Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to be here on the floor where so much history has been made since the House moved down here around 1858, 1859. Recently I saw an estimate that our Secretary of the…
Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to be here on the floor where so much history has been made since the House moved down here around 1858, 1859.
Recently I saw an estimate that our Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Henry Paulson, and the Fed Chair may have committed or are in the process of committing an estimated $7.7 trillion. I couldn't believe it, $7.7 trillion?
So I wanted to know how much do people pay each year in income tax? The estimate I got was $1.21 trillion from individual income tax payments is what is estimated for the year 2008. Six and a half times less than what our bureaucrats here in Washington, two people, have committed us to or are trying to commit us to to get the economy going and to make credit more available so people who are lagging behind on their mortgages can catch up? I couldn't believe it. Six and a half times more than individual income tax that's going to be paid in this year? It's outrageous.
My first thought was we'd be better off if we had an entire tax holiday for all of 2008, that everybody that paid in money so far this year gets all of their money back. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, people around this country starting to think about how much money they would get back that they have already paid into the Federal treasury this year, how much they wouldn't have to pay in for the rest of the year? It's an incredible amount of money. Think about the cars that would be bought, how many automakers would be bailed out as people
bought new cars. Think about all of the mortgages, all the new home sales that would take place, new homes built, new businesses built. An extraordinary amount of money. And yet we've got bureaucrats trying to get the economy going, obligating six and a half times that much money.
Now, I understand that some of that $7.7 trillion is an investment. We have heard people say here in Washington, leaders I care a lot about, but they've said only the Federal Government has enough patience to hold private assets for years until they meet full maturity. Now, I am finishing my 4th year here, but just in the 4 years I have been here, I can tell you there is no patience in the Federal Government. We can't even keep the same tax incentives in place from year to year, and here we're supposed to hold these administration to administration?
The bailout bill in September was a fiasco. Even those who supported the idea of a bailout bill, when you look closely at the bill, should have known this was not the thing to do. We have never in the history of the country since the Constitution came into play in 1787, as it came into being, we have not given one man this much unrestricted, unfettered authority to just obligate hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars just however he feels it ought to be spent.
So you look at the way Secretary Paulson has obligated the first $350 billion. Well, it's been squandered when you look at the effect it was supposed to have. For one thing banks we hear are starting to use the money to buy up competition. What does that do? It monopolizes banking. It kills the community bank for sure. And this is the same Secretary of the Treasury who back in September used his emergency authority to say we're going to stand good dollar for dollar for every dollar you've got in money markets, but we are not going to say the same thing for the good, safe community banks. They're only good for $100,000. He didn't say it. He didn't have to. They knew it. So he knowingly, and it had to be knowingly because I can't believe he's that ignorant otherwise--he's a very intelligent man. He had to know that he was intentionally creating the biggest 1-day run on banks in American history as people went in, pulled their money down to the $100,000 level that had that much, and moved it to money markets. Maybe that was the intent. Since he comes from Wall Street, he wanted to take it out of the community, the safe, commercial banks, and send it to his friends on Wall Street. Maybe that was the point, but he did that.
Now, others for whatever reason have gotten money and all of a sudden decided to tighten up credit. I have a friend, a constituent in Nacogdoches, Texas, who has a restaurant there. He went down to Wells Fargo, he tells me this week. He went down, I believe it was last week, to Wells Fargo in Houston and asked for a loan, and they said you're just a little late. Apparently after Wells Fargo, they said, got their money from the Federal taxpayers, they tightened the screws on credit and now they could no longer lend it to him. They could have if he had been there sooner before the Federal Government gave Wells Fargo the money. But now that Wells Fargo got the money, it's time to pull the plug and not lend to good borrowers anymore.
That was not the intent. I was against the bailout, voted against it both times. Did not support it. You read it. We should not have given that kind of authority to one person and especially the provision that allowed him to hire whatever advisers and whatever managers, whatever he wanted when he was going to outsource that. And now I hate to be in a position of saying I told you so, but it wasn't a good bill and now we have seen that.
Now, because he was doing all this fear mongering for 2 weeks, you know, the financial sky is falling as he ran around, he scared the stock market into paranoid schizophrenia. That's why it's up, it's down, it's up, it's down. The least little thing sets it off because he scared it into that. You cannot have a national leader go on television and say we're about to have a worse depression than the 1930s. We're about to have a stock market crash like 1929. You can't do that. You have to be the one that says ``we have nothing to fear but fear itself.'' Calm down, it's going to be okay. And it turns out all the while I read something that indicated that we had more home sales in September than any month since the year 2003. So things were going pretty good until we got all that fear mongering.
