[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18715-18722]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) is recognized 
for 60

[[Page 18716]]

minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time.
  You know, for folks who aren't accustomed to seeing what you and I 
just saw, I think that's quite a treat. In about--what does it turn out 
to be? In about 45 minutes, we've had the majority leader for the 
Republicans and the minority whip for the Democrats lay out in 
intricate detail the differences that we're facing here as well as the 
commonalities that we're facing here. That hasn't happened in a little 
while. It was a little more spirited today than it sometimes is as they 
come down on Friday afternoons to share with each other what the 
schedule will be going forward, but that's always a treat to see, and I 
hope folks enjoyed being able to be a part of that.
  What I have on my mind today is twofold. We're talking about jobs. 
All day, every day in this body we're talking about jobs. And much like 
you saw the majority leader and the minority whip lay out competing 
opinions, competing views of what America should look like going 
forward, we have competing views about what creates American jobs. And 
I will tell you that, Mr. Speaker, we sometimes spend too much time 
talking about the creation side that we ignore the destruction side. 
Because it's absolutely about creating jobs, but it's so much easier to 
stop killing jobs.
  Creating jobs, we can disagree about how to make that happen--lots of 
different proposals on the table--but destroying jobs should be 
something that we agree today should never happen, should be something 
that we say day in and day out we're not going to let happen. And 
that's the case as we talk about energy independence. Energy 
independence.
  I'm going to quote my Georgia colleague, Jimmy Carter, Mr. Speaker. 
He was giving a speech in 1979. He said: ``In a little more than two 
decades, we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in 
which almost half of the oil we use comes from foreign countries at 
prices that are going through the roof.''
  Sound familiar? Mr. Speaker, does it sound familiar? This was a 
speech given in 1979. ``In a little more than two decades, we've gone 
from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the 
oil we use comes from foreign countries at prices that are going 
through the roof.''
  I'll tell you what else my Georgia colleague, President Carter, said: 
``I am, tonight''--in his 1979 speech--``setting a goal for the energy 
policy of the United States. Beginning this moment,'' he said, ``this 
Nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977--never.''
  Hear that. The speech given in 1979 by the President who created the 
Department of Energy, whose sole mission was to wean the United States 
from foreign oil and create domestic capacity to meet all of America's 
energy needs, not just because of jobs but because of national security 
is what the President said. ``Beginning at this moment, this Nation 
will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977--never.''
  Well, sadly, that has not come to fruition, and we're going to talk a 
little bit more about why that is.
  Quoting again from President Jimmy Carter: ``From now on, every new 
addition to our demand for energy will be from our own production and 
our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on 
foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks.''
  Folks, this is President Jimmy Carter--I would argue one of the more 
liberal Presidents that we've had in our lifetime--from my great State 
of Georgia. I'm going to be one of the most conservative Members that 
we have in this U.S. House of Representatives, and I agree with 
absolutely everything he said. I was 9 years old when he said it: never 
use more foreign oil than we use at this moment in 1977; every new 
demand for domestic energy will come from domestic energy production.
  Who disagrees with that? Who disagrees with one of our most forward-
thinking, energy-independent Presidents that we've had? Who disagrees?
  Let's move forward. Let's look at U.S. oil consumption. 1973 to 2004 
are the numbers I brought down today. This top line, U.S. oil 
consumption. U.S. oil consumption. Here we are in 1979 when the 
President was giving his speech: All the new demand, he said, will come 
from U.S. energy supplies.
  The red lines are oil imports. Red line is the amount of oil that we 
are bringing in from overseas. Here's the President's speech in 1979. 
Here's that peak year in 1977. He was giving the speech in '79, but he 
said let's look at 1977, a peak year for our imports across the globe. 
We will never import that much oil again.
  Well, look out there. Look right out there, 1996, 1997, 1998 through 
today, we absolutely are. And why? And why? The why is because of U.S. 
oil production.
  You know, we talk--and again, you saw it with the majority leader and 
the minority whip. When they were talking about their competing visions 
for a direction for America, they were talking about jobs. And the 
minority leader asked, he said: Name one economist who will tell you 
that reducing regulation creates jobs? That was an honest question. 
Name one economist who agrees that reducing government regulation 
creates jobs.
  Folks, look at the Gulf of Mexico. Look at the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. 
Speaker, you know as I do, as you are from that part of the world, that 
America's largest shallow water oil drilling company declared 
bankruptcy in the midst of some of the highest costs per barrel of oil 
that the world has ever seen. Why? Why, Mr. Speaker, would a U.S. oil 
producer, the largest in the country, declare bankruptcy when the price 
that we're getting for a barrel of oil is among the highest in world 
history?

