Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, ``where are the jobs?'' could be answered in one word, in my State of Wyoming. We were hiring people when our energy industry was robust from other States that were losing jobs, like Michigan. But the cap-and-trade bill that passed this House last week changed coal bonus payments from being paid over 5 years to now being paid in one lump-sum payment.

We are going to destroy jobs in Wyoming. So the people who moved from Michigan to Wyoming to find good-paying jobs are now going to have to return to Michigan or stay in Wyoming and be unemployed.

It is because of the activities of this Congress. This Congress has not been happy to watch States like Michigan suffer. They have decided to make States like Wyoming, that were producing energy for this country, suffer right alongside States like Michigan. Our State, which had a healthy economy before cap-and-trade, before the Obama presidency, is now suffering just like the rest of the Nation. Our unemployment has doubled in Wyoming, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding. The chart he shows is exactly right. The fact that Wyoming chose to develop its mining resources and Montana chose a path that retarded the development of its mining resources is the difference in the teacher salaries, as pointed out in that chart.

We have been blessed in Wyoming by having low unemployment and it created an opportunity, until recently, for people from other States who have suffered job losses to find gainful employment and make a new life in Wyoming.

A number of families have relocated, especially from Michigan, to the State of Wyoming, and predominantly the community of Gillette. Gillette, Wyoming, has become Wyoming's third-largest city and is growing in a way that brings young families vibrancy, activity, and the arts and recreation to a wonderful Wyoming community in northeast Wyoming.

It's brought a lot of new people to Wyoming from Michigan looking for a new life and looking for work. Many of them came from the automobile industry and manufacturing industries and mining industries, quite frankly, that were devastated due to the economic downturn. But they were able to find jobs in Wyoming, and we're so happy to have them.

Then, along comes Waxman-Markey, a bill that creates a national energy tax and a bill that creates a tremendous threat, especially to coal mining jobs.

Jobs in the Wyoming mining industry are high paying. Eighty-six percent higher than the average wage in the State. The average annual wage in the mining industry in Wyoming was $73,000 in 2007. It is an extraordinarily liveable wage in Wyoming.

But, if you look at the total coal mining jobs in the U.S. and the changes in policy under Waxman-Markey and other bills going through this Congress, the outlook for those Michigan residents who have proudly relocated to Wyoming is not very prosperous.

Job losses related to Waxman-Markey, optimistic projections, total U.S. job loss in 5 years: 14,000 jobs lost in coal mining alone. A pessimistic number for job losses 5 years from now in coal mining alone: 35,000 jobs.

Let's project it out because, as you know, Waxman-Markey doesn't take effect completely until the year 2050, but let's just go out 10 years and 15 years.

The projected loss in jobs in 10 years due to Waxman-Markey, under the most optimistic scenario that can be put together: 20,000 jobs lost in coal mining alone. And the pessimistic number: 67,000 jobs. That's the entire population of my community of Cheyenne, and then some.

Of course, 20 years out the optimistic job loss in coal alone: 50,000 people. And the pessimistic number: 125,000 people in coal alone. These are not jobs that can be replaced by green jobs. These green jobs are not projected to pay 86 percent higher than the average wage in my State.

Not only is the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the national energy tax, an attack on coal-producing States around the Nation, but other bills going through this Congress are having the same consequence.

Let's take, for example, the Interior Appropriations bill that just passed the House. It had a provision in it that when a company acquires a Federal lease to mine more coal, they will pay a bid bonus payment. That occurs now. The problem is, these bid bonus payments are such a large amount of money that they have been spread out over 5 years so the companies can borrow less money or use production that they're currently accomplishing to pay in 5-year increments for those big coal bid bonus payments.

Under the Interior Appropriations bill that just passed this House, they will have to pay that all up front. These are staggeringly large numbers, in the tens of millions and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars.

Companies in this financial crisis cannot borrow those kinds of moneys. Consequently, there will be companies that will not bid, thereby reducing the receipts to the American taxpayer when there's not competitive bidding for the coal or there may be no bids at all because no company can borrow enough money to pay the entire 5-year payment up front.

One little amendment in an enormous bill that has tremendous consequences to coal mining jobs went through without discussion, and there are many such amendments in these bills every day that are an attack on jobs in this country, an attack on jobs in my State. The attack on jobs in the Appalachian States is unbelievable under the cap- and-trade bill. If I were in an Appalachian State, I would be even more concerned than I am for my State of Wyoming, and as the number one coal-producing State in the country, I am tremendously concerned about the loss of jobs.

These policies are not good for America. They're not good for my State. They're not good for the West, and they're certainly not good for the hardworking people of America.

I thank Mr. Bishop of Utah for allowing me the time to speak this evening.

I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding.

I am from Wyoming, a State that has many wild horses on its public lands. I also have a degree in animal science, and I may be the only Member of this body who has ridden a BLM wild horse. My sister adopted two. This bill is not respectful of the grass resource.

Let's talk about the ecology and the environment of the plains of this great country. Wild horses graze differently than cattle, sheep, elk, and deer. And the reason is they have a solid hoof; whereas, buffalo, elk, deer, and cattle have a split hoof. When a solid-hoofed animal is pounding our fragile soils in the West, they are tamping or compacting that soil so it does not accept water that is needed to sustain very shallow, very fragile topsoil and the important diversity of grass species that are supported and are needed by every animal that grazes those lands and every endangered and threatened species that uses those same lands.

Furthermore, wild horses are there year-round. Livestock is only there at certain times of the year. Wild horses that were not native to these lands, in the spring, create tremendous damage when the thawing occurs that creates great rises and disruptions of the soil.

Furthermore, when they graze, they pull plants out from the roots. Some of these species are, themselves, threatened and endangered grass and flowering plant species. That is why the Wyoming Nature Conservancy has opposed this bill.

Let me read you what the Wyoming Nature Conservancy has to say: H.R. 1018 is an affront to efforts that have united conservation and ranch interests to achieve real, on-the-ground results throughout the West. Western rangeland supports population of native plants, wildlife, livestock, and wild horses. It is our position that effective management of this rangeland must be based on science, not emotion.

This bill is based on emotion and not science.

Furthermore, when flies congregate on wild horses in the summer, the horses tend to gather closely and try to roll to prevent the flies from staying on them and laying their eggs. Consequently, they're destroying sage grass habitat.

Sage grass is a threatened species that is headed for the endangered species status if we do not control the activity of species that interfere with the recovery of the sage grass.

