[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16013-16019]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     CAN'T TAX OUR WAY OUT OF THIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Amash). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, before my colleague from Virginia leaves 
the floor, I plan to spend most of my hour disagreeing with most of 
what he spent his last hour on, but what he said at the very end is 
just so accurate and so infrequently said here on Capitol Hill, and 
that is, there are no good options left.
  If you have over a $1 trillion budget and you want to balance that 
budget, you're either raising somebody's taxes or you're cutting 
somebody's spending. There is no easy solution to that problem. It's 
not going to go away on its own. We're going to have to find a way to 
parse that--and by ``we,'' I don't just mean the 435 of us in this 
room, I mean the 315 million of us across the country.
  What I have here, Mr. Speaker--you can't see it from where you are--
but it's down to where we're in a spending-driven debt crisis. I think 
that's important because something has happened in the media. When I 
open up the newspaper, it's all about the tax component of this fiscal 
cliff, and there absolutely is a tax component. We talk about taxes as 
it relates to small businesses and creating jobs. We talk about taxes 
as they relate to individual families and being able to make ends meet.
  But what this chart shows, Mr. Speaker, is spending and tax revenue 
of the Federal Government of the United States of America from 1947 out 
to 2077. You can't see the intricate detail on here, Mr. Speaker, but 
what you can see from far, far away is that this green line that 
represents tax revenue is a relatively flat and constant line. As a 
general rule, it does not matter whether tax rates were the 90 percent 
marginal rates, the 70 percent marginal rates that they were when John 
F. Kennedy was President and he cut taxes, or whether they were the 28 
percent marginal rates during the Reagan years; the American people are 
willing to give you about 18 percent of the size of the economy in tax 
revenue.
  Mr. Speaker, it turns out--and this is of no surprise to you--it 
turns out the American people are pretty smart. If you raise taxes on 
this behavior, they switch to this behavior. If you raise taxes on that 
behavior, they switch to this behavior. Because at the end of the day 
we're more concerned with providing for our family, raising our kids, 
and taking care of our parents than we are about funding the Federal 
Government, and so we make changes in our lives to respond to the Tax 
Code.
  So whether taxes are at a top marginal rate of 28 percent, Mr. 
Speaker, as they were during the Reagan years, or whether they're at a 
top marginal rate of 90 percent as they were before the John F. Kennedy 
Presidency, America paid the same amount as a percent of GDP in taxes. 
This chart shows that. Taxes relatively constant going out over that 
horizon.
  Mr. Speaker, spending, this red line here--now you can see this red 
line is higher than the green line for most of the past 50 years. This 
business of running deficits is not new. We've been

[[Page 16014]]

running deficits my entire lifetime. With the exception of a couple of 
years in the Gingrich years here in the House and the Clinton years 
there in the White House, we've run budget deficits in this country, 
but they've been relatively small. I grew up in the Reagan years, and I 
remember lots of talk there about all the money we were spending on 
defense and those massive deficits that President Reagan was running in 
order to win the Cold War. Those deficits are minuscule compared to the 
deficits that we're running today.
  Mr. Speaker, what you see on this chart, as we go out from here where 
we are today in 2012 and 2013, what you see is a chart that reflects 
what happens if you and I do nothing, Mr. Speaker. If you and I were to 
close down this House, if President Obama were to leave the White House 
tomorrow and bolt the door, if we passed absolutely no new laws, no new 
promises, made no new commitments, this red line represents the 
spending that would happen automatically. This red line represents the 
spending that happens if we don't change one thing.
  What you see then, Mr. Speaker, is there is just no way--this green 
line represents taxes--there's no way that we can raise taxes high 
enough to cover this red line of spending. If we took everything from 
everybody, Mr. Speaker--hear that: if we had a 100 percent tax on every 
dollar you earned, if we took everything you had in your household and 
sold it all for its value, if we confiscated every asset of every 
business in America and we sold it at the auction block, and we put all 
of that money in a bank account to save for a rainy day, we still would 
not have enough money to pay for the spending that we've promised 
America in this red line. It's a spending problem we have. Our problem 
is not that we tax too little; our problem is that we spend too much.

