Floor Statements

I appreciate my friend from Utah yielding in such an amazing form.

I do appreciate my friend from Wisconsin's sensitivity over cranes. And she is right; they are a thing of beauty. We have seen whooping cranes in Texas. I am glad they are protected; they are beautiful.

We have heard President Obama say recently that we are going to have to make some tough choices, that we are going to have to scour through our appropriations, our authorizations, our budgets and cut things that are not really essential. And it is my understanding that of the 15 crane species here, 13 are not in the United States.

Currently, it is clear we are borrowing a great deal of our money that we use as we appropriate from this floor from the Chinese. As I understand it, many of these crane species are not located in the United States, but are located in Asia. What an incredible irony, that we could borrow money from the Chinese for which we will owe principal and interest to the Chinese, and then potentially turn around and pay money to help habitats in China. The irony is astounding.

I know all of us have people in our districts who are struggling to maintain their own habitat. As we make tough decisions in this body, this ought to be one that is not that tough: The American people keeping their habitat or cranes in a foreign country keeping their habitat. I think we ought to vote for Americans to keep their habitat. We have got to make some tough choices. It is time to quit borrowing money from China. It's time to quit printing additional money. It's time for some responsibility on this floor. We owe that to future generations not to put them in debt to pay foreign countries to create habitats for cranes.

With that I would urge a ``no'' vote on this bill.

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

Again I appreciate the sensitivities with regard to rare cats and dogs around the world. With regard to the previous votes on this bill in the House, to be specific, 227 Democrats voted ``aye,'' 67 Republicans voted ``aye,'' which also was about the same numbers, similar numbers, that voted for the bailout back in September, which was also a huge mistake. There was one Democrat that voted ``no'' and 118 Republicans that voted ``no.''

But we are even in different times now. We are still borrowing money from the Chinese. And, once again, the irony here is incredible. We are going to borrow more money from the Chinese to possibly give them money back to create habitats for wild dogs and cats that are rare.

There is no assurance that if we did that we wouldn't end up with moo goo dog pan or moo goo cat pan. There is no way to assure that money will not be wasted when it's sent to foreign countries.

One other thing, Iberian lynx, that cat would be eligible, and he is only found in Spain and Portugal. We would be appropriating $25 million over 5 years in order to send some money to the very country that has been making ridiculous accusations about the United States here in recent days. Oh, good, accuse us of ridiculous crimes, and then we will send you money for your dogs and cats. At some point we have got to stand up and be more responsible with the money we are borrowing that we are pledging our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will pay back.

This is not the time to be passing this bill. I know there were 294 votes, 67 Republicans last time, but I am hoping that because American habitats are again threatened for individual people in America, it's time to quit spending money for habitats in foreign countries for animals.

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

Madam Speaker, I have to confess that it's a little tough to be here on the floor and be accused of wanting to keep money from the hardworking Americans, as Republicans, when I have had a bill I have been begging to be allowed to come to the floor that gives a tax holiday to every hardworking American in the country--to everybody. Even those who don't make enough to pay income tax would get a FICA holiday.

So, to be lectured about our not wanting hardworking Americans to have a break, give me a break. The bill is there. Let it come to the floor. I'm told by people all over the Hill and all over America: Please, see if you can't get the Democratic leadership to give us this holiday.

Then we have a marriage penalty that is exacerbated in this budget, made even worse. Then who do you think is going to pay for this extra energy tax? It'll be passed on, and the people who earn the least will get hurt the most.

The real secret about this budget, Madam Speaker, should not be lost in this one act. Secretary of State Clinton was sent to beg the Chinese to keep loaning us money. What does that say for our future? We're quickly approaching the irreversible in this spending. It has to stop.

I appreciate my friend from Iowa yielding, and I appreciate his discussions here on the floor tonight.

And if I may seek indulgence in the last 5 minutes, I'm hoping to pay tribute to one of my constituents that won a--not won, but earned a Silver Star, if I might be allowed to do that at the end of the hour.

But what had concerned me, you know, we all have these meetings and hearings and it goes on all day long and often, around 11, 12, midnight, I sit down and I can catch up on some news. I can catch up on replays, sometimes on C-SPAN. But anyway, C-SPAN does help because, you know, we can see things from our office that we weren't able to get to the floor because of other things going on.

But I had seen on C-SPAN debate with the chairman with whom my friend from Iowa was engaging earlier, and I had seen him engaging with my friend from Texas, Mr. Culberson.

And I became very disturbed. As we know, there are rules of decorum here on the floor that we're not to insult another Member of Congress, that we're not to insult a Senator or the President, and so I became intrigued and very concerned as I heard Chairman Frank making statements. I've gotten the Record since then. The comment was made about my friend Mr. Culberson by Chairman Barney Frank.

``I've never seen people, Mr. Chairman, so attached to something they hate. This is presumably a psychological disorder which I'm not equipped to diagnose.''

Well, that caught my attention. He's accusing Mr. Culberson of having a psychological disorder, and so it seemed--well, in Shakespearean words, ``Me thinks he doth protest too much.'' So I began to listen more. He went on and continued speaking, and this is a quote from Chairman Barney Frank.

``Speaking about being undone, my Republican colleagues are being undone by the loss of their whipping boy.''

So I'm wondering this is a gentleman who is getting very sensitive and who is lashing out with what seemed to be inappropriate, perhaps not skirting over the rule, but there were other comments that certainly seemed inappropriate and unnecessary.

Chairman Barney Frank said, ``The bill under consideration is 5\1/2\ pages. I believe even the gentleman from Texas could have read it by now, and if the gentleman from Texas had not been able to read this 5\1/2\-page bill, I will talk long. Even if you read it slow, you'll get it done.''

He went on and said, ``My colleagues on the other side are kind of like kids who have a toy bear or a blanket, and this security blanket means a lot to them. Their security blanket is being able to complain about something that happened before the break. This bill undoes what happened before the break and makes it a nullity. They at some point, Mr. Chairman, have to outgrow the security blanket.''

So he's calling people on this side of the aisle little children. Of course the debate that was going on was the concern from our side that, first of all, we had been promised by our new President and by the Speaker, and we'd even passed a bill in here that said we had to have 48 hours to review any bill that they rushed in here to the floor. We had to have that chance. Yet they came in and immediately filed a bill. I think it went up on the Internet at around 11:00 or 12:00, and at 9:00 or 10:00 the next morning, we were having a debate on it and a vote on it that day. There was no 24 hours, but we were told we had to do that. It was critical. It was a crisis. People were losing their jobs every minute that we didn't vote on it and pass it.

So they ran roughshod. They would not allow any Member of this body the time to read the bill. They ran roughshod over everybody. Nobody had a chance to read it. Then to come in and accuse people on this side of the aisle, who were concerned about that, of being kids wanting a security blanket, I'll tell you: It is a security blanket to me that we could be able to read bills before we cram them down the throats of Americans. So I'm hearing this on C-SPAN.

Here is another comment by Chairman Frank: ``The gentleman from Texas has now had a chance to read the bill, and has a question for me about this bill.''

He goes on and says, ``He can have all the Special Orders he wants in order to beat that dead horse, because it is a dead horse. This bill that he does not want to debate the merits of, that he is probably prepared to vote against--that he didn't want to debate the merits of? That was uncalled for and was inappropriate. We were entirely prepared to try to debate the merits, but here again, it had to do with seeing a bill rushed through here without a chance for anybody to read it and then rushing in last week and saying, ``Here. Let's quickly vote on a 90 percent tax after the fact, ex post facto, a bill of attainder in all likelihood, due process issues, taking issues, equal protection issues, all kinds of questions about it.

Rush that in as a fix. Then here they come, rushing right back in, saying, ``Well, we've got another fix. This will even be better,'' and we wonder why people would want to question it. Well, you know, is this 5\1/2\-page bill any better than the one you rushed through last week? There were concerns.

Chairman Frank also went on and said, ``Apparently, there are two alternative strategies that the minority has in discussing this bill: One, discuss a bill that was passed 6 weeks ago; two, ignore the rules of the House and just talk whenever they feel like it. Neither one seems, to me, to advance debate.''

So I'm hearing these things coming from Chairman Frank. There was something amiss here.

He went on to also say, ``This is a revolt against King George, in effect, and it is--King George Bush.'' That is really unnecessary, slamming the former President. Talk about a whipping boy. They made former President Bush quite the whipping boy at every chance. They still are.

