Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this week more than 100,000 people will gather at Churchill Downs in my district for the 135th running of the Kentucky Derby. They will be placing big bets. And this week, this Democratic Congress is going to be placing a big bet, too.

We're going to pass a budget resolution that makes a huge bet on America and the American people. By investing in targeted ways and developing a health care system that provides affordable, quality health care for every American, by creating a new energy system and a new energy direction in this country, and investing in higher education so that every American has the tools necessary to bring us into the 21st century, we will be making a huge bet that the American people can grow us out of the huge hole that we're in now.

I am proud that we're willing to make that bet, and I urge all of my colleagues to join us in betting on the American people.

Mr. Speaker, for the last 2 weeks when I was home in my district, I heard from many of my constituents who were justifiably concerned about the large amounts of deficits that we face, about the borrowing that we will have to do and about the spending that we are proposing to do in the President's budget that he approved recently. You know, those who have sought to, maybe, take advantage of that fear have said, ``Nobody ever borrows their way to prosperity.'' Oh, really?

In fact, virtually everyone who has grown wealthy in this country-- every corporation and any individual--has borrowed to make that possible, and that's exactly what we're doing. We face a choice. We face a choice of having a dysfunctional health care system, of having an energy system that makes us insecure and that damages our environment, and of having an education system that relegates our citizens to a dismal future.

What we are doing in the budget we passed is to borrow, yes, but to invest in those very important matters that will guarantee a brighter life for our society and for our people, and that is what we are committed to do.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to first thank my distinguished colleague from Kentucky (Mr. Guthrie) for his leadership in introducing H. Res. 214 and also the entire Kentucky delegation for supporting this important resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in honor of the thousands of generous and dedicated Kentuckians who took action in the wake of the catastrophic ice storms that hit the Commonwealth on January 26 of this year.

In a week's time, all eyes will turn towards my hometown of Louisville for the 135th running of the Kentucky Derby, sports' most exciting 2 minutes. The mood will be jubilant, and justifiably so, but it could not be so if not for the round-the-clock dedication of thousands of volunteers, first responders and National Guard who spared our region from lasting devastation.

The storm created the worst power outages in Kentucky history, and of the 3,000 streets in Louisville, not one was spared from fallen trees, power lines and other wreckage, leaving our city with enough debris to fill Cardinal Stadium. Thousands were displaced, but they were not alone. Neighbors helped neighbors and people from all walks of life rose to the occasion to provide food and shelter to those in need.

Tragically, a family of three from my community was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from an enclosed generator, a loss mourned by the entire

Commonwealth. But thanks to the efforts of our tireless first responders--police, firefighters and National Guard--untold lives were saved. These men and women walked in freezing temperatures knocking on door after door to ensure that no more families would be subjected to toxic fumes.

Thanks to the leadership of Governor Steve Beshear, Mayor Jerry Abramson, Brigadier General John Heltzel, and countless other officials, the damage was minimized and attention has now turned to the massive cleanup. With 220 men and women working 12-hour days, 7 days a week in Louisville alone, more than half a city has been fully restored, and the rest is not far behind.

But it is the unbridled spirit of thousands of volunteers who have given us new cause to rejoice in this Derby season, again making our Commonwealth great to visit and a place we love to call home. On behalf of thousands of Kentuckians who suffered in that tragic storm, and the thousands more who helped mitigate that suffering, I urge my colleagues to join me in commending the many outstanding individuals who made that possible. But while we continue to mourn the losses, we must also celebrate a job very well done.

Madam Speaker, this week the House will consider the budget resolution for fiscal year 2010. As with any budget, whether it is a household budget or the U.S. Government, the process involves deciding among priorities. And in the case of the Federal Government, it is deciding among priorities, all of which have legitimate public benefits.

Last week, the Budget Committee marked up the resolution. One of the amendments offered by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle proposed one of those decisions. Mr. Hensarling and Mr. McHenry proposed to strip $50 million of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and direct those funds to be spent for veterans' health care facilities. I applaud them very much for their interest in veterans' health care.

And I am happy to remind them and everyone else who is watching that over the past 3 years, the Democratic Congress increased funding for veterans' health care by $17 billion. And that is following 6 years under their party's rule where the number of vets actually receiving care declined.