                              {time}  1320

  That's important when we talk about this fiscal cliff, Mr. Speaker. 
This is not a tax issue. This is a spending issue. And this isn't an 
issue that folks don't have an answer to.
  Mr. Speaker, you and I serve on the Budget Committee. And one of the 
things that I am most proud of in my 2 short years here in this body is 
that we looked at these tough challenges, the ones that my colleague 
from Virginia just described as being tough, tough choices. You are 
raising taxes. You are cutting spending. Someone is going to be 
unhappy. It is probably going to have to be a combination of both.
  We looked at those things we did on the Budget Committee, and we came 
up with a solution. We didn't just tell America who to blame. We didn't 
just talk about how hard it was and how tough it was going to be and 
how lousy that is for America's children and America's grandchildren. 
We proposed solutions.
  It's represented here on this chart, Mr. Speaker. What I have here is 
debt as a percent of GDP, the Federal debt. That's about $16.3 trillion 
today. I go all the way back to World War II here where debt was 100 
percent of GDP. The historical debt is represented by this gray line, 
Mr. Speaker. This red line, just a different representation of the 
spending I showed down there.
  On that chart, I was showing actual spending as a percent of GDP. 
This is a debt that we are going to run up as a percentage of GDP. And 
this green line, Mr. Speaker, represents the budget that you and I 
crafted in the Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Paul 
Ryan. We called it ``The Path to Prosperity'' because for the first 
time in my lifetime, this Congress got serious about making the tough 
choices necessary to get us out of these record-setting deficits.
  And that's so important because I get so tired, Mr. Speaker, as I 
know you do too, of everybody just pointing the finger to blame--Oh, 
it's his fault. It's her fault. It's their fault. It's their fault. 
This budget was not about blame. This budget was about solutions. And 
we laid it all out. That distinguishes us, particularly in this fiscal 
cliff debate, from the White House and from the Senate, which continue 
to talk in broad platitudes, but it failed to lay out the difficult, 
difficult line-by-line explanation of what their proposal would be to 
solve these problems. We did that in our budget, and it was hard.
  There is a reason the United States Senate hasn't passed a budget in 
almost 4 years, and it's because it's hard. A budget is a statement of 
your values. It's a statement of your values. We confiscate all of this 
money in tax revenue from the American people, and then we redistribute 
it out to those priorities that we have--national security, kids, 
school lunches and education, our criminal justice system, to make sure 
families are safe in their homes. We distribute it to those things that 
are important to us.
  So when you're running trillion-dollar deficits, as we're running 
today, and you have to put together a budget, you either have to tell 
the American people and their children and their grandchildren that 
you're going to continue running trillion-dollar deficits and bankrupt 
this Nation, or you have to tell the American people, you know what, 
we've got to prioritize, and these are my priorities.
  I'll tell you something, Mr. Speaker. It just drives me to 
distraction when I read the media accounts. One of the things that gets 
lost is that when we passed that budget, that budget that passed this 
House not once but twice, that budget represents the only budget that 
has passed anywhere in this town--in fact, the only budget that has 
received a majority of votes anywhere in this town. When we passed that 
budget, we said revenue in this country has to rise. It has to.
  Mr. Speaker, we go back to this historical chart that I showed you. 
We're down here in this green dip right here. Tax revenues are at their 
lowest level in modern times. Tax rates are plenty high, Mr. Speaker, 
plenty high. But guess what, if you don't have a job, you can't pay any 
income taxes. It doesn't matter--a 5 percent income rate on you, a 100 
percent income tax rate on you--if you don't have a job, you can't pay 
taxes. That's why tax revenue is so low.
  If companies aren't making profits, companies can't pay taxes. If you 
can't sell your home, you don't have capital gains to pay taxes on. If 
you can't start a business, you don't have income to pay taxes on. 
That's why tax revenue is so low.
  Mr. Speaker, the tax rates are the same rates they've been over the 
last 10 years. We had a giant spike in tax revenue. The reason for the 
decline is because of this recession. When folks aren't making money, 
they can't pay taxes.
  So what did we do in our budget? We crafted an economic growth plan 
that would bring in--hear this, Mr. Speaker--it would take us from what 
was about 14.5 percent of GDP. Today it's 16 percent of GDP. We passed 
a budget that would bring us up to over 18 percent of GDP and tax 
revenue. That's more than a 10 percent increase over what we're doing 
today.
  Do we do it by punishing little groups of people like the President 
wants to do? No, of course not. We do it by growing the economy, 
unleashing the power of the American entrepreneur, and allowing folks 
to pursue their dreams. That's how we bring more revenue into the 
coffers of the Federal Government.
  But hearing that said loudly and proudly, the only budget that has 
passed anywhere in this town was passed in a bipartisan way by this 
U.S. House of Representatives, dominantly passed by Republican votes; 
and it includes a revenue increase of over 10 percent. So just go ahead 
and dismiss that nonsense about Republicans ignoring the revenue side 
of this equation. Of course there's a revenue side of the equation. My 
colleague from Virginia was right when he mentioned it. It continues to 
be true, and we've dealt with it responsibly.
  What about the spending side, Mr. Speaker? Before I take this chart 
down, I want folks to see that spending side back in their offices. 
This green line represents the budget that we passed. This red line is 
the path of debt if we do nothing. This green line is the path of debt 
if we pass the House-

[[Page 16015]]

