[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13627-13633]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       OUR COUNTRY IS IN TROUBLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it never ceases to be an honor for me to be 
able to speak on this floor. The freedoms we have, the blessings, we've 
received because of those who've gone before us.
  The country is in trouble. People around the world cannot believe 
that the greatest nation in the history of mankind just cannot make 
itself live within its means. So businesses, manufacturing have flocked 
away from America.
  I know there are some who believe that the greatest thing that can 
happen for America is for those manufacturing jobs to leave America 
because they believe, gee, they hurt the environment because they 
pollute, so just as well they go to some other Third World country or 
China or other place, when the truth is, apparently, when those same 
manufacturing companies leave the United States, they go to nations 
that, on average, pollute, depending on the nations, 4 to 10 times more 
than we do here in the United States. For those that understand the way 
the world turns, as pollution goes up in

[[Page 13628]]

Asia, we usually breathe it here in the United States. So that hasn't 
worked out so well for the environment of the planet. We're hurting the 
planet as we drive manufacturing jobs out of America.
  This administration has used the EPA as a sword, as a tool to drive 
more and more manufacturing and production out of the United States, 
hurting the country more and more, not because, necessarily, they want 
to intentionally hurt the country. I'm not saying that. They just think 
we're better off.
  If they're not willing to have a draconian EPA being, as the 
President said in his speech, working side by side with them in private 
business, good riddance. Go somewhere else. Because, in the President's 
own words, that's what he said, and it was the scariest thing I heard 
that the President said last week, standing right here at the second 
level in this Hall, the line, and I'll read from his speech directly. 
He said, ``We need to look for ways to work side by side with America's 
businesses.''
  America's businesses do not need a government that wants to be their 
partner. The government in this country, according to the Constitution, 
metaphorically speaking, is supposed to be a referee--keep the playing 
field fair, keep it level, make sure everybody has a chance to compete 
and compete fairly, and stay out of the way. Do not interfere. Don't 
try to be a partner with business. Stay out of the way and be a 
referee.
  It's when this United States Government has tried to be a partner 
that so often it gets in trouble, and it kills businesses and it kills 
jobs, and people flee and go to some other country where they're 
allowed to produce things without the government trying to be their 
partner.
  Anybody that wants the government to be their partner should go to 
Venezuela or Third World nations. They're more than happy to partner 
with those businesses.
  But some years back there was a group of us that went to China, and 
we met with a number of CEOs of international corporations that have 
taken their American jobs by the thousands, taken their businesses, 
their manufacturing production and gone to China. I had the feeling 
that when we talked to them and asked them the question, ``Why did you 
move all these jobs to China?'' that they would say, well, they just 
couldn't work with the labor unions. The price of labor was too high. 
Regulations were too much. But the number one answer was because of the 
corporate tax. The corporate tax in America, in the United States, is 
the highest corporate tax in the world.

