[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3107-3114]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         CRISIS FACING AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, it is a treat to be able to join you tonight, 
my colleagues and friends, and to talk about a great crisis that our 
Nation is facing. It is becoming increasingly apparent to Americans not 
only that we have a problem with unemployment and jobs, but we have a 
problem with the Federal budget and the deficit and the spending and 
the taxing--all of those things that go into an economy.
  These problems are far more significant than I think many Americans 
are aware. I would like to talk about that tonight and to keep it 
fairly simple, and to let people know, as President Reagan said, while 
the solution is simple, it is not easy. It requires a great deal of 
courage.
  I am going to start tonight in perhaps an odd way. I am going to ask 
you, please, to picture that you are either a Senator or a Congressman 
in 1850 in America. In 1850, you would have noted that there was 
increasing discussion as the new territories became available, whether 
they would be allowed to come into our Nation either as a free State or 
a slave State. It created a lot of political tension between the 
different Representatives representing different points of view on that 
subject.
  By 1852, the book ``Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was written. It became a very 
popular book, and it tended to further inflame the issue, the great 
question of the day. The question was slavery; what would America do 
with that question.
  By 1857, the Supreme Court, deciding to legislate from the bench, 
which has always turned out to be a bad idea and beyond their 
constitutional authority, came up with a decision that came from my 
State, the State of Missouri. It was called the Dred Scott decision. It 
said essentially that black people were not people; they were property. 
But beyond that, it also said to the Congress and to the Senate that 
they could not make any kinds of deals as to which State would be slave 
or free because each State could do whatever they wanted.
  And so the stage was set as the tensions grew for Abraham Lincoln to 
be elected to be President. And as he was on the train approaching the 
capital, leaving Illinois, a number of Southern States seceded from the 
Union. And almost as though in slow motion, a great locomotive drove 
off the edge of the cliff pulling the train with it, and America was 
immersed in a terrible, terrible Civil War. It was a war that was 
ultimately to claim 600,000 lives. That is more than all the people who 
are Americans who have been killed in all of the rest of the wars we 
have fought in our Nation's history. Of course, a statistic like 
600,000 may seem to make your eyes glaze over, but then you start to 
hear the individual and personal stories of people who were horribly 
touched and families that were destroyed by the horror of the war, and 
you recall the words of the second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln 
and he talked about the fact that the war had been far, far worse than 
anybody had ever imagined was possible.
  That great tragedy, that terrible cost that was paid by our Nation, 
was a result of a failure of leadership, a failure to deal with a 
massive fundamental question that everybody knew was there all through 
the 1850s--the question of slavery. And the failure was not just in the 
Congress, in the Senate, but it was in the people of the States for 
being too disengaged and unwilling to take that question head on.

[[Page 3108]]

  The parallel today, I think, is a little bit frighteningly similar. 
Today, just as there was in 1850, there is a gorilla in our tent, and 
that is the problem with the Federal Government spending too much 
money. So what I want to do is put that in very simple terms not so 
your eyes will glaze over, but so we get some sort of a sense of 
balance as to what is going on; because my proposition is that we are 
spending too much money, the government is spending too much money, and 
it is unsustainable.
  Now, this is something that many thoughtful liberals, as well as 
conservatives, agree is true. There is disagreement as to what to do 
about it. But the numbers are the numbers. There is something about 
mathematics that is that way. And that is what we are going to talk 
about: the simple view of what the numbers are today and why. This is a 
crisis that we must address. We cannot ignore the gorilla in the tent. 
This is something that all Americans must become aware of and must be 
participants in solving the problem.
  As we do that, the jobs will return. America will hold her head high 
again; and almost, as a ship with a big wave breaking across the deck, 
the ship will shake loose the water that threatens to push it to the 
bottom and lift its bow in pride and sail further on.
  So what I am going to do is just take a look at some stuff that 
sometimes politicians talk about in gobbledygook-speak and try to make 
it simple.