In other words, this bill is elevating wild horses above threatened and endangered species, above all the plant and animal species that share the same habitat in the West, and this is inappropriate land management, grass management. It creates an unsustainable situation. That is why Wyoming's Democrat Governor has also opposed the bill.

Governor Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming: H.R. 1018, to be frank, props up a program in need of sweeping reform. The current adoption program is full and is not responsive to the real issues of wild horse management. By increasing expensive holding facilities where many of these animals live out their lives because they are unadoptable, H.R. 1018 ignores the reality that wild horse and burro populations are out of control and doesn't get to the real problems that cripple our ability to truly manage these animals.

Furthermore, Wyoming's highly respected premier Game and Fish Department: Simply put, we are very concerned that expanding the management

of free-roaming horses and burros to all public lands would have devastating impacts to the long-term sustainability of the public's fish and wildlife resources and their habitats in the West.

The list goes on and on of opponents. These opponents are people that manage fish and wildlife. These are people who manage grass resources. These are people who have boots-on-the-ground experience and know that you cannot elevate one nonnative species over native species of plants and animals and have an ecologically sustainable grass resource and prairie system.

Chairman Rahall, I have great respect for your knowledge of the mining laws that are so important to my State and your State, but I can tell you respectfully, Mr. Chairman, that wild horses are a problem in Wyoming, and I'm very hopeful that you will choose not to import the problem to your State of West Virginia. But if you do, you will find, of course, that you can sustain mammals in terms of a number of mammals per acre. In Wyoming, it's the number of acres per mammal, and it can vary anywhere from 35 acres to sustain one mammal to over 100. Because of that, the consequences of overgrazing are enormous.

Today's population of wild horses stands at approximately 36,000, and we know that the wild horse program stipulates that the total population of wild horses on public land should not exceed about 28,000 in order to promote a thriving ecological balance.

Mr. Chairman, we are talking about ecological balance. Yes, this is an expensive program, and I concur with the remarks of my ranking member from Washington. But I want to emphasize the disrespect that this bill places on our sensitive, fragile grass resources in the West that, during times of drought and during times of heavy pressure, are unavailable to sustain this feral horse population, nonnative, that is in need of control.

I rise in honor of today's guest chaplain, Pastor Shawn Kumm. He is joining us from Laramie, Wyoming, where he has served the congregation at the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church for 13 years.

Originally from Iowa, Pastor Kumm settled in Wyoming in 1996. He has held two offices in the Wyoming District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, first as secretary to the board of directors, followed by his nomination in 2003 to vice president of the synod, a position which he currently holds.

Pastor Kumm and his wife, Barbie, have two children, his son, Nickoli, and his daughter, Alexandra, who joins him here today.

Pastor Kumm has provided invaluable help to the members of his church and my constituency. I thank him for his positive impact, leadership, and service to the community and wish him the best as his congregation continues to grow with God's blessing.

I also want to acknowledge Representative Jeff Fortenberry, who joins me here today, and Pastor Kumm's parents, who reside in Representative Fortenberry's district.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S. 614, a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II.

As an original cosponsor of a similar measure in the House, I would like to give special recognition to Betty Cozzens, one of my constituents from Cody--and one of the 300 remaining Women Airforce Service Pilots.

We all owe these heroic women a debt of gratitude. In the 16 months that the Women Airforce Service Pilots existed, over 1,000 of them served their country with pride.

The Congressional Gold Medal is one of the most distinguished forms of recognition that Congress can bestow. It is an expression of public gratitude on behalf of the nation--to these women, for their service in a time of need.

The Women Airforce Service Pilots forged reform in the U.S. Armed Forces in regard to women in service, flying on every type of assignment flown by the male Army Air Forces pilots, except combat. I would like to express my gratitude to Betty and her fellow pilots for their trailblazing service, being the first women in history to fly American military aircraft.

I thank the gentleman from Missouri for pulling us together this evening for this discussion.

In Wyoming, our economy is very much based in the energy industry because we have coal, oil, gas, uranium, wind, solar, biomass, and that is the mainstay of our economy by far.

So as we watch the 350 to 375 very small businesses that are drilling for oil and gas and see the legislation that is coming before this Congress at the behest of the Democratic Party, it will devastate our businesses.

Absolutely. I think the Americans have the perception that Big Oil is who is recovering these natural resources; but even those firms hire very small, literally mom-and-pop operations, five and six employees to go out and drill the drilling, to do some environmental compliance, to do the surveying, and to complete those wells, and do the fracturing of the deep seams that are required to cause the gas to flow into a natural gas well. These are very small operators. As I said, in Wyoming alone, over 350 businesses.

Yet what we see on the horizon taxwise through the national energy tax that's being called cap-and-trade would be utterly devastating to those businesses.

I thank the gentleman.

In Wyoming, we have had surpluses in our budget for the last 7 years, and it is because of the explosive growth in the production of energy. It has made our unemployment among the lowest in the Nation. In fact, there were times during the last 7 years that we have had, statistically, zero unemployment. Incredible. While I was running for this position, I stopped at a fast-food place to get an iced tea late at night, and they offered me a job and my daughter a job at this fast- food place because they are so much in need of employees.

Wyoming is unique in that regard, and it is because we are producing domestic energy. And there are new discoveries of domestic natural gas all over the United States. The Balkan in North Dakota is fantastic. It is producing wealth for people who have been farming at that very narrow margin of profitability, 0 to 4 percent, for years.

Not only are we producing the cleanest burning hydrocarbon that there is, natural gas, but we are doing it in a way that makes us less dependent on foreign energy. And what we are seeing in this Congress are policies that will actually make us more dependent on foreign energy at a time----

And to the gentleman from Missouri, we are also proposing in this Congress to tax drilling costs, to raise the taxes on the brackets, to do away with the death tax, to put the recovery of natural gas under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Virtually every time I turn around, almost every day here, we are doing something that will impair our ability to produce our own natural resources.

And it's not just in Wyoming, there have been these fabulous new finds of natural gas that run up both sides of the Appalachian Mountains all the way from Pennsylvania clear to the Southern States. All of those States could have new natural gas production, the cleanest burning hydrocarbon, that reduces our need for foreign energy, that reduces the out-migration of jobs, it keeps them here, it grows them here. It grows revenue for those States.

I can tell you, as our State treasurer in Wyoming for 8 years, we had, just off interest income off State investments, the largest source of income for our State's general fund from one source, interest income off State investments. And all of those State investments, every one of them, came from severance taxes on oil, gas, coal, uranium.

Mr. Speaker, my name is Cynthia Lummis. I am the Member of Congress from Wyoming. I am a freshman and a Republican.

