Floor Statements

Today, congressional Democrats are introducing the curiously named Employee Free Choice Act, which actually does the opposite of its title by taking away an employee's free choice to choose in secret whether or not to join a union.

Union leadership is elected by secret ballot, I was elected by a secret ballot, and the President of the United States was elected by a secret ballot.

In these tough economic times, no one can blame American workers for supporting measures they believe will create new jobs for them. I grew up in a union household, so I understand why workers support this legislation when they hear their leadership talk about how this is needed because workers' influence is declining in the United States. Unfortunately, their leadership's rhetoric just doesn't square with reality. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership was just over 16 million in 2008, a 2.6 percent rise over 2007. This legislation lays waste to an employee's right to choose whether to join a union by secret ballot, which is too steep a price to pay.

Thank you very much.

What I'm going to do tonight is just introduce myself to the people here and just share some real life experiences.

I have lived in Johnson City, Tennessee for 31 years, have practiced medicine there, have built a thriving medical practice from 4 physicians to over 70 with 350 employees, and so we've delivered and have worked in a small business.

A few years ago, I decided to run for public office after just sharing some thoughts with friends, and I was fortunate enough to be elected to our commission and as the mayor of our city. I brought a very simple philosophy to government, very simple. It's not calculus; it's not arithmetic. It's simple math. That is: Spend less than you take in.

When we went on the commission several years ago, we had deficit spending, and we had a bloated city government. With the help of some great leadership and our other commissioners, we cut almost 100 people from our workforce. In addition to that, we had only about $2 million in the bank, and that was essentially broke. During the last 6 years, we've passed six consecutive budgets without a tax increase, and have gone from a fund balance of $2 million to $24 million.

So our city has a great savings account set so that, when this rough economy came, we were prepared for it like any individual would be with a savings account. We did this without raising taxes and without cutting services, and I think the people there rewarded us for this prudent behavior. As a matter of fact, Wall Street rewarded us by increasing our bond rating to a AA rating.

I then fast forward. I come to Washington, D.C. in January, and I'm sworn in. In the fall, we all recall the $700 billion bailout, or the so-called ``TARP''--Toxic Asset Relief Program--that had already been passed by the previous Congress, and that was passed because of illiquidity in the banking market. People weren't able to get loans, and that's still an issue.

One of the first things we confronted here was an $800-plus billion spending plan, the so-called ``stimulus.'' Now, one of the reasons we were successful where we were was we had a plan to correct our problems. We had a very well-thought-out plan, and we executed that plan--reducing debt and improving the financial stability of our local government.

Here in the Federal Government, we had a massive, massive spending plan. As we went through it, it was 450 pages or so long. The plan was discussed here on the House floor and was sent to the Senate. It came back as a 758-page bill. After conference, it was 1,071 pages, which we were presented here on the floor at about 9 o'clock one Friday morning a couple of weeks ago. We voted on it 5 hours later, of which no one could have read that bill in its entirety and can tell me what's in it. So it was about $1 billion a page. What I saw was massive Federal spending.

The options we have as a local government are: Number one, we can raise your property taxes. Tennessee is not an income tax State, so we have sales taxes and property taxes--that's a way we can raise revenue--or we can expand growth where you have more property taxes coming in. That's what we chose to do. We can't ask people to go down and spend any more money at the local department stores or at Wal-Mart or wherever. People are protecting their money now, so we can't do that. The Federal Government has a third option, and that is to borrow money, and they have borrowed massive amounts of money from China. If the situation comes where we can't borrow any more money on the credit market, then we have to print money. The danger of that is, when you expand the money supply, you certainly will create an environment where inflation may occur.

I can tell you one of the things that I did. I took this responsibility so dearly to myself because the people who are hurt the most with higher taxes are the people at the lower income and our senior citizens on a fixed income. I can think of so many people in my community for whom $20 or $30 or $40 a month is just devastating. The gas price increases we had last year were just devastating--$4 or $5 a gallon. They just could not pay it. If you had people working, as we have had many people, for $10, $12, $13 an hour and they had to drive more than 10 miles to work, it took a day-and-a-half's work per week to pay their gas to get to work.

So the people who are hurt the most are not the people here in this Congress, who make a good salary, or the people out there making six figures. It's the people on a fixed income. I think, as for this particular bill that we've done, this spending, if we create an inflationary spiral, we've hurt the very people we've said here that we're going to help. We've hurt them the most.