I mean, the Constitution makes very clear that Congress is the one that has

to appropriate money and pass spending bills. After the Democrats took the majority in 2007 and 2008 and passed these enormous spending bills, which only Congress can do, they still want to blame the President who had no power to legislate.

Chairman Frank also went on and said, ``I wish I didn't have to listen to some of these speeches, particularly the repetitive ones about the bill 6 weeks ago.''

He also said, ``But when Members complain about something that might happen that won't happen, it is because they are against what is happening but don't have the confidence that, if they said it, people would believe it.'' This was also a slam at the motives of the people who had proper concerns about the rush repeatedly to pass something so it looked to people across America that something was being done.

As a former judge, when I hear people being that sensitive and lashing out at others, there is something here, so I had gone back and had pulled some quotes to see if, perhaps, this was the source of the sensitivity.

On September 25, 2003, at the hearing on H.R. 2575, The Secondary Mortgage Market Enterprises, Mr. Frank said, ``There are people in the country who are prepared to lend money to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at less interest rates than they might get elsewhere. I thank those people for doing that. I must tell them that I hope they are not doing that on the assumption that, if things go bad, I or my colleagues will bail them out. We will not.''

Also on page 4, ``I think it is clear that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are sufficiently secure, so they are in no great danger.''

Also on page 4, this again is Mr. Frank. ``I don't think we face a crisis; I don't think that we have an impending disaster. We have a chance to improve regulation of two entities that I think are, on the whole, working well.'' Well, we know now they were not at all.

In debate on the floor here on H.R. 1461, to reform regulation of Fannie and Freddie, October 26 of 2005--this is in the Congressional Record--Mr. Frank said, ``There are banks who complain that because Fannie and Freddie are perceived to have some backup from Congress--and let me say right now, if you are listening, if you are buying Fannie's or Freddie's paper because you think I am going to vote to bail you out, sell it and cash it in. I am not going to do that. I do not think there is a Federal guarantee.'' We know, apparently, he didn't mean what he said or he has changed his mind since then.

On July 19 of 2008--and this is Air America's 7 Days quoting Chairman Frank--``It's really been a test of regulation . . . a conscious decision brought by Alan Greenspan, who is the arch de-regulator. Because in 1994, not coincidentally, the last time the Democrats had a congressional majority before this year, a bill was passed that was called the Homeowner Equity Protection Act, that said to the Federal Reserve, `Look, we now have loans being made by non-regulated entities, so please pass some rules. We give you the statutory authority to pass the rules to contain their activity and make it more responsible.' Alan Greenspan said, `Oh, no. That's interfering with the market. I can't do that.' He didn't do it; that's where the crisis came.'' Interesting place to blame.

In any event, on September 10 of 2003, there is one other quote from Mr. Frank. ``The more people, in my judgment, who exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury''--and these are Mr. Frank's words--``which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios.'' That was from The Wall Street Journal on October 2, 2008, bringing back that quote from 2003.

So, as I look back--and I was looking for the justification of why such an intellectual man as Mr. Frank would be lashing out, calling names, accusing people here on the floor of having psychological disorders--I began to get a picture, and it may have to do with what the gentleman from Iowa pointed out earlier about who ends up squealing. There was something there that did trigger, perhaps, more sensitivity than we might have thought necessary, but when you get to the bottom of it, there are quotes here that are a problem, that did help protect Fannie when they should have had some things done to shore them up and should have had a protection that prevented that from happening.

So I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

Again, I go back. There was no need to lash out at Mr. Culberson and at others, but the more you look back at the quotes over the last 5 years, even into the nineties, you begin to see, maybe, why there is such sensitivity on these issues.

I appreciate my friend yielding. I yield back to him.

I appreciate my friend from Iowa yielding.

I have run across some quotes.

I was at the home of some friends of mine in Dallas, and they had a number of fantastic quotes from our history, and I think what we've seen today as this budget, this terrible, terrible budget was passed, just one of the quotes from Thomas Jefferson, this brilliant man, was, ``the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.'' And that's exactly what we saw today with this budget. Liberty was yielding, the government taking more and more control of everything. Thomas Jefferson knew it.

I mean, it's like Solomon said, There is nothing new under the sun. These things that people think are new and innovative, it is not new. It failed in the New Testament church, it failed the Pilgrims when half of them nearly starved the first winter. They came up with this grand idea, let's give everybody their own private property and make them responsible for producing on their own property--and they have access. It's theirs. They can borrow it, sell it, whatever. It's theirs. It was a great idea. And that carried over 150 years into the Constitution, this idea of private property and the government not trying to run everything.

But what I would humbly submit, the way it appears to me and why we're seeing so much government intervention, the more it does, the more it feels like it has to do.

But what we've seen like Madoff, things like Countrywide, some of the people there who shoved people into mortgages they couldn't afford, packaged them together and then sold them off without recourse, made their millions. You know, things like that, those are the things this Nation, this government of this Nation, are supposed to be looking for. We're supposed to make sure there is a level playing field. We're supposed to protect this Nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We had some domestic enemies that were hurting people in this country.

But what happens is when we get so caught up in trying to run everything, telling Detroit exactly what kinds of cars you have got to make, telling the business people this is what you have got to do, we're so busy telling people how to run their lives, how to run their businesses, that we lost what we are supposed to be doing. We're supposed to provide these people with a defense from the crooks from the domestic and foreign enemies. But oh, no. We're too busy telling them what they are supposed to do.

I love what Abe Lincoln said. He said, ``We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other Nation.'' He concluded, ``though but we have forgotten God. Because if you know that there is an ultimate Universal source of right and wrong, then you care more about doing right and trying to help others do right.'' And that's what this government is supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be catching cheaters, dishonest people hurting America, and we lose that grip when we try to run everything.

And I would also point out as you try to get your hands around this huge budget that increases the deficit--I mean, people--we got beat up in 2005 and 2006. My first years here, we were in the majority. We were beat up because we were spending too much money, and we were. But then turn around to 2007 and 2008, the Democrats have control of everything. They are not reigning in spending. It goes through the roof. And now it's gone even further.

So if you want to know the bottom-line secret of what this budget is about, I would submit to you it can be found in one action: that was in this administration sending Secretary of State Clinton to China to beg them to loan us more money. That's what this budget does. It makes us beg China for more money.

You know, many in this body think this Nation will go on forever. We know no nation will last forever. We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. But those rights are like any inheritance. You only get to have them if people are willing to fight and protect them, fighting government and then fight our enemies abroad.

Well, in the summer of 2008, media from around the country released reports on an attack on an American military outpost base in the Kunar province of Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. Accounts say that 45 U.S. paratroopers and 25 Afghan soldiers were assaulted by up to 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, bombarding our soldiers with rocket- propelled grenades and mortars. Nine U.S. soldiers were killed, 15 injured, and it was called the deadliest attack on American forces in Afghanistan since 2005.

I am here today to honor these servicemembers for their incredible sacrifice and to especially recognize one in particular who I am so very proud and humbled to represent as his U.S. Congressman.

Army Specialist Aaron David Davis, from Kilgore, Texas, was serving as an anti-armor gunner of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team and was sent in as reinforcement when insurgents assailed our soldiers on July 13, 2008.

In the rural town of Wanat, Afghanistan, Specialist Davis and his men were bombarded by enemy fire from all sides as insurgents took over homes and mosques in their attempts to seize the newly established American base there. Specialist Davis and his fellow soldiers were vastly outnumbered, but they continued to courageously fight. Specialist Davis saw many of his fellow soldiers killed in the midst of that chaotic combat and was wounded himself; yet he was not deterred from fiercely protecting the base and his friends.

An American military helicopter finally came to the rescue, but even after he was told to get on the helicopter that would surely be his ticket to safety, a wounded and hurting Davis was more concerned with the protection of others. With his own life in peril, he stayed and continued to fight.

Among his heroic actions, Specialist Davis crawled to the frontline to check on a fellow soldier, and then he helped save three fellow soldiers, putting them on gurneys and helping get them airlifted out of the ongoing battle. While fighting to protect these men, Davis was again wounded, receiving shrapnel in his left hand, left arm, and behind his right eye. He became so wounded he finally had to be lifted away from the fight himself.

