Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of service of Brother Dietrich Reinhart, President Emeritus of Saint John's University in Collegeville, MN. Brother Reinhart faithfully served his community since 1967 in various roles as a student, professor, dean and finally, as President of the University.

His accomplishments at Saint John's are numerous and have impacted so many students' everyday life. As liturgy director in

1983, Brother Reinhart led the committee on the revision of the Liturgy of the Hours at Saint John's Abbey, a version that is still used in public prayer services. Brother Reinhart oversaw the completion of student housing units, academic buildings, sports facilities, a student center and the art center as well as implementing the educational Core Curriculum and developing new majors in Peace Studies and in Communications to accommodate both the increasing number of students and the rising student academic profile.

In November of 2008, after being diagnosed with malignant metastatic melanoma, Brother Reinhardt commented that ``Saint John's is a community where people stand by each other--they care about each other--and that there is always room in this community''. Brother Reinhart passed away at the retirement center at St. John's Abbey on December 29, 2008. He will be deeply missed by his community and it is my honor to rise with the thousands of students whose lives he enriched to recognize his life and his accomplishments before you today.

Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to comment also with the preceding gentleman, my colleague from Oregon. I would agree with him. I think he is 100 percent right. We do need to have an investigation. The American people were outraged last week when they heard about these bonuses. I would agree with the colleague from Oregon. We do need to have an investigation. Who knew what when? And the fingers need to be pointed right here at Members of Congress, Members of the House, Members of the Senate, and also the administration. Who was it that negotiated these payments? We still don't have an answer. The American people deserve to know. We have a timeline. We have some facts in evidence out there. We had Mr. Liddy, the CEO of AIG, in front of the House Financial Services Committee just last week. I sat in that committee. Mr. Liddy, under questioning, I asked Mr. Liddy myself, did the Federal Reserve chair know about these bonuses? Did he acquiesce to them? The answer was ``yes.'' Also the Treasury Secretary. The Treasury Department was involved in negotiating the compensation contracts.

Today in Financial Services Committee, the Treasury Secretary again was sitting at the table before the committee. The Federal Reserve chair was there as well. The questioning came before them. The Treasury Department was involved. The Federal Reserve was involved. And we know that the bill that was brought to this body and voted here in this Chamber, the stimulus bill, the $1.1 trillion bill with debt service, this tremendous historic-spending-levels bill that came before us, that was the smoking gun. Senator Chris Dodd inserted that amendment into the bill. He claimed that the Obama administration insisted that that amendment be put into the bill, the language that would protect these AIG bonuses. And as a matter of fact, you could call President Obama's stimulus bill the ``AIG Bonus Protection Plan'' because bonuses were simply protected by this bill.

I would agree with my colleague from Oregon. We need an investigation. We need a special independent prosecutor who can look into this and find out the true facts. What did the Obama administration know? When did they know it? What did Members of Congress know? When did they know it? Clearly, this was a government cartel that was protecting these AIG bonuses.

And why do we need to know this? Because the American people have figured out something that Congress is only just now beginning to figure out. Under President Obama's budget, we see that the administration is spending too much, they are taxing too much, they are certainly borrowing too much, so much so that the American people are saying ``I have had it up to here, I can't take it any more.'' And the economy is following suit.

Well, our colleagues are here today to talk about this. They have a lot to say. Joining me right now is a colleague from the great State of Ohio. He represents the people in the 12th Congressional District of Ohio and the great city of Columbus, Mr. Pat Tiberi, the new father of triplets, and I defer now to my colleague from Ohio, Mr. Pat Tiberi.

I thank the gentleman from Ohio's 12th district, Pat Tiberi. The remarks that he is making about the burdens that our children and grandchildren will bear are startling. I had a baby born to my husband and I back in 1987, and I did a study on what the Social Security tax would be on that baby, who is now 22 years old, when he gets to be in his peak earning years. Now, I know that Mr. Tiberi has triplets that were born this year. We are looking at the debt burden on my son, now 22. In his peak earning years, 25 percent of his income will have to be devoted just for the Social Security portion of his tax bill. It is simply unsustainable.

And our concern is that, under President Obama's budget, which clearly spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much, we are looking at a legacy cost that is simply unsustainable. The President is putting together an unbelievable $3.9 trillion budget, trillion dollar, which, as Mr. Tiberi said, will double the debt limit for every man, woman and child in the United States. Double it. We are seeing these numbers go through the roof of the Capitol right now, like nothing we have ever seen. It is like a sugar high. It is as though the people who are putting together this budget in the Obama administration were all staying up late one night drinking 24-packs of 20-ounce Mountain Dews. They are on a sugar high right now. They can't spend enough of your money.

And the message that everyone needs to send to Washington, D.C. is, I can't afford it. My family can't afford it. My small business can't afford the Obama administration's spending habit.

We have this movie that is out now called Shopaholic. This is a shopaholic bill that we have got in front of us, and it is time to let the people know that those who are paying the bill, the American people, have enough debt. We don't need to take this on too.

Joining us now, from the great State of Texas, is someone, Mr. Speaker, that all Americans are familiar with. His name is Ted Poe. Congressman Ted Poe is a former judge. He understands that that's the way it is in the United States.

I yield now to Representative Ted Poe of Texas.

Thank you to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear President Obama's $3.9 trillion plan for the budget, for the American people clearly spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much for our kids and our grandkids.

There is a man that we respect and admire. He hails from West Chester, Ohio, the eighth district. He is the leader of the Republicans in the House, but more importantly, he is the leader on the issue of fiscal restraint for the American people.

He stood right down here in the well, Mr. Speaker, he held up so the American people could see what 1,100 pages of a bill looks like. He held those 1,100 pages and made the incredible statement that not one person in this chamber had a chance to read this bill before we were expected to vote on it. There was no true debate on this stimulus bill that was passed earlier this year, $1.1 trillion. And now the President has a budget for $3.9 trillion that spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much.

Leader John Boehner stood on this House and demonstrated to the American people just how massive this is.

I yield now to our leader, a man that we respect and admire, from the eighth district of Ohio, leader John Boehner.

Thank you to the gentleman from Ohio, Leader John Boehner. We have tremendous respect for Leader Boehner and have great admiration for his courage in leading this effort in fiscal restraint. The American people are begging for fiscal restraint, and Leader Boehner has emphasized that to our caucus, and is leading that charge here in the United States House of Representatives.

Also joining us today, Mr. Speaker, is a brand new freshman also from the great State of Ohio, our third speaker from Ohio during this hour. Ohioans represent the heartland of our country. Hailing now from Ohio's Seventh District is Mr. Steve Austria, who has a lot to say. He represents the Dayton-Columbus area, and he is going to be speaking to us now as a small businessman himself. I yield now to Mr. Steve Austria from Columbus, Ohio.

I think, Representative Austria, those are wise words, and thank you for sharing those with us this afternoon. I appreciate your work.

Mr. Speaker, we are joined now by a great gentleman and a longtime advocate for the people in his district, the Second District in Tennessee. He has been serving as a faithful Member of Congress for 21 years, Mr. Jimmy Duncan, who is a tremendous gentleman, serving the people of Knoxville and the surrounding community. I yield now to Mr. Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee.

I want to thank Mr. Duncan for standing strong for restraint. When you have got donors to the other party who are standing up and saying this is a wealth killer, that is a wake-up call. As a matter of fact, we just had one of the former commerce secretary appointees, Senator Judd Gregg, say of this budget that it clearly spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much from our kids and grandkids. He said himself that this spending bill will bankrupt America. It will bankrupt our country.

And it caused me to think--I was writing some notes down. I was thinking about the very first Congress. We are the 111th Congress. And I was thinking back to the very first Congress and the founders of our Nation. And I was thinking that they are here in this Chamber, symbolically, and we, as Members of Congress--Mr. Duncan who served for 21 years; myself, this is my third year--I think of the first Members of Congress who are here as we symbolically stand on their shoulders and observe their example from the rear-view mirror of history.

And I think about these founders who wrote our Nation's Declaration of Independence to get away from a mother country who abused its taxing authority against the American colonists who then went on to write our great Constitution which was clear as to the limits on government authority. That was the greatest fear that the Founders had was a government that would be tyrannical and reach too far in the pockets and in the freedom of the American people.

The very same day that our founders, the first Congress, passed that Constitution, known across the world, they also passed the 10 amendments to that Constitution. And those amendments were written for one reason. It wasn't to limit the freedom and the power of the American people as individuals, it was written to limit the power of the Federal Government over the individual. And the 10th Amendment, the last of those 10, reserved to the States all power not expressly given to the Federal Government in the Constitution.

This spending bill that President Obama is putting forward to the 111th Congress would shock the founders of our Nation. I believe it would shock them because they might say that they bled and died and sacrificed their fortune and their sacred honor so that what? So that we could selfishly consume material wealth sufficient to bankrupt our Nation? That hardly seems what America is about or what America was founded upon.

Well, Mr. Speaker, joining us now is Dr. Paul Broun. He is a great patriot hailing from the State of Georgia. I appreciate Dr. Broun. He represents Athens, Augusta, and northeast Georgia hailing from the Tenth Congressional District.

I yield now to a great physician, a great friend, a great patriot, Dr. Paul Broun.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Paul Broun. I have such great respect for Dr. Broun. I appreciate his words. He's made the hue and cry that the American people need to know that this budget is historic by any measure. We would agree. The Obama presidency is historic, Mr. President. It is historic in the amount of debt that will be accumulated.

Leader Boehner stood on this floor just a few moments ago and stated that the debt in this country will double in just 6 years. It spends more than all the previous Presidents put together. And Leader Boehner said this: He said that when a dollar flows in to the Federal Government, 70 cents of that dollar will be needed just to pay for interest.

This is absolutely unsustainable. Pretty soon we will have currency equal to Zimbabwe's if we continue down this road because of currency devaluation. This is what we're seeing. We're looking at essentially a doubling of the debt under what the Obama administration wants to put together. But what we hear over and over again from the Obama administration, they say this is a debt that we inherited. Is it really? We need to look at the facts.

The facts tell us something different. January of 2007 is when Congress was run by the Democrat majority. Republicans ran it up until 2007 January. At that point, both the House and the Senate took over and were run by the Democrats. At that point, we saw the Federal deficit begin to rise and skyrocket. Discretionary spending was rising and then skyrocketing, and mandatory spending was rising and skyrocketing. We had the stimulus bill that was passed, an over $152 billion.

Speaker of the House Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and Senator Obama all voted ``yes'' for every one of these spending measures that has gotten us into the place we're in. Did they inherit this mess or did they help create this mess? The American people need to decide.

We have been down this road before. As a matter of fact, President Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary said it best when he said, ``We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I say after 8 years of the administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot!''

Mr. Speaker, we've been down this road before. We've all heard the saying that, if you don't learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, the Obama administration appears to making that same mistake.

Now, to speak to the American people is great man, a wonderful physician, a man I'm just getting to know. His name is Dr. John Fleming. He's serving the people of Louisiana's Fourth District from the big city of Minden, Louisiana. He's a freshman, and Dr. John Fleming has been a physician for 32 years and also a small business owner.

And I yield, Mr. Speaker, to Dr. Fleming.

Reclaiming my time, I yield to the gentleman from

New Jersey's Seventh, Mr. Leonard Lance.

I thank the gentleman from Iowa, also known as the Stunning Steve King of Iowa, as stated by national political commentators, who certainly know what they are talking about. Steve King is one of our stalwart patriots who is here on the floor fighting on behalf of the American people.

And while we are here tonight to talk about several subjects, we can't avoid the first subject that is on the table. It is the fact that under President Obama's budget that he has put forward, President Obama's budget simply spends too much, it taxes too much, and it certainly borrows too much.

We are very concerned about the excessive spending that is contained in this bill. It is $3.9 trillion. That is almost $4 trillion in spending under this budget deficit. This is an historical Presidency, historical for the amount of spending that is occurring under this President, $3.9 trillion.

Not only is that a huge amount of money just for spending and just for taxing; we know that just the energy tax alone that the President is putting in his budget is $2 trillion in spending. The President's aides just came out within this last week and said that it is not $646 billion, as we thought, it is nearly $2 trillion. That means for people in Minnesota, for people that are watching this evening, Madam Speaker, we are looking at perhaps an additional $4,000 per year out of the gate that every American household will see in increased taxes for energy. $4,000 a year in increased taxes. Who can afford that right now, when 401(k)s are down, when the value of houses are down, when jobs are on the line? We can't afford that, Madam Speaker. The President surely must know that.

But, borrowing too much. Representative Steve King talked about the massive borrowing that is coming from under our President's budget. This is what is remarkable. President Obama is borrowing so much of your tax money, Madam Speaker, of the American people's money, that literally President Obama's debt will be more than all previous Presidents combined.

