Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, of the foundational policies of American exceptionalism, the concepts that have inspired our great Nation are the sanctity of private contracts and upholding the rule of law. This cramdown bill crassly undercuts both of these pillars of American exceptionalism.

Why would a lender make a 30-year loan if they fear the powers of the Federal Government will violate the very terms of that loan? They will only make those loans at a great cost both to the borrower and to our society. Surely as day follows night, we will witness yet another nail in the coffin of home developers who already are reeling under the burden of poisonous government policies.

Experts currently estimate that the additional cost due to this risk of the cramdown bill would raise mortgage rates as much as two full percentage points or would substantially increase required down payments. This is the last thing homeowners need, the last thing our economy needs. There are responsible homeowners all across America who are living within their means, who are making honest representations on their loan applications, who are paying their debts, and who are working hard to achieve the American dream. Let's not disadvantage them.

Thank you. I want to thank the feisty gentlelady from North Carolina, from the Appalachian region, who sets the new standard for all of us for what we need to do to be sympathetic not only to the principles of the constitutional founding of this Nation, but sympathetic to the future of this great country. That's what we're all about here tonight, we're about growth, the future, where we're going to go.

And what we're very disappointed in is the bill that came before this body today. I think that there were intentions here that were meant to help people that were in homes to be able to stay there, but the unintended consequence could be that we could be killing the housing industry once and for all.

We've seen a proposal from our President that said that he wants to limit mortgage interest deductions for people that have a combined gross income of $250,000 or more. That may seem like a great thing. That may seem like those are people who can well afford their homes and don't have to pay for interest deductions. Well, one thing that we know will happen, in all likelihood, from what we've seen in history when the luxury tax was introduced back in the late eighties, immediately what happened is we saw the boat industry go down, we saw the fur industry go down, we saw the jewelry industry go down. Well, so what we might say. The ``so what'' is that average normal Americans lost jobs by the droves. And so immediately Congress had to come back and reverse that ill-thought out legislation so that we could bring those economies back online, and they did.

Now, once again we're seeing history repeat itself. And we're very concerned because we're seeing not only an attack on people who have managed to be able to create wealth and who have managed to have capital formation--that's the genius of the United States, private capital formation; you're able to collect money that belongs to you, hold on to it, use that money, put it at risk, create a business, create a service, create products that help all Americans and people around the world. That's the genius of the United States.

Private ownership of property. What did cramdown do today? It did just the opposite. It eviscerated pillars that exemplify American exceptionalism, and it's this; it eviscerates the sanctity of the private contract and it eviscerates the rule of law. What are we without the rule of law? What are we without private contract?

When a person goes to a bank and asks for a loan to buy a home, when that happens, that's a private contract between a borrower and between the lender. Today, this body, the United States Congress, said no to those private contracts. It said that now an American can go ahead and go and file in a bankruptcy court, and a bankruptcy judge could open up that private contract and reset the terms, completely reset the terms. What will that mean? That will mean, in the future, what lender in their right mind is going to lend to someone to buy a house if they know that a bankruptcy court will come back in and re-think this whole arrangement, perhaps to the detriment of the lender, and the lender may be left holding the bag. And if he isn't, certainly the forgotten man of the private taxpayer will be left holding the bag.

This is something that I found out today that I couldn't believe. You can have someone literally, under this bill, buy a $1.5 million home, and in some of these markets--southern California, Las Vegas--you can easily buy a $1.5 million home. And you could have seen that $1.5 million home lose value so that today maybe it's only worth $500,000. If you have that borrower go into bankruptcy court today, based upon today's fair market valuation, the bankruptcy court can go in, take your $1.5 million loan, reduce it down to $500,000. What happens to the borrower? They can sit in that house for 5 years. Once the 5 years is up, let's say that home has gone back up now, it's worth $1.5 million again, then the buyer can go sell that house and they pocket that million dollars.

What about that million dollars? Do they have to take it on their income? Absolutely not, they don't; there is no income tax consequence. Is there a capital gains consequence? Under current law, $500,000 of that gain would be tax free; in other words, that borrower would just skate. The lender was left hanging, the taxpayer was left hanging, but that borrower, who was able to live in that house for 5 years, takes $500,000 in cap gains free, no tax consequences--what a deal if you can get it--and of the remaining $500,000, they pay the cap gain on that. Amazing.

Yes.

There's only one person left at this point to bail out. And what the President and what the majority that runs the House and Senate have said, it's up to the American taxpayer. It is the forgotten man of the American taxpayer who is the one who is on the hook for every single one of these boondoggles that we have seen introduced in Washington over the last 7 weeks, it is the forgotten man of the taxpayer.

And what's worse, under this legislation that came through today, you can take what's called the Truth in Lending Act, and the Truth in Lending Act says something like this; if in that example that I gave of someone who takes a house, they buy it for $1.5 million, it's now worth $500,000, the bankruptcy judge says now you only owe $500,000 on this house, that person can go ahead and they can comb through the Truth in Lending Act. And if the bank that made that loan, instead of giving two copies of the loan to the borrower, they only give them one copy, that lender is in violation of the

Truth in Lending Act. Do you know what that means? That means that the lien that the bank has against that house, it goes away because the bank missed a technicality. So that because the bank missed a technicality, that person with the $1.5 million home that they're now getting for $500,000, they've just gotten a free home. I mean, they owe nothing on it because that bank has just lost their loan that they had, their lien on the property, and this borrower skates away.

Here's another thing that's even worse. Let's say that guy or girl had a $1.5 million home, they take out a home equity line of credit for $1.5 million against that house, they go out, they buy a yacht, they buy a BMW, they take their kids and they go down to Orlando, they do any number of things, so they take that money and they spend it. Guess what? Same result. They will owe nothing because if not every jot and tittle of that Truth in Lending Act is followed, that borrower cannot only see their loan principal reduced, they can see it vanish and go away.

This is beyond belief. It reminds me of that television show ``Deal or No Deal,'' you know. You keep looking to see if some banker has violated some technical provision so you can get a free house. It seems like we're now in the business of turning normal Americans into crooks, where we're going to encourage normal Americans to just stop making payments on their home. Why? Because they can get a better interest rate; they can get a reduced principal; they can get terms that are up to 40 years with zero interest. Just think of the inducements. Shouldn't we be inducing Americans to make growth decisions, good decisions?

These are graveyard economics for the future of our country. And think of the lessons that we're giving to the next generation about how to conduct your financial affairs.

Doctor, what would you think? I mean, this will be a job killer. As I said, this is graveyard economics. We will not only see, I believe, a continued diminution, if we follow the Obama administration's new calculus on the economy, we will see our senior citizens, I believe, continue to reduce the valuation in their 401(k)s. That's not the future I want to see.

I will yield to the gentlelady from North Carolina.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

What's amazing about this bill, this cramdown bill, this historic bill that was passed today, is that potentially who are millionaires, who received loans and the multimillion dollar level of loans, literally could have received a loan with zero down. So they could have gone into a home, they had absolutely no skin in the game, zero money down.

In fact, they could have had a negative-equity loan, which means they could have gotten money back at closing. So they could have had zero down with money back at closing and then they could have gone and taken out a home-equity loan based on the value of their property. This was happening.

I mean, let's not forget, just as recently as 2005 we were seeing housing prices go up and up and up. Remember, half of the houses that went into foreclosure were investor homes.