Unfortunately, the debate on their amendment the other night left a lot to be desired as it actually became an opportunity for somebody to take cheap shots at arts funding that are not borne out by logic or facts. We just heard a little earlier the gentleman from South Carolina say arts funding is wasteful spending. Well, this day by fortuitous coincidence is Arts Advocacy Day, and I'd like to make the case for NEA funding, because, although that amendment was defeated in the Budget Committee, it may rear its head this week as well.

Mr. Hensarling supported his amendment by juxtaposing the health care needs of one of his constituents, a legitimate American military hero from Palestine, Texas, against funding for the arts. He implied that he didn't represent constituents who would benefit from arts funding. Well, I represent some legitimate American heroes as well, but I also represent Actors Theater of Louisville, a world-renowned institution; the Louisville Ballet; the Louisville Orchestra; the Kentucky

Opera and dozens of other arts groups; 7,700 employees of arts groups; and 1,500 arts-related businesses. I represent Ken von Roenn, a glass artist whose work decorates Reagan National Airport. He created an institution called Glassworks which has brought hundreds and thousands of people to Louisville, made it a national center for glass art and has provided a great economic generator in Louisville.

In total, the arts contribute in my district alone more than $250 million annually, including $100 million on arts-related spending like restaurants and hotels and so forth. All told last year, 5 million people attended arts events and cultural events in my district and they paid $5.6 million in local taxes.

Now I don't know a lot about Mr. Hensarling's district or Mr. McHenry's district, but I do know this: I know in Mr. Hensarling's district there are 1,317 arts businesses employing 3,229 people. The economic impact of the arts in Dallas, which he represents part of, was $550 million in 2006. In Mr. McHenry's district there are 947 arts- related business employing 3,043 people. In North Carolina, there are 17,000 businesses employing 159,000 people. Nationally, the impact of the arts is $166 billion, 5.7 million jobs, $104 billion in household income, $7.9 billion in local taxes, $9.1 billion in State taxes and $12.6 billion in Federal taxes. Now somebody may say that that's not an economic benefit, but I believe the facts are contrary to that. And listen to what the Chicago Tribune wrote in an editorial back in February talking about the stimulus funding for the arts:

After all, the argument that the labor-intensive arts are not job- creation engines is patently absurd; they just fuel different kinds of struggling workers, workers unaccustomed to bonuses. Their role in generating billions of dollars in ancillary economic activity for stores, restaurants and the travel business has been proven in bucketloads of surveys and analyses.

Let's think about the arts funding in another way. Fifty million dollars as a percentage of this year's budget is one seventy- thousandths of the budget. For someone who's trying to decide how to spend $35,000 in annual income, their personal budget, it's 50 cents. That's the equivalent amount. I don't know one American probably who hasn't bought a CD, hasn't gone to a movie, hasn't gone to a concert or gone to a play and spent a lot more than 50 cents.

Mr. Hensarling offered the contrast of one piece of sculpture--a selective one at that--to a veterans clinic, but I would offer another picture: a picture of an F-22 jet fighter, $143 million for one jet fighter plane.

This is about priorities and the arts are an important priority for this country.

Thank you for yielding. And I want to congratulate my friend, Mr. Boucher and also Mr. Pence for this terrific piece of legislation.

Madam Speaker, I rise as a proud member of the Society of Professional Journalists in strong support of the Free Flow of Information Act.

As a former journalist, I have seen the assurance of anonymity put a frightened insider at ease and turn a reluctant source into an eye- opening wealth of information.

In my hometown of Louisville, we witnessed what happens when a source's identity is not protected. There, Jeffrey Wigand, the famous tobacco whistleblower, was victimized by threats and intimidation, ultimately losing his job, his family and his home. His selfless efforts are largely seen as heroic, but for many, the lesson is: If you have sensitive information that would benefit the American public, keep it to yourself.

We also know that if it had not been for the confidence of sources that they wouldn't be revealed that the incident at the Watergate and the more recent scandals at Walter Reed Hospital might never have come to light.

In a time when we have seen how the inner workings of corporations and government can have catastrophic effects on our country as a whole, it is as important as ever to protect this conduit to information, the anonymous source. Until we can guarantee that security, good journalists will be jailed, conscience-driven and law-abiding Americans will be silenced, and information that is critical to all of our lives will be locked away from the American people.

