[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11425-11431]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  THE ECONOMY AND OTHER CURRENT ISSUES

  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, I think we were just talking a little bit 
about the situation in the gulf that's gotten everybody's attention.
  My background is engineering, gentleman, and my first reaction when 
there's a problem is, how do you fix it? That's the first thing I'm 
saying. What has puzzled me and actually made me pretty frustrated is 
it seems that the administration is more interested in affixing blame 
than they are in fixing the problem.
  I recall that President Bush took a whale of a beating after 
Hurricane Katrina because it took him about 2 or 3 days after he had 
been rebuffed by the Governor and the Mayor of New Orleans, it took him 
a couple of days before they sort of got going. And then of course our 
FEMA didn't respond very well; the Federal response was a bit weak in 
terms of the magnitude of the disaster. And yet, by comparison, what 
we're dealing with here in the gulf is it took 50 days for the 
President to call the head of BP. Now, he had the power, if I'm not 
mistaken, is it right, he had the power to basically declare that a 
national emergency, get together a team of people, a fusion cell, get 
the very top resources in America. They could have pulled that 
together, they could have processed the different questions, sorted 
through the conflicting claims and started to put this

[[Page 11426]]

thing together, put together a series of, We're going to do this, this 
and this. If this doesn't work, this backup plan is already getting set 
up.
  We could have managed the process. Instead, after 50 days he calls 
the head of BP and just wants to ream the guy out. Well, BP did a 
terrible job, but after the crisis started it was the administration's 
problem to deal with, and I didn't see it fixing the problem. Am I 
mistaken in that? I mean, that's just an outsider looking in. I'm up in 
Missouri, we don't have too much coastline up there.
  Mr. SCALISE. Well, obviously you've been studying this. I know you, 
and I have spoken about the problems on the ground, and I appreciate 
your concern and the interest you have in trying to help us. I wish 
that the President had that much interest in helping us in the day-to-
day problems we're facing. Just the other day I was talking to one of 
the local fire chiefs who was there on the ground after Katrina, who is 
there on the ground right now battling the oil, and he said that the 
level of government dysfunction is higher today--more dysfunction 
today--than it was during Katrina. A case in point just happened 
yesterday when this sand barrier plan that our Governor and our entire 
congressional delegation fought for over 3 weeks to get the President 
to finally approve. In fact, last week, when the President gave his 
address to the Nation from the Oval Office, he actually bragged about 
the fact that he approved this sand barrier plan. Well, yesterday the 
Federal Government shut it down.
  Mr. AKIN. Wait. The President approved the sand barrier plan that 
we've been waiting a month to get approved, and now it's been shut down 
by the Federal Government?