passed budget plan and make it the law of the land.
  There are opportunities to make this difference. This House, in a 
bipartisan way, has stood up to those challenges. I encourage the 
President and the Senate to follow that strong lead.
  But let's take on the thing that we hear the most often, Mr. Speaker, 
and that is that the President is committed to taxing, raising taxes, 
exacerbating the tax burden on all of these family-owned businesses 
that you and I know are the keys to job creation.
  Now, I don't want folks to think that these businesses aren't already 
paying their fair share. We talk so much about ``fair share,'' Mr. 
Speaker. I think of fairness as being a society that rewards hard work 
and merit. I think that's what fairness is. It's that opportunity 
society that we all came to America for, that our parents or our 
grandparents or our great grandparents came to America for. We didn't 
come here for guaranteed success. We came here for the opportunity to 
work hard and to make our tomorrow better than our today. That's 
fairness: maintaining that opportunity, ensuring that other generations 
of Americans have that opportunity.
  I am going to quote Milton Friedman, Mr. Speaker. The country is the 
poorer for not having Milton Friedman with us any longer. But he said, 
There's a distinct difference between raising taxes, where the 90 
percent of America votes to raise taxes on themselves to help the 
bottom 10 percent because that's what we do as Americans. We're 
generous, generous people. We care deeply about our neighborhoods and 
our communities.
  It's one thing for the 90 percent to raise taxes on themselves to 
help the 10 percent. But it's an entirely different thing when the 80 
percent raise taxes on the top 10 percent to help the bottom 10 
percent. Think about that, Mr. Speaker.
  When we talk about the tough choices that my colleague from Virginia 
just brought up, how tough is it to decide you're going to raise taxes 
on them to solve the problem? Whoever the ``them'' is, raise taxes on 
them. ``They'' should pay more to solve the problem. That's pretty 
easy.
  The power to tax is the power to destroy. And we, through this House 
and the power of taxation, can choose to destroy any element of 
American society that we choose.
  I will tell you, it's our constitutional obligation to protect the 
minority, that an opportunity society means we do not let the majority 
run roughshod over the minority. Even in this House of Representatives, 
with our proud tradition, the minority has rights. The minority is 
protected from the will of the majority. That's always been true in our 
American tradition.
  How tough is it to decide that ``they'' are going to foot the bill so 
that ``we'' don't have to? Those aren't tough choices. Those are easy 
choices. We call that class warfare, and it's going on entirely too 
much in this country. But even in class warfare, Mr. Speaker--and you 
see it here on this chart I have presented of who benefits from tax 
loopholes--you can make choices that either help the economy grow or 
bring the economy to its knees. This chart shows the bottom quintile of 
income earners, the second quintile, the middle quintile, the fourth 
quintile. Here is the top 20 percent. And there on the end is actually 
the top 1 percent, Mr. Speaker.
  Who benefits from loopholes in the Tax Code? I'm a flat tax guy. And 
by flat tax, I mean the national retail sales tax. It's called the Fair 
Tax, the special retail sales tax that deals with the payroll tax 
inequities, and on and on. It absolutely turns our Tax Code on its head 
and puts our economy on hyperdrive. It's an amazing plan. It's a 
popularly cosponsored tax reform plan in this United States House of 
Representatives. I hope we're going to get a vote on it next year. But 
what it does is it eliminates all the deductions and exemptions, all 
the loopholes, all the carve-outs, all the special lobbyist-included 
benefits, all those special benefits for whoever is favored by a 
particular administration.

                              {time}  1330

  It eliminates them all in order to create one flat and fair system 
for the country. Now, if you make more money, of course you're paying 
more in taxes; if you have less money, you're paying less in taxes. 
It's progressive in that way. That's always been true in America and 
always will be. But the President is committed--and we heard it again 
today--to raising tax rates on family-owned businesses. Not ensuring 
that they pay more taxes, mind you--this is an important distinction--
but raising the tax rates.
  Look here, Mr. Speaker, if we go through and we eliminate all of 
these tax loopholes--and the top 1 percent is the crowd that benefits 
disproportionately from all these tax loopholes--we can still ask the 
top 1 percent to contribute more to the funding of our economy, but we 
can do it in an economically responsible way. Flattening the Tax Code 
asks more of those who benefit from the special deductions, exemptions, 
exceptions, and credits.
  This chart tells you who those folks are. Of course it's true that 
the top 1 percent benefit the most. They pay all the taxes. Oh, that's 
an exaggeration. Well, they make about 20 percent of the income, and 
they pay 40 percent of the taxes. That's right, Mr. Speaker. The top 1 
percent--and I'm glad we have them because they're footing the bill for 
all the rest of us. The top 1 percent of income earners are paying 40 
percent of the burden for our entire United States Federal Government. 
One percent is paying 40 percent of the burden.
  If we eliminate the exceptions, the exemptions, the tax credits, and 
the loopholes, those folks will pay more. But the President is 
insisting not on cleaning up the Code and making it more economically 
viable; instead, he just wants to raise rates and punish folks more.
  Let me go, Mr. Speaker, to President Barack Obama, August 2009. He 
says this in an interview:

       The last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the 
     middle of a recession because that would just take more 
     demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further 
     hole.

  That was President Barack Obama, August 2009. He was absolutely right 
then. Those facts hold true today. And it's not just that those facts 
hold true over a small period of time, Mr. Speaker; those facts hold 
true over a decade.
  I want to take you back to President John F. Kennedy, Mr. Speaker. 
It's not as if these are new ideas that we're talking about. This isn't 
some rocket science problem that has suddenly been thrust upon the 
United States of America in 2012. These are basic economics. Adam Smith 
talked about these economics hundreds of years ago. Let me tell you 
what John F. Kennedy said. This is in one of his news conferences, 
November 20, 1962, as he was providing the largest tax cut in modern 
American history. He said this:

       It's a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and 
     tax revenues are too low.

  That's where we are today, Mr. Speaker. Tax rates are too high and 
tax revenues are too low. It's a paradoxical truth that that can be 
true.
  He goes on and talks about raising revenues, and that's exactly what 
we're trying to do when we talk about a balanced approach. We need to 
cut spending, and we need to increase revenue. President Kennedy says 
this:

       The soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is 
     to cut the rates now. Cutting taxes now is not to incur a 
     budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous expanding 
     economy which can bring us a budget surplus.