I would like to respond quickly to two things that were said by my colleague from Iowa (Mr. King). One is that there is no need to give special protection to the media. As Mr. Pence pointed out, the Founding Fathers decided to give special protection to the media. They granted them freedom of the press. And there is no freedom of the press without the ability to protect your sources. And secondly, there was a question raised as to whether there was an abundance of information that would demonstrate a need. We don't know how many thousands of potential sources have been silenced by fear that they might be revealed in the press. It is kind of like saying ``we haven't been attacked since 9/ 11.'' We don't know. But we do know, as in the case of Jeffrey Wigand, what happens when a source is revealed.

So once again, as someone who has spent many years as a writer and editor in the United States and who is very grateful for the protections of the first amendment, I strongly urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, we are in very serious economic times. Unprecedented challenges confront this country. It is a time when we need all hands on deck.

Unfortunately, all we've heard from the other side of the aisle is hyperbole: we're spending too much, we're not doing this, we're not doing that. We need ideas.

The best in America has always come because of a conflict of ideas, because of ideas converging and taking the best and assimilating them into policies that benefit all Americans. We're not getting the help we need from our Republican colleagues. Again, we need all hands on deck.

Just this Sunday, one of the Republican Members was on a national talk show and said our faith in God is going to get us through this. Well, maybe it will, but faith in God, as important as it is, is not an economic policy.

We need the best that America has to offer from all sides of America. I invite my Republican colleagues to participate in this debate and help get us out of this economic challenge.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in recognition of National Safe Place Week, the organization and the critical services it provides to young people in need.

Of the more than 1 million youth who experience homelessness annually, some are born without homes, but most run away to escape abuse; and with no hope in sight, one-third attempt suicide. Thankfully, National Safe Place recognizes that in each of these young people is hope for the future, a chance to succeed, and an opportunity to become productive members of our communities.

In the 26 years since National Safe Place began in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, it has served nearly a quarter million disconnected youth nationwide, 100,000 in Kentucky alone. In 40 States and 1,400 communities across the Nation, Safe Place has provided the services and support to help a child's potential become a reality. No wonder Safe Place is the largest recipient of funding through the Reconnecting Homeless Youth Act, which we just reauthorized with legislation I authored with my colleague, Judy Biggert.

Time after time, adolescents devoid of hope have traveled a path that seems sure to dead end, only to find themselves in front of one of 1,600 stores, restaurants, and businesses bearing the Safe Place logo. Inside, they find a new path that begins with the support every child needs and ends with a chance that every child deserves.

I urge my colleagues to join me in celebrating National Safe Place Week.

Well, I thank my colleague.

It is a very interesting situation to me, not just a question of outrage, but also a question of mystery. Because for many Americans who are viewing this situation basically as a new situation, looking at it just from the last week or so when the news of these bonuses came out-- and of course they've known about the huge amounts that the taxpayers have been paying to AIG to keep them from collapsing--now we know that the American taxpayer owns 80 percent of AIG. But this story started a long time ago.

Last Congress, I was a member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. And last fall, we had the opportunity to hear from the last two CEOs of AIG before the government takeover. And it was a fascinating and illuminating story because what we learned during those hearings last October was that, early last year, in 2008, the man who ran this exotic investment faculty operation in London, Mr. Cassano, had told the board of directors of AIG that his division, the Credit Swap Division of AIG, would not cost the company one dollar. Several weeks later, all of a sudden there's $5 billion in losses in his division. And as we know, subsequent events have shown that there were literally hundreds of billions of dollars of credit default swaps-- which are basically bets on whether a certain obligation will be a valid obligation--but it was basically nothing but bets, and that this division had brought down a giant company.

Now, Mr. Cassano, it came out in testimony, was paid for his leadership, if you can call it that, of that division, $280 million over 8 years, $280 million over 8 years. And, strangely enough, in light of what we have learned recently, he had a contract which entitled him to bonuses of another $34 million.

Now, we don't know yet who the recipients of these bonuses that were paid last week are, but it would be fascinating to know if Mr. Cassano was one of those people because he had one of those contracts. One contract with someone who has been paid $280 million over 8 years was contractually due $34 million more when he had essentially brought down one of the 10 largest corporations in the United States and in the process cost American taxpayers as much as $180 billion.

