Mr. Speaker, Americans all over this country are asking, Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs? We just heard from the previous speaker bragging about the Recovery Act, which has been an abject…
Mr. Speaker, Americans all over this country are asking, Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs?
We just heard from the previous speaker bragging about the Recovery Act, which has been an abject failure, an abject failure. There have been very few private sector jobs created around this country.
What has been created are a lot of government jobs here in Washington, DC. If someone's looking for a job here in Washington, they have a lot of opportunities because government continues to grow exponentially. Exponentially. But what's not happening are jobs are not being created out in Georgia or around this country where they're so desperately needed, private sector jobs.
I was talking to one of my county commission chairmen just recently and he said, Paul, 1 year ago in our country, the employment rate was 14.3 percent. I said, oh my goodness.
Of course, in my district we have a very poor district, except for the two major cities, Athens and Augusta, the Augusta area and the Athens area. And this is not one of those counties.
He said, a year ago the unemployment rate was 14.3. Now it's 10.7 percent officially. And I said, that is great. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Where'd the jobs come from?
He said, Paul, there aren't any jobs. People have just gotten discouraged and quit looking. They've fallen off the unemployment roles. There are no new jobs here. We're losing jobs and our people in our county are leaving. They're just disgusted. They're disappointed. And that's what's happening all over this country.
How do I know that? Republicans a couple of months ago launched a Web site asking the American people to speak out. It's called AmericaSpeakingOut.com. And we are asking Americans to go on AmericaSpeakingOut.com to register--it's very simple, no cost--and to tell us what we should be doing here in Congress right now today not only to create jobs, but to get the economy back on track. How to deal with health care. How to deal with the issues that the American people are facing today. We are asking America to speak out.
You see, Mr. Speaker, we live in a republic. Representative government. And the only way we can continue representative government is if Representatives listen to the American people. And I've got a sad, sad thing to say--that the leadership in this House doesn't listen to the American people.
I will give you an example. When we were debating ObamaCare, three- fourths of America did not want that bill passed. Three-fourths of America said no to ObamaCare. Two-thirds today say--at least 60 percent or more--say repeal it. Repeal it. Our leadership here in the Democratic side didn't listen to the American people. President Obama didn't listen to the American people. They forced down the throats of the American public a bill, which is now law, that was designed to fail. It's designed to fail, America.
Why do I say that? Because it was designed to push people off private health insurance, designed to push people into a what's now called a public exchange. And that's going to force people into more and more government. It's designed to lead us where the President just before ObamaCare was passed into law said that he wanted to go, where everybody in this country would be on one insurance policy. One pool is what he said. That means socialized medicine, where bureaucrats here in Washington, D.C., direct the health care for everybody in this country, to tell doctors like myself--I am a general practice medical doctor-- how to practice medicine, who we can give care to, what medicines we can use, what tests we can do.
And in fact right now today, the Federal Government tells me or other physicians across this country whether we can admit a patient that's on Medicare to the hospital or not. It's not determined by the doctor or the patient; it's determined by a government bureaucrat that's not a doctor, not even a nurse or even a health care professional.
But more importantly, what is ObamaCare going to do? I spoke to just recently the head of a manufacturing entity in my district in rural north Georgia that hires over 400 people. And he said, Paul, with the tax burden ObamaCare's going to put on me as a businessman, with all the big government programs, the stimulus bill and TARP bailouts and taking over of the private sector, he said, Paul, I'm trying to find a place to move my company offshore, away from America.
Think about that, Mr. Speaker. If we continue down this road that this leadership and the Democrats are leading us down, that plant will close. Over 400 people in rural north Georgia will be put out of work. They're going to lose their jobs. And in fact, we knew that while we were discussing ObamaCare. We knew that it was estimated by experts that at least 5 million to 5.5 million Americans were going to lose their jobs strictly because of ObamaCare. And that has not changed. We must repeal it and replace it with something else.