  That was brought to you by a raging conservative economist, President 
John F. Kennedy. No, he's not a raging conservative economist, Mr. 
Speaker. He was a proud liberal of the Democratic party, but he knew 
economic truths, economic truths that were as sound then as they are 
today, and that apparently so many in this Chamber have forgotten.
  Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve 
the more prosperous expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.
  I'll go on with what was in his annual budget message to Congress, 
Mr. Speaker. Again, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the annual budget message to 
the Congress. He says this:


[[Page 16016]]

       Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity 
     and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as 
     to yield, within a few years, an increased, not a reduced, 
     flow of revenues to the Federal Government.

  This is not a conservative idea, Mr. Speaker. This is not a liberal 
idea. This is not a Reagan idea. This is not a Clinton idea. This is an 
economic truth.
  John F. Kennedy:

       Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity 
     and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as 
     to yield, within a few years, an increased, not a reduced, 
     flow of revenues to the Federal Government.

  President Barack Obama:

       The last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the 
     middle of a recession because that would just take more 
     demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further 
     hole.

  These are truths that have gotten lost in this election season, Mr. 
Speaker.
  I'll be honest with you. I'm not excited about the way the election 
turned out. It pleased the American people with a wide margin, returned 
a Republican majority to this U.S. House of Representatives, this the 
people's House, this the House that is the closest to the American 
voter. It was a huge Republican majority that was returned by the 
American people.
  I thought when we got past that election, Mr. Speaker, that politics 
would be done. I thought when we got past that election, we would get 
on about the serious business of correcting this avalanche of debt that 
threatens to crush generations of hopes and dreams of Americans, 
extinguishes the freedoms that we hold so dear. We know what the right 
answers are. John F. Kennedy knew in 1962 and 1963; Barack Obama knew 
in 2009 and 2010, and we still know today, but politics still seems to 
control.
  Mr. Speaker, to make my point about where we are in terms of spending 
being the problem, again, as you and I serve here on the floor of the 
House, we have so many folks pointing to different demons that are the 
problem, so I just went ahead and put all the demons that folks talk 
about up here on the board.
  What I have here, Mr. Speaker, represented by this blue line--this is 
about 20 years of spending. I go from 2002 out to 2022, and I look at 
spending of the Federal Government. This giant blue line that consumes 
the entire chart is just base, normal, everyday Federal Government 
spending, which is increasing 33 percent if we don't change it over the 
next 10 years. Hear that: Normal spending, not bailouts, not special 
war taxes, not any of that, but basic Federal spending is set to 
increase 33 percent over the next 10 years if we don't move to change 
it.
  This little yellow line, Mr. Speaker, that you can just barely see, 
this little yellow line is the cost of the global war on terror. Is 
that real money? You better believe it. When we choose to send American 
young men and women around the globe to protect our freedoms, you 
better believe we give them every single advantage that we can, and we 
take care of them when they return home. Absolutely, there is a cost to 
the global war on terror. There is a cost to protecting the homeland. 
But, Mr. Speaker, in comparison to all other spending that is going on, 
it's minuscule.
  Here are the financial bailouts in green, Mr. Speaker. You probably 
can't see those. Was that a lot of money? You better believe it. Do I 
think a lot of it went down a rat hole? I absolutely do. Those bailouts 
are over now. That money is out the door now. But as a percent of 
what's going on here, it's not that.
  Here's the 2009 stimulus bill. That's actually the highest order of 
magnitude here. That was a lot of money. There was over $800 billion 
that went out the door that I would again argue to questionable 
purposes that we cannot measure the success of here years later. But 
that's not the cause of the problem. The problem is systemic. The 
problem is baked into the way that we operate our Federal Government 
today. It's baked into program after program that we continue to create 
even in deficit times. It's baked into new promise after new promise 
after new promise that we continue to make even though we don't know 
how to afford the ones that we've already made.