                              {time}  1845

  Mr. SCALISE. It was shut down yesterday by the Federal Government. 
Spoke to our Governor's office about it. They basically said it was a 
Federal agency that shut them down. I talked to the Federal agency 
today, and they said they didn't shut them down. We went round and 
round, and of course they were shut down by the Federal agency. Again, 
this is a classic problem we have had every day.
  Mr. AKIN. The Federal agency said they didn't shut them down. Yet, in 
fact, they weren't telling the truth. They did shut them down.
  Mr. SCALISE. Yes. I don't know whether the people in D.C. didn't know 
what their Federal agents on the ground in south Louisiana knew what 
they were doing, but it's happening every single day. It seems like we 
have problems like this every day, so you can't just say it's 
miscommunication. Clearly, it's a lack of leadership. The President, 
under the law, is responsible for that leadership, and clearly, he is 
not doing his job, and he is not engaged.
  Mr. AKIN. It is a vacuum of leadership, isn't it?
  Mr. SCALISE. It is very sad that it is a vacuum of leadership, 
because the law is clear that, under the Oil Pollution Act, when there 
is a spill, the President is responsible for directing the recovery, 
and the responsible party, in this case BP, is responsible for writing 
the check.
  Now, for whatever reason, the President is allowing BP to still make 
decisions on the ground even though they have proven they are 
incompetent. Yet he is not doing his job. The President is not doing 
his job under the law. Now, if he doesn't like that law, he should try 
to repeal it, but in the meantime, he ought to follow the law.
  Mr. AKIN. The thing that struck me about it was--because I heard 
about this sand barrier thing. I mean there are a lot of different ways 
you could try to mitigate the oil that is in the water. There are 
dispersants. You can put hay in the water. There are a lot of things. 
One thing you could do is you could dredge up a little sandbar, which 
is very flexible. I mean you could pump it away a week later if you 
wanted to. That sandbar could protect these very delicate ecosystems 
along the edge of the water. They could trap the oil.
  You know, some years ago, there was a place that had some good food 
in Missouri. It was one of those truck stop-type places, and it had a 
picture that was kind of a cute one. It had a beautiful John Deere 
green wagon, and it had these two little kids dressed up in the high-
bibbed, blue-and-white-striped overalls. One of them had a handle on 
the wagon and was pulling on it. The other one was pushing. Apparently, 
the wagon had sort of gotten stuck in a bump, so he is looking back 
over his shoulder, and the caption reads, ``Are you pulling or pushing 
back there?''
  I've got to think of poor Governor Jindal. You're trying to get 
permission to build a sand barrier to try to protect your environment, 
which is what the Federal Government is supposed to be demanding that 
we do. We have all of these expensive bills to supposedly protect our 
environment. He says let us build a simple sandbar to catch the oil on 
it, and then we can take it away later. Yet it takes the government a 
month to try to make a decision. The oil is already into all of these 
delicate ecosystems while the Federal Government is dithering around, 
trying to make a decision.
  If I were the Governor of that State, I'd be jumping up and down mad. 
It's just a vacuum of leadership is what we've seen. Now you're saying 
the President said they could build them, and then they can't build 
them. There is no one in charge, it seems like.
  Mr. SCALISE. You know, the gentleman is correct about not only the 
Governor but about the people, who all throughout the gulf coast are 
jumping up mad because they're seeing this kind of dysfunction, this 
lack of leadership from the President, every day in different ways, and 
there is no reason for it. The President is giving speeches, talking 
about how he is in charge, but any time anything goes wrong, you can't 
find anybody who is in charge. Nobody takes responsibility. Nobody 
wants to be held accountable. Yet nobody wants to actually help us 
solve the problem.
  You were talking about food. Just Monday, I was in New Orleans. I ate 
at one of the great restaurants, Drago's, and I was eating my shrimp 
po-boy. The seafood is still great to eat. Unfortunately, a lot of the 
seafood beds are closed right now. There are still seafood beds open, 
and when you can find good seafood, it's still good to eat, and the 
shrimp po-boy I ate was wonderful. The problem, though, is with some of 
those seafood beds we've been trying to protect. Just weeks ago, some 
of those seafood beds had no oil. Today, oil is starting to come in.
  That's what this whole barrier plan is about--protecting our marshes, 
our estuaries, and the pelican nesting areas. In some of the other 
areas that haven't been affected by oil, we are trying to keep the oil 
out, and so we've come up with a plan. Unfortunately, the Federal 
Government didn't have a plan. So you would think that they would be 
working with us to help us implement our plan. In fact, they've been 
fighting us. It took us over 3 weeks to get the President to finally 
approve the Governor's plan, but he only approved 25 percent of it. He 
spoke last week in his national address as if he'd approved the whole 
plan. There is still 75 percent of that sand barrier plan that has not 
been approved, so there are still a whole lot of seafood beds and 
marshes that haven't been protected.
  Here we had at least 25 percent that we were working with to build up 
these barriers. Then yesterday the Federal Government comes and shuts 
it down. Again, this is something we fought for for over 3 weeks, and 
the Federal Government finally permitted. They were so successful, 
supposedly, that the President bragged about it on national TV. Then 
yesterday they just shut it down quietly, but we're not going to let 
this go by quietly because this is something that is their job, and 
they're not doing it.
  Mr. AKIN. The question that raises my blood pressure is it seems to 
me like President Bush was almost accused for bringing on Hurricane 
Katrina. Yet we've got one of the biggest leadership vacuums in terms 
of this oil spill every time you hear about something. There was also 
that moratorium about we're not going to drill any more wells at all. 
The equivalent would be, if an airplane falls down,

[[Page 11427]]

