Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, in the past, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle railed against the Bush administration for an energy policy they say was written by energy lobbyists and rewarded oil and gas industry companies. Now that they control both the Congress and the White House, that type of behavior which they railed against now seems to be acceptable.

The cap-and-trade legislation being considered in the Energy and Commerce Committee is based on a blueprint of a plan put forward by a coalition of outside groups called USCAP. USCAP claims to favor government regulation of greenhouse gasses; yet, one of the leading members of the group will receive a generous exemption in the legislation to build new coal power plants without the onerous restrictions that will prevent others from building.

The majority are allowing industry members to write legislation that benefits them in exchange for supporting their cap-and-tax plan that will raise energy prices for all Americans. That is hypocritical and it's unethical.

Madam Speaker, yesterday marked President Obama's 100th day in office. In that short time, the Obama administration has managed to launch a war on critical pro-life and pro-family policies. As a result, foreign organizations that promote and perform abortions are eligible for U.S. taxpayer family planning money that has been increased to $545 million a year this year.

Life-destroying research will be eligible for more taxpayer dollars. Medical professionals' rights to practice according to their consciences will be under threat. Foreign organizations will be allowed to receive Federal tax dollars despite support for coercive abortion policies like forced abortion, forced sterilization, and the UNFPA in China. Contentious organizations like Planned Parenthood will be granted massive amounts of hardworking American tax dollars.

Such actions certainly contradict the President's pledge to find common ground with pro-life Americans. As the old adage goes, ``Actions speak louder than words.'' Yesterday was a sad day for America's unborn and for those who would like to protect them.

Madam Speaker, Debt Day is the day on which the government runs out of money in a given year and all of the government spending for the rest of the year is borrowed money. For 2009, Debt Day fell on April 26, this past Sunday. This is an astonishingly early day in the year to run out of money. Last year, it was August 5. So in 4 months, this Congress and this administration has shattered all previous records for debt levels, moving Debt Day up in the calendar over 3 months from last year. President Obama and this Congress make the Bush deficit look trivial.

Friends, this is the most valuable and expensive credit card in history, a Member of Congress voting card. This Congress has taken out their credit cards and saddled our children and grandchildren with debt, mortgaging their future.

Since the first of the year we've spent $350 billion in TARP, billions in auto bailouts, $787 billion in stimulus, $410 billion in omnibus, $3.5 trillion in the budget--mostly borrowed money--all of this debt dumped on future generations.

I thank the chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 1913, the hate crimes legislation.

This bill would be more appropriately termed the ``thought crimes act,'' as it seeks to criminalize certain types of thoughts. Our legal structure was established to punish actions, not thoughts or beliefs, and this bill would set a dangerous precedent.

It will threaten our most basic right to free speech established under the First Amendment. Religious groups who hold certain convictions based on their faith could, in fact, be targeted by this law. In Sweden, a pastor was convicted by a trial court and sentenced to jail time for a hate crime after preaching a sermon that discussed biblical views of homosexuality. And in New York, the State hate crimes laws were used to justify taking down billboards on sexual immorality that a local pastor had paid to post.

This legislation seeks to create categories of citizens who are either more or less protected under the law depending on what category they fall into. This framework flies in the face of one of the most fundamental principles of our justice system. Chiseled in stone across the front of the Supreme Court building are the words ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' This means that all citizens, regardless of sexual identity or anything else, are to receive equal protection from the law. I support this basic principle that has long guided our Nation's system of justice.

But this bill undermines that principle. It seeks to establish different groups of citizens with different levels of protection under the law. And the bottom line is that this legislation simply isn't necessary.

If someone commits a violent crime, they should be punished to the full extent of the law regardless of who the victim is.

I urge you to preserve equal justice under the law and oppose H.R. 1913.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to the Members' attention a report from the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Napolitano, entitled ``Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.''

On page 2, under Key Findings, the footnote states, ``Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups) and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting Federal authority in favor of State or local authority or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.''

On Page 7, under Disgruntled Military Veterans, they're listed as having the potential to boost the capabilities of the extremists.

Mr. Speaker, this is the same Cabinet member who will no longer use the words ``terrorist'' or ``war on terror'' and who now wants to call some of our veterans and pro-life activists ``terrorists.'' This is outrageous.

President Obama, your Cabinet Secretary is the real threat to our security.

Madam Speaker, all in one week we've had April Fool's Day, the Democrats' budget, and the largest increase in cigarette taxes ever. But the American people aren't foolish and they aren't in the mood for gimmicks.

Yesterday, the Federal tax on a pack of cigarettes went up--way up. Was this tax raised to get people to stop smoking? Or was it raised to pay for a massive expansion in SCHIP? Well, both, actually. And that's a crazy way to run a railroad.