                              {time}  1320

  I'll give you the answer: Because the United States government 
wouldn't give them a single permit to drill. Hear that. More oil 
imports from around the world than ever before in American history, 
focus on both sides of the aisle on creating jobs, and the largest 
shallow water oil producer in America goes out of business because the 
American Government won't give them permits.
  Tell me, who believes, Mr. Speaker, that that didn't cost jobs, that 
that regulatory decision to refuse to allow Americans to drill for 
American oil in American waters, as they have for decades, who believes 
that didn't cost us a job?
  Now, good news. Good news. Those rigs that we would have been using 
to drill for American oil, they're not being moth-balled. They've just 
gone overseas to drill for foreign oil that we'll then be able to pay 
top dollar to get back in America.
  Folks, why? Why?
  This is an energy independence issue, and it is a jobs issue, and it 
is a national security issue.
  Look back: 1980, after President Jimmy Carter's speech that said we 
will never import more oil, importing, here, six million, almost seven 
million, barrels a day.
  Fast forward, 2008. That number's almost doubled to 13. It's almost 
doubled to 13. Folks, we're rich with energy in this country.
  Mr. Speaker, you know, as I do, we have been blessed. There are 
countries around this world that don't have access to fresh water. We 
do. There are countries around this world that don't have access to 
beaches and to mountains and to waterways, and we do. There are 
countries around this globe that don't have access to energy, but we 
do.
  Mr. Speaker, who is it who decides that we can't harness U.S. energy? 
Who is it? Is it some sort of natural law of nature that says we can't 
harness U.S. energy?
  No. It's the folks who sit in these chairs. It's the folks who sit in 
these chairs day in and day out who decide, no, no, you cannot harness 
American energy. You know where you ought to get your energy? Get it 
from overseas. Get it from overseas.
  Now, you might ask, where is it we have to go overseas to get our 
energy? And I think that's a fair question, something that we don't 
talk about very much when we talk about free

[[Page 18717]]

trade. You know, every single nation that America has had a free trade 
agreement with, we have a manufactured goods surplus.
  We talk so much, Mr. Speaker, about the trade deficit that we have 
with the world. You've heard it. You hear it all the time, a trade 
deficit that we have with the world.
  Why? It's energy. It's importing energy that creates the trade 
deficit. Those jobs we talk about, manufacturing jobs, good, high-
paying manufacturing jobs, in everybody's district in the country, we 
have a trade surplus with every single nation with which we have a free 
trade agreement. What we don't have is an energy surplus.
  These are the top oil-producing countries in the world, top oil-
producing countries in the world. Our green line up top is the former 
Soviet Union; it changes over to Russia. You see it's right up there at 
the top even as we enter 2010.
  This beige line is Saudi Arabia. It is also up there at the top as we 
enter 2010.
  Down here you see the next biggest oil producers, China in purple, 
and Iran in blue. You tell me if that's who you want to import our 
energy resources from.
  And here, in red, is the United States of America. This is production 
in millions of barrels per day. This line should be going up. This line 
should be going up, and this line is going down, and the question is, 
why? Why?
  Look again to the seats in this room, Mr. Speaker. Look again to the 
policymakers in this country. Bill after bill after bill we have passed 
in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, that would free up the American energy 
production that would create jobs, not tomorrow, not a week from 
tomorrow, not a year from tomorrow, but today, that would create jobs 
today, and those bills languish in the Senate.
  Do not tell me that regulations don't impact jobs. Asking the 
question, does an economist agree that regulation removal would create 
jobs, folks, we don't need an economist. We need any mom or dad in the 
country. We could get a sixth grader to come and say what's going to 
happen. If regulations put people out of business, removing those 
regulations will let them come back in.
  Largest oil-producing countries in the world, Russia, Saudi Arabia, 
Iran and China and the United States of America--we're in good company. 
We are in good company, Mr. Speaker, in the top five oil-producing 
countries in the world; but we're going down while every other country 
is going up. We are producing less, while folks with whom we have 
fundamental disagreements about a world view, their production goes up.
  And so who do we get our oil from, Mr. Speaker? Are we able to find 
enough oil in this global market to buy only from our friends? No, 
we're not. We buy from anybody who'll sell to us. And I don't need to 
speculate on what they do with the dollars we give them. I think we all 
have suspicions of our own.
  This chart, Mr. Speaker, is American oil production, U.S. field 
production of crude oil. We had a slow start back in the 1800s. We 
didn't know how powerful it was going to be. I'm not going to fault us 
for that.
  We started to sort out the technology, Mr. Speaker; we started to put 
it to good use. You see that spike running right up into the 1970s when 
President Carter was giving his speech. In fact, there's a little jog 
in the chart here, Mr. Speaker. You can't see it, but oil production 
went down, and Jimmy Carter gave a speech. He said, we are going to 
find domestic sources for American energy. We are not going to sell our 
future away to the world for the price of a barrel of oil. We are going 
to do it ourselves. And so you see an uptick.
  President Carter, you know, he's known for oil, oil embargoes, this 
energy speech. But really solar energy for which I would say I remember 
President Carter most fondly. He began that huge push for alternative 
sources of energy, and he was focused on that throughout this time. But 
his commitment to energy independence was every bit as large as his 
commitment to solar energy, and we began to produce more oil.
  Now, follow that line, Mr. Speaker, from 1990 straight down through 
2010. Straight down.
  It's not that we're not blessed with energy, Mr. Speaker. It's that 
we're also blessed--I'll use the word loosely--with a Congress that 
believes, or at least believed before this freshman class got here, 
that they're the smartest folks in the room, and if only the rest of 
America will do what they want them to do, America will be better off.
  Mr. Speaker, the decisions in my community about what makes the 
families in my community better off are made around the family dinner 
table, not 640 miles away in Washington, DC. The decisions about how to 
make ends meet are made around that dinner table, not 640 miles away in 
Washington, DC. The decisions about the environment, about 
transportation and about jobs are happening at that local level until 
we destroy that opportunity from Washington, DC.
  We have the oil. We could turn this chart around today; but, 
regulatorily, we won't allow it to happen.
  Next time, Mr. Speaker, someone talks about a jobs proposal, I hope 
you'll direct them to jobs.gop.gov. Because you know as I know, Mr. 
Speaker, at jobs.gop.gov you will find the list of more than 20 pieces 
of legislation that we have passed in this Chamber that sit idle in the 
Senate that will create jobs, again, not tomorrow, not next week, not 
next year, but today. Today.
  Where's an economist that believes reducing regulation creates jobs? 
Folks, that's not the question. The question is, is there a family in 
America that doesn't know for a fact that reducing regulations creates 
jobs? We're not talking about thwarting clean water, folks. I drink out 
of the same spigot everybody else does. We're not talking about 
thwarting clean air. I sniff out of the same air that everybody else 
does. We're not talking about those public health and safety issues. 
We're talking about national security.
  When you look at this chart, Mr. Speaker, it talks about the nations 
that produce oil, the oil that we need to run this country, Russia, 
Saudi Arabia, Iran and China.

