Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. John C. White for his dedicated service as the Chairman of the Board of the Universal Technical Institute, Inc. We are in sincere gratitude for the vision, guidance, and leadership you have provided to UTI for your thirty seven years of service.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Guido Weigend for his long-term dedication at the Office of Strategic Services. His many years of service have impacted us all. I would also like to thank him for dedicating the majority of his life to the advancement of our nation's youth through his role at Arizona State University. We are in sincere gratitude for the vision, guidance, and leadership he has provided our country.

Mr. Speaker, first, I appreciate being recognized for these 5 minutes, although it is always dangerous when a Member starts walking towards the microphone and they are doing it because something hit their desk and it annoyed them.

We have been working on something in our office to try to explain an intense frustration I have, and that is Washington and its embracing of delusional math. Look, I have only been here 3 years, and I have come to the conclusion that the single biggest problem I see is not the right-left continuum, but those who own calculators

and those who don't; those who live in a world where math actually has a value. And this will make sense, hopefully, in a moment.

I am right now holding a CBO report, the ``2013 Long-Term Budget Outlook.'' Yet I have not heard someone else come to this microphone, but there is just the beginning of a paragraph that should terrify you:

Federal debt as a percentage of GDP in 2038 under the

extended baseline is projected to be about twice as large as

the amount estimated in last year's report.

Do you understand what this report is saying? That because of the policies from this administration, the policies coming out of our bureaucracies and the things we need to actually deal with in this House, the numbers are almost twice as bad as they were last year. That is the speed we are going to hit 100 percent of debt to GDP. And the thing you need to understand is that it is worse than in the long-term budget outlook forecast because there are delusions built into that, because we here as a body instruct the Congressional Budget Office saying, Follow current law; that's what you need to budget off of.

How many of us here come January when the SGR is up, and many of you will know it as ``doc fix,'' are going to hold the numbers, hold the current law with the understanding at the end of about a dozen years, doctors who see Medicare patients are going to be paid 73 percent less. So we will walk onto the floor here probably in December or January and fix the SGR so doctors are compensated so they continue to see their Medicare patients, and we blow up the numbers in the long-term budget forecast, and we do that on lots of things. So when you actually do the adjustment for math reality, policy reality, the long-term budget numbers are much, much worse than we talk about around here.

And now to my point.

A year and a half ago, we actually did something bipartisan. We did something called the JOBS Act. In the scale of things, it was small; but there were some neat things in there. One of the things I fixated on was something called ``crowdfunding,'' an opportunity to help the truly little entrepreneur. This was only up to $1 million, and it was using this thing called the Internet to be able to raise money so if you are the cupcake shop or the mechanic shop, or you have some idea where you can begin getting some angel investment and get going, well the SEC took a year and a half to do what was supposed to be a simple rule set, so they are a year late.

And here is what they brought us: this is the law, these handful of pages, six, seven pages is the crowdfunding portion of the JOBS Act. Here is the 550-page proposed rule-set.

So if we are in a world where we have crushing debt screaming towards us, and some of that is coming now because we are being told that the new normal is a 2 percent GDP growth, we need to be doing things that accelerate that economic growth, or we are in incredible trouble.

So as the House, bipartisan, we passed the JOBS Act, which is one of the little increments that is supposed to reach out and help grow the economy, and then the bureaucracy hands us crushing rules that make it almost impossible to use.

So for whoever is listening, watching, caring about things like the crowdfunding rules that are before the SEC, you have 90 days from now. Please go online, make comments, help them understand that this is supposed to be helping the next generation of small entrepreneurs in this country, and don't make it 550 pages of bureaucratic legalese. It can be simpler. We can handle this. We can do great things in this country, but we can't do it if the bureaucracy continues to crush our opportunities.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Harold Sharp for his 44 years and 3 months of dedicated government service. Arizona is in sincere gratitude for the assistance, guidance, and leadership you have provided for the Federal Aviation Administration for so many years.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in celebration of Mr. Christopher Moyer's 55th birthday. May the years ahead be blessed with good health, strong family, prosperity, and peace.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in celebration of the marriage of Sara Kyler and Brian Gates. May God be with them and keep them. May their love for one another and commitment to the life they have ahead be an inspiration to others.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Harold Sharp for his 44 years and 3 months of dedicated government service. Arizona is in sincere gratitude for the assistance, guidance, and leadership you have provided for the Federal Aviation Administration for so many years.

