse national championship or 
winning the NCAA basketball tournament.
  And, again, all of the young people and all of those institutions 
deserve recognition. And I am not indicating, for example, that the 
University of Virginia men's soccer team, who won the 2009 Division 1 
NCAA national championship--I know that every parent, every student on 
that team is extremely proud of his or her son's accomplishment in 
doing that.
  But, again, if you look up the recorded vote, which was requested by 
the sponsor of that legislation, nobody voted against it. And so you 
have to say to yourself, well, okay, then why does it take 55 minutes 
on over 30 separate occasions since January of this year to 
congratulate all of these fine activities that have occurred?
  And I only brought up the colleges and universities, but, in looking 
at the list, I know we have congratulated--and if I was a golfer, I 
could tell you, but we congratulated the guy who won the Masters, we 
congratulated a NASCAR race driver for winning his race.
  And, again, all of those are important things, and I am sure that 
when the bills are finally passed and signed by the President, that 
makes a nice memento for that school or that individual to hang on 
their wall.
  But when you are not doing other things such as producing a budget or 
producing a jobs bill that actually puts people back to work in this 
country, you have to ask yourself, well, why are you so busy taking 55 
minutes times 36 to do that?
  In addition, just sort of randomly, in pulling out some of the 337 
suspensions that required a vote, because the majority asked for a 
vote, that don't have anything to do with schools and don't have 
anything to do with public buildings, you find that we are all about 
congratulating a lot of people who are engaged in certain activities in 
this country.
  So, H. Res. 117, one of the first ones because 117 is kind of a low 
number, we supported the goals and ideals of National Engineers Week. 
Now, again, if you look up the vote, you will find that

[[Page 10358]]