                              {time}  1330

  Is there an environmental issue when it comes to energy production? 
You bet there is. But I propose this, Mr. Speaker. Give us energy 
independence. Give us energy independence in this country, Mr. Speaker, 
by whatever means necessary, by hook, by crook, you drill, you dig, you 
put the solar panels on the roof. Do whatever you have to do. Give us 
energy independence today. And I'll be glad to have the discussion that 
the President from my great State of Georgia started in the late 1970s 
about having enough alternative energy sources to fund this country.
  Folks, who doesn't love green? Green's wonderful. I saw a study the 
other day that said it's the most soothing color for children. Green's 
wonderful.
  Green's not what we get when we have to bargain with Russia, with 
Saudi Arabia, with China, and with Iran to get the lifeblood that keeps 
the American economy going. Green is not what we get.
  Folks, drill, dig, do whatever you have to today to achieve energy 
independence to reduce this imported number. Twice as much oil being 
imported today as we were when President Carter gave his speech that it 
would never rise again.
  We can do it, Mr. Speaker. We're Americans. We're the greatest 
engineers on this planet. We have the hardest working workforce on this 
planet. We have folks who are willing to save and sacrifice like nobody 
else on this planet. We can do it. The question is, Mr. Speaker, are we 
in the U.S. House, in the United States Senate, down at 1600 
Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House, are we going to free the 
American people to pursue that goal?
  You know, I came to this Congress about freedom. I don't actually 
view my job as the job of being the smartest person in the room. I view 
my job as protecting the freedom of folks back

[[Page 18718]]

home, because if you've not been down to the seventh district of 
Georgia, Mr. Speaker, I'll tell you you're going to find some of the 
smartest folks in the land right down there. It's kind of the north 
metro suburbs of Atlanta. And folks run this country from there with 
the decisions they make every day of the week.
  We don't need a Federal law that tells you whether to buy a Snickers 
or a Twix. I'm sure we could have a spirited debate about that here in 
this Chamber. But we don't need a law to do it because folks just make 
that decision every day. Are there enough peanuts in Snickers, Mr. 
Speaker? Do you think we should have them add some more?
  You know, those are the kinds of things we decide we're going to 
regulate out of this body in the name of making everybody happy. The 
children, when they get their trick or treat bags on Halloween that 
have the mini-Snickers in there, how much happier would they be if each 
of those mini-Snickers bars had eight peanuts in them instead of just 
seven? They'd be so much happier. And it would help peanut farmers in 
Georgia. It would be a home State jobs creation initiative. We should 
regulate that from Washington, DC. No. Because families regulate that. 
If you don't like the peanuts on the Snickers, you're going to get a 
Payday bar. If there are not enough peanuts in Payday, you're going to 
go on to the next one.
  We as Americans, Mr. Speaker, not as congressmen, as Americans, we 
sort out these decisions a thousand times a day. How do we get more 
freedom then, Mr. Speaker, back into individuals' hands?
  We're talking about jobs, and that's, again, energy independence. 
It's a national security issue. It should be the focus of everything we 
do in this House because it's a national security issue. If you don't 
believe we would make different foreign policy decisions, Mr. Speaker, 
if we were not dependent on people who hate us to fuel this economy 
with their oil, I'd have to disagree because I'm absolutely certain of 
it. We would make better foreign policy decisions if we produced our 
own energy resources--and we can.
  We're the Saudi Arabia of coal, for Pete's sake. What has this body 
over the past several years been trying to regulate right out of 
existence? Coal. The one resource that we have in abundance more than 
anyone else on the planet. And folks in their wisdom have decided that 
it would be better not to harvest our coal and instead import oil from 
people who hate us.
  Folks, that's not freedom. That's decisionmaking going on right here. 
And I promise you we'll get it right in the Seventh District of Georgia 
more often than not. And when folks believe they're the brightest 
people in the room, they start to make mistakes.
  That brings me to the FairTax.
  Oh, Mr. Speaker. You know the FairTax is a tax bill, but at its 