So it's not just a question of outrage now since the American taxpayers are paying attention and the Congress is paying attention to the AIG situation and all of us are rightly outraged, but we have to look back and see the greed, the malfeasance, and the close to criminality that occurred in this corporate operation.

Strangely enough, when we spoke to those CEOs in the Oversight Committee last year, they really didn't understand anything that had been going on. And in their defense, they came on the scene when this operation had already been going, and I assume at some point it had been making AIG a fair amount of money. But they didn't know what credit default swaps were. They didn't know what all these collateralized debt obligations were upon which these bets were made. But they did know that all of a sudden this one operation that was kind of hidden from their view and developed this mystery about it because nobody except Mr. Cassano knew what was going on there, they knew that he had cost them their company and he had cost the American people an awful lot of money.

The great finishing touch on this story is that even after Mr. Cassano had been fired, he was still on AIG's payroll as a consultant for a million dollars a month, a million dollars a month. And the reason was nobody else knew what was going on in that division. They had to have the benefit of his knowledge, even though his knowledge had cost them their company.

So this is a story that didn't happen yesterday. It didn't happen on Friday when those bonus checks were issued. This is a story that is symbolic of what has gone on in this country over the last decade when greed and a lack of supervision and a lack of regulation have resulted in a worldwide financial crisis. So we can rightly be mad and we will take action tomorrow to rectify this situation with bonuses, but this, again, is symptomatic of a much deeper problem that this Congress both in the Financial Services Committee in the House, the Finance Committee in the Senate, and throughout government is going to be dealing with for a long period of time.

So I'm glad that we have the opportunity to talk about this crisis in accountability, this crisis in regulation, this crisis in supervision in our country because the American people deserve not just to have those bonuses returned to the taxpayers' accounts, but they also deserve to have an economy that is free of the insecurity that these types of situations bring.

So with that I look forward to hearing from our other colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, it now gives me great pleasure to yield to my good friend from Iowa who served with me on the Oversight Committee last year and sat through many of those hearings and now serves us well on the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Braley of Iowa.

It was a fascinating hearing, and something that came up in that hearing was intriguing to me as well. One of our members early in the questioning period asked the two CEOs why the Treasury Department, under Secretary Paulson, had bailed out AIG and not Lehman Brothers, and they both said, well, we don't know, you will have to ask the Treasury Department.

And when it got to my turn to question, I asked them, I said, you know, I would like to ask you a similar question or related question, but maybe in a different fashion, what was the relationship between AIG and Goldman Sachs? And the reason I asked the question was because Secretary Paulson and many of the officials at Treasury had come out of the Goldman Sachs operation.

And they responded, as you will recall, Goldman Sachs was the counterparty with AIG on $20 billion worth of credit default swaps.

And until the last few days, AIG had been unwilling to tell anyone who their counterparties had been, and they did reveal last week, a list of many of them, and how much money they had been paid and Goldman Sachs had been paid 11 or $12 billion of this amount.

So what we saw was an incredible amount of incestuous dealings among these giant corporations who were out to, essentially, create wealth without creating value. And creating wealth, not for the American people, but creating wealth for these few people, these giants of Wall Street, these masters of the universe, who got into an operation that they really didn't understand. And now we are all paying the price for that.

There is a fascinating article that's in the current issue of Harper's Magazine by a lawyer out of Chicago. It talks about what he perceives to be one of the problems in our current economic situation, and that it was that over the last 20, 30 years, we have put more and more emphasis on the financial services aspect of our country as opposed to the manufacturing facilities.

And it all happened because we stopped paying attention to how much money you could make in the banking business, and we essentially did away with usury laws so that banks could earn 25, 30, 35 percent on their money on credit cards, and these exotic instruments where they could leverage their assets 30 and 40 times.

And because they were making these huge profit margins, they drew capital away from manufacturing to the financial sector, because there was no longer nearly the return available to capital in the manufacturing sector, and it was all in the financial services sector.

What we have seen as a result of that is, as has been mentioned already today, the greatest disparity in wealth between the rich and everyone else in this country in its history, and also, basically, an unsustainable and dangerous financial services sector, one that had gotten so big and created so little value that it jeopardized all of our society and our economy.