The other thing was he said he was going to buy troubled assets, buy the mortgage-backed securities. And if I understood right, before the Senate he testified he was already thinking by the time it passed the House that he was going to have to do something else. Maybe it was the next day. If he were to have been considering doing something else other than what he represented, going back to my days as a judge, if somebody, whether it was the Secretary of the Treasury or anybody else, comes in and gets money based on false premises or false promises that he knows he's not going to follow through on, you get into some interesting doctrines, whether it's a promissory estoppel, fraud, different things like that. The bottom line is it's time to end his authority.
Now, I've had people in this Congress tell me, no, what was negotiated with the Treasury was that we will get a strict up-or-down vote before Paulson can spend the other $350 billion. That's not what the bill says. The bill basically says that before he can squander the other $350 billion, and ``squandering'' is my word and I paraphrase based on his prior performance, that before he can get that $350 billion, all he has to do is propose a plan, and if Congress doesn't vote to disapprove the plan within 15 days, he gets the money. They could do that over Christmas. People not get back in time to have a vote, and he's got the money.
So it's time to end that. That's why even though my first thought was a whole year tax holiday, and imagine what that would do for the economy, it would be extraordinary, there were not a lot of supporters for that. I love and cherish and appreciate the support of the great congressman from the State of Arizona, John Shadegg. John has been a confidant. He has been a helpful source and resource. He liked the idea and was telling me tonight he may go ahead and file that anyway. But in looking at the $350 billion still unspent of the original $700 billion that this Congress allocated for him to spend, let's cut that off and let's see what we could get instead. Instead of letting Mr. Paulson spend that money, let's let the taxpayers keep their own money for 2 months. What you would do under this bill, and we filed it yesterday, H.R. 7309, it would allow for the months of January and February a complete tax holiday. This isn't by and by in the sky. This is real time. In January if this bill were to be brought to the floor--and I feel sure if it gets to the floor it will pass because otherwise people would be afraid to face the voters if they voted not to let taxpayers spend their money but to allow Paulson to continue to have that authority or some other Secretary of the Treasury. Let there be no Federal withholding for the months of January and February. Not only would there be no withholding, the tax rate, as it says in the bill, for wages received for services performed during the period beginning January 1, 2009, ending February 28, 2009, shall be 0 percent. On down it indicates self-employment income for services performed during the period beginning January 1, 2009, ending February 28, 2009, the percentage shall be 0 percent.
So, basically, getting a two-twelfth or 16\2/3\ percent tax cut for the year 2009, now, that will help get the economy going. Why not let somebody have that substantial amount of money being pulled out of their check and sent to Washington for Paulson to squander, why not let them have it, let them catch up on their mortgage?
Because I know, I have heard a number of people say we fell a little behind back when gasoline was $4 a gallon. I can't get my breath. I can't catch a breather. Let them get the breather by getting their own money, getting their own FICA. Because that means even people who are on the lowest wage-earning scale, who don't make enough to pay income tax, they still have FICA withheld for Social Security and all from their paycheck.
This would let them have that back, give them a boost. Since they are not
having to take anything out for FICA, the employer would not have to match that for 2 months. That will allow the employer not to have to fire anybody for a couple of months, give them a little breather to catch up.
Then at the end of the year you have 2 months for which you did not have income that's taxable. Now, the reason we had to word it the way we did was because people were saying, man, if that were about to happen, we will just postpone Christmas bonuses and put them in January or February. Well, that's not what this is for. This is for wages earned, for services performed during those months, and that would make it work.
Now, I have been joined by my friend here from Georgia, Dr. Paul Broun, who it is an honor to serve with. I would like to yield such time to my friend, Paul Broun, as he may use.
Certainly.
It absolutely did, no question.
You remember correctly, yes, sir.
It certainly did.
I am a cosponsor on Mr. Shadegg's bill as well, because I love the idea. It would get the economy flying so high, going to strong. Who knows if and when it could ever come down, it would move it so quickly. Thank you.
Absolutely.
It would be H.R. 7309.
That's correct.
I sure do thank my friend from Georgia. I appreciate those comments very much.