                              {time}  1340

  Mr. Speaker, I just want to go through a few of those accounts that 
have been increasing. Folks won't be able to see this back in their 
offices, so I'll just read a couple of them to them. The chart is 
entitled, ``Where the Money Goes.'' It's inflation-adjusted dollars, so 
we can compare apples to apples. It compares 2002 to 2012. Let's just 
look at a few. I've put them in the order of how much money we're 
spending on them today:
  Social Security spending, for example, from 2002 to 2012, has 
increased 35 percent over the last 10 years. It's the largest pot of 
money that we spend in the government, these Social Security checks. 
Folks have paid into it their entire lives. They've earned them and 
they deserve them. I'm glad they're getting them. It has gone up 35 
percent in the last 10 years;
  With national defense, of course, between 2002 and 2012, there has 
been a lot going on in the world. The world has become less safe. We've 
been involved in two wars, and that spending has been going up between 
2002 and 2012. Again, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the spending on 
national defense has gone up 50 percent. Now, it's still dramatically 
below where it was in the eighties and nineties when we were trying to 
win the Cold War. We've been fighting two wars over this past decade. 
It's dramatically lower than it was when we were fighting the Cold War, 
but it's up 50 percent;
  Medicare spending over last 10 years--2002 to 2012--is up 70 percent. 
You hear so much talk that the Medicare trust fund is going bankrupt. 
Over the last 10 years, Medicare spending is up 70 percent in 
inflation-adjusted dollars--constant dollars. It's up 70 percent, and 
that climb continues; but, in fact, Mr. Speaker, those numbers are low 
compared to some other categories:
  Food stamps from 2002 to 2012 are up 136 percent. We're in some tough 
economic times. We all know that, in tough economic times, support 
program prices--costs--increase, but this is 136 percent over the last 
10 years. K through 12 education is up 144 percent. Energy spending--
sadly, this is going to include all of the Solyndras of the world, all 
of those stimulus dollars that went out to support dubious 
enterprises--is up 1,751 percent.
  So, when we talk about budget cuts--and this is important--it's 
always described as we're going to gore someone's ox, as we're going to 
destroy someone's program. Energy spending is up 1,700 percent. What if 
we reduced it so it was just up 1,600 percent, Mr. Speaker? Would that 
destroy President Obama's green energy plans? I don't think so. What if 
food stamps, instead of going up 136 percent, just went up 130 percent? 
Can you really say that that is an attack on folks who are recipients 
of food stamps; or can you say that when the American people increase 
food nutrition spending by 130 percent that we're actually making a 
pretty good faith effort to make sure folks are taken care of?
  We see it time and time again--30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent, 59 
percent, 46 percent, 62 percent. We're not talking about destroying 
Federal Government programs. We're talking about curbing double-digit 
increases that have gone on over the past 10 years--triple-digit 
increases in so many cases. That brings us to this balanced approach we 
keep hearing about, Mr. Speaker.
  I hear the President say ``balanced approach'' over and over again. I 
just have not seen him yet do a balanced approach. I mean, we saw his 
proposal that came out yesterday where he wanted to raise taxes by $1.6 
trillion and where he wanted to increase spending on a variety of 
programs, and he thought he could find $400 billion in reductions. Not 
today, of course. Somewhere down the road, he thought that we could get 
together and maybe find $400 billion. So bring taxes up $1.6 trillion 
and then find $400 billion in spending reductions.
  It's not a tax revenue problem, Mr. Speaker. It's a spending problem. 
We've got to focus on this red line. We've got to focus on spending.

[[Page 16017]]

  Look at where we are with the sequester, for example. We're talking 
about balanced approaches. I have defense spending cuts in the 
sequester, I have non-defense spending cuts in the sequester, and I 
have mandatory cuts in the sequester. As you know, Mr. Speaker, about a 
third of all of the dollars we spend in this country we call 
``discretionary spending.'' Half of those are defense and half of those 
are non-defense. Everything else--two-thirds of the pie--is what we 
call ``mandatory spending.''
  So the two-thirds of the pie over here represent 63.8 percent of all 
Federal spending. The sequestration is going to ask that big piece of 
the pie--63.8 percent--to bear 14 percent of the cuts. We're going to 
ask non-defense discretionary spending, which is about 13 percent of 
the pie, to bear 35 percent of the cuts. It doesn't quite seem 
balanced, does it, Mr. Speaker? Then we're going to ask the Defense 
Department, which represents 16.8 percent of all spending, to bear 49.5 
percent of all the cuts.
  Now, I'm not a math major. I didn't study statistics, but I'm pretty 
sure, if we were implementing a balanced approach, these lines would be 
roughly equal; they'd be balanced. What we have instead is a dramatic 
attack on our national security concerns while the driving piece of the 
pie, that piece of the pie that's growing larger and larger each year--
it's already the largest, and it's growing at the fastest rate--which 
alone threatens to undermine the economic security of the Nation is 
asked to do next to nothing.
  Now, as you know, Mr. Speaker, the only serious proposal in town--the 
only one that has received a majority of the votes to deal with that 
mandatory spending issue--came out of this U.S. House of 
Representatives. It came out of our Budget Committee. It passed the 
floor of the House in a bipartisan way to deal seriously with those; 
but as the President asks time and time again, ``Can we have a balanced 
approach?'' my answer is, ``Yes, we can. Let me see your balance.'' He 
hasn't been shy at all about talking about all the taxes he wants to 
increase. I just haven't seen any of the spending cuts he wants to 
implement. It's because we don't have a tax problem. We have a spending 
problem in this country.
  If you haven't looked at what the spending problem is, Mr. Speaker--
and I know you have because you serve on the Budget Committee, and 
you're one of the finest members we have on the Budget Committee. 
You've taken difficult and tough stands in order to support your 
constituency and to make sure the children of tomorrow have a better 
future than the children of today, and you continue to pass on that 
American Dream. Yet this chart represents the chronic deficits that we 
have at the Federal level. These are actual dollars, and these numbers 
come both from the Office of Management and Budget--that's the 
President's budget team--and from the Congressional Budget Office, 
which is the nonpartisan budget team here on Capitol Hill.
  We go back to 1970--through the Carter years, through the Reagan 
years, the Bush years, the Clinton years. You'll see there were 
systemic deficits through all of those years. It was only under the 
partnership of Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton and, I might also add, 
with some of the most aggressive spending reductions that we've seen in 
my lifetime that we were able to create budget surpluses if you include 
the Social Security trust fund; although, there is still a little 
sleight of hand going on there as we look at this chart because we're 
looking at cash flow, not at what's going into the trust fund baskets, 
but there was absolutely a cash flow surplus here for 4 years.
  Then the tech bubble bursts and 9/11 happens, and we get into these 
Bush years where you see some of the largest deficits in American 
history. In response to 9/11, in response to the wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, there were some of the largest budget deficits in American 
history. This was on a Republican President's watch and on a Republican 
Congress' watch in response to some tremendous crises, but they were 
the largest deficits in history--frightening deficits.
  Mr. Speaker, those deficits are barely noticeable compared to where 
we are today.
  These were the largest budget deficits in American history during the 
Bush years, deficits so large they were threatening our economy. 
President Bush began to bring them down over the last 4 years of his 
tenure, and they're dwarfed by the size of the deficits created by this 
U.S. House of Representatives under Democratic control, by the United 
States Senate under Democratic control, and by President Barack Obama 
and the White House.
  Mr. Speaker, those numbers have begun to come down. You can see here, 
over the past 4 years, we had a $1.5 trillion deficit in 2009, a 1.34 
in 2010, a 1.32 in 2011, a 1.1 in 2012. They start to go down, but look 
out over this 10-year horizon. Again, these numbers come from the 
Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan group here on 
Capitol Hill. They come from the Office of Management and Budget, which 
is the President's budget team down at the White House.
  If we do nothing to curtail spending, the largest deficits ever known 
to this land occur not once, occur not twice, occur not 3 years in a 
row, but occur forever in looking forward through the budget window. 
Now, the truth is they don't actually occur forever because America 
would collapse under the weight of that debt. Our economy would cease 
to function. Our Nation would cease to exist. It absolutely does not go 
on forever, but it never gets solved. Not 1 year, Mr. Speaker, not 1 
year. We begin to bring deficits down, and we bring them down to almost 
$600 billion. Again, the best year in the next 10 is worse than the 
worst year in the last 50.