everybody that was here that day voted to commend the fine engineers in 
this country because they were having a good week.
  The next one, again in the low numbers, 197, we wanted to commend the 
American Sail Training Association for its advancement of character 
building under sail and for advancement of international goodwill.
  Again, worthy goals, but you have to say, when you are not attending 
to the business of the people of the United States through legislation 
that makes a difference in their lives and you are making choices about 
limited floor time--because, again, we are not here 5 days a week; we 
are here, really, on an average, about 3 days a week, even though, when 
campaigning to become the majority, they indicated we are going to work 
5 days a week--you wonder why that takes 55 minutes when everybody 
votes for it.
  A lot of things dealing with education: We indicated that February 
the 1st was going to be National School Counselor Week. We recognized 
National Robotics Week. And I am not really sure what that is, but I am 
sure, I guess, we have a week dedicated to people who make robots. The 
only robots I have seen are those ones on TV that battle each other all 
the time. But, again, that take a lot of smarts to put together a good 
robot.
  We had a week recognizing School Social Work Week. We supported the 
goals and ideals of National Public Works Week. And I guess that that 
means, you know, like, sewers and bridges and things like that, that we 
felt it was necessary to take 55 minutes to say that national works are 
good things.
  We thanked Vancouver for hosting a wonderful Winter Olympics. And, 
again, when that came to a vote, I don't recall anybody in the House of 
Representatives voting against it. Certainly, people who saw the 
Olympics thought that that was a very nice Olympics. The American teams 
did better than they normally do during a Winter Olympics.
  So, again, I don't have any big difficulty with the fact that one of 
our colleagues sat down and drafted a resolution to do any one of these 
337 things. I think the question is: Why, unless you are making it 
appear that you are doing something, would you consume 435 Members, all 
of the wonderful staff that works here, why would with you consume all 
that time to do these things, when, instead, you could be dealing with 
things that people are concerned about?
  So, I am not smart enough to do the math, but just for those that may 
be interested, that will read the Congressional Record, if you take out 
your calculator and indicate 337 for the suspensions where they have 
required a vote, multiply it by 40 minutes, and then also multiply 337 
times 15 minutes for the votes that occurred, that will give you the 
amount of floor time that has been consumed with these suspensions.
  For instance, we recognized the importance of manufactured and 
modular housing. I think that that's important. I never lived in a 
modular house, but if I did, I am sure that I would think that it was a 
good thing to honor the people that made it so that it didn't fall in 
on me, and we should recognize them.
  But, again, why do you have to take an hour on the floor of the 
greatest deliberative body of the world to congratulate or recognize 
people who are in the modular home industry rather than dealing with 
other things?
  And let me just talk for a minute about what those other things are. 
I mentioned the budget. No one around here can recall a time since the 
Budget Act of 1974 when the House of Representatives has not produced a 
budget.
  Everybody at home, certainly in my part of the world in Ohio, when 
they sit down and figure out, you know, okay, we were sending the kids 
to school and it's going to cost this much, the car payment is this 
much, insurance is this much, you have to budget it. And if you don't 
budget it, you run into trouble. And then the trouble you run into is 
you either don't know what's going on with your finances or you spend 
more money than you have. And that's certainly the case with the 
Federal Government.
  But one way that people that were here long before I got here decided 
that you could, sort of, track that and keep an eye on it was to 
produce a budget. And it also is a good tool for our constituents 
because there is a lot of concern about how much money is being spent 
in this country.
  However, Americans tend to be generous people. Americans also 
recognize the importance of national defense. And if you said to my 
constituents or any constituents that, ``Look, we have to spend more 
money than we are bringing in in tax revenues this year, but here is 