                              {time}  1610

  Now corporations, those that understand business law, corporations, 
directors, and officers, have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders to 
try to make as much money as they can. Unless some, Mr. Speaker, do not 
know who the stockholders are, more and more they're union workers; 
they're American workers across their countries; they're small business 
owners and operators, franchise operators; they're the rank and file 
across the country--State employees, local employees, Federal 
employees. But more than that, businesses across America, they have 
retirement accounts that invest in these companies.
  Those companies' officers and directors have a fiduciary duty that 
they have to--or they could be sued--have the best interests of the 
company and the stockholders at stake in the decisions they make. If 
you go to law school--I hopefully have saved somebody a lot of money--
that's it in a nutshell.
  So, when a group of corporate leaders is trying to decide how can we 
avoid being sued by the stockholders by doing the best thing to help 
them create the most revenue for their stock--what can we do? What will 
enhance their dividends?--they have to look. When they see the United 
States of America is taxing corporations at 35 percent and they see 
that China taxes at 17 percent, you would think it was pretty much a 
no-brainer. That's basically what they said.
  I was gratified to hear that, whether it's union labor or nonunion 
labor, across the board, the experience that the corporate leaders that 
I talked to in China say really their best workers are right here in 
the United States--union workers, nonunion workers--and that, generally 
speaking, they have better quality control over products produced here 
in the United States of America. So, when they move plants from here in 
the United States to other places like China, they have wonderful 
workers, but the quality control is not as good as what they have here.
  But if you think about it and you realize, gee, they would pay half 
the corporate tax in China that they pay here by the billions, then 
they could afford to build state-of-the-art facilities, where 
facilities here in the United States, their manufacturing plants, may 
be falling apart and getting older. Well, you could go build a state-
of-the-art facility in a place like China, and because of the 
tremendously reduced corporate tax, by the time you really get around 
to paying much tax, you've paid for the plant.
  I was advised privately that it was possible the Chinese Government 
would make deals with some companies if they were big enough, and it 
might be, for example, they would say, Look, you move your 
manufacturing plant, hire these thousands of employees here in China 
instead of in the United States, and we'll make a deal with you. No 
corporate tax for 5 years.
  Then, depending on the company and the negotiations, they might say, 
And then for the next 5 years, maybe 5, 7 percent, maybe 10 percent. 
Maybe then it goes to 17, or maybe by 15 years you get to the 17 
percent rate.
  But in those kind of scenarios, they say, We paid for a state-of-the-
art facility by the time we ever get around to paying corporate tax. 
Whereas, if we kept those jobs in America, facilities getting older, we 
just can't produce dividends and returns on money for stockholders. 
We're just treading water. Here, because the corporate rates are half 
as expensive, then we can produce, we can compete anywhere in the 
world. Our goods are that much cheaper.
  Now, it is true our labor is more expensive, but, in general, we have 
good laborers in this country, and there are Americans that are willing 
to work, willing to do the jobs. From talking to employers, though, we 
could use a lot more people willing to be employees who can pass a drug 
test. That's kind of important.
  Now, I have had so many constituents say, Look, you have to pass a 
drug test in order to get employment for most important jobs nowadays, 
whether it's with a grocery company back home or a small operator. I 
was talking to an independent oilman this afternoon that drills wells 
from Longview, Texas, and he was saying, We have to give people drug 
tests.
  He was telling me, because of the drilling that's currently going on 
in east Texas, he's having trouble finding enough workers right now, 
today. While people are unemployed around the country, he's having 
trouble right now, today, finding enough people who can pass a drug 
test and are willing to work hard on an oil well, and he would put them 
to work.
  In fact, he was telling me this afternoon, they'd start out at 
$50,000 a year. They'd have health care. It's hard, dirty, long hours, 
tough work, but it's a good living. But so many of the people that 
apply can't pass a drug test. And because it's such difficult work 
physically and it requires that you be alert because all of the other 
people on the rig have to count on each other, kind of like in a 
military operation, the equipment is so dangerous, if somebody has 
taken drugs and is not at peak performance, they can get somebody 
killed. It's happened far too many times. They have to have people pass 
a drug test.
  That's just this afternoon. Well, think about it. If we had 
manufacturers coming back into America because the corporate tax rate 
was less than 17 percent, then the manufacturing jobs show up like 
crazy.
  Now, I realize from hearing all of the news, apparently the big 
emphasis of the national union leaders, who sure don't seem to be 
speaking to all of the

[[Page 13629]]

union folks I know, but their emphasis seems to be basically we're not 
doing very well getting union members from private corporations. So 
they've gone all after government employees: Let's try to unionize 
government employees because maybe we can pick them up.
  And what I think eventually rank-and-file union workers for private 
companies will begin to understand is it seems that they're being 
thrown under the bus. The concentration seems to be for more government 
workers, less private workers, which means they're driving for more 
jobs in the government sector, which kills off the private sector, 
which will kill off those jobs for the union members who have jobs in 
the private sector.
  So, as I sat back here listening to the President's speech last 
Thursday night and as I struggled with what the President was saying--
because some of it didn't seem to me that it was going to create the 
jobs he was promising, but I was willing to wait for the bill and not 
judge from a speech, because it's been said around here before that CBO 
cannot score a speech. Well, that was before, a couple years ago, when 
the administration got on to them, and basically they did score a 
speech, but that's because the White House is able to exert pressure on 
CBO that the Republicans have not been able to see fit to do.
  I know Mr. Elmendorf was not happy with my reference, but the fact 
is, after Mr. Elmendorf met with the President in the woodshed, or the 
Oval Office, he came back and was able to bring down the scoring of 
ObamaCare by about a quarter of a trillion dollars or so. Then after 
ObamaCare passed, they said, Whoops, looks like maybe we underestimated 
by about a quarter of a trillion dollars.
  That makes for a pretty big plus-or-minus margin of error when CBO 
can't do better than that, but CBO and the rules were created by the 
most liberal Congress in history until about 5 years ago. They created 
CBO. They created the rules for scoring. They yanked us out of Vietnam 
without a chance to make sure our allies there would not be killed, so 
most of them were. They also created an automatic baseline for 
government budgets that increases every year. They created a formula. 
It increases every year.