With that, I would like to yield again to my friend from Memphis, the runner-up in the last poll to my beloved Louisville Cardinals, Mr. Cohen.

I can tell my friend that one of the reasons no action was taken last year was the carried-interest provision, which is to what you refer. Also, it affects a lot of people who are developing apartment complexes and other things, so they are essentially individual businessmen investors who had formed partnerships, and they would have been affected by the same change.

And there was a considerable amount of question as to whether that was advisable, because we want to promote people to do apartment complexes and shopping centers and so forth. We couldn't quite figure out a way to make the distinction. But that was, I think, one of the main reasons we didn't take action.

But in reference to your question, and I think our colleague from Florida discussed this perfectly in his opening remarks, and that is it's not a question of whether we need massive regulation, or little regulation, we need the right regulation.

What we have failed to do over the last 20 years is to modernize our regulatory system in such a way that it took recognition of the very changing picture of business, particularly in the financial sector.

I think this Congress, and I know Chairman Frank of Financial Services, I know the administration is very much concerned with reshaping our regulatory system. Again, not to overregulate the economy, but to make sure we have the right type of regulation in place, adapted to the current financial structure of the world, so that these types of situations don't reoccur.

I think that my colleague from Iowa also mentioned something that we really need to look into as a Congress and that is the whole question of our antitrust laws, and not just which industries are covered or not covered, but also what we can do and whether we should do something to in some way control the size of businesses because what we have seen in many of these cases recently is we have gotten businesses that are ``too big to fail.''

I understand that there is a worldwide economy and these companies have worldwide operations and there is somewhat of a limit as to what we can do, but we have not revisited the question of our antitrust laws and the size of corporations for some time in this country.

I think the American people would appreciate that conversation because they don't like being in a position in which they are virtually helpless when a giant corporation which yields no benefit to them--that they perceive, anyway--is able to affect their lives so dramatically.

I would yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

I thank my colleague. One of the things that we have to continue to do is to remind the American taxpayer of what has happened, what brought us to this point. I know that right now our colleagues on the other side are trying to play political games and, all of a sudden, because of this new revelation about bonuses, they want to make this all a Democratic problem.

But, as all of us will recall, and I think the American citizens will recall, we were cruising along last year, knowing that we were in a little bit of financial difficulty. We knew that the foreclosures were up, we knew that the signs of the economy were not where we would like them to be, and that, for many Americans, those of us that had been in the trenches politically since 2006, knew a lot of Americans have been hurting for a long time, particularly middle-class Americans and hardworking families out there.

But all of a sudden, last September, out of the blue, seemingly, Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke call

us all in and say, The sky is falling, and we are about to go over the cliff, and we need $700 billion to bail out these companies that are in severe difficulty.

I think the American people rightly were stunned, saying, Where did this come from? I think all of us were stunned because we didn't know where it came from.

And what we have found out subsequently is that in many of these operations like AIG, sometimes the CEOs didn't really know the depths of their problems.

I know we had hearings again in the Oversight Committee last Congress where we talked to, for instance, the rating agencies and some of the people who were involved in the measurement of risk and the analysis of risk, and even Chairman Greenspan, who said we had no way of assessing risk that involved declining real estate values.

All of the models they had built to assess the risk, whether it was Moody's or any of the rating agencies or, in this case, the Fed, said our computer models wouldn't accept negative growth in real estate. So all of a sudden the American people say, Whoa. Where did this all come from?

I think none of us really knew where it came from. And the reason we didn't know is because we had trusted the marketplace to be the salvation of our financial system. And, as we have seen, the marketplace that Chairman Greenspan worshipped, and others, was not capable of accounting for what happened in the real world.

So now we are cleaning up. We are trying to pick up the pieces. The American people are rightly dismayed that their government was not on the job. We have an opportunity now to show the American people that they can have confidence, not just in the economy, but also in their government. And that is the charge that I think all of us willingly accept.

I am very happy to be here tonight to talk about that and to be part of a Congress that is responding to a crisis that, basically, we didn't build, we didn't create, but we are more than willing to try to fix, because we owe that to the American taxpayer.

With that, I'd yield back to my colleague from Florida.