                              {time}  1350

  As you look at the proposal of what folks believe is going to happen 
in the economy over the next 10 years, the best year we have over the 
next 10 is worse than the worst year we've had over the last 50 when it 
comes to raising the debt and deficit here in the United States of 
America.
  Continuing talking about the balance, Mr. Speaker, the President is a 
smart man and I have always respected him, Mr. Speaker, for the fact 
that he has released a budget to the American people, made a proposal, 
in every one of his 4 years in office. Every one. The law requires him 
to do it, but he has always done it. That distinguishes him from the 
United States Senate, which the law also requires them to do it, and 
they haven't done it.
  So every year the President goes through the very difficult work of 
producing his own budget, sharing with the American people his vision 
for what the Federal budget should look like. I happen to have a 
graphical representation of that vision. This is the one he gave us 
last. It was February of 2012. There was an election coming up, and he 
wanted to do his very best. This was actually the most serious of all 
of the budgets that he's submitted.
  And what I show here, Mr. Speaker, with this white dotted line is the 
debt that America would have to pay if we change not one law on the 
books. If we change not one law on the books, the debt of America would 
rise along this white dotted line.
  This red line that runs right above the white dotted line is the debt 
that we would accumulate if we passed the President's budget. I'm not 
misspeaking, Mr. Speaker. I'm talking about that budget he introduced 
in February of 2012. I'm talking about that budget that raised taxes by 
almost $2 trillion on the American people; he raised taxes by $2 
trillion on the American people and still ran up higher debt because he 
spent even more than that.
  Now, to give the President his due, he actually only ran up higher 
debt in his budget for the 2013 year, the 2014 year, the 2015 year and 
'16 year and '17 year and '18 year and '19 year and '20 year and '21 
year. It was really only the first 9 years of his 10-year budget that 
he continued to run up higher debt. By the 10th year of his 10-year 
budget, and I blew it up so folks could see it, there's a little bit of 
a betterment there. We did a little bit better in that

[[Page 16018]]

final year in terms of trying to bring the debt below what it would 
have been if we'd done nothing. And all the while, the budget raised 
taxes by $2 trillion and raised spending even more.
  Mr. Speaker, that's not balanced. I try to explain that to my 
constituents back home, the ones who come and say, Rob, why can't you 
all just come together and build consensus? Why can't you find that 
middle ground? It's because in my mind, Mr. Speaker, there's no 
question but that we have to raise revenue through smart tax policy and 
we have to cut spending, which is the driver of our debt.
  But when my President looks at this very same set of numbers, looks 
at this very same rising debt across the country, looks at the very 
same economic destruction that this debt is causing across the Nation, 
he raises taxes by $2 trillion and raises spending by even more.
  Mr. Speaker, he says balance, but the only proposal he's brought to 
Congress in the last 12 months is about as unbalanced as they come.
  We can, Mr. Speaker, we can come together in the middle. We can find 
consensus. As I said earlier, my Democratic colleague from Virginia 
accurately identified the challenges. None of them are easy. None of 
the solutions are easy. But don't be fooled, Mr. Speaker, into 
believing that either, A, this House isn't serious about bringing 
revenues back to historical norms. We are, and we've passed language to 
do it. And don't think, too, that the President is serious about 
cutting spending because we've yet to see one single proposal to 
suggest that he is.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, in the proposal he rolled out yesterday, the 
one budget-cutting exercise that we've done, this across-the-board 
sequester that's coming, the sequester that's coming as a result of 
those 12 men and women--the 6 Republicans, 6 Democrats; 6 House 
Members, 6 Senate Members--who got together on the Joint Select 
Committee to try to craft a proposal, as a result of that failure, we 
now have these across-the-board cuts. The President's proposal supports 
kicking that can down the road for another year. Mr. Speaker, we can't 
kick the can down the road.
  Is it going to be a challenge to get over this economic hump? You 
better believe it. It has been for the past 4 years. Americans have 
been challenged for the past 4 years. This recession has been 
debilitating across the board. There's still no easy solutions out on 
the horizon. But we know this: we know when we raise taxes, the economy 
suffers. We know when we lower taxes, the economy grows.
  I'm looking at a National Bureau of Economic Research report, Mr. 
Speaker. They say this:

