American Jobs Act of 2011

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak here today, and I certainly appreciate my friends enlightening the Chamber and those that may be prone to listening.

I want to add a little bit to the enlightenment, as we've seen that the President is out there. And here is an article from the AP, dated October 4, saying that President Barack Obama is criticizing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for saying the President's $447 billion jobs bill will not get a vote in its entirety in the Republican-led House. The President singled out Mr. Cantor. According to the article, it says, `` `I'd like Mr. Cantor to come down here to Dallas and explain what in this jobs bill he doesn't believe in,' Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday at a Texas community college.''

And as we know, the President would have been reading those remarks, because he wouldn't want to stray far from the teleprompter with remarks. We've seen what happens on those occasions, and it isn't pretty.

The article goes on:

``Three weeks after Obama sent the legislation to Congress, the proposal has run into resistance from Republicans and even some Democrats.''

See, the article's not quite accurate on that, because we know that the President came in here, in this very body after he demanded to come speak, which requires an invitation. You can't just come speak on the House floor unless you're recognized by the Speaker, you're a Member of the House, or if the House votes to allow someone to come in who's not a Member.

Some people are surprised when they come in, Mr. Speaker, that the President's not up there where you are, but

the rules make it very clear. This is the people's House. The President can only come, just like any other leader that's invited, for instance, Prime Minister Netanyahu. They speak from the second podium because they're invited guests.

Well, now, it's a little bit rude to demand to come speak in someone's house, and then you come in there and lecture them and you state things like repeatedly saying, You've got to pass this bill right away, right now; pass this bill, this bill, and it turns out you didn't even have a bill. You had the gall to come in here and demand we pass a bill and you haven't even got a bill?

And then on Friday, the President hit the campaign trail. Well, maybe not the campaign trail, but whatever you want to call it. He was out there spending millions and millions and millions of dollars to go to different places around the country and demand we pass this bill. Tell Congress, pass my bill, and he didn't have a bill.

Saturday, Sunday, he's out there saying, Pass my bill right now, pass it right away. People, go to work immediately. Never mind that he had to take a vacation before he could get around to producing a bill that was that important. Never mind that he's going around telling everybody, We should make Congress pass a bill that doesn't exist.

On Monday, I was a little bothered we were being condemned for not passing a bill that didn't exist. So we were pushing to try to get a copy of this phantom bill. Late that afternoon, we finally got a copy emailed. I printed it out that Monday night at around 11 p.m., and I started going through the President's bill.

Now, by Wednesday, when no bill was filed and when the President was still running around spending millions of taxpayer dollars, condemning Congress for not passing his bill when he was so busy out there telling people to make Congress ``pass my bill,'' he forgot to have anybody file the bill. For 6 days, we were condemned here in this Chamber for not passing the President's bill. He was so busy condemning Congress for not passing his bill that he forgot to ask somebody to file it for him.

By Wednesday, I got tired of being condemned for not passing the American Jobs Act, so I filed an American Jobs Act. Mine's two pages. It's H.R. 2911. It would create more jobs in America than anything that the President has ever even talked about because, though you have businessmen who are very successful, like Donald Trump, saying we ought to slap a 25 percent tariff on everything we buy from China, that starts a trade war. I'm sure we don't win. I don't think China wins. I don't think anybody wins. It would be messy. China owns so much of our debt, unfortunately, that it's probably not a smart move right now until we get out from under this debt.

The Bible talks very clearly about what happens when you allow somebody to own your debt. Basically, you become a slave to them. So I'm looking forward to the day we don't owe China and we don't owe foreign countries, the day we get out of debt because we balance our budget; and it looks like it will take a balanced budget amendment to do that.

In the meantime, there is no treaty that would be violated, no trade agreement, no court order anywhere in the world that would prevent us from eliminating the 35 percent tariff that we put on all American-made goods before they're able to sell them abroad. It's called a 35 percent corporate tax, the largest corporate tax in the world. It's the number one reason that I've heard from CEOs as to why they moved their businesses to other countries.

So my two-page bill, the American Jobs Act--and I do appreciate the President promoting the American Jobs Act; that's my bill--reduces the 35 percent corporate tax to zero. Now, there are some people who never really got economics, and they don't understand the way the real world works. They think the real world works like CBO's archaic rules that say you can't take actual historic precedent to figure out what effect a bill will have.