So people were out there going into homes, thinking they were going to flip them, getting in so highly leveraged, and they got into this game. And now, if you own that property, you will be able to go, and you don't even have to answer your phone if on your caller ID you see it's your lender, you don't even have to pick that phone up and talk to your lender. Under this legislation we are going to start seeing television commercials where its plaintiffs' bankruptcy attorneys saying call me, call me, call me. I can get you a better deal on your house.

We are seeing all those ads on TV now. You don't have to pay your tax bill, I will get you off the hook. You don't have to pay your credit card bill. Don't worry, I will get you off the hook, but the one thing, I was born in Iowa, just like our great representative, one thing we learned when we were growing up, we have to pay our bills. Because if we don't pay our bills, our grandparents taught us somebody else is going to, and that's tantamount to stealing.

What I saw today in this cramdown bill reminded me of the 10 commandments and what the 10 commandments teaches to all people in all cultures, and that's that we shouldn't take what doesn't belong to us. When I look at this legislation and it makes clear that people can go before a bankruptcy judge, they can get a false valuation on their home and have their whole debt essentially wiped out. And if they sit on that home for 5 years, they could walk away and skate on a profit at somebody else's expense, I don't know what else you call it. I have no idea what else to call it.

I just know this is immoral. This bill that passed today is nothing short of immoral and people should be ashamed of putting their name on this bill.

Let's remember, there is no free lunch here. That's what Milton Friedman, the great economist said. There is no free lunch, because when a judge writes down, let's say, the multimillionaire went out and bought that million dollar and a half house, now the fair market value is $500,000 now. So the bankruptcy judge, with a stroke of the pen, said ``voila,'' now you only owe 500,000 when before you thought you were going to get a million and a half. The banker gave you a million and a half. What happened to that million dollars? Where did it go?

Well, remember, when the banker gave that money out and got the house back in collateral and got the promise from the borrower that the borrower was going to pay back that million and a half plus interest, the banker sold the right to that mortgage. He packaged it up in mortgage-backed securities and he sold those securities.

So now those mortgage-backed securities, which kind of started this whole meltdown in the first place, because we are worried about their valuation, now we have mortgage-backed securities that we thought were toxic before and in trouble before? Now these mortgage-backed securities, after this bill that was passed in this Chamber today, have just been made radioactive. There is no one who will touch these mortgage-backed securities.

So in a very odd, circuitous sort of way, this administration, and those that run the House and run the Senate, have just guaranteed that mortgage-backed securities are worth even less than they were worth before today. So who is going to pay for this loss? Eventually these insurers and these bondholders, because there was a carve out for AAA bond holders in this bill.

I don't know if you are aware of that, but if you are a AAA bondholder, you skate on this bill. You don't have to pay for the losses. But if you are anything else, a BB bondholder, you lose on this deal.

And so where will these people go, these insurers go? People will go to the claims court, and they will make an application at the U.S. Claims Court.

Guess who will be paying the claims? The United States taxpayer, the forgotten man, the chump at the end of the stick will be the United States taxpayer who ends up paying the freight on all of these big ideas.

At the end of the day, you have graveyard economics. And what we know is that there is a better way out of this. There is a positive ending. We don't have to have a sad ending.

That's the grief that I think we have been living with these last, 6, 7 weeks. We have seen a very sad ending to our economy, but we know there is a great ending to the economy. There is a completely different alternative that we can offer the American people.

I thank the gentleman from Iowa, Representative King, for yielding.

Conversely, you had given the numbers about how the market has been tanking in the last 7 weeks since the Obama administration took over. Now, compare and contrast that to the Bush tax cuts. The first quarter after the Bush tax cuts were put into place, already we saw revenues increasing to the government and we saw an economic uptick. That's how quickly those incentives will come into place.

I handed out literature this week to various colleagues to show that our economy on its own, in a miraculous way, which always happens, is already healing itself. We saw that we had about 5 million existing homes out on the market. That number has now dropped to about 3.8 million. So the housing stock is already in the process of depleting and demand is coming up. Interest rates are coming down. In some segments of our economy, we see 85 percent home sales that are being completed. So we're seeing a turnaround already in the housing market, although now with cramdown, that may change a little bit after the lesson of today.

But also in the auto market, we're seeing pent-up demand building. We saw a very low number of sales that were completed in February, about 42 percent fewer sales. That's a dramatic low in auto sales; however, we're seeing pent-up demand. People want to go out and buy a car. But because of the news that they have seen come out of Washington the last 7 weeks, people have been unwilling to spend.

But what is it that would turn it around? That's the positive answer and the positive solution that can be on the horizon. We could turn our economy literally around if we would do a few things: One of them would be that all of this money that has been committed, and if you go back to about January of 2008 and you take a look at all of the commitments that the Federal Government has made through both the Bush and the Obama administrations, the trillions and trillions of dollars, if we would reel that money back in that hasn't been lent yet, that hasn't been spent, if we would reel those commitments back in and not spend them, because guess what, all that spending hasn't worked yet; so how is spending $20 trillion more going to turn it around? If we would pull that in and if we would give the marketplace one thing it's been begging for but hasn't gotten: certainty. The marketplace needs certainty. And what the Obama administration has given them is buckets of uncertainty. So that's why we are seeing the economy tank.

So if we do a few very simple things: One, for at least a 3-year minimum, zero out capital gains so we could get people off of the sideline, sell their assets, whether they're stock, equities, whether they're buildings, whether it's homes, sell their assets and have zero capital gains, minimum 3 years, preferably for 4 years, people would get in the game and they would start buying and selling and creating wealth because that, after all, is the genius of America. The ability to have private capital formation from which wealth comes and which you create more wealth.

Number two, the United States, as Representative King knows, has about the second highest corporate tax rate, business tax rate, in the world at about 34 percent. If we would take that corporate tax rate from 34 percent down to permanently 9 percent, we would make America in this global economy, where we have an economic global malaise going on, we would become the situs to do business, and we would bring capital from all over the world because investors all over the world are looking for safety. They're looking for certainty. If you can have zero capital gains, 9 percent corporate tax rate, then for our United States citizens, cut everybody's taxes 5 percent on the margin. So you cut everybody's taxes down.

And then let people know what's going to happen with the death tax. We all know the right year to die in the United States is 2010 because then you have zero estate tax. But after that President Obama wants to institute a punishing high tax rate. What we need to do is just repeal the immoral death tax. That will bring more certainty to the marketplace than anything else. Our problem, then, Representative King, would be where are we going to find the workers to find all the jobs that would be created? That brings certainty. That brings the ability to have private wealth creation, and it gives us a pro-growth, pro- prosperity climate, rather than what we have been dished out for the last 7 weeks: a graveyard economic climate.

There was an article that came out in Congressional Quarterly last April, and it was interesting. It said with the carbon tax, it doesn't matter if you are manufacturing or if you are helping orphans in Africa. Every human activity will involve an aspect of the carbon tax. So it is very disingenuous for our new President, who stood right behind you last just Tuesday during his State of the Union message, when he looked into the camera and he told the American people if you make less than $250,000, you won't pay one dime more in tax. Now, would that that were true. I wish it was true. But we all know he contradicted himself with his own words in the same speech when he said he wants to introduce the energy tax because energy tax will impact everyone.