I introduced a bill, H.R. 3889, comprehensive health care reform system, totally constitutional according to the original intent of the Constitution. Totally in the private sector. Would radically change healthcare financing. Would radically lower the cost of health insurance for everybody in this country. Would solve most of all of the problems with portability and uninsurability, et cetera. Would leave the doctor and patient in control of their health care decisions. It's 106 pages, a major piece of legislation, not almost 3,000 like ObamaCare was. And it's very simple. You can read it and understand what that bill says.
Our Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi, said we've got to pass ObamaCare to find out what's in it. Just the other day we heard about this financial reform bill that we've got to pass it to find out what's in it. The American people deserve more, Mr. Speaker. They deserve to know what's in a bill and deserve to know how it will affect them.
Mr. Speaker, we are killing jobs by bill after bill, by bigger government program by bigger government program. It's going to hurt our economy, destroy our economy. And we're borrowing from our children and our grandchildren's future.
Mr. Speaker, our children and grandchildren are very probably going to live at a lower standard than we live today if we don't stop this outrageous spending that's been going on ever since Nancy Pelosi has been Speaker of this House. And even more so since President Obama has been in office. It's got to stop. It's got to stop.
Now, I've done many America Speaking Out town hall meetings all over the 10th Congressional District in Georgia, just listening to my constituency. I have done these in small groups. We've done big town hall meetings. We've gone into factories and asked factories and companies to speak out and to tell us what we should be doing in Congress right now today. In fact, I went to the Coca-Cola plant in Athens, Georgia, and spoke to the employees there and asked them to speak to me, and encouraged them to go on AmericaSpeakingOut.com.
I did a town hall meeting in Columbia County in Evans, Georgia, and did the same thing. Did one in Athens, which is the most liberal county in my district. In fact politically, it's a speck of blue in a sea of red. It's a very Democratic county. It's where the University of Georgia is. It's a very liberal county. And I did an America Speaking Out town hall there. Invited the whole public to come, anybody who wanted to come, because I wanted to hear.
That's what America Speaking Out's all about. We want to hear what America thinks we should be dealing with here in Congress. And offer us suggestions of how to create jobs. We're asking where are the jobs? The policy that's being followed by the Democratic majority is taking away jobs. I already mentioned how ObamaCare is going to eventually put over 5 million Americans out of work, Mr. Speaker, just because of that one bill. The stimulus bill's going to put people out of work. It's put a few people to work, more government employees than private-sector employees.
But we're asking Americans to speak out, to go on AmericaSpeakingOut.com to tell us what we should be doing here in Congress today, to offer suggestions, to vote on suggestions that are already made or comments already made. Americans can make their own comment.
These are just some of the things that--these are sheets actually that my staff wrote to suggestions of legislation that people in the 10th Congressional District of Georgia suggested that we do. No energy tax. Boy, if that energy tax--I call it tax-and-trade, my Democratic colleagues call it cap-and-trade--but it's about taxes. In fact, the President himself said that his energy tax, the tax-and-trade bill is necessary to fund ObamaCare. It's all about revenue.
The experts tell us that the national energy tax is not going to reduce carbon emissions worldwide. It's going to hurt our economy, and it's going to put millions of Americans out of work. And Americans understand that. And they said no to the energy tax. No to the finance bill that was just signed into law this week. Defund ObamaCare. No to socialized medicine. Repeal ObamaCare. Pass alternatives to health care reform.
I would love to see my bill, H.R. 3889, be put into place. In fact, I reintroduced it as a repeal ObamaCare to repeal all of this onerous bill, onerous law that's going to lead to socialized medicine here in the country, as the President has said that he wants to go to, and replace it with something in the private sector to maintain the doctor- patient relationship and to lower the cost of health care for everybody. Alternatives to health care reform.
Keeping bills germane. The American people have told me, even the liberals, in Athens, Georgia, ``We need to have bills that are germane.'' In other words, we shouldn't tack onto bills things that aren't germane to those bills.
The House passed, and in fact we're waiting on the Senate amendments to the emergency appropriations for the war supplemental bill, a $75 billion bill. Only $33 billion of that $75 billion have to do with the military and war supplemental. All the rest of that $75 billion is bigger government programs, bigger spending, that the Democratic majority pushed through.