This poster pretty much says it all. This is what boils down H.R. 7309 into a nutshell. You have the Secretary of the Treasury Paulson here on one side, and then they have got you, the taxpayer, all the taxpayers across America on the other. The question is, who do you want to spend your $350 billion, because it hasn't been spent very well.
When you hear that there are executives that may get millions in bonuses for running their business into the ground, and, sure, the government has some culpability in that, we sure do. Things haven't been run very well. But, obviously, they haven't run them very well either, and they want bonuses while the taxpayers they are taking it from have none and are cutting back on Christmas presents. Because of the way things are going, it is really tragic.
My friend from Georgia mentioned the automakers bailout that we voted on tonight is a mistake, it's not properly done. It is only a temporary fix that's going to lead to more and more and more. It sounds like a placation to the UAW.
I am much more concerned about car dealers than the UAW. I am very concerned about the auto workers and all these plants all over the country.
Because one of the things I found when we went to China a few years ago, a number of bipartisan groups went, talked to different CEOs from industry. Why did you move your industry to China?
Over and over we heard them say, well, our quality control was better in America. I thought perhaps they would say we moved because of the cheaper labor. They said, yes, labor is cheaper, and no unions to deal with. But that's not the reason we kept hearing that they moved. It was that we have a corporate tax that's over twice what China has, and then apparently they are willing to negotiate with some corporations, depending on what they bring to China.
So I am not as concerned for organizations as I am for the individuals; the workers in these plants, the workers at the car dealers, all these people that will be hurt if the automobile makers in America go down. But I don't think that will happen, even through a chapter 11.
But I am extremely concerned any time any entity has money that belongs to other people and they hold on to it as if for ransom, and that is what we are hearing may be happening with some of the hold-back money, the rebate money that is owed by the auto makers to the dealers. And it is just not right.
You come in here to Congress begging for money and you are not even going to live up to your side of the bargain? Regardless of what your religious beliefs are, and I never seek to impose mine on anyone else, but Jesus did refer to such a situation in one of his parables, like as in one person being forgiven their debts, and then they go and lord it over someone under them.
We are seeing that kind of thing, and it should not be happening, and there should not be a dime provided to the auto makers until they provide the money that is owed to the people that they have, that should be going to these dealers rather than holding them up for the money they are properly owed. I don't think they ought to get a dime until they are properly reimbursed themselves out in the dealerships.
Anyway, we have bureaucrats in Washington picking winners and losers. The former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, wrote an article this past week, and I quote from it: ``The bankruptcy of the current Washington political establishment makes Representative Louie Gohmert's new proposal for a tax holiday proposal intriguing.''
He went on to say, ``What Pelosi and Paulson are proposing to pour into crony capitalism is more than what it would cost to give every American taxpayer a total Federal tax holiday for 2 months.'' It is a great article and I would commend that to you. ``A people stimulus package, a tax holiday instead of a bailout.'' He has a website at Newt.org.
Also American Solutions has some wonderful information about the proposed tax holiday. And Jeb Babbin of Human Events, the publisher there, has a tremendous article on this. He has been extraordinary in his support for this idea. At one point he says, ``Most Americans were opposed to the bank bailout last fall, and neither they nor the markets themselves have confidence that any of the bailouts or `stimulus packages' will work. They will have confidence in Gohmert's plan because it is an economic stimulus that has been proven by history. Tax cuts mean more spending, savings and investment. They pave the way to economic recovery. Government bailouts do not.''
He said, ``Gohmert's tax holiday plan is eloquent in its simplicity.''
Mr. Speaker, that is all I know to do, is come back with simplicity.
``Every American taxpayer would pay no Federal income or FICA taxes for the first two months of 2009. For the typical American family earning about $50,000 a year, that would mean they would keep about $2,000 that would otherwise be paid to the government. People making that kind of money could certainly use $2,000 more than someone getting a multi-million dollar bonus.''
``In any event,'' he says, ``Gohmert's plan doesn't pay for Wall Street bonuses or let banks use bailout money to buy other banks or pay dividends. It doesn't rely on bureaucrats to pay money out to the right people at the right time or try to stimulate the economy with token payments to people who don't pay taxes. Most Americans pay about 25 percent of their income in Federal income tax and another 7.25 percent in FICA, Social Security and Medicare taxes.