This is the first time that the freshman Republicans have engaged in a Special Order, and it's my privilege to be joined by members of the Republican freshmen. This is our opportunity to share with you our perspective on these first 5 months in Congress that we have shared together as freshmen, to tell you a little bit about ourselves and about our views about this process, about where we have been in the last 5 months and where we think, as fiscal conservatives, the Nation should be going instead.

And I'm so pleased to be joined, first of all, by one of my freshmen colleagues, who has a very interesting background. Glenn Thompson, from Pennsylvania, is in addition to his professional career a volunteer firefighter and has volunteered for the Boy Scouts for 30 years. I yield to him to talk to you about why he chose to run for Congress and what he is accomplishing here, and how he feels that if this Congress could work together more closely on fiscal conservatism, how this Nation would currently be better off and on the road to recovery.

I yield to Mr. Thompson.

I have the privilege of serving on the House Budget Committee, and yesterday Dr. Bernanke testified at our hearing and expressed his concern over the need for Congress to develop a plan to come up with a way to deal with these debts and our deficit issues. They are part of a risk that is presented to our country long term if we don't begin to address them now, and after passing a $700-plus billion stimulus package, over $1.1 trillion when you consider the interest on top of that; also, the $410 billion budget for the current fiscal year; and then approving in the Budget Committee, over the objection of all of the Republicans a nearly $3.6 trillion budget for the next fiscal year, I firmly agree with the gentleman from Pennsylvania about the concerns that we all have as freshmen, Republicans, for the tremendous debt and the tremendous deficit that is being undertaken.

I would like to ask a couple of other colleagues to join in this conversation. Next, calling on Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri, who is another member of our freshman Republican class who is the rarest of rare commodities in Congress in that he has operated and continues to operate a small business. He currently operates a 160-acre farm after serving as a leader in a number of other small businesses. And if any entity within this Congress does not get the attention it deserves, I would suggest that it is small business.

And I yield to my colleague, Mr. Luetkemeyer from Missouri.

That is exactly what I hear when I go home. Wyoming people want Wyoming common sense. It is the same kind of common sense that you discussed was evident among people that were experiencing a tragedy in your district and who got together and solved the problem, and that is something that we as a class of freshman Republicans hope to do as well.

We represent 20 States. We span in age from 28 years old, our youngest Member, to 64 years old. Five are physicians or work in health care, and as Mr. Thompson mentioned, he works in health care. One of our physicians is with us this evening, Dr. Phil Roe, and we will be visiting with him shortly. We have two college athletes, six with military backgrounds among our 22 freshmen Republicans, four former State treasurers and 16 State legislators or statewide officers.

And I know Mr. Luetkemeyer was a State legislator, as was I, as is our next freshman who's going to visit with us, a gentleman from Minnesota, Erik Paulsen, and I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota who first I might mention still finds time to teach Sunday school at his Lutheran church, Missouri Synod, of which I am also a member, and who as State legislator helped eliminate Minnesota's $4.5 billion State budget deficit without raising taxes. So this is someone that we desperately need working to pull off a similar success story here in Washington.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Will the gentleman yield?

You know, that is very much a bipartisan frustration right now. I read of Senators and other House Members who are tremendously concerned about their local dealers, GM, Chrysler, having to give up a profitable business because of this takeover. Both sides of the aisle on both sides of the Capitol building share in their tremendous frustration over the manner in which the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler are playing out.

I want to give a moment to another member of our freshman class who has joined us, Dr. Roe. The gentleman from Tennessee served as a doctor for 2 years in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and has delivered close to 5,000 babies. He also has been the mayor of his small town and was very successful in using their landfill as a source of energy for that community. And being a mayor of a town of people of very modest means requires an amount of creativity that is unique in this country.

Welcome, Dr. Roe. Please join our discussion.

Will the gentleman yield? I understand that in the old Senate Chamber that still exists in this building that you can go see Congressman Crockett's desk. Is that the case?

Will the gentleman yield?

How did you pay for it?

Thank you.

Let me tell you about a few of our other classmates who could not be here this evening. We anticipated that we would have votes tomorrow and that we would have more members of our freshman class able to join us, but because of votes not being taken tomorrow, some people tried to get home tonight so they could visit with both their families and their constituents.

Among them is Chris Lee from New York, who has spent two decades as a business entrepreneur in New York; Tom McClintock of California, another of our freshman colleagues, who was first elected to the California State Legislature at the age of 26; Pete Olson of Texas, a naval aviator for 9 years, who had missions in the Persian Gulf, also a naval liaison officer in the U.S. Senate; another, Bill Posey of Florida, an accomplished stock car racer. We have all become, of course, Pittsburgh Steeler fans due to our good friend and fellow freshman, Tom Rooney of Florida, who also played college football and was a special assistant U.S. Attorney at Fort Hood and taught military law.

With that kind of diversity in our freshman class, it has been really helpful to me. For example, between votes, I can sit down on the floor next to Representative Rooney and ask him about things like enhanced interrogation techniques.

Well, look. He just walked in the room.

I didn't know you were still here. I'm so pleased to see you. It's that kind of expertise that makes our class such a close group and very helpful to each other as we are dealing with the many issues at hand.

So, with the magical appearance of Representative Rooney, I'm delighted that you have chosen to join us this evening.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Will the gentleman yield?

Thank you for your statement.

Now, we have six freshmen here of the Republican class and, indeed, a seventh member in the Chair. Our Speaker this evening is a member of the majority party, a Democrat. It would be really fascinating at some point to have a Special Order some evening with our Democrat colleagues who are freshmen as well, because I think many of us came to Congress with a different perspective, with a new perspective, regardless of party, about how we think America can move forward.

As freshmen Republicans, we did support legislation that would stimulate economic growth. It would have cost $315 billion less than the bill that Congress adopted, the Democratic bill; and it would have created twice as many jobs.

In my district in Wyoming, it would have created 50 percent more jobs; but in many districts that are suffering mightily, it created twice as many jobs. That because we really targeted and took to heart what President Obama asked us to do, and that was to be targeted and temporary. Unfortunately the bill that was adopted was neither targeted--it was a shotgun approach to economic stimulus--and it is not temporary. Many provisions in that bill are built into the ongoing spending of government and inflate the costs of government, as Dr. Roe pointed out earlier, by adding to the baseline of expenditures that will go up and up and up in the future.