There is so much more to the story, and I wish there were more time to elaborate on this young man's incredible selflessness. Aaron Davis spend many weeks recovering from his wounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and he is now back on active duty at Fort Sam Houston, continuing to boldly serve his country while still further rehabilitating.

He was recently awarded the Purple Heart for the wounds he suffered, as well as the Silver Star, the third highest military decoration that can be awarded to a member of any branch of the United States Armed Forces, for his incredible courage and unwavering commitment to his country and his fellow soldiers. Specialist Aaron Davis deserves our thanks for his bold bravery and selfless sacrifice.

It is the courage and commitment of Aaron Davis and his fellow soldiers and those like them that allows us to continue to enjoy our freedom as U.S. citizens. We are manifestly proud and permanently grateful. To Specialist Aaron Davis, may God bless Aaron Davis and he and all he has done for this Nation.

Madam Chairman, parliamentary inquiry?

We have been talking about the time. When I came in, I understood the gentlelady across the aisle had yielded 10 minutes of her time to Mr. Brady. Was there a different understanding from the Chair?

Oh, when she said I'm yielding 10 minutes to my friend from Texas, the Speaker took that to mean I'm reserving my time? Okay. Thank you.

The gentlewoman from New York reserved her time and signaled that the gentleman from Texas should yield his time.

Oh, I see. So when she said I yield my friend from Texas 10 minutes, that meant she was reserving her time? All right. Thank you for the clarification.

I did want to take up a couple of things that were mentioned. First of all, my friend across the aisle had indicated that opponents had wanted to cut benefits to the middle class and reward the wealthiest few and even held up a chart showing the kind of deficits that were run up in 2007 and 2008. And this is the same kind of mantra we've been hearing and actually heard that in 2005 and 2006.

And the fact is there was too much money being spent after President Bush took office. When Republicans had the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, too much money was being spent, and that's why before the Democrats took office or took the majority, there was a $160 billion deficit that was run up.

It was too much money. It was too much deficit. And that's why the American public said: Enough. We're going to put the Democrats in charge. We don't want another $160 billion deficit.

And so what did we get in 2007 and 2008? We got the numbers that the jobs were falling, we got a problem economy, and the runaway spending went wilder than ever. Now, just in 2 months--and I was objecting back then, I'm objecting louder now--because now they're going to increase that 10 times teams. We spent nearly $800 billion on a spendulus bill in January, February. Then we had another--they got the other $350 billion of the $700 billion from last year.

Going nuts spending money--$1 trillion dollars? That would pay for an entire year of every individual taxpayer getting back every dime they have.

So when we hear that this party--these people on this side of the aisle--want to make benefits to the wealthiest, you can look at the bill I filed. It was for a tax holiday to let those who were paying taxes get their money

back. That's a solution. That gets the economy going.

This cap-and-tax on energy, that is going to penalize the people that are just struggling to pay their gasoline bill. And then to hammer the deductions for charities and mortgages, that also hammers the people in the middle class trying to get by. And it brings home the point that this majority is about the GRE--government running everything.

I have a bill that I filed the last Congress, I'm filing again, that would have no increases. A level spending bill. No automatic increases. And they're running that up like crazy.

The Federal Government has been too busy trying to run everybody else's business, telling Detroit, telling Wall Street, telling the lenders, the banks what to do, that they forgot that their job was to provide a defense against enemies foreign and domestic, like Madoff, the cheaters. We should have been after them. That's the job of this government--not telling everybody how to run their business.

I appreciate my friend for yielding. He knows about scoring points--going back to school--but this is outrageous.

Here, the economy is hurting. And, as my friend so eloquently put it, the government doesn't do things better than business. Business always does a better job than government. Yet, here we are. We are piling on.

I don't know if most people are aware, but virtually every week we are putting more of our energy resources off limits. So we are going to run up the price of energy as we approach the summer--and the prices are already going up on their own. And then you have got this ridiculous spending that's going crazy. Begging the Chinese to keep loaning us money. We're going to print money. Inflation is going to hit it.

On top of that, we're going to really hammer free enterprise by saying, in effect--you guys wouldn't know this, but my elementary school teachers, who I think were all Democrats, were liars. Because they told me growing up in school that you cannot have a free society, a Democratic country, if you don't have a secret ballot. That's what they told me. And I believed them. I still believe them.

Yet, here is this bill, they call it card check, but it's the anti- secret ballot initiative by the Democratic leaders. Obviously, it's being pushed by the people they owe a great deal to.

But Fox News had a story on about the Dana Corporation Auto Parts in Albion, Indiana, and they said that the card check process has nearly torn the 50-person plant apart after harassment and intimidation from the United Auto Workers Union forced them to a secret ballot vote.

The union organizer, they said, came to the plant 2 years ago, asking employees to join the UAW because the company had signed a neutrality agreement with the union. The meeting didn't go well.

One of the people interviewed, Larry Guest, said, ``He was using real rough language--cursing. It didn't go over well with the women at all. There were a couple that just got up and left.

So employees said the union representatives approached them in the break room, at the plant doors, and even followed them to their cars and just harassed them and even followed them home--and the employees verified this--and they said, ``We're in a little town. We're in a plant of 50 some people. The last thing you need is to have a union come to your door saying: I want your name.''

But that's all it took under the card check process. They didn't get a secret ballot. All they needed was their name. So if it meant following them home, following them to their car, going to their kids' baseball games, whatever it took until they finally got them to sign just to get them off their backs.

As one employee said, Jamie Oliver, ``When they approach you every day, every day, every day, after a while it's like `Okay. Fine. I'll sign the card.' ''

The UAW collected the necessary signatures but plant employees appealed to the NLRB--the employees appealed. Then they finally got it overturned. The card check didn't make their life better, it made it more miserable. So here you have got companies struggling to stay afloat.

Now I have had private businesses in my district say: I'm barely staying afloat. If this card check bill passes, I'm going to have to let everybody go. I'm too old to keep putting up with it. I've heard this from a number of people. We're going to let them go. And the card check will put a bunch more people out of business.

Here, at a time when the economy is already struggling, and I think my friend is so right--my friend from Utah nailed it--the American people are what makes this country great.

I was visiting with some students here from the Big Twelve. We have A&M, Baylor. They're still here, but the House rules say you can't acknowledge people in the gallery, so I won't. But we have some from Missouri, from Texas Tech. From around the Big Twelve. They get it. They know that the American people are the real strength of this country. And for the government to try to cram this stuff down on them and say, We do it better, is really outrageous.

So I appreciate all of my friends here today making that point to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, there are some good provisions in this bill. There have been hearings on 70 out of 170 provisions in the House and this Congress. But our esteemed and fine chairman of the committee said the arguments against this bill, in his word, are petty.

I guess when you spend $1.68 trillion, whatever we have spent already in the last few months, $10 billion can seem like petty cash. You know, 10 billion here, there. I understand it can seem like petty. But that is an argument. This is $10 billion without hearings in this House over 100 of these provisions on whether they will help the economy.

You know, we heard over and over that people are losing jobs every day. Let's do something about it. And in the meantime, we're going to go spend $10 billion in this bill; don't know that it will help the economy. Maybe eventually.

Well, how about the people that are out of work right now? How about the people that might be able to utilize some areas that won't be able to now for certain purposes?

Or like energy, for example. Oh, yes, has anybody noticed the price of gasoline is going up again, just like everybody expected it to go up. And it will go up more and more as we approach the summer.

And what is happening, what are we doing in this sensitive body that we have here in Congress? We are going to put more of it off limits, more of it off limits at a time when the price is going up, the economy is struggling, people are losing jobs, people are having their pay cut, people are allowing their pay to be cut so others don't lose their jobs.

And what are we going to do to help? By golly, we are going to put some more land off limits so we can't get the energy and help ourselves in this country.

I was talking to some people from China not long ago. And the way they look at things, they don't look at just, you know, 10 years, 100 years, they look way down the road. And as we have seen in this body, for example, last week, we just looked at what's popular today. Gee, let's have a 90 percent tax on bonuses that we should not have ever allowed in the first place if people had done what I asked and read the stinking bills before we rushed in and passed them. But I digress.