Mr. Speaker, this is one of those moments where you come to the floor--I am unscripted--and I want to sort of share something from the heart that actually has really, really disturbed me watching this debate over the last few days.

I am from Arizona and I like to say I am a friend of Gabby Giffords, and I have known her for a very long time. Do we all remember 3 years ago when this House came together, when my media in Arizona and the media across this country said, whoa, maybe it is time to actually take a step backwards and reflect on our use of language, reflect on our tone, reflect on our civility.

Yet look what you have heard over the last two or three days, over this last week. I have a President that got behind the microphones and was literally talking down the stock market, asking why hasn't it gone down. I have one of the heads of the intelligence services fearful that the intelligence service officers are bribable now because some are on furlough. I have had Members come to the microphone right off to the side of me here and use language like ``terrorist.'' The White House has stood behind the use of the language of ``gun to the head.'' You want to talk about something that is offensive? And this is to all my brothers and sisters here in Congress and for the blogs and the reporters and the political operatives around this country, you are better, we are better than this.

A good example is you just heard the Representative from New Jersey come to the microphone. I can only say nice things about his tone. He made his argument in a rational, constructive way. We have different views of the world. There was none of the flailing of the hands and the screaming into the microphone. And you have to start to take a step backwards and wonder, why the theater, why the viscousness and the theater coming from the left.

I hope we don't look back a month from now and find out that some of this was about money, fund-raising, the politics of cash; because the reality is this argument is actually pretty darn simple. Those of us on the conservative side believe we have and we have reached out over and over. And if you really want a solution, and this is to Senator Reid, send over some Members to that conference committee. Put them in a room and let them start talking.

I am from that view of the world that a big deal is healthiest for the country; but then I will hear language like, well, we are heading toward the debt ceiling and you are going to default. Anyone that says that is looking you in the eyes and lying to you, either that or they don't own a calculator. You have got to understand the math. This country takes in 18 percent of GDP in taxes, and we pay out 2 percent in debt coverage. And in 2014 we have, what, $1.6 trillion in refinancing.

The fact of the matter is any way you ladder the model, we are never, ever, ever--and I am also quoting Bill Gross from a couple of days ago--we are never never, ever, ever, it is implausible that we won't make our interest payments. You have $3.1 trillion we are going to take in in tax revenues. We are going to spend about $3.7 trillion. So using language like, well, we are going to default, has the left decided that they are hungry to scare the markets, hungry to scare the world debt markets, and is this how you leverage politics?

Look, I understand we have different views. I actually believe the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, is part-timing America, is destroying so many people's opportunities. But I also do believe we do have to come up with solutions and continued solutions for preexisting conditions for someone with

severe asthma. But we have our vision, we want to get to the same goal.

So to my friends on the Democrat side, particularly over in the Senate, 2 years ago you lit up my phones in my office demanding that we talk and negotiate on other issues. So that rhetoric was acceptable in the summer of 2011, but today it is not? How about just a little bit of intellectual consistency from the left?

Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Gosar, and from all of us, I see Peggy has slipped off the floor, but happy birthday.

Mr. Speaker, I actually come here before the body with somewhat of a unique perspective on what's going on here. And I hate to admit that I'm getting this old, but in 1993, I was the majority whip in the Arizona State house. I was the one who was assigned to work as a negotiator on the original IGRA compacts between the State of Arizona-- the legislature had to put its text together--and the tribal communities, our 21 land-holding tribes within the State of Arizona. So I spent a year of my life with lawyers and tribal members and their lawyers and members of the legislature and members of the Governor's office going over this over and over.

And the concern that constantly came up was, if we make this deal as IGRA, that had passed a few years earlier and was sponsored by one of our U.S. Senators, are we confident that this very situation that's happening right now would not happen.