Never mind even if the same result always occurs after a certain thing is done, you can't consider that because the 1974 liberal Congress that ran us out of Vietnam and left all our allies there to be killed by our enemies put in the rules for CBO to score bills. So you don't get a fair look at what really happens with CBO rules, and there are some people who think those rules are the way you have to look at things. The fact is, if you reduced the corporate tax, especially to zero, jobs would come flooding back into America.

Now, I would think unions would love this bill. If you really want union jobs back in America; if you're really willing to say, you know what, forget this business about America being nothing but a service economy, we really want manufacturing jobs back, then eliminate the 35 percent insidious tariff we put on American-made goods before they can be sold abroad.

As I've said here on the floor, I'm willing to negotiate, to be bipartisan. If the President can't bring himself to get to zero, then let's negotiate somewhere in between. We could do that. Herman Cain is talking about 9 percent. But then we have the President out there demanding that we pass his bill. Then he's saying things about it that simply are not factual, not factual at all. I know, because I read the bill. I'm very irritated with people who think the President's lying about his bill, because I believe I can prove he's not lying about his bill. He doesn't know what's in his bill. You can't lie about something you don't know, and I believe I can prove the President is not a liar. Absolutely not.

He gave that speech in here on Thursday night. The next day, he's on the road condemning Congress for not passing his bill. There was no bill yet. Saturday, he's on the road condemning Congress for not passing his bill. There's no bill. He was still keeping that up all day Monday. Well, it wasn't until Monday that his bill got finished. There's no way he could keep giving those speeches every single day all over the country and have had the 6 or 7 hours I did between 11 p.m. to 5 or 6 a.m.--I've said five, but I was still going awhile--but at least the 6 hours that I took the night the bill came out to go through his bill. He hadn't had that time. There's no way the President could work that 6-hour schedule, or time in his schedule, to go through the bill like I did. There's no way to condemn the President for not knowing what's in his bill when he hasn't had time, when he's been too busy condemning Congress for not passing it. How could he know what was in it?

Then today, of course, we see the President's knocking the GOP leadership, and he's telling people on the campaign trail--let's see. This is an article from Yahoo! News, by Chris Moody:

President Obama is in Dallas today, urging Americans who

support the American Jobs Act to demand that Congress pass it

already.

Though it's been nearly a month since he laid out this

plan, House Republicans haven't acted to pass it, and House

Majority Leader Eric Cantor is out there actually bragging

that they won't even put the jobs package up for a vote--

ever.

It's not clear which part of the bill they now object to--

building roads, hiring teachers, getting veterans back to

work. They're willing to block the American Jobs Act, and

they think you won't do anything about it.

Apparently, those are the President's words, according to the article, the best I understand this. Oh, this was the President's reelection campaign that sent out an email blasting House Republicans for not voting on the proposal.

It's just been in the last hour, while the President is condemning Republicans for not passing his bill, that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, tried to force a vote on the President's plan in the upper Chamber on Tuesday afternoon; but Reid used a procedural tactic to block the bill from coming to the floor. He called the Republicans' insistence on a vote a ``publicity stunt.'' So the President hasn't had time to read the bill. He hasn't had time to find out who was really blocking his bill. Well, it turns out it's really Harry Reid in the Senate.

Based on the things the President has said, I know he hasn't read this, because I know the President would not be dishonest. When he's out there and has repeatedly said that we're going to make millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share, I know he wouldn't go out there and say that if he knew the

truth about what was in his bill, because in his bill at pages 134 and 135, it gives the definition of who's rich and who's going to get it socked to him.

The President has been saying repeatedly ``millionaire and billionaire''; but bless his heart, if he had time to read the bill-- and I hope somebody will carve out some time for him to do that. I know his speech schedule out there of condemning Congress has kept him tied up--but if they could work in some time for him to read his own bill and just stop condemning Congress for just a little bit and if he has enough time to get to page 135, he'll find out that the people he's going after that he says are millionaires and billionaires in his bill--and it's not a jobs bill.

Since I have used the name that the President was originally plugging, I think his bill would be better called ``the saving Obama's job bill.''