we're going to cancel every air flight in America. You know, there were 
some reasons there was this disaster. From what we're hearing, there 
were enough coverups and different things, so we don't really know 
exactly what happened. Though, apparently, the equipment, at least if 
it's functioning properly and has been properly checked out, should 
work. So there was some human error involved, clearly, and possibly 
some equipment that was not properly inspected. There are some 
problems, but that doesn't mean you shut every oil rig in the gulf down 
while you're trying to figure out who did something wrong.
  Wasn't it over 100,000 jobs that were just going to, all of a sudden, 
disappear?
  Mr. SCALISE. That's exactly correct.
  In fact, when the President came out with this ban--and he calls it a 
temporary pause--if they do what the President said he wanted to do, 
which is for 6 months to allow no drilling in the gulf, ultimately, 
those rigs, each of them, will lose about $1 million a day. They're 
being lured by other countries, countries that want these valuable 
assets and the skilled workers that go with them. Now some of them are 
starting to go to places like Brazil and West Africa. So, over the next 
couple of weeks, you will see a chipping away of not only the ability 
to generate natural resources in America, which provides billions--$6 
billion by last estimates--of Federal revenues that will go away but of 
also the jobs. In Louisiana alone, it will be over 40,000 jobs that we 
will lose.
  Mr. AKIN. Is that 40,000 jobs just in the oil industry alone?
  Mr. SCALISE. Just directly related to those rigs. Of course, you've 
got service industries, and you've got restaurants. You've got all of 
the secondary spending that goes along that you can't even calculate 
because it's so big. These are high-paying jobs. These are skilled jobs 
that will leave our country, and some of them are already starting to.
  Ultimately, if you go back, the President is trying to say this is a 
fight between safety and jobs. Unfortunately, he probably--or maybe he 
hasn't even read the recommendations of his own scientists who came up 
with a report. Right after the explosion on the rig, they asked to have 
a panel of scientific experts, who were assembled by the President and 
by the Secretary of the Interior, put together a report. They asked for 
a 30-day report. Sure enough, this panel of scientists came back with a 
30-day report of specific recommendations to increase safety, to make 
sure you go and you inspect every rig. For the ones that are working, 
fine, like every other one is, and you allow them to do what they're 
doing. If there are any problems you find, you address those problems, 
but you don't shut down an entire industry because one company didn't 
follow the rules.
  In fact, the Federal regulator, under President Obama, didn't enforce 
the laws that were on the books. The recommendation came back and said 
to look at these safety guidelines we're giving you, but don't shut the 
industry down. Well, the President conveniently discarded, threw away, 
the recommendations of the scientific panel, and he recommended the 
moratorium. They actually pointed out, No, we didn't. You're misstating 
what we said. They apologized for that, but they still went forward 
with this moratorium.
  Then, just yesterday, a Federal judge in New Orleans said, You cannot 
have this moratorium because it's not based on fact; it's not based on 
science, and it doesn't help safety. In fact, it could decrease safety. 
Yet they still continue to ignore the fact that they are throwing away 
science and are trumping it with politics. They are playing politics 
with this decision, and they are still going to try to ignore now a 
ruling of a Federal judge and of their own scientific experts to run 
40-plus thousand jobs in Louisiana and over 150,000 good, high-paying 
jobs in this country to foreign countries and are going to make us more 
dependent on Middle Eastern oil.
  Mr. AKIN. Just from what we've talked about in 10 minutes tonight in 
terms of this leadership vacuum, we are seeing a threat to 40,000 jobs. 
Just in your State alone, it's 40,000. We're not talking about the 
barbers and the restauranteurs and all of the other people who are 
supported by it. It's just 40,000 hard jobs which are being thrown down 
the drain when a panel of people who really have studied and know the 
industry are simply saying, Look, go out to the different oil rigs. 
Make sure that they're inspected and up to spec because, by the way, 
MMS, the Federal agency supposedly doing this, has not done that. Make 
sure that they're up to spec, and then let them go ahead because there 
is nothing wrong.
  We have drilled thousands of wells in water, and they have worked 
fine. Just because one goes bad, you don't shut the whole industry 
down. So we are threatening 40,000 jobs. Also, in spite of what the 
panel recommended the President do, we are continuing to endanger the 
environment, and they are always screaming they care so much about the 
environment. Though, they are the very ones preventing you from trying 
to protect the environment.
  The thing that strikes me is: Why do we put so much trust in the 
competence of the Federal Government? That's what is striking me. 
That's part of the reason I thought it was good to take off a little 
bit and talk about the gulf situation.
  We've got this proposal now. The President wants to use the fact that 
a company mismanaged its oil well and that he and his administration 
have made a complete mess of the management of that crisis to say now 
what we need to do is to have the Federal Government do this cap-and-
tax bill, which is more taxes, more red tape and government regulation. 
When the last government agencies didn't even do their jobs, now he 
wants us to buy more of this, not to mention the fact that we've 
already passed this huge tax increase for health care. Now we're 
supposed to trust the Federal Government to take care of our own 
bodies. We took a look at what it's doing down there in the gulf. I 
sure don't want the Federal Government tampering with my body. I'll end 
up with two left arms, which would be a pretty terrible fate for a 
conservative like me.
  Mr. SCALISE. You know, if you look at what the President said in his 
speech last week, I and many others were angered by the fact that he 
spent almost as much time trying to exploit this crisis to promote his 
cap-and-trade energy tax as he did in talking about the oil spill and 
how we can battle the oil and keep it out of our marsh. In fact, if he 
just were doing his job and were focusing on what his responsibility is 
under the law, then he actually would be focusing exclusively on 
helping us battle the oil instead of, not only blocking our attempts on 
the ground, but of then diverting it and trying to exploit it to talk 
about this cap-and-trade energy tax.
  Then you go into so many of the other things that are happening on 
the ground that are causing so much frustration for our local leaders, 
who should all be not only working with the government to battle the 
oil, but they should be empowered. They should be given ideas from 
Federal agencies.
  Look, I'm for smaller government. Right now, we've got the largest 
government in the history of our country, but whether you're for bigger 
government or for smaller government, I think we should all be able to 
expect competent government. Clearly, we are not getting that now.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, you know, the thing that strikes me--and maybe it's 
because I'm an engineer and I see it this way. For most Americans I 
know, if you've got this big hole in the middle of the gulf and if it's 
pouring out all of this oil all over the place, the reaction of most 
people is, Well, let's fix it. You know? Let's get the job done. 
Whether you believe in big government or in little government, what you 
want to do as Americans is to have this ``can do'' attitude. Well, we 
made a problem. Now we've got to get in and fix it. We've got to figure 
out what we did wrong. We've got to make sure we don't make those 
mistakes again, and we're going to move forward.
  I don't like being negative. I like fixing problems, and I know 
you're the same kind of temperament. We've been