                              {time}  1620

  Now, I was here in '05 and '06, and I am embarrassed that, as 
Republicans, our party did not have the nerve to eliminate the CBO, to 
eliminate the ridiculous rules by which bills are scored. The actual 
reality and history and recurrent numbers of what happens--when you do 
this, you get this effect--you can't consider that. They have to use 
rules that don't apply in the real world and without taking into 
consideration the effects that have been had when an action is taken 
every time.
  So we get terribly inaccurate scoring from a government entity, and 
we also have this automatic baseline that increases every year. There 
is not a business or home in America that can plan a budget by saying, 
We're automatically going to increase our budget every year from now 
on. No matter how much income or revenue we have each year, we're going 
to keep increasing our budget. That is what has been happening for 37 
years, since 1974.
  The Budget chairman back in '05 and '06 was not willing to do it, but 
I am extremely gratified that our bright chairman of the Budget, this 
Budget chairman, is going to do it, in that this year he's going to 
take up a zero baseline budget. I filed one in my first Congress back 
in '05 and '06, in my second Congress in '07 and '08, in my third 
Congress in '09 and 2010, and in this Congress. I am delighted. I don't 
care whose name is on the bill; but when we finally eliminate the 
automatic increases in the Federal budgets every year, that's going to 
be huge, and it's going to be better than anything that the President 
has proposed by way of producing revenue and balancing the budget.
  I do appreciate the White House emailing their version of the 
American Jobs Act.


                         Parliamentary Inquiry

  Mr. GOHMERT. If I might inquire of the Speaker, a parliamentary 
inquiry: If there are charts around on the floor, can anybody use 
those?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman is free to use charts in 
debate.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, because I saw my friends across 
the aisle using a chart that said the ``American Jobs Act.'' It makes a 
wonderful chart if it's still on the floor, because that's what we're 
talking about, an American Jobs Act.
  The President kept saying, Pass it right away. Act now. Pass this 
jobs bill. Pass it right away. Pass it again right away. Pass the bill 
right away. They'll get back on their feet right away if we pass the 
bill. Anyway, just on and on--pass the bill, pass the bill, pass the 
bill. So I heard the speech. I got a copy of the speech, and I like to 
highlight stuff where I can find it easier. So we've got all this 
``pass it now,'' ``pass it right away'' stuff highlighted.
  Where is it? We were told to pass it now, to pass it right away. We 
heard the speech Thursday night. We didn't get a bill Friday. We didn't 
get a bill Saturday. Obviously, it can't be filed Saturday or Sunday if 
we're not in session. We didn't get it, though, through email. They 
send the stuff when it's needed, but nothing Saturday, nothing Sunday.
  On Monday, we were inquiring of the White House by email, by phone, 
Look, when are you going to let us see what this bill we've got to pass 
last week is?
  We finally got a copy, and I was up until 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning 
going through it--tagging it, highlighting it, being staggered by the 
stuff in here that will kill jobs instead of create them--oh, other 
than the jobs that are created for the government that will help kill 
the economy. I couldn't believe this was being called an American Jobs 
Act, but it was not a surprise to me even at noon today when we 
inquired and found that no one had been willing to file an American 
Jobs Act in the House of Representatives. It had been available. The 
President had been talking about it since last Thursday, but nobody had 
been willing to actually file that bill in the House.
  I have been through the President's American Jobs bill, and I am 
absolutely convinced--absolutely no question--that this will hurt our 
economy. It creates massive, bigger government intrusion. If you like 
Freddie and Fannie Mae, you will love the new American Infrastructure 
Financing Authority. What a wonderful government creation that is. 
We're going to provide billions and billions of dollars to create this 
new government entity. But not to worry--these are people who will be 
running it who really know what they're doing--right?--because the 
Secretary of Transportation is going to be in charge. I do know the 
Secretary of Transportation right now, and I like him very much. He's a 
good guy. Nonetheless, we're creating another government nightmare 
called the American Infrastructure Financing Authority.
  Unbelievable.
  You would have thought we would have learned a lesson--but not to 
worry. These are people who will be appointed by the President. Some 
other people here in Congress can throw in some recommendations, but 
they're appointed. The seven voting members are appointed by the 
President. So that will be wonderful. They'll run all our 
infrastructure requirements for us, and of course the President will 
appoint the chief executive officer.
  Having been a history major in college, I do believe that the best 
indication of future performance is past history, past performance. 
With the auto czars and the private committee composed of a bunch of 
auto czars, I read somewhere that not any of them had ever worked in 
the auto industry at all, and most of them didn't even own a car. 
Nonetheless, they had put them in charge of our auto industry.
  That kind of scares you when you think about it and when you think 
this is the same guy who's going to appoint all these people to run the 
brand-new American Infrastructure Financing Authority. That's AIFA, and 
it is just another nightmare. It's going to help bankrupt America 
quicker than this administration has already been doing.
  I know people like to throw blame around. There is plenty of blame to 
go