what we are spending it on, because you can look at our budget,'' then 
sometimes people would say, ``Well, okay, I mean, borrowing money is 
not a good idea, but if we are going to borrow money, at least we 
understand that you are going to borrow it for''--for instance, there 
is a horrible situation going on in the Gulf of Mexico, with the oil 
literally gushing out of the bottom of the ocean.
  And if you have seen the pictures of the wildlife and you recognize 
that hurricane season is about to hit the gulf and, you know, when that 
water gets stirred up, the damage and the oil is going to spread much 
further than it has today, there are a number of people who would say, 
``Well, okay, borrowing money is not a great idea. Maybe we would 
prefer that you go find cuts someplace else to pay for it. But we 
understand that emergencies happen, and so if you need to spend X 
millions of dollars to deal with that situation and then hopefully get 
it repaid from BP or those responsible for the mess that has been 
created down there, we think that that's okay.''
  But without a budget, we not only deprive Members of the Congress 
from understanding where it is we are going fiscally, we also deprive 
all the people that are paying the bills, the taxpayers of the United 
States, from knowing how the government proposes to spend their money 
in the next fiscal year.
  And it's a fiscal year, Mr. Speaker--and I know you know this, but I 
will indicate it just for the record--that the Federal Government's 
fiscal year goes October 1st to October the 1st. And so these things 
need to be in place by October 1st, both budget and the appropriations 
process, the spending process, or else calamitous things happen. The 
government shuts down, there is no predictability about how things are 
going to be spent, and it's a mess. And it's certainly not the 
preferred way of governing.
  And, as a matter of fact, there are a number of statements made by 
gentlemen who now hold the position of majority leader or chairman of 
the Budget Committee who, when they were in the minority party and it 
was the Republicans' job to cobble together a budget and get it passed, 
which we always did, they indicated in words to the effect that the 
inability or the failure to create a budget is a failure to govern.
  And, you know, words are funny things, just like when you say we 
should work 5 days a week and we wind up working 3 days a week, but the 
reason that you said we should work 5 days a week is to say that other 
people are bad, that can come back and bite you in the nose.
  And, similarly, when you make statements like, you know, ``The 
failure to produce a budget is a failure to govern,'' when you are in 
the criticism business rather than the governing business, and then all 
of a sudden the voters put you in charge, and they say, ``Well, we are 
not even going to try to do a budget,'' it gets you into trouble.
  You know, one of the dissatisfactions, one of the many 
dissatisfactions--and you are seeing it in election after election 
across the country--is that people think that the Federal Government 
has stopped listening to them and their representatives have stopped 
listening to them. And I happen to think one of the biggest 
contributors to that is this venomous partisanship that goes back and 
forth.
  And, you know, you have to recognize that, when you are in the 
minority and you are making a statement that the failure to produce a 
budget is a failure to govern, well, sometimes, you

[[Page 10359]]

know, the dog catches the car. And you then are put in a position where 
it's your job to craft the budget. And so, what are we to think if you 
don't produce a budget? I think you are to think that it's a failure to 
govern.
  And, rather than saying that, it would be my preferred path that we 
would work together, Republicans and Democrats. Just because a Democrat 
has an idea, I don't dismiss it as a bad idea because it came from a 
Democrat. And my Republican colleagues, a lot of them are very bright 
people and they have very good ideas that, if they were incorporated 
into some of the things that the majority was up to, perhaps we could 
have legislation.
  And that's always been, you know, how I have tried to conduct myself 
in the 16 years I have been here. And the proof is sort of in the 
pudding. And the National Journal, one of the publications here on 
Capitol Hill, sort of looks at how Members of Congress vote. And there 
was an article, about a month and a half ago, that talked about who 
voted either for or against the clearly identified initiatives of 
President Obama the most.