Sometimes we just look at 1 day. They look way down the road. And it was interesting to me, these individuals said, we know what the United States is doing. You keep putting your energy off limits, more and more of it. We know what you're doing. You're smart. You're smarter than somebody gives the United States credit for, they said, because we know what you're doing. You keep putting your energy off limits, knowing that other countries will use up all of the rest of the resources in the world, and then you'll be the only country with those resources, and you'll be able to maintain your status as the one superpower in the world because you've got all the resources. You were smart enough to hold them and wait to use them until after everybody else exhausted theirs. And I wished I could say, ``You're right; we see that far down the road in this Congress.'' But it's not true. We keep hurting ourselves at the worst possible time.

So with this big bill here, Mr. Speaker, 100 provisions out of the 170 that didn't get a hearing in the House, we need to practice, and we can start now. I'm shocked. I'm outraged. I'm outraged and I'm shocked. I'm shocked and outraged, because once people start finding out what's in the bill, what all provisions didn't get a hearing

that could have been tweaked to avoid the outrages that will come, we'll need to have people saying this to save their jobs. Some may be comforted that the Senate has had Senators--and I don't know if Senator Dodd examined all the language to make sure it was perfect, but I'm sure some Senators did. But get ready to say you're shocked and outraged.

I appreciate my friend from Texas yielding, also a former judge. Actually, he served on the bench longer than I did. And, Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the opportunity to try to point out some of these things tonight.

What struck me months ago was hearing that trillions and trillions of dollars were being committed on behalf of the Federal Government to try to help the economy recover. So I wanted to know how much money gets spent into the Federal Government by taxpayers just paying their taxes, ordinary individual taxpayers. And the answer we got was $1.21 trillion was what was expected to be paid from individual taxpayers for the entire year of 2008.

So I am thinking $1.21 trillion, that is less than supposedly Fed Chairman Bernanke and Chairman Paulson and now Secretary Geithner are committing of our money. Can you imagine what would happen with the United States' economy if you just told all the taxpayers in America: No taxes. For the whole year of 2008, no taxes. And if you paid it, you are going to get it back; and if you haven't paid it yet, don't worry about it before April 15th, because you are getting all your money that you have already paid in.

Can you imagine the cars that would be bought, the car dealers and the car manufacturers that would be bailed out by Americans choosing which car they wanted to buy? That was my thinking. That was the thought process.

I got a message from Newt Gingrich; he liked the idea. He said, what would you do if you added FICA in there? Well, if you added FICA, that is $65 billion per month. You could have 2 months of allowing every American to get back every dime that was being withheld for Federal withholding, both FICA and individual income tax, and do that for 2 months and still have spent less than the $350 billion that the Obama administration was looking to get from the half that was left over.

It turns out there was more than half left over. There may have been $450 billion from the original 750. We haven't got the final figures, which is another reason we all opposed that bailout back in September. It was a terrible idea because it was just too open-ended.

So anyway, Human Events had an article, this was their headline, Nobody

Pays Taxes For 2 Months, the Gohmert Tax Holiday Plan. Now one Texas conservative is challenging Congress and the White House with a commonsense plan that is much more likely to help our economy recover more than bank bailouts or any handouts to car makers. Two months' break from income or withholding for all taxpayers. The total cost would be actually less than $350 billion. It is effectively a 70 percent tax reduction for a year.

Also it was indicated by Moody's Economy, they did their own study and found that this idea would increase the 1-year gross domestic product more than any other plan that involved taxes. So I thought it was a good idea. And then I had my friend, Judge Carter from Texas, point out that apparently other people had beat me to the tax holiday idea.

What gets interesting, CNN had this report and had the quote from our President. He said, ``I campaigned on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes.'' That was February 3, 2009.

Well, here is a chart that indicates that may have been going on, anyway, in spite of what the President said. You have got some powerful people here that have taken a tax holiday for a number of years, no penalties, no interest, where on the other side you have ordinary folks who are paying their taxes, and that is the quote from our President, ``ordinary folks who are paying their taxes,'' he said he didn't want two sets of standards. Well, we have had two sets of standards. They don't get any tax holiday. The leadership here has fought it tooth and nail. If you don't make your payments, there are no excuses. They come after you for the penalty and interest and all kinds of stuff to go with it. So, unfortunately, despite the assurances of the President, there are two standards that have been taking place here.

It is really ironic, but it has been about 30 years ago, back then, a comedian, he wasn't so much an actor back then, I think he had been with a group called the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. But he was out on his own as a comedian. Steve Martin was originally from Waco, Texas. He went to Waco High. Anyway, as part of his comedy schtick, he would say, you know, I'm going to write a book, ``How to Have $10 Million and Not Pay Taxes.'' And then he would lead the audience on. Well, they would want to know, how do you get $10 million and not pay taxes? He would eventually say, okay, okay, I'll let you in on the secret how you do it. First, you accept $10 million, which is pretty funny, because nobody just gets themselves $10 million unless you're a special person or something. And then he said, you just don't pay taxes. This is what Steve Martin said 30 years ago. Just don't pay taxes. And if they ever catch you, all you have to do is say, ``I forgot.''

Now, 30 years later, it is basically what we are seeing. People, powerful people. We don't want two sets of standards, one for powerful people. Well, the powerful people are able to file their forms, and if they have not paid their taxes, then they could just write, yes, ``Rangel Rule,'' or perhaps they could say, ``I forgot.'' Or ``it was just an honest mistake,'' or, the favorite one apparently of powerful people, ``Look, I used TurboTax. It's not my fault. TurboTax did that. I didn't do it.'' And then that saves you penalty and interest. So there ought to be a number of things, Rangel Rule perhaps, but TurboTax Rule. Maybe that would also free you up from interest or penalty on your taxes.

I yield back to my friend.

Thank you. I appreciate the time. And I appreciate your leading this debate.

Mr. Speaker, it's good to have a chance to talk about these things. And I appreciate so much my friend from Georgia, Dr. Broun, points being made. And as he said, this is an incredible power grab that's going on.

Now, we've had, made some light and been a little tongue-in-cheek tonight. But it's a little scary what's going on. And when you look at all the things that have happened so fast in 3 months, I'm telling you, I had no idea we could ever move this far this fast down the wrong road. And some say, a road to socialized, or to socialism like Europe, European socialism. It's not European socialism. It's socialism. That's what it is.

And what I struggled with, as I heard our President saying not only are we going to make it harder to get energy, because for folks, Mr. Speaker, that might not know at home, today, we passed an omnibus land bill that was 170 different land bills combined into one, 100 of which or so that had not been properly through committee process and had the vetting they required. And so many of those put more and more land off limits to production of energy, took natural gas and oil away. It's going to help raise the price of gasoline at a time when people have lost their jobs, other people are cutting what they're willing to take, so that others will keep from losing their jobs. It is a tough time for many people.

Now, I really feel like if the President would quit spreading the gloom and doom that our President did start--George Bush went out first and said, you know, depression's coming. But, good grief, you know, President Obama, with his gifts of communication, I thought, would help turn that around. Then he came in and also tried to set the bar low so it would be easier to get over it. Turns out that's been hurting the economy. Market's up a little bit this week, but good grief, at what price? Look at what's happened in the past.

So then when I hear our President say, you know what? We're going to cut the amount you can deduct for charitable deduction. And as I heard him, as I heard a replay of the interview, he said, basically, that a deduction shouldn't be the reason that you make a contribution to a charity. Well, that's nice. But it encourages people to make charitable deductions. So we start demeaning people who are making charitable deductions. Goodness, they shouldn't be doing it just to get a--you shouldn't make charitable contributions to get a deduction. So you're going to belittle the people that are helping the charities, when most of us know it's the charities, after a disaster, that can move straight in and immediately start helping people, not only in this country, but in other countries around the world. But whereas the U.S. government, we have to go through the government in another country, and often, whether it's a famine or something, we've been propping up governments that had no business being propped up because we're trying to get charity to the people, whereas charities can run right in and take care of it.

But anyway, I've struggled. Now, why would the President here, at this time when we're taking over AIG, taking over the car dealers, taking over Wall Street, why, at this time, would you choose to limit the deductible of charitable contributions?

And then it hit me. It hit me. It's all about the GRE. All about the GRE. That's what all of this is about, the GRE, the Government Running Everything. That's what it's about, the Government Running Everything. And that's what all of these things are about.

You know, people in positions that should have known better, not paying taxes. People, I mean, Secretary Geithner, for goodness sakes. I was on a conference call with constituents.