       Tax changes have very large effects. An exogenous tax 
     increase of 1 percent of GDP lowers real GDP by roughly 2-3 
     percent.

  We can raise taxes if we want to. It's going to lower economic 
output; it's going to harm American families. It's going to diminish 
job creation; but we can do it. That's the debate we're having here on 
Capitol Hill.
  Mr. Speaker, this chart represents the plan that the President has 
proposed for cutting spending. It's not that the camera is not 
adjusting to it properly, Mr. Speaker. It's that this is a giant blank 
sheet of paper. It's absent of any information whatsoever because so, 
too, is the President's proposal for tackling the real economic 
challenge we have here, the real driver of budget deficits, the real 
threat to American economic superiority in this world, out-of-control 
Federal spending.
  The President of the United States, he's been President for 4 years, 
no credible plan for tackling that spending.
  I want to go back, Mr. Speaker. This United States House of 
Representatives, in a bipartisan way, passed a plan not just to change 
the trajectory of Federal spending, but to actually pay down the debt 
to zero over time. That shouldn't sound so crazy, Mr. Speaker. Folks 
have to pay their debts, but we haven't seen that out of this 
administration in even one of those budgets. Not one of those budgets 
put us on a path to being debt free.
  In the time I have left, Mr. Speaker, I just want to do a little math 
here on the board. I brought my big marker with me. I want you to know 
I got this free with rebate. We squeeze every penny we can in the 
office. I think everybody ought to do that. I think you ought to lead 
by example. But I've been struggling with the idea of fairness, Mr. 
Speaker, and I brought with me the tax rate chart from the IRS. This is 
a 2012 tax rate chart.
  If you earn between $35,000 and $85,000, you're in the 25 percent tax 
bracket. If you earn between $35,000 and $85,000 in America in 2012, 
you're in the 25 percent tax bracket. I'm calling that middle class, 
Mr. Speaker. Depending on how large your family is, it's tough to make 
a go of it at $30,000. And depending on how large your family is, 
$85,000 puts you right there in the middle. But that ball park--30, 40, 
$50,000--I think we can call that secure middle class America. You pay 
a 25 percent income tax rate.
  Payroll tax. Your payroll tax is 15.3 percent, Mr. Speaker. Every 
wage earner in this land, 15.3 percent they pay each and every month in 
payroll taxes. Those FICA taxes you see on your paycheck.
  Let me do some quick math, Mr. Speaker. Bear with me.

                              {time}  1400

  40.3 percent in Federal taxes. That's the tax rate for every middle 
class American in the land.
  I ask you, Mr. Speaker, are tax rates too low?
  Do you think you ought to work for the first 5 months out of the year 
just to pay your Federal tax burden before you begin to pay your State 
tax burden, before you begin to pay your local tax burden, before you 
begin to actually earn money to pay for your food and shelter and 
clothing for your family?
  Forty percent is the marginal tax rate for middle class America. 
Thirty-five percent, Mr. Speaker, is the rate that that 1 percent are 
paying today. Thirty-five cents out of every dollar earned by that top 
1 percent today, that's the marginal tax rate for those folks.
  Now, a lot of folks don't realize, taxes are already going up next 
year. You know, the President's health care bill, that bill that I was 
not here to oppose. Though I've tried it repeal it, I haven't been able 
to get that through the Senate. But the President's health care bill 
raises taxes come January 1.
  So on this top income bracket that the President wants to raise taxes 
even further on, they have a tax rate increase coming, and it's coming 
on January 1; 3.8 percent, Mr. Speaker. Every dollar of unearned income 
these top 1 percent earn is going to have a new 3.8 percent Medicare 
tax added to it, 3.8 percent.
  0.9 percent, Mr. Speaker. That's an increase in the Medicare tax on 
all the earned income of these folks, 3.8 percent increase on the 
unearned income. Another 0.9 percent increase on the earned income.
  2.7 percent, Mr. Speaker. That's the Medicare tax that that top 1 
percent is already paying on all of their earned income today. It's 
going to go up another 0.9 percent. They're already paying 2.7. The 
President says that's not enough.
  Let me do some quick math here. Since they're only going to have to 
pay one, Mr. Speaker, either the unearned income tax or the earned 
income tax, it's going to be 3.8 percent either way. They're paying 
39.8, plus this 15.3, of course, on all those dollars that are subject 
to Medicare and Social Security under the cap today, plus another 6 
percent is the average rate for State income tax today.
  So let me add those to both of these charts. Six percent is the rate 
in my home State of Georgia. So I'm just going to come back over here 
to these middle class taxpayers that appear to be paying 46.3 percent 
as a marginal rate on every dollar they earn.
  Let me come back over here to the high-income folks. Before they pay 
their payroll taxes, we have 44.8. And of course, on that money that 
they earn up to $100,000, they're paying an additional, where are we, 
about 11.5 percent on that. 11.5 added to 44.8. That's an over 56 
percent tax rate.
  Mr. Speaker, how much is enough?
  When does freedom in this country cease to have meaning?