[[Page 11428]]

kind of complaining about the fact of a vacuum of leadership in the 
administration, and it's a vacuum that's evident in the gulf oil spill. 
It's evident in Afghanistan, and it's evident in a lot of policies. 
Let's stop for a minute. I don't want to be negative. Okay. Let's say 
that we are President and that we have this oil spill. What would be an 
appropriate response?
  My thinking is I know the military has these things they call 
``fusion cells.'' They're teams of people who get together. It's a 
clearinghouse for all kinds of information. You get the top resources 
all over America of what you need in different areas. You put a plan 
together and say, This is our first attempt to stop this well up. If 
this doesn't work, we're going to do this. That means we've got to have 
this, this, and this piece of equipment ready to go. It means we've got 
to clear this, this, and this with this agency.

                              {time}  1900

  We've got Governor this; Governor this; Governor this asking for 
permission. We've got to consider that, take a look at the law, move 
fast if we have to change the law or change some policy, and we need to 
get back to them within 12 hours. And you've got a whole team that is 
on top of it, managing this thing. That's my sense of where we would be 
going. You have to be able to look at all of the data, get the right 
people in the loop, and make decisions. We're not seeing any of that.
  Mr. SCALISE. No. Another thing that needs to happen is you need to 
have a real clear command structure on the ground where decisions are 
made quickly and decisively; and if things go wrong, there are people 
you can hold accountable to go fix them. Not to sit around and point 
fingers, but to get things done. The problem that we continue to have--
and we're over 2 months into this now and there was no excuse for these 
kinds of delays 3 or 4 days after the rig exploded, but especially 2 
months later, when everybody knows how important this is, how much 
national significance it has not only for the 11 lives lost, for the 
environmental damage, but now for the economic and energy security 
issues that are being raised, you would think that this would be the 
number one priority of this President and he would be focusing all of 
his resources.
  And when local leaders have ideas like our local leaders have had 
ideas, the Federal Government is right there working with them saying, 
How do we get this done today instead of 3 weeks going by, fighting 
with the Federal Government to get approval for things that should have 
been approved on day one, if this was the top focus. And then where the 
Federal Government is even coming up with ideas.
  I watched the movie ``Apollo 13,'' and it's an inspiring movie. It's 
one of those movies you watch if you really want to get your juices 
boiling. And you can see what American ingenuity is all about. This was 
a case where the American spirit was alive and well and those NASA 
folks sat in that room and said, We're not leaving until we get our men 
back home safely. ``No'' was not going to be an answer and no excuse 
was going to be accepted. You don't have that same can-do spirit today 
by the Federal bureaucrats, who continue to block our attempts to 
protect our marsh, to keep the oil out of those seafood beds, to 
protect those pelicans and the other wildlife that are threatened every 
day, when we have ideas to protect them.
  Again, if they've got a better idea, wonderful. We'd love to hear. 
Unfortunately, not only did they not have any ideas to help us, but 
they're spending their time blocking our attempts to save our marsh. 
And there's no excuse for that.
  Mr. AKIN. It's got to be terribly, terribly frustrating. As I took a 
look at it, my daughter actually was taking a biology class and she did 
a paper on the whole oil spill and some of the different technologies 
for mitigating all this really raunchy oil that's floating around. One 
of the things is there's a company that has in barrels a powder-like 
yeast--these little critters that will eat that oil. When the critters 
eat the oil, when they get done eating it, if there's no more oil, they 
just die because there's no more food and other creatures can eat them, 
and the whole thing just cleans up the mess biologically, naturally.
  Now, I don't know whether that's a great solution or not, but it sure 
seems to make a lot of sense. And then you've got other people in the 
Midwest areas, we've got plenty of straw and hay. And there's even 
these YouTubes and people are saying, Here's one way to fix it. Put a 
bunch of straw and stuff in this water. All of this very sticky oil 
clings to the straw, you bring it in, pile it up, and burn it in an 
incinerator or whatever. But Americans have ideas how to do this, and 
our government is standing around saying, You can't do it. No, we don't 
like that idea either. In the meantime, the oil is piling up on the 
shores, and we're just asking for some legitimate government.
  My friend, Congressman Broun from Georgia, is here, a medical doctor 
and also a guy with some strong ideas and a lot of common sense. It's a 
pleasure to have you.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. Akin. I appreciate you yielding 
me some time. As you were talking about putting straw or hay on the 
oil, we can make electricity out of that. Just think about that. What 
better source of electricity than doing that?
  Before Mr. Scalise leaves, I want to just tell him just for his 
edification--I think he knows what I'm fixing to tell the American 
people and Madam Speaker--is that we recently--in fact, just in the 
last day--sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service to ask them to 
give a special exemption for taxes on the money of all the people who 
are being harmed economically by this disastrous oil spill. They won't 
have to pay taxes on the money they get, which is absolutely fair.
  We saw that happen. The Internal Revenue Service was going to tax the 
recipients money that they received in Hurricane Katrina, as you know, 
in your own home city there in New Orleans. And Congress had to act to 
say to the Internal Revenue Service, Don't tax that money. But I wrote 
the Internal Revenue Service and said, Please give a special exemption 
to all those businesses and individuals that have been harmed. And it's 
absolutely critical because these people have been out of work, many of 
them for 2 months now. They're struggling just to make ends meet. And 
it's absolutely critical.
  And I hope that the Internal Revenue Service and this administration 
will immediately give a special exemption to all those people who are 
harmed--those businesses and those individuals that are harmed. And I 
hope that the American people will just have a tremendous outcry and 
have a heart for those that are harmed and say to this Federal 
Government, to the Internal Revenue Service, Don't tax these folks. And 
I've made an appeal to the Internal Revenue Service and hope you all 
will join me in trying to get the Internal Revenue Service to not tax 
these people who are already damaged and already hurt, and it's only 
fair to those people.
  I just wanted to tell my good friend from Louisiana that we're 
fighting for folks--not only those in Louisiana, but those in Alabama, 
Mississippi, and Florida, and all over the gulf coast. It may even 
affect people on the east coast. It may even affect my own home State 
of Georgia. So we're fighting for those folks, and hopefully the 
administration will come forward to say, Don't tax these benefits 
because they're not benefits. They're actually moneys to just try to 
help them get their lives back on track.
  Mr. AKIN. That all goes to the same thing we're just talking about. I 
don't really naturally like to be dumping on people for mismanaging 
something, but this is so outrageous. I mean, the only thing that could 
top the outrageousness of BP is the outrageousness of the 
administration to be sitting here 2 months after this situation without 
a clear-cut plan. I would think the President would have some boards 
like this and say, Look, the first thing we've got to do--and this is 
just like somebody has been hit in an automobile accident. They're 
bleeding. You're a doctor, Dr. Broun. And you stop the bleeding, is one 
of the first things you do.

[[Page 11429]]