One lady I didn't know before the call was telling me she had just retired from the IRS. She said, IRS employees are incensed that they now have a boss who didn't pay his taxes when he knew he was supposed to.

And she went on to say at one point, I'd gone over to the boats at Bossier City in Louisiana, and won $600. And when I went to file my tax return and filed it, I forgot I had gotten that $600 that I won over there. So I immediately filed an amended return. And because I was filing an amended return, under the IRS rules, she said, an IRS agent who underpays taxes, no ifs, ands or buts, there's no excuses. You're fired. That's it. No recourse.

She said, I was being fired, and the only thing that saved me was my supervisor pointed out that I had not underpaid my taxes. I was getting money back, so the amended tax return didn't actually cause her to have to pay anything. Therefore, she was able to scramble, with her supervisor's help, and keep her job over $600, where she'd paid all the taxes that was due.

But now, everybody else in the IRS has a boss that has done exactly what she was about to be fired for if she hadn't overpaid her taxes.

It isn't right. And it appears that there are two standards already under this administration, one for powerful people, and then the other one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes. That isn't right.

And we don't need the government running everything. Look at what we've done. You know, the government should be about making sure there's a level playing field so everybody can play fairly. And then we're to provide for a common defense against enemies, foreign and domestic. That means cheaters. So if people are cheating out on the playing field, we move in, we go after them.

But it turns out we have been so busy trying to tell auto makers how to make cars, trying to tell banks who they have to loan to, what they have to do, we have been so busy trying to tell everybody how to run their life, the government running everything, that we haven't been taking care of going after the cheats like Madoff. That should never have happened. I don't care which administration's in charge. Apparently it was going on under a lot more than one. It doesn't matter. The government needs to quit trying to run everything. Go after the cheats. Make sure everybody plays by the same rules, and if they don't, then punish them. But we should not be running everything, and that's what we see over and over.

And I hope the American people will think about these things, Mr. Speaker, as they start seeing gas prices go higher and higher, at the very same time we're putting more and more of our energy, our own energy off limits. And we're making, having more and more dictation, this cap-and-tax, going to add thousands of dollars to people's budgets they have to pay when we've got a budget here running out of control. And it is deeply disconcerting.

I know there are some people that are saying, well, maybe the American people will forgive the Republicans for overspending previously now that they've seen the Democratic majority has just more than doubled anything Republicans ever did, and give us another chance. I hope they will. I know those who were pushing the overspending before have learned their lesson.

But the trouble is, I don't know how much more of this damage to the country we can survive for the next year and a half before the next election. But I appreciate the chance to point these out.

And I would yield back to my dear friend, fellow former judge, Judge Carter.

I appreciate the gentleman yielding. There have been so many wonderful points made here. I say wonderful as an adjective, when actually it is tough to say wonderful about such a very perplexing and disconcerting issue.

One thing that I haven't heard mentioned yet is about another issue that is contained in the budget, and that is with regard to restrictions on charitable deductions. Has the gentleman mentioned that?

And I appreciate the time you yield.

What struck me this weekend as I thought about President Obama and the Democratic leadership trying to restrict the deductions for charitable donations is, why would you do this? Because we know, worldwide, the best help that goes to people in need, whether they are starving or after an emergency, comes from the charities, the American charities. They can go straight in and start helping those people, whereas, our government, it has to go through the other government, often a third-world government, and sometimes we end up propping up really bad governments, just trying to help the people if we go through the government.

So why would the Democratic leadership and the President be wanting to cut down on charitable donations?

And that is when it hit me this weekend. It is about the GRE, the GRE, the Government Running Everything. That is what it is about. It is about power. That is where this restriction on deductions for charitable contributions is coming from. They want the government controlling everything. They see how philanthropic the American people are, how they want to help out of the generousness of their heart, and they say, gee, these charitable organizations, they are nongovernment organizations, NGOs are doing a great job. That ought to be us. Why don't we control that too?

When the government's job ought to be making sure there is a level playing field; everybody has an equal opportunity, not equal results, but an equal opportunity. And our job is to provide for the common defense against enemies, both foreign and domestic. And if we do, we go after the cheaters. That is our job.

But we have been so busy trying to run everything, we have not been going after the cheaters effectively; not on Wall Street, not in corporate America, not out there in the streets. That is what we have got to get back to.

But I appreciate the gentleman yielding. But I just had to share, that is what hit me this weekend. It is about the GRE, the government running everything. This group running things now wants all power, including the power of charitable organizations.

Thank you. I yield back.

Madam Speaker, here, once again, we are going to hastily do something wrong, good intentions. There is nobody in this Congress that wants that money back more than I do.

But going back to September, going back to the stimulus, spendulus, going back to the omnibus, we hastily went through this stuff. Some of us said don't go so fast, and we can make sure we got a better bill, and we didn't do that.

So here we are, going to hastily shred the Constitution, with an ex post facto law that says we will take 90 percent as taxes.

Mr. Speaker, that's not right. We don't take bad law and make worse law shredding the Constitution. You want to get it back, I want more than 90 percent. I want 100 percent.

You do that by forcing them into bankruptcy, going back and putting these preferences aside so we can get 100 percent, and we can get more than just the bonuses in bankruptcy or receivership. That's constitutional.

Don't shred the Constitution after we have already messed up by blowing aside the procedure and doing the hastily wrong thing.

Parliamentary inquiry.

Is it inappropriate and against the rules to ask another person to yield?

Further parliamentary inquiry.

Is it inappropriate, when somebody accuses me of being the pot calling the kettle black, in other words, of being the very thing I am accusing others of doing, of asking the gentleman to yield so I can find out where the heck he is coming from?

So it's inappropriate to ask?

The parliamentary inquiry is, if I am allowed to ask someone to yield after they have called me a name?

So you are saying you don't know whether I can ask another person to yield?

All right. So, would it be inappropriate to ask the gentleman who controls the time to specify how I am shredding the Constitution when I say someone else is doing so?

I think you have pretty well taken care of that.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, I heard the chairman a moment ago saying Bush was in charge in September. And that's correct. I was glad to hear that.

But some of us back in September were begging the majority and people on this side of the aisle don't give $700 billion in this fashion to anybody, not Paulson, not Geithner, not anybody. But it passed with the majority of the majority voting for it.

So it's a little difficult to come in here and say the President has done everything he can when President Obama's defense apparently is, well, Bush was bad, he used maybe $300 billion of the $700 billion; so we've got Obama $1.5 trillion, $1.6 trillion.

Look, if we want to fix this so the President can do all he can, somebody needs to put in the teleprompter that he's directing Geithner to put this outfit in receivership and then go get 100 percent of the bonuses. Then we can talk about doing all he can.

We've heard a lot about AIG and how they shouldn't have been getting those bonuses they got--$165 million--but let's take a real objective look here.

These executives took one of the biggest, most important companies in the world, in the country, and they ran it into the dirt. They bankrupted a lot of other companies. But they didn't have to go into bankruptcy because they convinced the government to come in with taxpayer dollars and give them $173 billion.

Now that's pretty extraordinary. They still have their jobs. Why wouldn't they get a bonus? Good night. You run a company into the dirt and then talk the government into giving you $173 billion in taxpayer dollars, that's deserving of something, and apparently somebody thought it was worth a bonus.

Well, the fact is they shouldn't have gotten bonuses. They should have been in receivership. But I keep looking for people to finally keep the promises that they have made.

We heard that we were going to get change that people could believe in. We saw with the bailout back in September what some of us knew was a horrible mistake, and we said it then.

Even though I am a Republican, I was looking forward to change from the deficit spending. Yet we have just gotten more and more and more of the same. When are we going to get change? Isn't it about time we quit the deficit spending? It would sure be nice.

We were told that there would be no more lobbyists in this administration. I liked the sound of that. It sounded good. Well, it turned out he meant no lobbyists except for the ones they actually hired to be part of the administration.

We were told there would be new ideas in this administration; we'd go in a new direction; we'd have change. But then we got a Secretary of the Treasury that is given credit for thinking of a lot of the plan that Paulson had, even though I still haven't been able to figure out what plan that was.

So we didn't get change. We're getting more of the same. More and more of the deficit spending. When are we going to get the change?

We have heard from the majority over and over again for the last 4 years that deficit spending is bad. I agreed with them my first 2 years here, 2005 and 2006. So when they took the majority, I thought, Well, the good news is they'll finally stop this ridiculous deficit spending. But they didn't. It got worse and worse and worse.