Americans--liberals, conservatives, independents, Republicans, Democrats--have told me, keep bills germane. No to cap-and-trade. I can go on down this list, but the overwhelming thing I heard, Mr. Speaker, where are the jobs? What are we going to do to create jobs in the private sector?
And I've heard my Democratic colleagues just speak over and over again about how great this stimulus bill has been. It's been an abject failure. Where are the jobs, Mr. Speaker? Where are the jobs, Mr. President? Where are the jobs, my colleagues on the Democratic side? They're not there. In fact, the policies and the spending that we see going on over and over again from bill after bill since this President has taken office will actually take away jobs. And it's going to push jobs and manufacturers to go overseas.
I talked to one manufacturer and asked him, What can we do to get you to start hiring employees? And he said the best thing you could do is lower my corporate income tax rate. My Democratic colleagues say that we need to tax the rich, so we need to keep those corporate tax rates high. Mr. Speaker, we have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. It's 35 percent. Second only to Japan. In fact, I've talked to manufacturer after manufacturer and they tell me, ``Paul, if you just lower my corporate tax rate to 25 percent, that would help me be able to create jobs in my company.'' Just lower it 10 percent.
Mr. Speaker, I think corporate tax rates should be zero. In fact, Mr. Speaker, not only should corporate rates be zero but dividend taxes should be zero. Death taxes should be zero. Capital gains taxes should be zero. We should have an immediate write-off of capital expenditure for business, not have this prolonged depreciation schedule that the Internal Revenue Code forces them into. They have to write the check; they should be able to write it off. If we could change just the tax law, we would create jobs. In fact, I introduced H.R. 4100, the JOBS Act. My JOBS Act is an acronym for Jump-start Our Business Sector. What it would do is for 2 years, it would cut in half the payroll tax for business as well as for individuals. It would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. It would suspend the death tax; suspend the dividend taxes for 2 years. And it would lower the two lowest income tax brackets down to 10 percent and 5 percent respectively.
And if you think about that, Mr. Speaker, what would that do from a monetary perspective? What it would do is it would leave dollars in the hands of small businesses and it would leave dollars in the hands of the American public; the consumers. That would give small businesses the opportunity to expand their business, to buy inventory, to modernize, to hire new employees. And it would give dollars to the consumers so that they could buy the goods and services that they need. It would give some stability to our economic situation so we don't see the stock market jumping up and down as we do today. It looks like a yo-yo. Why is that? Because there's so much uncertainty. And why is there uncertainty out there? It's because of what this Congress and what Nancy Pelosi and Company are doing right here and what Barack Obama is proposing for more and more government; more and more of the Federal Government taking over the private sector. That uncertainty is creating a lot of fear.
I've had businesses, small businesses, large businesses, in my district tell me they're sitting on cash but they're afraid to hire new employees. Why? Because of ObamaCare. Because of the debt. Because of the outrageous spending. Because of the so-called ``financial reform bill'' that was just signed into law this week. They're afraid, and I don't blame them. I've said in multiple
floor speeches here that we have a steamroller of socialism being driven by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and fueled by Barack Obama. We need to put that steamroller of socialism in a parking lot. If we would do so, if we would put the steamroller of socialism that my Democratic colleagues are driving, if we would put that in a parking lot, we would put certainty back in the financial sector and we would see a growth in our economy. But with that uncertainty that our leadership of this House and the Senate and the President are giving to the private sector, we're going to see the business sector afraid; afraid to hire new people.
Some economists say we're fixing to go into a great depression. In fact, some even say we're going into a depression worse than we saw in the previous Great Depression. I hope and pray not. I pray that God prevents that. But whether we do or don't, I know this: The simple truth is bigger government, bigger government spending, more debt being created for our children and grandchildren to have to pay is not going to solve the economic problems of our country. We've got to stop the outrageous spending here that Congress has been doing, that this administration is doing, that the previous administration was doing.