                              {time}  2100

  And so, not untypically, the numbers were pretty high on the 
Republican side in opposing some of the things that President Obama is 
putting forward; and again, not surprisingly because the President is a 
Democrat, the members of the Democratic Party voted for his proposals 
in pretty large amounts. But I was surprised--and I think I'm probably 
lucky I didn't get a primary from a tea party person because that 
analysis showed that on 65 percent of the occasions where President 
Obama identified what his goal or priority was, I supported President 
Obama. That's a pretty high number. It wasn't the highest among 
Republicans, I think it was fifth or sixth, but that's what I'm talking 
about.
  The way that things work and the way you govern is when you take the 
best ideas of a lot of bright people here, a lot of good-intentioned 
people here, and craft something that maybe you don't get everything 
you want--the only two people that I ever knew or do know that were 
right 100 percent of the time were my mother and my wife. And I know 
that because they both told me they were right 100 percent of the time.
  So, again, you have to say to yourself, what are we doing? Why are we 
spending an hour times 337 honoring football teams and lacrosse teams 
and swimming teams and recognizing the--well, we did modular housing. 
Let's see, what else did we do? We honored a historic community and 
expressed condolences to the Chatham County Courthouse. Again, I don't 
know what horrible event befell the Chatham County Courthouse, but we 
took an hour here doing that rather than doing other things.
  And so what is it that we haven't accomplished, and what is it that 
the American people, I think, would appreciate if we got around to it? 
The first I indicated--and I apologize, Mr. Speaker, my writing is bad 
and it looks like chicken scratch--but the first is a budget, and I 
think I've talked enough about the fact that we haven't produced a 
budget.
  Another thing, 12 years I spent on the Transportation Committee 
around here, and every 6 years we have reauthorized something known as 
the Surface Transportation bill. It was called ICE-TEA in 1991, it was 
called TEA-21 in 1997, it was called SAFETEA-LU in 2005, and it expired 
last September. Now, that legislation is what funnels literally 
billions of dollars to the States so that they can build roads and 
bridges and make safety improvements and build bike lanes and a whole 
host of other things.
  But aside from being a bill that keeps our country competitive--
because it really started, even though we have a 6-year bill now, it 
started in 1956, I believe, with Dwight Eisenhower when he decided we 
should have a dedicated gasoline tax and built the national highway 
system. And if you think about the national highway system and what it 
has meant to this country in terms of commerce, it's unbelievable. Even 
if you go beyond commerce, you have to say to yourself, wait a minute, 
it's also a big item in national defense.
  So you would think that that would be something we would like to take 
care of. As a matter of fact, the rule of thumb on the Transportation 
Committee was that for every $1 billion that was expended in that 
legislation, it created 47,500 jobs. Republicans now are asking where 
is the budget, but before that we were asking where are the jobs.
  The job figures, Mr. Speaker, you know, came out last week. There was 
an uptick in employment, but included in that uptick in employment was 
the fact that the government has hired 400,000 people to conduct the 
census. Now, anybody who is interested can go back and see how many 
people were hired to conduct the census in 2000. It's an important job. 
But 400,000 people were hired to conduct the census, counting all the 
people in the United States of America.
  When you take out the 400,000 government jobs that were created 
temporarily--and again, if you're talking about jobs, a job to me is 
something where you can earn a wage, have health care security, have 
retirement, potentially, and the ability through that wage to support 
yourself and your family on a long-term basis. Very, very few people 
would consider it to be just a sweetheart job, to get a job counting 
people in the United States and then being done and not being employed 
when you're done with that.
  So if you look at the jobless figures and you take out the 400,000 
people that have been added to conduct the census, job unemployment in 
this country is stagnant. It's hovering between 9 and 10 percent. We've 
been joined by my good friend, Mr. McCotter of Michigan. Michigan has 
been hard hit because of the auto industry. The gentleman from Michigan 
can tell us in a minute what that unemployment is.
  But, again, by recognizing National Teachers Day and taking an hour 
of time to do that, we haven't gotten to the transportation bill. It's 
about a year overdue; it will be soon. We keep kicking the can down the 
road, but it's not being done. So if your question is, where are the 
jobs? How can the government assist? The government doesn't create 
jobs--unless you're a census worker. But how can we assist, sort of 
give the economy a boost? And under this administration we've had 
stimulus 1, we've had stimulus 2, we've had bailout 1, 2 and 3, son of 
bailout, son-in-law of bailout; and we still hover around 9 or 10 
percent unemployment across the country.
  What is significant about the transportation bill is that the 
people--although the 47,500 jobs that are created for each billion of 
spending are on a wide array of things--the people that cook food and 
serve it to highway workers in restaurants, the people in the uniform 
business that produce or clean uniforms for the people out building 
roads and bridges, the people that make the orange cones and the 
reflective vests--the bulk of the highway work is done by laborers and 
operating engineers and designed by civil engineers.
  Well, their unemployment rate, the unemployment rate in the trades 
isn't 9 or 10 percent. Depending upon what trade you're talking about, 
the unemployment rate is between 27 and 40 percent. So these people who 
have had jobs--we're not talking about people that don't want to work 
or anything else--these people who have had jobs, because of the 
shrinking of the economy and because of Congress' failure to act on a 
transportation bill--which was due last September, it's not like it was 
last week and we just sort of skipped over it and didn't quite get 
there from here--it's almost a year late.
  And there are really no prospects, despite the really good intentions 
of a guy named Jim Oberstar, who is the chairman, a Democrat from 
Minnesota, of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. If it 
was up to him, we would have had a transportation bill on time, but 
it's not up to him. The leadership of the House has indicated that 
we're just not going to do a transportation bill between now and 
certainly the election. And the President's Secretary of 
Transportation, Ray LaHood, has indicated that the administration