Madam Speaker, you heard me correctly. From George Washington through George W. Bush, the 43rd President, you can add up the debt level of every one of those Presidents. And day after day after day we hear President Obama blaming the previous administration for the current situation he is in; but President Obama will lay so much debt on the backs of the American people that it will trump all 43 Presidents combined. That is historic.

Take a look. These are the figures that are put out, this is the Office of Management and Budget, and these are the figures that the President himself points to. The figures here on the left are the figures for debt prior to President Obama coming into office. These figures on the right are the debt amount that President Obama by his own figures say will be accumulated, $20 trillion in debt by President Obama's own figures.

As a matter of fact, the Congressional Budget Office came out and said so rosy were the President's figures that he undercounted his debt by $2.3 trillion. He has rosy estimates of how great the economy is going to grow, and he has very conservative estimates on how high his debt will grow. We are concerned, we are very concerned about what the future debt load will be on the American people.

I am often reminded of the Founders; and Representative Steve King and I stand here tonight in this chamber, Madam Speaker. Together with yourself, we are literally standing on the shoulders of the Founders of this great country are. And it was the Founders of our country, as we look through the rearview mirror of history, who very clearly made it known that our government was to be a Constitutional government formed on limited government principles. And the day that the Founders signed the Constitution, they also signed the first ten amendments to that Constitution; and those ten amendments were given as a gift, a protection to the individual American. Why? Because our Founders were so concerned about the abuse of taxing authority of their mother country, Great Britain. They were so concerned about that abuse of a taxing authority that they said to the American people in the first ten amendments: We want you to know that your Federal Government will be limited in its power. And in the tenth amendment, they specifically said: These limited powers that we are giving to the Federal Government are all the Federal Government will have. Every other power that there is will be given back to the States. We, the Federal Government, won't hold that power. We give it back to the States.

This is very important to realize, because our President doesn't seem to see it that way, Madam Speaker. Our President seems to think that the time and energy and productive years belongs to Uncle Sam and not to the individual. That is a completely different way of looking at the world than what our Founders viewed.

This evening, Madam Speaker, Representative King wants to turn the subject now to talking about the gift of life, the gift of human life; the issue that our framers talked about in the Declaration of Independence when they called out for inalienable rights and said that we, Americans, were created by a God; that our creator God created us. He gave us inalienable rights, rights that only God can give, rights that no government confer nor can any government take away. That, among those rights are life, liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness.

Tonight, I know that is what Representative Steve King wants to speak about, Madam Speaker. He wants to speak about that cherished gift enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, and why we are so genuinely concerned about the nomination to the Office of Legal Counsel that President Obama is making and the individual that Representative King will be speaking of.

If the gentleman would yield, what we have seen transpire is nothing short of historic. We have seen, since last year, the Federal Government become the bank of first resort and the bank of last resort. We have seen the Federal Government nationalize banks. We have seen the Federal Government step into insurance agencies, become the insurer of first resort and become the insurer of last resort and nationalize the largest insurance company in the United States, AIG.

And now what are we seeing in the Treasury Secretary's proposal that was just given out yesterday, or maybe it was the evening before that, is this: Now the Federal Government will become a hedge fund. That is essentially what we are looking at. The Federal Government will become a hedge fund. The only thing is that we will have toxic assets in the hedge fund.

How does this work? Again, the taxpayer, John Taxpayer becomes the chump that is holding the bag in all of this. Again, it is the taxpayer that is the forgotten man. Because once again, the Federal Government thinks that the taxpayer is good enough to have to pony up the money for all of these ideas that seem to come out that have a lot more to do with centralized government planning and very little to do resembling free-market capitalism.

We are lurching. We are lurching, Madam Speaker, away from free- market capitalism when you come to the point where the Federal Government now decides to throw the dice and become a hedge fund and the taxpayer is the one who is there for all of the loss but not for the gain. I yield back.

Exactly. And we haven't got the question answered yet. It appears that only large institutional investors, a Goldman Sachs or someone like that, will be able to get in on these sweetheart deals. I don't know too many Joe Averages that will be able to buy into this great deal.

So think of it this way in your example: You have $1 million worth of mortgage-backed securities. How much skin in the game would this private investor

have? Again, public-private? Public is $950,000 worth of Federal tax money to $50,000 worth of investment from the private person. But yet what if the yield is positive? For a $50,000 investment, you could have a $500,000 gain. That is pretty amazing. Whereas the Federal Government would be losing 95 percent, and there is nothing to lose when it comes to the private investor.

And if the gentleman would yield on AIG, let's not forget what AIG was. Once the American Government came in and federalized AIG, AIG was essentially a pass-through entity, meaning Federal tax dollars passed through AIG, went directly to Europe and made whole foreign investors. So this is what the taxpayer was paying for. The taxpayer gave money to bail out foreign investors.

My question is, foreign investors were made whole 100 percent across the board. Goldman Sachs--and I'm not trying to pick on them--but they were made whole $13 billion, 100 percent. My question, Madam Speaker, is will the American taxpayer be made whole 100 percent? And when will they be made whole, if ever?

If there is one final thing I can add to the gentleman's remarks. It was amazing this afternoon. President Obama had made a statement when he was with the prime minister of Australia. And he was asking Congress to give more power to the Treasury Secretary. As if they don't have enough already, he wants more power to the Treasury Secretary, which means more power for himself, because the Treasury Secretary represents the President.

He wants more power for what? So that if a private corporation becomes in trouble--we are not talking about a bank now. We are talking about a private corporation that becomes in trouble, he wants the Treasury Secretary to have unilateral authority, on his own decision, to walk into a private business and essentially nationalize it, take it over and reorganize.

I'll tell you what. If investors are worried now about the Federal Government coming in, opening up private compensation contracts and deciding to lower the amount of the wage value, you ain't seen nothing yet. Because the Federal Government is going to come in with its Marxist view of economics and make a decision about who is allowed to make what wage based upon what government thinks. This is one of the scariest ideas to come down the pike.

And we also have a great institution in Minnesota, a great bank, Twin City Federal. Twin City Federal took some of the TARP money, some of the Federal bailout money. They did so because they felt if they didn't they would appear weak because the money was supposed to be only given to strong banks. Twin City Federal made the remarkable move about 1 month ago to return the TARP money. And people didn't know if a bank even had that ability to return the money. But they said they wanted to. They wanted nothing to do with TARP.

I think now they are very happy that they got out of that program now that they see the Federal Government has no hesitation to step into a company and now go in and renegotiate the wage contracts between upper management and high-end employees.

And it makes me wonder if we will have politically correct wage decisions that will be made. For instance, if you are an executive at a wind-powered plant, is it okay for you to make $800,000 a year; but if you are the president of an oil company, we don't like you so you are only going to make $60,000 a year. You wonder what kind of decisions are coming down the road.

And again, this has nothing to do with free market capitalism or getting our country back in order. This has everything to do with the banana republic and bringing our country's finances down the road to bankruptcy.

I yield back.

And if we could just speak a little bit more about the importance of this office, the Office of Legal Counsel. The gentleman had quoted from Newsweek magazine. Newsweek went on to say that this role as Office of Legal Counsel acts as a kind of mini Supreme Court. This office is the President's legal counsel, for all practical purposes. They issue opinions, much like judicial opinions, kind of a mini Supreme Court. Newsweek went on to say its carefully worded opinions are regarded as binding precedent, as final say on what the President and all his agencies can and cannot legally do. I can't think of a more important office to whisper into the President's ear about where the President will come down and stand on issues.

The other thing to recognize, the Office of Legal Counsel is a training ground, so to speak, for future Supreme Court justices. This individual that the President has nominated for this position, previous occupants were Antonin Scalia, William Rehnquist. This is very important that we know who this person is that will be whispering in the President's ear.

If I could add to the gentleman's remarks. I think that the other thing that is glaring in this statement by Ms. Johnson is the fact that she said, recognizing a compelling State interest in protecting the fetus. I would just like to remind her that the State is not only interested in protecting the fetus, the State is also interested in protecting the woman. Many States all across the United States of America have laws known as women's right to know because there is an intention that women who are abortion-minded know what the consequence of that decision will mean. Many women become infertile for life. Once they have an abortion they can never bear another child after that. And many women don't know what the consequences of an early abortion will be. That is a violent act. An abortion is a violent act to a woman's body.

Also, women have tremendous emotional pain that they may deal with, not just for an afternoon, or not just for a weekend, they may, for the next 10 years, suffer with depression and all manner of disorders that they may have to deal with emotionally for years and years because they didn't fully comprehend the consequences of their decision.

And while women should never be viewed as fetal containers--I have never heard any more crass language in my life than the imagery that Dawn Johnson brought up--it is also true that babies are more than a product of tissue. Babies are a gift. Just as women are a gift, babies are a gift. Human life is to be cherished, not discarded.

We had great kids, Representative King. That's how we did it, and a great husband.

And to help him make his statements for him because these are written statements that become binding precedent within the President's office. This is an amazing amount of power.

It also binds the administrative agencies. So this has power throughout the entire Presidential administration. Every agency, every department would be bound by these statements.

It almost seems contrary to feminism because feminism empowers women and believes that women have the capability to give consent, informed consent. The way that this is written by Dawn Johnson, it appears that she is saying that women are without capacity to give consent even in an area of becoming pregnant.

And if I could just correct the gentleman, my opinion is that every child is a wanted child. That is one of Planned Parenthood's trademarks that, I believe, is one of the biggest myths that has been perpetrated in the last 40 years--every child a wanted child----

As if there are unwanted children. Every child is a wanted child.

I can attest to the fact that there are open arms for every child who is born. If a child is considered less than perfect, has a physical or a mental disability, there are homes all across the United States that are begging and pleading and waiting for a child. None of us can ever forget the words of Mother Teresa, who said, ``If you don't want the children, I want the children. Give them to me. I will take them,'' this diminutive, little nun from Calcutta who was willing to take any child from across the planet. Here in the United States, we have willing, open hearts that would take every child who is born in this country.

This is a remarkable statement because it seems to invoke the worst hate speech that you could possibly make. To call out those who are praying on behalf of life and to liken them to terrorists and to call them terrorists, that seems to me invoke a hate speech and also a form of bigotry, religious bigotry of the worst order.

This really calls into question for me the President's judgment in choosing someone like Dawn Johnson, who used this type of language, and putting her in the position of being Office of Legal Counsel. I think it is shocking and a stunning choice, and it really calls into question President Obama's judgment in this selection.

I would add that, with all due respect, this is one of the most ignorant comments that I have ever heard--that the experience is no longer traumatic. Speak to anyone who deals in the aftermath of dealing with women who have had abortions.

My best friend runs a crisis pregnancy center. She has given her life and has poured her life out because she loves women and she loves abortion-minded women. She wants to meet them at the point of their deepest crises. She has told me that, for women who come in who are considering abortion and also for women who have had an abortion and who come to her, it is

completely traumatic. They agonize as they walk into the clinic. They agonize, the women who have had previous abortions, after they have had the abortion. It is traumatic.

There are reams of scientific papers that have been done that speak loudly to the trauma that the woman has experienced, let alone the trauma that the baby has experienced. That baby's life was taken in cold blood. That baby was murdered in cold blood. Not traumatic? It was traumatic for that innocent child, but it was equally as traumatic for the mother. The mother realizes and understands what has occurred. This is traumatic. To make that statement, to me, is heartless at worst and ignorant at best.

That is the cruelest thing that could be done to a woman who is in crisis--to tell her that this is an easy quick fix and that you will experience relief. Women are strong, capable, intelligent people. They can handle the truth, and they deserve to be given full scientific evidence of the procedure they are about to undergo if that is the case. We need to respect women, and these statements do not reflect a true respect for women.

I would say that this reflects his position completely because we know, from the President's previous votes when he was a State Senator in Illinois, he was the most pro-abortion State Senator in Illinois. His voting record here in the United States Senate was that of the most pro-abortion United States Senator.

He fully supported partial birth abortion, one of the most gruesome, cruel procedures of infanticide one could ever imagine. Also, he voted for the Born Alive Act, which meant that he stood on the floor, as a matter of fact, in the Illinois State Senate and argued that children who were born, born alive, did not necessarily have a right to live, that as to those children who were born alive after a ``botched'' abortion, the doctor would have the right to kill that baby after it was born, and now President Obama voted in favor of that unthinkably gruesome bill.

One of the most gruesome quotes--and I don't know if the gentleman has this one--is when she is referring to her beliefs and to people who are like-minded.

She said, ``Progressives,'' which would be far-left liberals, ``must not portray all abortions as tragedies. Absent unforeseen technological and medical changes, abortion is unlikely to become truly rare and certainly not nonexistent.''