One of the things that Representative Rooney just mentioned that is so frustrating to all of us, I think on both sides of the aisle, is seeing legislation that is not germane to the subject of the bill being attached to the bill. In the case that Representative Rooney was just discussing with us, it was the funding for our military men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan and in Pakistan, and the addition to that bill would lend money or guarantee money to the International Monetary Fund. No connection whatsoever. And the IMF funding has created a situation

where we're not voting tomorrow on that bill because there are not sufficient votes to pass it by virtue of an amendment that was not germane being added to a bill. In the Wyoming legislature you cannot do that. You cannot amend a nongermane topic to a piece of legislation or it is ruled out of order. If that rule were in effect here, we would see much better legislation. We would see people having a better opportunity to vet that legislation, discuss that legislation and then vote with their heart rather than having to grit their teeth and vote for a couple things that are just not a good pairing.

I can give an example of where it pained some people on the other side of the aisle. I am a big supporter of Second Amendment rights, but there was an amendment put on a credit card bill to allow concealed weapon permits in national parks. I firmly support allowing concealed weapons in national parks because they are so part and parcel to the State of Wyoming and to our right to bear arms, but attaching it to a credit card bill is wrong. It's just wrong.

Mr. Luetkemeyer, this gets into an area that you're involved in deeply now. Any comments on either your service in the State legislature in Missouri and how you would compare it to process here in Washington and how process here in Washington impedes that or the energy issues specifically? Either one.

The gentleman from Minnesota also was a leader in his State legislature. Observations comparing the two?

We have other Members who are not here tonight who I'd like to mention. One was mentioned earlier by Mr. Rooney. Duncan Hunter, a member of our freshman class from California, quit his job after 9/11 to serve in the Marine Corps. He has served three combat tours, including two in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. And along with Mr. Rooney and Mr. Coffman of Colorado, who took unpaid leave from the Colorado State House to serve in the first Gulf War and gave up being Colorado State treasurer for a tour of duty in Iraq--and I was Wyoming State treasurer at the same time Mr. Coffman was State treasurer and at the same time when another of our fellow freshmen, Lynn Jenkins, was the State treasurer in Kansas. We were proud of our colleague, Mr. Coffman, for leaving his job as Colorado State treasurer to do a tour of duty in Iraq. The experience of our servicemen and -women in this Congress is invaluable, and I applaud them and appreciate their efforts.

I want to call on Mr. Rooney one more time to discuss our specific concerns about the issue that prevents all of us from being here tonight, that being the fact that an amendment has been placed on a military funding bill that is not germane.

Would you care to elaborate further? And then I would like to yield to Mr. Thompson.

Well, the bill that we had originally sent to the Senate was just a clean war funding bill that the President asked us for and that we delivered as a House of Representatives to the Senate.

I did not serve in politics before running for Congress, so all this is new. But unfortunately, by the time it came back from the Senate to us, it had an additional amendment on it which included funding for the IMF, which is basically our borrowing money from somewhere else or printing money to loan it to another country. And that might seem ridiculous to a lot of people that may be listening, since everybody knows that America is going through tough times right now. People in my district are really hurting. The middle class needs help. They need tax cuts. They need to feel that their job is secure. They need to feel that the Federal Government is helping them, not

impeding them. And to think that we are going to borrow or print money to send abroad, some of it to people that we might not necessarily want to lend money to, and have to put that on the backs of our servicemen and -women, because they know that it will be difficult for us as Republicans to vote against it, is really, in my opinion, shameful in a lot of ways.

I understand there are differences in ideology. There are differences in principles about what governing should be. But if we have a clean military funding bill, then it should stand on its own. If you have a clean IMF bill to loan money to foreign countries, then it should stand on its own. The majority is the majority. If it is a good idea, it will pass. They have the Congress. They have the White House. Why should it be attached to something that has nothing to do with funding our soldiers abroad?

I recently got back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Recently I visited Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And the one thing that impressed me more than anything else is the men and women that wear our uniform. They never talk about politics. They never talk about policy or how they stand on certain issues. They are there to do a job. They are putting themselves in harm's way so we can stand here tonight and discuss these issues and talk about what we think is best for the future.

To think that politics is being played with the ammunition that goes in their guns or the body armor or the vehicles that they drive or anything that they have to rely on from us as a Congress to pay for what we are sending them there to do is just unconscionable to me. And it is something that I hope, as you said earlier, has been delayed, and hopefully that delay is felt, continues on to next week, and maybe we can reconsider what we are doing and what we talk about. Politics should have no place when it comes to funding what we send our men and women in uniform to do abroad.

Whether you agree with these wars, whether you agree with the war on terror, whether you agree with anything that we are doing, we are sending them there. We should give them a clean bill. And as of right now, we are not. But maybe, just maybe, cooler heads will prevail and we will give them a clean bill for what they are doing and what they are serving us for.

I would like to acknowledge two other Members of our Republican freshman class who have also served in the military: John Fleming, who is a family physician from Louisiana, was also a medical officer in the U.S. Navy; and Brett Guthrie, one of our colleagues from Kentucky, served as a field artillery officer in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell. And we have other veterans as well.

I want to turn now to a subject that is on the front burner in Congress, House and Senate, both energy and health care. And we have a wonderful array of talent in our class on both subjects. We have two medical care providers with us to discuss that issue. I know I was listening briefly to the Progressive Caucus before we had this little opportunity to visit this evening, and they were espousing the benefits that they see in providing health care by way of a government-funded option.

I might point out before I turn it over to Mr. Thompson that government payers, and this was an independent study, found out that Medicaid and Medicare have shifted a total of $89 billion per year in costs on to other payers. As a result, families with private health, and I'm quoting from the study, families with private health insurance spend nearly $1,800 more per year, $1,512 in higher premiums and $276 in increased beneficiary cost sharing to cover the below-market reimbursement levels paid by Medicare and Medicaid.

My concern is, if we go to a government option that is side by side with private sector insurance, that it will be less expensive and it will recruit people to gravitate from private insurance to this government system. But the reason that it may be cheaper for the government to provide insurance is that they are continuing to shift costs and to fail to reimburse providers accurately and adequately.

I know in my State of Wyoming, where health care is the number one issue right now, that there are physicians who are no longer accepting Medicare and Medicaid patients. They cannot afford to accept them anymore because reimbursement levels in rural hospitals and to rural physicians are so low. And if that is the manner in which our country intends to get ahold of the cost of health care, we are in big trouble.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

I look forward to that discussion. Another of our colleagues, Dr. Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, in his practice, co- founded a health clinic to match uninsured patients with doctors who provide services free of charge. So we have some very qualified, very caring medical care providers and physicians in our class, and I'm proud to serve with them.

Of course, Doctor Phil, you are among them. Would you please comment on this subject.