[[Page 10360]]

has decided that they want to go on an 18-month listening tour to 
listen to ideas about transportation and has no intention of even 
addressing the highway bill until March of next year.
  And so at that point it's going to be 1\1/2\ years late before the 
bill is even hobbled together. And bills just don't all of a sudden 
spring up like crocuses here in the spring. There have to be some 
hearings and adjustments and amendments, and then it's brought to the 
floor for floor activity.
  So when we are spending an hour times 337 doing things like, oh, I 
don't know, in support of National Safe Digging Week, we spent an hour 
on that--nobody voted against it, but in order to make it look like we 
were here 5 days a week, to make it look like we were doing something, 
we spent an hour both discussing and voting on National Safe Digging 
Week. Now, I don't know exactly what National Safe Digging Week is, but 
I think it's when you go out in your back yard and you want to put in a 
garden, you should call the utilities first and not stick the spade in 
the ground or else you're going to cut your neighbor's gas line. So I 
think that's National Safe Digging Week.
  But regardless, again, I'm not aware of any big push by anybody that 
would condemn National Safe Digging Week, and I certainly have never 
seen a resolution around here that wanted to promote National Unsafe 
Digging Week. But we took an hour, we took an hour, rather than 
producing a budget so that we could, in an orderly fashion, figure out 
where we are in this country financially.
  Instead of just borrowing trillions and trillions of dollars that we 
don't have, we could have been doing a transportation bill for a sector 
that, unlike the 9 or 10 percent--which is really high all by itself, 
and if you sort of flashback to February of 2009, the President's 
observation was we have to do this $800 billion of stimulus spending 
because if we don't, unemployment is going to go above eight percent. 
Well, the economy is an unpredictable thing, and I certainly don't 
fault the President for--or his advisers actually, I don't think the 
President actually sat down and crunched the $800 billion--but you 
certainly can't fault him and his advisers for thinking that was the 
case.
  But the fact of the matter is it hasn't been the case, and 
unemployment has risen, cresting double digits; and now it's not 
getting better unless we spend more money hiring people--400,000 
people--to count people in the census.
  Maybe the gentleman from Michigan could just share with us briefly 
what the economic picture is and what's of concern to his constituents 
in the State of Michigan. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. McCOTTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  You bring up a very sore point for the people of Michigan: we have 
the highest unemployment rate in the country. We've suffered greatly in 
what many people believe has been our longest lasting recession. And at 
present, they are very concerned that not only will we not see an 
immediate recovery or one in the near future, but instead what we will 
see is another dip down into the recession with inflation following it 
due to, as the gentleman has pointed out, the massive borrowing by the 
Federal Government. This would be akin to the stagflation that Michigan 
experienced in the late seventies and early eighties, which was a very 
severe blow to our economy and to the families and the workers that 
rely upon a strong manufacturing base in this country.
  When you talk about the budget, when you talk about the 
transportation bill, these are essential items of the Federal 
Government. Not being able to bring forward a budget, as the gentleman 
has rightly pointed out, leaves individuals who could make investments 
and who could help grow the economy to feel that the fiscal discipline 
and fiscal integrity in the United States is absent. This will then 
preclude them from stepping forward and trying to help grow the 
economy, to help people find jobs, especially in my home State of 
Michigan.
  We talk about transportation, which is something that has generally 
been very bipartisan. This is not an ideological debate. We understand 
there is a Federal role. As Republicans, we know this from starting 
with Abraham Lincoln's support for internal improvements, and yet for 
whatever reason we have not seen a bill come forth.
  As the gentleman has also rightly pointed out, the people of 
Michigan--who would be interested in such a bill, I assure you--are 
hearing that there will instead be a listening tour. Well, if you 
haven't heard them by now, they want jobs, they want the opportunities, 
they want to see the economy grow, and they want to see the Federal 
Government actually taking responsible steps to help facilitate 
economic growth.
  I think that as we continue to go through the list of items that the 
gentleman has put forward, we do not criticize colleagues for voting on 
what's put in front of them. People have long talked about the bills or 
the resolutions that Congress passes. There are constituencies who like 
them. There are very few, as has been pointed out, very few individuals 
who oppose them. But if you look at it like a meal, on the blue charts 
that the gentleman from Ohio has put forward are what I would call the 
fixings, and what is on the white board that is missing is the actual 
meat and potatoes.
  This Congress has to understand that there are families worried about 
their finances, they're worried about their futures, they're worried 
about what next meal they will put on the table if they lose their job 
or if their unemployment runs out, or if we go into a double-dip 
recession with the prospect of stagflation.
  It is up to this Congress not necessarily to say that all the fixings 
are irrelevant, but we should be able to put a full meal forward of 
legislative priorities, pass them, and help to get us out of the 
situation that we're in. I know that in a State with 14 percent 
unemployment, that would be a most welcome change to what we're 
experiencing now.
  I yield back.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman for those observations. Again, 
it's tough for you to see, so I just want to elevate this chart for a 
minute. But two of my favorites that we've spent an hour on is H. Res. 
1294, expressing support for the designation of National Explosive 
Ordnance Disposal Day.

                              {time}  2115

  Now, I guess that means, you know, if you live next-door to a Korean 
War vet and if he smuggled home a couple of grenades and he has them in 
your basement that we are honoring the getting rid of those without 
blowing people up. Again, at a time when we haven't done a budget and 
we haven't done a transportation bill, the fact that we would spend an 
hour of time here coming up with honoring people who dispose of unsafe 
ordnances is a strange thing.
  We've been joined now by my great friend from Ohio, Mr. Tiberi, of 
Columbus, Ohio.
  You know, a lot of people point to the collapse of the subprime 
market and to the fact that we weren't on the ball when it came to the 
residential housing market. You can go back and forth. You can blame 
the Republicans, you can blame the Democrats, but the blame game really 
doesn't matter much.
  The gentleman talked about a second recession. We do know that the 
mortgage market for a commercial property is about to explode. We have 
seen it. We see it coming. We know it's coming. Basically, what has 
occurred is because of the difficulties in the economy. Just as an 
example, if you were in the real estate business and if you purchased a 
building, an office building, and if it were fully rented--everybody 
pays you rent--but you bought it for $1 million and today it's not 
worth $1 million, the banks, which we've bailed out again and again and 
again, are now in the process of saying to the people who own those 
buildings, Well, wait a minute. We can't finance that for $1 million 
anymore because it's only worth $600,000. We know that that is coming. 
We know it.
  Again, we are passing bills about the safe, you know, disposal--not 
even the