                              {time}  1800

  We have here a picture of all the things that the Federal Government 
is spending money on. It's your old classic pie chart. And I have over 
here Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. You can see that's a 
pretty big piece of the chart. These things are called entitlements by 
politicians. An entitlement--I'm an unfortunate engineer that ended up 
in politics--is sort of like a little machine that's created by law. 
The machine might have been created 30 years ago and it's a little bit 
like the machine in the bathroom which you put your hand in front of it 
and it spits out paper towels, except this machine spits out dollar 
bills. The entitlement is like a little machine. It's put on a track 
and off it goes spitting out dollar bills. So anybody who qualifies 
gets money. These programs--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid--if you 
qualify, you just get money.
  There are other entitlements as well. In addition to other 
entitlements, there is something that acts an awful lot like an 
entitlement and that's the interest on our debt. When we sell a 
Treasury bill, the person that bought it expects to be paid interest, 
and so the Treasury bill acts like a little machine. It spits out 
dollar bills at the appropriate intervals.
  The point is that if you add these entitlements here, the other 
entitlements, and you take the net interest on our debt and you put 
that together, it comes up to $2.2 trillion. What does that mean, 
anyway? $2.2 trillion is bigger than I can understand, but we can 
compare it to something else, and that is the revenue of the Federal 
Government. That is, when everybody in America pays their taxes, the 
money comes into Washington, D.C., that's our revenue. The revenue is 
$2.2 trillion. So the entitlements and debt service at $2.2 trillion is 
the same thing as our revenue.
  Well, what's left over to pay for national defense? And what's left 
over to pay for the rest of the running of the government? This other 
non-defense discretionary would be things like the Congress and the 
Senate buildings, would be the Federal prisons, the Federal parks, 
Departments of Energy and Commerce and Justice and Education, all those 
different things. Those are this non-defense.
  In other words, what I'm saying is this. If you zero out defense, so 
there's not a soldier left, not a rifle, not a ship, not a plane left 
and zero out everything else in the Federal Government, when you zero 
those out, you now have a balanced budget. Because entitlements and 
debt service are taking every last penny we get in revenue. That is a 
serious problem.
  I am joined by a very good friend of mine from Louisiana, a man who 
is growing in stature and feared, loved and respected, my good friend 
Steve Scalise from the great State of Louisiana.
  Please join us, Steve.
  Mr. SCALISE. I thank my good friend from Missouri. When we talk about 
feared and loved, I'm not sure where we fit in, but I do think it's 
important----
  Mr. AKIN. The feared is because of the people who want to whitewash 
what was going on with that big oil spill and the fact that you got on 
it and told people the truth; and I respect that. Thank you, sir.
  Mr. SCALISE. Thank you.
  That's the beauty of the people's House. I think what you're doing, 
you hold this weekly town hall forum, as we call it, to talk to the 
American people about what really is happening here in the people's 
House, in the Congress, and how it affects people all across this 
country. Of course, I had three town hall meetings last week when I was 
back in my district, when Congress had finished dealing with one part 
of this budget problem.
  I think when you talk about what's wrong with the spending, how out 
of control spending is in Washington, we had taken some action 2 weeks 
ago to say it's finally time to start righting the ship. Speaker Pelosi 
had the reins of the House of Representatives for 4 years. Of course 
during that 4 years that Speaker Pelosi was running the House, we saw 
unbridled runaway spending and record deficits, to the point where we 
now have a $1.5 trillion deficit.
  One thing that she left behind that we're dealing with is the fact 
that Speaker Pelosi didn't even bring a budget to the House floor last 
year so there was not even a budget, when families across this country 
had their own family budgets and families and small businesses are 
dealing with their crises and shortfalls by cutting spending.
  Mr. AKIN. Let me interrupt for just a second, gentleman, because 
you're bringing up a whole lot of additional facts and things. Let me 
try and put this in perspective.
  In 1974, we came up with a budget act, and every year since 1974, 
there was a budget here in this House. You might have liked it, you 
might not have liked it, but there was a budget, anyway, for what's 
going to go on in terms of Federal spending. Last year, under Speaker 
Pelosi, there was just no budget. None. And so what a lot of people see 
us dealing with now, and I think you're getting to this point, and that 
is the fact that we're doing what you do in the Federal Government when 
you don't have a budget and it's called a continuing resolution. I 
think maybe you were going down that direction.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. SCALISE. You're exactly right, because when we're talking about 
where we are today, it's important to look at how we got into this mess 
and the mess that we're trying to clean up, but the fact that 
historically last year Speaker Pelosi failed to even bring a budget to 
the floor when she was Speaker and so there was no budget that was 
passed.
  What that means is, like I said, while families are putting together 
their own budgets and families and businesses are dealing with the 
problems in the economy and shortfalls and they're cutting back and 
doing more with less, the Congress didn't even pass a budget. And so 
under Speaker Boehner now as we've got this new Republican majority 
here, we came up with a plan to fund the government for the rest of the 
year, but to fund it in a way that actually started cutting spending. I 
think one of the big problems that's been out there for a long time, 
things that you and I want to deal with, we want to cut spending and 
start putting our country back on a path to a balanced budget.
  And so we had this debate 2 weeks ago in the House where we said, 
okay, we want to be responsible about funding government, but that 
means we've got to start making real cuts. You can't just keep spending 
at the rate you're spending with the deficits that go along with it. 
We've got to start cutting so that this pie that you showed actually 
starts getting addressed and shrunk in a way that the

[[Page 3109]]

Federal spending starts getting closer to matching the amount of 
revenue that's coming in.
  Mr. AKIN. If I could piggy-back in and jump to what you're saying.
  A couple of weeks ago, we had basically a budget on the floor of the 
House. But the budget, interestingly enough, is what's called the 
discretionary side. So the budget was for this green, the defense, and 
this--what is that?--tomato soup. Maybe it's Campbell's tomato soup. 
This is the non-defense discretionary. So the budget only dealt with 
this section and we were making cuts to that section.
  What, of course, you have to ask yourself is, how about all this 
other stuff? Of course, this wasn't touched.
  So proceed, please, because I think it's a good story. People need to 
understand what we're working on was the first thing we had to work on 
which was the fact there wasn't any budget that we're running on, and 
so we're trying to put a budget together for between now and October 1, 
if I recall, sir.
  Mr. SCALISE. And so finally, to address the real problem in the 
country with this runaway spending, what we said under both Speaker 
Boehner and then chairman of Appropriations Committee Hal Rogers is 
that we've got to stop the bleeding. We've got to start cutting 
spending. And we brought a bill to the floor that allowed for $100 
billion in cuts. That's billion with a B. Real cuts to spending at the 
Federal level to finally start that process. By no means is this the 
finished product, but it was the first start of the process of finally 
getting spending under control.
  That bill came to the floor. We had a lot of debate. An open process. 
Any Member could bring an amendment to that bill. I brought an 
amendment to get rid of a bunch of these czars, these czars that are 
killing jobs in our country, that are getting paid millions of dollars 
to go out there and try to implement radical policies that run jobs to 
China and India and other places. That amendment passed. A lot of good 
amendments passed to cut spending, but ultimately we set a new tone. We 
said, number one, we're going to put our money where our mouth is. We 
promised that if we get the reins of power in the House, that we would 
actually really start cutting spending. So we cut $100 billion. We sent 
that to the Senate. And we're almost at 2 weeks past the point where we 
sent that bill over to the Senate. They still haven't had one ounce, 
one minute, of hearings or debate on our bill that we sent to them to 
cut $100 billion in spending.
  Mr. AKIN. Why do you think it was that they didn't want to take a 
look at the bill? They could have brought a bill up the same way. They 
could have gone through it and said, Well, we don't think they should 
have cut this much. They should have done this or this or this. They 
could have made changes on it and gone back and forth, and then we 
would have a budget for between now and October 1 and we could get on 
with what should be done this year instead of what should have been 
done last fall, or actually last year before the fall.
  Proceed, please.
  Mr. SCALISE. I think it became very clear very quickly just what is 
at stake here. There was a battle line that was drawn. In fact, as we 
were debating that bill to cut $100 billion and, as I said, with a $1.5 
trillion deficit this year, $100 billion is just a start. Well, 
President Obama comes out and actually starts criticizing us for 
cutting $100 billion. He said $100 billion is too much. Senate majority 
leader, Harry Reid, said $100 billion is too much to cut. Again, we're 
saying $100 billion is just the beginning. We've got to cut more than 
$100 billion. And so you quickly saw a divide. There is a divide right 
now in Washington. I don't think there's a divide in this country. I 
think most people, people I talk to when I go back home to south 
Louisiana, my colleagues that I talk to that are going back home and 
having town hall meetings, meeting with their constituents, families 
and small businesses are saying, it's about time that we're finally 
seeing real cuts coming out of Washington, but yet the President and 
the Senate leader that were saying $100 billion is too much to cut. And 
so we've sent them $100 billion, but what's at stake here, it's not 
just getting spending under control, it's getting jobs created again in 
America.