  I would say, Well, we've got to stop that oil coming out of the floor 
of the ocean, and here's the plan to do it and we'll do this, this, 
this, and this, in this order. And it's going to require these 
resources and we're putting the team together and the plan to do that. 
Now we've got this situation with jobs down there. And Congressman 
Broun's got an idea to help on the income tax side of it. Congressman 
Scalise has got a plan as to what to do with some sand berms to stop 
this oil from coming into the harbor. And you put the team together to 
make decisions and deal with this. And so instead of fixing blame, you 
fix the problem. And all we've heard is the government getting in the 
way.
  My understanding is private companies have more oil booms out there 
to collect oil than the Federal Government did. And there are types of 
booms--I heard they're called fire booms--where they're a material 
that's more or less fireproof. It corrals the oil. Light the oil on 
fire and they can burn the stuff up before it drifts onto the shore and 
causes a lot of trouble.
  And the thing that drives me crazy is here is this example of the 
government just totally failing and the gall of the administration to 
turn around and say we've got to pass a great big tax increase and 
we're going to give the Federal Government power to tell you you've got 
to put a 220-volt plug in your garage for your electric car and you 
can't build a wing on your house without making sure the carbon 
footprint is right and we're going to tax anybody every time you flip a 
light switch and we're going to try and pass this piece-of-trash bill, 
and the excuse for this is the fact that we haven't dealt with the 
problem in the ocean. I don't understand how people can have such 
great, great faith in the Federal Government. It just blows my mind.
  And, of course, you know, gentleman, the health care bill. Every day 
that comes out, we find more and more problems, all things that we were 
saying were going to happen. And it shows that the real objective here 
isn't health care at all. That's the ironic thing. This Obama benchmark 
progress report. Here's the thing about jobs. Is it going to help with 
jobs? No. It fails this measurement. Costs. Today, I want to lay out 
the details of a plan that not only guarantees coverage for every 
American but also brings down health care costs. Is it going to bring 
down health care costs? No. The whole thing is a scam because all it 
does is businesses will dump their employees in the Federal Government.
  And so why do we have so much trust the Federal Government should be 
entrusted with health care? You're a doctor. Would you want to trust 
your body to the Federal Government when we've seen this record?
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Akin, you're exactly right. The American 
people get it, though. The administration doesn't. That's the problem. 
In fact, whether it's the oil spill and the disaster that's going on 
there and their disastrous response to that or forcing ObamaCare 
through against the will of the American people, all this 
administration is showing the American people is its arrogance, its 
ignorance, and its incompetence. That's exactly what the American 
people have seen. In fact, just on the oil spill, just the other day I 
was talking to a fireman in my district and he asked me about this oil 
disaster and the poor response that this administration has shown. This 
working guy, just a guy trying to make a living and take care of his 
family and struggling to make ends meet, asked me if this 
administration was purposely not responding to this oil spill just so 
that they could force through their cap-and-trade. I call it tax-and-
trade. Because President Obama himself said this was about revenue. He 
had to have that revenue from this energy tax to pay for his health 
care plan for ObamaCare. And that's what we see over and over again.
  And the American people get it. They understand that this 
administration is bungling the oil spill, the ObamaCare, and you're 
talking about a budget. We're asking, Where's the budget? Back in the 
ObamaCare debate, the leadership here in the House said that they were 
going to deem and pass. Deem and pass. That sounds like a bad place in 
a spaghetti western where the bad guys are setting up to ambush the 
good guys. And that's exactly what was happening.
  Now, on the budget, Leader Hoyer is saying that we're not going to 
have a budget and that they're going to deem the budget. So we're 
having another deem and pass by the leadership in the House to not even 
set forth a budget. And why? Because Democrats don't want to--a lot of 
the Democrats, particularly Blue Dogs, don't want to vote and those 
vulnerable Democrats don't want to vote for the massive debt that's 
being created and incurred--or already incurred, actually. Tremendous 
debt that's already incurred by this administration and by this 
leadership in the House and the Senate. They don't want to have to vote 
on that again because they're scared what the American people are going 
to do in November.
  Mr. AKIN. The funny thing is, the very words they spoke kind of come 
back to condemn them. They're kind of condemning themselves because 
here's the Democratic whip, Congressman Hoyer, he's saying, Budget is 
the most basic responsibility of governing. That's 2006. The most basic 
responsibility of governing is what? The budget.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Passing a budget.
  Mr. AKIN. And here's the guy in charge of the budget, Congressman 
Spratt, If you can't budget, you can't govern. So this is what they're 
saying in 2006. And now we take a look at what's coming forward and we 
say, Where's the budget? Here's the Hill: Skipping a budget resolution 
this year would be unprecedented. The House has never failed to pass an 
annual budget resolution since the current budget rules were put into 
place in 1974, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
  So, since 1974, Republicans and Democrats have met in this Chamber 
and every year they put a budget together. Some of them were a lot 
better than others. Some were tighter. Some tried to balance the 
budget. But they have always had a budget. Didn't always get passed. 
Didn't get taken care of. But they always had a budget. Until when? 
Until this year. And why? Why is it Democrat leadership says it's 
absolutely essential to have a budget, and they don't have one this 
year? Why do you think that is?
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Before you take that down, if the gentleman 
would yield.
  Mr. AKIN. I do yield.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. The folks watching on C-SPAN tonight, Mr. Akin, 
may wonder if Congressional Research Service is some far-out right-wing 
group that might be trying to hammer the Democrats and trying to 
castigate them in a negative light. But that's not so, is it?
  Mr. AKIN. The Congressional Research Service is a bunch of 
professionals that are paid by the U.S. Congress and they try to be as 
objective as they can. They're not always right. But they at least have 
very good access to historical records and the history of the Congress. 
This statement that the House has never failed to pass an annual budget 
resolution, that's a historic fact.
  So what we're seeing here is we're in uncharted ground, at least 
since 1974, that there is no budget. Well, why is there not a budget? 
You made reference to it. And here's the nasty little picture. We were 
told that George Bush spent too much money. President Bush.