[[Page 10361]]

safe disposal of hand grenades. We're just honoring people for having a 
week when they dispose of hand grenades.
  You know, with the last one down here, H. Res. 1301, we supported the 
goals and ideals of National Train Day. That's about the fifth time 
that I can recall since the Democrats became the majority that we have 
recognized National Train Day. I happen to like trains. I support 
trains and so forth and so on. Yet how come we spent an hour of time 
and 337 hours of time having bills and having votes when everybody 
votes for them rather than dealing with this commercial mortgage 
crisis? I mean, where is the bill that does that?
  What you will get instead is inaction. We'll honor, you know, a 
couple more universities for winning a swim meet or a curling 
tournament, and we'll not deal with the commercial mortgage crisis. 
Then we're going to start the blame game all over again. We're going to 
say, Well, it happened on your watch. It's George Bush's fault. It's 
Barack Obama's fault. How about, rather than honoring trains, we take 
an hour of our valuable time here and we do something about a crisis 
that we know is coming?
  I yield to my friend from Ohio for his thoughts.
  Mr. TIBERI. Well, I thank the gentleman from northeastern Ohio and 
the Cleveland suburbs in Lake County for organizing this hour today, 
and I think you've really hit on some of the important points.
  When you kind of go back over a year ago when the stimulus bill was 
passed by the majority, the Speaker said that unemployment wouldn't go 
above 8 percent. Boy, it would be nice to see unemployment at 8 percent 
in Ohio at this time, wouldn't it? It would be nice to see unemployment 
at 8 percent in my district. It would be nice to see 8 percent 
unemployment in your district. It would be nice to see unemployment 
even close to 8 percent nationally, and we don't see that today. In 
fact, as someone who has a father factoring the last time unemployment 
was above 8 percent, which was in the early 1980s--he lost his job and 
lost his pension, and we lost our health care--it's kind of deja vu all 
over again.
  Rather than try to focus on those issues, we have spent a whole lot 
of time on issues that don't employ people, that don't make a 
difference in people's lives. Maybe they are important, but not as 
important as dealing with the nuts-and-bolts issues that you've talked 
about tonight.
  I mean, if you can't budget, you can't govern, one man said, who is 
now the chairman of the Budget Committee from South Carolina. If you 
can't budget, you can't govern. Maybe you've already said this, but, 
since 1974, the House has never passed a budget. This year, the 
Democratic majority is not going to pass a budget in this House of 
Representatives. If you can't pass a budget, you can't govern. By the 
way, for the 6 years that I was in the majority here, we didn't have a 
78-Member majority like the Democrats do today. This is unbelievable.
  I was knocking on doors in my district in central Ohio and in 
Columbus on Saturday. Americans are mad and they are struggling. They 
are scared and they are concerned. Those who have the ability to expand 
their businesses--and there are some employers, job creators who have 
the ability--are frightened. They are frightened. I don't know if you 
talked about this before I came. They are frightened at the prospects 
of higher taxes. They are frightened at the prospects of more 
regulation. So what are they doing? They are kind of retracting and are 
not doing what they could be doing, which is creating jobs, obviously.
  Rather than being on the floor here to honor somebody who is going to 
have a courthouse named after him, which might be worthy, let's focus 
on these issues that you've talked about that are vitally important. We 
have an election in 5 months. Between now and then, nobody who I talked 
to in central Ohio who is a job creator, who is an entrepreneur, who is 
a risk-taker, is willing to take that risk based upon what they see 
coming out of this Congress.
  So the gentleman from northeastern Ohio is correct in saying that it 
is not the roadmap that we need to be on to make our economy better in 
the greatest country in the world. We have too much debt, too many 
taxes, and too much spending. What we need to be doing is just the 
opposite of what the majority is doing today.
  I yield back.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman for that.
  I just want to give credit to somebody who is in the Chamber with us. 
He can't speak because he happens to be the Speaker pro tem, the 
gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Minnick), and he is presiding over the House 
for this Special Order.
  When you talk about commercial real estate, he has got a plan. I 
mean, he has put together some very bright people to help avert what he 
sees and what everybody in this Chamber should see, if they don't see, 
which is that we are headed for this big fall off the cliff in 
commercial real estate, which will make the housing market, the 
residential housing crisis, really--and you're talking about millions 
and millions of dollars per building.
  Go ahead.
  Mr. TIBERI. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I'd be happy to.
  Mr. TIBERI. Just last week, back in central Ohio, as we were home 
during the Memorial Day recess week, I convened a meeting--and I'm a 
former Realtor, a recovering Realtor. We had real estate folks on the 
commercial real estate side. We had small businesses. We had business 
or building managers, building owners and managers and bankers in the 
meeting.
  To your point, they said that the commercial real estate market, if 
Congress doesn't deal with this issue soon, is going to make the 
housing meltdown look like minor league compared to what could happen 
on the commercial real estate side, not just in Ohio but across the 
country. This is happening very, very soon.
  As we deal with this financial regulatory bill that is coming soon, 
which is in conference committee today, that could actually add to this 
problem by restraining credit and by creating a bigger problem with 
respect to access to capital. In this Congress today, with the 
majority, we are really heading for a disaster of epic proportions if 
we don't deal with this.
  So I am pleased that Representative Minnick is on the case. I am 
pleased that you are on the case, and I hope that some folks can get to 
the leadership on the Democratic side to actually do something about 
this before it is too late.
  I yield back.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman.
  Here are three quick examples of things that we haven't done that 
could, one, make sure we don't spend more than we are supposed to and, 
two, that could deal with the sector of the economy workforce that is 
not facing 10 percent or 13 percent or 15 percent unemployment but that 
is facing, rather, 27 percent to 40 percent unemployment. We're not 
looking forward, as the current resident of the Chair, Mr. Minnick, is, 
to averting another meltdown for which we will again engage in a lot of 
finger pointing: It's this person's fault or it's that person's fault.
  The gentleman from Ohio, I know, serves on the Ways and Means 
Committee, and the other side of this is not just what haven't we done 
in terms of action, but there are a number of things that are set to 
expire that have to do with job creation, and I'll ask the gentleman to 
address some of those in just a second.
  Again, referring to the list, rather than dealing with these issues 
or with the issues that we are going to talk about in a minute, we 
spent an hour here in the House of Representatives expressing the 
support of the week of April 18 through April 23 as National Assistant 
Principals Week.
  Now, you know, there are a lot of things that honor teachers, school 
counselors, so forth and so on. I don't know what my friend's 
experiences were, but it was the assistant principal you would see when 
you went to get spanked, when I was growing up, because you were 
misbehaving. So I'm