I might mention the three officers of our freshman Republican class who couldn't join us this evening, and two of our more unique members who I hope will be able to join us if we have the opportunity to do this again. Our class president is Steve Austria of Ohio. He was a force in getting Jessica's Law and the Adam Walsh Child Protection Safety Act passed into State law. Our representative on the Steering Committee, Gregg Harper of, Mississippi, is an attorney with a child whom he has brought to share his unique health concerns with us. And we've all learned a lot from him.

And of course, our Policy Committee representative, Jason Chaffetz, who is a former Division I football player at Brigham Young University, my University of Wyoming's nemesis, but a dear colleague of ours, and two wonderful freshmen who are plowing new ground. The very first Vietnamese American to serve in the United States Congress, Joseph Cao, born in Saigon, Vietnam, escaped at the age of 8 to the United States, lost his home during Katrina, and fought to return electricity and telecommunications to Louisiana residents after Katrina.

We also boast the youngest Member of this U.S. House of Representatives, Aaron Schock, the youngest school board president, Illinois State Rep, and a Member of Congress with whom we are privileged to serve.

I thank the gentlemen for joining me this evening. I thank our Speaker, the gentleman from Virginia, who was very patient with his fellow freshmen colleagues from the other party, and look forward to the opportunity to have a bipartisan freshman discussion at an early opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 27 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, June 8, 2009, at 12:30 p.m., for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to engage in a colloquy with the chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Mr. Oberstar.

Mr. Chairman, section 311 of the bill directs the FAA to complete its analysis and recommendations for updating the aircraft, rescue and firefighting standards at our Nation's airports. I agree that the FAA should complete an update on firefighting standards, and commend the chairman for his dedication to improved safety at our airports. However, I am concerned that the prescriptive language in section 311 would unnecessarily create a significant financial burden on small rural airports least capable of absorbing cost increases.

Will the chairman confirm that it is not the intent of H.R. 915 to saddle small airports and rural communities with unnecessary unfunded mandates?

Further, can the chairman assure me that he will work with me and other Members from rural districts to ensure that there is adequate flexibility in aircraft rescue and firefighting standards to account for the unique needs of small rural airports?

I yield to the chairman.

I thank the chairman for his willingness to work together. I would also like to thank the gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Adrian Smith, for his valuable assurance on this important issue.

Thank you, Congressman Akin. I appreciate being involved in this discussion.

This is a national energy tax. This will not solve our problems with pollution, but what will? Sometimes we Republicans are called the ``party of no,'' and it's because we need opportunities to express our better ideas. Indeed, I believe we do have better ideas, and some of them are being illustrated by the chart that Mr. Akin has on the board right now.

We have opportunities to clean up the technologies and sources of energy that we have right now. We have the opportunity to increase the number of hybrid and zero-emission vehicles on the road. We have the opportunity to increase wind and solar and biofuels. We have the opportunity to add to the amount of natural gas that we use because it is, by far, the cleanest burning hydrocarbon. We have opportunities to sequester the CO2 that comes from coal, and as we know, coal is more than half of the electricity that is produced in this country. So, to abandon coal

abruptly is just not possible. We should pursue ways to clean it up. That includes sequestering carbon.

My State of Wyoming has the most advanced carbon sequestration laws in the country, which say that the pores under the surface where carbon can be sequestered--or captured and secured--belong to the surface owner, and that liability for the escape of hydrocarbons that are introduced into those pores are on the companies that put that carbon in the ground. So that creates a mechanism that other States are looking at right now, including Montana and others that are following Wyoming's lead.

In addition, we need to produce from coal liquid products that burn less. In addition, we need more nuclear energy. As we know, nuclear energy is not a carbon emitter, and it is producing 20 percent of our electricity now. So we absolutely cannot take nuclear energy off the table. It's very important that we add more nuclear.

Thank you, Mr. King. You do such a nice job of laying out these issues. I want to thank Mr. Akin for including me in his last hour as well.

The chart that was just placed up on the board illustrates something that is a new phenomenon in terms of the debate about renewable energies that I had not heard before arriving here in Washington--and that is objection by the environmental community to something called industrial-scale wind farms and industrial-scale solar farms.

So even the advocates of renewable energy in terms of wind and solar are saying, Yes, we embrace wind energy and solar energy, but we do not want them done in industrial scale because it consumes so much land, it creates view sheds that have too many wind turbines on it, too many solar panels on it, and that we don't want them.

And we are seeing efforts by Members of Congress when, coupled with environmental groups, to prevent large-scale wind farms and large-scale solar facilities in deserts and in areas where one might think would be appropriate for wind and solar, such as places where the wind blows and the sun shines. But, nevertheless, the problem seems to be the industrial scale that is being proposed for these facilities.

Well, as you and I know, Mr. King, unless you do these on industrial scales, you can't possibly promote them as a larger component of our industrial energy mix. In fact, if you blanketed the entire State of Ohio with wind turbines, it would produce annually the equivalent amount of energy as one square mile of Wyoming coal.

Now, Wyoming coal comes in square miles, which is very unusual for those of you from the East who are used to underground mines. We have something called surface mines, where you may have 30 to 100 feet of overburden, which is essentially the soil on top of the coal. And then you will uncover 100-foot coal seams. They are 100 feet level of coal, with no striations of anything but coal in between.

So all you have to do is scrape off and save the overburden--the soil--pile it up, recover the coal, scoop it out, load it in trucks, load it in rail cars, and then put the top soil back in the same contours as it was before you began mining, reclaim the surface to a condition that is equivalent to or superior to the condition of the surface of the ground before you even began to recover the coal, and put it back to normal with ground for sage grouse, for rabbits, for snakes, and perfect, perfect ground cover.

So it is a wonderful resource.

Snakes and rabbits. They seem to go together. I was at a

field hearing 2 weeks ago for the Natural Resources Committee. We toured solar facilities in California. We were in Representative Mary Bono Mack's district and Representative Jerry Lewis' district. We were on a Marine base at Twenty-Nine Palms with my committee cochairman, Jim Costa, who is from California as well.

We got to tour their solar facilities. And they are about to put at a Marine base at Twenty-Nine Palms 240 acres of an abandoned lake bed--it is dry, there's absolutely nothing on it--in solar panels. And they will be able to do that in a way that improves the makeup, the mix of renewable and unrenewable resources on that base that will make it the leading base in the whole Marine system for renewables, because they have wind, solar, and some geothermal.

But they probably could not pull that off if they were not on a nearly 600,000-acre military base, because if you try to move that same facility onto public lands in the desert, you encounter environmental group resistance to having large solar and wind projects, industrial scale.