[[Page 13630]]

around because I know, in 2006, I was on this side of the aisle, 
hearing people stand up at the Democratic microphones, saying what I 
knew to be true. They were right. We had no business spending $160 
billion more than we took in. That was un-American. It was outrageous. 
This body had no business authorizing expenditures of $160 billion more 
than we took in. They were right. The Democrats were right when they 
said we should not spend in a year $160 billion more than we took in.
  Nowadays, people like to say, Well, it's Afghanistan and Iraq that 
have broken this country and have made us bankrupt. That's not the 
case. We were in Afghanistan; we were in the worst part of the 
expenditures in Iraq during those days, and we overspent what we had 
coming in by about $160 billion. If anybody back then had told me that 
within 4 years those same people who condemned this side of the aisle 
for overspending by $160 billion would be just fine with overspending 
by $1.6 trillion, I would never have believed it.

                              {time}  1630

  There is no way, with the speeches that were given here in '05, '06, 
'07 about the Republicans' irresponsibility in '05 and '06, my freshman 
year, over $160 billion more being spent than we brought in, that they 
would have any nerve or ability to stand up and say I'm voting to spend 
$1.6 trillion more than we're going to take in. I just didn't think, I 
wouldn't have believed that anybody would be willing to do that. Well, 
they have, and we as a country have.
  But I went through the President's bill. Yesterday I went through 
much of it, but there is a little more that needs to be said, for 
example, to illuminate the President's comments about he wants to go 
after the profits of Big Oil; and he does that in his bill, we were 
told. He was going to fix it for Big Oil.
  Well, I was a little cynical, I was a little leery, because I have 
heard the President call the Wall Street executives fat cats. He has 
called them names, said we wouldn't be letting them do that, that we 
ought to go after them, that kind of stuff.
  Yet I knew that, while he was calling them names, at the same time 
his governing made sure that an entity like Goldman Sachs made more 
money than they've ever made in their history. They should have had to 
file for bankruptcy. Instead, now they're making more money than 
they've ever made in history, and this President is presiding in such a 
way it's bad for America, but Wall Street is doing great, and some 
would say that doesn't make sense because we know that Wall Street is 
mainly Republicans.
  But if you look into it, as the Heritage Foundation has--my friend 
Mike Franc there has done the research--you found out that, in essence, 
corporate executives on Wall Street, when you include their immediate 
family that donates with them, donate about 4-1 or donate about 4-1 for 
Obama over McCain. And Mike had said, when he first saw that, he 
thought, wow, that's intriguing. That may be different from prior 
years, But as he checked on it, it wasn't that different from prior 
years, donations from Wall Street.
  Then you get to realizing, wait a minute, Democratic Presidents, 
Members here in this body are constantly deriding these greedy, evil 
people on Wall Street; and yet they're generally giving 4-1 to 
Democrats over Republicans. There are 4-1 Democrats on Wall Street in 
executive positions than there are Republicans. Well, no wonder. It 
starts making more sense that they would do much better under 
Democratic administrations since it helps to know people in those kinds 
of positions.
  But we were told by the President he's going after Big Oil. The 
provisions in this President's bill--it's at page 151--repeal the 
deduction for intangible drilling and development costs in the case of 
oil and gas wells. Now, the bill has a dishonest word here. It says 
repealing oil ``subsidies.''
  A subsidy, you can look it up, Webster, wherever you want to, but the 
definition will basically be the same wherever you look it up. A 
``subsidy'' is a grant or a gift of money. There are no grants or gifts 
of money, and there wasn't anybody that wanted to go after British 
Petroleum more than I did around here when we found out 800 violations 
or so and when all the other majors were having maybe one or two in the 
gulf.
  Yet they were involved in crony capitalism. So the administration 
looked the other way over and over and over again until the Deepwater 
Horizon blew out. People were killed, you know, not only lives lost but 
fortunes lost. The Gulf of Mexico was devastated all because this 
administration and those inspectors that were sent looked the other way 
to all of this pitiful way that drilling was done because they were 
buddies, crony capitalism.
  So when you look here at what the President actually has in his bill, 
who it's going to help and who it's going to hurt, what you see are 
these deductions here that he's repealing--the repeal of deduction for 
tertiary injectants, the repeal of the percentage depletion allowance 
for oil and gas wells. Section 199, the deduction attributable to oil, 
natural gas or primary products thereof, the repeal of oil and gas 
working interest exception to passive activity rules.
  I read through these, checked with experts and find out, CPAs, people 
that do the tax returns for independent oil companies, and I was 
reminded, this stuff basically applies only as a deduction for an oil 
company that produces less than a thousand barrels of oil. All of the 
majors that this President says he wants to go after and go after their 
profits, they're majors.
  All of the deductions that he is trying to repeal, they're not going 
to affect, they're not really going to hurt the major oil companies. 
They're going to devastate the independent oil companies. That will be 
the result here.
  So he says he wants to go after the majors, but that's just not what 
he is doing in his bill, and I know that, being a community organizer, 
he's not that well up on what he's going to hurt and what he's going to 
help. But the fact is there are figures that indicate American 
production activities are dominated by independent producers, who drill 
95 percent of the Nation's natural gas and oil wells, accounting for 67 
percent of total U.S. natural gas and oil production. That's the 
independent oil companies of America. Ninety-five percent of the 
drilling, 67 percent of the production is not ExxonMobil. It's not 
Shell. It's not British Petroleum. It's the independent oil companies 
in America.
  And who are they? They're people that cannot go to the banks, for the 
most part, to get a loan. Any bank that would loan an oil company money 
to drill a particular well is probably going to get shut down because 
the chances are, in most cases--certainly in the investments I have 
had--you are more likely to have a dry hole than you are to hit 
anything that's really going to be of a sufficient, productive nature.
  So, of course, once you have established a field, the odds go up 
dramatically, but most of these wells, when it's not an established 
field and it's just helping produce more from a known field, you can't 
get loans. The only way independent oil companies have to be assured of 
being able to drill oil wells is not to go get a loan, and they also 
know that if they invest and pay all of the 100 percent of their own 
drilling and they hit a few dry holes in a row, they're going to be 
bankrupt, if there were so many of them.
  What most independent oil companies do, they do studies geologically. 
They have to hire geologists most of the time. I am told they were 
independent geologists. I know a great number of those. They do great 
work. They will study an area, and they will hire a landman to come in 
and study who owns what interests in the minerals, who owns what rights 
that they're going to have to acquire in order to do drilling, and then 
they hire people that are involved in drilling.
  They're not like the majors where they've got all they need to go do 
all the drilling. They hire independent mud companies, independent wire 
line companies. They will often have to have people come out and feed 
them, and if they don't, they're going to have people who need to go 
eat somewhere.