[[Page 10362]]

trying to figure out, you know, of all of the people we honor--and I 
suppose I voted for it as did everybody when the roll was called; but 
you know, assistant principals, I'm not so sure, are up there with 
everybody else.
  I'll yield to the gentleman from Ohio to talk a little bit about what 
are affectionately called the ``Bush tax cuts.'' What we're talking 
about is the tax legislation that was enacted in 2001 and 2003. They 
are characterized by our friends on the other side of the aisle as tax 
breaks for filthy rich people, but maybe you could go through a few of 
them, and we could identify them, because I think they go from cradle 
to grave.
  What is about to expire? People are going to pay higher rates on 
what?
  Mr. TIBERI. Well, I thank the gentleman for yielding on this matter 
and for bringing this up because we've spent a lot of hours on issues 
right behind you that are not life-or-death issues.
  Just a couple weeks ago, we spent less than an hour on an issue that 
deals with tax increases for people who own partnerships. Quite 
honestly, the way the majority sold it was we're going to tax people 
who are hedge fund partners. Yet the reality is, if you look at what 
the Congressional Budget Office said, in going back to your point about 
commercial real estate, the U.S. Conference of Mayors expressed grave 
concern about what the majority Democratic Party was doing with respect 
to carried interest. Real estate partnerships are the most impacted 
group, and we're going to take their real estate partnership and go 
from 15 percent to ordinary income.
  So, next year, which is what you just said based upon the tax cuts 
expiring, the marginal rates going up, the rate increase and the 
payroll tax for health care, you're going to see a huge increase in 
people who invest in our cities, in commercial real estate. At the same 
time that this problem is going to occur that you've already explained, 
you're going to see tax increases from 15 percent to over 40 percent 
for some people.
  What the Conference of Mayors understands, which is not exactly a 
conservative group in any way, shape or form, is that, if you're going 
to increase taxes on people who invest in our cities from 15 percent to 
over 40 percent, they're not going to invest in our cities. This is a 
huge impact, even before those tax cuts expire at the end of this year.
  What will happen next year is we're going to see capital gains rates 
go up. We're going to see dividends go up. We're going to see marginal 
rates go up--close to 40 percent for the top tax group. As the 
gentleman from northeastern Ohio knows, before all of these tax rates 
go up, we have already seen 53 percent of Americans today pay Federal 
income tax. There are 47 percent of Americans who don't, and that is 
going to get worse when these tax cuts expire. So you are close to a 
situation where you have more people actually in the wagon than are 
pulling the wagon rather than people pulling the wagon than are in the 
wagon. This is not a good situation for America.
  My mom and dad came to America for a better life, for the American 
Dream, for an opportunity, and that is slowly slipping away for so many 
people under this Democratic majority where it's class warfare every 
step of the way. When these tax cuts expire, it's more of that class 
warfare--the haves versus the have-nots--and it's a bad, bad recipe for 
the future of America if we continue this class warfare argument, 
whether it's on income, whether it's on capital gains and dividends, 
whether it's targeting the job creators and the entrepreneurs versus 
the people in America who aren't.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, to the gentleman's point, you mentioned a 
variety of tax provisions that are set to expire. I want to focus on 
two--interest and dividends.
  So any senior citizen who is living on a fixed income, who receives 
his or her income as a result of investments that he or she makes and 
who receives interest income if he or she is invested in the stock 
market or in some other fund and he or she gets dividends as a result 
of that, currently, under the current law, what is the rate that that 
senior pays on his or her interest and dividends?
  Mr. TIBERI. Fifteen percent.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Okay. Now, what's going to happen when the majority 
party indicates that it is not going to take any action?
  Again, as they're not on the budget, as they're not on the 
transportation bill, as they're not on the commercial real estate side, 
when they fail to take action to extend those, the senior citizens who 
today are paying 15 percent on the money they earn in interest and on 
the money that they earn in dividends, what is their tax rate going to 
be?
  Mr. TIBERI. The capital gains and dividend rate will go up to 20 
percent, and depending on what rate they are on, that marginal rate 
will go up as well.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Okay. So, you know, some of my favorite discussions 
here are semantics, so we're going to hear that because people who 
raise taxes repeatedly usually don't get reelected because people 
aren't real crazy about that. So we'll hear, We're not raising 
anybody's taxes. We're just letting this set of tax rates expire. Okay. 
But, you know, if I've made 100 bucks in interest and today the tax on 
that is $15 and it's going to go up to at least $20 that then I'll have 
to pay, I have a tough time, and I would really have a tough time 
explaining to the commonsense people whom we represent in Michigan and 
Ohio how that is not a tax increase.