So there's nowhere to go without offending someone in this country. Oil and gas development offshore on the Outer Continental Shelf would be a magnificent resource for us, but there are environmental groups that have testified against that. Industrial-scale wind and solar on deserts in California, groups are testifying against that. Nuclear, groups are testifying against that. Any hydrocarbon, groups are testifying against that. Coal, there are groups saying there's no such thing as clean coal.

We have to meet our energy needs as human beings, and there are ways to do it by using all of the resources we've discussed in moderation. That is the Republican response to this issue. To do it cleaner, do it better, do it with all of the resources that we have at our disposal in America; disengage from our need for foreign oil, because that is a national security issue, and produce our own energy, our own security. Do it in a more environmentally sensitive manner, but don't diminish our standard of living at the time we do it because it falls more seriously on working-class Americans and poor Americans than it does on rich Americans when we do something like our national energy tax, which is proposed under the name of cap-and-tax.

Thank you very much for including me in your discussion this evening, and I yield back to the gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 20th anniversary of the Brady Plan and in honor of former Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady. The Brady Plan launched a new era of growth, development, and capital market access for emerging market economies.

While Brady Bonds themselves have been largely superseded by newer instruments, the Brady Plan encouraged

many emerging market countries to adopt and pursue ambitious economic reform programs which have been instrumental in the progress achieved during the last 20 years.

On April 25, I attended a commemorative dinner in honor of Nicholas Brady and his many accomplishments. As Secretary of the Treasury under President George H.W. Bush, Mr. Brady was instrumental in resolving Latin American debt problems.

I was honored to hear Mr. Brady speak on the current economic crisis and credit crunch, as well as present his proposal for reform. As he stated, we must have boldness, clarity, and determination today, just as they did in 1989 in order to build prosperity out of this crisis.

International economic experts who attended the dinner praised Mr. Brady's work, while also noting how important trust, integrity, and personal relationships are in formulating global policy. The same is true today.

Our actions today to solve the economic crisis cannot and should not be done in haste. The politically charged environment of Congress makes the creation of effective long-term policy extremely difficult. Consequently, Mr. Brady's remarks supported the creation of an independent commission, to find the root cause of our economic situation and to propose reforms to our financial system.

I support such a bipartisan commission. As Mr. Brady stated, ``It is vital not just that far-reaching, complex reform of the financial system be pursued prudently but in a bipartisan manner in order to gain national support. After all, the purpose is to revive public confidence in the system itself.''

I was disappointed to see the Financial Markets Commission in S. 386, the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, pass the House with a makeup of six Democrats and four Republicans. That is why last week I opposed this commission while at the same time agreeing to cosponsor H.R. 2111, the Congressional Commission on Financial Accountability and Preparedness Act of 2009. H.R. 2111's commission will have two members appointed from each side of the aisle and a mutually agreed upon fifth member to chair. This is true bipartisanship and is what is needed to find the real root causes and solutions to our financial crisis.

I hope that submitting Mr. Brady's speech for the Record will spark a debate in Congress over the necessity for a bipartisan commission and how we, as a Nation, will move forward.

April 25, 2009.

20th Anniversary of the Brady Plan

(By Nicholas F. Brady)

Washington, DC.--Good evening. I'd like to thank Charles

Dallara and the IIF for organizing this gathering of old and

new friends to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Brady

Plan. Although I've been given the honor of speaking, I'd

like to note that a great many of you here tonight share the

credit for making the Brady Plan a success. And I want to

thank you all of you who have spoken so generously.

Let's start with why the Brady Plan was called the Brady

Plan. We had been negotiating with Mexico since March 1989

under the rubric of what we called ``the new debt strategy.''

In July, while we were in Paris for the Group of Seven

Summit, we had a major breakthrough with Mexico. When

President Bush, No. 41, held the traditional end-of-summit

press conference before 1,000 reporters, one journalist asked

the president if he was going to call the new strategy the

Bush Plan. He didn't miss a beat before answering, ``No,

we're going to call it the Brady Plan. Then if it works,

we'll call it the Bush Plan.'' The audience erupted into

laughter, and the president, with his marvelous sense of

humor, repeated the line so many times in the following days

that the name stuck.

There are uncanny parallels between the situation we find

ourselves in today and the one the Bush administration

confronted a generation ago. We faced a three-pronged crisis,

including the credit markets, the real-estate market, and the

budget just as the Obama administration does now. So it may

be useful to recall the issues and challenges of the late

'80s and early '90s as we try to resolve current problems and

move into the future.

First of all there was a serious LDC debt crisis. It's easy

to forget that in 1988 our banking system was in dire straits

because the commercial banks held billions of dollars of

loans in countries whose economic prospects had ground to a

halt. Three weeks into my job as Treasury secretary, the late

Gustavo Petricioli, then Mexico's ambassador to the United

States, called for an urgent meeting at the Treasury

department to tell me that Mexico was threatening to default

on its international bank loans. Talk about reality. It

didn't take much imagination to grasp that if Mexico took

that route then a string of Latin American economies likely

would follow and that a volatile region would move from chaos

to danger.

Clearly a new approach was needed. For several years before

I got to the Treasury, people had come in with various papers

and solutions, all aimed at alleviating the debt overhang,

but none really accomplished that. In a huge stroke of good

fortune, I inherited two brilliant people at Treasury--David

Mulford and Charles Dallara--and the first thing we did was

to write a paper that came to be known as the ``Truth Serum

Paper.'' We worked days, nights, and weekends to establish a

detailed description of the problems we faced, of what the

fundamental realities were. No troublesome obstacle was

passed over. Among the indisputable points we laid out were

that new money commitments had dried up in the past 12 months

and that many banks were negotiating private sales of LDC

paper at steep discounts while maintaining their claim on the

countries that the loans were still worth 100 cents on the

dollar. There were more, and they were equally sobering.

We used these irrefutable facts as a starting point in all

subsequent meetings. Our rule was that no suggestions were

permitted to be discussed if they didn't accept the Truth

Serum. They were off the table. Goodbye. Don't waste time.

I felt that the solution to too much debt was not more debt

but less. From there, you know the rest: we persuaded the

international commercial banks--at first with great

difficulty--to write down the stated value of the loans on

their books to something close to market value in exchange

for that lesser amount of host-country bonds backed by U.S.

zero-coupon Treasuries. The Brady Plan was achieved at a

negligible cost to the U.S. government. Yet it led to the

restructuring, for example, of more than $100 billion of

foreign bank debt for Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina alone.