I wasn't here during the first 6 years of the Bush administration. I was elected in 2007, is when I took office. But I voted against the TARP bill, the toxic asset relief program, because I thought it was wrong. It hasn't helped. The second tranche that President Obama forced through the Congress, it hasn't helped. Taking over GM and Chrysler hasn't helped. Taking over the student loan program; taking over the health care system hasn't helped. The stimulus bill has been an abject failure, by and large. The company that makes these huge signs to proclaim that Barack Obama and his policies are the messiah which costs Lord only knows how much has helped that company, but it hasn't helped the American taxpayer. It hasn't helped small businesses around this country by and large.
America Speaking Out gives the American people an opportunity to give us ideas about what they think, what America thinks about what we should be doing now to solve the problems. You see, I'm excited about the so-called ``Tea Party movement'' in this country. I've spoken to many Tea Party rallies. But, Mr. Speaker, there's a great misunderstanding, particularly in the press, particularly with my liberal friends, what the Tea Party is all about. We started a Tea Party Caucus just this week. I was one of the original signers of membership into the Tea Party Caucus. I've done a number of interviews. Just yesterday I did one on FOX. I just did one this afternoon. I've done many interviews recently. And it's very apparent to me and it's apparent to me to the questions that were asked during the news conference that we held yesterday, after the Tea Party Caucus started, that there's a tremendous misunderstanding, particularly by my liberal colleagues and by the press, about what the Tea Party movement is all about. And I'm excited about it.
The Tea Party simply is this: It's freedom-loving Americans, people who just basically want to live their lives without all the government intrusion. They're teed off. Tea in the Tea Party stands for Taxed Enough Already. It's an acronym. And they see the so-called ``jobs bill'' that my Democratic colleagues keep bringing to the floor of the House. I've already mentioned my JOBS Act which is an acronym for Jump- start Our Business Sector. I believe every one of the so-called ``jobs bills'' that my Democratic colleagues have introduced is an acronym for just one big slush fund, because that's what it seems to be.
The American people are angry. They're angry about not being listened to. They're angry about seeing their freedom being taken away; their jobs being taken away. The previous speaker during the 5-minutes was touting how great the stimulus act has been, but it's not been great. They have to try to spin how disastrous the spending bill has been. It's not created very many jobs. It's created some, but not very many. And certainly not very many in the private sector.
The American people are asking, where are the jobs? When are we going to get this economy back on course? We've seen a liberal icon, my Democratic colleagues, one of their icons, one of this country's icons, John F. Kennedy, considered to be very liberal at the time.
Today they'd call him a wacko, a crazy man, because he proposed tax cuts.
I hear from my Democratic colleagues that they want to tax the rich, they want to tax them even more. Well, who are the rich? It's the small businesses of this country. Most small businessmen and women file their taxes as a Sub S corporation, which means they file their business taxes on personal income taxes.
My Democratic colleagues say they're making too much money. We want it here in Washington to create a bigger government, a bigger socialistic government. And what's that going to do? It's going to kill jobs. It's going to take jobs away from millions of Americans. And my Democratic colleagues want to tax small business to the hilt. They're not happy with the high tax rates that small business are already suffering from. They want more taxes on the so-called rich, the rich of the little mom-and-pop grocery stores, the little hardware stores, the small community businesses, men's stores. It's not the Wal*Marts, the AT&Ts, the Boeings. Those aren't small businesses.
But we have developed policy, and the policy of the Democratic majority is anti-business, it's anti-freedom, it's anti-job creation. Why do they want to do that? It's because they believe, in my opinion, that government is the solution to everything. You see, they think, in my opinion, that government has to tell them how to run every aspect of their lives.
I'll give you some examples.
We've already seen where our Democratic colleagues want to tell us how much salt we can have in our food. I'm a physician, and I have prescribed low-salt diets to my patients. I don't use salt. I hardly ever pick up a salt shaker. I don't even salt watermelon or eggs when I eat those, or tomatoes. And I know as a physician we have plenty of salt for most of our bodily needs unless somebody has a particular reason that they lose salt in an abnormal way. Even athletes, for the most part, don't need salt. When I was playing football in high school, our coach would give us salt tablets. That was absolutely the wrong thing to do.