But that may not be fair either because if people really find out what's in this bill, I don't think they would be very happy. I'm not sure it saves his job.

But he defines millionaire and billionaire--right here on page 135-- as any taxpayer whose adjusted gross income is above $125,000 in the case of a married filing separately return, and that's $250,000 in the case of a joint return, married filing jointly.

And here again this may be something nice he's throwing out for gay folks that are living together, so he can tell them actually you're better off not getting married, because there's some marriage penalty here. If you're the head of a single household, you've got an exemption of $225,000; all other cases, $200,000.

So it really penalizes married individuals and, apparently, according to this bill, a millionaire or a billionaire is somebody who makes $125,000.

But if you think this is good news, if you want to get divorced, it is good news for you because if you're married and you're filing a joint return, you get a $250,000 exemption. Or if you're married and filing singly, you get a $125,000 exemption. The good news is, if you're thinking about divorce, you can actually get divorced and have a $75,000 to $100,000 higher exemption if you'll just get divorced, and you can even live together. This is the President's proposal: live together and you get a whole lot more of an exemption than if you're married.

Now, of course, the Founders, they all understood marriage to be between a man and a woman, and that's the way the history of the country has been. Study after study has shown that the odds are children will be better adjusted if they have the two-parent home, the traditional two-parent home. Obviously, there's some homes that aren't good and children are not well served there. But this President, by virtue of the power as the old saying, the power to tax, the power to destroy, takes a shot at traditional, conventional marriage.

Then there is an additional AMT amount. That's subsection c, because if you are a millionaire or a billionaire, which means you make more than $125,000 and you're married, there is an extra penalty for you that the President's got waiting for you in his so-called jobs bill.

I don't know if he's aware--I just don't see how he could be because he's been so busy out making speeches everywhere. But if you were to look, Mr. Speaker, at the stuff in here, well, he says it's about jobs; so I bet the President does not know that here at page 75, we've got a new Federal entity, although it's defined on page 76 as a private, nonprofit corporation, called the Public Safety Broadband Corporation, because this President believes there is danger in people having broadband in their home.

Can you really trust the American people? It has to be the theme of this part of the President's so-called jobs bill. Apparently, he thinks there's a public safety threat in broadband that people have coming into their home and business. So he's created this private, nonprofit corporation.

You might say, well, good, thank goodness it's not government; it's a private nonprofit corporation that will control everybody's broadband. Good news, is it?

Because when you look down at section 285, halfway down page 76, you see who's on the board of directors. And even though it's a private, nonprofit corporation, the board of directors is comprised of--the Federal members are the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Attorney General of the United States, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. I believe those are all appointed by the President. How about that? But it's a private, nonprofit corporation; so surely the Federal Government wouldn't try to control it.

But the Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and Attorney General, shall appoint 11 other individuals who serve as non-Federal members of the board.

Well, isn't that happy news? They're not really Federal even though the President's appointees are the ones that will be on the board with these folks. They'll owe their appointment to them.

But it's just interesting. I bet the President has no idea. And, of course, I know the President's aware of what a fiasco to our Federal budget Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been and the danger that it posed to our Federal economic system. Well, he's probably not aware that in here his bill creates--I'm sure there's no way he could know what's in this bill. He's too busy running around condemning us for not passing it. There's no way he could have spent 6 hours reading this, 6 to 7 hours, like I did.

Anyway, if you'll double-check, you'll find, Mr. Speaker, that page 40, whoever wrote this bill thinks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a wonderful, wonderful thing. The Federal Government, insuring all these home loans and, then, of course, we pass laws.

I do remember our friend from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) assuring everybody that they're in good shape, not a problem. It turned out they weren't in good shape. He didn't know. Mr. Frank wouldn't come down here and misrepresent something like that, I know. He wouldn't. He just didn't know, just like the President has no clue what all is in this bill.

But if he'll check at the bottom of page 40, he'll find the American Infrastructure Financing Authority says it's established as a wholly owned government corporation. So if you like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, you think they've done a great job, you're going to love this bill. It's like both of them combined, exponentially increased and put on steroids. Because we know houses, compared to infrastructure, don't cost all that much. But, boy, you compare them to infrastructure, man.