We all remember how much fun it was last 4th of July when we were all paying well over $4 a gallon. We thought we were going to see gas at $6 a gallon, $8, $10. We didn't know where gas was going to top out. Every morning you'd get up and the first thing you would do is you'd look at your local gas station and see is it up 10 cents today, 20 cents today? The economy felt like it was out of control.

I am very concerned that here we are in an economic downturn when the demand for energy is low and so we're seeing the price of gas go down accordingly. This is exactly when we should be revisiting the American energy debate. And we should open up every form of energy for exploration that there is. Coal isn't evil. Oil isn't evil. Natural gas isn't evil. Wind isn't evil. Biofuel isn't evil. Solar isn't evil. None of these forms of energy are evil. But the interesting thing is the way that the Obama administration is approaching energy, they make evil the production and use of one of the basic building blocks of our economy. That's energy. This is a warped view of America. It's not the view that we grew up with in Iowa. It was not our commonsense understanding of fairness. We don't want to punish people for trying to get ahead. We don't want to punish people for trying to succeed and have a good economy. Fairness is what we need to be about. The Tax Code today has nothing to do with fairness.

The proposition you were talking about was fairness for the American people. I talk to people at all economic strata, and they say everybody should have to pay something. Everybody should have to pay something in taxes. People just shouldn't be exempt. It's not fair that just a few people pay taxes while other people don't. And the proposal that you're offering with the fair tax is one that should be debated in this House. The flat tax is one that should be debated in this House because everyone benefits by having a strong country. Everyone should have to participate in a simplified, easy-to-figure-out Tax Code where, no kidding, your tax return could be about this big and you could fill in an amount and you're done. Or you could even be simpler and just pay tax every time you go and you purchase something at the point of sale. There are a lot of ways we could do this, but it needs to be fair and it needs to be shared.

I thank the gentleman.

I would love to see that circus trick performed. When does government grow and ever contract down by half? It doesn't happen. Find an example where it happens. It doesn't happen.

Here is my concern about what the Obama administration may be doing. I am very concerned about the inflationary aspect. Inflation is the cruelest tax that you can inflict on anyone, especially when you have senior citizens who spent a lifetime being prudent, working hard, scraping, maybe saving 10 percent of their income in every check, putting it away, squirreling it away, helping their kids out, paying

for weddings, paying for college, paying off things so you could have a nest egg. And here you maybe have $200,000 or $400,000 in the bank, or $125,000 in the bank, and then you look at the last 7 weeks America you see that your 401(k) has dropped a third in value. Maybe by this point it has dropped 50 percent in value, your 401(k). That is just with the current economic decisions we have seen thus far, before this administration has spent $20 trillion.

Then you look at the Federal Reserve, which has been busy in various parts of this city printing money, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, pumping money out into the money supply, inflating the currency.

What have Americans been doing? When all of this started, the U.S. savings rate was negative 1 percent. During the Depression the savings rate was negative 1.5 percent. You know what the savings rate was in the month of January? Plus 5 percent.

Why is that? Human action. Americans are scared to death about the economy, so they have taken the money that they have had and they have held it. They decided not to buy. Hence we see the anemic car sales going on, because they are scared to death. Every day we see the Obama administration saying they want to spend this many trillion, that many trillion. Now they want socialized medicine. Now they want a carbon tax. It is like more, more, more, and people have figured out this calculus doesn't add up.

So if we inflate the money supply, as the Federal Reserve may do in conjunction with our current Treasury Secretary and the Obama administration, we could potentially see our dollar, if you own a dollar in 2008 and the Federal Government pumps extra dollars in, in 2009, but there is no additional productivity, there is no additional value behind those dollars, it is just paper that comes into the system, if you have $2 in your hand and no more additional worth, you really only have 50 cents. In other words, that dollar isn't worth a dollar anymore, it is only worth 50 cents.

So inflation is a cruel tax. Just because your 401(k) maybe lost 50 percent of its value because of the stock market, you could see your 401(k) lose another half because of the cruel tax of inflation. That is the next policy that we need to see over the hill that may be coming with these Obama policies.

I don't know if the gentleman from Iowa would like to comment.

Thank you to the gentleman from Iowa for yielding.

I think you are stating it very well. There is a strong, bold, philosophical divide. One has faith in the people, faith in the future, faith in the Constitution, faith in the pillars of American exceptionalism, the rule of law, the sanctity of the contract. Those are pillars of freedom that America was built on that caused our greatness, that gave us a pro-growth economy, that was the envy of the world.

On the other side of the equation we have our brethren on the liberal side who have a completely different faith. Their faith is in the state. Their faith is in big government. They said this is the new era of big government. They have embraced socialism with both arms. They love socialism. They can't get enough of it.

They want to make sure that the American people will have their fill of socialism, so much so today I had farmers in my office who told me just a few years ago crop insurance was 33 percent provided for by the State, just a few years ago. Today, 80 percent of all crop insurance is purchased through the Federal Government. Why? Because the Federal Government subsidizes that rate, and so they are crowding out private insurers for crops and they are becoming the new game in town.

Just like what we saw the liberals do here in Congress with those who give out student loans. They didn't like the idea that private banks and companies offered and made student loans. No, that wasn't good enough. The liberals that run Congress wanted to make sure

that the government gives out student loans. Where is their faith? Their faith is in government.

Now what do we see with health care? It just roils those liberals to have private health care and private pay of health care. They can't stand it. What do they want to make sure we have? They want to make sure we have socialized medicine, and as quick as possible, so quick that in this stimulus bill that you spoke of, Representative King, that not one person in Congress read before we voted on it, one hour of debate before we were forced to vote on this bill, we couldn't even ask questions hardly on this bill and we were forced to act on it.

There is a rationing board, a Federal rationing board for Federal health care. Not only that, all Americans will have to have their health records, including their mental health records, all poured into one health record per person, and 600,000 entities, not people, 600,000 entities will have access to every American's health records.

This Congress, led by the liberals who have more faith in the state, more faith in government than in the American people, has decided that everyone's private health records will now be naked before the world; that 600,000 entities will now have access to every American's private health records, including chart notes from therapists if they go to see a mental health professional.

That is the faith that we see from the liberals that run this Congress. That is the future that they have defined for Americans. That is not the future that I hear when I go back to the Sixth District of Minnesota. The great people in Minnesota, just like the great people in Iowa, are working pretty hard these days. They are pretty nervous these days. They have faith in themselves, in their fellow man. They go to their churches. They are praying. They are seeking relief. And they are concerned about what they are seeing come out of Washington, D.C.

I just want the American people to know, there are a few of us here in Washington that still believe in American exceptionalism, that still believe in our Constitution, and that still believe in the greatness and the future of this country and that it lies in the hard work and innovation of the American people, and we are not going to give up that level of freedom.

I yield back to the gentleman.

And the gentleman knows that if you look at the living laboratory of history and economics of the last 100 years, you can see example after example of the Progressive Caucus, where their ideas have been implemented, and you can see the ramifications and the results of those ideas. They've resulted in millions of people's deaths by government and untold misery for generations. Where Russia was, for instance, trying to come out of its Soviet and its socialist domination to now, what the gentleman had just stated is a reverting right back to it.

Tyranny, in human history, is the norm. Freedom is the exception. That's the oasis of America, the beauty of America, that throughout time, when tyranny has reigned supreme, the United States came out of the mist like a gem, like a midnight sun that came out of the darkness, and it has shone as a beautiful symbol of freedom for 230 years.