In this statement, she is lamenting the fact that abortion could become rare. She wants abortion to occur. When do you ever hear anyone say that they don't want abortion to be rare? But that is what Dawn Johnson is saying.

When President Bill Clinton was running for President, he said he wanted abortions safe, legal and rare. Hillary Clinton said the same thing when she was running for President. Barack Obama--I'm not sure what his words were, but those were the words of the people running for President. Dawn Johnson is refuting that. She doesn't want abortion to be rare. She wants to see abortions occur. That is in the realm of the macabre. I am amazed at that statement.

You know, I would say that this heavy tax burden that the Obama administration is laying upon the American people has more to do with involuntary servitude than the fact of a woman who has the opportunity to carry an unborn child to term and to give life to that baby. Most women consider that a privilege and a blessing, and they pray for that opportunity so that they can have the chance to share in the joy of motherhood together with their husband, to be able to bring life and to cooperate with God and bring life into the world.

Life is a beautiful thing. It is precious. It is something not to be wasted. It certainly cannot be equated with involuntary servitude, which is slavery. Slavery is what we are looking at right now with the debt burden that we are seeing from the Obama administration, where we are looking at having more debt under President Obama than under all previous 43 Presidents combined. That is involuntary servitude when a person has to work three-quarters of the year just to pay their tax bill, and that is what we are looking at

down the road for our kids and grandkids, because this Obama administration is clearly spending too much, taxing too much and borrowing too much.

Mr. Speaker, today we understand that the Obama administration's stimulus bill--the $1 trillion stimulus bill--was also the AIG bonus protection plan, because we understand now today that language is contained within the stimulus bill that would ensure that the AIG bonuses would stay with the executives who received them.

The American people are outraged. We are outraged as well. But who knew about these bonuses? When did they know about it? CBS News has reported the Obama administration has known for weeks about these bonuses. Senator Chris Dodd also said that he knew about these bonuses, put the amendment into place, but says it wasn't his language, it was the administration's language.

This is a scandal that is brewing in Washington. We need to have answers. The American people need answers. This is their money that is being spent for these failing businesses. It's time that the American people know what the real truth is.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Camp for yielding.

Now we find out that President Obama's stimulus bill, over $1 trillion stimulus bill, was actually the AIG Bonus Protection Plan. This is a scandal of huge proportions that we are only now just unraveling. It appears that language was put in the stimulus bill that would prevent the United States Government from recouping these outrageous bonuses that were paid to executives at AIG.

The Republicans have a message, and it is this: We want 100 percent of these bonuses to come back to the United States taxpayer, and we say ``time out'' on these bailouts. No more bailouts. We don't want to see any more. They haven't been working, and the American people are saying enough is enough.

This is a scandal. We need to know, who knew about these bonuses? When did they know about them?

Yesterday in the Financial Services Committee, the CEO, Mr. Liddy, disclosed that the chair of the Federal Reserve knew about the bonuses and acquiesced to them. We are now finding out that the Treasury Secretary as well, or that Mr. Summers, also knew about these several weeks ago. We need an investigation and we need answers.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about America's economy and where Americans are at right now. We have seen a lot of trouble over the last 2 years, and it needn't be that way.

We could turn this American economy around next quarter. We could truly bring hope and change to the American people if we would put into place a positive solution that would give people certainty about where they are going to go in this economy, and we can. We know it's possible. It's really fairly simple.

All we need to do is this: we need to get people investing in the economy, and you do that by making incentives for that. I am a former Federal tax lawyer. I have lived this life, I know how it works.

Right now we have a high rate on our capital gains tax. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is looking at increasing that tax. We need to go just in the opposition direction. We need to cut the investment tax called capital gains down to zero. The best thing we could do is make that tax permanent to the investor community.

Let Americans know, if you take your money, and if you put it at risk opening a business, hiring people for jobs, in the next 4 years your risk will be paid off because you will have a 0 percent interest rate. That's capital gains.

If we would permanently lower the capital gains to zero for 4 years, we would have incredible domestic investment, as well as foreign investment. Even better, we can take the business tax rate--the United States today has the second highest business tax rate in the world, 34 percent.

America is not an attractive place to invest money. We can change that. We can go from 34 percent on our business tax and bring that down to 9 percent, make it permanent.

What are foreign investors looking for? A safe haven for investment. They want to invest in the United States, but we have a very punitive investment climate.

If we would bring down that business tax rate to 9 percent, we would be able to bring foreign money into the United States and invest and create jobs. Rather than seeing jobs flee the United States to other countries, we will see them come right back into the United States.

That's what we need now, more jobs, more stability, more certainty. We have had enough with economic uncertainty from 2008 to the present. Let's change that equation. We can have a positive alternative.

First, zero capital gains. Second, lower the business tax rate to be one of the lowest in the world.

Third, cut every American's tax rate down by at least 5 percent. We can do that, and that will help Americans keep more of their money.

Fourth, we need to kill the death tax once and for all. If even one American pays the death tax, it's immoral. Why in the world should Uncle Sam be able to reach in the coffin after death and still try to pull the wallet out of an

American who is deceased? This is immoral. It shouldn't be.

Then, finally, the alternative minimum tax, we should zero out the alternative minimum tax, which is putting a second tax burden on already overtaxed middle-class Americans.

Also, Sarbanes-Oxley, Sarbanes-Oxley has actually chased capital out of New York City over to London. We need to get that investment capital back in the United States.

That's a pretty simple plan. If we would stay here for the rest of the day, and if we would stay here tomorrow, as Members of Congress, we could very quickly and simply pass this commonsense legislation that has worked time and time again.

Don't just take my word for it, a woman from Minnesota--take a look at Harvard. Harvard did a study back in 2002 that examined 18 different world economies, and they showed the same thing. They said, what do you do to make economies work, and what do you do that makes economies not work?

Here is what you do, you lower the wages of government employees, you lower transfer payments, welfare payments, and you lower the tax rates. That's what you do, the study concluded, to make economies revive.

What you don't do is increase government spending. What you don't do is increase taxes.

What we have seen in the last 60 days is what you do to make an economy not work or bring more uncertainty into our economy.

The American people deserve a positive solution, and we have got one. Let's get to work, let's stay here, let's make it happen. Instead, what are we seeing happen? We are seeing more spending and higher taxes.

And what did the Federal Reserve try to do this week? They announced that they are going to do another $1 trillion in purchases. And they just announced today another $300 billion in buying up long-term Treasury securities. They have already lowered the interest rates to zero, so now they want to flood more money into the money supply, but this reduces the value of dollar.

There is so much we can do to change the economy. Let's get busy.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor John Kurkosky of Annandale, Minnesota for creatively using his song-writing and singing talents to support his neighbors in need.

A self-professed ``shower singer,'' John makes a hobby out of writing and singing country, rock and gospel songs. Five years ago, he wrote a song, ``Ice Fishin' My Buddies and Me'' that gained popularity last year when it was featured on the local news story about

Minnesota ice houses. Though John has recorded about 40 songs, his tale about one of Minnesota's most popular pastimes seems to be everyone's favorite. So popular is this local song that if you Google ``Kurkosky fish house song,'' you'll get hits all over the web, including YouTube.

His CD, ``John Kurkosky: My Mixed Up Music'' sells at a shop in Annandale, Minnesota and is also available by mail. As a construction worker, John doesn't plan to quit his day job anytime soon, but since March is Food Share Month, he is using his talent to set up fundraising events in Central Minnesota for local food shelves. In addition, John already donates a portion of every CD sale to food shelves. This March campaign is the largest food drive in the state, supporting work at 260 food shelves across Minnesota.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate and honor John Kurkosky on his musical success and his charitable efforts. It is Minnesotans like John that make our communities better places to live, work and raise a family.

I commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shimkus) for all the work that he has done, the tremendous work on energy. The energy fight that we all participated in last summer when we talked about how we needed to adopt an all-of-

the-above-energy standard so that we can increase America's energy supply, your leadership was exemplary on that effort.

We all remember how much fun that was last July 4, when we were all paying $4 and more a gallon, thinking that we were on our way to paying $6 a gallon, $8 a gallon. We had no idea where it would lead, because what we are seeing was that the world was diminishing its supply, raising its prices. And here in the United States we adopted a policy that was to not produce more American energy, and that constricted and constrained the American public because they had less supply and they had to pay more money. This was not a scenario that the American people were very happy about, and we can see why.

Now, it is curious that under President Obama's spending plan, and that is what we talked about last week on the floor, that the President's budget spends too much, it taxes too much, it borrows too much. All of this radical historical level of spending is mandating massive tax increases. Mandating.

Just the stimulus plan alone, which we found doesn't do anything to stimulate, was over $1 trillion in spending. Then we saw after that a $410 billion budget bill which included almost 9,000 earmarks. And our President, who said he would not sign a bill with earmarks, signed a bill loaded with earmarks, and he did it behind a closed door where no cameras were present. And sandwiched in between all that massive spending was a fiscal responsibility summit. Now, that was a little humorous to me, but now here we are today talking about the budget.

Moving forward. This historic level of spending, $3.7 trillion, where will the money come? Where will the money come from to fund all of this massive spending? I can guarantee to the American people, there is no vault back here in the Capitol filled with wrapped $100 bills. There is no money here. There is no money tree out on the Capitol lawn that produces money every morning that we can shake and go gather that money up and spend on all these programs, socialized medicine, all the programs that the President is envisioning. So where will we go to get this money?

To fuel this radical historic level of spending, we are looking at the system that Mr. Shimkus has spoken of so well, and it is the cap- and-trade system, which we all know now is a subterfuge for an energy tax. This is a massive tax. And just as our President stood right here in this room several weeks ago and looked into the camera and said to the American people: 95 percent of the American people will pay no increase in taxation. And that absolutely is not true. We know it, because during the course of those remarks he said he wants to pass a cap-and-trade system.

What will cap-and-trade do? It will increase the price of almost every product and service in the United States. Why? Because think of any commodity that somehow doesn't have energy attached to it. There isn't one.

I hail from great State of Minnesota, Minnesota's Sixth District. I will tell you one thing. When October hits in Minnesota, you turn on your furnace, and your furnace stays on until April. Our furnace is still on in Minnesota. It stays on. Energy is a fact of life. And under this cap-and-tax system, we are looking at a minimum 40 percent increase in the monthly energy bill, the monthly electric bill, let alone the increase in the gas tax when you go to the gas station, let alone when you go to the grocery store the increase in taxation. We know this.

As a matter of fact, we have some quotes from our President. We have a quote just a few days ago when the President said that he wants to pass this cap-and-tax system, but he said we may need to delay implementation until 2012. Why? Because our President said, in our current economic meltdown, we will not be able to afford a cap-and-tax system. Well, we know something about our economy. We engage in business cycles where we have good times and not so good times. What are we going to do, suspend this tax in not so good times? The President by his own words is admitting this will harm our economic future.

In fact, when President Obama was running for President, he said, and I quote, ``What I said is that we would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is more, that is as aggressive if not more aggressive than anybody else's out there.'' So if somebody wants to build a coal powered plant, they can. It is just that they will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that is being emitted.

And then he want on to say, ``When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know, under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.''

Coal is the number one energy electricity producer in the United States, and we have coal in abundance in this country. Coal isn't evil. Oil isn't evil. Natural gas isn't evil. It has given us the energy to fuel the greatest economy that has ever been known in the history of man. And I fear that what we will be seeing is the demise of the American economy if we tie cement blocks onto the coal, oil, and natural gas industry. And I fear even the biofuel industry will be negatively impacted, the solar and wind industries I think also will be negatively impacted, because we need to have money in private hands to be able to create these new, wonderful alternative forms of energy that we need to have in the United States. We want to see more nuclear powered plants, zero emissions.

Now, if the President is truly worried about the emissions problem into our atmosphere, why not embrace nuclear power? It produces zero emissions. We should be building nuclear power plants all across this country.

I don't want to take up all the time here, and I would be happy to dialogue with my colleague. Again, I want to thank Mr. Shimkus, because Mr. Shimkus understands, unfortunately all too well personally in his own district, what the cost has been when government rolls the dice with people's lives and thinks that they have come up with some grand new idea, but that grand new idea, as we have already seen economists forecast, is a loss of at minimum 1 million jobs. How could America accommodate right now 1 million more job losses because of this new tax? I yield back.

That's right.

I thank you for yielding.

When we are looking at the money and where all of this massive amount of money will be spent, again, the placeholder in the President's budget is $646 billion. But we are told that is maybe one-third of the true amount of revenue that will be generated. Now just think, that is between $1.5 and $2 trillion in new taxation. That is just one new taxation burden on the American people. And the President has already indicated that he may be using that money not to build new nuclear power plants, which would have zero emissions, but to redistribute the wealth, as he is wont to do, with paying for socialized medicine. So we are going to embrace a socialistic view of socialized medicine for the American people which will further be a burden on the American people.

