[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12505-12507]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2020
                 SENATE SHENANIGANS ON DEBT LIMIT BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. It's been quite an eventful day here on the House floor, 
a lot of scurrying, a lot of things going on in committee rooms, 
different meeting rooms around the Capitol today. And actually, last 
night, when I finished talking and meeting with folks around midnight 
or so, it appeared that Republicans would start today with basically 
not much change to the bill we had yesterday.
  But we had a conference this morning, the Republican Members of 
Congress, and added to the Boehner bill was the requirement that before 
the President would get the full tranche of the debt ceiling being 
lifted there had to be a balanced budget amendment passed from the 
House--with two-thirds vote, of course--and from the Senate with two-
thirds vote and be sent to the States by the Archivist of the Capitol 
for their ratification.
  Now, it's a shame that a balanced budget amendment is needed, but if 
there could have been a piece of legislation that were prepared and 
passed that were tight enough to require always that a balanced 
approach be taken--no more money spent than money coming in--then we 
wouldn't have had to worry about a balanced budget amendment. But what 
we've seen over the last 100 years or so in this country has been 
runaway spending. And I think of the line Jim Carey had in one of his 
movies, ``Somebody stop me,'' and Congress needed somebody to stop 
Congress. But the only way to do that, constitutionally and legally, 
was to change the Constitution so that Congress could be stopped from 
spending more money than it took in.
  I was going to vote ``no'' on the Boehner bill as of yesterday, as of 
last night, but this morning, I found out that the Speaker, as he said 
he would, had listened to the Conference and put back in the balanced 
budget amendment requirement. It already had a requirement in there 
that there would be a vote, but we knew that the Senate had already 
voted 51 votes to table the balanced budget amendment. They didn't even 
want to debate it. And now tonight, as I speak, the Senate has wasted 
no time, with the Majority Leader of the Senate, a Democratic Party 
leader--I would bet that he has not bothered to read the bill, that he 
has not bothered to see what's there, and perhaps Majority Leader Reid 
does not know that 70 percent or so of all American adults would like 
to see a balanced budget amendment passed.
  Tonight, again, he is working against the will of the American 
people, just like he and then-Speaker Pelosi did in pushing for 
ObamaCare to be passed though a majority of Americans did not want that 
kind of government intrusion into their lives. Well, Democrats still 
control the Senate, so once again they're working their private will 
against the will of the American people.
  So as I speak, I don't know what the tally is. It was being taken as 
I walked onto the floor. But I would imagine that Leader Reid would not 
have brought the Boehner bill, with the requirement of having a 
balanced budget amendment passed by two-thirds, to the floor of the 
Senate unless he knew, once again, he had the 51 Democratic Senators 
who were willing to vote to table the bill that has required so much 
sweat--I don't know that there were any tears, but there was a lot of 
sweat and a lot of frustration. I know I've had plenty, anger at times, 
frustration. But we came together and got the bill done. And I ended up 
being a ``yes'' for a number of reasons, but the most important was 
that the balanced budget amendment was going to be required to pass 
two-thirds of the House and Senate before the President got the debt 
ceiling increase that he so desperately wants.
  To table that--it's bad enough that the Senate all this time has been 
trashing things that we've been fighting for and getting accomplished 
in the House, but to table it? You're not even going to let Republicans 
who want to speak on this issue come to the floor of the Senate and 
have a fair debate simply because one party controls the majority? You 
want to keep the other side from coming to the Senate floor and having 
a fair debate over a balanced budget amendment. It is just staggering 
to think that, once again, just like when ObamaCare was crammed down 
the throats of Americans, not with any sugar, it was a sour piece of 
medicine, and now, not even to allow debate over a balanced budget 
amendment to be brought to the Senate floor, I don't think the Founders 
intended that. I don't think the Founders intended that when 70 percent 
or so of Americans felt something was critical for the ongoing and good 
of the country, that you would have one group in either House who would 
prohibit even discussing, debating a bill, using the rules and 51 
Senators to prevent debate. I mean, that's one of the things that 
helped make this country great.
  This was the one place you used to be able to say whatever you 
wanted. It has been credited to different people, ``I disagree with 
what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it,'' and 
now it appears the Senate is operating under the rule, ``I disagree 
with what you say, so I am going to use procedural maneuvers and 
prevent you from saying what you want to say.''
  And I'll say this about Speaker John Boehner, too. He knows that I 
have not been happy with many of the things that have gone on, but 
unlike the Majority Leader in the Senate, he has made no effort to 
prevent me from coming to the House floor and speaking my mind, such as 
it is, here on this floor. We're supposed to have freedom of speech, 
but the Senate will not allow the working of the people's will on the 
Senate floor.
  Now, I've heard some people say, Mr. Speaker, that the fact is that 
by our passing this bill today in the House that we have provided a 
vehicle for the Senate to use to completely strip out and put some 
contorted piece of legislation on and send back down here. Well, the 
fact is that the Senate did not need this bill today to have a vehicle 
to send a contorted piece of legislation back to us. Now, the 
Constitution makes clear, anything that produces revenue has to 
originate in the House. That's the Constitution. But it is also 
important for people to understand, Mr. Speaker, the lengths to which 
the rules have been twisted--and I think misused--in order to make 
something happen that never should have.
  A good example is this monstrosity some call ObamaCare. It's got 
different names, but the original name of this