And that's the question. Here we are now, 2009, will we continue to forge the link on the chain of freedom, or will this be the last link of freedom, and will the next one be broken, and will we revert back to tyranny? That's the question before us tonight, because what we are seeing is so historical, so profound that the United States has no way of continuing to look like a free country 10 years from now if we continue to implement just the concepts that we have seen implemented in the last 7 weeks.

And if the gentleman will yield, that's exactly what has happened in the United States for the last 10 to 15 years. We have seen dramatic increases in productivity that's added real wealth to the United States. Much of that can be attributed to the fact that we had tax cuts on capital gains and dividends. That may sound technical to talk about that, but the fact is, what are the real results that we have seen from that? We've seen real wealth creation enhancement, not just for those at the top of the economic spectrum, those at every level of the economic spectrum, and that's what we want. We want to see everyone succeed. We don't want to be about just punishing one aspect of American economic society. We want all people in the United States to succeed. We do that when we unleash American productivity. We don't do that when we punish the sector that will allow us to have growth and productivity.

If the gentleman would yield. Imagine what your business would have been like had a judge been able to come in and open up that contract that you had with a purchaser of your product and of your service, and let's say your margin, your profit was maybe 2 percent or 6 percent. And you have a judge come in and alter those terms, let's say, to 10 percent. What happens to your margin? It's gone. You're not only working for free, you're paying that person to work for them.

That's what we saw happen today on the floor of this body. We saw contracts opened so that any margin that people were making, it's gone. It's gone. And so, what we're doing is we're violating that pillar of American exceptionalism which is the sanctity of the contract, and the pillar of freedom that says that we will keep contracts inviolate, and we will observe the rule of law.

What do people trust in? Why would people make a contract in the future? What business would do that? Because now this Congress has set a standard that says, no longer will your word be your bond.

You know, it was just last week that the Wall Street Journal reported the estimate that the premium would be an additional 2 percent on a mortgage. That's what the cost would be if this cramdown legislation goes through. So if someone qualifies for a 6 percent mortgage, now they would be looking at an 8 percent mortgage. What that does is it takes scores of people out of being able to qualify for a mortgage, just adding to the cost. And for what?

Over 92 percent of all Americans are responsible. They're working. They're paying their mortgages on time. And when you look at the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that have been thrown at this housing problem,

and you have 92 percent of Americans paying their mortgages on time, when you look at these tens of trillions of dollars now that are being thrown at this, I think we could probably be paying those mortgages off, multiple times, of the people who were in trouble. It is so much money. It is so unfathomable. I think that's why you see the American people running scared right now, because they aren't getting certainty out of Washington, D.C. What they're getting is uncertainty. And we have a completely different message. We have a message meaning fairness. We have a message of hope, where we can turn the economy around. We've done it before. We can do it again. We cut people's capital gains tax, we cut the corporate business tax. We cut their marginal tax.

Why do we do all that? Because we want simplicity and we want fairness for people in the tax code. Everybody should have to pay something. But it needs to be fair.

I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding.

It's exciting to see what science has wrought just in the last few days, the discoveries that have come about. But the bottom line in all of it is this: Cloning will lead to the exploitation of women. That's harmful and that's not good, especially for poor women in the United States and around the world.

Women's eggs are required in the process of cloning, and the extraction technique exposes otherwise healthy women to the risk of infertility and, sadly, tragically, even of death.

The recent cloning scandal that we've witnessed in South Korea should serve as a warning here to those of us in the United States. Many Korean women were coerced into donating their eggs for Professor Hwang's fraudulent research. Not only is it wrong, really wrong to destroy human embryos, but it's even worse to put women in a position where their health is at risk to do unethical research, especially now, when we find science has taught us we don't have to.

The use of the iPS cells, or the adult stem cells, make it unnecessary to use women's eggs, while researchers who have been pushing human cloning have been seeking them.

We all know that November 20, 2007, a Wisconsin researcher and a Japanese scientist discovered, they independently announced their ability to derive pluripotent stem cells through the reprogramming of regular stem cells. This is a marvelous breakthrough.

And then just days ago, on March 1, 2009, two research teams demonstrated they could reprogram cells without the use of potentially cancer-causing viruses. This is marvelous.

iPS can produce a large number of both patient-specific as well as disease-specific stem cell lines because, according to the Telegraph newspaper, tests on the reprogrammed cell lines showed they behave exactly, exactly like embryonic stem cells. These cells have already been used to make heart muscle, brain neurons, motor neurons, blood, insulin secreting cells.

We are thrilled at the advances that science has made. Let's use these advances to make sure that we can further do more research that will protect people's lives.

But, at the same time, let's not hurt women, let's not destroy their lives, and let's not destroy their fertility; and certainly we shouldn't do anything that should lead to women's death.

And I thank you so much to the gentleman from New Jersey for leading this important hour. Thank you so much.

Mr. Speaker, last night, President Obama repeatedly expressed a desire to pass fiscally responsible legislation, his fear of passing a mountain of debt to future generations, and his intention to greatly reduce the federal deficit.

All sentiments with which I couldn't agree more.

However, only two weeks after passing a $1.1-trillion economic ``stimulus'' package and a week after presenting a $275-billion plan to address less than 8% of American mortgages, Washington Democrats today are bringing to the floor an appropriations bill that represents the largest discretionary spending increase, aside from legislation after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, since the Carter Administration.

If we look back on the last 19 months, you'll find that the U.S. government has pledged more than $11.6 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers to dig our nation out of the recession--and that doesn't even include the $410 billion we are about to spend in this latest spending bill.

Where is the fiscal responsibility?

Even more incredulous is the fact that this omnibus appropriations bill contains funding for many of the same agencies and programs that already received funds in the so-called ``stimulus'' bill--162 programs in fact. For instance, it provides $2.9 billion for the 2010 census even though $1 billion was already allocated for this project in the ``stimulus'' package. We also have funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, which, fresh off receiving $50 million from the ``stimulus,'' is now in line to receive $138 million in this latest proposal.

The combined fiscal year 2009 funding for these ``double-dipping'' programs is $680 billion--a whopping 80% increase in spending.

Furthermore, the Democrat majority is once again using a massive spending bill to shove sweeping national policy changes through Congress without public scrutiny and without proper debate. This bill contains language to terminate the District of Columbia's successful school voucher program; it eliminates the ``Reading First'' program within the Department of Education; and it drastically undercuts construction and design funding for Yucca Mountain, a key component to any plan that puts America on the path to energy independence. The merit of these programs aside, a sweeping spending bill--especially one with no opportunity to amend--is not the appropriate place for any of these measures to be considered.

Enough is enough. The American taxpayer is already struggling in this weakened economy and it is time Congress started to show respect to the American people and stop increasing the weight of their financial burdens. The spending spree has to stop now.

Madam Speaker, I am thrilled to recognize hard-working school board members in Minnesota this year during School Board Recognition Week. Throughout the year, school boards across the nation play a vital role in organizing members of the community to participate in our children's education.

Parents, teachers and local leaders are uniquely equipped to meet the needs of students in the classroom. A locally-governed education system requires local involvement. Many of these individuals hold full-time jobs, and yet they selflessly volunteer their time to serving their families and other families in the community by donating their talents and resources through various roles on the school board.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank members of school boards across the State of Minnesota for devoting countless hours and energy towards our children's education and ultimately their future. Additionally, I want to encourage continued involvement to ensure our grandchildren receive the same priceless support from which so many of us benefit. I applaud and join my colleagues in recognizing the individuals who selflessly dedicate their time to this crucial role.