SCHIP needs more money under the Democrats' plan. So we're going to need more people to start smoking, not fewer. In fact, we're going to need about 22 million new people to start smoking.

But this tax increase is going to convince people to stop smoking, which means the SCHIP will be short of funds and the folks in charge in Congress are going to want to raise taxes again soon.

I'm all for health care for kids, and I'm all for getting people to quit smoking, but I'm against health care run by bureaucrats and health care programs funded by cigarette taxes.

The American people must wonder what Democrat leaders are smoking in Washington these days. And that is no laughing matter.

Mr. Speaker, the President has disparaged budget gimmicks and declared ``a return to honest budgeting.'' Yet his plan then goes on to claim $1.5 billion in war ``savings'' that are nothing more than an illusion, just the kind of gimmick he has disparaged.

The President's budget claims $1.6 trillion in ``savings'' and $1.5 trillion in ``deficit reduction'' by claiming the already determined drawdown in troops as a reduction in spending. Put another way, the administration budget assumes an elevated path of war spending that was never going to be followed, and then claims savings through a reduction that was going to occur anyway.

This war games budget gimmick ends up representing three-quarter of their so-called savings.

The President isn't making any attempt to reduce spending. He has constructed an unrealistically high future spending projection, and then claimed as savings the difference between this fictional budget world and reality.

We need to get spending under control, not budget gimmicks.

Madam Speaker, President Obama's appointment to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel is truly from the far left radical fringe.

Dawn Johnsen, a former attorney for one of the radical abortion groups, is a step back for a President who has claimed he would like to find common ground on the abortion issue. Ms. Johnsen's own quotes speak for her radical views. She has equated pregnancy to slavery when she said that laws restricting a woman's abortion choice ``are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude.'' She has likened pregnant mothers to ``no more than fetal containers.'' She has likened pro-life advocates to ``terrorists,'' calling them ``remarkably similar to the Ku Klux Klan.''

Her appointment is a slap in the face to all fair-minded persons, not just pro-life Americans. The President should withdraw her nomination or else the Senate should reject it.

Mr. Speaker, what we do here in Washington, the policies that we make, have direct economic consequences on the market, on job creation or loss, on retirement accounts, and on the financial security of the American people.

For example, yesterday, Secretary Geithner finally released the administration's plan for dealing with the troubled assets that are dragging down our banks and that are impeding our Nation's economic recovery. The market jumped up 500 points.

Now, we still need to do some work to evaluate exactly how this plan will work and whether it is the best plan for the country, but I think this is a perfect example of how our actions here in Washington affect Wall Street.

I have a chart here with some data that I have assembled for the last 30 years, from 1977 to 2009, of market activity, and I want to show a broad trend that we see over that time regarding the market's reaction to government policies:

Here on the top, this yellow line, is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. You will see the red and blue panels. The colors here indicate which party is in control of Congress. So, where you have red, that is the control of the Congress, both the House and Senate, by Republicans. Where you have blue, that is the control of the Congress by the Democrats, both House and Senate. Where you have these slash/slanted marks, you have a divided Congress.

From 1977 to 1995, you see the Dow Jones growing gradually, minimal growth. You see when it hits the red panel that it moves sharply up. When you have, actually, the dot-com collapse and 9/11 and the divided Congress, you see it goes down. When it hits the red, it goes sharply up again.

The next chart down below shows budget deficits from 1977 to 2009. The bars above represent deficits. The bars below represent surpluses. Notice under President Obama that this last bar, the yellow line, is $1.752 trillion for fiscal year 2009. Let me just put that into perspective. That single deficit is more than the previous eight

deficits under President Bush combined. If I could show you the projected deficits, they are all trillion-dollar deficits out for 10 years as far as we can look.

So I think we need to really question some of the rhetoric we are hearing about fiscal responsibility about this present administration. These deficits have both immediate and long-term consequences. The long-term consequences are the debt that we are leaving to our children. In the more immediate term, they represent the eroding of our standing in the world. They are going to feed inflation and undermine the value of the dollar.

Last month, I met with a delegation of Chinese officials. The first question they asked me was, ``Congressman, is America abandoning the free market system?''

I mean the world is watching us, and they have expressed some hesitancy about buying more of our debt. I think, when we go in the market this year with $2 trillion or $3 trillion in treasuries to fund our budget, it is going to be harder and harder to find willing buyers.

When the rest of the world watches as the U.S. Government takes over private businesses, as government spending grows and as the government crowds out the private sector and stifles innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit on which this Nation was founded, we have serious problems. When we take these kinds of actions and make these kinds of policies, we are jeopardizing our standing in the world and our future.