I just wanted to go back on your previous comments on China. There is an article in today's Washington Times newspaper. Open up the inside of the paper. It said this regarding China, China made the comment that they will not be engaging in a cap-and-trade system. They won't be engaging in reducing their own emissions. Why? Because they said the United States are the consumers of products. Japan is the producers of products. They said, with a straight face, ``as the producers of products, we aren't the ones who are truly generating the emissions, it is the consumers.'' Now they are ignoring the fact that they probably have one of the largest pools of consumers in the world.

They have no intention of paying this tax. And if you would give Al Gore and the people who are embracing the whole global warming narrative, if you would give them every aspect of what they believe, if you presume every premise they believe, and if the United States would implement all of their radical ideas, all of this cap and tax, let's say we did everything, gave it all to them, what would we produce in lowering emissions? By their own numbers, it shows that we would be reducing emissions by the year 2095--which is a long time from now--by less than 1 percent. That is a negligible amount. And we know that China is going to continue to grow as a manufacturer. India will continue to grow. Their emissions will overtake any savings the United States would possibly have.

So we need to recognize the truth of what cap and tax is. Cap and tax, pure and simple, is a big government attempt to reach into Americans' pockets, pull more money out, bring it to Washington, DC, to empower the Federal Government so they can decide to do what they want to do with the American people's money.

I would yield back.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas, Judge Carter, for yielding on that point. You could not have set up this segment better to talk about ethics and talk about those who are writing our budget, that they need to live under the laws that they are creating. You quoted from the New York Times article that said there are high hopes for AIG.

The American people had very high hopes for AIG, the largest insurance company in the world. They should, after all, the American people own AIG now. We own 80 percent of AIG. The American people have been forced to invest $173 billion in this company. And they just found out that $165 million, perhaps as much as $450 million, has been paid out in bonuses to some of the executives at AIG. And the American people are outraged. They realize that is their money, and that money is going out on bonuses.

But then along came a story from CNN. And CNN said guess what, in President Obama's stimulus package earlier this year, we remember, that is the over-trillion-dollar bill that none of us were allowed to read because the Obama administration wouldn't release that bill until after midnight, and we started debate the next morning at 9 in the morning, contained in that stimulus bill is an interesting provision that was put in by the head of the Banking Committee on the Senate side, Senator Chris Dodd.

Senator Chris Dodd inserted a provision into the stimulus bill that said essentially this: it said that the bonuses that would be given out to any of these companies can stay with the people who get the bonuses unless they are given after February 11, 2009. In other words, these bonuses that AIG received are prohibited by the language in the stimulus bill from being recouped by the U.S. Government. We are prohibited. Our hands are tied. This is President Obama's stimulus bill and the chair, the Democrat chair of the Banking Committee, inserted an amendment that prevented the taxpayer from recouping any bonuses that would be paid out to the executives.

Now this is a curious thing because CNN also reported that the largest beneficiary of campaign donations in 2008 from AIG was Senator Chris Dodd. So Senator Chris Dodd, CNN said, was the largest recipient at over $103,000, managed to slip into President Obama's stimulus bill, which he didn't give any time for any Member of Congress to read, a provision that would have prevented the American people from recouping any of these bonuses.

Now I think that raises questions I would suggest along the line of the gentleman that you've been raising about the ethical requirements of the people who are serving the American people.

With that, I yield back to the Judge.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. And I am wondering when it will be that Congress will finally have hearings on itself and on the culpability of Members of Congress for this housing meltdown.

We look at individuals who were involved in shielding Freddie and Fannie for years from any sort of tightening, any sort of regulatory burden, any sort of accountability, any sort of transparency--for years. We look at comments that were made even by the current head of the Financial Services Committee. I sit on the Financial Services Committee. And the chairman of our committee, Barney Frank, had made statements when he was confronted by former Treasury Secretary John Snow that Freddie and Fannie were in deep trouble. And he also foretold of a housing collapse that he was portending on into the future for the United States. And the comments from Representative Frank were, don't worry, everything's fine; there's no problem with Freddie and Fannie. People knew we were looking at a meltdown.

When are we going to have those hearings? When are we going to hear from Members of Congress, their culpability in bringing about this housing meltdown, about the Members of Congress who loosened and relaxed the platinum level standards of lending in our country? We had platinum levels of standards of lending for over 200 years in our country. Those lending standards were so reduced, that created our subprime mortgage mess. It even created a problem in prime mortgages because the lending standards were so reduced. That just didn't happen in the free market, because private businesses, they want to limit their risks. It was the Federal Government that forced these private businesses to maximize risk. With what? The promises that good old Uncle Sam, the chump called Joe taxpayer would bail these businesses out--AIG, Freddie, Fannie--if anything went wrong. We need to have a hearing where Members of Congress are called on the carpet for their involvement in leading to this housing collapse.

I yield back.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for yielding, and I thank you for this opportunity and the kindness to be able to address this body on the issue of taxes. We're very excited to be able to have this opportunity.

I'm joined this evening by two wonderful colleagues, Mrs. Foxx of North Carolina, and also Mr. Garrett of New Jersey, who have indicated, also, willingness to speak to this important topic.

We see that there is a tremendous change that is about to occur in our Nation. And I just want to begin by talking about the real problem that we have at hand, and that's the issue of certainty versus uncertainty in our economy.

There are many people right now who have been unwilling to make decisions about investing in the economy, spending money, buying something, should they save money, should they spend it, can they get a job? And the worry has been ``certainty.'' What's going to happen next? They feel like one shoe has dropped, when will the other shoe drop? What's it going to be? What's going to happen? People are just nervous.

I don't know about you, Mr. Speaker, I was back in my district this weekend, I'm sure you were, too, and people that I saw are very worried about what's coming down the horizon because they just saw, in the last 55, 60 days, they saw our Congress spend $1 trillion dollars and more, once you count the debt service on the stimulus bill. They're very nervous when they see that level of spending. They've never heard of that before. It's historic, it's never happened before.

They saw that, and then right after that they saw us take up the appropriations bill for the rest of the year which spends for the Federal Government, and it's $410 billion. And then they heard it had 9,000 earmarks contained in the bill. And they thought, what in the world is going on? I thought this was an emergency. I thought this was a time when we're supposed to be careful with our money. And the American people are socking away money as much as they can.

It was just only about a year or so ago that we saw that the savings rate in the United States was minus 1 percent. During the Great Depression, the savings rate was minus 1.5. What was the savings rate in January? It was plus 5 percent. It's plus 5 percent because the American people have figured out, we're in trouble. And so they are battening down the hatches and they're doing everything they can to make sure their ship is in order, their house is in order so they at least have a job and so that they can at least take care of their bills.

What has Congress' response been? It has been to spend $1 trillion, and then $410 billion--plus 9,000 earmarks contained in that bill--and sandwiched in between was something called a Fiscal Responsibility Summit. Now, people are scratching their heads saying, you people call yourselves fiscally responsible when you've just spent that kind of money, let alone what's happened with the Federal Reserve and all the money that the Federal Reserve has committed?

The reason why I'm bringing that up, Mr. Speaker, is because today marks a very important anniversary. I know Mr. Garrett remembers this anniversary. It was 1 year ago today that for the very first time in the history of our country the Federal Reserve opened the discount window to a private investment bank called Bear Stearns. We all remember that, it was $29 billion. Just preceding that, this body had spent the outrageous sum of $168 billion in a stimulus package that was supposed to rescue our economy from diving into the doldrums. So what did our body do? We spent $168 billion, and we got into helicopters and we dropped checks all across the United States and said, ``Have a good time. Spend money so that our economy doesn't tank.'' Our economy tanked because people said you can't spend money like that and think that your house is going to be in order. So people got nervous, they got very worried.

Then they saw us bail out a private investment bank at $29 billion. Well, it wasn't long after that that we heard that Freddie and Fannie, the secondary home loan mortgage companies, they were in bankruptcy. We had to bail them out. So the Federal taxpayer had to cough up $200 billion to bail out Freddie and Fannie. This really scared people.

At the same time, the Federal Government took $400 billion and infused that money into the Federal Home Loan Association. People thought, my stars, what's about to happen? Well, they didn't even catch a breath, and the Treasury Secretary said, now we need $700 billion; we've got to have $700 billion for the TARP program, which was to have money to be able to buy troubled assets, the mortgage security bailout.

And we were told we had to get this done within a week or the whole economy was going to fail. Well, we had that tussle, we had that struggle. And you remember, Mr. Speaker, that last September we were all here in this Chamber. We came in, the galleries were filled with people, the press was up in the press box; what were we going to do? We were going to pass this historic level of spending, $700 billion, and the vote failed. It was a Monday. No one could believe it. So there was regrouping going on; took another vote, the vote passed. Only this time it was wrapped in another $110 billion worth of very expensive gift wrap called ``vote buying.'' And so that bill was passed. Pretty soon, the year went by, and between this body and the Federal Reserve trillions of dollars flew through the door.

People were looking for hope and change; I was looking for hope and change. And when January 20 came and the Obama administration was sworn in, what did we see? We saw over $1 trillion worth of spending out of the gate. And what did it do? Has it calmed the waters? Has it brought us certainty? Are you kidding? We saw GDP tank. We saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average go to such historic lows, no one could believe it. We were looking at 6000 on the Dow Jones. We saw job losses spike through the charts, unbelievable levels of job losses. Where is the certainty?

Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm here to say, there is a certainty that we can tell the American people tonight, and that certainty is that their taxes are just about to have the roof blown off. They're going to have the roof blown off. And it was here in this body, not too long ago, when President Obama stood right here and he told the American people in that camera right up there, he said, ``I will not raise taxes on 95 percent of the American people. You can take that to the bank.'' And in the course of his remarks, he said that he is going to pass the cap and trade tax. That's the new tax on energy, which 100 percent of Americans are going to be spending.

That's what we want to talk about tonight, Mr. Speaker. We have to talk about this tonight. We've been talking about all the spending; now it's time to talk about the taxing. And it's really a shame because the time to have been talking about taxing is when we were talking about spending.

We didn't even have a paragraph of conversation on this floor about how we're going to pay for all this spending. Congress just had a sugar high. It's as though every Member of Congress just ingested a 24 pack of Mountain Dew and said, ``Hallelujah. I'm on a sugar high. We're going to spend money and we're going to rev this economy up.'' Well, I'm telling you, if you had a 24 pack of Mountain Dew, you would not only be on a sugar high, you would be zooming, but you would crash. And that's about what we are going to be seeing. That crash is called taxes, Mr. Speaker. And the American people haven't seen anything yet when they open up their tax bills.

At this point, I would like to yield to the gentlelady from North Carolina to take it from there. And we're going to go in a game of tennis here tonight. We're going to volley back and forth and we will have a great discussion on taxes.

I yield to the gentlelady from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

I yield to the gentleman.

It was 1,073 pages on the stimulus, which not one Member of Congress read. It wasn't released to the public until after midnight. I kept my staff here until 9 o'clock at night hoping we could have a chance to read this bill. I released them at 9. It didn't come on-line until after midnight. And had the Members of Congress stayed up all night and had we not taken one break and just read it, we would have had 23 seconds per page to read that. Not one person could read it.

I think there is a reason for it. We know why. There was no stimulus contained in the stimulus bill, nothing that would help small businesses. We even had essentially an admission of that this morning from President Obama because President Obama said now he has to have a plan for small business. There wasn't much of anything to speak of in the stimulus bill or in his budget bill for the rest of the year; so now he wants to have a new small business bill that is quite a bit of money. But what does it do? It funds the SBA, government. It funds more government. It has no nothing to do with tax reductions for small business.

You talk to any businessman. I'm a small businessman with my husband. We started a business from scratch, and I'll tell you what would help: Lower the tax rate for businesses. American businesses pay the second highest tax rate in the world, 34 percent. Imagine. You want to have certainty in the marketplace? Bring the corporate tax rate from 34 percent down to 9 percent.

The world right now is nervous. We think we're nervous in the United States. The world doesn't know where to invest. How do we know that the world is nervous? This weekend, and this is humorous, you have the specter of the Chinese communists lecturing the Obama administration, could you please stop spending so much money, President Obama? You're making me nervous. I'm worried that I am going to lose my Chinese debt pretty soon if you don't get a grip on your spending. Then you have European socialists saying to the Obama administration, gee, we don't want to spend all the money that you want us to spend.

Isn't it interesting that you have an American President now that's making the world nervous? We were all told that the President was going to bring the world together. We were going to have unity. All of our allies were going to be on board. Our allies are running like mice off a sinking ship saying we don't want any part of this out-of-control spending because our allies have been down that road themselves.