Look, I know many of the players have changed in those 20 years, but this is what we talked about. And now I need to take you to the next reason: Why is this so dangerous to our State?

Arizona does something, and I don't know if it's unique to our State, but there's the ability for my poor rural tribal communities to transfer their machines to urban communities. I believe if this casino goes into my metropolitan area, my State, within a couple years, becomes a full-scale gaming State because the horse track and the others are already lining up, gearing up, I believe, to do the initiative, saying, hey, we all thought we had this deal. Look what's happening. They're coming into your neighborhood. Let's just put it on the ballot and let everyone participate in full-scale gaming. And the moment that happens, the value of the machine transfer for these poor rural tribes that are just now starting to build that consistent cash flow will go away.

This is much more than just dealing with the Tohono O'odham and where their aboriginal lands are and this acquisition of lands that are 100 miles beyond. This is an issue of: Are you about to allow something to happen that will change the very nature of my State?

Mr. Speaker, due to a family funeral, I was unable to vote on today's ``FARRM Bill'' legislation. However, I want the record to show my strong opposition to the bill that was passed by the House.

Despite the fact the welfare portion of the bill, in the form of SNAP, was separated; the bill that made its way to the Floor was rife with a permanent entitlement system in the form of farm policy.

If this bill becomes law, there will be no incentive for our friends in the agriculture community to pass another farm bill for the next 30 years because Washington, in one fell swoop, pegged prices at all time highs.

Further, under this bill, shallow-loss programs and wholly uncapped crop insurance have become a permanent backstop.

We had an opportunity to shrink government and chose instead to continue down a path of unending subsides and market distortions.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I might consume.

Mr. Chairman, I'm sure this is true for all of us in the body, both on the

right and the left. As we grind through the amendments and look at them, we, on occasion, come across an amendment that you can actually see where it was well meaning. It may have had a good heart behind it, but when you sort of dice it up, you start to actually understand both something from a personal basis almost borders on the humorous side but also structurally has some real problems.

I stand up today trying to remove some language, the Healthy Food Financing Initiative. Look, we will have some Members who will say it's only $125 million, but understand that $125 million may be used to buy a grocery store to subsidize certain healthy food products in areas where the program deems there is a shortage of such.

Where there is an amazing irony is, okay, we want healthy foods. There are some areas that the products that may be available in those areas we deem not to be particularly nutritious, but that may be because in our commodity subsidy system, what's in our grocery stores? The fact of the matter, processed foods, because we subsidize commodities. Then I go in and say, But my solution is I'm going to create another subsidy to take care of the problem on the other side. At some point, you've got to be willing to take a step back and see the irony of this.

But there are also other structural problems. We're basically taking taxpayer money, and through a sort of a network, you may find a private grocery store being financed by taxpayer money. You may be finding the system where certain foods and certain retailers are being financed by taxpayer money just because it's designated as an area where these products don't exist.

So with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve to close.

Mr. Chairman, to the gentlelady from Ohio, you hit a couple points that I absolutely agree on.

We have a horrible obesity epidemic. We have a crisis of nutrition of what people consume. If you really care about those things, then you would actually look at the farm bill overall and what we do in this country to distort what we consume. Walk down your grocery store aisles and you will see what we've done by more government policy.

But the fact of the matter is you, in many ways, make your own argument. If there is actually a program that you believe is working at all in Pennsylvania, then you've demonstrated the States are capable of doing this. But, once again, to take another $125 million of Federal money to create another program that ultimately actually does things like buys a grocery store, I mean actually competes with a private business, I see something that's almost absurd in that if that's the way that this amendment ultimately works.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

May I request my remaining time?

Mr. Chairman, it may be a little unprecedented, but I wanted to actually give my friend, Dr. Burgess, even though he is on the other side, 30 seconds of my time.

I will try to be fast at this.

To the gentlewoman from Ohio, actually, I want to be careful in my language because I did say purchase grocery stores. It's basically finance their acquisitions through loans and other mechanics. It would be unfair to use the Solyndra type, but it is that mechanic of doing those loan mechanics and those things. And functionally, the taxpayers do have money out and risk in that fashion.