                              {time}  1810

  One of the reasons we are seeing such stagnant job growth in this 
country is due to the uncertainty that is created by the runaway 
spending. These are interlinked issues--the spending problem in 
Washington and the problem with the slow economic recovery--because 
people are afraid to create jobs. Our job creators are under attack by 
Federal bureaucrats, who are bringing out all these regulations every 
single day to kill jobs.
  We are seeing in my home State, in south Louisiana, where the 
administration doesn't even want to explore for energy in America. 
They've only issued one permit in 10 months to drill. In fact, now 
we're looking at the Middle East. We're putting more dependence in this 
country on Middle Eastern oil, under the Obama administration, at a 
time when the Middle East has never been in more disarray, which is why 
people are seeing over $3.20 or so a gallon at the pump. It's because 
of the President's own policies. This is killing jobs. It's not only 
running more jobs overseas, but it's also raising the prices of energy 
and gasoline for families.
  Mr. AKIN. You're getting this down to the place where we really need 
to be talking this evening, and that's about jobs, because Americans 
are wanting to know: Hey, where are the jobs? So let's take this thing 
straight head on.
  The fact of the matter is, first of all, if you allow this monkey 
business to go on here, this is just silly. There is no way you can 
excuse kicking the can down the street and ignoring this huge problem, 
and this huge problem really is connected to jobs. Specifically, there 
are things you do to kill jobs. We had a forum back in my district of 
St. Charles, Missouri. We had a whole bunch of businessmen come in, and 
we asked them: What do you have to do to create jobs, and what do you 
have to do to kill jobs? The thing that you do to kill jobs is exactly 
what we're doing.
  So what are those things?
  First of all, we're going to tax the owners of businesses--that's the 
first thing--because if you tax the owners of businesses, they can't 
expand their businesses, and they can't invest in their businesses, so 
the businesses just sit there. In fact, as you tax them more, they take 
money out of the businesses to pay the taxes, and they start laying 
people off because they can't run their businesses. So the first thing 
is: If you want to kill jobs, raise the taxes on the people who own 
businesses.
  The second thing you do is bury the business in redtape. Now, we've 
got an EPA that feels like they can run redtape without Congress even 
passing a bill, so they're going to try and pass cap-and-tax and all 
these kinds of ridiculous regulations that cost a whole lot of money. 
It's not like a tax, but it ends up costing people business.
  One of those very interesting actions on the part of the EPA, just to 
illustrate redtape, is the idea of requiring cleanup in case you spill 
milk. Usually, on farms, the cats lick up the milk.
  We have with us a genuine hero in the U.S. Congress, Congresswoman 
Black from Tennessee, who won a coveted award just earlier this day. 
It's the Golden Turkey Award. It's for the silliest, dumbest regulation 
that you could find. Now, I know the competition is going to be fierce 
in this category, but Congresswoman Black won it by plenty of extra as 
she got her award. We're going to recognize her tonight for this award 
that she got, which ties right into our subject of jobs, and that is: 
If you want to kill jobs, raise taxes on business owners, and bury them 
in redtape.
  Congresswoman Black from Tennessee.
  Mrs. BLACK. Thank you. I am so honored to unveil this new initiative 
from our Republican Study Committee.
  This right here is the Golden Turkey Award. Each month, the RSC will 
be bestowing this dubious award to highlight the most absurd, the most 
ridiculous and obscure regulation that taxpayers foot the bill to 
enforce and have to live by. This month's Golden Turkey

[[Page 3110]]