``Computing how much money Gohmert's tax holiday would leave in your family's checkbook is very simple. The fact is, you can just look at your paycheck. Look at the stub. It will tell you how much has been held out of your check. You see how much has been held out of your check for a month for Federal withholding and for FICA. That is what you would get back.''
I would like to point out, there was a quote decades ago from John Kenneth Galbraith about economists. Opinions of economists have been bantered about over and over again. But I think about Galbraith's quote when he said there are only two kinds of economists: There are those who don't know, and
those who don't know they don't know, and I think our Treasury Secretary is in the latter category.
An interesting article published, ``Less Government is More Better,'' by Ted Nugent. The guy is amazing. He is a rock star, and he is an amazing rock star when it comes to political philosophy as well, and I am quoting from his article.
He says, ``That is right, a 2 month, $350 billion tax holiday, and no income tax for January and February 2009. This would be massive wads of your money staying in your pockets where it belongs, surely doing more for the sagging economy than using it to bail out Wall Street or the automotive industry.''
He also says, ``Fedzilla,'' apparently that is his term for the Federal Government here in Washington, ``has just gotten bigger and bigger. Of course, Fedzilla,'' he says, ``bureaucrats such as Speaker Pelosi and others, will fight Congressman Gohmert's proposal because they believe Fedzilla knows how to better spend your money than you do. But this arrogant attitude by Fedzilla-addicted zombies is always the problem, never the solution.''
He said, ``Fedzilla rarely gets anything right. Need proof? Quick, name three specific things Fedzilla has spent your money on which you believe was a wise use of your tax dollars.''
He says, ``Taxpayers are partially to blame for the financial mess created by Fedzilla. We have sat idly by and drank the bureaucratic Kool-Aid brewed by Fedzilla and slowly surrendered our financial independence to big government bureaucrats. Shame on us,'' Ted Nugent says. He says, ``We should have been snarling watchdogs of the bureaucrats with our tax dollars stuffed in their bloated wallets, instead of solace, disconnected, apathetic accomplice lapdogs.''
You have got a quote here from Thomas Jefferson. Ted Nugent quotes Jefferson saying, ``I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.''
Boy, if that doesn't apply. Of course, Ted Nugent says, ``You think?'' Sounds like my sister's response. ``You think?''
In any event, this is a simple bill. And I know some people have said, won't that hurt Social Security? Section 3 deals with that, and requires the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Commissioner of Social Security as appropriate, to determine what impact the nonpayment of FICA for 2 months would have on the Social Security trust fund and the Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund, Federal Disability Insurance trust fund, Federal Hospital Insurance trust fund, and they have to make sure the difference is made up.
We have already allocated $350 billion, so shutting them down from using that and saying the taxpayers get it instead sounds like a pretty good deal. I hope it would.
We have got to get back to the roots of what America was founded on. It broke my heart back in September when we had this bailout proposed. On that first Monday we took the vote, some of us knew it was going to be tough in the stock market. Why? Because the Treasury Secretary had forecast a self-fulfilling prophesy that the stock market would drop unless he got his $700 billion slush fund.
Well, that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you promise the market is going to drop unless something happens, it usually happens the way you say it, because the market is fragile. It relies so much on confidence. So it dropped 777 points. Something Biblical about that, 777. Or I guess if you are into I guess slot machines, something intriguing about that as well, 777.
But it also broke my heart to see so many people, they knew the principles of this country, they knew what it was founded on. They knew what started the Revolution. They had their history. They knew that the people in the colonies, in what back then were the colonies of America, did not want the king's government, any government, owning all that they held dear in this country.
When the king, the government, started exhorting too much power and control and ownership over things in the colony, it started a revolution. When the signers of the Declaration of Independence signed that document, they knew that King George would see it. It was posted. It was made available. It was read out. People knew who had signed it, and so would King George III. They knew if the Revolution failed, their lives were over.
You look at the end of the Declaration of Independence. They said ``we pledge our lives, our fortunes,'' and many of them lost both. Some lost their lives, some lost their fortunes, some lost their families, but they believed it was worth it to have a country in which people could be free to decide what to do with their own property.
You know, the pilgrims tried this idea of basically socialism. They had a beautiful compact when they came to this land here, the ``New World'' they called it. The compact was they would all share the land, they would all produce from it, they would bring into the common storehouse and then they would share equally.