I thank the gentleman from Florida. We just have a couple of minutes left, so we will just have some concluding remarks from the gentleman from Tennessee and the gentleman from Iowa. I think this conversation has been a good one, and I am glad that they joined us for it.

I yield briefly to my colleague from Memphis.

I thank my colleagues for their participation today. I look forward to our conversations next week, next Wednesday, and as we go through the year. It is a great honor for me to serve with so many thoughtful, dedicated Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on Sunday former Vice President Cheney made the latest in a series of outrageous attempts to rewrite history. He suggested that America was less safe now than under President Bush. Well, as a former journalist and editor, I'm compelled to do a little rewrite of his story.

I think it is important to note that under President Bush and Vice President Cheney, we let Osama bin Laden escape. We took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and moved to Iraq. We went into Iraq with no plan for victory. We heard from Vice President Cheney that we were going to be greeted as liberators, that WMD would certainly be found, and that this war was going to be very short and cost us very little money.

My editing of Vice President Cheney's statement on Sunday would be that he did not exactly tell the whole story.

Fortunately, the American people know the whole story. They know that we are much safer now with President Obama in the White House. So as the recently departed Paul Harvey would have said, ``And now you know the rest of the story.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to applaud President Obama's executive order lifting the ban on Federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

I join scientists across the country, especially researchers at the University of Louisville, who are excited about the opportunities that expanded research presents.

But as we all know, there is another dimension to this issue, and it involves moral questions about the use of discarded embryos for scientific purposes. I fully respect the views of those who raise moral objections to embryonic stem cell research; their convictions are just as valid and unassailable as the scientific arguments made about the potential of stem cell research. On the other side, however, are equally valid and, to my mind, unassailable moral arguments that support President Obama's decision this week. They are analogous to the arguments made in support of organ donation and transplantation. Here, human material that has the potential to save life is not being squandered.

Like those who raise moral objections to stem cell research, I would have problems with the production of embryos for scientific purposes, but to me, the destruction of embryos that can be used to advance science in the service of life raises similar moral problems.

I congratulate President Obama on his action.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, in this Chamber, Prime Minister Gordon Brown talked to us about having faith in the future, and that, in fact, is what America's always been about, having faith that the future will be better for all of us. But it's impossible for the American people to have faith in the future, faith in their future when the next illness or accident could drive them into bankruptcy or, in fact, could end their lives because they have insufficient access to quality, affordable health care.

This Congress and this administration is committed to changing that. We are committed to making sure that health care is a right that every American can exercise. And we have already taken the first steps in this Congress, by expanding SCHIP, by providing assistance to the States to provide more Medicaid, and finally, by developing the infrastructure, by investing in that health care infrastructure that will help make a system that can provide quality, accessible health care to everyone. That's what restoring faith in the future means to this Congress.

And this afternoon, when President Obama convenes his first health care summit, we will begin to take the steps, as a Nation, to develop the kind of health care system we all can be proud of and that will bring faith in the future to every American.

Madam Speaker, it's a great honor for me to be here tonight to join with many of my colleagues from The Majority Makers, the Class of 2006, which brought change to the Congress, and now hopes to join with President Obama to bring change to the country. We're here tonight to talk about the challenges facing this country that are manifold, the incredible, unprecedented nature of our situation, the opportunities that we face, because every challenge comes with opportunities, and also to talk about the budget that President Obama has proposed to this Congress, because it is a budget that takes us in a very different direction in this country, echoing and reinforcing his theme of his campaign, which was to bring change to the country. And it's also the motivation for all of us who came to Congress in the Class of 2006.

You know, I have the great privilege of serving on the Ways and Means Committee and also on the Budget Committee. Over the last 2 days, we've heard Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and OMB Director Peter Orszag talking about what the situation is in the country--the economic challenges we in the world face--and also what the Obama administration plans to do about them in asking for our assistance. Two things have been very clear in listening to both of these two gentlemen, who are new to their jobs, in listening to the new administration and also in listening to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle as they're responding to the initiatives of the administration.

The two things are: One, that they like to take potshots at the budget, which is fair game, because this is, after all, sometimes a partisan exercise. Also, the ideas that they bring to the debate are really no new ideas at all. As a matter of fact, listening to Republicans talk about the economic situation and their suggestions for how we move forward is kind of like listening to the coach of the Detroit Lions saying, ``hey, use my playbook,'' after they just went 0 and 16. I don't want to pick on the Detroit Lions, but that's really what it sounds like because they bring no new ideas to the table.