heart, it's a freedom bill. What the FairTax is, Mr. Speaker, if you 
haven't looked at it recently, it's a fundamental change in the way we 
tax America. Today we tax income, and of course, the power to tax is 
the power to destroy.
  I ask young people when I go to schools to speak, I say, Who wants to 
come to work for me? I'm going to work you hard, and I'm going to work 
you long. And I'm going to give you $10 an hour. I get a couple of 
hands that go up. Apparently $10 an hour is not as much today as it was 
back in my day. I would have jumped at $10 an hour. But I get hands 
that go up for $10 an hour. Then I say but I'm going to have to tax you 
$9 of that so you're only going to be able to take home $1. Now who 
wants to come work long hours for me? All of the hands go down.
  The power to tax productivity is the power to destroy productivity. 
The power to tax income is the power to destroy income. Why? Why do we 
want to destroy that which makes this country great?
  So the FairTax shifts that paradigm. Instead of taxing what people 
produce, we want to tax what people consume. A consumption tax. You've 
all seen it. It's in your sales tax. Back home in your State you get 
taxed on what you consume. And we could do it.
  I'll tell you, the FairTax is a jobs program, because when we stop 
taxing productivity, we get more of it. That creates jobs. I'll tell 
you, the FairTax is about transparency.
  You know, Mr. Speaker, the payroll tax, that 15.3 cents out of every 
dollar that comes out of your paycheck, that FICA line that you see, 
now 7.65 percent comes from the employee, the other 7.65 is hidden as 
an employer tax, but it's a 15.3 percent payroll tax.
  Did you know, Mr. Speaker, that 80 percent of American families pay 
more in the payroll tax than they do in the income tax? Eighty percent 
of American families pay more in the payroll tax than they do in the 
income tax.
  Now, I just got back from Thanksgiving. I've got doctors in my 
family, I've got teachers in my family, I've got all sorts of folks so 
I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, I got an earful throughout the entire 
Thanksgiving dinner. It was more of a three-day festival for me. 
Different sides of the family coming into town, and I got lots of good 
advice about how we should do things differently up here.
  But you know not one person mentioned the payroll tax. The income tax 
was a hot topic. But nobody mentioned the payroll tax, and it's the 
biggest tax that 80 percent of Americans pay. Why? Because the payroll 
tax is hidden in every single paycheck that you get. You don't feel it. 
The government gets its share first. You get your share second. You 
don't feel it go away unless, Mr. Speaker, you're one of the self-
employed folks in America. And instead of paying the 15.3 percent 
payroll tax, you pay the equivalent 15.3 percent self-employment tax. 
And then you feel the bite of that tax each and every day. You know 
that's the biggest tax that you pay.
  The FairTax, instead of allowing all of those taxes to be hidden, 
hidden in business taxes, hidden in income taxes, hidden in payroll 
taxes separated out so you don't feel the pain, the FairTax takes your 
entire Federal tax burden and sticks it into one rate, a sales tax on 
everything that you buy. One rate.
  Now, that rate would have to be 23 percent. That's a big number. 
Twenty-three percent is what the sales tax rate, the FairTax rate would 
need to be in order to replace Federal income taxes on businesses, on 
individuals, Federal payroll taxes on businesses, on individuals, the 
gift tax, the death tax, the capital gains tax, the dividend tax, all 
of those Federal taxes on income, the FairTax could replace them all 
with a 23 percent personal consumption tax there at the cash register.
  And you'd see it, Mr. Speaker. Can you imagine? Today I can just 
raise an excise tax here, raise a quarter of a percent on income tax 
there. I can do lots of funny math as they like to do in Washington, 
DC, because folks can't feel the pain. They always think it's not going 
to tax me. It's going to tax somebody else. Yes, I vote ``yes'' because 
it's going to tax him instead of me. The FairTax puts us all in the 
same boat and let's us see how much the United States Government costs 
us.
  I'm a cost-conscious shopper, Mr. Speaker. I brought a marker down 
here with me today in case I had to write any big red marks on my 
chart. This was free with rebates at Office Max last week. I don't know 
if anybody else got it. Free with rebates for this marker. Dollars and 
cents matter. We make different decisions in our personal purchasing 
life when we experience those costs.