Award goes to a regulation that I have been talking about in my 
district and here also in Congress for the past month. The March 2011 
Golden Turkey Award goes to the Environmental Protection Agency.
  Mr. AKIN. The EPA.
  Mrs. BLACK. The EPA. The EPA recently discovered that milk contains 
fat. Can you believe that? It's also considered an oil. So what did the 
EPA do? It decided to regulate milk spills.
  Well, the EPA is currently developing a rule that will subject dairy 
farmers to the Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure Program--
that's sort of a long name--which was created for oil contamination in 
waterways, and now they're applying it to dairy farmers. So, when 
Nellie kicks over the bucket, our farmers will have to build berms 
around the area where they milk. They will have to have an emergency 
responder's plan so, in case milk is spilled, all of their employees 
will be trained in the containment of this spilled milk.
  Mr. AKIN. Now, if you had some cats around in a cage and could open 
the cage, do you think that would work or do you think the EPA is going 
to want something more expensive than that?
  Mrs. BLACK. That's an excellent question because, when I talked to 
the dairy farmers back in my district and when I told them about this 
great idea the EPA has for them, one of my farmers told me he already 
has this plan in place. When asked, he said he has a barn with about 15 
stray cats, and he's going to open the doors and yell, ``Here, kitty, 
kitty,'' and that will take care of the emergency spill.
  Mr. AKIN. How many millions of dollars do you think it's going to 
take to get this tremendous hazard of spilled milk under control? I'm 
glad that our Federal Government is really dealing with tough issues 
like this.
  Mrs. BLACK. It's good that you asked, because the rule requires that 
these emergency protocols be in place by November 10 of this year. The 
U.S. Department of Agriculture has already initiated a $3 million pilot 
program through the Natural Resources Conservation Service to help the 
farmers and the ranchers comply with the on-farm oil spill regulation. 
So already we see $3 million that's going to be wasted in just getting 
the farmers up to speed on how they have to do these plans.
  When I was in my district last week and spoke to people about this, 
they were absolutely speechless. It has been told to me by many of the 
businesses in my district that what they really want is just for the 
government to get out of their way, to let them do their jobs, to stop 
overtaxing them, and to stop overregulating them so that they can 
actually grow their businesses. They have the capital to do so, and if 
we would just leave them alone, they could grow their businesses.
  So that's why the inaugural Golden Turkey Award is being presented to 
the EPA and to its proposed overregulation of dairy farmers with 
spilled milk. I am going to work as hard as I possibly can to make sure 
that this does not get initiated and that our farmers will be freed 
from this onerous regulation.
  Mr. AKIN. I have to wonder, particularly of the people out in my 
State of Missouri, what they'll be thinking when they find out that $3 
million of their money is being used to come up with a program to take 
care of spilled milk.
  I don't know how you found this treasure out. I heard there was 
another one that was similar. I think it was an EPA requirement that 
you couldn't have rogue dust. So, if you're a farmer, you can't farm 
with rogue dust, which is dust that comes off your property and goes 
over onto somebody else's property.
  It makes me think that whoever is writing these regulations lives in 
one of these office buildings downtown here. If there happens to be 
anybody who is working on the rogue dust program, I'm sure that's 
another $3 million wonder--or maybe worse--just to go out on a combine 
in the good old State of Missouri and just run down a couple of rows of 
corn and see what happens when that old, dusty corn hits the combine 
and how they're supposed to keep all that dust right over their own 
properties. So that's another one of these examples.
  I think Ronald Reagan talked about the fact that we're buying too 
much government, and that's what we've been doing these last number of 
months.
  The point of the matter is, when you start cutting a lot of this 
government trash, you're going to create jobs in a couple of ways. The 
first thing is: You don't put us in debt so much, but you start cutting 
that redtape, which is overhead that our businesspeople have; and if 
they're not having to pay for all that overhead, they can hire people 
and get the economy going.
  Hats off to Congresswoman Black from Tennessee for winning this 
prestigious Golden Turkey Award. Actually, I suppose the one who 
technically won it was the EPA; is that right?
  Mrs. BLACK. That's right. The EPA has won.
  Mr. AKIN. Isn't there actually like a bowling trophy with a big 
golden turkey on the top of it or something?
  Mrs. BLACK. You're so right, and it's proudly displayed on my desk. 
It is a trophy that stands about 12-inches high, and it is golden and 
has a golden turkey on the top of it. I'm challenging all of my 
colleagues to find places that we're having overregulation, killing our 
businesses, stifling the growth of our economy, and stifling job 
growth.
  Mr. AKIN. Who says we can't have fun in cutting the wasteful spending 
out of the government and at least do it with a little twinkle in our 
eyes?
  It is noteworthy that a freshman Congresswoman could walk away with 
this kind of a prize. Certainly, there will be competition to have that 
Golden Turkey passed around.

                              {time}  1820

  I appreciate you joining us tonight.
  We have some other distinguished guests. My good friend, Congressman 
Walberg, I'm going to ask if you'd like to join us. We're talking a 
little bit, first of all, a big picture about how much money there is 
in the entitlements, the trouble with trying to balance a budget. And 
also we've talked about jobs and how much jobs relate to a government 
that's out of control, has forgotten they're supposed to be servants 
and are just running mad, making redtape, which again is excess 
overhead for the businesses and kills jobs. But please join us with 
your unique perspective.
  Mr. WALBERG. Well, I appreciate my colleague from Missouri. I 
appreciate you holding this time this evening as we can talk about 
those things that impact our whole way of life in the United States.
  We, I'm sure, understand here on the floor this evening the impact of 
what our Framers and Founders had in mind of a limited government, a 
government that believed very clearly that free people, with the 
opportunity to be creative and use the resources that they have, could 
indeed make a life that was filled with happiness in their pursuit that 
involved property and all that went with it.
  As the subcommittee chairman for Workforce Protection, I had the 
opportunity to look at some things that are coming up right now that 
are being proposed as workplace safety standards. And this goes into 
cost issues that are huge regulatory costs, but also costs that 
ultimately reduce jobs and opportunity. One such regulatory issue is 
related to the noise regulation being proposed by OSHA. Now fortunately 
that has been pulled for the time being. It was pulled a couple days 
after we introduced the fact that we're going to hold hearings on it, 
continue to hold hearings. We found out in the process that noise 
standards--and all of us here would say that a worker ought to be safe, 
reasonably speaking, in their workplace.
  I worked at U.S. Steel South Works shortly after high school, worked 
in the furnace division. I worked on a mole platform. I worked in a 
hooker shaft, which was lifting and holding pig iron and a number of 
other things. And I had reasonable expectation to be safe, including 
using hearing protection that involved either earmuffs or earplugs. 
What this new standard would have required would not have been simply 
putting earplugs into employees that

[[Page 3111]]