                              {time}  1915

  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. And he did.
  Mr. AKIN. And he did spend too much money. In fact, you and I, 
gentleman, voted ``no'' on some of the things he wanted to spend money 
on. His worst budget, though, was when Speaker Pelosi was in charge of 
this Congress in 2008, right here. That was his worst deficit, $459 
billion in deficit that year. Not proud of that, $459 billion. The 
people said that Bush spent too much money. And here we come to the 
very first year of President Obama, and it's $1.4 trillion. That's 
three times the worst Bush deficit. And so if you had that followed by 
an even bigger deficit

[[Page 11430]]

this year, you had unemployment at 9 percent, if you were one of the 
Democrats, would you want to pass a budget right now? I think they're 
running for cover.
  You know, we have an expression in Missouri, it's called ``hunkered 
down''--``hunkered down like a toad in a hail storm.'' It seems like to 
me, if I had anything to do with that level of deficit spending, I 
would be hunkered down. In fact, I think I would have resigned and gone 
to try to do something else with my time because this is totally 
destructive to our country.
  And you raised the question, Is the objective to precipitate such a 
crisis that they consolidate power in the Federal Government? At least 
it seems like to me the American people are going to go, Oh, my 
goodness. You're going to need to create an awful good crisis for us to 
ever trust the Federal Government with the kind of quality of 
leadership that we've been seeing.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Akin, if you would yield.
  Mr. AKIN. I do yield.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Saul Alinsky in his book ``Rules for 
Radicals''--and I am reading the book to try to garner some information 
about the battle plan of the progressives. There's another word for 
progressives in my opinion; it's socialists, Marxists. You can use 
other terms.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, Saul Alinsky was a Communist, wasn't he?
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. He was.
  Mr. AKIN. And that's a historic fact that he was a Communist. And 
Obama studied under him, right?
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. That's what I understand. In fact, he dedicated 
the book ``Rules for Radicals'' to the first great radical, Lucifer.
  Mr. AKIN. The first great radical, Lucifer, Satan.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. It is right there in the book. That is the 
first thing I looked at.
  Mr. AKIN. Did he have all of his bolts together? What was his 
problem?
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, Lucifer rebelled against our creator, 
God, and was thrown out of heaven. And we're trying to fight all of 
those spiritual wars today because of that. But the thing is, what the 
progressives or radicals or socialists--whatever you want to call 
them--are trying to do or the proposal from people like Saul Alinsky 
and others is that you just totally destroy your enemy, and then you 
build up a socialistic society out of it.
  I've had person after person in my district, just working folks--not 
politicians, just working folks, say to me, Paul, why is President 
Obama trying to destroy the free enterprise system? Because that's 
exactly what he's doing. I hear that over and over again from lower 
middle class working people all the way up to small businessmen and -
women who are just saying, Why are we trying to destroy the free 
enterprise system? Why are we creating all this debt? And the people in 
my district in Georgia are just seriously questioning all this huge 
debt. What this chart shows is the deficits for each year. That doesn't 
reflect the debt that's accumulated. The debt would be an exponential 
curve if we showed that.
  Mr. AKIN. Yes. Now an average guy on the street--let's just say 
they're reading some newspaper headlines over the last 18 months. Now 
what's the impression they get? First of all, there's this huge 
bailout, a Wall Street bailout. So you get these firms on Wall Street 
that are getting billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. That, of 
course, makes people get really happy and excited about that. So we're 
bailing out Wall Street first of all. Now there are people that are 
making a case that the economy was in very bad shape and that we had to 
drop $700 billion. We didn't vote for that. But there are people that 
make the case that, Well, there were these things that were failing.