Look, for many of us here, we see an amendment like this, we see the well-meaning nature of it, but the underlying cause of much of this is the global policy we engage in--and we have for 60, 70 years.

We seem to be, if you look at all the amendments and really dig through this farm bill, I believe you will see layer after layer after layer where we're trying to fix sins that we created with our last attempt to fix a mistake.

I appreciate we have a crisis in parts of our country--whether it be access to healthy foods, whether it be obesity--but a $125 million program that creates special grants, special purchases, special loans, this isn't the way you get there to fix that.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, being someone who worked on this amendment last year--and I appreciate my next-door neighbor and my old friend, Matt Salmon, for bringing it up--for those of us from Arizona, we actually have some very intimate experience with sort of dealing with these mechanics.

For almost all of us in this body, we run for office telling everyone that immigration is a Federal issue. You know, we need to set Federal policy, and that's how we mechanically will come up with our commonality of enforcement.

But what happens when, all of a sudden, we have a municipality that's still taking those Federal dollars and yet is not playing under the same rules as their next-door neighbor municipalities?

The beauty of this amendment is very, very simple. It says, if you're going to take these resources, you need to play by the rule book that we in Congress set on an issue that we're supposed to be dominant on.

And the reality of it is, when you have a municipality that, through stated policy, flaunts what we're trying to do, particularly in immigration policy, it ends up creating this sort of balkanization in our communities, and it sets off those very fights that I believe our last speaker was touching on.

And having been the county treasurer of Maricopa County, I've seen the edges of this, when one municipality was looking very, very differently at our Federal laws compared to another one and, literally, the movements that would happen with populations and the fights that would start and also the chaos it would actually create when you were trying to have a community of also equal law enforcement.

So, Mr. Chairman, that's one of the reasons I stand here and support the Salmon amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I wanted to take this 60-second moment to stand here in front of the House and talk a little bit about the Working Families Flexibility Act. I am someone that as a Member of Congress, in a previous life, has run both a State agency where they could do this, where actually employees at my State level had the options of how they managed their compensation, whether they wanted to take it in time or actually in dollars.

But yet the arrogance, the continuing arrogance of Washington, it's good enough for our public employees, but it's not good enough for the businesses around the country. I've got to give Martha Roby credit. Thank you for bringing this bill before us. Hopefully, we're going to step up and say, if we really want economic choice for the American people, we'll pass this bill.

Mr. Speaker, this is actually one of those moments when you get to stand in front of the House with sort of a happy story. There's an organization out there called Family Promise. They are in 41 States with, I believe, about 160,000 volunteers, and they've had an issue for years now. They bring in homeless families, but often those homeless families would have a pet, a furry family member.

Just this week, PetSmart set up PetSmart Promise. I actually got to see this firsthand in Scottsdale, Arizona, where they actually are taking care of that furry friend of that homeless family that needs to get their life back in order. So PetSmart gets a real call out from us. Family Promise is doing amazing things, and this is just one of those moments where you're very proud of a corporate entity like this, stepping up and working with Family Promise to help homeless families around the country.

Mr. Speaker, this is one of those moments where you come up here for 1 minute, and I wanted to share a certain frustration, particularly the votes we just had here in the House.

I come from Arizona. We have 22 tribal communities, 21 actual designated reservations. I lived almost my entire life alongside the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian community. It's a sophisticated tribe with wonderful outreach into the community. They've come light years in the last 10. They've done amazing things.

We have been working with that community and Congressman Cole's office trying to work on language that would work with them in VAWA, and yet Congressman Cole and Congressman Issa were not allowed in the process to offer their amendments. That's of great frustration to me because there was months of months of labor and work put into that.

But there was also another irony here. I heard some folks on the right and a lot on the left talking about the self-determination court process within those tribal communities. Okay, great. Are we now ready to have this body step up and help our tribes in Arizona that are sophisticated manage their own finances and their own health care? Because they're asking for that self-determination.