How can we be the leader of the free world with this kind of government intervention and undermining of the free market?

I also want to point out here that there is a good lesson here on this bottom chart. You see these 4 years right here in a row. That is when the Republicans were in control of Congress and when President Clinton was in office. For the first time in years, we balanced the budget 4 consecutive years in a row, and we paid down on the public debt 4 years in a row. Now, Clinton deserves some credit, and the Congress deserves some credit, but we balanced the budget 4 years in a row.

The lesson here is that real bipartisanship works. The phony bipartisanship of wanting us to come in at the last minute and vote for something that we did not have any opportunity to create or to craft in the first place will not work. Real bipartisanship works and policies matter, and some policies help create an environment in which our economy can thrive.

The government cannot create wealth. The American people, entrepreneurs and businesses must do that. Yet the government can and at times has implemented flawed policies like spending too much, taxing too much and borrowing too much like we are seeing right now. Those policies have economic consequences.

Mr. Speaker, as you can see here in this graph, what the President called gyrations of the stock market, in February of 2008, a year ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat at just 13,000 points.

Just before Congress passed the so-called rebate check package worth $168 billion of borrowed money, Speaker Pelosi said, ``This package gets money into the hands of Americans struggling to make ends meet . . . and stimulates our slowing economy.''

Yet since then, the market has lost nearly half its value. That's trillions of dollars in wealth wiped out in 1 year from retirement accounts and the savings of hardworking families across America.

The rebate package a year ago was just the first in many attempts to borrow and spend our way out of this situation. Here we have the $300 billion housing bailout, $200 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, $700 billion in TARP funds. Look at the drop after that: $14 billion, auto bailout; $787 billion, stimulus, before the market dropped.

Our actions have economic consequences.

Mr. Speaker, House Republicans share the outrage of the American people that AIG would use taxpayer dollars to award executive bonuses during this economic crisis.

But we believe the American people deserve 100 percent of their money back, not 90 percent. The American people deserve to know that this whole outrage could have been avoided.

Senator Wyden authored an amendment banning executive bonuses, and that amendment was stripped from the stimulus bill. Senator Dodd took responsibility, but he told CNN that ``the administration had a problem with the amendment.''

The bill on the floor today to enact a 90 percent tax on AIG employees is just a cynical attempt to divert attention from the truth that Democrats in Congress and this administration made these bonus payments possible in the first place.

House Republicans have legislation that would ensure 100 percent of these bonuses are returned to taxpayers, but they blocked the plan from receiving a vote today. The American people have a right to get 100 percent of their money back, and Mr. Geithner should resign.

Mr. Speaker, the $3.6 trillion budget released by President Obama spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much, and wastes too much.

Today, middle-class families and small businesses are making sacrifices when it comes to their own budget, yet Washington continues to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars on bailouts and other government programs. The spending in this budget is so massive that independent estimates suggest roughly 250,000 new Federal bureaucrats may be needed just to spend it all.

Rather than government cutting back, showing restraint, operating more efficiently on basic government responsibilities, the President proposes to create massive new programs, vastly expanding the scope and reach of the Federal Government. The energy taxes alone will cost every household over 3,000 additional dollars per year.

This budget will cost American jobs at a time when we can't afford it. The majority of those hit by the new tax increases are small businesses, the engines of job creation in our economy. This budget takes us in the wrong direction.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. There is an old

saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. And I think sometimes, Mr. Speaker, pictures help explain some otherwise complicated situations, so I have assembled some data about the economy and government spending, and put them on charts to help explain some of the facts.

I think the overall emphasis is that there are economic consequences to what we do and what we say here in Congress. There are economic consequences to our taxation and spending, our budget policies. And I would just like to first explain some of the colors on the chart and go through them.

On the chart you see red and blue lines. The colors here indicate which party is in control of Congress. So where you have red, that is the control of Congress in both the House and Senate is Republican. So you have here and here in these years Republican control. Where you have blue, that is both chambers being controlled by the Democrats. Where you have the slanted marks, you have a divided Congress. So here, the House is Democrat and the Senate is Republican; and with the smaller lines, you have the House Republican and the Senate Democrat. And we have a range of years here from 1977 to 2009.

At the bottom, you can see President Carter here from 1977 to 1981, and then Reagan, and these white dash marks show the range of the terms of the President.

That is correct.

That is correct.

That is correct.