would meet the standard, or earmuffs, but would require businesses to 
purchase machines that weren't only guarded or shrouded safely for 
hearing protection, but machines that would be reduced in the noise 
standard to a point that, as we looked at it more carefully, most 
likely weren't even machines made yet. They hadn't been produced. So 
we're talking about businesses that want to employ people that increase 
the economy--because you and I both know that the economy is produced 
in the private sector, not in the public sector, that the private 
sector entrepreneur, the taker of risk, produces an idea, comes up with 
it, ultimately hires employees to carry out the job, and then we put 
reasonable regulations to make sure that those employees are safe, that 
the hearing is protected as well. But we don't say to the employer you 
must buy a machine that isn't even produced yet, that isn't made yet in 
order to protect--
  Mr. AKIN. You know, I really appreciate your example. And that's the 
trouble with these things. It's not that maybe there shouldn't be some 
workplace safety rules, but these things have just gone beyond the 
realm of what even makes sense.
  I have even greater respect for you now. I also worked in a steel 
mill. And the noisy place at our steel mill was the pipe shop where 
they're loading the pipe. And you take a whole big bundle of pipe and 
drop it or hit it against something, and boy does it make a racket. So 
they always had ear protection and things in the pipe mill there. And 
certainly businesses know that that's necessary to do that. But when 
you start loading that kind of extreme redtape and regulations on a 
business, the business has to use their money to pay for all that, and 
they can't hire employees. So taxes, redtape, those are job killers.
  As I recall, I think there was a gentleman last week that shared, 
somebody that had a drycleaning facility, and they found something like 
a spoonful of some water underneath a concrete slab that had a small 
amount of cleaning fluid--I guess carbon tetrachloride--in the water or 
something. They had to do like a $60,000 remediation, which for a 
simple dry cleaner just about took every penny that the owners had out 
of their bank, because of one teaspoonful of some water that had a 
little bit of the cleaning fluid they use on people's clothes. And 
that's what we're talking about. This is just bizarre kinds of stuff.
  We have Dr. Boustany from Louisiana here, and I think he was going to 
share with us for a minute. And Congressman Walberg, we'll come back to 
you. Congressman Walberg is from Michigan and a great Member of the 
caucus. And doctor, please.
  Mr. BOUSTANY. I thank my friend from Missouri for giving me time to 
speak here.
  As we talk about American competitiveness and growing jobs, private 
sector jobs in this country, coming off the heels of this recession 
where we still have high unemployment, there are two aspects to it: One 
is cutting back on government spending, as you've already suggested 
with the pie chart you have there. We have to get our debt under 
control. This is imperative because it's going to strangle private 
investment in the form of higher taxes on the American people.
  But the other side of this is the growth side of the equation, 
stimulating economic growth. And if you look at how to do that, we want 
economic growth in the private sector which will help spur job growth. 
The way we have to do that is we have to look at an energy strategy for 
the United States because so much of what we do depends on cheap, 
affordable energy to fuel our plants, our factories, transportation, 
you name it. So it's critical that we have an energy strategy for the 
country, which we don't have, and we never have had one. In fact, what 
you're seeing now, instead of the lack of an energy strategy, we're 
actually seeing energy proposals that are detrimental to the country 
that are being proposed by this administration. Let me list what's 
going on.
  First of all, the moratorium on drilling for American energy in the 
Gulf of Mexico has been in place since May. This is killing jobs back 
home in Louisiana, along the gulf coast, but it's also hurting our 
energy security in this country. As we lose these jobs--these are 
highly skilled workers, as they leave this industry and go find other 
jobs and move, you cannot turn that light switch back on and get that 
kind of skill back on these platforms. That's number one.
  Mr. AKIN. Now wait just a minute. Just on the surface of what you're 
saying, if somebody were really to listen to what you're saying, it 
sounds like insanity. Because here's what my thinking would be: You're 
saying that we've got all this unrest in the Middle East, which 
threatens the oil production there, which increases the cost of Middle 
Eastern oil. So we pay even more to countries that don't like us and 
use the money for advancing terrorist kinds of causes----
  Mr. BOUSTANY. That's exactly right.
  Mr. AKIN. And we have oil right under our feet and we're saying no, 
you can't drill for that stuff. And gasoline is $3-something a gallon, 
and we're not even drilling for the silly oil that we've got.
  Now let me add one thing that gets me even more fired up, and that 
is, you go north, north of Louisiana where it's cold--we're talking out 
in the ocean outside Alaska. You've got foreign countries that are 
drilling on what is basically our coastal plain and they're drilling 
for oil. And here we are paying $3-something, and we're not drilling 
for any of this stuff. I mean, isn't this weird?
  Mr. BOUSTANY. We have basically shut down our production in the Gulf 
of Mexico, and it's a boneheaded policy to do that. But not only that, 
the administration in its budget proposal is now proposing nearly $50 
billion in new taxes on small, independent oil- and gas-producing 
companies. Now that's going to put a lot of these guys out of business; 
they can't cash flow. And they do a lot of the work on the Continental 
Shelf in shallow water areas, and also our onshore production in oil 
and gas. And there's a distinction between oil and gas----
  Mr. AKIN. So here we are again. Because I started just a little while 
ago, we talked about if you want to kill jobs, first of all tax small 
businesses, tax them so much they can't run their business, or at least 
chase people out of them so there goes the jobs. The second thing you 
do is bury them in redtape. Now we're coming back to what you're 
saying--the very people we should want to be working and drilling for 
oil for us, we're going to tax them out of existence. Isn't that 
ridiculous?
  Mr. BOUSTANY. It's ridiculous. And these taxes are indiscriminate; 
they hit oil companies, those drilling for oil, but also natural gas.

                              {time}  1830

  And there are many--even our friends on the other side of the aisle 
will admit that natural gas usage is a very important transition 
strategy as we look at our energy needs going into the future whether 
for transportation fuel, electricity generation. Those taxes proposed 
by the administration will put a lot of these gas companies out of 
business. And keep in mind, 97 percent of the natural gas used in this 
country is produced here in this country by these small companies.
  A given rig will employ 65 people on one rig. So, if a company that 
has--let's say they have to cut back 50 rigs. Do the math. You're 
talking 3,000-plus jobs.
  Mr. AKIN. The very jobs that we should be encouraging because we're 
so dependent on foreign oil.
  Mr. BOUSTANY. These are private-sector jobs. They're good-paying 
jobs, and they help promote U.S. energy security. It's critical.
  So what we have is an administration that is proposing policies 
counter to what American interests are with regard to our energy 
security, and I would submit to you it hurts our national security as 
well.
  And I'm really worried about the situation in the country of Oman, 
for instance. It's right across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran. That 
strait is very narrow. Forty percent of the world's oil crosses through 
that strait, and if it

[[Page 3112]]