After the first winter, when so many died of starvation, they realized we got to go do something different here. First of all, if you don't work, you don't eat. Sound familiar? That is what the Apostle Paul had to order after the New Testament church tried the idea of everybody bringing into the common storehouse and then sharing it equally.
The other thing they did was provide private plots of land to each individual so they could eat what they produced and then share what was left. That is the way America got started. Those were lessons that the founders knew. And they knew that if individuals had the ability to succeed and flourish as private individuals without government control and government constant intervention, that this could become the greatest country in the world.
If you read one of John Adams's letters to Abigail after the signing of the Declaration, you can just virtually feel the excitement. He said, ``This is a great day.'' My paraphrase is, this is a great day. We have within our grasp in this country something that the philosophers and the dreamers have only dreamed about, and that is within our grasp. This day ought to be celebrated throughout this Nation's history with picnics and parades, and he mentioned firing of guns. We substitute fireworks. He knew how important it was, because of the ideal that people could have a government, this experiment in government, where they would control the government and govern themselves.
And somehow we have wandered so far from that that in September of this year, we could have a bill that so many would vote for that would allow one man, a king of a treasurer, to buy private assets, let the government take them and make money.
Let me just say, when you hear somebody in the government say we are going to take taxpayer money and make money with it, then the response should be, it is none of your business. Taxpayers always make more money with taxpayer money than the government could ever do. That is not their job. It is called socialism when the government buys into banks, buys stock in the banks, buys stock in insurance companies, and stock has been offered in the car companies.
We have a bill that will make a Car Czar. Can you imagine? I mean, Ted Nugent called the government ``Fedzilla.'' Can you imagine the kind of creation Fedzilla would come up with if it starts being the Car Czar, designing cars and telling Detroit what they have to produce? I wouldn't want to buy one of those. We saw those kind of cars. Not that many people bought the Yugos or the other Russian cars produced over there designed by a government-controlled car company.
People didn't want them. They wanted American cars if they could get them.
But, in any event, we've come to this time when, in American history, people would willingly vote to socialize a segment of the economy. I was told, well, this couldn't be socialism, this was before the final vote, because I only know three socialists in America and they're all against the bailout bill.
Well, it turns out they didn't like the idea of giving Wall Street all this money. They just wanted the government to take over the financial sector. But hearing one of them on television
after the bailout, he said, you know, this actually ends up being a great day because we've federalized, socialized whatever you want--he didn't say that, but it's basically socialized a segment of the financial economy, the financial sector. And now we just need, according to him, to take over the rest of it and then we spread it across the country.
That sounds good. And I heard somebody call into a talk show and say, what's really wrong with socialism?
Well, let me explain it to you this way. When I was an exchange student in the Soviet Union back in 1973, I spent the summer over there; went out to a collective farm, and there were some farmers who were sitting in the shade, you know, mid-morning.
Well, I've worked on farms, ranches, growing up in East Texas, and I know, during the summer, like this was, you start your work as quick as you can after daylight, and you want to be finished before the sun gets too hot. I've worked in 104, 105-degree heat with lots of humidity and it isn't fun, so you try and finish before it gets that hot.
These guys were all sitting in the shade. And I spoke a little Russian back then and I asked them, trying to be nice, when do you work out in the field? And they laughed at me, at the question. And one of them spoke and said, I make the same number of rubles if I'm out there or if I'm here, so I'm here. That's why socialism never works, because when people find out that they can get just as much as the person that works from sun up to sun down, then it falls apart.
Now, the Soviets set a record of having socialism for 70 years. And the only way they could make it work was to have a tyrannical central government that could kill you or imprison you if you didn't play along. But it was doomed to failure.
Socialism is always doomed to failure. And this country, if it were to continue going down this road, would not make 70 years unless it went to a tyrannical government as well; and God help us if that were to happen.
In any event, I would rather the prayers be that God continue to bless America; that we get back to our founding principles; that we embrace the principles that made America great, and not the principles that brought about the Revolution.
My bill, H.R. 7309, helps get us back a little bit on track. And you know what a great healthy by-product would be? When people start realizing how much money they're sending to Washington, they might demand a little better accountability, the kind of accountability we have not gotten from the first $350 billion that have been squandered for who knows what. It hasn't helped.
But with that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the patience. I would encourage, Mr. Speaker, people all across America to call your Representative, call your Senators, let them know that the taxpayers should be the one to spend the $350 billion, not the Treasury Secretary.