Mr. Speaker, as a mother and a former foster mother to 23 troubled teens, I strongly believe in the important role of the parent or legal guardian in a child's life. This is especially true when it comes to matters as serious as the health and wellbeing of that child. Prescription drugs, such as medication to treat psychiatric conditions, can have a major impact on the mind and body of an adult, let alone the young mind and body of a child. And, let's be clear: As adult as today's teens like to appear, they are still very much children in need of adult guidance. Critical decisions regarding the administration of prescription medications should only be made by a qualified medical doctor with the express consent of a parent or legal guardian.

Consider contraception, for example. Contraceptives can cause serious medical problems like blood clots and migraine headaches. Even worse, they can be dispensed in certain combinations to prevent implantation of new baby, a form of abortion that many parents and young girls find morally reprehensible. This ``morning after pill'' can also be used to hide evidence of sexual abuse, one of the very forms of abuse that this legislation is seeking to prevent.

Unfortunately, H.R. 911 would not only allow residential treatment facilities to change a child's prescription medication without the consent of her or his parent or legal guardian, but without even consulting them. Committee Republicans offered language to require consent before such a change in prescription medication, but it was defeated during committee consideration, almost by party line. The right of consent is a necessary component of any decision affecting the life of a child, and should be explicitly stated in this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, the parents and guardians that have raised and cared for these children know and understand their children and their medical histories best. Without language requiring consent prior to any change in prescription medication, the potential positive impact of this legislation is lost, and so is the important role of the parent in the life of his or her child.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. Speaker, at about 10:00 p.m. last nite, the text of the $792-billion so-called ``stimulus'' package was finally made available to Republicans. At 11:00 p.m., this 1073-page package was finally posted online for the public to see it. And, votes are expected by 2:00 p.m. today.

Are Republican legislators really supposed to digest and comprehend the single most transformational piece of legislation that has come through Congress in 16 hours? We do a great disservice to the American people today by rushing this package through.

But, the level of disrespect we show the taxpayers today by this perversion of process is far exceeded by the level of disrespect we show the taxpayer by the substance of this package. As the Los Angeles Times stated in an editorial today, this bill ``serves as a case study for the timeworn notion that haste makes waste.''

Whether by design (The Washington Post did report that ``House Speaker Nancy Pelosi . . . called the legislation `historic and transformational' for its investments in Democratic social priorities.'') or as a byproduct of the political wrangling to get the bill to the floor, this bill is chock-full of the pet projects and political priorities that lobbyists and lawmakers insisted upon.

But, the bill is supposed to have a single purpose: to stimulate the economy. Congress' one and only criterion for any project or program should have been its ability to help grow the economy and help create jobs. Again, the Los Angeles Times noted that scattered throughout the bill ``are proposals that advance a political agenda more than an economic one.''

Targeted investment in transportation construction is proven to grow the economy and create jobs. The U.S. Department of Transportation reported last year that every $1 billion in federal highway investment, when combined with the required state matching funds, supports 34,779 American jobs. Of that, only about 12,000 are actual construction jobs. The rest are in supplier industries or related economic sectors. That's why Republicans in the House had moved to reprioritize spending in the House bill and triple investments in transportation construction--a motion the majority flatly rejected.

There is a substantial and tangible ripple effect to these investments. Yet, it gets lip service in this bill: $27.5 billion of the $792 billion bill (a mere 3.4% of the total bill) is invested in this proven stimulator.

Tax relief is similarly stimulative. The Republican alternative that was rejected by the majority would have created twice the jobs at half the cost. It would have done so by putting money back into the pockets of those who would use it to create jobs and to keep money cycling through the economy.

Amongst other things, this alternative, which I did support would have:

Reduced the lowest individual tax rates from 15% to 10% and from 10% to 5%. In Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District, 272,306 filers would benefit from the reduction in the 10% bracket alone and 228,926 filers would also benefit from the other rate reduction.

Allowed small businesses to take a tax deduction equal to 20% of their income. Nearly half a million Minnesota small businesses--each employing 500 or fewer employees--would benefit from this.

And, provided a home-buyers credit of $7500 for those who can make a minimum down-payment of 5%.

What's more, Mr. Speaker, this package sets upon the shoulders of generations of Americans a debt that I don't think we can even comprehend. With this so-called stimulus, we raise the government's commitment to addressing this economic downturn over the past year to $9.7 trillion. From the first set of rebate checks passed last February to the bill before us now, $9.7 trillion has been spent or pledged to addressing this recession.

And, all reports indicate that there is more to come. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner talked about another $2 trillion for financial service sector bailouts just this week. President Obama's economic advisor, Larry Summers, has talked about additional stimulus and financial service bailouts that will be needed in the months to come. President Obama noted that this is just a leg in a stool when he came before the Republican Conference only a couple of weeks ago.

That's just for what's actually in the bill. A long history of expanding federal budgets has made it clear to the American people that no increase in spending is ever temporary. As the Los Angeles Times noted the $191 billion in increased benefit spending in this package ``expand programs that may be hard to trim after the crisis passes. . . . What's worse, there are no accountability measures attached to those funds. . . .''

An analysis by staff at the House Budget Committee looked at what happens if Congress continues to fund just 19 of the most politically popular programs at their new stimulus levels--programs like Pell Grants, Head Start, food stamps. Over the ten-year period ending in 2019, ``these 19 programs alone would increase federal outlays and tax entitlements by $1.59 trillion.'' (Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2009)

Even before we add in the financial service sector bailout and this ``stimulus'' bill, the American people were looking at the largest budget deficit in modern history for 2009--8.3% of the economy. According to an analysis by the Strategas Group, if you add in this bill and the bailout, ``the deficit could hit nearly $2 trillion, or 13.5% of the U.S. economy.'' The Wall Street Journal rightly calls this ``uncharted territory'' and reminds us that the consequences could mean ``new federal debt in the trillions of dollars over the next few years, which could test the limits America's credit-worthiness,'' and could mean that ``the U.S. will become less desirable as a destination for the world's capital.''

With this bill today, Congress isn't helping America to dig itself out of the recessionary hole, we're merely digging it deeper. I cannot support this new direction for the American economy, Mr. Speaker. I stand today on the side of the American taxpayer and will vote to oppose this bill.

And I want to thank the stunning representative from Iowa, Mr. King, who is putting this effort together for this hour. There are many of my colleagues who are here, and many more who want to join and add their words to the wonderful repertoire we are having this evening.

As Mr. King had mentioned, it is absolutely true; as we look at the risk that we put the American taxpayer at, we are looking at essentially $9.7 trillion of potential risk.

One fact you mentioned, that potentially 90 percent of all home mortgages could be completely paid off with that amount of money. Here is another fact. You could take that $9.7 trillion that the American taxpayer is on the hook for, and you could write a check today to every man, woman, and child in the world for $1,430. That is how much money we are on the hook for.

And the reason why I wanted to have the opportunity to stand up right now; my husband and I have been married 30 years, we have 5 biological kids, and we have been blessed to have 23 foster kids. I can't look my 22-year-old in the eye and say to him, ``Harrison, this stimulus is good for you and good for your generation.'' Why? Because I know for a fact that just the Social Security burden alone, the unfunded net liability that the next generation will owe just on Social Security will equal 25 percent of their income when they come into their prime earning years. That is before this level of spending.