                              {time}  2130

  But, with a straight face, there are people who will come down to the 
well of this House and say, ``We're not raising anybody's taxes. We 
just let these taxes expire.''
  And I see the discussion of taxes has once again gotten the gentleman 
from Michigan on his feet, and I yield to him.
  Mr. McCOTTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding on your point about 
how the proponents of the tax increases going up, tax rates going up, 
will say that they really didn't do anything, that they just simply let 
the tax relief expire.
  This is akin to coming upon an accident scene and saying, ``Well, I 
did not help the victim. I merely let them expire.''
  I yield back.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank you.
  The Chair tells us we have about a minute and 45 seconds, and I'd 
just yield to my friend from Ohio for any closing observations that he 
has.
  Mr. TIBERI. Well, I thank the gentleman.
  You know, the bottom line is there are a lot of people in our State 
that are hurting. There are a lot of people in Ohio that would like a 
job. There are a lot of people in Michigan that would like a job.
  Looking back over the last year, we have spent a lot of time on 
energy and cap-and-trade and health care and stimulus. And the bottom 
line is, ever since we spent that time, more and more people in Ohio 
and Michigan are out of work. We have record unemployment, record 
unemployment going back to when I was in high school back in the early 
1980s, with no end in sight.
  And then, on top of that, we have tax increases coming. We have 
spending out of control. We have spending that is higher than I've ever 
seen. Even the high spending that we thought we saw a couple of years 
ago is minor league compared to the spending today.
  And Americans are getting it. And all the time that we've spent on 
the legislation that you've talked about that is not really important 
in people's lives is starting to penetrate to the American people, to 
Ohioans and to Michiganders, that we need to be tackling some of these 
tough issues.
  How do you tackle these tough issues, sir, without passing a budget? 
And that's the bottom line.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, that's right.
  And it's interesting, this special order, we have people from Ohio 
and Michigan. And at least each November we don't get along very well, 
but on this issue we're very united. And I

[[Page 10363]]

thank both of you for participating, Mr. McCotter and Mr. Tiberi.
  And, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of our time.

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