But my colleagues want to say they want to control salt in our food. They say they want to control what kind of light bulbs we can put--in fact, that's what they've done--what kind of light bulbs we can have in our lamps at home. They want to tell us what kind of cars we can drive, how much water comes out of our shower heads. They want to control every aspect of our lives, Mr. Speaker, every aspect.
There's a word for that, Mr. Speaker. That word is socialism. Central control from Washington, D.C. We have had a greater takeover of the private sector since Barack Obama's been the President of the United States than Hugo Chavez--we've had a greater takeover in the private sector in this administration than the communist dictator Hugo Chavez has nationalized the private sector in Venezuela. That's a shock to most people when you tell them that, but that's factual. We've had a greater takeover of the private sector under President Obama than Hugo Chavez has done in Venezuela.
It's got to stop. The American people are understanding that. They're sick and tired of it. They want their freedom back. They want their Nation back. They want their jobs back. They're asking where are the jobs, when are we going to put our economy back on the right track. That's what we're asking here as Republicans. We've got to stop this policy of bigger government and higher taxes, more intrusion in people's lives. And Mr. Speaker, that's all we've seen over and over again from the Democratic majority.
In fact, not all Democrats believe in that. I'll give you an example. During the debate on ObamaCare, I proposed--in fact, I wrote an op-ed along with Congressman Dent and Congressman Shadegg--one's from Pennsylvania and one's from Arizona--challenging our Democratic colleagues to introduce a Democratic bill that I had the language for. All they had to do was write
the name of the sponsor in a blank and introduce it. It would be a Democratic bill. They could claim it to be ObamaCare.
It would do four things: cross-State-line purchases for businesses and individuals; number two, anybody in this country could join an association pool--all across the country, multiple associations--to have the opportunity to buy and own their own health insurance through the association; number three, to encourage States to set up high-risk pools to cover those who are uninsurable; and number four, to have tax fairness so that everybody in this country could deduct 100 percent of their health care and health insurance cost off their income taxes.
I had Democrat after Democrat tell me this: They said, Paul, that makes sense. It really makes sense. But I can't do it. I can't do it because my leadership would punish me if I did. If I introduced that bill and tried to push it through the Democratic Caucus, my leadership would punish me for doing to so. I was told by Democrat after Democrat that they were focusing on only one thing, and that's ObamaCare as we know it.
The debate was over whether we were going to have a robust public option, a public option not so robust, or a public exchange. And that's what we wound up getting, which is actually ``public option lite''-- public option on a diet. All three of those are geared and guaranteed to force everybody in this country into a government-controlled health insurance program controlled from Washington, D.C.
The only bipartisan vote on ObamaCare was ``no.'' We had Democrats and Republicans voting ``no.'' Every Republican voted ``no.'' Seventy- five percent of America said ``no.'' But we have it now as law because Ms. Pelosi and the Democratic leadership are not listening to America. They're not listening to America when America says, Where are the jobs? We're doing that. I'm doing that.
I hold America Speaking Out town hall meetings. Republicans are going to be doing that all over this country during this August district work period. We want to hear from America. I encourage every American who is concerned about where we're going as a Nation, that's concerned about public policy--whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, Independent, whether you're a liberal or a conservative, whether you consider yourself a moderate--I'm encouraging everybody in this country to go to AmericaSpeakingOut.com and speak out. Give us your ideas about how to solve the problems, the economic problems. Give us your ideas about how to solve this unemployment problem.
I want to hear. That's the reason I've done many, I have even lost count, somewhere between 10 and 20 America Speaking Out town hall meetings and meetings with small business and large groups over the last several months, and I will continue to do so. Republicans are doing that all over the country. I wish my Democratic colleagues would do the same thing and listen to the American public.
Since last August, our Democratic colleagues went and hid because of the ire of the American public, at least most of them did, a lot of them did. Some you can see that didn't, you can see the result on YouTube right now today, Mr. Speaker. There's a tremendous anger expressed all across this country to our Democratic colleagues about that bill.