I'll tell you if this out-of-control spending would have worked, Japan would have been looking great for 10 years rather than this ``lost decade.'' Europe would be the beacon, the envy of the world for investment. Instead, these are economies in shambles, and I think that's what the American people are worried about.

And I yield back to the gentleman from New Jersey. I think they're worried because they know. The American people get it that they're going to have to pay the bill.

You had mentioned that you felt that the President maybe was revealing his true colors in an off-the-cuff remark, but I have in front of me a copy of the President's budget. This is in black and white and anyone can read it. And this is page 5, ``Inheriting a Legacy of Misplaced Priorities.'' I think the President is pretty clear about wealth transfer. He's been very clear. He's got it down in black and white. And I will quote from it. It says this: ``While middle class families

have been playing by the rules living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not.''

He is saying that people, the top end, have not been playing by the rules. Now, this is a canard that gets repeated over and over and over again, saying that people have not been paying their taxes, somehow it's been unfair and they have skimmed.

But as the gentleman from New Jersey knows, and that as our colleague who has joined us, Dr. Broun, knows, I know the gentlelady from North Carolina is aware of this, the top 1 percent of income earners in the United States pay 40 percent of all the taxes in the United States.

I know these Minnesota accents are a little tough to get through, but I also want to mention, just for point of reference, I am a Federal tax attorney. That's my background. That's what I do. Taxes are us.

But the top 1 percent of income earners pay 40 percent of all the taxes. The top 5 percent of income earners in the United States pay 60 percent of all taxes. The top 10 percent of all income earners pay 80 percent of all taxes.

Today in the United States, 40 percent of all Americans pay no taxes. And under President Obama's plan, 50 percent of all Americans will pay no taxes.

This weekend I was up in the northern part of my district, probably no one in this group made more than $50,000 a year. All the people I spoke to were very upset with President Obama's plan. They were upset because they believe in tax fairness. They believe that every American should pay something, no matter what their income is, everybody should have something in on the deal.

Why? We all benefit from national defense. We all benefit from roads. We all benefit from corrections. All of us benefit. All of us should be paying it.

I will yield to our counterpart from Georgia.

Yes, that's the solar flares, that's true.

As a matter of fact, in President Obama's budget, which he has already submitted, and which we are going to be taking up, and we are going to be voting on with appropriations, he has already included, as a baseline part of his budget, remember, his budget is historic.

It's so huge, the trillions of dollars are so huge we can't even get our arms around it, 646 billion in new taxes for the energy tax. I am sure that the gentleman and his constituents from Georgia, and I am sure that the gentlelady from North Carolina and her constituents, and the gentleman from New Jersey and his constituents would be interested in knowing, well, what does that work out for me? What does that mean that I am going to owe?

Well, people in the Sixth District of Minnesota, we need heat. We don't have a choice in wintertime. We have to turn our furnace on. This is very, very large concern, and I hope we have time to discuss it before the Democrats ask us to vote on this bill.

Because we are looking at a good $4,000 per household in increased costs right away to pay for energy. Energy touches every part of our life, and we have got a graph up here that talks about what President Obama and the Democrats' tax plan will do.

Gas prices are going to go up. We all remember how much fun it was last July to pay over $4 a gallon and we thought we were quick on our way to $6 a gallon, $8 a gallon? Well, remember that? Welcome back to it. That's called cap and tax. Welcome back to now seeing your home heating fuel, or in the case of Georgia, going up 40 percent. Can you imagine if your constituents get an electric bill that will be 40 percent higher than what it was before?

Remember also what happened at the grocery store last summer when gas prices went up. The food prices went up. Why? Energy is in everything we eat.

Also if you go to Wal-mart, if you go to Target to buy something to wear. Energy is a component, a basic building block of everything.

I know that the gentlewoman from North Carolina has a great graph on this.

That's right. That's what he said to the American people.

I just want to inject, actually, this economic situation that we are in is not too tough to figure out. It's real doable. We have a plan for it, and it's pretty simple.

We have a very high rate of tax on investments. If we would take that tax off, it's called capital gains, and zero it out and shout out from the house tops, for 4 years we will have a zero capital gains. You invest, take your money off the sideline, put it into the marketplace, any profit you get back, it's yours, 100 percent.

If we would have a zero capital gain, and if we would take our corporate tax rate from 34 percent down to 9 percent, cut everyone's marginal tax rate by 5 percent, even President Obama wants to increase the death tax. We say kill the death tax. That's not a good idea to have Uncle Sam reach into somebody's coffin after they have died and take 45 percent of what they own.

And get rid of that alternative minimum tax. You do that, next quarter you have an increase in GDP and jobs. Next quarter you have the Dow Jones up. Next quarter, you are going to see unprecedented levels of growth and unprecedented levels of investment in the United States from the world markets. This is pretty easy to solve.

But the Obama administration has taken a completely different view. They have taken the view of the French Revolution, which is to tax, tax, tax and spend, spend, spend. And now they have even taken another cue from them, off with their heads.

Because in their budget proposal, by their own language, the evil are the top 1 percent of income earners. And that's who they want to whack off their heads.

But the Wall Street Journal even had a great article that said this. It said you could confiscate the wealth of everyone making $75,000 or more, it still wouldn't be enough to pay for all the spending that President Barack Obama wants to spend.

Isn't it interesting that we are getting a blanket approach to about everything there is. I know the gentleman from Georgia had brought up the whole cap and tax thing, where we have to have a global warming tax, an energy tax, and everybody has to pay.

I thought it was interesting. I was back in the district over the weekend and I heard President Obama on the radio admitting essentially and saying that he wants to have this new energy tax passed, but he does not want implementation to occur until after 2012.

The reason why, he said, is because the economy is in such rough shape right now, businesses and the economy couldn't take it. And that's a general admission that this new energy tax is going to tank our economy. As a matter of fact, I had a conservation over the weekend with some people who are experts in this area, and they said this new energy tax literally has the potential of reducing American's standard of living 30 percent. Thirty percent reduction in standard of living because of this energy tax.

The worst feature of all is that it gives all the power to Washington, D.C., and takes at way from the individuals by putting this right of taxation in the Federal government's

hands. It's almost like an invisible tax that is put into every aspect of our lives. How do we ever get rid of it? How do we deal with it?

We are losing freedom by the boatload. That's the difference between, I think, what the Republican agenda is and the Democrat agenda. We believe in the Constitution. We believe in the first amendment, religious freedom, freedom of speech. We believe in the second amendment, the right to hold and bear arms. We believe in these important values. We believe in bedrock values for our country.

Marriage should be between a man and a woman; life should be protected from the moment of conception. We believe in these values. We believe in securing our Nation. We believe in taking on the enemy and winning and not being ashamed to win.

One thing we don't believe in are open borders. We don't believe that we should have open borders. We believe that we should deal with the drug problem that is coming across, and the illegal alien problem. And we believe in low taxes. We don't believe in high taxes. And our country will change forever if this new energy tax comes in.

Did the gentleman from New Jersey have something you wanted to say, or can I go to the gentleman from Georgia?

It hurts the poor and it hurts every segment of the economy.

Because, remember, how did this start? The housing problem. Mr. Garrett started talking about that with foreclosures. This hurts the housing segment where you showed on the chart--Florida, Arizona, California, Nevada. They have all sorts of trouble. What does President Obama want to do? He wants to take away the home mortgage interest deduction that will hurt people who have already made 30 years' worth of plan on their finances. They took this interest deduction out, and now it's going to be taken away from them. That is going to hurt the housing industry.

It's raising taxes.

Imagine what it will do to churches. Imagine--already churches are being decimated. There's a foundation in Minnesota that does good work all across the world helping people to learn how to hear. They have had donors already this year pull $300,000 worth of donations because they are going to lose that donation.

We're going to see donations dry up to some of the best organizations; ministries, churches, synagogues. This is serious, what's happening right now.

If the gentleman would yield, the jobs that are being created are new government jobs. They aren't new jobs in the private sector. They're government jobs that will somehow have to be continued and sustained.

If the gentleman would yield, the cost of these jobs in the stimulus were easily $300,000 per jobs. Some of these jobs were $650,000 per job that they created.

We haven't even talked yet about socialized medicine. We talked a little bit about cap and tax. We haven't even talked about socialized medicine. Find me one model anywhere in the world where socialized medicine has delivered better care at a cheaper cost. You want to talk about tax increases, socialized medicine will break the bank in the United States, because now President Obama even voted for the SCHIP bill, which we all know will now for the first time swing the door wide open for illegal aliens. I know one thing, the people in my district are not interested in paying for the health care for illegal aliens that are coming across our border to be yet one more magnet to bring people in that should come here legally. That is a very real concern that we are addressing, and that is why I think people are so concerned right now about what they are seeing on the taxing climate.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 48 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, March 17, 2009, at 10:30 a.m., for morning-hour debate.

I want to thank the gentleman from Texas, Louie Gohmert, and I want to thank you for the great idea that you proffered to this body earlier on, which is if we want that true stimulus, Mr. President, I recall you saying, Mr. Gohmert, then why don't we let the American people keep that stimulus dollar directly, pull the United States Government out as the middleman and let's prohibit the government from skimming off its portion to go into a bureaucratic cliff that no one knows where the money goes, let's let the American people keep their money. That was the Louie Gohmert plan.

People all across America have said to me, Do you know that Louie Gohmert? Have you heard of his plan?

And I tell them, You bet I know him.

I can't imagine a more stimulative impact.

As a matter of fact, I was with two ladies yesterday, women who don't necessarily think about politics day and night, and I told them about the Louie Gohmert stimulus plan. They said hey, I would love that. I would love to have of that money because, as the gentleman from Texas knows, in the last 50-52 days under the current Obama administration, the average American family has just had placed on their shoulders an incredible debt load of over $18,500 per family. That is just in the last 52 days. I don't know about you, my family cannot afford these current spending policies.

What we have seen in the last 52 days, out of a Democrat-controlled House, a Democrat-controlled Senate and a Democrat-controlled White House, is spending at historic proportions: $18,500 per American family. That's on top of the debt load that we already have.

What has been the response of the American people? In the month of January, the American people were spooked about what is happening in this economy. What did the American people do? Their personal savings rate has elevated to 5 percent. You know what that savings rate was before, Mr. Speaker, that savings rate was minus 1 percent. The American people are so afraid of these historic levels of spending, they are holding on to every dollar they have, and the personal savings rate has increased to 5 percent. I think that it is great that the American people are going down a savings route. It

shows that inherently the American people are prudent with their own money.

But what has been the Obama plan? The Obama plan has been to raise spending to such historic levels that it will force the United States Government to continue to borrow more money from China, and the Chinese right now are a little skittish about buying more American debt. So skittish are they that our Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, had to go to China about 2 weeks ago and practically beg the Chinese to continue buying American debt. Our Secretary of State wouldn't be in that embarrassing position if the Obama administration wouldn't be so bent on spending this level of money.

Well, if we don't have to spend this kind of money, then we don't have to borrow from China. We don't have to have punishing high tax increases, and that is what is amazing to me in the President's budget. He was just here in the Chamber about 2 weeks ago with his State of the Union address, and he said that he plans to tax the American people under the new cap-and-tax plan.

Under this tax plan, which is hard to believe, I know, in the midst of a recession, adding to the burden of the American people $646 billion in new energy taxes. Well, we all remember how much fun it was last July to pay over $4 a gallon for gas, that is the road we are heading down again. In fact, some estimates say that the average American family will see an increase in their yearly energy bill of over $1,400 a year in their utility bill because of this energy tax. Why do we have to have this tax? Because spending is out of control. As a matter of fact, it won't just stop with the utility bill, it is also the gas bill when you go to your local gas station and fill up. The energy tax will impact the price of food. It will impact the price of goods at Wal-Mart. If you go to a local clothing outlet like Target, it will increase the cost of things there. Everything we touch will be impacted by the energy tax. We wouldn't need to do this if we didn't have these historic levels of spending.

One thing that was alluded to by our colleagues, Mr. Burton and Mr. Gohmert, is the fact that what we will see happen, other than punishing tax increases and going to other countries to borrow money, we will have to resort to inflation. What's that? Inflation occurs because the Federal Reserve is printing money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and putting that money into the money supply. If we have $100 in the money supply and the Federal Reserve puts another $100 into the money supply, what does that do to the $100 we have now? It means that our $100 is actually worth half of what it was before.

The cruelest tax of all is the tax of inflation, especially for senior citizens and especially for people who have spent their entire life trying to create wealth, and that is the genius of the United States of America, freedom. Freedom is the genius of our country. And with freedom, we have been able to amass private wealth creation.

Now I'm not just talking about billionaires, I am talking about my grandparents who lived through the Depression. My grandfather made a dollar a day working as a meat cutter, $7 a week. He had seven children that he had to feed on $7 a week. But they wanted to create as much private wealth as they could in their family. My grandmother and grandfather never became wealthy, but what did they try to do individually, they tried to save as much money as they could so that someday they could afford to buy a home.