[[Page 13631]]

  It is hard, nasty, 24-hour-a-day work. You don't stop 8-5. You have 
to do shifts because you can't afford to get somebody too tired for 
staying on a rig too long. But they employ millions of people. They 
cause the employment of millions around America even though there 
aren't that many that actually work on the wells, themselves.

                              {time}  1640

  They create jobs. They don't just save them like this President says 
he's been doing. And so what's the President doing? He, in his bill, is 
not touching, he's not going to hurt the Big Oil companies. They're 
going to apparently do as well as his good friends at General Electric.
  So what we have seen is, if you're really friends with this 
administration, or to be fair, the parties in power, then odds are 
you're going to get your tax bills through and you are going to be like 
General Electric, you're going to be like Warren Buffett, and you're 
going to be able to skate through without paying virtually any tax.
  I loved the way Art Laffer explained to it me in his living room 
after a Sunday lunch one day last year. We talked about these taxing 
concepts. I just love the guy. He is so brilliant. He's charming and 
funny. He sure got us out of a mess back in 1980-1981 because he was 
the adviser to Ronald Reagan. Art Laffer was his economic adviser.
  Many people have heard about the Laffer curve because for people in 
government who want to maximize the amount of revenue to the Federal 
Government so they can spend more, how do you do it? Well, if you don't 
have any kind of tax at all, the government has no tax at all, then the 
revenue of the Federal Government would be zero on this end. If the 
government taxed a 100 percent tax, very, very quickly nobody would 
work. Nobody's going to work to produce 100 percent revenue for the 
Federal Government unless the whole Nation is enslaved, and God forbid 
that that will happen.
  So on the two ends of the graph, you have zero revenue to the Federal 
Government, if it is zero percent tax altogether, and on the other end 
you have zero revenue to the Federal Government if there's 100 percent 
tax. So somewhere in between, you reach the maximum efficiency for 
bringing in revenue to the Federal Government. If you tax too high, 
then you start hurting the amount of revenue percentage-wise coming in, 
and so you actually get less revenue when you pass that maximum point. 
Before that point, you can continue to raise taxes and actually 
increase revenue. Beyond that, the revenue starts coming down. So as 
Art has described it, you need to cut taxes 30 percent, and you will 
get us out of this horrific doldrums of an economy.
  I was back at Fort Benning, Georgia, at the time, and things were not 
good. The military was not respected at all. I liked Ronald Reagan a 
lot. Of course, when you're in the military, you can't say anything 
negative about the Commander in Chief or you've committed an offense 
under the UCMJ. You can't criticize someone in your chain of command, 
including the Commander in Chief. So we just had to bite our tongues, 
but we could see Jimmy Carter was doing such damage to this country 
economically and in the foreign arena. It was just tragic.
  I liked Ronald Reagan. He said he was going to be able to help bring 
down double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment and double-digit 
interest rates. As much as I liked him, I recall telling my wife, 
Kathy, back at Fort Benning, I like him, but I don't care who the 
President is, there's no way a President can actually help do all that, 
really have that kind of effect.
  He proved me wrong. With Laffer's guidance, taxes were cut 30 
percent, and the economy took off. Because the economy took off and 
there were more jobs, unemployment dropped dramatically. Interest rates 
were able to come down dramatically. We had a 12\1/4\ percent or 
something loan on our first home in Georgia just off post in Fort 
Benning. It may have been 12\3/4\ percent. Some folks told me that was 
crazy--it was too high--but it wasn't long before interest rates some 
places were 18 percent, so 12 wasn't so bad. Now, interest rates came 
down under Reagan, but it was Laffer who said bring down the taxes by 
30 percent, and you'll do dramatic work on creating a better economy.
  I love the story Art Laffer tells about getting a call from President 