Thank you. If you look at how the market, for instance, reacts, here is the Dow Jones in yellow over this period of time. It is going along real nicely here until it hits the red section, and then you see it move sharply up. The Dow goes sharply up. You have a divided legislature. And, to be fair, you had the dot-com collapse and 9/11, as well as the switch of Jeffords to make the divided Congress. It goes down. And then you hit the red, it goes sharply up. As long as President Bush is there to veto any of the proposed tax changes that the Democrats in this Congress proposed, it goes up.

No. I am saying that markets basically react to rhetoric; and that on-again, off-again tax cuts, that rhetoric about tax increases affect the market dramatically in a negative way, and you can see this drop here.

This second chart is unemployment, which is sort of a mirror image in the strong periods and in the weak periods with the recessions. The next charts are the budget deficit and job growth. So if you look at these yellow bars here, these are the budget deficits. Notice under President Obama this deficit here, $1.752 billion, this bar. That is more than all of the 8 of the previous administration, under Bush, combined.

That is correct.

That is true. I remember when they were attacking him for $250 billion deficits. Now, we have a $1.7 trillion.

The deficit of $1.752 trillion is more than all of the previous 8 years combined.

That is correct.

That is correct. I could have really scared you and showed you the proposed deficits in the future, but I only have this year's proposed deficits.

Would the gentleman yield?

I serve on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and we are having hearings every week. We had one today on the proposed new proposals, cap-and-trade they call it, of the Obama administration. Now in a time of economic uncertainty, families and small businesses have to conserve. They have to be more efficient. They have to save. They have to be a lot more frugal. This is not the time to massively expand the Federal Government.

We should be doing what we are supposed to do in a more frugal way, a more efficient way. And yet the new administration is proposing vast new proposals in the area of government-owned health care, in the area of cap-and-trade, which is a tax on all energy use in the United States.

Will the gentleman permit me to speak here? The cap-and- trade proposal really has eight taxes on energy. And the President is proposing to raise $646 billion with this new cap-and-trade regime. So this big line here, the deficit here, which makes all the other deficits look small in comparison, is reflecting these massive new government programs. In the stimulus bill we passed--not we--but the Congress passed, the creation of 31 new Federal programs and an expansion of 73 existing programs. This is massive government spending. That is what is reflected in this.

Could I just point one other thing out, Mr. Chairman?

There is a good lesson in here. Do you see these 4 years right here when the Republicans controlled the House and Senate? Speaker Gingrich was here. I served on the Budget Committee with John Kasich of Ohio. And because the Republicans in Congress worked with President Clinton--Clinton deserves some credit, and we deserve some credit--we balanced the budget 4 years in a row. We had four consecutive balanced budgets and paid down the public debt 4 years in a row.

Real bipartisanship works. This phony bipartisanship of wanting us to come in at the last minute and vote for something without having any bipartisanship in creating the bill, in crafting the bill at first, that will not work. Real bipartisanship is good for the country, not calling us in and trying to buy off three votes at the end. I yield back.

When we talk about $250,000 adjusted gross income, you're talking about a lot of small businesses who may be what you would call ``asset rich but cash poor.'' They may have assets in building, lands and equipment. But that is where they put their profit. That is where they put a lot of their money. They are just not walking off with $250,000. They are small businesses that are investing in their businesses and creating jobs. So, we should keep in mind that government cannot create wealth. It is the American people. It is the entrepreneur. It is the small businesses that have to do that.

However, government can hinder economic growth. With flawed policies, flawed tax-and-spend policies, borrowing, spending and taxing too much, we can crowd out the private sector. So that is important to remember as we look at the impact of these proposed new taxes. But that kind of rhetoric, on-again off-again tax cuts, tax increases they talk about, creates uncertainty in the market. So you will see people not investing, not risking their capital, and holding back in uncertain times.

This fourth chart shows the job situation. Above the line is job growth; and below the line is job loss by month. You can see when Reagan or Bush inherited a recession, when they passed these tax cuts, they stimulated tremendous job growth.

For instance, in 1981, the capital gains tax was reduced from 28 to 21 percent, and the revenue rose by 325 percent in 6 years.

In 2003, you remember that under President Bush, when we reduced the capital gains, revenue rose 159 percent in 5 years. So this tax policy stimulates the formation of capital and directly affects job growth or job loss. Our tax policies have real economic consequences.

Finally, the last chart. The President talked about gyrations in the stock market. So I took this last year from February 2008 to March 2009, and here is where the President Obama was inaugurated. I put up several things we considered in the Congress. The rebate checks, the housing bailout of $300 billion, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout of $200 billion. You remember the $700 billion bailout we passed, look at how the market dropped after that. Here is election day. Here is the auto bailout. Here is the stimulus bill, a $787 billion stimulus bill, look at the market drop. The $410 billion omnibus bill, look at the market drop; and now the proposed $3.6 trillion budget. What we do here has direct economic consequences on the market and on job formation.