[[Page 12506]]

bill was H.R. 3590, and it calls it: the Bill from the House of 
Representatives.
  So this was a Senate bill--ObamaCare was a Senate bill, started in 
the Senate, derived in the Senate. Well, then, since the Democrats 
raised revenue in ObamaCare, created new taxes, introduced taxes, well, 
that's a revenue-generating bill, then how in the world could the 
Senate originate the bill since it generated revenue, because the 
Constitution makes very clear they can't do that.

                              {time}  2030

  Well, what the Senate did was take H.R. 3590 entitled, ``an act to 
amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first time home 
buyer's credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain 
other Federal employees, and for other purposes.'' That's ObamaCare.
  And I would humbly submit that any bill that starts as a lie, because 
this bill was a lie, a bill that starts as a lie can't be a very good 
bill in the end.
  We know that any building that has a proper foundation can weather a 
lot of storms. This bill has a lie for a foundation. The ObamaCare 
bill, H.R. 3590, ``an act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to 
modify the first time home buyer's credit in the case of members of the 
Armed Forces.'' And they had to do double page, and this paper is very, 
very thin so they could get all of this stuff in here.
  But it is interesting. You know, the bill started as a bill to help 
veterans and our military. But this bill, to help veterans and our 
military, those who are putting their lives at risk for our liberty, 
for our benefit, that was stripped out and this ObamaCare bill begins 
with page 1, line 1 of the bill to help our veterans and military, and 
strikes every single word, deleting every single word in the bill to 
help veterans and our military, and substitutes therefore ObamaCare.
  That bill started as a lie. They took a bill that had nothing to do 
with health care, and they stripped every word that would help our 
military and made it ObamaCare. That is phenomenal, just incredible.
  So the Senate didn't need us to pass a bill today for them to do the 
same thing, to take some well-intentioned bill, some bill that did some 
great things for America, deleting beginning on line 1, page 1, and 
substituting therefore whatever contorted mess that the Senate is going 
to send down here.
  But the thing is, although some of the Senate leadership has been 
taking their shots in the media at the House, they have not passed 
anything. They have fought now today makes twice as the Nation moves 
toward not having enough money while the House has been embroiled in 
serious debate and discussions trying to put together a bill. And we 
did that, and it had 234 votes. And the Senate immediately tabled it.
  The truth is, I thought we should wait for the Senate to do anything. 
And I disagreed with the Speaker's strategy. The Speaker's strategy was 
if they won't take that, then let's try again. We will compromise on 
the things that we want and send a bill that is clearly a compromise of 
the things that we want, so surely the Senate will take it up and 
surely they will pass it.
  We heard from Majority Leader Reid that he was going to make sure 
that it was dead on arrival, but those kinds of things have been 
threatened before, too. We know that the President has drawn many lines 
in the sand that have kept moving. And we have heard the President talk 
about his bill. I can recall sitting back there during the September 
speech by the President in here on health care in which he kept talking 
about his bill, my bill, this bill, and don't misrepresent my bill or 
I'll call you out. And he was the first one to use the lie word here on 
the House floor talking about what he believed to be misrepresentations 
of his bills.
  I asked the HHS Secretary a couple of weeks after that, the President 
keeps talking about my bill, this bill, where can I get a copy of the 
President's bill? And Secretary Sebelius said: I think he was talking 
about a set of principles.
  So I was right. The President talked about this bill, my bill, this 
bill, my bill, but he had no bill. People talk about how beautiful his 
clothes were, but the fact was the emperor was naked. There was no 
bill. There was no bill then; and now as the President talks about his 
bill, his ideas, there is no bill. As Harry Reid talks about his bill, 
there is no bill. Maybe they will finally get around to passing 
something. There is something filed in the Senate, and as I understand 
it, Chairman Dreier has filed it down here so that we can take it up. 
We will see what happens.
  But the phenomenal thing is how badly off track this Congress has 
gotten when one of the Houses, in this case the Senate, will not even 
allow debate over something that the vast majority of Americans want. 
Forget Democrat, forget Republican, forget red, forget blue. Let's get 
responsible.
  Mr. Speaker, there is $160 billion in deficit spending. My second 
year here, 2006, was not responsible; and Democrats won the majority as 
the result because they promised we will eliminate that $160 billion 
deficit spending. Man, oh, man, were they right. They eliminated $160 
billion in deficit spending. And now this year as a result of their 
actions, the last four, we will have $1.6 trillion in spending deficit 
this year. Bringing in around $2.2 trillion.
  We find out today the numbers from the first quarter of this year, 
which was very little growth at all in our economy which people got 
depressed about when the original numbers came out, was about a third 
of what they originally thought it was. Things aren't looking good. 
This is President Obama; it's his economy. With the changes that 
Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid made in the first 2 years of 
this President's tenure, they set us on a track that is leading to a 
major crash.
  Now, we have already heard in recent days that the August 2 deadline 
that the President set, just like I said some weeks back, that was not 
a particularly special day. It did happen to be the day before the 
President's big birthday celebration, but otherwise it was not a 
particularly significant day. I know that the group that Tom Daschle 
helped start, the Bipartisan Policy Center, whatever it is, that they 
were echoing whatever the President said, that August 2 was going to be 
the day.
  And they lumped in Social Security with everything else. The law is 
very clear, Social Security gets paid. It is on automatic pilot. Just 
like in 1985 and just like in 1996, when there was a shortfall 1 month, 
the Treasury Secretary is supposed to sell off some of the Treasury 
notes. There is $2.6 trillion in Treasury notes, sell off enough to pay 
the benefits and expenses of Social Security. So there is no risk of 
that failing.
  We also know there are many times more than enough money to pay our 
debts as they come due in August; and so we have been told, well, 
actually it is not August 2. Maybe it is like a couple of weeks or a 
couple of weeks beyond that. We are not sure, but sometime in the 
future. Well, in the House it has been taken seriously even though 
August 2 was not particularly a magic date. We have passed two bills, 
and the Senate has passed zero. That's irresponsible. Absolutely 
irresponsible. That invokes no confidence that this government will 
ever be able to do what it needs to.
  So I know, I have gotten emails, calls, and letters. Members of 
Congress all over the floor on both sides of the aisle have gotten 
calls and letters and emails. The majority in my office have encouraged 
me to stand firm. It is great to represent a district that understands 
not to cave in to fear-mongering.