I held town hall meetings last August in the 10th Congressional District in Georgia, multiple of them, and I was cheered because I was against ObamaCare. I was cheered. America has an opportunity to speak out now through americaspeakingout.com, but we need to change the policies, Mr. Speaker. We've got to stop this socialization, nationalization of our private sector. We've got to stimulate small businesses, and the only way we can do that is to give them the money they need to expand their business, to buy inventory. My jobs act, H.R. 4100, will do just that.
I hope, Mr. Speaker, that the American public that are watching right now will ask their Congressmen to cosponsor it. I ask my Democratic colleagues to cosponsor H.R. 4100, and let's make it a bipartisan jobs act, jump-start our business sector. The way I pay for all that is to take the unspent stimulus dollars to pay for the tax reduction. So it's paid for, won't create any more debt. It won't borrow from our children's and our grandchildren's future. It is a commonsense solution.
But that's not what we're getting from our Democratic colleagues. We're getting more government, more central control from Washington, bigger bureaucracy, higher taxes that are going to cost Americans jobs, send jobs overseas where people in the Philippines or in China or whatever are working and doing jobs that Americans could very well be doing. But Americans are not having the opportunity to do those jobs because the policies of Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid are driving jobs offshore, driving jobs away from America. We've got to change those policies.
We do that through tax cuts. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President Kennedy, cut taxes, and what happened when he did? We saw a tremendous growth of the economy. President Reagan did the same thing, tremendous growth of the economy. George W. Bush cut taxes, tremendous growth of the economy.
The leadership of the House right now, today, wants to see those tax cuts that were put in place during all the years of the Bush administration, wants to see them expire. That's going to kill more jobs here in this country, and it's going to mean that farmers and small businesses are going to have to close down and sell their assets just to pay their higher taxes that are going to be required.
I'm told from some of my Democratic colleagues that there are many Democrats that don't want to see those tax cuts expire. There's some of our Democratic colleagues that understand that allowing those tax cuts to expire at the end of this year is going to cost jobs. So, again, the bipartisan approach to creating jobs is for us to at least keep those tax cuts because the jobs that are going to go away if those tax cuts expire won't go away. So we'll save jobs.
The President has a fondness to talk about the jobs he's created or saved. Well, nobody can know how many were saved. We've seen some kind of funny finance calculations or accounting here because I know of one instance, for instance, as an example, that one company got some stimulus funds and they gave everybody in their company raises. They didn't hire any new persons, not the first new employee. But the government counted every one of those increases in wages as a new job, as a new job. That's inane. It's disingenuous. It's deceptive. That's what we see over and over again.
We've got to stop that, Mr. Speaker. The American people deserve better, and I'm excited about the grassroots movement. If you want to call it the Tea Party movement, it's not just the Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Express, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks. I can go on and on about different groups, the 9/12 Group. There are many.
What my liberal colleagues and the press don't understand is that this is a grassroots organization, an effort, in all these organizations. It's not one monolithic thing. It is American citizens all over this country in their local communities that are speaking out. They're saying that they're taxed enough already. They see their jobs going away. They want to go to work. They see that the policies that we have been handed by Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, those policies are destroying jobs. They're putting millions of Americans out of work. And what they see is more of the same, and they don't want more of the same. They're taxed enough already. They want to see some changes. And I'm excited because I believe we're going to see some big changes in November, big changes on November 2.
See, Mr. Speaker, the most powerful political force in this country today is written about in the Constitution of the United States, and if you look at the document, if you look at the document itself, our Founding Fathers when they wrote the document, those three first words of the Constitution were bold and much, much larger, about four times larger, three or four times larger than all the rest of the text. What are those three words? ``We the People.''
We the people are speaking. They're saying, Where are the jobs? Republicans are saying, Where are the jobs? What I'm hearing from the leadership on the other side, from Ms. Pelosi and company, We're going to give you more government, more taxes, more government control, bigger government, more government jobs, but less in the private sector is what the bottom line's going to be.
Mr. Speaker, we've got to stop this. We've got to stop growing government and shrink it. We've got to stop this outrageous spending. We've got to repeal or replace ObamaCare with commonsense solutions that will maintain the quality of health care in this country, continue to allow the doctors and the patients to make decisions instead of some Washington bureaucrat, which is going to happen under ObamaCare.