Then when they found that there was a President from the same party, instead of together, since they control the House, the Senate and the White House, to completely bring an end to deficit spending, it's just gotten worse and worse.

This madness has to stop. We are blessed right now with a President who's one of the most gifted communicators I have ever seen in my lifetime. But what we are finding is that true leadership is not going to be found between the lines in a Teleprompter. You can look at the Teleprompter, you can read from it, but that is not where leadership is.

I heard right here from that podium, Mr. Speaker, at the State of the Union last month these words: ``We're going to assure the continuity of a strong, viable institution that can serve our people and our economy,'' and President Obama said, ``I understand that on any given day, Wall Street may be more comforted by an approach that gives banks bailouts with no strings attached, and that holds nobody accountable for their reckless decision. But such an approach won't solve the problem.''

He went on to say, ``This time, CEOs won't be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.''

And then here we come the following month--there were no strings attached--to say, You know what? You ran this company in the ground. You don't get a bonus with taxpayer dollars.

I'm kind of outraged over that. Like my friend, Mr. Forbes, I'm kind of outraged that people are outraged they didn't stop this, when some of us--you go back to some of our comments on this very floor--we said, Read the bill. It's a problem.

Well, it's time for true change. Let's get what we should have and not what people talk about.

I do thank my dear friend, Ms. Foxx, for the things that she's pointed out tonight, Mr. Speaker, and also for the good that she's done. I hadn't realized. I guess we don't notice gender around this body, but apparently one of the few women. I didn't realize there had been that few. But what a powerful contribution, Mr. Speaker, that Ms. Foxx has made, and is making. It makes me very proud to be serving with her, as we came in together.

But there is something that we have discussed and have in common, and that is a concern about the morality of this Nation. Chuck Coulson talked about in a recent Bible study group we had, quoted Michael Novak, using the metaphor of the three-legged stool on which a government and a country like ours is seated.

Now many have used the metaphor of the three-legged stool, but he was pointing out that really the three legs are composed of morality, economic freedom, and political freedom, and that you need all three legs.

What we have seen in this country is a breakdown of the morality leg. As we look at the struggles in our economy, it seems that there has been a real problem with this nagging issue of greed and jealousy and envy, covetousness. People see what others want and they want that and they want more.

And as we have seen greed take over good sense, then it affects the economic freedom. And as that has impacted the economy and the economy has gotten in trouble, what we see throughout history is that when people have a choice between order and freedom, they will give up freedom just to have order, and that it puts our entire political freedom at risk when we have had a breakdown in morality affecting the economy, and then the third leg goes, our political freedom.

I have been visiting with a group tonight, and I know the rules of the House are that we don't call attention to anyone in the gallery so I will not do that. But I have been visiting tonight with friends from Lufkin, Texas, Mayor Gordon and his wife, and Paul Parker and his wife and their grandson, Josh. They understand this issue of morality. They understand that a country cannot be perpetuated where you lose that leg of the three-legged stool.

We even see it in Washington, where people get envious: Well, somebody got something in their district, I want something in mine. And if they put what they want or their district's wants over the needs of the Nation, then we come in here and we pass bills that have 9,000 earmarks in them that don't help with the stimulus, they don't help the country go in the right direction. And it is really kind of a moral leg that is affected there as well, which affects the economy because it doesn't stimulate the economy, which can throw the economy into chaos, at which time people are willing to give up political freedom in order to have the security of some order in this Nation.

I have been inspired by some of the words of our President, President Obama. But as we have found, leadership is not found in the lines on a teleprompter; leadership is something you have got to do, how you live. And George Washington, we know, struggling as we was to win freedom, he knew that his life had to be transparent, that he had to be humble, and he had to be a man of complete honesty; otherwise, it wouldn't survive. And his quote was: Men unused to restraint must be led; they will not be driven. And that is what we need more of, not just pretty words that are read from a teleprompter. We need leadership. We need people not to say we are not going to allow greed to get $165 million worth of bonuses after driving a country into the dirt. Not at all. No, we need leadership that doesn't just say these things. They follow through, and make sure he appoints honorable men, honorable people. And by that I

mean generically men and women, because of the contribution.

We were just down to Statuary Hall, and I was pointing out the first woman to address a group in Congress was a Christian evangelist, I think it was before 1820, that delivered the Sunday nondenominational Christian sermon down in Statuary Hall back when it was the House of Representatives. But men and women have inspired this place, but they don't inspire anyone unless their life is transparent enough so that people know that they mean what they say.

So as we continue to have these issues arise of the lack of morality; Ms. Coleson once said: You can't have the morality of Woodstock and not have tragedies in this country. If you have the morality of, ``If it feels good, do it,'' then you are going to have some catastrophes, because some people will want to see how it feels to do different catastrophic, greedy, terrible things. So we have got to get back to our moral underpinnings and moral anchoring so that we can move forward. But we need leadership from the White House to the Senate to this House to be in order so that they can lead by example, and not put earmarks in that may help some people but not help the economy and not help the Nation move forward and not help the generations to come.

Ms. Foxx has heard me say, Mr. Speaker, before. As a judge, I know if a parent were to have come before me and that parent had been to the bank and said, I can't control my spending, I just can't stop spending, so please make me a loan; and my children and my grandchildren, maybe my great grandchildren who aren't even born, will pay it all back some day because I can't and I can't control my spending. Well, that parent wouldn't get to keep the kids much longer, and especially if the kids had kids. That raises issues.

But in any event, we have got to get back to morality of good leaders here. We don't spend our children's money, we don't spend our grandchildren's money and our great grandchildren's money. That is irresponsible. And if we are going to do the business of this Nation with which we have been trusted, we have got to just reestablish the moral leg, the humility, the strength of character that Washington displayed, and that I have seen in my friend, Ms. Foxx. I appreciate your yielding and I appreciate the chance to speak here.

I have seen that same moral strength in a group that is here at the Capitol tonight from Murray State University, a group of Christians that are here.

So thank you for yielding and allowing me to speak tonight. And thank you for taking this time.

Mr. Speaker, these are interesting times we are living in. It just seems like the motto we hear in Congress is, so much money to give away and so little time. Wow.

How can we give away more and more money? Well, to give it away, we have got to tax, we have got to borrow, and we have got to print more money. All of these are not good things to be doing. And how ironic this week to see an article in national papers that, as Mr. Geithner is encouraging other countries to follow our lead and spend and spend and tax and spend and borrow and spend, Europe, of all places, is saying, we are not sure that this idea of spending and spending more and more money is such a good idea. Whoever would have thought that Europe would be the ones to give us a lecture on overspending not being the way to go? But these are the people that have been overspending. They know, it doesn't work. Yet, here we are, trying it ourselves.

Now, we keep hearing about the deficit. When I was here as a freshman in 2005 and 2006, I was upset about the overspending. I was upset about the deficit going up. And it wasn't the tax cuts that created the problem. The tax cuts created the greatest revenue coming into the U.S. Treasury in American history, more money than ever coming into the Treasury. That wasn't the problem. But as it came in faster and faster, we were spending even faster than that, and there were some of us who were upset about it. The American people were upset about it. So as our friends across the aisle kept pointing out, you have got to cut out this deficit spending, the voters heard them. They said, they are right. The Democrats are the ones saying don't be spending and running up the deficit on our children and grandchildren. The voters were right. The Democrats were right to say that, because we were overspending. Many of us in the Republican party were saying the same thing. But that was not what carried the day. There was overspending.

As a result, we got this comment after the election in November of 2006 from our now Speaker: ``The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in the history.''

In fact, we even voted a few weeks ago in here that we would not even vote or take up this horrible spending bill, spendulus, porkulus, whatever you want to call it, until we had at least had 48 hours to review it. We voted on that. The vast majority, it seems like it may have been a super majority, voted that we would not vote on that bill until we had seen it for at least 48 hours. Then it gets on the web at 11:00 or 12:00 at night. I got my copy to review the next morning about 9:00, and we are debating at 10:00. And we are told, people are losing their jobs every minute you are delaying passing this bill. We have got to pass it. You don't have time to read it, you have just got to trust all the people, the staffers and everybody that put this together. We don't know what is air-dropped in there; we don't know what all is part of it, because we don't have time to read it, either. Nobody on either side of the aisle read it, but we had to pass it.