We are looking at $1 trillion in spending. $1 trillion just in stimulus spending is equal to the entire amount of money that we have in currency, in the currency today, in the United States. This is an enormous amount of money. And that doesn't include the $2 trillion that the Federal Reserve has also just been in the process of promising this week. We had a $3 trillion day here in Washington, D.C. just a couple of days ago.

But the great news is that we do have an answer to these economic doldrums. Republicans don't disagree that there is a problem. There is a tremendous problem. But we also know the solution.

How do we know? Well, there is a Harvard long-term study that was completed in 2002, and it said very simply this, ``After studying 18 economies, we

know what the answer is to increasing economic competitiveness. It is this: Governments need to cut government wages and they need to cut transfer payments, which are welfare payments.'' How do you characterize a downturned economy? Very simply: Increase taxes.

We know what the solution is. Imagine if last year, under the Democrat controlled Congress and under President Bush, had we chosen to reject $1 trillion in new spending, and instead had we put in place permanent tax cuts in the capital gains tax, zeroing that out, cutting the corporate tax rate down to 9 percent, cutting marginal tax rates for every American, our problem this year would be finding enough workers to fill the jobs.

There is a reason why we aren't seeing an investment in the United States; it is because we are currently the second highest tax rate, corporate tax rate, in the world. We can change that very quickly. And now when the rest of the globe is in economic doldrums, wouldn't it be a pleasure to have the United States be the best climate for investment? We can do that.

That is what the Republican plan aims to do. That is what all of us are down here tonight to offer that positive solution to the American people.

We are going to hear a lot about how bad this bill is. In fact, we know it is bad, because Senator Judd Gregg just announced that he is withdrawing his name for consideration as Commerce Secretary under President Obama for two reasons: One being that the stimulus package is so bad he can't be associated with it; and, number two, he is so outraged that the current Obama White House has taken the Census out of the Commerce Department, where it has historically been, and pulled it into the White House for what we believe are obvious political reasons that he has said, ``I can't abide by this. I am gone.''

That is why we are here tonight. That is why I commend you, Representative King, for holding this forum, because we know we have solutions that work. And, after all, the American people deserve no less. And I thank you.

Thank you, Representative King.

Just listening to this very important discussion among all of our colleagues, it just struck me that it seems very telling to me that President Obama, who has strong majorities in both the House and the Senate, seems to be pointing as his nemesis in this very historic debate to radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity as being the nemesis in this debate of this wasteful historic level of spending. And so I just wonder if it's a coincidence that now we have Democrat Senators who are calling for Congress to reinstate the fairness doctrine, to now silence these voices.

I think the American people need to pay attention to what happens when we challenge this current Democrat majority, because now we're hearing United States Senators calling to silence the very voices that have tried to sound the alarm so the American people can know what's happening here in this Congress.

And I yield back.

Madam Speaker, I was detained and unable to cast a vote for rollcall vote No. 57, the motion to table the privileged resolution, H. Res. 143. I would have voted ``nay'' on that motion.

I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey). He has done a marvelous job laying the groundwork and pouring the

pillars of this important discussion. This is historic, as we all know. Our colleagues understand how historic this level of spending is. Never before in the history of this country have we seen the type of profligate spending that has occurred just since January of this year. Just yesterday, as a matter of fact, we had a $3 trillion day here on Capitol Hill. That is big money. You have heard of fantasy football before. Well, this is fantasy economics that is happening here in Washington, D.C.

My colleague will recall it wasn't that long ago that we were fighting on expanding the SCHIP program by $35 billion before we first take care of the children who needed to be on the SCHIP program. We didn't want to expand eligibility until we first took care of the poor children that needed to have that SCHIP funding. So to just get things in perspective for the American people, we've moved from fighting tooth and nail over spending $35 billion to today we're talking, as my colleague mentioned, what appears to be $798 billion. But again, that is the raw number. It is just like when you buy a house or if you buy a car on credit and you're making your mortgage payment, you know you pay an awful lot more back to the bank because you have to make all those interest payments. This bill will be well over $1 trillion, including the debt service. So we're not talking about a small amount of money.

And just also to put this in perspective and in context, normally this Congress spends about $1 trillion a year in Federal discretionary spending. And we will take what, perhaps 1,000, 1,200 votes in the course of a year until we finally spend about $1 trillion in spending. Well, consider, it wasn't even the end of January and this body spent, in one vote, what this body normally spends in over 1,000 votes over the course of 12 months to spend in discretionary spending.

And remember, this body has hasn't even taken up yet the normal appropriations bills that we have to take up for parks, public safety and education. We haven't even gone there yet with regular budgetary spending that is the duty of this House of Representatives to spend. We've already over and above spent now another $1 trillion on the spending package. We're very concerned about the level of profligate spending.

I wanted to mention a study that was completed by Harvard in the year 2002. It was a long-term study. It looked at 18 different economies across the globe. And it asked this very simple question. What is it that governments can do to stimulate or cause economies to prosper, and concomitantly, what do governments do to cause economies to go in a downward spiral? Well, here is the bottom line. Here is what the nutshell of what this long-term study discovered. It was this: If you want an economy, any kind of economy, to prosper and advance, governments need to do two things. You need to cut government wages, number one, and number two, you need to cut transfer payments, which is redistribution of wealth.

This stimulus package, which is a big government bailout package, does just the opposite. It increases funding eventually of government wages and also of transfer payments. The reverse then also is true in this Harvard study. It said what can governments do to hurt their economies? And it is very simple: Tax increases. That is what hasn't been talked about in this discussion. The only subject of discussion in Washington, D.C. has been, how big can this bill be? How much can we spend?

I'm a former Federal tax litigation attorney. That is what I did for a living, deal with taxes. This bill doesn't answer the question, how are we going to pay for this bill? I don't think the American people realize that yet. Congress has been so free with the American people's money to spend it in every direction they possibly can, but they haven't even addressed the question yet of how they are going to pay for this trillion dollars. And my colleague from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) is exactly right when he said that we have over $10 trillion of debt, $10 trillion in debt. And now we're going to add to that another 10 percent, and we haven't answered the question, how are we going to pay for it? Well, it is real simple. This is not too tough to figure out. There are only two ways to pay for that kind of spending. You either borrow it from other countries, or you increase the tax load on your citizens, or the Federal Government prints money and puts that money out into the money supply.

Well, what does that mean? Massive tax increases. We already know it's going to hurt the individual. It will hurt the economy. What about borrowing? Borrowing is the same thing. We have to pay that money back. We pay it back to other countries. Well, guess what? Other countries right now are suffering globally with their economies as well.

What about printing money, putting that into the money supply? We could do that, but that's the cruelest tax of all because that's the tax of inflation. So hardworking, prudent Americans who've done all the right things, who've invested well, will see the value of their dollar drop dramatically because their money isn't worth what it once was.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia to bring that point up, because what he is stating for the American people is that this Congress is making a decision, together with the Obama administration, we are adding to uncertainty in the marketplace, and that's really the issue, will this Congress address the issue of certainty versus uncertainty in the economy.

I have the largest window manufacturer in the United States in my district. I met with the president of that company several years ago and he said to me, Michele, what we need more than anything is certainty in the marketplace.