My little grandmother was eventually able to buy a one-bedroom home. She was so proud of that home. She took such good care of that home because she wanted to make sure that my mother and her six brothers would one day have an inheritance. And at the time of her death, she was able to give them $10,000 each. That was her goal, to transfer to them some of her private wealth. And that is what I am so worried about, Mr. Speaker. That is what I am so worried about, that we are going to take away the right of the American people to amass private wealth no matter how much because they want to be able to use it to be able to pass on to their own kids.

They cannot do that, Mr. Speaker, when this body continues to spend money on the most worthless projects imaginable. We could spend the next hour in this Chamber going after worthless project after worthless project. We just saw in this body this week, President Obama signed it yesterday, almost 9,000 earmarks; 9,000 earmarks. And that is after President Obama campaigned and said I will be a new President. I don't want to see earmarks; I don't want any more earmarks. And what did he do in the first 52 days, putting a burden on the American people of over $18,500, including wasteful projects, 9,000 of them, and having the audacity to say to the American people, This is the end of the old way of doing business. From here on out, it is the new.

It is not the new, Mr. Speaker, not when you are looking at continual rampant spending to have continual rampant taxing. That is what is around the corner.

This horrible energy tax is going to forever change our American way of life, and now is our opportunity to stop it.

I know, Mr. Speaker, that Representative Gohmert and I were talking about that earlier today. The opportunity that we have between now and May when the Obama administration wants to make sure that the American people are saddled with this horrible new tax, and how do we know that? He has already built it into his budget. He has already assumed that you are going to be paying $4,000 per family in new taxes to finance these boondoggles that all of us come up with here in Washington, D.C.

I didn't vote for any of this. I am more proud every day that I voted against every one of these wasteful spending programs. I know that Representative Gohmert feels the same way.

With that, I would like to hand it back to Representative Gohmert, and I would be happy to talk about that with him.

If the gentleman would yield. I'm familiar with that story as well. Davy Crockett did come back to this Chamber, he did go to his fellow representatives and ask for money. And the disgraceful thing is that Members did not want to give money personally out of their own pocket to be able to help--it was a widow, I believe, they didn't want to give that money to the widow.

I have only been in this body for 3 years, but if there is anything that I have learned it is how easy it is to spend other people's money. It is so easy to be generous. But one thing that this body needs to remember, one thing that President Obama needs to remember, we are not a philanthropic society, we are not the family, and we certainly are not the church. And when government tries to be the church, when government tries to be the family, and when government tries to be a philanthropic society, we distort everything and usually mess it up.

If you look today, the news just came out that Freddie and Fannie, which

were the engines behind this failure on the housing mortgage meltdown, Freddie and Fannie need another $30 billion of infusion of money because, guess what? They're now nationalized; they're owned by the American taxpayer. They can't stop spending money. They're addicted. As a matter of fact, our government charged Freddie and Fannie with making more loans to people who can't even afford to put down payments on houses. The government hasn't learned its lesson, and it seems unwilling to learn its lesson. I don't know why in the world we would want to take more money out of the hands of people who get how to save it and how to spend it and bring it here to Washington to people who have proved for all time that they have no clue how to spend it.

I yield back.

And if the gentleman would yield. We could go to the Old Testament as well and look no further than the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments say, ``Thou shalt not steal.'' And whether it comes from government or whether it comes from an individual, we are not to steal from our neighbor.

That's what has me so concerned about this new energy tax from the Obama administration because it literally will be widows and orphans that will be in the worst possible position. Because this energy tax will hit every aspect of American Society, it will forever lower America's cost of living and our way of life. We need look no further than Europe. Europe has already instituted this energy tax. It is continuing to lower the standard of living in Europe, and it is creating job losses all across the United States. Why would we be cruel to widows? Why would we be cruel to orphans?

This will not work. It has been a disaster. And now is the time for the American people to raise up, contact their Member of Congress, and say, please shield me from this Obama energy tax, I can't afford it. Why would we do this when we see crushing debt loads?

Earlier this week, Mr. Speaker--I was sharing this with Mr. Gohmert-- I met with people from the furniture industry. And I don't know if the American people know yet, the furniture industry, if you look at their stock value, the stock value of the American furniture industry has dropped 90 percent. So if you have people who spent their life working in the furniture industry and that's what their retirement was made of, they have lost 90 percent of the value of their wealth assets. Why would you impose a cruel energy tax where we are going to require more jobs to flee from this country?

I yield back to the gentleman.

If the gentleman would yield.

I would like to add to the stunning Steve King from Iowa for his comment. He is absolutely right that the cost of a good is labor and capital. But the third component is the added cost of government. That's the third component that goes into an item. And that cost is getting exceedingly high. And I know that my colleague from Texas, Louie Gohmert, knows this very well because, if you look at the energy industry, at oil and gas production, the amount of money that companies make in profits is exceeded dramatically by the amount of money that the corporations pay in taxes to the government.

People think that oil and gas companies have obscene profits, but they pay even more obscene levels of taxation. Literally, they have spent trillions of dollars that they've paid over to government in taxes, while they've kept billions of dollars in profit. But out of that profit pool, that is where the oil and gas companies have had to take that money to invest back into the business so Americans can enjoy more energy.

I am so pleased about the positive solution that's been offered by one of our colleagues, John Shadegg, and also Mr. Bishop, and also Senator Vitter, and it is the No Cost to the Taxpayer Stimulus Bill that says, very simply, let's open up and legalize all forms of energy production all across the United States--wind, solar, biofuels, oil, gas--all of them, let's open all of them up--in fact, I say hamsters running on cages. No matter what it is, let's make sure that we legalize the source of energy. And that is zero cost to the taxpayer. It relieves the American people's burden on dependable gasoline at affordable prices. Let's do that.

I know I was absolutely astounded, Senator Obama, during the campaign--and I will yield back after this quote. This is a quote from our now President. He said, during the course of the campaign, ``What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.'' He is admitting that his plan will bankrupt coal companies.

``When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, you know, under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.'' That's the future that the American people have to look forward to, and I think that's audacious.

I yield back.

If the gentleman would yield, in Minnesota that's true.

Thank you. I think we see two separate agendas at work here. The American people want low-cost energy that's dependable. We need that. Not only just individuals but also businesses, we need low- cost, dependable energy. But the Obama administration has taken a very different

view on energy. Then Candidate Obama said he wants high-cost energy. Why? Because he wants to force the American people to have to pay the carbon tax that's about to come down the pike. We wouldn't need this terrible carbon tax that will completely damage our economy, especially in this time of recession, if the Obama administration wasn't addicted to spending. Because they are so addicted to these high levels of spending, President Obama, in his State of the Union address, said what he wants to do with that money. He wants socialized medicine. Is that what the American people want? The American people aren't crying out for socialized medicine, but that's what President Obama wants to give to the American people.

Not only that, but in his State of the Union address, he said his vision for America is that government's hand would be in the hospital room of a brand new baby with a brand new mother. He wants, from cradle to career, the Federal Government's hand on the life of that child. I don't know about you, but the people in the Sixth Congressional District of Minnesota, moms and dads want to have one of the parents at home with that baby to be able to love that child, rear that child. They don't want to send that little baby off to a government daycare center from the day that baby is born. That is President Obama's vision for child rearing, that the Federal Government would be involved in the cradle stages of a child's life. Massive spending demands a way of taxation.

This cap and trade isn't going to solve our energy problem. It will add to our energy problem because, again, it's going to take out of the pockets of the middle class of this country to put into the pocket of the Federal Government.

I thank the gentleman from Texas. I appreciate that.

I would just like to expand on what Mr. King said. When you look at this body of the House of Representatives and when you look at the United States Senate and when you look at the White House, one thing that we all do when we come in is we take an oath and we pledge our allegiance, not to the American people, not to an issue; we pledge our allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.

Every time this House acts in contravention of the Constitution, we cause a distortion of freedom and we cause a diminution in the freedom of the people. We cause a diminution in the prosperity of this great land. That's the problem. Our founding principles are all contained in the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln republished and reaffirmed this Nation to a new foundation grounded in the Declaration of Independence.

And, of course, we know what that beauty is. The beauty is that our rights were given to us from a Creator. Those rights are not from government, the rights of man. The rights come from a Creator God. And that Creator gave those rights to every human being on the planet. Among those rights are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Those are rights that only God can give. Government can't give them; government can't take them away. And our government was instituted for only one reason, and it was to secure those unalienable rights.

None of us in this Chamber with an election certificate has any right to violate those rights because we are here only by the consent of the governed. And when we act in contravention of that, that's how we get into the soup we're in. And today we are in some kind of soup. So if we return to our Constitution, we're in good shape.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to be able to speak this afternoon to the American people about something that has been on all of their minds for the last 5 months, and that is spending, the out-of-control spending that they see occurring here in their Nation's Capital. And they are worried. They are worried, Madam Speaker, about what they are seeing.

And there is an old adage that we have heard as a precursor to a joke. Since we have been children, we have heard the adage that asks a simple question: What comes first, the chicken or the egg? And we ask that question in public policy: What comes first, spending or taxes? And clearly, spending is the precursor to taxes. And what we have seen the Obama administration and the Democrats who currently control both the House and the Senate embrace is a new initiative never seen before in the history of our country, a level of spending that is unprecedented.

Joining me now in this hour that we have to speak to the American people is one of our new freshmen. His name is Mr. Jason Chaffetz. And he hails from Utah's Third Congressional District. We are very excited to have him join us and to have him speak now to this body and to the American people on spending and what that means for our economy. Mr. Chaffetz, I yield.

I thank Representative Chaffetz from Utah's Third Congressional District, and what an honor to serve with you. What an honor to know that we have freshmen who have learned the true lessons of life, that you live on Ramon noodles rather than get money from mom and

dad. That's where it all comes from. Our country is well served from having his representation.

Spending is the issue that we need to address right now. It comes down to a philosophical claim and a philosophical shift. That may not seem like much, but we are here debating ideas on the floor of the House of Representatives. And there is a big idea that we are grappling with right now: where are the answers to the problems that lie before our Nation? Where are those answers? Who is the best person to solve those problems?

What we have seen in just the last 50 days is a decided shift, a transformational shift, a groundbreaking shift from the way America has previously done business, and it says this. It says that there is a real belief that the genius of America lies in government, and that it lies in Washington, D.C., and that it lies with the Federal Government making more and more decisions over the personal areas of our lives. And that the Federal Government is far wiser with our money than the individual is with their own money, or that a private business is with their money, or a local community is with their money.

These are troubling times to be sure, but is the answer to be found in a larger government that comes about through greater levels of spending? Well, that is not what a Harvard study found back in about 2002. Researchers from Harvard made an exhaustive study, one of the largest of its kind done over a series of years. This is what they studied. They studied over 18 different economies across the world. Of course not all of them are free market-based economies like America's economy. It was the whole gamut of economies across the world, and they asked a very simple question and one that would be prudent for us to look at now as we are engaging in this economic debate, and it is this: What are the courses of action that causes an economy to climb and to grow and to find prosperity? Just exactly what we are trying to find now here in the midst as we grapple with these very real problems. What is the way out? And conversely, what is not the way out? What causes economies to contract, to fail, to have hyperinflation ensue, to see a misery index go up? What is that policy? And this is the result. I think for the common sense quotient that makes up most Americans today, the answer is not real startling.

This Harvard study from 2002 that looked at 18 different economies said this: When nations have contracted their spending, when they have brought their spending under control and reduced their spending, when they have lowered the amount of spending that they pay for government wages so they aren't increasing government public wages, in fact they are lowering government wages, and when those same economies cut taxes for the people of the government, then you see the economies turnaround and you see the economies thrive and you see the economies grow.

The study also found just the converse. It found that where nations decided that the answer to the economic problem would be to grow spending, in fact dramatically increase spending, to increase wages for public employees in the government sector, where taxes would be increased on the people and burdens would be heaped up on both businesses and on private individuals, again the common sense quotient that makes up the great majority of American people won't be surprised by the results from this Harvard study.

These are the results: the results are when governments decide to dramatically increase spending, as the current Obama administration and the current Democrat-controlled Congress is about to engage in and in fact have engaged in, then government economies at that point fall into a spiral. It becomes negative, the revenue that comes in, and there is not growth out of the economy.

That only makes sense because where do governments have to go to finance what they have to do. There is one place that they have to go, and that is in my pocket and in the pocket of the American consumer and that is in the pocket of private industry.

Now there are some nations that don't allow for private industry. They have government-controlled economies. We have seen that in the living laboratory of the last 100 years of history across the world. We have seen the engine, the greatest engine of prosperity known to man through the annals of history which would be the United States free market capitalist-based system.