Reagan. He said, Art, great news. We got your tax cut.
  Art said, in essence, this is my paraphrase: That's great, Mr. 
President. Congratulations.
  Art, you don't seem excited. Why aren't you excited? This is great 
news. We got the tax cut with the Democratic House and Senate. They're 
going to cut it 30 percent.
  He said, Congratulations, Mr. President. That's great.
  President Reagan said, Why aren't you more excited?
  He said, Mr. President, I understand you're going to cut it like half 
a percent the first year, 10 percent the next year, and another 20 
percent the third year.
  He said, Well, that's the deal we had to cut with Congress. We 
couldn't get all 30 percent at once.
  As I recall, he said something like, Mr. President, if you were going 
shopping and the place you were going to go shopping had a half of one 
percent sale this month and then 10 percent sale next month and then 20 
percent sale the next one after that, when are you going to go 
shopping?
  He said Reagan was quiet for awhile and then finally said, Are we 
going to have a couple of bad years?
  He said, Yes. Now it's going to be 3 years before the economy heals. 
We could have had it this year.
  President Reagan got the best he could in 1981 and 1982, and those 
were not good years. In 1983, the economy surged, and more money was 
brought into the coffers.
  The problem, though, is that the Democratic Party got so excited 
controlling the House and Senate--Reagan and Laffer had set up such a 
situation here, and there was so much more money coming into the 
coffers, the Federal revenues--that they started spending like never 
before. They can blame Reagan, but the Constitution makes very clear, 
Congress spends the money.
  So really, this year, we are still working off of what Congress did 
or didn't do last year under Speaker Pelosi. Next year, beginning 
October 1, will be the first full year we are back at least as 
Republicans being in control of one House. So I think it is very, very 
important what we try to do to generate jobs and when you know that 
these provisions are going to devastate independent oil companies that 
do 95 percent of the drilling in continental America and won't hurt 
Exxon, British Petroleum, and, in fact, because 95 percent of the 
drilling will not get done in the continental United States.
  I guess that's why the President was trying to do this. They 
apparently don't like drilling. They don't like mining. They don't like 
any of this stuff occurring on our soil. They would rather it go 
somewhere else where they pollute a lot more. But we are talking about 
millions of jobs that will be lost because of the devastating effect of 
destroying independent oil and gas businesses--and all of that when 
we've gotten such great news over the last few years. We went from 
having basically no natural gas reserves to having 100--some say 200, 
some say 300--years of natural gas reserves.
  Some fleets of trucks are starting to convert to natural gas. If we 
converted cars and trucks--you can't order them from Detroit yet that 
come equipped with natural gas. You can get them done after they leave 
the factory. But if we started getting natural gas vehicles like some 
fleets have done, travel is a lot cheaper. You don't have the pollution 
you have with gasoline. It burns clean. You do have CO2.
  So look out. We're going to grow more plants, because plants have to 
have CO2 in order to have photosynthesis, in order to 
produce O2 as a byproduct from growing as a plant. So, gee, 
if we use more natural gas, we may end up with more healthy plants. So 
that may be a difficult thing if people don't like green plants.
  I couldn't help but notice on page 155--and I have read through 
here--the President has things like eliminating deductions. He says 
this bill is paid for.

[[Page 13632]]

In his speech he says--and I want to read it correctly. He told us back 
2 years ago during his health care speech, if you misrepresent my bill, 
I'm going to call you out. So let me read what he says.
  He says, ``And here is the other thing I want the American people to 
know. The American Jobs Act will not add to the deficit. It will be 
paid for.''
  That's what he said.
  What he's counting on, what he references on page 4 of his speech--
and it's on page 155--yes, there is elimination of deductions. In 
reality, it's going to cost this government revenue. It's not going to 
create more Federal revenue.