We've got to stop bailing out Wall Street and start bailing out small businesses by giving them the money that they need by allowing them to do business and leave the dollars in their pockets. Mr. Speaker, that's what's going to create new jobs. That's what's going to put our economy back on track. That's what's going to solve this economic downturn.
I heard, when the President signed the financial reform bill--so- called, which it's not. It puts in place permanent bailouts for Wall Street. It's going to hurt Main Street banks, the community banks. It's going to create bigger bureaucracy, more government jobs.
It is going to make it more difficult for small businesses to go to their local banker and get a loan.
The President, my liberal colleagues, blamed a lack of financial regulations on the economic downturn, but that is not what caused the economic downturn. They are blind. They want to blame, as the previous speaker to me just blamed, the Bush administration. That is what I keep hearing. It is all Bush's fault. When are they going to take time?
Mr. Speaker, when is Ms. Pelosi going to take responsibility? When is Barack Obama going to take responsibility for the disastrous, disastrous policies that they are forcing down the throats of the American people? It is past time for them to take responsibility, but they are not doing it.
They are blaming the Bush administration. What caused the financial collapse was the government. It is the Community Reinvestment Act, Freddy and Fannie, poor Fed policy.
There is some blame an Wall Street, absolutely. There is some blame, even in Main Street, Main Street banks. Greed is part of the cause of that, but it was policy that was established by Congress under the Carter administration with the Community Reinvestment Act, then a reform, so-called reform, which essentially forced banks to make loans to people who couldn't pay it back.
Then we have Freddie and Fannie who would buy off those loans, poor Fed policy, that kept the interest rates low so that Freddie and Fannie could set up these no-documentation or low-documentation loans. That is what created the bubble and the burst.
So it is government. Mr. Speaker, the best way to control quantity, quality and cost of all goods and services is a free enterprise system, unencumbered by taxes and regulations. You have two things. On the one hand you have government control, socialism. On the other hand you have the free market system, and the free market system will create jobs if we will allow it to do so.
That is not what we are getting. We are getting bigger government, which is going to kill jobs. We need to stop that, Mr. Speaker. We need to create what has made this country so rich, so powerful, so successful as a political experiment in all of history. We have got to go back to those foundational principles, those foundational principles that are expressed in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the governing force in the Constitution of the United States, as it was intended.
Psalm 11, God asked a question. He says, if foundation should be destroyed, what are the righteous to do? God goes on talking about that He is sovereign and He reigns.
But how does He reign in public policy? How does He reign in this country? Well, certainly our Creator reigns supernaturally, but He also reigns through those of us who know Him as Lord and Savior, those of us who look to our Creator for direction, those of us who look to the Judeo-Christian principles that our Founding Fathers held so firmly. And those principles are based on personal responsibility and accountability. Those principles are based on the free market system, on free enterprise, where people have the ability and opportunity to succeed.
But they also have an opportunity to fail. Without an opportunity to fail, you don't have an opportunity to succeed. We see class warfare by our Democratic colleagues, where they hate the rich. They want to tax them to the hilt. They want to have a redistribution of wealth, as President Obama keeps talking about.
But what is he saying? He is saying that he knows how to run everything in human endeavor. That is what the leadership here believes. They believe in central planning. They believe government knows best. They believe that government should tell us what to eat, what car to drive, and how to live our lives and what kind of health care we can have.
Those policies destroy the free market, destroy small business. We see examples all over the world. Socialism has never worked, never will work, and I don't care whose socialism it is, whether it is Stalin's, Mao Zedong's, Castro's, Hugo Chavez's or Barack Obama's. It is not going to work; it never will work.
We have got to stop it, and it is up to the American people to stop it. The American people need to speak out. Go on americaspeakingout.com. Demand from your Congressman, your Senator, that we stop this inane policy of creating bigger government, higher taxes, more regulation, more government, more control from Washington.