                              {time}  1340

  Transparency let's you know how much your government is costing you.
  Does everybody want a free marker? Yes. Does everybody want to pay 
the $6.95 it would have been if it weren't free with a rebate? I think 
not.
  It puts the entire cost of government out where you can see it. Most 
importantly, the FairTax is about individual freedom.
  Folks, have you thought about how the Tax Code manipulates your life?
  It doesn't matter whether you sit on the far right over here with the 
Republicans or if you sit on the far left over there with the 
Democrats. Sometimes something happens when you show up

[[Page 18719]]

in Washington, D.C.--and you do. You believe you're the smartest person 
in the room. Everybody tells you how wonderful you are. You think your 
ideas are so great. Then you decide--you know what?--that I should 
reward people for doing this behavior and that I should punish them for 
doing that behavior, and if I do it, they'll be happier and America 
will be better.
  So what am I going to do?
  I'm going to put a tax on gasoline because I don't want people 
driving to work. That's bad. Then I'm going to put a tax credit on 
electric vehicles--right?--because that's green. We were talking about 
green earlier, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to put a tax credit on electric 
vehicles. So I'm going to punish those people who buy oil at the 
community gas station, and I'm going to reward those people who go out 
and buy these $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 electric vehicles.
  I don't actually think that's very good tax policy, but we have the 
power to do that. We can manipulate your behavior every day of the week 
by changing how the Tax Code touches your pocketbook. I was talking 
about that electric vehicle tax credit. That wasn't just an example. 
That wasn't just something I made up.
  Do you remember when this President passed his energy bill? It 
included in it a tax credit of $6,500 for everyone who would go out and 
buy an electric vehicle. Well, again, the Volt was not on the market at 
the time in the 40s, and the only vehicles out there were in the 
$80,000-$90,000 range. But Americans are industrious, which is why, if 
you leave America to Americans, we're going to be just fine. Americans 
are industrious.
  What they found out was, if they put brake lights on their golf 
carts, as well as some side view mirrors, some good seatbelts up front, 
some headlights and windshield wipers, that the Department of 
Transportation would certify those golf carts as road-ready vehicles, 
and they could get the $6,500 tax credit. Ah. Now it turns out you 
can't buy an American-made golf cart for $6,500. Our golf carts are a 
little more expensive than that. Yet our friends in China are not only 
willing to share their oil with us--guess what?--they're willing to 
share their golf carts with us, too. So it turned out, at the end of 
tax year 2009, Americans were literally standing in line for VIN 
numbers for Chinese golf carts so that they could claim this tax 
credit. Free golf carts for all.
  Did anybody get one, Mr. Speaker? Did you get that free golf cart? 
Don't tell me if you did. I know some folks who did. I'm not proud of 
it, but I know some folks who did. Free golf carts for all from the 
United States Tax Code.
  Folks, when we bring all that power and all that authority here, it 
gives us the power to manipulate your life, and we don't always 
manipulate it for the powers of good. I would tell you, even when we're 
trying to manipulate it for the powers of good, as the President was 
trying to manipulate it for the powers of good in his energy bill, we 
run afoul. Why do we need to pay people to engage in behavior? We make 
those decisions each and every day.
  The FairTax abolishes the income tax code so that no longer can 
people who think they're the smartest people in the room in Washington 
tell you how to live your life. It's not just a crazy conservative, 
Republican idea. No. We have that idea from folks on the other side of 
the aisle, too.
  Let me quote President Obama:
  You've got too many companies ending up making decisions based on 
what their tax director says instead of what their engineer designs or 
what their factories produce, and that puts our entire economy at a 
disadvantage.
  You were here, Mr. Speaker, when the minority whip asked: Is there 
any economist who believes that regulations destroy jobs or that 
removing regulations would create jobs?
  We don't need an economist. We've got the President of the United 
States:
  Too many companies make decisions based on what their tax director 
says, based on tax regulation, instead of what their engineer designs 
or what their factories produce, and that puts our entire economy at a 
disadvantage.
  President Barack Obama.
  We'll go more:
  We need to make America the best place on Earth to do business. A 
barrier government can remove is a burdensome corporate tax code with 
one of the highest rates in the world.
  The minority whip asked: Where is the economist that believes that 
repealing regulation is going to create jobs?
  It's the President of the United States:
  A barrier that government can remove is a burdensome corporate tax 
code with one of the highest rates in the world.
  We can do that. We don't need world approval. We don't need to shop 
that around for a decade. We could do that here, and we have 
legislation drafted to make it so.
  I'll quote Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:
  Our tax system is broken, and it needs to be fixed.
  I probably could have quoted any American and would have gotten that 
same sentence. I don't think there is anybody who disagrees with that, 
Mr. Speaker. Our tax system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. Where 
are the ideas to fix it? I tell you they are here in this House, Mr. 
Speaker--the FairTax. The FairTax, this personal consumption tax that 
I'm talking about, has more cosponsors on it--more Members of Congress 
who have added their names to the bill who have said they want to be a 
part of that--than any fundamental tax reform legislation in either the 
House or the Senate. It has the most Members in both bodies. We have 
proposals to fix it.
  Let me quote House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi:
  Any tax reform and closing of loopholes, which is really important 
for us to do as a sense of fairness, must also reduce the deficit.
  The minority leader knows we've got to cut out these loopholes, these 
tax breaks, these deductions, these exemptions. We hear that down here, 
Mr. Speaker, and you've heard me go on about it in the Rules Committee. 
Folks come down here, and they say, Oh, I hate this tax break or I hate 
that tax break. Oh, this loophole is unfair or that loophole is unfair.
  Folks, every loophole is unfair. Don't just pick on the oil companies 
because you don't like oil companies. Don't just pick on the solar 
panel companies because you don't like solar panel companies. Every 
loophole is unfair. Everything that advantages your business over 
another business is unfair. Everything that advantages your family over 
another family is unfair. There is no secret spot that we go to here in 
the Congress to get money to pay our bills. There's not one. There's no 
secret spot. It comes out of American taxpayers' pockets--every penny.
  When you cut a special break to a special interest, only one of two 
things is going to happen--they're going to pay less. So either you, 
the American taxpayer, is paying more, Mr. Speaker, or we, collective 
America, are borrowing more and passing that bill on to our children 
and grandchildren.
  Why? Why do we give the special tax breaks and the loopholes? Who 
elected us, Mr. Speaker, to decide who wins and who loses? My people 
sent me here to protect their freedom. They're going to decide who wins 
and who loses by the sweat of their brow and by the power of their 
ideas. They didn't send me here to choose.
  The Tax Code is not supposed to be about picking winners and losers. 
It's supposed to be collecting whatever revenue there is that we need 
to run this country. You can't run a country for nothing. I'm not a guy 
who says let's abolish all taxes all the time. We have a social 
contract in this country, and we have to collect dollars to pay for 
national defense. We have to collect dollars to pay for homeland 
security. We don't need to dispense favors from the Tax Code.
  I challenge you, Mr. Speaker, to help me challenge our colleagues. If 
you want a special favor for that special interest in your district, 
don't hide it in the Tax Code. Bring it down here as a spending bill. 
Let's debate it. Instead of saying, Oh, my favorite special interest 
back home, I want to give you a 50 percent tax break--instead of that,

[[Page 18720]]

why not just come to the House floor and say, Hey, I just want to write 
you a big check for 50 percent of your tax bill--because that's what it 
is. That's all it is--every single tax break, every single tax 
loophole, deduction, exemption, on and on.