  So we drop all this money into Wall Street. We bail out banks. We 
bail out insurance companies. And then the bailout fever really gets 
started, which we predicted would happen if the Federal Government 
basically opens the kitty to any group that wants to bail out anything, 
and we start buying out Government Motors--I think it used to be called 
General Motors before--and Chrysler. So we're doing that. And then we 
decide, Hey, it would be a great idea if we bailed out college kids who 
want to get loans. The government's going to take that over. And now 
the government is in the process of collecting other things that it can 
own. Of course notably, 17 percent of the free side of the economy 
which used to be where you worked, Doctor, in health care. So now the 
government's taking over 17 percent of the U.S. economy in the health 
care area. They're nibbling and just salivating about taking over the 
energy business.
  So if you're an average guy on the street, and you start connecting 
the dots--which many people may not. But when you start to think about 
it, the government's taking over everything. So it's not an odd thing 
for somebody just taking a look at the headlines and looking back at 
the last 18 months to say, Holy smokes, what's going on here?
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. In fact, it's my understanding that we've 
nationalized more of our private economy in our country just since the 
Obama administration took over from the Bush administration--we've 
nationalized more of our private economy under this administration than 
Hugo Chavez has in Venezuela, in the whole time the Communist dictator 
Hugo Chavez has in his country down there in Venezuela.
  Mr. AKIN. I know America likes to win, but I don't know that we want 
to do better than Hugo Chavez. That's not exactly where most Americans 
want to be going, I don't think.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, during the Bush administration, we had 
the TARP funds, the Troubled Asset Relief Program that the Bush 
administration promoted. It was actually through his Secretary of the 
Treasury, Hank Paulson, who came to us and said, The sky is falling, we 
had to pass a TARP or the economy would crash. I voted against that 
because I wasn't in favor of bailing out the incompetent Wall Street 
bankers for their malfeasance. I want to bail out Main Street, small 
businessmen and -women. I want to bail out the small community banks by 
getting the Federal regulatory burden off them so that they can compete 
in an open marketplace.
  I believe very firmly that the free marketplace, unencumbered by 
government regulation and taxes, is the best way to control quality, 
quantity, and costs of all goods and services, whether it's banking 
services or health care, in my business as a medical doctor, or selling 
tires and gasoline and automobile parts and appliances, like my dad 
did, or any other good or service. The best way to control it is 
through an open marketplace unencumbered by taxes and regulations. And 
the more taxes and regulations we put on business and industry, the 
higher the price goes, the quality goes down, and we have less of those 
things for the people who are consuming. And we're going to see that in 
health care.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, I appreciate, gentleman, your perspective on all of 
these things, and I appreciate you sharing what a lot of your 
constituents are telling you because it very much reflects what I am 
hearing when I go home. And the question mark is, Really, what is the 
game plan of this administration? It seems that one thing you can say, 
whether it is the Katrina oil spill, whether it is the attempt to try 
to do the cap-and-tax or cap-and-trade or whatever you want to call 
it--a government takeover of energy is what I would call it--and 
whether you want to talk about socialized medicine, whether you want to 
talk about a whole series of different things, it seems like the 
pattern is that every single thing the administration does is to try to 
create an entitlement class, a victim class, a group of people that are 
totally dependent on the government. And perhaps the worst of all of 
those things, as you know, Doctor, is the socialized medicine, because 
if your body is physically dependent on the government to give you your 
health care, it makes you truly one of these dependent classes. And it 
seems like the government is trying to turn all of us into a bunch of 
people totally dependent to the government--in fact, slaves to the