That's what is so impressive about this team that President Obama has assembled and about the budget that he has brought to the Congress and to the American people. It is a budget that is full of new ideas and of new approaches to very old and very difficult problems.

So, as we're here tonight to talk about where we've been and where we're going and where we need to go in this country, I just want to mention the fact that Prime Minister Gordon Brown was here today. The theme of his address to the joint session of Congress was--and he has mentioned the expression many times--``faith in the future.'' That's really what we're trying to bring to this country, faith in the future, because that faith has been destroyed over the last decade in the United States, and that's what we are so committed to doing, and I think that's what the Obama administration is committed to doing as well, to restoring faith in the future, because that is also what has driven our country, our people, our businesses, and our institutions, which is that we believe there is a better time facing us, a better time ahead, and we have taken those steps. We have worked as hard as we can and have used our ingenuity to realize the future that we all aspire to. So I look forward to the discussion tonight as it's always a pleasure to be with my colleagues.

I would like to yield, first of all, to someone who has been a consistent participant in these discussions we've had, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Klein).

I thank the gentleman from Florida.

One of the great things about having these discussions is we get perspectives from all over the country, not just from different, more conservative, more aggressive districts but, rather, geographically and demographically. There are a lot of important perspectives that help shape the context of this discussion.

I would now like to yield to my colleague, the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Altmire).

I thank the gentleman.

I just have to add one thing because I think what he has done has brilliantly answered one of the charges that's always leveled about government action and its involvement in health care, which is, ``Oh, we don't want socialized medicine.''

What Mr. Altmire has so intelligently recognized is that, whether it's in an organized way or in a disorganized way, we do socialize the cost of medicine across society. Right now, we do it in a very disorganized way, which, unfortunately, leads to both the inefficiencies, the added expense and the fact that many people fall through the cracks and are not covered. So I thank him for his comments.

Now I would like to yield time to my good friend from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter).

I thank my friend, and I'd like to ask a question of the gentleman from Colorado who has done such incredibly important work on the Financial Services Committee and on these issues of which he spoke.

One of the things that we face, I know in terms of the housing situation, is that we have a very different situation from place to place in the country. We know certain areas of California and Nevada and Michigan have suffered to a far greater extent than many other areas. And in some of these areas, where housing values have not declined as much, and some other ones, I know some of the citizens wonder, ``Why should I worry about helping the people in California or Nevada? What's in it for me?''

I'm asking the gentleman a question.

I thank the gentleman.

It now gives me great pleasure to introduce my colleague from the great State of Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).

I thank my friend.

I want to tag along a little bit about the tax discussion because, it's interesting, there's an old saying that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And what we've seen out of our colleagues on the other side is the only policy that they even think about when it comes to the economy is tax policy and the need to cut taxes.

The Republican-run Congress, controlled Congress, in 2001 and then 2003 cut taxes. Most of that tax cut went to the very wealthiest people in the country. That tax cut was scheduled to expire in 2011. And now that the President's budget would allow those tax cuts to expire for the very wealthiest Americans, those making over $250,000 a year, our colleagues on the other side want to say we're raising taxes, which is not true at all.

In fact, the way I look at it is, if you go to a store, and the store says we've got 40 percent off today and you happen to miss that sale and you go back the next day and it's back to regular price, you can't say the store raised prices, you just missed the opportunity. Well, in this situation, the wealthiest Americans did not miss the opportunity, they took full benefit of those tax cuts for the last few years. Meanwhile, the great disparity between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else continued to grow to unprecedented levels. And now that this President--and I assume this Congress--will say, let's restore some more fairness to the tax code, let's let those tax cuts expire, the rich can pay marginally more than they have been since the Bush administration cut taxes, and now they're complaining that that's a tax hike, which is frivolous.

I would yield to my friend.

That is clearly the effect of the President's budget, and it was clearly the effect of the recovery plan that we passed recently. And I think it was well justified. And I think the American people appreciate it and understand that--they know a tax cut when they see it and they know a tax hike when they see it. And 95 percent of the people in this country will see their paychecks increase, and they know that that's not a tax increase. So I thank the gentleman.