                              {time}  1650

  It's going to cost jobs. There will be fewer people paying as much 
income tax. That will hurt the Federal coffers more. We'll have more 
deficit spending. We can't get that under control. But we just passed a 
deficit bill I didn't support because it didn't have adequate cuts in 
there. There was no restraint on spending that was really adequate. If 
you only cut $1 trillion over a 10-year period, and we all know--
everybody in here knows--you can't bind future Congresses. So all the 
cuts that do not occur within the next year or year and a half, there's 
no reason to think that they will happen. You can't bind future 
Congresses.
  Anyway, even if we did cut $1 trillion--not much the next year, but 
it gets heavier toward the end of the 10 years. If we were to cut $1 
trillion over 10 years and we were to do that every 10 years, within 
exactly 150 years we will finally balance the budget, and we will have 
only added $120 trillion to the $14.3 trillion or $14.6 trillion that 
we've run up in deficit spending now. If we were able to reach this 
wonderful goal of $2 trillion in cuts in the next 10 years and do that 
ever 10 years, then we can balance the budget in only 80 years. We'll 
only add around $72 trillion in additional deficit spending to our 
deficit.
  So the joint committee was charged: Find $1.5 trillion somewhere 
between now and basically Christmas, the end of the year. Actually, we 
found out today they're really going to need to find it by the 1st of 
November. This is how the President pays for his $450 billion spending 
spree, where we create the American Infrastructure Financing 
Authority--a new Fannie and Freddie on steroids. We create a new 
massive government bureaucracy.
  The FCC wanted to have a fairness doctrine and control what people 
said on the airwaves. They want to dictate everything that gets done in 
the media on the airwaves, but they were realizing more and more people 
are going to broadband and less and less to the airways. They're losing 
control of things. So the President addresses that. It's not a jobs 
bill in the private sector, but it creates a brand-new authority, 
government entity. Well, actually, he describes it in his bill as a 
private nonprofit group. He appoints the directors, of course, and it's 
called the Public Safety Broadband Corporation. Wow, it's going to kill 
the private sector. But more government jobs. Good news there.
  And here's the pay-for. If we had a drum roll, Mr. Speaker, we could 
ask for it. The Budget Control Act of 2011 is amended by striking $1.5 
trillion that they have to find in cuts in the next month or so and 
inserting $1.95 trillion in cuts. That's it. Magically, he just found 
$450 billion in cuts, but it's because he told the supersubcommittee: 
Go find this extra money. What a great revenue-enhancing deficit 
spending cut that is.
  This bill is a disaster. It sets up a program that will allow people 
who have their hours reduced by 10 percent to start collecting 
unemployment compensation. It requires State agencies to start 
mandating that those employers involved certify that even if they cut 
an employee's hours, they're going to still have the same health care 
benefits, retirement benefits. I talked to some employers today about 
it. They said, We'll have to give up providing health care and 
retirement benefits because we need the flexibility. If we're all 
taking a cut, then let's take a cut.
  I want to challenge my own Republican leadership, Mr. Speaker. Most 
of America is not even aware that this year we put our mouth where our 
money is, and we actually voted to cut our own budgets by 5 percent. 
And next year we're cutting our own budget by 6 percent. Well, we 
haven't done enough with that. I would challenge our own leadership, 
and I hope that we'll seize the day--seize the moment--and be able, 
because we would have the right to do this since we're cutting our own 
budgets. America doesn't know that, but we are.
  Okay. All Federal Government, here's the deal. We're cutting our own 
budget in Congress by 5 percent this year, 6 percent next year, and 
we're doing it to every department In the country. We have the moral 
authority to do that since we're cutting our own. We should do that. 
Let's get spending under control. But the President uses, apparently, 
Rahm Emanuel's own philosophy about: Don't let a good crisis go to 
waste. So he's got this 155-page bill that he finally made available 
Monday night but that nobody has filed here in the House.
  We need American jobs. We need American jobs now. I am convinced that 
if we eliminated the corporate tax altogether, you would hear a 
gigantic sucking sound, I believe Mr. Perot used to say, of 
manufacturers leaving other countries and flocking back to America, 
making more income than they had in the past, because for the first 
time--Donald Trump is a sharp man. He has made a lot of money. He has 
advocated that we put a 25 percent tariff on everything we buy from 
China.
  If you studied the situation and understand the treaties--I don't 
like most of them, but if you look at what we've done, if we set a 25 
percent tariff on everything America buys from China, we have violated 
a number of contracts and agreements. There's penalty phases to that. 
We start a trade war. I don't think China wins, but I know we don't 
either. I don't think anybody wins a trade war that that would start.
  So inspired by Donald Trump saying, Why don't we put a 25 percent 
tariff on everything we buy from China--and I've talked to Art Laffer. 
He likes the idea. He's got some other alternatives as well, but one of 
them is you eliminate the corporate tax altogether. I really think it's 
one of the most insidious taxes in America because people have had to 
be sold a bill of goods to believe that you won't have to pay it. We're 
going to make these evil, greedy corporations do it.
  And I will admit to you, sometimes unions are very helpful because 
greed does take over. But the thing is, if you eliminate the corporate 
tax, who's been paying that? The consumers and lower wage earners in 
those corporations. In some cases, there are studies that have 
indicated that. But it's the consumers that have to pay the corporate 
tax. If a corporation doesn't pass that tax on, they can't stay in 
business.
  If you eliminate the corporate tax, you'll have jobs flooding back 
into America, and you'll have more people paying income tax. The Laffer 
curve won't be zero taxes on this side with zero revenue. It will be 
zero corporate tax. But even at the same tax levels, you will have 
dramatic increases in the Federal revenue because so many more people 
will be employed, things will be going well, and the economy will have 
a jump-start like we've never seen before.
  So after nobody else would file an American Jobs Act, as the 
President proposed, and having examined it over and over in the last 
couple of days, having checked today at noon to see if anybody had the 
nerve to file this disastrous bill that will kill jobs, run up the 
price of gasoline and oil and make everybody's life more miserable, 
more government intrusion into broadcast, more government intrusion 
into financing things--not Fannie or Freddie because we've still got 
them around, but a new infrastructure financing authority--I realize 
this is a disaster for America.
  So I filed not a 115-page bill but actually a 2-page bill today at 
about 1:20, and it says: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to 
repeal the corporate income tax. Be it enacted by the Senate and House 
of Representatives of