[[Page 11431]]

government. It reminds me as we start approaching the Fourth of July 
how it was that the people in this country said, We really don't want 
the government to be our master. We don't really believe the philosophy 
that the government should provide everything for everybody. And I 
think the public is waking up to this.
  I would be happy to yield you a minute if you'd like, gentleman.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, thank you. I appreciate you yielding 
back. We have got about 2 more minutes left. I just wanted to add 
something to what you just said about being enslaved. My good friend 
Star Parker who, by the way, is running for Congress in California, in 
Los Angeles, whose welfare mom got saved. She accepted Jesus Christ as 
her own Lord and Savior. She started looking at her lifestyle, and she 
started trying to break out of that welfare state that she was in and 
had a great deal of difficulty. She wrote a book called ``Uncle Sam's 
Plantation'' where she described all that. And she's been a great voice 
against this government largesse--socialism, if you will, because she 
knows how it destroys families, it destroys communities, it destroys 
everything. And we are headed in a direction in this country where 
freedom is being taken away from the American people.
  The American people need to stand up and say ``no'' to the 
steamroller of socialism and say ``yes'' to freedom. Let's stop all 
this government spending. Let's stop all this bigger government and 
government takeover, and let's put us back on the course of the 
Constitution with limited government. And that's what the Tea Party 
movement is all about. I yield back.
  Mr. AKIN. I really appreciate you mentioning Star Parker. She is 
really a fun person. She has a great personality, is a lot of fun. 
She's cute, and she is very articulate. And she has an amazing story 
about how the government tried to trap her into all of this welfare 
stuff and all of the behaviors that would destroy her life. She came 
out of it through the power of Jesus Christ, started her own business. 
Now the government gives her trouble. While she is trying to run a 
business, doing the right thing, the government is taking shots at her. 
And she says, Whose side are you on, government? You know, when I was 
doing the wrong stuff, you were encouraging me. When I am doing the 
right things, you are giving me a hard time. What's the story here?
  As I said, I started with a picture of that little green wagon and 
those two kids. One of them pulling, the other one pushing. The guy 
looking over his shoulder said, Are you pushing or pulling back there? 
You know, it just seems like, is the government trying to help us or is 
it trying to destroy us? And it seems like every decision we have seen 
is more dependency on Big Government.
  Thank you, Doctor. It's a pleasure to join you, and God bless 
America.

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