Say ``no'' to all of that and say ``yes'' to tax cuts, to the free market system, to freedom. They want socialism. I want freedom. America wants freedom. We have got to demand it, Mr. Speaker, and it is up to the American people to do so. America can speak out, can speak out to my Democrat colleagues, can speak out to the President, can speak out to their Senators, speak out by going on americaspeakingout.com. Demand policy that's going to create jobs.
I see I have been joined by my great friend and an excellent Member of this body and the Republican Conference, my good friend, Steve Scalise from New Orleans, Louisiana. He knows about this inane, disastrous policy that this administration has put in place, how it has killed jobs in Louisiana throughout the gulf coast, directly as well as indirectly.
Mr. Scalise, thanks for joining us.
Thank you, Mr. Scalise, I appreciate that. And not only is it killing jobs, but it's going to make everybody's gasoline go up. It's going to make electricity prices go up.
I said here on the floor in a speech that the President's energy tax, cap and tax--or cap and trade, as they call it, some call it cap-and- tax, I call it tax and trade because it's all about taxes--is going to hurt the most vulnerable people here in America. It's going to hurt the poor people. It's going to hurt the seniors who are on limited income more than anybody else. And it seems to me that this disastrous economic as well as environmental disaster that has happened in the gulf is being utilized by this President to try to force his energy policy, his tax and trade bill.
I've been criticized by the liberals around the country because I've said it's going to hurt the poorest people in this country, and it will. In fact, the President himself said, ``It will necessarily make electricity prices skyrocket,'' make electricity prices skyrocket, necessarily, that's what the President said about the energy tax. It would necessarily make electricity prices skyrocket. Who's going to have the hardest time paying their electric bill? The poor folks in America, those people on limited income, the senior citizens, who can least afford to have their gasoline go up, to have their electricity go up. It's going to be disastrous. And it's going to kill jobs.
In fact, the President talks about all the green jobs that are going to be produced. Spain put in a similar type of tax, a similar kind of policy in Spain, and it did produce green jobs. But Mr. Speaker, for every green job produced I think it was 2.3 jobs were lost, a net loss of 2.3 jobs for every job that was created. For every green job that was created, every green job created they lost 2.3 jobs. And that's what our President wants to force on the American public.
I'm wondering whether he's closing down exploration in the gulf just to try to force through his energy tax. I don't know. But I've had people, as I've listened at my America Speaking Out town hall meetings I've had people across my district say that they wonder about that. I was doing an America Speaking Out town hall meeting in Athens, Georgia and a lady got up and she said she wanted to see all new energy exploration stopped, all new drilling for energy and gas to stop in this country. We had about 100 people there. I said, okay, let's find out what everybody else thinks. Now, mind you this is the most liberal county in my district, very Democratic. I didn't carry it as a Republican in any of my elections when there was a Democrat and Republican on the ballot. I did carry it in the special election when I was first elected, but not since. And I asked the public, we invited the general public, I said, how many of you in this audience want to see us stop any new exploration of oil and gas? Eight people held up their hands. Then I said, how many of you want to see us lift the moratorium and start back to exploring and tapping into our own resources here in America and continue drilling for oil and gas and continue developing our own natural resources our own energy sources? Everybody else. I think we had a total of 98 folks, so 90 people held up their hands that they wanted to see it continue, eight people said they wanted to see it stopped.
Over and over again I've talked during this special hour about how the leadership--Ms. Pelosi and company--have gone against what the American people want. They want to see jobs created. We asked them, where are the jobs? They want to see their economy stimulated, not government. We asked them that.
Mr. Scalise, I know that you've seen the disaster of the moratorium on the jobs in Louisiana, but it affects all the Gulf Coast States certainly, not only directly, but indirectly. In just the few minutes we have left, could you give us some examples of some of those non- directly affected people, the fishermen, the people on the platforms, et cetera, could you give us some examples of those people who have been affected by this moratorium?
Real quickly, the people I talk to don't want an unemployment check, they want a paycheck. And I yield back.
Mr. Speaker, where are the jobs? We need to have different policies to create jobs than what we've been given by Ms. Pelosi and company.
I yield back.