were to shut down because of unrest in Oman and Iranian mischief, we 
would see oil prices spike up to $400 a barrel, and we'll pay a lot at 
the pump.
  It will hurt our farmers. Rice farmers back home are trying to export 
rice and grow rice for domestic consumption. It will hurt our chemical 
manufacturing.
  And speaking of the natural gas piece----
  Mr. AKIN. Maybe I could just stop. I want to hit you with a ``gee-
whiz'' statistic because I'm kind of an old geezer. I've been here for 
a while, and I've watched voting patterns, and here's something that 
might be interesting to you. And I tell this to some of my constituents 
back home.
  If I were to say that the Republicans and Democrats in the House are 
divided on the abortion issue, people would go, Well, no big surprise. 
What I think's interesting is if you look back over the years, at least 
the 10 years I've been here, the two parties are more divided on 
developing American energy than they are on the abortion subject. And I 
find that just amazing to me because it seems so obvious that we're 
still using gasoline in cars. Until we get away from that, we need to 
be trying to produce our own gasoline.
  We have very large reserves of oil that we could be drilling. And my 
understanding is on many, many of those locations where we could drill 
and hope to find oil, there are environmental lawsuits blocking 
drilling in all of these different locations where we could legally 
drill--not mentioning ANWR, which is off bounds to us right now--and 
now the regulations in the gulf which, again, I don't have any problem 
with people wanting to say, hey, we need to see what went wrong with 
the oil spill. How do we make sure that we get a very deep high-
pressure situation, that we've got the proper devices to stop that up 
if we need to. But just to basically shut down and then tax everybody, 
this is just bizarre.
  Mr. BOUSTANY. Well, it is bizarre.
  And again, Americans want to compete. And we know, if given the 
opportunity to compete, we can win in the global economy. And we've got 
to have energy production in this country to allow our companies to 
compete.
  Now, let me point out something. One of the biggest areas of exports 
for the United States is chemicals, petrochemicals and other chemicals, 
fertilizer, that are produced here, manufactured here in the United 
States.
  Mr. AKIN. Manufactured with?
  Mr. BOUSTANY. Natural gas and petroleum products.
  And if you shut down our natural gas production, then our companies, 
which have a price--on a basis of price, we can compete because we have 
cheap natural gas here in this country compared to around the world. 
Our companies are competitive.
  Mr. AKIN. Now, you haven't even mentioned the massive new supplies of 
natural gas they're finding, particularly under Pennsylvania. That's an 
incredible find.
  Mr. BOUSTANY. Yes.
  We know we have the world's largest reserves in coal. We have 
potentially the largest reserves in the world in natural gas here in 
the United States. And some argue that the estimates of oil are vastly 
underestimated because of two things: one, the shale oil that's 
available that currently is off limits because of administration policy 
and environmental policies; and, secondly, on the east coast and west 
coast, Outer Continental Shelf area, we don't have accurate seismic 
information. So when they say we only have 3 percent of the world's 
reserves, that's an inaccurate figure. That's not been thoroughly 
looked at with modern seismic activity.
  But our companies that manufacture these chemicals and fertilizer 
have a competitive advantage because of the low price of natural gas in 
this country. If we tax it, as this administration is proposing, it 
will actually make us less competitive. Our exports will go down, and 
it will be counter to what the President wants to do by expanding 
exports. It makes no sense whatsoever.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, I think what you're getting into, Doctor, is 
something that I wanted to talk to a little bit tonight. And that is 
the assumption that you can just go taxing and taxing and always talk 
about the rich guy and, oh, we're going to talk about the rich guy and 
think you can get away with that without consequences.
  Because it seems to me that there is a disconnect with the current 
administration and the Democrats as well policywise because they talk 
about the fact they want jobs, but then they destroy the companies that 
create the jobs. And you can't kill the company if you want jobs 
because the company is the one that hires people. And they seem to miss 
that connection there.
  I'd like to go back to my good friend from Michigan--I had to check 
to make sure, Congressman Walberg--and I wanted to give you a chance to 
jump in to our discussion.
  But I'd like to start going--talk a little bit in the direction about 
taxes, what happens with taxes and how it is that we can deal with some 
of the tough problems budgetwise here, and at least one piece of that 
is the proper tax policy.
  Mr. WALBERG. I appreciate my good friend from Missouri again holding 
this conversation tonight.
  And I think you're leading into the key point here. Because bottom 
line, when you talk about entitlement spending, those entitlement 
programs that we've come to expect in the United States, whether it be 
Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security--and most of us, at least in this 
room tonight, have paid into Social Security a long time.
  Mr. AKIN. Now, let's not get personal about age here now.
  Mr. WALBERG. It's not a voluntary tax. And in just a couple of short 
years, I will be capable of receiving that myself. I've not had a 
choice to do that.
  And yet the only way that we can see those entitlement programs 
continue, at least if we did it right, is have an economy that's 
growing, have people that are employed, that are paying into the 
entitlement programs, the taxes that are there. Even if we don't talk 
about any alternative way for younger employees coming down the road in 
the future, we still have to have the ability to put dollars in. That 
comes from having a job.
  So when we go back to what Dr. Boustany was talking about on the 
issue of energy, when we talk about the regulatory concerns that I 
expressed that are destroying jobs, I go back to my own home State of 
Michigan, my own district, Seventh District. Michigan, who led the 
Nation for 4 straight years on unemployment. A State that was known for 
its manufacturing, its auto industry, always having jobs, high standard 
of living.
  And yet, as a result of government growing too large, too strong, too 
intrusive, and spending too much and taxing too much, we've destroyed 
the economy in Michigan. And now the new administration comes in and 
has to go through almost insurmountable odds to try to restore an 
economy that has jobs so they can pay in to this.
  Mr. AKIN. Let me just ask you whether this gets under your skin, 
because I'm on the Budget Committee. But I hear all the time that my 
Democrat colleagues are saying the recovery is fragile; therefore, 
don't you go cutting any of this government spending. And I'm just 
thinking, wow. I totally don't see it that way at all.
  When you have a government that's busy spending money trying to 
regulate a milk spill in a barn, you have a government that's wanting 
to talk about rogue dust that comes off of a farm when you're basically 
running a combine through a row of corn, and you've got a government 
with duplication after duplication--and we're talking about let's cut 
just some of the edge of this stuff--and they're saying, careful, don't 
destroy a fragile economy, hey, the economy is fragile because they're 
doing everything wrong to it.
  Mr. WALBERG. Everything wrong. Everything to destroy it.
  Mr. AKIN. And the main thing that's wrong is, as Ronald Reagan said, 
we're buying too much government.
  Mr. WALBERG. Right.
  Mr. AKIN. Please, go ahead.
  Mr. WALBERG. I assumed I would get you into a rant on that because I 
know you're passionate about that. It's absolutely true.

[[Page 3113]]

  I can show you from experience in Michigan as we went through this 
type of downturn back in the 1980s: too-large government, increased 
taxation, increased spending for all sorts of programs.