It doesn't exactly match up with the transparency and the openness that was promised. It doesn't match up with the President of the United States, President Obama, promising there would be no bill that would be taken up and voted on unless we had 5 full days before he signed it to have comments, 5 full days. Well, we were told we had to pass it, we had no choice, people are losing their jobs. And the thing is, people were hearing things that were supposed to be in the bill, and yet the very week that this bill was being brought to the floor to vote on, there were tens of thousands of jobs every day being lost because businesses were giving up hope. They were trying to hang in there, hang on to their good employees. So many of those jobs lost were good union jobs. They were trying to hang in there. But then, from what they were hearing it didn't sound like this so-called stimulus or spendulus bill was going to allow them to come out from under the trouble they were in, so they gave up and kept laying jobs aside. People, families were hurt. So we were told, ``It has got to be fast. Don't read it, just vote on it.'' So it was passed, and 4 days later it gets signed into law.

Now, how is that an example of being open, honest and transparent? As a young attorney, I always advised people, if people want you to sign off on something but say, ``you don't have time to read it, just sign it,'' then it is even more important to read before you sign off on it, before you put your name on it. And here we had the Congress of the United States put their names on a document that they were not allowed to read all because it had to be passed immediately. And then 4 days later, once we get the press and all of that going on, have the photo op there in Colorado, then the bill gets signed. And I'll bet the folks there, I'll bet the President had not read the bill. Of course he hadn't. He hadn't had time.

I am joined by my dear friend from Indiana, Mr. Dan Burton. I would love to yield time to him such as he would use and do so at this time.

Thank you. I'm so grateful to my friend from Indiana. I always learn something every time I hear him speak. And I appreciate him any time he wants to speak while I've got time, he is welcome here. It is interesting though. It just seems like we do not learn the lessons either of history from other countries or of our own history. We keep trying the same things over and over again.

For one thing, though, we had this massive bailout back in September. And there were a few dozen, I think maybe 60 Republicans that joined with the vast majority of the Democrats and passed that bailout bill. I thought it was a huge mistake. I knew it was a huge mistake. I begged my colleagues across the aisle, this side, please don't do this. And yet, we did. Seven hundred billion dollars. It was an outrageous amount. It may be that only $250 billion of that--only--only $250 billion of that was spent before the new administration came in. And they immediately asked for the other $350 billion, another $800 billion in a stimulus, spendulus, porkulus whatever you want to call it bill, and then followed that up with over $400 billion on top of that. We only get $1.21 trillion in from income tax, from individuals for the entire year of 2008. And yet, just in a matter of weeks, $1.6 trillion, $1.7 trillion, an incredible amount of money.

I have said this before, people I think are getting the idea, you want to increase the economy and help the economy? Let every taxpayer know they can keep their own tax dollars. Now originally my bill proposed 2 months. But for the kind of money we have been spending, we would be better off to tell everybody you have the whole 2008 tax year off with no taxes. If you send it in, you're getting it back. If you haven't paid it, then don't. We would have been better off. Cars would be bought. Homes would be bought. Homes would be built. Businesses would be built. American Dreams would be made all over.

It is interesting to hear a study this morning that we went from an American Dream of having our children have it better than we have to now the current American Dream, the majority American Dream is to own their own business, to have a small business. Then also know that American businesses, small businesses, that is, have 70 percent of the employees in the

country. You want to help the country? Help small business. And yet all we are hearing is we are going to hammer the people that may make more than $250,000, the very people who I've heard from who have said, ``I would like to hire at least one or two employees, but if I'm about to get hammered with a tax, I'm going to have to pay that in taxes. I can't afford to hire anybody. So I'm waiting back here to see if I'm going to get hammered with more taxes. And if not, then I will hire more people. And if I am, then I'm not hiring anybody. I will just kind of hang on to what I've got.''

One of the things we learned back in history classes was that the power to tax is the power to destroy. That is so clear. Over and over, no matter what country you're in, the government has the power to tax, unless it is a socialist country, in which case all money comes into the government, and they pay everybody, so they just own everything, which kind of seems to be the way we are going right now, but if you tax something, you get less of it. If you want more of an activity, then not only don't tax it, but give it an incentive to have more of that.

There is no better example than in the 1960s when the people in this body, in the House of Representatives, had a big heart, a tender heart, and wanted to help single women who they knew, there weren't that many, but there were some who were having to deal with deadbeat dads, who were not helping raise the children and were not helping with funding. They said, let's help those women. Let's give them a check from the Federal Government for every child they can have out of wedlock. They meant well. But now, 40 years later, we have gotten what we paid for. We have gotten a Nation in which nobody would ever have dreamed at this time that so many of our children would be born out of wedlock. Some of the greatest contributors to this country have come from single-parent homes. And I just have great praise for the single parents who try to raise kids and have done so effectively. It is a tough, tough job. But studies indicate, generally speaking, kids end up better off if they come from a two-parent home, as long as there is not abuse, things like that, we know that. As a former judge, I sure do.

Well, then if you look at some of the things we have taxed, we still have a marriage penalty. If you're married in America, and you are both working, then you're going to pay a higher tax than you would if you were living together in what used to be called in the Bible Belt, ``living together in sin.'' So what does the government do? The Federal Government, this body, because this is the only body that can do it, this body taxes marriage. Well, you get less marriage when you tax marriage.

Now, we have heard over the last few decades all kinds of solutions, we are going to try to fix the marriage penalty, we are going to lower the tax here, fix this, do that and have less of a penalty, oh, we think we have fixed it. I have gotten sick of hearing those messages. And I intend to have a bill filed in the next couple of weeks as soon as we get it back from legislative counsel. It is very simple. It just says, if you're married, then you have got a choice. You can file married jointly or you can file as a single individual, whichever is better for you. Boom. No marriage penalty. That's the end of it.

Now that is how you deal with a marriage penalty. You give people who are doing a good thing, being married, you don't penalize them, you help them.

And then we hear in the President's budget, his plan, we are going to disallow charitable contributions beyond a certain extent. It will be interesting to see how it ends up shaking out. But we are going to disallow tax advantages beyond that and allow that income to be taxed.

Guess what? If you are going to start taxing that money instead of allowing the charitable deduction for the full amount, you are going to get less charitable deductions. I have said all along that this President is a smart man. I think he is. I wish that he would leave the teleprompters alone because the things that we need and what we need to fix America will not be found in a teleprompter. I wish he would look us straight in the eye and talk to us.

In any event, if you are really, really smart and you are pushing to provide less tax incentive for charitable deductions, charitable contributions, you are going to get less of them. If you are really smart, you know that. You know you will get less. So what can you be meaning? What can your thoughts be?

Well, the inevitable conclusion is that you intend to have fewer charitable organizations because you intend to do all of the charitable giving by the government. That is the only conclusion that can logically be drawn. You think you're better at giving charitable donations to the right places than the American public could be, and that the government will do better with those donations, we call them taxes when they are to the government, than those charitable organizations will be.

As I have traveled around the world as a Member of Congress, I haven't done it but a few times, but what I see, the best work for individuals suffering in other countries doesn't come from the U.N. It doesn't come from the United States dollars. When the United States gives, it has to go through another country or through the U.N., and all these people get their cut of the action. And sometimes we prop up corrupt governments by trying to help their people. No, the best work gets done by charitable organizations that go straight in and help the people directly. That's where the greatest good gets done.

Now with this President's new budget, he is proposing to cut that back so the government will be the end all charitable donor. That is so offensive. That is so offensive.

I am delighted to be joined by one of the greatest Members of Congress that we have here. We were delighted when she joined our ranks a couple of years ago because this is someone who comes from the heart, incredibly sincere, and it is hard to beat somebody who is both sincere and very, very intelligent. I would yield to my friend, the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann).

Thank you, and great points all. I was enjoying the points you were making.

But what came back to mind was the story about Davy Crockett in the House of Representatives. Some people don't know he was a representative, and yet there is a great story, a true story about him going back home to Tennessee and somebody, one gentleman just lowered the boom on him and was really fussing at him because Congress had decided to give money to help some business that had burned. The gentleman was telling Davy Crockett, if you want to help somebody or some business because it is a noble cause, give them your money, don't give them my money. And Crockett came back here and told about the incident as part of the Congressional Record, telling his colleagues: How about for once we don't just force the taxpayers to give up their money and give it to where we think it ought to go. If we think that this business deserves some charitable help, then let's give it out of our own pockets.