                              {time}  1350

  We call it part of the Tax Code; it's just the government writing you 
a check. Folks we're broke, 15 trillion in debt that we're passing on 
to our children and our grandchildren. We can't write those checks.
  The FairTax does away with that. All the exceptions and exemptions 
make the Tax Code transparent for people to understand. Now, one of the 
things I hear these days in this tough economic time--and it is a tough 
economic time--folks say, but, Rob, if we had a consumption tax like 
what you're proposing, people are consuming less in these tough times, 
and so we're not going to have enough money to run the government.
  Well, folks are right. We are absolutely consuming less in these 
tough times, and I encourage you to consume even less going forward, 
tighten the belt. Think about that next purchase. Make those decisions. 
Tighten it as much as you can. Saving is the virtue.
  For far too long, we've celebrated consumption as the virtue. We have 
a chance right now, and it's only right now, Mr. Speaker. We haven't 
had this chance in almost 100 years. America used to produce what the 
rest of the world wanted. America used to be the exporting giant that 
sent the world the goods that it needed and the middle class prospered 
as a result.
  Well, we've gotten out of that habit. We've gotten out of the 
production business. We're putting more businesses out of business 
every day with the regulations we've talked about earlier. Now we're in 
the importing business; now we're in the borrowing business.
  But, Mr. Speaker, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity right now. 
Why? Because there are a billion new middle class Chinese consumers 
coming online today, and they want what we make. There are a billion 
new Indian middle class consumers coming online today, and they want 
what we make. We do not have to buy everything from the world. We can 
produce everything for the world.
  Consumption is not to be celebrated. Production is to be celebrated, 
which is why I want to take the tax off production and put it on 
consumption.
  This chart represents--the blue is personal consumption through the 
years, the last decade. The red is personal income. And what you'll see 
is the red line drops below the blue in bad times and above the blue 
line in good times. What does that mean?
  The red line is income. The blue line is consumption. Yes, it's true 
that in bad economic times we consume less but, guess what, we earn 
even less than that.
  Is there less personal consumption going on today, Mr. Speaker? There 
is, but also less personal income going on today. Folks don't have 
jobs. When you tax income, you tax one thing and one thing only and 
that's the production that you had today.
  When you tax consumption, you tax, perhaps production from today, 
also savings from yesterday and also borrowing from tomorrow. It's a 
much more stable income stream for the government. And let me tell you 
why that's important.
  Mr. Speaker, you know, we've only been in this House 11 months now, 
part of the biggest freshman class this body has seen in a generation. 
But in just this period of time, we have learned that it's hard to cut 
spending, hard to find agreement. It takes 218 votes to cut spending. 
I'm having a hard time finding those 218 votes on programs I want to 
eliminate. It's hard.
  But because income drops lower in tough economic times than 
consumption, and because income rises higher in good economic times 
than consumption, what happens is in the bad times, because we have an 
income tax, we end up borrowing more to pay our bills and in the good 
times when we have a surplus, how much did we save? Mr. Speaker, do you 
remember? How much did we save and put a way for a rainy day during 
those 3 years of surplus in the 1990s? A lot? No, it was zero. Oh, but 
we spent some more. Oh, boy, did we spend.
  And by ``we,'' Mr. Speaker, I know you weren't here. But, boy, did 
this Congress spend. In good times if you send this Congress the money, 
it's going to spend it. Don't send it. Don't send it. Because the 
consumption tax flattens out the volatility of the tax receipts in this 
country so that in bad times we don't have to borrow as much and in 
good times we don't spend as much.
  That's important because that gets multiplied over Congress after 
Congress after Congress. You know, the FairTax isn't some sort of 
amazing record-breaking idea. It just says get the government out of 
the way. You know, when this Republic was founded, the only way we 
funded this government was through consumption. That was the only tax 
we had, a consumption tax.
  That's how we funded the government because our Founding Fathers 
said, if you have enough money to import china from China and silver 
from India, then you have enough money to help to keep this country 
afloat. If you have enough money to spend big, you have enough money to 
pay taxes big.
  But let's talk about the individual American family for a moment. You 
know, back when the income Tax Code started in the 20th century, the 
Tax Code was 400 pages long, 400 pages long. Now, I read a lot of 
legislation around here, Mr. Speaker, as you do, and 400 pages is a lot 
of pages to get through, but I can sort that out. By World War II, 
1945, the Tax Code was 8,000 pages long, grew 20 fold in the first part 
of the century.
  By 1984, its was 26,000 pages long; and, Mr. Speaker, we're getting 
past the amount of pages that I can digest. We're getting past the 
amount of pages that I can sort out on my own. I'm having to hire 
professional help now. I've got to hire staff like I.S. Dunklin here in 
order to sort through all of this Tax Code. That's 1984--26,000 pages; 
2004--60,000 pages; 2011--72,000 pages, Mr. Speaker.
  Who is it? Which is that American family that has so much extra time 
on their hands today they've sorted through 72,000 pages of Tax Code to 
figure out what the tax bill is. It makes a criminal out of all of us, 
out of all of us.
  Did you see the article in Money Magazine? They brought in about 20 
different tax preparers, gave them average, middle class families, 
incomes and deductions and credits, you know, their life, of 20 
different tax preparers who looked at this one family's circumstances. 
How many of them do you think came up with the same answer? How many of 
them came up with the same tax bill? Zero.
  Twenty different tax preparers, 20 different answers about what this 
middle class American family would owe. You can't sort through 72,000 
pages; and, why, this is the thing about the FairTax, Mr. Speaker. We 
have inherited this Tax Code. This Congress has inherited this Tax Code 
from those who have gone before us, but we don't have to keep it. 
That's what's so great about America. We get to choose; we get to 
decide.
  We could erase the Tax Code today. Instead of 72,000 pages, we could 
have this. We could have a blank page, and we could begin anew to 
decide what we want the American Tax Code to look like.
  Folks, I don't mind paying taxes. I just don't want to pay someone to 
help me pay the taxes. I don't mind paying taxes, but I don't want to 
be at risk of getting arrested because I didn't do it right. I only 
spent 60 hours trying to sort it out, and it should have taken 70 
hours.
  Folks, if you have to pay the government, if the government has to 
get the money before your family gets the money, why can't we make it 
easy? And I'll tell you that we can. Making it easy is what it's about 
for the American family, but making it easy also has an impact on jobs.
  You know, don't think for a minute that we don't live in a global 
economy. Why, it hasn't always been true. Back