                              {time}  1840

  We ran businesses out of the State. We turned that around in the 
nineties, and we cut taxes 26 times. We right-sized government. We put 
Workfare and Edufare in in place of welfare. We encouraged businesses 
to thrive and grow. What happened? By reducing taxes, cutting spending, 
the economy grew. More revenue came in, and then government had to 
control itself from spending those revenues from less taxes, but still 
increased revenue because people were working, they were spending, they 
were saving, they were investing, they were taking care of themselves.
  Lo and behold, the American people with their own intellect, their 
own intelligence, their own creativity began to grow an economy that 
made things right for themselves. And then they had choice. They had 
opportunity. They could be creative. They could build new machines. 
They could build machines that met the noise standards that were 
presently available, as opposed to saying we're going to create jobs by 
saying you can't have this noise standard here and you can't take care 
of it with an ear plug or an ear muff; you are going to have to produce 
a machine that isn't there. So look what we're doing.
  And my good colleague, I have a letter from OSHA that says that was 
part of an economic development plan, to encourage the development of 
new machines that would meet these noise standards so that then you 
would have new jobs. Well, wait a second. The people that would produce 
those, and more importantly the people that would buy those machines, 
could not do that because they couldn't afford it. So here's Big 
Government again with its own ideas that ultimately destroys an 
economy.
  Mr. AKIN. Let's take a look at you just talked about an example from 
the great State of Michigan. And just hearing you talk about it just 
made me feel good. It's America on the move again. It's individual 
citizens taking risks, going out there working hard, making a good 
living; and then because of the things they've done, other people get 
better jobs and they make a better living, and everybody does better.
  I mean, you cannot ignore the fact that the standard of living that 
we enjoy in America is because a whole lot of people could be free, 
free to succeed or free to fail.
  Mr. WALBERG. Right.
  Mr. AKIN. But it's called free enterprise. Now, let me give you 
another example that occurred when I was a Congressman here, and I 
think the beginning of when you were, and that was that the second 
Bush, G.W. Bush, copied the example of JFK and Ronald Reagan. And both 
of those Presidents understood that when the government cuts taxes in 
the right way, it actually gets the economy going. In fact, what 
happens when you cut taxes the right way, the government actually gets 
more revenue.
  Now, that sounds weird. Let me just try and explain. I have done this 
a couple times before, but tell me if you think it makes sense. How is 
it that the government can cut taxes and get more revenue in? Well, 
think about it. Let's say you're king for a whole year. And the only 
thing you can tax is a loaf of bread, and so you start thinking if I 
put a penny tax on that loaf of bread, I can figure out how much bread 
people are eating and figure out how much to get for tax revenue. Then 
you think, hey, how about I put $10 tax on every loaf of bread. Then 
you think maybe people wouldn't buy any bread. So you start to think 
there is probably an optimum point where you can put some tax on the 
bread, people will still be eating bread, but you will get your most 
revenue. That's what goes on.
  Here is an example. May of 2003, were you here then, Congressman?
  Mr. WALBERG. I was not.
  Mr. AKIN. Okay. You were thinking about it, though, perhaps.
  Mr. WALBERG. I was thinking about it.
  Mr. AKIN. Good for you. Anyway, May of 2003 we cut three taxes, not 
popular, because everybody, oh, the Democrats, that's all rich-guy 
stuff. It was capital gains, dividends, and death tax. Now, I don't 
know if you're a rich guy if you're dead, but anyway we're going to tax 
death. We tax everything else, so why not that.
  So we cut capital gains, dividends, and death taxes at this time 
right here. Now, I have got three charts that show what happened. This 
is job creation before and after the tax relief. This is some of the 
taxes we extended into this year. Okay. The lines that go down are job 
loss by month and the lines that go up are job gain.
  And so what you have right here is that's the tax relief goes into 
effect. And take a look at the jobs, the more lines coming up over 
here. I mean, that's really pretty substantial and pretty interesting, 
whereas these you are losing. So this tax appears to have had a good 
effect. Let's check it on not just job creation, let's check it 
against----
  Mr. WALBERG. You meant the tax cuts, the tax relief.
  Mr. AKIN. The tax cuts, yeah.
  Mr. WALBERG. It gave incentive.
  Mr. AKIN. So the tax cuts go into effect same place here, this line, 
this is the GDP, this is actually losing GDP or gaining; you can see 
the average here is about 1.1 percent; but after those tax cuts, it 
jumps to 3.5. You can see these are a lot stronger economy. So the 
economy seems to do better when you allow business people to take the 
money, put it in their business, create jobs. There is more people 
working, more tax revenue comes in.
  Well, wait a minute. You cut taxes, that means your revenue's going 
to go down? Well, let's see what happened to revenue. Here's the story. 
Here's the tax cut right here. The revenue has been going down. They 
cut the taxes, and 4 straight years of increase in revenue. So what's 
happening there is that actually if you do the right kind of tax cut, 
just as you say you get the free enterprise system working, and you can 
turn the economy around. JFK understood that. He did it. It worked for 
him. Ronald Reagan did it. They said, oh, trickle down economics and 
all this kind of stuff, but it worked.
  In fact, here is another chart. This is the tax rate on the most 
wealthy people. This is this red line. It started at 90 percent; it's 
come down. You notice as the tax on the wealthy people comes down, the 
amount of Federal revenues goes up. Now, that's weird. Why would that 
be? It's the same principle. You can overtax and basically run the 
economy into the dirt.
  Mr. WALBERG. Isn't it the simple principle that what you give 
incentive you get more of, and what you discourage you get less of?
  Mr. AKIN. Yeah, you are absolutely right.
  Mr. WALBERG. You give incentive to people to use their own resources 
with American exceptionalism and let the market forces work, everybody 
benefits.
  Mr. AKIN. And we started out tonight talking about the overall fiscal 
problem we have in America, and the fact that it's really unique. This 
is a pretty scary situation that America's in. And the solution, as 
Ronald Reagan said, the solution is simple, but it's not easy. And the 
solution really comes in two sides. The first is we have to be cutting 
all of what the government is spending. We have to do some cuts. But on 
the other hand, what we have to do is to selectively do the tax cuts to 
allow the economy to really get back in a strong recovery.
  The one thing I agree with that the Democrats are saying is that the 
recovery is fragile. I think they picked that up from Bernanke, the 
Secretary. But I think it is. I think it's fragile because of the fact 
we've still got the problem of excessive taxes, excessive red tape, and 
a whole lot of uncertainty in the markets.
  Mr. WALBERG. And a lot of spending.
  Mr. AKIN. If we can do those, that's going to help. So the first 
thing is we've got to cut taxes, but we tremendously have to cut the 
overhead. And