I had the opportunity today to speak to a good many bankers because of some legislation that came on the floor, and it was about this, the home bailout. I called and spoke to numerous ones in my district. Let me just reminisce a little bit about the banking problems we've had.

I think there are approximately nine banks in America that control about 70 percent of all of the financial assets in America and over 8,000 community banks that control the other 30 percent. Less than 5 percent of our community banks have had to ask for TARP money. Every single one of the major banks has been too big to fail. Well, who is going to go save these small community banks? I can tell you no one is, but most of them are very financially secure. I spoke to several today where less than 2 percent of their loans are a month behind or more, so they are doing very well.

Then they were presented with a situation today in this particular bill where a bankruptcy court can say to you, You have to mark down the difference. If the home price decreases in value from, let's say, $230,000 to $200,000, you have to eat that. This local bank has to eat that.

The gentleman will yield.

Absolutely. Not only that, but if you do what they have recommended or what we voted on today, another provision in that bill is that you could get a zero in bankruptcy court. The judge could say, You get a zero interest rate for 30 years.

I asked one of my banking friends, How do you make money if you lend at zero percent for 30 years?

The bottom line is that those costs are passed on to the other people who borrow money from that bank. So the taxpayers absolutely get the bill. That is a great point you just made.

Absolutely.

What we've just said to many of the banks in our area and to the folks who've borrowed money with the intent of paying it back--which is the example I gave today--is, look, if somebody had bought a Tahoe last January and they had paid $40,000 for this new Tahoe, well, when gas prices went to $5 a gallon, you probably couldn't get $20,000 for that Tahoe. You were probably upside down in your loan right then, but what did you do? Did you walk back and give it to the bank? No. You kept paying on that until you paid your Tahoe off. So that's what we've asked people to do.

I think this bill should be vetted extremely well in the Senate. We shouldn't cause people, the 98 percent of the people who are paying their mortgages on time in Tennessee, to say, Hey, I've got to also pay for this other mortgage when I'm doing it the right way.

I think the experience I've had in government is that we've always preached--and I have seen it myself, have lived it and have breathed it--smaller government and low taxes. Businesses move in, and your economy thrives. I have personally witnessed that. I know it works. I come to Washington, D.C. What do I see? The most staggering spending that I've ever seen in my life.

Let me pose a question. Then I'll let you answer this: When we passed the omnibus spending bill, I took that 2,000 pages back to show my constituents what we'd passed here. An 8.5 percent increase. Now you tell me what State government, what local city government is going to pass an 8.5 percent increase this year. The example we should be doing is: We in Federal Government are going to cut the size of this Federal Government. We're going to tighten our belt. It would be a wonderful example to the rest of the Nation.

The thing that I noticed when I was home and you have, I'm sure, the same--and I have to say you have a wonderful Charlotte airport. During the snowstorm, I got to spend 24 hours there. So it's a beautiful airport. The people from North Carolina were very good to their neighbor from Tennessee.

I think one of the things that we have to do is we have to set an example in the Federal Government to the rest of the Nation. If we did that, if we had a plan that we're going to balance the budget--I mean, this particular budget we're spending is $1.6, $1.8 trillion out of balance, and we're going to cut it--well, it's some gimmickry because when you don't have an $800 billion spending package, you've already cut that much of it. That's onetime dollars. So that's really not a fair cut.

A real cut would be when you actually spend less money than you did the year before, and that's never happened in my view of Congress.

Would the gentlelady yield for just one comment?

Just something even more sinister.

What the gentlelady from Wyoming was saying is that the carbon tax, if you look at it, or cap-and-trade, just so people understand what that is, is when oil is offloaded from a ship or comes out of a well, a tax will be placed on it at the wellhead. So you pay a tax that goes directly to the consumer. Again, the least people able to afford this are the folks on a fixed income, our senior citizens, which we have a lot in our community.

So when you go down to the grocery store to buy a bag of tomatoes or bread, it was brought there by a vehicle that's paying more to get there just because of this carbon tax. And the theory, as you pointed out, is we want to tax carbon to produce carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and we'll use these other renewables.

And at some other time, I certainly would like to go into some ideas that we've shared at the local level about how to reduce carbon at no cost to the taxpayers.

Mr. Speaker, this week the House is scheduled to consider the fiscal year 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act, which is going to spend an additional $410 billion. After spending $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, another $787 billion for what is supposedly stimulus, perhaps supporters of this week's bill just believe that spending another $410 billion has lost a lot of its significance and will go unnoticed. It cannot and it will not.