If you go back to January of 2008, when this Congress made a decision to spend $168 billion in rebate payments that went back into the economy, that decision only led to uncertainty for the American people, uncertainty for American business.

We could go through all of the spending initiatives that Congress took through all of 2008 and now into 2009. But I think yesterday said it all, when our United States Treasury Secretary, Mr. Tim Geithner, made his press conference that was well anticipated, what will the Obama administration do about the TARP monies that are available? We saw Wall Street's response, and it was to tank. Why? Because the Obama administration said what they want to do is have bigger and more powerful government. That's what they wanted, bottom line, bigger more powerful government. That did not calm the markets. That only led to uncertainty in the marketplace. It didn't lead to certainty. That's what we need. What would lead to certainty? And what would lead to certainty into the marketplace would be permanent tax reductions. If businesses and individuals who were interested in risk-taking with their investments knew that we would permanently cut the capital gains tax, permanently lower the business tax, the corporate tax rate, permanently lower marginal tax rates, do something about the estate tax problem that's going to spring open in 2010, and also, if they knew that we were going to radically reform the Sarbanes-Oxley rules, that would send a signal.

Instead, what does the stimulus do? It tells the American people, well,

we're also going to embrace socialized medicine. What? Embrace socialized medicine? This is not what the American people bargained for. This is not what they asked for.

We also know that the current administration wants to impose the largest energy tax we've ever seen in the history of our country, also known as the cap-and-trade system. This leads to massive uncertainty.

If we would have taken $1 trillion last year that we spent on spending and put $1 trillion into permanent tax relief, I think the gentleman from Georgia would agree, this year, our biggest problem would be finding enough workers to fill the jobs that would have been created from permanent tax relief. That's an alternative that the Republican positive solution has put on the table for American business and American individuals. We've got a plan. We've got a big plan. And that's the genius of America. We trust the American people to take their ingenuity to pour it into the marketplace, because we understand that's true wealth creation.

Governments can't create wealth. They never have, they never will. It's the American people and American businesses that create wealth. How? By productivity. How do you get productivity? You produce goods, you produce services. How do you do that? You put capital at work. Why do you do that? You know that you're going to have a return on your investment.

Today, the American business world sees there will be very little return on investment. But the Republican plan offers all sorts of return on investment. And that's why, to the gentleman from Georgia I know this is a marvelous way to go, and I'll be happy to add to your colloquy as we go.

I'll yield back.

I thank Mr. Gingrey from Georgia for his fine words. And I think one thing that also we should address is the issue that was brought up earlier this week by our President in his press conference, when he stated that only the Federal Government, he said the Federal Government is the only entity left big enough and powerful enough to pull us out of this recession. And I was really struck by that comment that he made. That is a tremendous amount of faith to have in the Federal Government. And it views the Federal Government almost as a Good Fairy, or as the Easter Bunny, or as Santa Claus, that it's the Federal Government that's going to be able to pull the economy out of the doldrums. If that is the case, then why doesn't the Federal Government go ahead and take over everything and just run this country and we just decide we're going to become full-blown, socialist state. I don't think that's what the American people are calling for.

If you look at the living laboratory of the last 100 years of economics, you look at when America has prospered, what economic policies we followed, and when America has foundered, and it's almost like an economic punctuated equilibrium. If you look at the 1930s, under FDR, with historic levels of government spending, historic levels of government intervention, the United

States Secretary of the Treasury during the 1930s was Mr. Henry Morganthau. And after nearly 8 years of historic levels of government spending, and historic levels of government intervention, unemployment levels remained the same as they were at the beginning, about 20, 22 percent level. That's horrific in the United States. The economy had not turned around after that period of time, after historic levels of spending.

Sitting before the Democratic controlled Ways and Means Committee in 1939, Henry Morgenthau said this:

``After historic levels of spending, we aren't any better off now than we were when we first started. The formula we tried did not work.''

Then if you leap forward to the 1960s and 1970s and look at the historic levels of spending that occurred under both LBJ and again under Jimmy Carter, we heard my colleague Mr. Gingrey talk about the housing recession that we had during the time of Gerald Ford and about this massive government spending. This was not the policy that brought us out of the economic doldrums. You look at what did work. Look at the dramatic tax cuts that took place in the early 1980s under Ronald Reagan that turned this country around, that pivoted us economically and started us moving forward. Under that policy, under welfare reform that President Bill Clinton signed into law in the 1990s, we saw the government rise, and we saw the local economy rise across our Nation.

It is phenomenal what can happen, and it is because of the genius of American initiative. We could do that again. We are still the United States of America. We can still flower and can succeed. When I think that all across the globe we look at global economies that are tanking right now, the United States has the potential for being the center of the storm of security because we have so much in place that could offer the world a safe haven for dollars if we were to embrace the policy that both Representative Gingrey and I have been behind, which is this:

Dramatic cuts in government spending and dramatic cuts in taxation. If we have permanent levels of taxation cuts where we lay a ground of certainty in the marketplace, we will see investors want to put capital out if we can zero out capital gains for 3 years. The United States now has the second highest level of taxation in the world. Why would anyone choose the United States to invest in right now? We are not a positive investment climate, but if we would cut corporate tax rates from 34 percent down to 9 percent, zero out capital gains for 3 years, cut marginal tax rates at all levels, as Representative Gingrey has said, and also wipe out the death tax, you would see the economy turn around. Within 6 months, we would be shooting up. Within 18 months, I believe we would have gone through a recession and that we would be roaring, and the rest of the world would look to the United States to invest their currency, and we would forever, I think, be the leader on into the future. We have a good story to tell.

I thank the gentleman for yielding back.

One thing that I am very concerned about as a former Federal tax lawyer is the burden on the 20- to 25-year-olds. I cannot look 20- and 25-year-olds in the eye and in good conscience say to them, ``This stimulus bill will be good for you.'' It will not. Why? Because kids born during that time period already are inheriting a huge tax bill.

Studies have been done. In my postdoctoral studies that I did in tax law, what my research showed is that, by the time they reach their peak earning years, 20- to 25-year-olds will have to pay a tax burden. Just the Social Security portion of their tax burden will be about 25 percent of their total income. That does not include the Medicaid portion of their tax bills, the Federal tax portion of their tax bills, the State portion, their property tax, their gas tax, their local taxes. By the time all of it is added up, the estimates are, in their peak earning years, that 20- to 25-year-olds could be paying anywhere from 70 to 85 percent of their income in taxation. You heard me right. They could be paying 70 to 85 percent in taxation. That cannot happen. We will see a revolt in this country before people get out of bed in the morning to go and hand over 70 to 85 percent of their checks in taxation.

We can not do that to the next generation. We can not impoverish them by taxing them against the wall. That is why the kindest thing that we could do for the next generation is to hand them a well-run country with low tax rates. We cannot spend our way into prosperity. That is something that Leader Boehner has said over and over again. My colleague from Georgia agrees with that. We cannot spend our way into prosperity. What we can do is look at the fundamentals of what works. This Harvard study from 2002 bears it out. This is how you do it:

You cut government wages. You cut transfer payments. You do not increase taxes. Under this current stimulus bill, there is no provision for payment for this $1 trillion in expenditures. The day will come when we have to pay this bill, and it will come sooner than anyone thinks. That is what we are concerned about today.