[[Page 3114]]

the thing here, and I think the public is becoming aware of this fact, 
we can't make it by cutting defense and non-defense discretionary. That 
was the budget we were doing 2 weeks ago on the floor. We cut $100 
billion out of that. If you know what the real problem is, as we talked 
about earlier, the total of these entitlements plus debt service is 
$2.2 trillion. The Federal revenue is $2.2 trillion. You can zero this 
and this out, and you just barely have a balanced budget; and that's 
not talking about the out-years, when it gets worse.
  So these areas must be dealt with. Now, supposedly if you talk about 
changing anything with Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, 
lightning will fall and you'll be struck dead politically. But the fact 
of the matter is we must deal with these. How we deal with them is one 
of those things that we need to have a conversation on it.
  But to do what the President did and submit the 2012 budget and not 
deal with these at all is being disingenuous. It's kicking the can down 
the road and ignoring this massive problem, which is a little bit like 
that gorilla in the tent.
  I started, my dear friend from Michigan, I started by talking about--
and it's sort of sometimes I think about this: What would it be like to 
be in the year 1850 and be a Congressman or Senator and you have this 
huge issue of slavery and we didn't deal with it? We just ignored it, 
and then we got slammed by the Civil War.
  And my question is, are we as Americans going to deal with the fact 
that our entitlements and debt service is using up the entire revenue 
of the country? I mean, that's not just a little bit of a budget 
problem; that says we have a fiscal crisis on our hands and we're 
responsible. And our American citizens that elected us here expect us 
to deal with this problem. And the first way to deal with it is to at 
least acknowledge that we got the problem.
  Mr. WALBERG. And I believe that more and more people, even those that 
are using the entitlements, the Social Security, Medicare, understand 
that and are growing in their fear that unless we do something, they 
indeed will be hurt. But I think that you and I together, and many who 
are of like mind, understand that we must do something, but we can do 
something that's better.

                              {time}  1850

  We can do something that assures people that they will have what they 
expect.
  Mr. AKIN. That's exactly the point.
  Mr. WALBERG. And we can do it the right way without the Big 
Government issues and getting down to that American exceptionalism that 
says we can trust people to do for themselves, if given the incentive 
and opportunity, better than what Big Government can do.
  Mr. AKIN. You see the point of the matter is is there are people who 
are dependent upon these programs, older people. They are going to be 
in trouble if the wheels fall off this thing. So what we need to do is 
craft a solution that allows the older people that are on these 
programs to stay there, and as people become younger, give them 
alternatives and to have a transition so that you can get these costs 
under control.
  That is the way to manage a solution. Everybody has got to suffer a 
little bit. But at least we are not allowing the whole thing literally 
to crash like some sort of a train off the edge of a cliff.
  Mr. WALBERG. Well, I think, not necessarily the suffering idea, I 
think in doing something that's credible and the right thing to do, it 
gives people optimism that the answer is here. It will take some tough 
decisions but ultimately the people who are in need will be taken care 
of.
  The other people with the great creativity, the American 
exceptionalism that's there will find ways to do it and do it better, 
and ultimately a greater opportunity for the future, and that's 
optimism.
  Mr. AKIN. You know, and I think that is a thing that's so exciting, 
because I don't think you are being a Pollyanna by saying what you just 
said.
  Mr. WALBERG. Not at all.
  Mr. AKIN. The reason I say that is because we have been through, as 
Americans, a lot of dicey situations.
  Our own parents, known as the Greatest Generation, as they would say 
it, did their bit. My father was with Patton in Europe, and they fought 
World War II. And then there were the days when Ronald Reagan came to a 
discouraged Nation, and he said America's got brighter days ahead. With 
that twinkle in his eye, and he had such a way of putting it, you know 
the solution is simple but it's not easy.
  We have come to another one of those pivotal times in history where 
it is our responsibility to deal with a massive problem and not to 
ignore and try to pretend it doesn't exist and just try to lie to 
people and let the government run a little longer until we are gone, 
and then everything comes down in a big heap. That's not what the 
American public wanted of their leadership.
  As long as you and I are kicking, my friend, we are going to stay 
here. We are going to talk about this. We are going to talk about the 
great days ahead for America and some of the things that could possibly 
be.
  You know, we take a look at some of these medical costs. They are 
really, really busting the budget. Maybe one of the things we need to 
do is to say, hey--I think it was 1950, somebody calculated the cost of 
polio that had cost us a trillion dollars a year in America today, the 
polio costs.
  They forgot something. We figured out a cure for polio. Maybe it's 
time for us to target the most expensive diseases, things like diabetes 
or Alzheimer's, things that are very, very big-ticket items. Maybe 
that's part of that American exceptionalism to leave the world a better 
place, to leave our kids freer, not taxed into the dirt, to leave our 
economy the strongest of any in the world, that America could be a 
shining city on the hill, a light to the people around the world.
  That was the vision of our forefathers. Why don't we grab ahold of 
that have and say, hey, we have got way too much government that we 
could afford. Let's turn loose the American people and let's not trust 
so much in government. I think that's the big question coming up. Do we 
really want more government, more taxes, more spending, more debt, and 
less freedom, or do we want more freedom and a whole lot less 
government, and the government that's there to really be a servant to 
the people and not have the attitude that they know better than 
everybody else. Don't you think that's where we are?
  Mr. WALBERG. And I think the people spoke in November. I think that 
speech they gave to us, my good friend, is that we must take this 
opportunity. This is our point in time. This is our date with destiny, 
as it were. If we back off from tackling the big things, we will not 
only lose there, but all of those little special things will be taken 
away as well.
  Mr. AKIN. Congressman Walberg, with you and the other great people at 
work down here and the American public, I believe we can do it. It's 
time for us to roll up our sleeves. Let's get busy cutting, let's do 
things the right way. Design programs that work and not threaten 
people, and let's move forward, because there are brighter days ahead.

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