[[Page 18721]]

in the 1970s we were a little more insular. As a Nation, we could make 
some different choices.
  But today money can leave this country with the click of a mouse. One 
click of a mouse and you can transfer a trillion dollars from here to 
Zurich. And guess what, the big CEOs can get on their plane and they 
can fly to Zurich too. And guess what, the folks who live in Zurich 
they want jobs too. Everything that has to do with the prosperity of 
this country can get up and leave, except for the American worker.
  You and I are here. You and I aren't going anywhere. So we are 
invested in making sure that those people who provide the jobs for us 
stay here too.
  Look at the average effect of tax rates. This is effective tax rates. 
I have got some other charts that talk about the statutory rate, 
because the statutory rate for business taxes in America is the single 
highest statutory rate in the world. Again, you can create a company 
with a click of a mouse. You can move your trillions with a click of a 
mouse.
  Where are you going to move them? You are going to move them to the 
country that has the highest rate in the world as America does, or you 
can move them somewhere that has a lower tax rate.
  Folks, as the minority whip was asking if we had an economist, we 
don't need an economist to sort that out. Every high school student who 
has had a semester in economics knows if somebody is taxing here and 
somebody is taxing here, the money is going to go to the low tax 
jurisdiction. That's the marginal tax rate.
  But look at the effective tax rate, because you might be thinking, 
but, Rob, you just told me about all of the loopholes and the 
exemptions and the credits. I bet that's how America stays competitive. 
We just give away all of these freebies kind of under the table to all 
of our businesses, and that keeps them afloat? No and no.
  The effective rate is the rate that folks are paying after you factor 
in all of those loopholes and exemptions, United States, 27.7 percent. 
The 58 other countries in the OECD, that group of economically 
developed countries from around the world, those people who are 
competitors in a global marketplace, their average rate, 19.5, 19.5. 
Our friends in the European Union, you have probably been following 
them. They have got this breed of socialism that's been pervasive over 
there. It's putting their business out of business one by one by one by 
one.

                              {time}  1400

  You probably think they've got the really big tax rate. No, no, 
they're just 21.9. The big tax rate belongs to the land of the free and 
home of the brave. Folks you don't need an economist to sort this out.
  Mr. Speaker, we know if we charge employers more to stay here, 
they're going to do what? Leave. And if we charge employers less in 
America, they're going to do what? They're going to stay, and more 
importantly, they're going to come. They're going to come. The Tax Code 
is a business opportunity. It does not have to be a burden. We have 
simply made it a burden in this country.
  This map shows you what the global tax rates are around the globe. 
We're here in orange in the 30 to 39 percent rate. We're actually at 
39. So we're the highest of the orange countries. Look here who is in 
10-19. Here we are, we're up here around 40 in America. Look at our 
friends to the north. Anybody been to Canada recently? It's not a bad 
place. They've got good schools, good energy infrastructure. Wars don't 
break out there very often. Nobody's out to get them. It's pretty 
pleasant. They charge businesses about half of what we charge for them 
to have the pleasure of doing business there.
  Now, I'm just asking, Mr. Speaker, you see the young people that come 
through this Capitol. Ask them, where would you start your business? 
Would you start it in the country that has the 40 percent tax rate or 
would you start it in a country that has a 20 percent tax rate? 
Businesses don't pay taxes. Consumers pay taxes, and when we burden our 
businesses, we not only reduce the number of jobs that are available in 
this country, but we reduce the competitiveness of our goods overseas, 
and that's where the American competitive future lies. We must become 
the exporter to the world, and we cannot do it when we hide taxes in 
the price of everything we pay.
  Have you ever walked up to a Coke machine? I'm from Atlanta, as you 
know, Mr. Speaker, and we're the home of Coca-Cola, and I like to say 
wonderful things about Coca-Cola, and I do on a regular basis. But when 
I walk up to a vending machine out here on Independence Avenue, and 
there's a Coke machine there and there's a Pepsi machine there, the 
price is always the same whether you want to buy a Coke or Pepsi. Why 
is that? Why is the price the same? Why doesn't Coke decide they just 
want to make a whole lot of money and they're going to charge $2 while 
Pepsi is only charging $1? Even better, why doesn't Coke charge $5, 
while Pepsi is charging $1? And the answer is competition.
  There comes a time when you cannot sell your product because the 
price is too high. These orange Nations are raising the price of those 
products. The green Nations are lowering the price of their products. 
Look at the green: it's our neighbors in Canada, it's our neighbors in 
Europe. We cannot compete today with this Tax Code. And who gets to 
change it? How hard is it, Mr. Speaker? Where do we have to go to find 
the wisdom to change the Tax Code? Oh, good news. It's right here, 
right here with us in this body. We can erase the code and start fresh 
tomorrow.
  Mr. Speaker, people talk about these things as if they're 
unattainable. The income tax hasn't always been in this country. It 
started in the early part of the 19th century. We can stop it just as 
effectively as they started it. We get to choose.
  Looking at the top 75 countries--you're going to have a tough time 
reading it, Mr. Speaker. These are 75 Nations around the world ranked 
by how easy it is for businesses to pay taxes in those countries, 
ranked by the ease of tax compliance. Let's see, we've got a lot of 
smart guys in America. Maybe we're up here at number one? No. There's 
Hong Kong at number three. That's a thriving economy. Ireland here at 
number five. We've got Canada here. We knew they were going to do well. 
Denmark, Switzerland. No, there's America, over in column number four 
at number 69. Mr. Speaker, it's an embarrassment. Top 75 countries by 
ease of paying your tax bill, America is number 69. There are dictators 
in these other countries that write the tax codes. There are monarchs 
in these countries that write the tax code. We're the land of the free 
and home of the brave. We write our Tax Code, and you want to know 
where the jobs have gone, Mr. Speaker? We have run the jobs off one by 
one by one. Stop the nonsense about talking about growing jobs and 
you're still running jobs out. Keep the jobs we've got and the new jobs 
will come. We can fix this.
  Sixty-nine out of 183 countries America ranks, and in terms of the 
level of the corporate income tax, the level, 131 out of 183. People 
wonder, they ask the question all the time, why are jobs leaving 
America? I don't think government can stop it. Government stopping it? 
Government's causing it. Get that: Government's causing it, and we can 
stop it, and we must.
  But you might be thinking, well, good news, Rob. At least if we've 
got this terribly burdensome Tax Code and at least if we've got the 
highest corporate rates in the world, at least if we're doing things 
more stringently than anyone else on the planet is doing them, we must 
be getting a lot of money for it; businesses must just be paying tons 
here. Oh, no. No. Revenues as a percent of GDP, you see the U.S. down 
there in red. Here is the OECD, the average. We're down there at the 
bottom.
  For all the pain and suffering that we put businesses through to make 
them pay their taxes, for all the jobs that we lose in this country 
because businesses know it's too complicated to do business here, we 
don't get much for it.
  Interesting sideline, Mr. Speaker: If you go over to the former 
Soviet bloc