You look at the dramatic growth and increase of standard of living, opportunity and freedom, it has occurred on America's watch from 1900 to the year 2000. You saw dramatic growth and wealth creation like we have never seen before in the history of the world.

In fact, up until about 2006, we saw the greatest wealth enhancement in recent times. Under six of the eight years of President Bush, we saw some of the greatest increases in private wealth enhancement than we had ever seen in all of history. How did that happen? How did that occur? Well, it didn't occur because of dramatic increases in government spending. Where it occurred was the genius of private wealth creation. That is what America has given to our people. We have given the genius of freedom which in turn has given us the genius of prosperity and the genius of private wealth creation. It is what I wish for my parents. It is what I wish for my children. It is what I wish for my neighbors, that they would have private wealth sufficient to be able to satisfy not only themselves, but so that they can give out of their bounty to others. And that is what we have seen occur in this country, and the genius of wealth creation in private hands that has led to some of the greatest levels of compassion and of charitable giving that we have ever seen in the history of our country.

But what has been the response of the Obama administration? President Obama in his State of the Union address stood in this Chamber addressing this body as well as the United States Senate and the American public. And he said very simply and unashamedly, he planned to cut the deduction that Americans can take for charitable giving.

Now I don't know about you, but I think it is very good, Madam Speaker, to encourage Americans to give more money to the charity of their choice. Whether it is their local church, and local churches and religious groups were the groups which began America's hospital system. In every community across the United States, we boast wonderful hospitals--Presbyterian hospitals, Lutheran hospitals, Catholic hospitals, Baptist hospitals. Denominations saw to it that in their local communities, they weren't just meeting the needs of their parishioners only--only of Catholics, only of Presbyterians, only of Lutherans--they saw as Christ reached out to the infirm with his own hand, that they wanted to reach out in a charitable context and reach the needs of people beyond their own denominational doors, reach out to literally give a glass of cold water to those who were infirm, and meet the health care needs of those in their community.

I worry, Madam Speaker, I fear, Madam Speaker, that as President Obama is seeking to cap the gift giving that Americans will now be able to do to their local churches, to their local hospitals, to their local charitable institutions, that we will see these great givers of gifts, local charities, dry up. Why, because the Federal Government, the philosophical direction that President Obama has taken is that he believes the Federal Government can do a far better job spending your money than the American people can spending their own money. Madam Speaker, I beg to differ. No one spends their money better than the individual, and no one needs their money more right now than the individual. No single mother needs their money more right now than that single mother who may have three kids, who may have four kids.

I know personally in my own life when my mother found herself a single mother after a divorce that left her with four children, she had to take a low-paying job because she was determined that her children would be fed, sheltered and clothed. There wasn't much money available. We went immediately overnight from being middle class to being below poverty. But I had a mother who was determined that her children would have shelter. We didn't have a home any longer in the suburbs. That had to be sold. But we had an

apartment, we had somewhere to live, and my mother made sure that she worked. And I began at about age 12 getting baby-sitting jobs. My brothers got newspaper routes. We did what families are doing today. They are doing whatever it takes so they can survive so their children can have a meal tonight when they come home from school. They are doing whatever they can.

So, Madam Speaker, it strikes me as cruel that a philosophical decision has been made by the Obama administration and by the Democrat leadership that runs both the House and the Senate now in Washington, D.C., every lever of power today is controlled by the Democrat majority, and that decision has been made. Clearly it has been made affirmatively, and it has been made time and time again in the last 50 days of this administration. And it has been that we need to spend more money which in turn will mean the poor American people will have to be taxed almost into poverty to pay for this profligate spending.

Madam Speaker, I would ask: what is this emergency spending that the President believes must be done to save the economy? And I think, Madam Speaker, that it would sicken the American people if they knew what some of these spending projects are. Here are some among them. My colleague, Representative Jason Chaffetz of the Third Congressional District of Utah talked a little bit about the stimulus bill that is costing the American taxpayers well over a trillion dollars with debt service.

We received that bill and had only limited hours to be able to debate and vote on that bill. But the nasty little secret, Madam Speaker, that the American people are sadly learning is that not one Member of Congress was given an opportunity to read this bill before we were asked to vote on the highest spending bill that has ever come before this body. Ever in the history of man, no one has ever spent in one fell swoop a trillion dollars before in a spending measure. And the Members of this body, the people's representatives, weren't even given the courtesy of reading this bill which broke every promise that was made to the American people during the course of the last election.

On the campaign trail, we heard over and over again from then-Senator Obama that he wished to give the American people 5 days to read these bills online so the people's representatives would have time to read these bills before we vote on them. He wanted to ensure complete transparency, complete openness. We cheered President Obama when we heard that, and we are sadly disappointed that President Obama has chosen, together with the Democrat leadership that runs Congress, that they did not want, that they were so ashamed, could it be, of the stimulus bill, we don't know what their motives were, we don't know. But what would lead them to keep this bill in hiding?

As a matter of fact, there isn't one Republican word in the trillion- dollar spending bill, not one word of bipartisan support. There were some offers of bipartisanship that we heard in the press, but no real extending of the hand to the American people to have true bipartisan intervention in this bill.

As a matter of fact, President Obama came over to meet with the Republicans, and we were so delighted. When President Obama came over to the Capitol, the Republicans in the House came together. We welcomed President Obama. When he came in our closed-door meeting, we prayed for our President and we promised him that we will pray for him at every meeting and that we will also have an open door to him. We have an eternal olive branch held out to President Obama because we want to be able to work with him. However, what we saw was that olive branch was not extended to the House Republicans.

We were not invited to those negotiations. As a matter of fact, the ranking member, the House Republican, lead member on the House Ways and Means Committee--and that would be Ranking Member U.S. Representative Dave Camp from the great State of Michigan--he said he was walking to the rotunda, and never in his career here in Congress has this ever happened to him. He walked past Senator Harry Reid, who was at a microphone announcing that a deal had already been struck in negotiations on the stimulus bill. Where was Representative Camp going? He was going to attend the conference committee that was supposed to come up with the agreement on the stimulus bill. Representative Camp, the Republican, hadn't even yet made it into the conference committee meeting and Senator Harry Reid was already at the microphone announcing that an agreement had been made.

The Republicans had been had. But what was worse, Madam Speaker, the American people had been had because there was no bipartisan agreement. We questioned President Obama. One of our Members, Representative Roscoe Bartlett from the State of Maryland, said, Mr. President, I have lived through the Great Depression, I have seen it. What evidence do you have that this radical spending and radical government intervention into a troubled economy will be able to pull our economy out of these current doldrums? Because it's never occurred before in the history of America where radical spending has literally brought us back to American prosperity. Prosperity does not follow spending. Prosperity follows the belt tightening that government has to do so the American people have more of their own money to spend.

When our Member, Representative Bartlett, asked this question of the President, here was the President's response; he said, I disagree with your premise. He said, I believe that the problem with President Roosevelt is that he failed to spend too much in the 1930s. I, for one, was incredulous, Madam Speaker, when I heard President Obama say that he believed that President Roosevelt failed to spend too much to bring the economy out of the doldrums. That was amazing. No President has ever intervened more, has ever spent more. In fact, many historians agree that what was a recession that President Roosevelt inherited turned into a Great Depression. And we don't want to see that happen again for the sake of our children, for the sake of the United States economy.

And then the question was asked about taxes to our President. He was asked about the massive tax increases that will surely result as night follows day from all these dramatic spending increases. And President Obama said simply this--he was attempting to be humorous, and he said, Well, I live down the street in a very nice house, Pennsylvania Avenue, 1600. I really like it there. And he said, I don't have a lot of expenses and I don't pay property taxes; I can afford to pay a little more. And again, I was incredulous by that statement. It almost reminded me of Marie Antoinette when she said, ``Let them eat cake,'' meaning that the rest of us aren't living in public housing, the rest of us are struggling with the day-to-day expenses that we deal with. We are all in need of as much money as we can keep in our own hands, not sending it on to the Federal Government.

We have joining us in the Chamber right now another representative from the great State of Missouri. His name is Todd Akin. And Todd Akin has long been a champion against dramatic increases in government spending. He has long called on this body to get its house in order. And I will now yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Thank you for yielding back.

The gentleman from Missouri, Todd Akin, is so well respected in Missouri for a reason; he's a great historian and a lover of history. And I had done some reading myself on depression-era economics because that's really, I think, a very important area for us to look at

right now when you look at the parallel and compare and contrast between the policies that are being implemented today and the parallel nature that they have with the 1930s. Eleanor Roosevelt said that there were only two people who could say anything to her husband and cross him; one of them was Henry Morgenthau. And Henry Morgenthau, the United States Treasurer, as Mr. Akin had stated, was one of the people who came to the very clear conclusion that overspending had been a huge mistake. And that is the focus of this Special Order hour this evening is on spending. And we saw that, throughout the 1930s, a misery index unlike any other had been created because of rampant out-of-control spending. And Henry Morgenthau said--probably the person who could testify the best to that level of government intervention--it was wrong, it was a mistake, it didn't work. And the one thing we know about history is if we don't learn from it, we will live to repeat it.

And I believe, Representative Akin, you can correct me, that it seems that you are saying clearly to the American people, let's not, President Obama and the Democrats who run the House and Senate here in Washington, repeat that same mistake.

I will yield to the gentleman.

I thank the gentleman from Missouri again, Mr. Akin.

And this is a tremendous historic shift in philosophy that has occurred in the last 50 days. Again, the Obama administration, what's occurring--and this just came out in the Washington Times, ``The world loses over $50 trillion.'' The markets are responding, the markets aren't happy.

When they take a look at this massive government spending and, as Mr. Akin had said, the new shift that says that government is God, what we are doing now is we are embarking on a new level of tyranny never seen before in the history of this country. And that's really the divide: liberty/tyranny. There is a constitutional scholar, Dr. Mark Levin, who's writing a book that's about to come out that talks about that chasm between liberty and tyranny. America was birthed out of liberty. We want to make sure that that continues.

And a cradle of liberty was the great State of Tennessee, and hailing from the Second Congressional District of Tennessee is Mr. Jimmy Duncan, one of the great gentlemen of this body, Mr. Duncan, with his words of wisdom on spending.

I appreciate the gentleman from Tennessee's Second Congressional District, Mr. Jimmy Duncan. He's a tremendous gentleman of the South but also a tremendous fighter for the people, the common man, who understand how they have to run their own family budget. And they look at this Congress and they look at this current Obama administration, and they are shaking their heads. In coffee shops and barber shops and beauty parlors all across the United States, Americans are disgusted because they know in their own life, they can't begin to spend that kind of money and think that their family can possibly remain afloat. And they know that they are going to suffer, that their local neighbor is going to suffer, that small businessmen are going to suffer, and suffer they will.

But that does not have to be our story in the United States. It can be completely different. The House Republicans have a very positive solution to all of this, and we can come out of these economic doldrums very quickly, and the solution is this: If we would zero out capital gains, the taxes that you have to pay when you invest your money, if we would zero that out for 4 years, people would invest in this economy. And if we would take the business tax, it's the small businesses, after all, that create 70 percent of all jobs in the United States. If we would take away their crushing burden and, instead of the second highest tax rate in the world, give them about one of the lowest rates in the world, 9 percent, make that a permanent tax.

Right now all across the world, nations are scared to death financially. They want to go somewhere where they can invest their money. Imagine if we would make the United States the premier place in the world to invest for business creation and advancement. We would bring jobs into the United States, high-paying jobs. Zero out the capital gains tax, 9 percent corporate tax, and then lower everyone's income tax by 5 percent. And the death tax, the most immoral tax there ever could possibly be, that Uncle Sam would reach into your coffin at the time of your death and say now you pay taxes once again. Get rid of that tax. Get rid of the alternative minimum tax. Our problem would then be finding enough workers to fill all the jobs.

Someone who understands this very well is a southerner named Judge John Carter from middle central Texas, representing Texas's 31st Congressional District. He has been a champion. He understands the devastation of overspending, and he's here to bring that, Mr. Speaker, to our body.

I just wanted to give one illustration of this, and it

caused me to think of this when you were speaking, if you take a look at just the money that's been spent in the last 50 days, just in the past 50 days, let alone the debt that the Comptroller General David Walker said the American people owe, which is $53 trillion in unfunded Federal debt liabilities, just in the last 50 days, the Obama administration and the Democrats that control the House and the Senate have spent and committed and put a burden on the back of every American household, $18,500, $18,500.

So not only do the American people have to figure out how to pay their water bill and their electric bill, they have got to figure out how to come up with $18,500 just to come up with the spending of the last 50 days.

That's correct.