[[Page 13633]]

the United States of America and Congress assembled. This Act may be 
cited as the ``American Jobs Act of 2011.'' It repeals the corporate 
income tax, repeals the alternative minimum tax, and there will be so 
many more people paying income tax, people will not believe the kind of 
money that will flow into the Federal Government, not that that's a 
good thing, but we can at least pay down our debt if we're responsible.

                              {time}  1700

  I'm so excited that the Tea Party is getting fired up. I see people 
from all races, all walks of life in the Tea Party. The one thing they 
seem to have in common is they're paying income tax, and they're tired 
of carrying half of the country on their backs. So this is a start, I 
believe--it is a jobs bill--and you will see jobs flood this country, 
and we'll get on track.
  In the few minutes I have left, let me just tell you about a man that 
probably had the most influence on my life behind my father. His name 
was Sam Parker. There have been wonderful men in my life, women in my 
life, teachers in my life that affected me.
  Sam Parker was hired by the Mount Pleasant School Board in 1952 to be 
a coach and to teach history. He was the head coach of the Mount 
Pleasant Tigers football team. In 2 years' time, in 1953, he had led 
them to being undefeated after the first nine games. He turned the 
program around. He was a devoted Christian, belonged to the Methodist 
church there, started teaching Sunday school. His wife, Norween, was 
the librarian at the junior high.
  After nine games, we went to play Sulphur Springs, and people were 
saying, This looks like the best team in 3A, in Texas; they very well 
could win the State. They went to Sulphur Springs. Some team members 
told me it was their fault; they didn't take it serious enough, and 
they lost by one touchdown. That was Friday night. Monday morning, the 
school board fired Sam Parker.
  Then he and his wife had a tough decision. They believed that God had 
called them to Mount Pleasant to plant their roots, invest their lives, 
and change America from that small place. Well, he did the unthinkable. 
He stayed and taught American history after being fired as head 
football coach.
  And 7 years later, I met him in a park recreation program he put on 
for young kids in the public park down there each summer. I worked with 
him one summer as a teenager with the kids. He taught more kids how to 
play baseball in Mount Pleasant during those years than anybody else in 
town. He was my scoutmaster. He had a troop there. He was my 
scoutmaster through my becoming an Eagle Scout there at Mount Pleasant, 
and he taught me American history. He continued to teach Sunday school.
  The man that coached 2 years at Mount Pleasant High School changed 
Mount Pleasant in an incredible way. He was still alive in 1991. Before 
he died, they renamed the football field Sam Parker Field. He taught me 
American history. He served in World War II. He loved this country. His 
son was my best friend--is still a dear friend.
  Those are the kinds of people that have changed America. Those are 
the kinds of people who are the reason we have been blessed like we've 
been blessed, And if we don't have more people willing to put pettiness 
aside, goofy ideas that enrich their cronies, goofy ideas that increase 
power for some people and get back to what made America great, we're 
going to lose this country. As Ben Franklin said in 1787, we will 
become a byword down through future generations because we had the 
greatest country ever given to mankind, and we became irresponsible and 
lost it.
  It's time for major changes.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________