They took up a collection. Can you imagine if the debate here on the floor were along those lines these days, that the children need our help, so I'm passing the hat and would like for everybody to kick in their own money here on the floor so that we can help these children? No, that's not what we hear.

Thank you. Actually, I guess it was right at the end of 1 year, my freshman year here, there were so many of our friends across the aisle quoting Scripture. And it was being used in a way to say things like, well, Jesus said take care of the widows and orphans. And some of you guys, you want to just neglect the widows and orphans and help your rich friends. And others would say, Jesus said that we should be good Samaritans and help those less fortunate. Somebody else said Jesus had said to them that we're to love our neighbors as ourselves, ``the golden rule.'' When a lawyer asked him what is the most important commandment, he said, love your neighbor--those were the two, love God and love your neighbor.

But anyway, we were getting beat up over that, that we ought to be taxing people, taking from other people and giving to these folks that were in need. And I had to point out that night that Jesus never said go ye therefore, use and abuse your taxing authority to take somebody else's money to help them. He said, you do it. You do it. He was talking to the individual. He was talking to the individual heart. And the individuals who were supposed to do it, not go and abuse taxing authority, take somebody else's money, and yet that is what has happened. And a great example was Zacchaeus. Because if you look at what Zacchaeus did after he met Jesus, he went and cut taxes. Not only did he cut taxes, he gave rebates to those he over-collected from. And that is what would be called a tax holiday.

That is such a great point. And it goes right along with the corporate tax. We have people come in here and say the corporate tax is the way to go because these mean, cruel, greedy corporations, let them pay the tax. Well, if a corporation does not pass that tax on to its customers or its clients, then it goes out of business. So that is so deceptive. And I think it is so wrong to say, we all know in here we're going to stick it to the little guy, the guy that is just working and doing all they can to stay up, or the seniors who are on Social Security, we're going to stick it to them, but we can't just stick the tax to them any more than we already have, let's tax the corporation, and then they will have to pass it on. But it won't say ``tax'' when it's passed on because it's from us to them, and it's our way of sticking it to the little guy without them knowing.

But at some point the American public is going to wise up. And I've looked into this as well because there are some that say we need to erect tariff barriers and say, if you're going to sell stuff in this country, your country may be subsidizing this kind of thing, but we're going to put a tariff. Well, that triggers so many penalties. It would trigger a tariff war around the world if we did that. Whereas, what I have looked into is, what if we said we are not going to allow Congress to stick it to the little guy by popping the tax on the corporations that they have to pass on. Let's just say no corporate tax.

Corporations that have fled this country because of the high corporate tax rate have said, our manufacturing jobs will be back in America. The furniture jobs, even though labor is cheaper elsewhere, it would open them up. And some would say, well, that's subsidizing. But the nice thing is it would not trigger any penalty or any tariff war, no trade agreements, penalty provisions would be triggered by doing away with corporate tax so that the people in America wouldn't be taxed further.

But how much more insidious could it be than what President Clinton did as soon as he took office with a Democratic majority when he raised this massive tax on Social Security benefits? These people have worked their whole life, paying taxes on what they made, putting a little bit into Social Security, and actually they're only getting back about one- fourth to one-third of what they would have been if they could have put it into their own private retirement account. But anyway, here it is, they're getting so little as it is, and now you're going to put a tax on top of that? To me, that was pretty insidious. And it continues. There's talk about even possibly increasing the Social Security tax. I think it's outrageous.

We have been joined by my good friend from Iowa. It is always a pleasure, Mr. Speaker, to see him here on the floor. I yield to my friend, Mr. King.

I would yield to my friend from Iowa.

I thank Mr. King and I thank Mrs. Bachmann.

That's such a great point about energy. We have been blessed in totality with more natural resources in the United States of America, I think, than any other country. It's just been fabulous. And yet we continue week after week, month after month with the Democratic majority to continue to put more of our natural resources off-limits.

One of the things some of us have been advocating, and I have got my staff working on a bill we talked about yesterday that would be in conjunction with our friend Mr. Shadegg, with Senator Vitter, but we all agree: We want all-of-the-above energy. Use it all. But make sure we protect the environment. And that can be done. But open up the OCS to drilling. Put litigation on a fast track so they can't tie it up for 10 or 20 years and just keep repeatedly bringing them to court. But let's go use it if it's legal, if it's proper, and it will be if it's done right.

And then something that had been negotiated before that could be done is that the Federal royalty that could be obtained by leasing the OCS would be more than traditionally a property owner gets from leasing their land to produce oil and gas. Traditionally that's been one- eighth. One-eighth of the royalty is what the owner normally got. We could get at least three-sixteenths. We could split it with the States. We've got States coming up here like California saying, please, give us some money. I'm so proud they worked on their budget. They still need money.

You've got all kinds of money sitting in the vault, sitting in the bank, right off your coast. Use what you've got. If it's solely in the State's territory, it's yours. If it's out beyond that and in Federal territory, we will split the money with you. And then my feeling is, and this is what I've talked to the staff about in a bill, we'll take half of the Federal part of that because we should share it with the States, but then with our half, take half of that and devote it completely to research for alternative fuels. You don't have to tax anybody else. You don't have to add more costs to the already hardworking people that are paying to sustain this unwieldy government. But you could fund our own alternative research so that as things run out, we've got it.

And it's really beginning to appear very disingenuous, this stuff about the global warming, and that's why we are no longer hearing ``global warming.'' They're not using that term. They are using ``climate change.'' Climate change happens four times a year. It's the seasons.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Minnesota.

I yield to my friend from Iowa.

I appreciate my friend from Iowa's (Mr. King) help.

I would be willing to yield for any final comments to my friend from Minnesota.

Mr. Speaker, March 18 will mark the 72nd anniversary of what freshly graduated newscaster Walter Cronkite called the ``worst school disaster in American history.'' I stand before the House today to commemorate those students and educators who so tragically lost their lives that afternoon as well as to encourage the survivors.

The 1930s saw many families in East Texas with hope as they fought to regain what had been lost in so many parts of the country during the Great Depression.

With the discovery of oil in northern Rusk County, the City of New London, Texas, boasted one of the richest rural school districts in America. They had just built a state-of-the-art school that would make any school district envious.

But at approximately 3:18 p.m. on March 18, 1937, many of those same families would lose forever the promise of youth while east Texans and people around the world would bear the pain of losing a community's entire generation.

It was on that date, at that time, the New London school did become the site of the worst school disaster in American history. In those days, natural gas had no odor. That odorless gas started leaking from a tap line and accumulated in the massive crawl space beneath the school building.

In an instant, a spark from a sanding machine in the basement ignited the gas, creating an explosion heard miles

away. Witnesses said the building was lifted into the air.

When it came crashing down, its victims were buried in a mass of steel, concrete, brick and debris. Frantic parents, neighbors, oil- field roughnecks, and volunteers around the State ranging from Boy Scouts to Texas Rangers converged on the devastating scene. Many dug with nothing but their bare hands.

Men, women and children worked all through the night battling rain, fatigue and unimaginable grief. They worked to reach those buried underneath the mountain of twisted metal. Within 17 hours, all of the debris had been heroically removed, and all victims had been located.

A cenotaph, a tall monument, stands silently in New London across from the disaster site bearing the names of the 296 students, teachers and visitors who instantly lost their lives. The subsequent death count from injuries sustained that day brought the final count to 311.

Within weeks, the Texas legislature passed a law requiring that an odor be added to natural gas. That practice quickly spread worldwide, saving countless lives in the aftermath of that devastating loss. Now the odor added to natural gas is unmistakable and allows anyone to know instantly there is a leak requiring caution and repair.

This weekend we will have a formal observance, and it will be my honor to be with those amazing people of New London, Texas. We will pay tribute to those hundreds of young lives whose faces were full of hope and promise one moment, yet left lifeless moments later.

We will also honor those who heroically fought to rescue the victims, while we lend sympathy to those who bore the burden of tragic loss. We also honor those who have survived that day when their lives were forever changed.

May God bless their memory, may God heal the wounded memories, and may God bless those who have carried on in New London, Texas, ever since that heartbreaking day.