The folks in Tennessee assume that when you spend $2 trillion in just discretionary spending--never mind spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--that it gets easier to find some savings and set priorities because $2 trillion is a staggering amount of money. I have to tell them that, in Congress, the opposite is true; the more you spend here, the more difficult it is to set priorities.

It's time to get our Nation's financial house in order. We can only do that by debating the spending package, but once again, it appears we will be faced with a take-it-or-leave-it package of priorities that will be subject to almost no scrutiny or debate. If we're going to restore fiscal responsibility, we must carefully review this package and demand that excessive spending be eliminated.

I thank the general for his service.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support for H.R. 911 because I think, on balance, this bill will help states prevent further negligence at some ``boot-camp'' style facilities. Most programs, like the First Freewill Baptist Ministries in my district, do a lot to help troubled teens turn their lives around, but a few bad apples risk ruining their reputation. This legislation will ask states to strengthen their own oversight of these programs, but will not give the Federal government oversight.

While I will support the legislation, I am still concerned that this bill goes too far in taking away parents' rights to decide how their child will be medicated, and I hope the Chairman will work to improve this section before this bill becomes law.

As written, the legislation will allow residential programs for teens to change a child's prescriptions without parental consent. Many of these programs are quick to use psychotropic drugs to calm mood swings in these teens, and in some cases, the medicating may be warranted. I believe, however, that parents should always be given the right to help decide on best treatment options for their children, even if it is just to grant the facility a waiver to provide treatment. No parent should have no say in how their child is medicated, but as it is currently written, that would be the result of this bill.

So I hope we can improve this aspect of the bill, but again, I will support this legislation today to move the process forward.

Madam Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Niswonger Children's Hospital in Johnson City, Tennessee. On March 2, 2009, the hospital will open its doors and the new home for the Children's Hospital, our region's first hospital for children. The Children's Hospital at Johnson City Medical Center has offered premier health services in approximately 20 pediatric subspecialties for the past 16 years.

Once open, Niswonger Children's Hospital will serve children from birth until 18 years of age in a four-State region, including parts of Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky. With the financial assistance of Scott and Nikki Niswonger and the people of our region, the hospital will be a place where children will feel comfortable coming to for their care.

Niswonger's patient-centered care philosophy will put families in control of their care, and I certainly commend them for their work

Madam Speaker, when I began my medical practice some 30-plus years ago in Johnson City, we used a closet and had a one-bed neonatal intensive care unit. Today, we have a state-of-the-art intensive care unit to care for children.

When I began practice, when I graduated from medical school, almost half of the children who were born at 7 months died. Today, they have the same life expectancy as a term birth, and from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank this family for what they have done to make the health care of our region better and our children's lives better.

Madam Speaker, this weekend the administration warned that our economic crisis could become a catastrophe if we failed to pass an economic stimulus package. Madam Speaker, avoiding a catastrophe is exactly why House Republicans are opposed to the package that the House considered just 2 weeks ago. The Senate bill, being hailed as a compromise by some, spends more money than the House bill did and still contains too much wasteful spending.

We strongly support a stimulus bill, but it must be a stimulus bill that grows our economy, creates jobs, and doesn't saddle our grandchildren with unnecessary debt. Purchasing golf carts for the Federal Government is not stimulative; neither is money designed to follow-up the census which doesn't even begin for 2 years.

We support reducing taxes for working families and small businesses and improving our roads and water and sewer infrastructure. All of this lays the groundwork for future growth and is a much wiser use for our precious tax dollars.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge support for real economic stimulus legislation. With terrible economic news coming in all the time, I'm eager to support legislation that will spur economic investment and put an infrastructure in place that will promote future economic development.

Folks in east Tennessee will tell you that the bill the House passed last week is a bad bill. It's bloated by wasteful spending. Back home, we're adapting to this troubling economic climate by tightening our belts and clamping down on unnecessary spending.

Many people are understandably upset that the Federal Government's reaction is exactly the opposite. They're amazed when we're prepared to spend an additional $819 billion of their money after a $700 billion bailout that was spent without anyone being able to give a straight answer about where the money went. They're skeptical of the results that we're getting, and so am I.

I think there are a few stimulative activities we should be taking a good look at. First, we should return more of the money we're taking in in Washington through tax cuts for people who pay taxes. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many economic experts, this is one of the most effective measures we can take. I would also cut taxes for small business who are going to create the jobs we need to get out of this economic crisis. These businesses can use this money to reinvest in plant equipment.