If the gentleman would yield, we have to borrow that money. That is all borrowed money, $787 billion. When you add the interest on that, that amounts to about $1.1 trillion, the price tag of that one bill.

Now President Obama said right before we voted that we are in a crisis and we must pass this stimulus bill immediately or we may suffer a catastrophe. That is the kind of rhetoric that scares the market. We need to stay away from the rhetoric of fear and panic and disaster and catastrophe, a lot of which has been used to pass these bills. That bill you are referring to was 1,174 pages long. It wasn't put on the web until after midnight. The next morning at 9:00 we were debating and voting on that bill. Not one Member had a chance to read that bill. That is legislative malpractice.

I have a copy of that press account that occurred yesterday. It was ABC News. Jonathan Karl reported this: ``Last month the Senate unanimously approved an amendment to the stimulus bill aimed at restricting bonuses over $100,000 at any company receiving Federal bailout funds. The measure, which was drafted by Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, applied these restrictions retroactively to bonuses received or promised in 2008 and onward.'' But then the provision was stripped out during the closed-door conference negotiations involving House and Senate leaders and the White House, and a measure by the Senate banking chairman, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, to limit executive compensation replaced it with an 11- page amendment. Dodd's measure explicitly exempted bonuses agreed to prior to the passage of the stimulus bill.

That should be investigated. That is the news story you are talking about.

Will the gentleman yield?

I know the public might sometimes be confused by all these bills we talk about. There was a $700 billion bailout bill; there was a $787 billion stimulus bill; there was a $410 billion omnibus bill--the one that had the 8,500 earmarks that he signed last week that just funds the government for the rest of this year; and then now we have this proposed budget of $3.6 trillion.

Now, the gentleman from Ohio was talking about the Chinese owning $726 billion of our debt. You know, I met with a Chinese delegation last month of officials from China, and the first question they asked me was, Congressman, is America abandoning the free market system? I mean, the world is watching this. And they have expressed some hesitancy about buying more of our debt. I think when we go on the market with $2 or $3 trillion in treasuries this year to fund our budget, we are probably going to have to raise interest rates on those notes, or else we're going to have to print money. We are going to feed inflation. At the end of this year, I am afraid we are going to see inflationary pressures that is going to impact every consumer, just like the energy tax.

You said wild spending spree. I really think this is by design. I think they are exploiting the financial crisis to move their political agenda and tuck into these big spending bills--that they are not permitting anybody to read--all of these issues that we are now reading about, like repealing welfare reform, that worked well, that the Congress passed back in `96. Now there is an incentive from the Federal Government to the States, 80 percent match for every new welfare recipient you add.

I just want to say after hearing the gentleman, I can only say one thing: Please, no more bailouts. Look at the market and see what has happened with these big bailout bills.

I would say the message that I'm trying to convey here tonight is that policies matter. And some policies help create an environment in which the

economy is able to thrive, and wrong policies have the opposite effect. So let's learn the lessons that we can learn from these charts. Let's get good policies again. Let's get our spending under control. Let's not tax too much. Let's not waste money. Let's not borrow too much. And if we will pursue good policies, then, hopefully, the market will start responding again the way we'd like to see it.

And I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the President's chief of staff said, ``You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. It's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.''

In other words, the administration and this Congress are exploiting our financial crisis, inserting many of their political-agenda items into the massive spending bills without due deliberation: items like repeal of welfare reform; like the comparative effectiveness board that will lead to rationed health care; like electricity rate decoupling, which increases electricity prices as people use less energy; like easing Cuba travel restrictions; like mandating Davis-Bacon for all contract projects in the country; like killing school choice for poor kids in Washington; and parts of government-run health care and the cap-and-trade energy taxes and more and more.

Without one Member of the House reading these 1,100-page-plus bills, Mr. Speaker, this is legislative malpractice.

Mr. Speaker, the Senate passed the $410 billion omnibus spending bill last night containing some 9,000 special interest earmarks. Sadly, it included a provision that will effectively kill a popular and successful program here in our Nation's Capital that provides a ray of hope for the children it serves.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program provides low-income families with a voucher they can use to attend the school of their choice. For many students, this provides the opportunity to get out of dangerous and failing public schools into private schools that provide them with a safe environment and a quality education.

This program is under attack by politicians in Congress, many of whom send their own children to private schools. If school choice is good enough for their kids, why not school choice for everyone?

I urge the President, who has chosen private school for his own children, to veto this special interest, pork-ladened bill and work with Congress toward meaningful education reform.