[[Page 18722]]

countries, you'll find most of them have flat taxes these days. The 
flat tax, consumption tax, sales tax, all of these taxes that we know 
generate job growth. We can't get one in America, but the former Soviet 
bloc countries got one. They all got them. Why? Because they were 
starting new countries where they could start from scratch and do it 
any way they wanted to. And when you start from scratch, you end up 
with a flat tax. You end up with a consumption tax. You end up with 
something that's going to grow your economy instead of punish it. We're 
punishing our economy, and we're not getting a thing for it.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 25 is the FairTax. H.R. 25. Folks can find it at 
thomas.loc.gov. That's the Library of Congress' Web site that does all 
of the legislation, posted for all Americans to see and read. It's only 
about 115 pages long. It's a short read, not 75,000 but 115 pages long, 
talking about what we could do if we had the will to do it. I think we 
do have the will. We have more cosponsors of the FairTax than any other 
tax bill in the House. The Senate, the Senate version of the FairTax, 
more cosponsors on the Senate version of FairTax than any other 
fundamental tax reform bill in the Senate. We can do it, Mr. Speaker, 
but it's a heavy lift.
  And if folks have suggestions, Mr. Speaker, if you would encourage 
folks, if it's about the FairTax, if they know how we can get this 
country back on track, they can send an email to [email protected] 
and you will be able to see it. If it's about energy independence and 
how we can change national security in this country, how we can reclaim 
all of the bounty with which God has bestowed this country, 
[email protected], Mr. Speaker, is an email address 
that folks can send their ideas to about how we can get this going 
forward, because I am certain as I am that the sky is blue that the 
best ideas for saving America in this time of crisis, Mr. Speaker, they 
are more likely to come from the family dinner table back home than the 
committee hearing room here.
  That's who we are here. We're just folks who used to be at the family 
dinner table back home, and we've taken 2 years out of our lives to 
come up here and be a part of a larger discussion, but the good ideas 
still come from back home. Mr. Speaker, if folks would send in those 
ideas, we can begin to change this Chamber one seat at a time. We can 
begin to effect this process one Member of Congress at a time. Members 
of Congress don't change their minds or change their votes because of 
lobbyists on Capitol Hill. No, they change their minds and change their 
votes because of lobbyists back home, and that lobbyist is named Sally 
the pharmacist, and that lobbyist is named Steve who works at the 
foundry. Those lobbyists are the individual voters back home. That's 
what effects change in this place. That's what causes change to happen 
in Washington, DC.
  The American people still run this Republic. I see it every day, and 
Mr. Speaker, if the American people would reclaim this House, reclaim 
this House by reclaiming their Representatives, by pushing forward 
those commonsense ideas--we don't need an economist to tell us, we know 
it to be true--we can reclaim this country.

                              {time}  1410

  I'm not telling you it can happen overnight. I'm not telling you it's 
going to be easy. But if there is one thing I am certain about America, 
Mr. Speaker, is in times of crisis we get the job done. If there's one 
thing I know about the American family, it's if you tell the American 
family they can't, then they will. We can do it, Mr. Speaker. 300 
million Americans together can do this, but their ideas have to be 
heard.
  This big freshman class, I would argue, is doing a better job of 
making the families' hopes and dreams heard on Capitol Hill than we've 
seen in my lifetime. But we can still do better. F[email protected] 
and [email protected]. We will get those ideas heard.
  Mr. Speaker, I'm grateful to you for providing me the time this 
afternoon. I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________