                              {time}  2040

  It has been rough in recent days because you never like to be chided 
by friends who don't like the position you're taking on a bill. But I'm 
ever so grateful that the bill was made eminently better this morning 
by adding the requirement that the Balanced Budget Act pass. And not 
only that,

[[Page 12507]]

talking through the day, I do appreciate Speaker Boehner face-to-face, 
eye-to-eye. He has been very gracious all week. It's others that have 
made it kind of tough at times. He realized something needed to be 
done. He wants to do something. So, in talking with him and also 
talking with Chairman Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Budget Committee, 
I'm also satisfied that we've got a number of wonderful things coming.
  We can perhaps figure at some point the Senate will get concerned 
about going against the will of the majority of the Senate. At some 
point they're going to realize: We should not keep going against 70 
percent of the American public because a lot of us have got elections 
next year. So, gee, maybe we better do something that the majority of 
Americans want.
  Well, one of the things that I heard Rush Limbaugh talking about in 
the nineties when Congress was not even a blip on my radar was the zero 
baseline budget. And it didn't make any sense to me as he explained it. 
I thought, that's strange. As it was explained, we have automatic 
increases in every agency's budget in the Federal Government. Every 
agency has automatic increases every year. Well, citizens don't get 
automatic COLAs but their agencies sure get an automatic increase every 
year. All those budgets, they get automatic increases. Why? We ought to 
have a zero baseline budget every year so nobody gets an automatic 
increase in the government agencies. If they want an increase, they 
ought to have to come in and prove it. And we can save trillions of 
dollars if we just required every budget in the Federal Government to 
start out and prove what they need for the year. A zero baseline 
budget. No automatic increases.
  Well, when I got to Congress and was sworn in in January of 2005 and 
started looking at the things that would make America stronger, a zero 
baseline budget made sense. During that Congress I filed a bill to 
require a zero baseline budget. No automatic increases every year. And 
then back in those days it didn't make sense the Republicans wouldn't 
bring that to the floor because any time you slowed the automatic 
increase as a Congress, there were people that called you a draconian 
fool, you're making draconian cuts, when you weren't making cuts, you 
were just slowing the rate of growth. It wasn't a cut. The only way to 
fix that was just say: No automatic increases.
  And I pushed for that in my first Congress in 2005 and 2006, and 
Republicans were in the majority. And our leadership at that time, 
particularly in 2006, when I talked with some of our leadership then, 
and I was pushing it, and I was told we just can't do that. We should 
have. We didn't. We should have had major tax reform. Well, now is the 
time. This is a great time to push for a flat tax or a simplified tax 
that's fair, simpler, and so that everybody has their fair share.
  I don't want a mega-rich person paying a 10 or 12 percent income tax. 
Everybody ought to have some interest financially in what happens 
here--and not because they make lots of money and don't put anything 
in. People need to have a vested interest in this Congress by paying 
income tax in. And the lowest rate is down, I believe, around 15 
percent. It may be 5 percent. I've forgotten now. But the top rate has 
been 39 percent. Some people want it to go higher. And even though the 
top rate is 39 percent, there are some mega-rich that don't pay 39. 
Well, why not have a tax that's a fair tax cut across the middle that 
will be a flat tax. Everybody pays the same amount of tax. That ought 