This weekend, I met a young man named Mike who is in deep trouble with his two restaurants. He doesn't have the capital to keep going on. He hires 21 people. This is someone we need to desperately help, and this story can be repeated across this Nation.

To those who've been put out of a job, I would eliminate the taxes on unemployment insurance. It is so counterproductive to provide people these benefits only to turn around and take part of the benefit right back, and it doesn't make any sense.

As a former mayor, I would also encourage meaningful infrastructure investment focused on improving our Nation's roads, sewers, and education. I know from my experience that these improvements lay the groundwork for future economic development that will benefit our children's generation. In Johnson City, Tennessee, the investments we made several years ago make our city attractive to businesses and homebuyers, which in turn promote economic development.

I hope the majority party will take these suggestions and incorporate them into their package so that the next bill we consider on the House floor will be an American stimulus package, not a Democrat or Republican stimulus package.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this enormous economic stimulus package. To put its size in perspective, one-tenth of 1 percent of the stimulus would solve Tennessee's State budget deficit.

To quote one of my favorite baseball philosophers, Yogi Berra, if you don't know where you're going, you might end up someplace else. I think with this bill we are going to end up someplace else.

We know that this spending is enormous. The question is, is it going to work? This past week the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office cast doubt on whether this is going to be effective when it said only 7 percent of the plan's infrastructure spending would be spent by the end of the first fiscal year, and only 65 percent of the total package would be spent by 2010. I as a previous mayor support infrastructure spending.

Even more troubling for taxpayers is where their money is going. We were about to spend $50 million on the National Endowment of the Arts. Whatever one believes about spending taxpayer dollars on the arts, shouldn't we all be able to agree it should not be done when the country is facing a trillion dollar deficit and that it is not economic stimulus.

Until it was exposed, this so-called economic stimulus bill was spending millions on birth control.

People back in Tennessee are adapting to this troubling economic climate by tightening their belts and clamping down on unnecessary spending, and so they are understandably upset that the Federal Government's reaction is exactly the opposite. They are amazed that we preparing to spend an additional $825 billion of their money after a $700 billion bailout was spent without anybody being able to give a straight answer as to where the money went. They are skeptical of the results we are getting, and so am I. An economic stimulus project should fund projects that stimulate the economy, create jobs with long- term economic growth, not as a short-term fix.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to join in congratulating our Nation's 44th President, Barack Obama, on his inauguration. This is truly a historic moment for our Nation.

We are all Americans first and, as Republicans, stand ready and willing to work with the President in restoring economic growth, creating jobs, restoring physical integrity and protecting our Nation's security.

In the weeks and months ahead, we will surely have honest differences on what the best direction is for us as a country.

But all of us start this Congress with tremendous hope for President Obama's success. Madam Speaker, some of us grew up at a time of segregation and division in our Nation. But with President Obama's election and inauguration as President, all of us better understand what Dr. King told us when he said, ``Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.''

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, as an obstetrician/gynecologist for over 30 years, and I have delivered close to 5,000 babies, I strongly, very strongly, support the sanctity of life.

Using 3-D technology like the ultrasound has given us a window to the womb that shows that the unborn child is a living, breathing person. We can see the heartbeat as early as 28 days post-conception. I have watched babies breathe, move their small fingers. They are human beings at that point of conception. I have looked through this window with my own eyes many, many times. I have seen human development from its earliest stages of a fetus all the way through birth, which strengthens my conviction in the right to life.

Life is a precious gift from God, and it begins at conception. It is our responsibility and privilege as legislators to protect those who do not have a voice. I will always fight for the right to life, because it is my conviction that we are all unique creations of God who knows us and loves us before we are ever conceived.

Tomorrow, in my opinion, will mark one of the most tragic, misguided Supreme Court cases in our Nation's history, Roe versus Wade. Since its decision in 1973, more than 50 million babies have been denied the right to life. We must make our laws consistent with our science and fully restore legal protections to all those waiting to be born. If the government has any legitimate function whatsoever, it is to protect the most innocent among us.

And, just to comment on the previous speakers, one of the most egregious procedures ever done is the third trimester abortion. I can tell you as a physician with over 30 years' experience there is no indication for that procedure for protection of the life of the mother. There are none. And my group that I practiced with for over 30 years has delivered over 25,000 children, and I can tell you right here and now, it breaks my heart to see that procedure, to know that it is done, and it is legal in this country. That is as wrong as it gets.

I am glad and privileged to be here on the floor of the House with other legislators fighting for the rights of the unborn, and I thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.