The plan broke the debt gridlock and opened the door for

economic growth and social development in Latin America after

the lost decade of the 1980s. And it created a new asset

class: publicly traded sovereign debt--Brady Bonds--that grew

to exceed half a trillion dollars. The process bought time,

and the bonds helped to provide funds to developing nations

in exchange for long-lasting reforms by the participating

countries.

A second initiative the Bush 41 administration had to

undertake was to reconstitute the savings and loan industry

and the real-estate market it financed--a problem not of

President Bush's making. We created the Resolution Trust

Corporation to take over some 750 insolvent savings banks,

which reintroduced vibrancy into the real-estate market. In

order to do this, we had no choice but to seek funding from

Congress and undergo the intense political criticism that

came with it. So we took the heat and moved on to solve the

problem. Leadership can be painful. The final tab for

cleaning up the S&L mess was $165 billion, including what was

spent before we arrived. While this is not trivial, it didn't

come close to estimates by businesses, politicians, and the

media, which estimated that it would cost us $500 billion.

I've been asked a number of times what reversed that era's

negative thinking--and when. My firm conclusion is that it

subsided in direct proportion to the weekly successful

results recorded by the RTC to close the bankrupt S&Ls,

gather up the real estate they held, and sell it promptly

into the market.

Third, in a major contrast to today, we set about to reign

in escalating spending by the U.S. government, which was, for

that day and age, clearly out of control. The Budget Act of

1990 established binding caps on the amount that Congress

could spend on discretionary items. It was easy to see--and

it was easy for me to recommend--that that's what the country

needed. But President Bush, who had uttered the famous words,

``No new taxes,'' in his 1988 election campaign, said to me

more than once, ``The trouble with you, Brady, is that you

never ran for sheriff.'' The record should be clear that

George Bush fully grasped the political ramifications of

designing this legislation, but he decided it was the right

thing to do for the country. And while the Budget Act

probably contributed to his reelection defeat in 1992, it was

an essential building block for the decade of economic growth

that followed.

People constantly tell me that the problems we're dealing

with today are much more complex than those we faced 20 years

ago. Maybe. Maybe not. The issues didn't feel simple to us

back then, just as I'm sure they don't feel simple to

Secretary Tim Geithner and his associates at the Treasury

now.

I won't spend a lot of time tonight trying to assign blame

for the current crisis; I've been gone from Wall Street too

long. In broad strokes I would say that when I came to Wall

Street in 1954, it was a profession, one that financed the

building of this country's industrial capacity and

infrastructure. Year by year, however, the industry's

emphasis has moved away from that purpose and toward

financial innovation for financial profit's sake. Of course,

many banks have served their clients well and their hard work

has been a positive factor. Nevertheless, the U.S. Department

of Commerce figures show that from 1980 to 1982, the

financial sector accounted for an average of 9.1 percent of

U.S. total corporate profits. By 2005 to 2007 that three-year

average had more than tripled, to 28.6 percent.

The particulars of today's collapse in judgment and common

sense have been laid out

in chapter and verse, so just I'll say briefly, first, that

the whole notion that risk can be measured by a mathematical

formula is based on the illusion of reality. Second, the

desire for the improved returns generated by high leverage

led the purveyors of this risk to push it beyond any

reasonable boundaries.

But while assigning villainy to CEOs of banks and other

institutions may be high theater, playing to our country's

justifiable anger is counterproductive. There are many good

people in the industry, people who inevitably will--and

should--be called on to work through the malfunctions in the

system. The political process should concentrate now on how

to fix the financial system and let the country's legal arm

ferret out and deal with the wrong doers.

A core issue today is that the government has yet to

adequately describe the roots of the financial crisis to its

citizens and therefore to fully pinpoint its size. It's been

my experience that you can't fix what you can't explain. This

leads one to think that the solution lies in providing

ringing clarity on how the housing market burst, how the

market excesses spread beyond housing, how these forces were

fueled and then accelerated by our outsized external

imbalances, and, with this knowledge, decide how markets can

now be stabilized.

At the same time, it's hard to see how our national leaders

have helped the country dig out of its very real problems

when they devalue each public pronouncement with the caveat:

``Remember, it's not over yet.''

Their caution reminds me of a story that was told to me by

a friend, Bob Kleberg, who was the head of the King Ranch,

the largest ranch in the United States, about a college

commencement ceremony in his hometown of Kingsville, Texas,

during the worst of the Great Depression. Bob had invited two

speakers. One was an earnest Ivy League economist and the

other was this country's most famous cowboy-philosopher, Will

Rogers. The economist, who spoke first, read a long and

languorous speech about how bad things were, leaving the

roomful of 21-year-olds wondering if there was any hope to be

had about their prospects. The conclusion of his speech was

met with nervous and polite applause, after which Will

Rogers, who was sitting in the front row, literally vaulted

up onto the stage. Facing the audience squarely he looked out

and said just six words: ``Live through it if you can.'' Then

he jumped off the stage and returned to his seat. Terse,

maybe. But they did live through it.

And we will, too. So what should we do as the crisis

abates? Here, there is real work to be done. First we should

just come out and say it: the financial system that led us to

the brink of disaster is broken.

How do we proceed?

The first step would be to reduce the number of and

simplify the U.S. regulatory authorities, which include the

Federal Reserve, the OCC, the FDIC, the OTS, the CFTC, the

SEC, and state regulators too numerous to list. The easiest

part of this process is naming them! Nowhere else in the

world is the implementation of banking authority so diffuse,

and the choices they present to the governed result in

regulatory shopping for the softest touch. Be forewarned:

each one of these organizations has a protector in Congress,

and it will take a thunderbolt from the White House and

Congress to reorganize and streamline them. Tough as it will

be, the necessity is apparent to all, both here and abroad.

The next step after marshaling the regulatory authorities

is to move on to the banking institutions themselves. Of

course we must be attendant to the fact that markets are

international and by definition interrelated and

interdependent. Yet a sense of order would dictate that we

tend to our own backyard before trying to gain consensus with

19 other countries.

As I see it, we have two choices. The first is to repair

the current system, which is made of deposit-taking

institutions on the one hand and what's known as the shadow

banking system, or non-bank financial institutions, on the

other. Under this approach, we would subject the entire group

to one large, all-seeing regulatory system. Doing so would be

enormously complicated, and the more complicated the

regulatory system the less effective the regulation. In my

opinion it is a bridge too far.

