[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 61-62]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             MAKE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT LIVE WITHIN ITS MEANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Walberg) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WALBERG. Mr. Speaker, when the 112th Congress was sworn in on 
January 5, 2011, I, along with many of my fellow Republicans, voted to 
change the status quo.
  Instead of escalating spending, we have made and pushed for 
significant spending cuts. Instead of forcing a trillion dollar 
government takeover of health care on the American people, we voted to 
repeal it in the House. Instead of imposing costly and burdensome 
regulations on an already struggling business economy, we passed 
legislation to reverse overly burdensome regulations so businesses can 
get back to hiring again.
  These are the vows we made to our constituents when we took office a 
year ago. And despite hitting numerous snags in the do-nothing Senate 
and with leadership lacking in the White House, we delivered on the 
promises.
  In the past year, the House has passed 27 job-creating measures as 
part of our plan for American job creators. We have remained committed 
to removing the onerous taxes and regulations that are crippling small 
business and our families and are the cause for so much distrust of 
Washington. We have begun an honest conversation about which programs 
are in alignment with our constitutional principles and which programs 
are wasteful and inefficient.
  We have the responsibility to make the Federal Government live within 
its means, just like hardworking families across the country. This 
means we have to cut spending, stop raising taxes, and eliminate 
wasteful spending from our outdated, overreaching government programs.
  When we took office last January, we vowed to reduce discretionary 
spending to 2008 levels, and we delivered. The House passed a bill to 
reduce spending

[[Page 62]]

by $5.8 trillion over the next 10 years. We also voted to cut over 100 
programs across government and save billions of dollars in the process. 
In May, the House also overwhelmingly voted against giving President 
Obama a blank check to increase the debt limit without spending 
reductions or reforms.
  We have relentlessly fought for policies that will encourage job 
creation and free our families from the burdensome economic problems of 
government regulation. We acted to undo duplicative permitting 
requirements for farmers by passing the Reduced Regulatory Burdens Act. 
We pushed back against the President's attempts to implement a cap-and-
trade policy--an energy reduction policy, really--through the 
regulatory process by passing the Energy Tax Prevention Act. And we 
confronted the EPA's costly and burdensome agenda by passing three 
regulatory reform bills that safeguard our environment while keeping 
Americans at work.
  On November 16, we defeated the 3 percent withholding rule by passing 
H.R. 674. This misguided tax rule would have required government 
agencies at all levels to withhold 3 percent of their payments to 
businesses for goods and services. Any small business that contracts 
with the government would have their profit margins wiped out if such a 
rule were allowed to take effect.
  We passed the REINS Act, to bring accountability to the executive 
branch by requiring that government bureaucrats receive permission from 
Congress, the elected representatives of the people, before the 
implementation of any major regulation.
  Just 2 weeks after beginning our work in Congress, the House voted to 
repeal the overreaching, costly, and harmful government takeover of 
health care that President Obama forced upon the American people. H.R. 
2 was one of my first votes after being sworn in. The bill cut new 
spending by $1.4 trillion over 10 years and repealed the President's 
health care takeover, and I was proud to vote to repeal this job-
killing law which will do nothing to bring stability and certainty to 
American families.
  Throughout the first session of the 112th Congress, House Republicans 
have remained committed to changing the way the government does 
business. We've delivered on our promises to pass legislation that 
reins in spending and encourages job creation. Going forward, I'm 
hopeful that our friends in the Senate and the leadership in the White 
House will finally be ready to join us in passing legislation that the 
American people want and not let dozens of job-producing bills sit idle 
in the Senate.
  This year, I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House 
as we look beyond the next election and focus on improving people's 
lives and creating a brighter economic future with the freedom God 
really intended for all of us.

                          ____________________