This has to be the thinking of whoever put this bill together, and I know it wasn't the President because he couldn't have put this together and gone around telling people things that are in it, not knowing this kind of stuff that is in it. But the American Infrastructure Financing Authority--and we could do that like we did the flood insurance. You know, the Federal Government says, well, we need a Federal player in the insurance business; so we provided a Federal option.

Well, guess what, the Federal Government runs in the red on the flood insurance. Private companies can't keep up with that, and so insurance companies quit providing flood insurance in those parts and the Federal Government became the insurer.

It's the same way with student loans. Banks, other lending institutions could lend money for student loans, and they were backed by the government. But under Speaker Pelosi and this President, Harry Reid, the Federal Government decided we're going to take over all the student loans.

Well, that creates a concern for some because if you're as outspoken as some of us are, I'm just grateful my daughter has just finished her college degree so I won't have to come begging to the President for a student loan so my children can go to college. Is that what we want? Is that where we want the infrastructure financing to go? Every school district, town, county, State has to come begging to the Federal Government because we run everybody else out of business, like we did student loans and flood insurance?

Surely the President doesn't know this is in here. This is not a jobs bill; it's a government takeover. Same with

the public safety broad band authority or corporation.

I bet a lot of folks don't know about the short time compensation program. It's a new program, never created before, but it's in the President's bill. The participation, it says, is involuntary. But if an employer under this program reduces hours worked by employees instead of laying them off, and that's anybody who has been reduced by at least 10 percent, then it says they're eligible for unemployment compensation. It gives out the terms for that. I bet the President doesn't know that's in there.

Now I have to agree with him, it is a jobs bill for plaintiff's lawyers because we have seen over and over a lot of states doing tort reform. It's more and more difficult to sue people. So we have got a new program here that will help with lawyers that are out of work because here in the bill, we've created a new class of protected individuals. So if you're unemployed and you get laid off, you ought to see a lawyer if you feel like you weren't hired because you're unemployed, because you can sue. You can file a claim, at least, against the employer that didn't hire you.

Now, a practical look at that provision, allowing employers to be sued if they fail to hire someone who is unemployed, would make employers--I've already heard from them--if that ends up in the law, I'm not going to be hiring anybody. I can't take a chance on being sued or having claims filed against me. If five people unemployed come in, four of them don't get the job and they all four file claims against me, I can't afford that.

So I think once the President ever gets to look at his bill, then he'll understand this is not what he's thinking it is.

And, of course, he's promised America we're going after major oil companies. There is no way this President could know that page 151-154, the part that goes after oil companies, will not affect his friends at British Petroleum, Exxon, Shell. They won't be affected because the most important deductions that are repealed here are only for smaller producers, the independent producers who drill 94 percent of all the oil and gas wells on the land of the continental U.S. There's no way he could know that, even if he read this, unless he really understood the oil and gas industry.

So what he'll do, he drives up the capital for companies trying to drill wells, and this will be a disaster unless you're a major oil company, in which case you'll make more profit than you've ever made because you kill off all of the independent competition. That's what his bill does, and I'm sure he doesn't know that.

Now, they have also been out there blaming Republicans for increasing the debt. This was in an article. We've got it up on the House Web site so people can really see what has happened. It's a great article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution. This is one of the diagrams. It shows who really increased the debt. We know from the Constitution that it is the Congress that holds the purse strings. So really the one responsible, most responsible, is the Congress. And who's most responsible, the biggest, most powerful body is controlled by the Speaker; you, Mr. Speaker--that is while you're pro tempore. This shows the increase in debt as a percentage of GDP. And we see what happened under Speaker O'Neill. We see what happened under Speaker Jim Wright. Didn't really increase much in debt as a percentage of GDP. Under Speaker Foley, it increased a great deal. And actually under Speaker Gingrich and Speaker Hastert, debt as a percentage of GDP, it went way down. And then we got the last 4 years with Speaker Pelosi, and it went through the roof like has never happened in this country's history.

Well, I hope I have provided an adequate defense to those who would say that the President is misrepresented because I think I've got proof. The President didn't lie about any of this stuff. He hasn't had time to read it. He doesn't know what's in it. I hope and pray that he'll take the time to do that so he can accurately represent the saving Obama's job bill, and I appreciate the President's support for the American Jobs Act, which bill is mine.

I yield back the balance of my time.