I think the American people would be shocked to learn, because the welfare reform that passed in the 1990s was with a Republican House and a Democrat President, President Clinton, has been dramatically effective to reduce even illegitimate rates and reduce welfare rolls and reduce costs to taxpayers all across the country.

I think the American people would be shocked to learn that all of those positive reforms have been repealed in one fell swoop. In the stimulus package the Obama administration rolled back the positive reforms that Republicans, working hand-in-hand in a bipartisan way, were able to bring about for the American people.

That's a tremendously powerful point that you are making, tremendously powerful. You cannot spend trillions of dollars and not see massive waste, fraud and abuse. In fact, it's so bad that a lawsuit was filed by Bloomberg Media to the Federal Reserve saying we would like the American people to see the data.

Who is getting these loans out of this $350 billion, now $700 billion, that have been spent on these bailouts? Every day the Federal Reserve is spending money in bailouts, but no one knows. No one knows, no one knows who is getting these loans, what is it for?

The American people deserve answers. The American people aren't getting them, and that's the kind of immorality that occurs when we have dramatic spending like we have never heard before. This is real people, real people are paying out this money. This is no joke. These are people that literally will become slaves to the government in order to pay their taxes in future years, and this is a crime for the next generation.

I wonder if this bill will come to us the same way that stimulus bill came after midnight, and then we are expected to take up the debate at 9:00 in the morning. In fact, experts said we had 23 seconds per page to read that bill.

It was a slap in the face to the American people to spend that kind of money in stimulus, and now you are talking socialized medicine. This is nationalizing. This administration loves to nationalize every aspect of every American industry that there is. The health care industry, which could be 18 percent of our economy, in one fell swoop, could be nationalized.

It doesn't matter which person is in that office, which party.

If the gentleman would yield, I appreciate the remarks that you're making regarding ethics. Ethics, after all, is the study of what's right and what's wrong. That is really, if you want to get down to the brass tacks, that is what ethics is all about--what is right, what is wrong.

And what the gentleman has been talking about is the behavior of Members of this body, as well as the actions that Members of this body take, that lead to what's right and what's wrong.

If we look at this current economic mess that we are in the middle of, what is the morality, what are the ethics that got us into this mess, what are decisions that Members of this body made?

We are taking our fingers right now--and our mothers often said to us, If you point your finger at someone, remember, there's always three fingers that point back at yourself.

One thing that I think would be a credit to this body is if we examine--now, I am a fairly new Member of this body. This is just the beginning of my second term. But we need to look, how did government contribute to this economic meltdown. How did individual Members, individual Senators, individual House Members contribute to this economic meltdown.

I believe that my colleague, Judge John Carter, is asking the right questions when it comes to ethics. And I

commend Speaker Pelosi, who said she wanted this to be the most open, ethical Congress ever when she took the gavel as Speaker of the House. We agreed with her. We applauded her for making that statement. However, what we have seen since that time has given us great concern.

The same with President Obama. He has said he wants the most open, ethical administration. But we have been very concerned about what we have seen. And I would just bring up one example of that, and that would be one of our former colleagues--my colleague, Judge John Carter, brought that up himself.

Again, we don't necessarily know the answers. We aren't a court of jurisdiction here. But we are asking questions that I think the American people have the right to know.

We know that the Chief of Staff of President Obama was one of our former colleagues. A very bright, intelligent man. But we wondered what was missed during the Obama team's vetting process because the Chief of Staff served on the Freddie Mac Board of Directors. Why is this important?

When you look at the economic meltdown, what we often hear is that all roads lead to Freddie and Fannie. That is the government-sponsored entity that was the guarantor of all of these mortgages that are now falling--many of which are falling into disarray.

Well, our former colleague, the new Chief of Staff of the President, served on the Freddie Mac Board of Directors during the time that the Freddie Mac lied about its earnings. It was a leading contributor to this current economic meltdown.

The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency later singled out Freddie Mac, that Board of Directors of which the current Chief of Staff sits on. And, again, we are not condemning. We just don't know. We are asking questions. That is all we are doing. We are not trying to cast aspersions.

But the Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency said this; that the Board of Directors of Freddie Mac, of which the current Chief of Staff to the President sits on, contributed to the fraud that took place in 2000 and 2001 for, ``failing in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention.'' In other words, the Board of Directors ignored the red flags that we are waving in their faces.

Later on, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined Freddie Mac $50 million for deliberate fraud for those years, 2000, 2001, 2002.

The Chief of Staff currently for President Obama was paid more than $260,000, again, according to records and, again, this has to be answered, for the service that he gave while he sat on that Board of Directors for Freddie Mac. And after he resigned from that Board to run for Congress in 2002, Freddie Mac, or the troubled agency's PAC, gave the current Chief of Staff of the President, gave his campaign $25,000, the largest single gift to a House candidate.

Well, again, this is incredible because currently the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States is in the process of trying to dig us out of the mess that it appears Freddie Mac started, all while he sat on the Board of Directors and information was given to that Board.

Again, we don't know. And I agree with my colleague, Judge Carter, we don't know what those answers are. But surely the American people deserve to have answers. They deserve to have answers about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Who knew what; what did these Board of Directors know; what did they attempt to do, what was their role in all of this? After all, they were fined by the FDIC for their failure to be diligent. Who would have suspected that that failure could have resulted in a multitrillion-dollar meltdown that has brought a terrible disservice to our country, as well as the Community Reinvestment Act.

We need to know what did, for instance, Chairman Frank, who's currently the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, of which I am a member, what did he know during his time? We know that he has made statements that Freddie Mac was in good condition, Fannie Mae was in good condition, when in fact they weren't in good condition.

What we need to get are answers. What did Members of Congress know about these organizations? Did they contribute or didn't they contribute to their failure? The American people know these are ethical questions because ethics is an issue of what is right, of what is wrong, and we all stand before the American people. None of us are perfect. We don't pretend to be perfect. But the American people deserve answers because we are in a very precarious situation right now and, Judge Carter, I want to thank you for bringing these questions up before the American people

If the gentleman would yield, I would just add to that. That statement has been repeated many times, and American people wonder exactly what that means. But it's not a standalone statement. That was something that the current Chief of Staff to the President said, but also our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, just last week in Brussels, advised a European audience to, Never waste a good crisis.

Those were her words. Exactly what the Chief of Staff to the President said. In fact, 5 days before President Obama became President, he said that we are, ``5 days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.''

Judge Carter, I think you would agree with me, the last 50 days of American history we have seen a fundamental transformation of the United States of America, and Americans have questions.

Thank you so much for yielding. I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert). She has served long and hard on the Financial Services Committee, and I know that she shares my opinion that these are historic times and we have never seen anything quite like this in the financial services sector before.

Beginning in the housing industry, we watched the market just collapse and we saw the economy flat line and go down into the negative column, and women all over the United States started feeling very insecure. I think as mothers and women, that is very important to each one of us. It is a sense of security, not only for our own well-being but for the well-being of our children.

I know that we look at our mothers. I look at my own mother, Jean, who lives in Anoka, Minnesota. She is going to be 78 years young in just a few months, and she is very concerned as she looks at the value of her 401(k). She, like many Americans, has opened up her statement and seen that her 401(k) has dropped by 50 percent. My mother is a wonderful woman. She does samples. When you go to the grocery store and see those sample ladies, my mother is a samples lady. She has worked all of her life, but she wants to do this because she loves people and she wants to be with people.

But at 78 years of age, she may not always be able to work. And she looks at what she has worked so hard to save for. She never had a high- paying job, but my mother was extremely frugal and extremely prudent, and taught me to be the same way. There are women on fixed incomes all across the country who did the same thing. They took care of their children, raised them, scrimped and saved and clipped coupons, and now here they are, looking at their savings and seeing the value of their savings diminish before their eyes. They are very concerned, and they wonder what in the world has gotten into Congress. What in the world has gotten into this new Presidential administration. They really had high hopes for this administration, and they are looking and saying as a senior citizen, my options are limited. Maybe my husband has already passed away or my husband is infirm. What am I

going to do; I can't go out and get a job. They look at this administration, and in the name of economic stimulus, they saw that this current liberal administration has legislation that is overflowing with wasteful government spending.

And they might have heard about one of these wasteful projects. It is a brand new, billion-dollar high speed train that is going to go from Disneyland up to Las Vegas. A billion dollars of a widow's money to go to pay for a brand new ride essentially from Disneyland to Las Vegas. Harry Reid, the Senator from Nevada, was behind this measure, and it makes us wonder, is he more interested in making sure kids start gambling at younger ages?

We also see the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, she was behind passing our nearly 1,100-page stimulus bill, brought it to the floor, and not one Member of Congress was able to read that bill before we were asked to vote on it. I don't know if any other Congress was asked to pass a bigger spending bill than this bill with less time to read it, digest it, and even know what was in it. That is not something I want to go home and tell my elderly mother or tell people back in the State of Minnesota, that is Congress is here spending more money than we have ever heard of before, money we don't have, and we are spending that money without even having a chance to read the bills.

I kept my staff here until 9 at night before we were supposed to vote on the stimulus bill. I released them to go home. They had worked all day long. I kept them here until 9, hoping that the Democrats would release the bill so we would at least have a chance to read it. They went home. It wasn't until after midnight that the Democrats finally put the bill online. There was absolutely no way to read the bill. That's shameful. The American people deserve better than that.

And then we see that the President is now telling 92 percent of the American people who are currently paying their mortgages on time that it isn't enough that they pay their own mortgages, now they have to pay the mortgages of the people next door who maybe took out a home equity loan or bought more home than they can afford and got out on a limb, now 92 percent of the American people are seeing their 401(k)s disappear before their eyes, or seeing jobs disappear in their city and community. And they are being told that now it is their responsibility to pay the mortgage of 8 percent of the American people.

And now we have our second spending bill that has come before us, the largest budget that we have had for discretionary spending, $410 billion. It is an 8 percent increase from the last budget.

I hear the Obama administration telling the average American it is time for you to sacrifice. One thing I don't see is that the Federal Government is having to sacrifice. They are not sacrificing. They are increasing their spending by a whooping 8 percent on the Federal budget, and this is what we have to see for it. We are looking at a doubling of the national debt. Here we are at $5 trillion, which worried me back in 2000. And now projected going forward 2019, we are looking at a deficit north of $20 trillion. We have never seen anything like that.

In the previous hour we saw the Democrats up here speaking. And one of the charts that they had up talked about how very quickly now we are going to see Social Security spending going from having money in the bank for coming in for Social Security. Very soon we are going to go underwater and we are going to have less money coming in for Social Security than what is going out. We will be looking at having about a trillion dollars in obligations that we currently don't have money to obligate to pay for those bills. This is concerning. These are elderly, senior citizen females that are again worried about their own security. No wonder the stock market has dropped more than a thousand points since President Obama took office. No wonder more Americans are blazing mad right now, and they are saying we are not going to take it any more. So you see all across the country tea parties breaking out, people saying I can't pay these taxes any more.

Every promise that was made to the American people during the last campaign by the current Obama administration on fiscal accountability has already been broken. And we only have 45 days in this administration. Every fiscal accountability promise has been broken, and it is a travesty.

I called a friend of mine who is a tax accountant today; she's working really hard because all of the tax returns are going to be due now April 15. I called her to see how she's doing. And I said, tell me, what is some of the information that you're seeing; what can I tell the American people? And she told me about a tax return that she's doing. And I will close with this.

I talked about elderly ladies and their concern about security. Let me tell you about a younger female American, she's just 8 years old; lovely girl, tragic story. She was born in the year 2000, and she had a wonderful family. Her father was a great patriot who wanted to serve his country. He went to Iraq. When she was 4 years old, her father was killed serving his country in Iraq. And now this little girl is receiving money from Social Security disability payments, and she's also receiving money from the United States Defense and Accounting Service which the U.S. Military annuity pays. These are the right payments that she should be getting because of the service that her father gave to her country. But with this money that's coming into this little girl, this little 8-year-old girl is paying Federal taxes on the amount of money that she is receiving as an orphan. She's not only paying Federal taxes, she is also paying what's called alternative minimum taxes. That's how out of kilter and how drastically this government is spending your money in an out-of-control fashion, that not only is this government now going to widows for more money and increased taxes, we're even reaching into the pockets of orphans to tax them with alternative minimum tax, a tax that was meant for rich people so that rich people would not escape paying taxes. Now orphans are being subject, at very low levels, for alternative minimum tax.

I would repeat what we saw a reporter say on CNBC: ``Mr. President, are you listening to the American people?'' We cannot afford a doubling of our national debt. We cannot afford to impoverish America's widows. And we certainly can't afford to be taking money out of the pockets of orphans whose fathers were killed serving this country in the Iraq war. This must end. And the Obama administration must stop taxing the American people.

And with that, I would yield back to the gentlelady from the State of Illinois, Mrs. Biggert.