to be fair. Everybody ought to have the same thing.
  Art Laffer, a great economist that helped revive the dismal economy 
coming out of the Carter administration, was just saying this week--I 
agreed with what he said. I have been talking about this, and I 
appreciate that man's opinion so much. He said we ought to have a flat 
tax. And he said, I believe you could get there and have the same 
amount of revenue if you were to have a 12, 13 percent flat tax, and 
even allow for mortgage interest deduction and to allow for deductions 
to charitable contributions. That was the main part of the tax. There 
was another aspect. But, boy, that would be so much more fairer. No 
mega-rich would get out without paying nothing. GE shouldn't have to 
pay nothing or, get away with paying nothing just because they're a 
friend of the administration and get lobbying and all that kind of 
stuff.
  Everybody ought to have to pay something. I'm okay with reducing 
corporation tax because when you do that, you're reducing the tariff 
we're putting on our own products. And if you took off the 35 percent 
tariff we put on every corporate American good produced, there's no 
telling how many markets around the world would just be begging for 
American products that would have 35 percent less of a tariff on those 
goods. We could compete anywhere if we keep the tariff down on our own 
goods. People talk about putting tariffs on other people's goods. We 
ought to get it off our own. And then you would see massive amounts of 
economic boom going on, and people would be hired, and more people 
would pay the 12, 13 percent income tax. You would have more revenue 
than ever coming into the American coffers in the Federal Government. 
That would create jobs. And as people know, the best form of welfare is 
a job. You feel good about yourself. But it's hard to feel too good 
about what is going on down there.
  As I have said before, down in the Senate, above the door from the 
President's sitting position, above the left door are the words 
``Annuit Coeptis.'' He, God, has smiled on our undertaking. It's part 
of our Great Seal on the back of every dollar bill. It's hard to 
believe that God could be smiling on people that will not allow debate 
on a responsible balanced budget amendment.
  In the time I have left, let me just say we've got so many calls, 
emails, letters, encouragement. And so many of them say, We're praying 
for you in Washington that you will do the right thing. Some of us 
happen to believe--and I won't try to push my religious beliefs on 
others--but some of us happen to believe that as we're told in the Old 
Testament, the Lord is the source of all wisdom. That there is no 
wisdom outside of that. Ben Franklin apparently believed that, as he 
said in 1787, ``I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, 
the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the 
affairs of men.''
  Mr. Speaker, Peter Marshall was Senate Chaplain back in the 1940s, 
and a constituent gave me this book with many of the prayers that he 
prayed there on the Senate floor. I want to finish, Mr. Speaker, with a 
prayer prayed by Peter Marshall, U.S. Chaplain for the United States 
Senate in the 1940s. On the Senate floor, as the Senators are down 
there. It makes a wonderful prayer.
  Peter Marshall prayed:
  ``We pray to Thee, O Christ, to keep us under the spell of 
immortality.
  ``May we never again think and act as if Thou wert dead. Let us more 
and more come to know Thee as a living Lord who hath promised to them 
that believe: `Because I live, ye shall live also.'
  ``Help us to remember that we are praying to the Conqueror of Death, 
that we may longer be afraid nor be dismayed by the world's problems 
and threats, since Thou hast overcome the world.
  ``In Thy strong name we ask for Thy living presence and Thy 
victorious power. Amen.''
  Mr. Speaker, may that be our prayer also tonight.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________