We need a stronger identity of purpose between the

regulators and the businesses subject to regulation beyond

mere adherence to the law. My own view is that in addition to

too many regulators, there is the further problem that the

regulators did not use their existing powers. They could have

halted the growth of the excessive leverage but did little. A

culture of systemic risk awareness has to be developed, with

clear guidelines to be followed regularly.

Equally important, we need a financial system that has

untouchable safety and survivability as its main stem. This

would remove debate over whether any of its parts is too big

to fail. After all, we're talking about the people's money.

Is it operationally possible to combine the mechanics of the

shadow banking system, which has emphasized gigantic leverage

under-girded by stratospherically complex mathematical

formulae, with the principle of securing the people's money?

And as tempting as it is to tinker with the present system

instead of building a new one, is it the best we can do to

prevent another crisis?

I believe that we need a simpler system centered on

deposit-based banks. Under this approach, individual accounts

in the depository banks would continue to be protected up to

$250,000 and these banks would have access to the country's

central bank. These institutions would not be allowed to

participate in markets involving inordinate leverage or

equity transactions that would risk their deposit-protecting

charter. In contrast to the current mode, when asked what

their primary purpose is, the banks' chief executives

wouldn't talk first about shareholder return. Instead they

would stand up and say: ``Our institution's primary purpose

is to repay the depositors' money. Of course this is not the

institutions' only purpose, and innovation within them as it

relates to the asset side of the balance sheet should be

encouraged as long as they keep a weather eye on leverage and

equity risks.

The highly innovative shadow banking system with its mantra

of lower transaction costs, which would continue to introduce

new concepts, would fund itself from the money markets and

other sources but without federal guarantees and access to

America's central bank. Institutions that currently straddle

the two funding markets would have to choose which type of

business to pursue. I know this would provoke the immediate

cry that the financial system would be further pinched and

credit would further shrink. My answer is that any deposit-

gathering system with a $250,000 guarantee from the U.S.

government and access to the central monetary authorities

would get all the deposits it needed to provide a vibrant

credit system.

Admittedly, ironing out the details of such a vastly

complicated system is a task of the highest order, but I

believe it is attainable. You may have noticed that the

Senate voted this week to create an independent commission to

examine the root causes of the economic collapse and provide

a blueprint for the future, and the Speaker of the House

called for an inquiry similar to the Pecora Commission held

in the early 1930s that gave rise to that generation's new

securities laws. It takes me back. My first assignment as a

new hire at Dillon Read in 1954, where I stayed for the next

35 years, was to read the volume on securities from the

Pecora findings as an explanation for why we did things the

way we did.

This country has had a long and important history of

independent commissions aimed at laying the groundwork for

solutions to national problems of huge moment. Independent is

the key word. Such commissions, which call on people with

deep knowledge of the underlying problem, have had as their

precept exposing fundamental realities. It's unfathomable why

such a suggestion has been so long in coming, except to note

that commissions terrify the powers that be, both inside and

outside the government. If properly constituted, however,

they bring together the best of the country's thinkers and

thinking, and they're often the only force that unifies the

nation. I've been dismayed to read that a number of lawmakers

who say they're for a commission nonetheless don't want it to

get in the way of acting now. That's exactly backwards. In my

view what we need is a rigorous debate and that takes time.

As the American writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson

once said, ``Counsel to which time hath not been called, time

will not ratify.''

The composition of the commission is critically important:

it can shape the whole outcome. It should have the word

``independent'' in its title. I believe its chair or chairs

should be appointed by the president and that its expert

membership should be appointed in equal numbers by the

Democratic and Republican leadership of both houses of

Congress. It is vital not just that far-reaching, complex

reform of the financial system be pursued prudently but in a

bipartisan manner in order to gain national support. After

all, the purpose is to revive public confidence in the system

itself.

In conclusion, let me thank all of you for the great warmth

of your reception. We can all agree that thanks to so many of

you in this room tonight, including Charles and David, Bill

and Pedro and Angel, that the Brady Plan worked and that it

indeed set the base for significant prosperity over the past

20 years. I believe that if we can muster similar boldness,

clarity, and determination today, we can build prosperity

from this crisis and I look forward to working with you in

this endeavor.

Madam Speaker, ever since I came here I've been hearing the majority party say that they inherited this deficit, and so they have no recourse except to double it in 5 years and then to triple it in 10. That is not a grown-up response to inheriting a deficit. The grown-up response is to be responsible with discretionary spending and taxes.

With regard to taxes, Madam Speaker, if the government increased the top tax rate from the current rate of 35 percent to 100 percent, it would only collect an extra $400 billion this year. In other words, confiscating all of the income that is currently taxed at 35 percent, the highest tax rate, would not raise enough revenue to cover any of the annual deficits projected in the next 10 years.

There is no way the tax hikes on the rich alone can pay for the proposed spending in the current budget. The tax hikes are going to fall on working-class Americans and on poor Americans. This is no way to run a household, and Madam Speaker, it is no way to run this House.

Madam Chairman, today, in America, there is a set of parents that are sitting at the table with their teenage son. Their teenage son does not have a job, but he's provided an allowance by his parents.

They're sitting at the table because, unbeknownst to the parents until today, he has taken out four credit cards and run them up to the maximum. So the discussion with the teenage son is, What are we going to do about this?

The teenage sons says, I will find a summer job mowing lawns. And they say, Well, what are you going to do in the fall? It's going to take you longer than that to pay back your credit cards. Let's worry about that when the fall comes.

In order to avoid a big scene, the parents say, Okay, we'll worry about it when the fall comes. Now give us your credit cards so we can tear them up and stop this bleeding.

The son, of course says, You can't have my credit cards. I've become used to this lifestyle. I'm going to keep my credit cards and run them up some more.

As we know, that teenage son is the Democrat budget and the parents are the American taxpayers.

Madam Chairman, it takes one second to say ``no.'' One second to say ``no'' to this budget tomorrow. One second to save the American people $23 trillion. One second to save the American people and their children and their children's children from the debt that we are piling on them. One second to save them from taxes every time they turn on a light. One second to save them from expenditures that we'll never see the end of. It will take one second to say ``no.''

Or we can say ``yes'' to the Republican budget. If you say ``yes'' to the Republican budget, we can get to the point where deficits disappear. We can get to a point where the American people will be proud of their Congress for spending only as much as they take in.

One second to say ``yes'' or one second to say ``no.'' I encourage my colleagues to vote with the American people, for their pocketbooks, for their financial security, to save them from debt. One second. Say ``yes'' to the Republican budget. Say ``no'' to the Democrat budget and save us and our children and our grandchildren from a future of debt that we may never recover from.