[[Page 16019]]

  At what level of confiscation of the work product of the American 
people does freedom cease to have meaning?
  We've got to be getting close to it, Mr. Speaker. But more 
importantly, when we talk about paying their fair share, when is 
America as a whole paying its fair share, Mr. Speaker?
  When is America paying its fair share, but the Federal Government is 
spending too much anyway? Middle class America, 46.3 percent. That's 
middle class America. That's $35,000 a year you're earning, and your 
Federal Government and your State government hit you for a combination 
of 46 percent of every dime.
  What incentive is that to go out and work longer and harder?
  Forty-six percent. Fifty-seven over here. Fifty-seven. We all know 
that small businesses create all the jobs in this country. That's why 
we're so worried about this tax proposal, because, while this is 
already 57 percent over here, Mr. Speaker, the President wants to raise 
it another three, to almost 60 percent. 60 percent of every dime earned 
by family-owned businesses the President wants to take back for 
Washington, D.C.
  I'm in favor of a balanced approach. I'm committed to fairness in 
American society. But, Mr. Speaker, I ask you, is the problem that 
taxes are too low, or is the problem that spending is too high?
  We're better than class warfare, Mr. Speaker. We're better than 
saying we're going to ask them to bear the burden while we benefit.
  Three hundred twenty million of us have to come together, Mr. 
Speaker, on tough, tough challenges, challenges that this House has 
crafted solutions to. These solutions are not easy. These solutions are 
not pain-free.
  These solutions involve shared commitment from every single American 
because as freedom is eroded in this country, ever single American 
suffers. And as economic opportunity and economic liberty is expanded 
in this country, absolutely every American benefits.
  We can do better, Mr. Speaker, as a Nation. We have done better as 
the United States House of Representatives.
  And I come here today just to remind my President and the White House 
that the election is over. The time for clever soundbites that register 
on the public opinion polls is far behind us. What's in front of us are 
hard, hard decisions that this House has led on, and that we are 
waiting patiently for partnership to work on and to pass.
  I want to leave you with three numbers, Mr. Speaker: H.R. 5652, it 
was passed in May, called the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act. 
It was the House-passed idea to avoid the debilitating sequester cuts 
that we see coming, to deal with the mandatory spending side of the 
equation, passed in a bipartisan way here in the House. It is the only 
proposal in all of Washington, D.C., to have been passed by a body. 
H.R. 5652 passed in May.
  I'll leave you with H.R. 8, Mr. Speaker, the Job Protection and 
Recession Prevention Act. That's our plan, House-passed plan for how to 
deal with these tax increases that threaten America's family-owned 
businesses, threaten our economy, how to deal with them in a 
responsible way to get us past this fiscal cliff, passed in August, 
only plan in Washington, D.C., to prevent these debilitating tax 
increases from hitting across all of our family-owned small businesses.
  And finally, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 6365. It's the National Security and 
Job Protection Act. We passed that in September. That's the bill that 
looks specifically at these coming defense cuts, these cuts that 
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has called devastating in their 
impact.

                              {time}  1410

  If you don't know--and I know you do, Mr. Speaker--Leon Panetta, the 
former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, former chairman of the 
Democratic-led Budget Committee here in the U.S. House of 
Representatives, current Secretary of Defense, calls these defense cuts 
devastating. This U.S. House has passed a proposal to prevent that 
second round of cuts from taking place. It's the only proposal anywhere 
in this town to have passed. We did it in August. We took care of our 
business. And we have yet to have partnership from either the White 
House or the Senate on that proposal.
  We took care of the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act in May, 
Mr. Speaker. We took care of the Job Protection Recession Prevention 
Act in August, Mr. Speaker. We took care of the National Security and 
Job Protection Act in September, Mr. Speaker. The work of this House 
has been done month after month after month. We've passed two budgets 
in a row, Mr. Speaker, that take on the tough challenges of entitlement 
reform, that take on the tough challenges of increasing revenue, that 
take on the challenges that no Congress in my lifetime has ever taken 
on, Mr. Speaker. We did it not once but we did it twice. And the 
silence from the Senate and the White House has been deafening.
  We can do it, Mr. Speaker. We must do it. This House has done it. And 
as we did in May, as we did in August, and as we did in September, I 
reach out my hand again, Mr. Speaker, to the Senate and to the White 
House to join us in tackling these tough solutions, tackling these 
challenges, providing these solutions not for Republicans, not for 
Democrats, not for politics whatsoever, but for America. Because it's 
the right thing to do. And without it we all know where this country is 
headed.
  Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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