Now it gives me great pleasure, we've been around the country from Florida to Colorado to Tennessee and Kentucky and Pennsylvania, now it gives me great pleasure to introduce my colleague from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

I thank my friends. And I think one of the things that is so impressive about this budget that we have had submitted to us is it is unique in so many ways and it is trend setting in so many ways.

I would like to yield once again to my friend from Florida (Mr. Klein) to talk about how this budget may differ from budgets we have seen.

I thank my colleague, and I think that is truly one of the special things about this budget, is that it is forward-looking, it is visionary, and it doesn't rely on the tired actions of the past.

And, furthermore, it's such an honest budget. For the first time it is totally comprehensive, so that we don't keep things off the books like we have kept the expenditures for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 8 years. It puts expenses for those activities in the budget, projects them. It also includes items for anticipating disasters like Katrina or other natural disasters we know are going to occur but we never put those expenses in the budget.

So this is fully transparent, it is comprehensive, it is honest and, again, it is forward-looking, and that certainly is something that I think the American people, as time goes on and we discuss this budget, will appreciate that it is large. There is no question about it. We are spending unprecedented amounts of money and we, unfortunately, are facing some pretty substantial deficits.

But if we stick to this test, the odds of our not just recovering from our current situation, but from setting the foundation for an incredible era of growth and progress in this country, are greatly improved because of this new agenda advanced by the Obama administration.

So, as we get toward the end of our hour, I would like to recognize my friend from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen) who

has also played an important role in one aspect of meeting the challenge of this current situation, and that is an element of the housing problem that he has been particularly instrumental in dealing with.

I thank my colleague and thank him for his work on this very important piece of legislation that we will be dealing with tomorrow, which will be another important component to get the ship of state back on course and to get our economy moving again.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome and recognize our distinguished colleague from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

I thank my colleague for his contribution.

I would like to conclude this hour of discussion from the Majority Makers, the class of 2006, that as this Congress proceeds and as we work with the Obama administration to set a new course for the country, to lay a foundation for growth and prosperity, a return to prosperity in this country, we look forward to further discussions.

And I think the most important thing we can say in closing is that to repeat the words of Prime Minister Brown this morning, who said, who kept mentioning, ``faith in the future.'' That's what we are about, restoring faith in the future for the American people, and this will be our main mission over the next 2 years as we proceed to help every American realize his or her ambition for a better life.

Mr. Speaker, I like to think that government is the way that we organize our responsibilities to each other.

Last night, President Obama gave a clear path to explain how this government can help us meet our responsibilities to each other. He mentioned government and laid a groundwork for government, not as a substitute for private initiative and private enterprise, but as a catalyst for private initiative and private enterprise.

As a facilitator and enabler he showed the way that this government can help people realize their ambitions and rebuild America in a much stronger position.

As we move forward in considering the agenda that President Obama has laid out, I hope that we will remember that not only do we call on individual Americans to meet their responsibilities to each other, but that we as Members of Congress meet our individual responsibilities to them and to make this government one that truly stands united in favor of the American people.

This was truly an inspirational charge that we were given last night, and I hope we all listen carefully.

Mr. Speaker, I was unable to cast the recorded votes for rollcall Nos. 72, 73, and 74. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on H.R. 601: Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass; H.R. 44: Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass; and H.R. 911: Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass.

Mr. Speaker, over the past few months we have seen not only a financial meltdown, but also a meltdown of confidence. People we had worshiped, people who ran huge businesses, people we had considered experts proved to be simply Wizards of Oz. We pulled back the curtain and found they were as flawed and fallible as the rest of us. And now we have an economy that gets worse from day to day.

Each of us has stood here and preached about what steps we think will fix our economy. We have heard Members who have never worked in the private sector talk about how to create jobs; we have heard people who can't balance their own checkbooks talk about admonishing bankers; and we have heard the head of the Republican Party incomprehensibly say, ``Work is not a job.''

None of us has confidence that everything in the economic recovery package will work; but we should all realize that unless the American people have confidence that we are working together, the odds of its success are greatly diminished.

I urge all my colleagues to forget their political calculations, calculate the consequences of failure to our country, and support the only plan available for fixing our economy.