We have to be adults now. We are Representatives in Congress. We have to be adults with people's money. We cannot just spend money without thinking through how it is going to be paid for, and I think it is important that the American people realize that this Congress has not made provisions for paying for this party, and it is the 20- to 25- year-olds, in the mother of all ironies, who will be the ones to pay for this bill.

I thank my colleague, Mr. Gingrey of Georgia. I think he has every reason to be very concerned about this Freedom of Choice Act coming before this body, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.

Why? Because during the campaign, the President stated quite clearly that

he wanted the Freedom of Choice Act to be the first piece of legislation that he would sign as President. So important to this pro- abortion President is the issue of the Freedom of Choice Act, he wanted to make that the signature item of his Presidency.

It's a cruel statement to make to the children of this country because there's a lie that's been perpetrated over the years since the 1960s. Planned Parenthood has said ``every child, a wanted child;'' which, by implication, means that if a mother does not want the child, it's better to kill the child than to allow that child to receive life.

But I can attest to the fact that I believe every child in the United States and across the world is a wanted child because there are arms that are open and waiting of childless parents all across this country who would love to receive a child, but children just aren't available for adoption.

My husband and I are fortunate enough to have 5 children born to us, and we were also fortunate to have 23 foster children come into our home. We were delighted to take at-risk children into our home, thrilled that we could have that opportunity. There are people all across this country who would also like to have that opportunity.

It is horrific to know that in the African American community, 50 percent of all African American pregnancies in the United States end in abortion, 50 percent. That is a genocide of African Americans of the United States. It should not be. There are Americans all across this country who would love to adopt African American babies, but they can't because 50 percent of all African American pregnancies today are ending in abortion.

What would the Freedom of Choice Act do? Very simply, it's this: It would eviscerate, it would take away every State and local restriction that there is today on abortion--reasonable restrictions, restrictions like making sure every woman has the right to know what options are available to her, to know what is an abortion, what does it mean. For women who have the opportunity to see their unborn child on an ultrasound machine, it's an earthshaking experience to see your baby, your flesh and blood, moving on an ultrasound machine.

It takes a woman, it takes the father of that baby to think of what this means. This is human life, and it causes them to want to choose life and give life to that unborn child.

Reasonable restrictions have been passed all across this country in many hard-fought battles, and 35 years of effort from the pro-life community would be extinguished just like that. But that's what our President wants to have happen. He wants to take away any pro-life opportunity available from American women.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in honor of a true patriot, David Peterson, of Sartell, Minnesota. David is a City Councilman, community leader, attorney, husband and father. And, he is about to make his first deployment to Iraq as a Captain with the Minnesota National Guard's 34th Infantry Division.

Even a quick glimpse at David Peterson's life reveals the heart of a true citizen. An attorney by profession, David has worked in legal aid services, as a prosecutor, and in the civil division of the Stearns County Attorney's office. He will use that training as a JAG officer during his deployment.

His long and strong history of community leadership led him to run for City Council, and in January 2007, he was sworn into office. He will take a leave of absence from that position while he serves his fellow Minnesotans in Iraq.

Tonight in Sartell, David's friends and family and neighbors are meeting to wish him Godspeed as he prepares for his deployment. Along with the Sartell American Legion, the Mayor and City Council will present Captain David Peterson with a flag flown over the U.S. and Minnesota capitols and the Sartell City Hall. They've asked David to take it with him to Iraq and they will fly it again over the City Hall when he returns.

I join all of Sartell in our pride of this citizen-soldier, and I, too, wish him Godspeed and God's blessings on his journey.

Madam Speaker, I rise to share my profound disappointment in the continued extraordinary anti-Israel rhetoric and policies of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is again endorsing a conference that denies the horror--indeed, the existence-- of the Holocaust and that places blame for much of the world's woes with the people of Israel.

Tehran's Sharif University of Technology conference, entitled Holocaust? A Sacred Lie by the West, is in and of itself disturbing. It is evidence that the hatred that underlies the violence in the Middle East is, regrettably, alive and well. But, for the head of a nation to lend the imprimatur of government support to such an event is real cause for alarm. President Ahmadinejad, in his statement of support for the conference, stated that the ``Zionist regime is the `illegitimate child' of the Holocaust phenomenon.'' This is dangerous rhetoric.

There are millions of peace-loving peoples in the Middle East-- Israelis, Palestinians, Iranians, Iraqis; indeed from every nation of the region. They will never be able to experience peace and security as long as hatred like this is spoken, taught, and endorsed by the leaders of the region.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has just announced his intention to run for another term as Iran's President. I am hopeful that the people of Iran will send him a message that they want to live in peace with their neighbors and that they want to put an end to the cycle of violence and hatred that conferences like this one epitomize.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in honor of Bruce Anderson, who retires as Sheriff for Sherburne County, Minnesota, on Friday, January 30th. As County Board Chairman Arne Engstrom has said, Bruce Anderson ``raised the bar so high for sheriffs in our state.''

Bruce Anderson, raised in Elk River, Minnesota, first started with the Sheriff's Office in 1975, when he forfeited a football scholarship to the University of Minnesota to take a job as a dispatcher-jailer with Sherburne County. He was just 19 years old, but he knew he wanted a career serving his community in law enforcement.

Fourteen years ago, he took his experience with the office to a new level when he was elected to serve as the County's Sheriff. His professionalism and dedication earned him re-election three more times, without any opposition. When he told the County Board that he would be retiring, his announcement was

marked with the same humility and commitment that Sherburne residents have come to expect of his service. In fact, he thanked the Board for their support, thanked the citizens for the privilege to serve them, and thanked his staff--calling them ``unsung heroes.''

Bruce Anderson's tenure as Sheriff was marked by a number of enormous advances in the Office's operations. He oversaw an expansion of the County jail and worked out an arrangement to house federal inmates there as well. He brought extraordinary technological advances, including updating their radio system to digital to better enable Sherburne sheriffs to communicate with neighboring jurisdictions. And, he solved some real mysteries and crimes, including a high-profile 1992 murder.

Bruce's successor will be Captain Joel Brott, who has served in Sherburne County law enforcement for 12 years. Captain Brott has said that he considers Sheriff Anderson a mentor and with such tutelage, Sherburne is sure to be in good hands.

In the meantime, we look forward to seeing what next wonderful adventure in public service awaits Bruce Anderson. Sherburne County Commissioner Felix Schmiesing called Anderson's retirement ``the end of an era'' but I believe it is the start of a wonderful new chapter both for Bruce Anderson and for the people of Sherburne County, who I am certain he will continue to serve in some new way.

Madam Speaker, one week ago today Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.

Millions flooded into Washington, DC to witness this historic occasion, presenting law enforcement authorities with an enormous logistical and security challenge.

To meet this challenge, the selfless men and women of Minnesota's National Guard came to Washington to assist with the Presidential Inauguration and to ensure the safety of the President as well as everyone present for inaugural festivities.

The superlative conduct and ability of Minnesota's guardsmen helped to make certain the ceremony and surrounding events occurred as safely as possible for all attendees, despite the many obstacles present in such a complex undertaking.

And so it is my honor to recognize and pay tribute to all the brave citizen-soldiers of the Minnesota National Guard. Their exceptional service during our President's inauguaration is a true source of pride for all Minnesotans, as is the Guard's continuing and unbroken tradition of noble service to our State and country.