[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11239-11240]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         TIME TO REVERSE COURSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, the President of the United 
States believes that government can do the job better than the private 
sector. He has proven he has believed that because he in effect is 
taking over the health industry and using the Federal Government to do 
it.
  He reached into the automobile industry and took control of a large 
part of that, and eventually he will probably try to take control of 
all of it. He

[[Page 11240]]

has reached into the financial industry across this country and has 
scared the financial industry to death, some with fairly good results, 
but the fact of the matter is it's more government control.
  And now he wants to take over the energy industry. The long socialist 
arm of the President is reaching out and trying to take over every area 
of the private sector. He believes in total government control over the 
economy. And if you don't believe it, all you have to do is look at the 
record over the last year and a half.
  The thing that bothers me is the detrimental effect it's having on 
the American people. Unemployment is still close to 10 percent. We're 
now seeing a tragedy in the gulf, as the gentleman from Texas talked 
about. And instead of really solving that problem, what he's doing now 
is compounding it by saying no drilling down there for 6 months. And 
all these people, as Mr. Poe said, are going to lose their jobs if the 
ruling of the court today is reversed when it goes to a higher court.
  The thing that really is funny about this is we just sent $2 billion 
to Brazil so they could do offshore drilling. I guess we don't care 
much about the environment down there. And we're certainly going to 
have to buy oil from them because we're going to lose the oil that's 
going to be produced down in the gulf. We're going to be more dependent 
on Saudi Arabia, on Africa, on Venezuela, Mexico, and probably Brazil, 
because we want to clean up the environment by using windmills and 
solar panels and geothermal energy sources.
  We've got the energy here in the United States to solve these 
problems. We don't need to be sending Mr. Soros money in Brazil so he 
can make more money by doing offshore drilling with our taxpayers' 
money. We don't need to be sending those jobs down there. As Mr. Poe 
said, those jobs are going to go down there. They're going to go 
someplace else because they can't keep those rigs moving in the gulf if 
they're not producing. So those people who are entrepreneurs are going 
to take those rigs and they're going to move them someplace else. Along 
with them will go the jobs, and possibly the impact could be as many as 
150,000 Americans will be out of work.
  This administration is on the wrong track. They have been on the 
wrong track since the Obama administration took office. The President 
believes in socialism. He really believes in it. And so he's trying to 
put the government in control of everything, and himself at the head of 
the government is going to be the person pulling the strings.
  The American people, I hope, are going to realize that, and I hope in 
the November elections they're going to say that we've got to change 
that and give us a House and a Senate that can stop his runaway 
socialistic agenda.
  The way to solve our economic problems is, as I said earlier tonight 
in a 1-minute, the way Ronald Reagan did it, listening to Mr. Laffer, 
and that is to cut taxes, to get the burden of government off the backs 
of the businessman and the individual citizen. And if you do that, you 
can unleash the power of the free enterprise system and make this 
economy grow, cut taxes, give people more disposable income, cut 
business taxes, give business more money to invest, and create an 
environment where people can buy more because they have more money to 
spend.
  Instead, at the end of this year the Democrats want to let all the 
tax cuts we put in place expire. That in effect is a tax increase. And 
then they're talking about additional taxes. Mr. Hoyer today gave a 
speech saying we have to increase taxes because the deficit is so 
large. They've made it so large--into the trillions and trillions and 
trillions of dollars. And now they're saying we have to raise taxes, 
take more blood out of the American taxpayer, to pay for their 
mistakes. That's only going to compound the problem, because if you 
take money out of their pocket, they won't have it to spend; and if 
they don't have it to spend they won't buy and there will be more 
unemployed. Whereas, if you do the opposite and give them more of their 
tax money to spend and reduce the taxes, they'll be able to buy more 
and the economy will flourish. Reagan knew it, Art Laffer knew it, and 
we had 20 years of economic expansion because of it. But these guys and 
the President want control of everything.
  The American people have to wake up, Mr. Speaker. They have to 
realize what's at stake. Not only the future that we face but the 
future our kids face and our posterity. They're going to have a worse 
form of life, a worse quality of life, if we don't reverse what we're 
doing right now.

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