Floor Statements

I thank my colleague from South Carolina for yielding.

He knows just how excited I am to be down here today. He knows how excited I am because, unlike what my colleague from New York suggests about accepting how the world is, today's a day where we decide: You know what? We can do better. We can do better.

The million folks I represent back home in Georgia don't want to accept the way this body operates today. They want us to do better.

I know, when this body passed this 1-year extension last December, they knew we were going to be back here today. For a year, we've known we were going to be back here today. To suggest if only you'll give us another 60 days we'll do better, that's the way this House has worked in years past. Yet this year--this year--this body has said, if these issues are so important to the American families--and they are--and that if these issues are so critical to the economy--and they are--why do we need another 60 days? Why not do it today? We know that it has to happen. We know that it's coming. Why can't we get together and do it today?

Now, I tell you, I've studied majority politics in this body. Traditionally speaking, the majority, which the Republicans are, would just bring a bill to the floor and jam it through--my way or the highway. You've seen it. You've seen it when Republicans have done it, and you've seen it when Democrats have done it, and it could have happened that way again today.

But what did the Rules Committee do?

The Rules Committee didn't say, My way or the highway. The Rules Committee said, We've got a position here in the House. They have a position. They're in the Senate. Let's do what we've been doing for hundreds of years, and let's come together in a conference to work out our differences.

There are those in this body who would rather work out our differences on the front pages of newspapers, and there are those in this body who would rather work out our differences on Sunday morning talk show programs, but I don't think that's the best way to get the people's business done, and neither do the million folks back home whom I represent.

It's okay that we disagree about what this policy ought to look like. It's not okay if we let the disagreement put the economy in peril and put the budgets of hardworking American taxpayers at home in peril. We can do better, and we are doing better. We are doing better.

The traditional process would have been to go ahead and put this bill through late last night by calling everybody back. We could have just gone ahead and passed it in the dark of night. But the folks said, You know what? That's not the right way to operate this body. We can do better if we're proud of what we're doing. Let's put it off until tomorrow morning. Let's do it in the light of day, and let's let everybody have their say.

That's what we're doing.

That's why we're here today.

I say to my friend from South Carolina: I am proud that we serve on that Rules Committee together. I am proud of our leadership for giving us this opportunity to be open. I am proud that it is not a small band of rebels in the Republican Conference, as my friend from New York would suggest, who are hijacking this process. Rather, it is a proud band of 240 Republicans who say that regular order has merit. Let's do it in the way that we have done it for hundreds of years--House bill, Senate bill.

Let's come together, Mr. Speaker, and work out those differences.

I thank my chairman for yielding the time, and I want to thank my chairman for his work on opening this process up in the House. He's teamed up with our new Speaker to say that regular order is the better way to do things.

I want to say, and it needs to be said, it's too easy when all you do is read the headlines in this town to start pointing the finger of blame. Here is National Journal, one of our dailies: Dems Sign Conference Report. The White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had blocked passage of the measure.

It's not about where the blame is; it's about where the successes are.

When you look behind me, Mr. Speaker, at this stack of pages that represents this bill, what that represents is the work that didn't get done last year but that Norm Dicks and that Hal Rogers have come together to get done this year. When we talk about regular order and the regular order that hasn't happened this year, what we need to talk about is the fact that we had no regular order on appropriations bills last year. We got six of them passed through appropriations, the regular order process, this year. That's half. That's 50 percent of the way

there, and I know we have a commitment from the Appropriations Committee to get the rest of them there next year.

This is a success story. This is not a failure. Is this the way that I wanted to legislate, 2,300 pages? No, it's not. And it's not the way that the Appropriations Committee wants to legislate, and it's not the way any Member of this House wants to legislate, and it's 50 percent better than what we did last year. We're going to get back to regular order. We're going to get back to regular order by clearing out the work from 2012--I'm sorry, 2011 was this year. We are now finishing 2012 today. We're going to be able to start 2013.

I sit on the Budget Committee. My commitment to my friends on the Appropriations Committee is we're going to move that budget. We're going to move it early. We're going to move it on time, and we're going to be done by the end of March so that you all can begin your important work. It's not just about the spending of the money. It's about the oversight of how the money is spent. And that's why regular order is so important.

Do you know that there is only one committee in this House that comes to the Rules Committee day in and day out and says this: I want an open rule on my bill so that all Members can be heard. I do not want waivers to go along with it, and I want the House to operate under regular order? There's only one, and it's the Appropriations Committee.

When you see what's going on today and what we're doing in the name of completing our business for the year, understand that this is the one committee in the House that wants to give everybody a say. This is the one committee in the House that tries to make every Member's opinion count. And if we can successfully deal with this in the same bipartisan way that we have been throughout the year, we can move this business today and begin anew, as we all want to, on January 1 of next year.

I thank my chairman, and I thank the appropriators for their very hard work.

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the time.

I want to get to tax policy here in just a moment, but I want to take just a few minutes, having just passed the appropriations bill for fiscal year 2012, to talk about how long that's been.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I know you have been a proponent of regular order since you came to this body. But as I went back and looked to see when was the last time the House was able to operate not under a continuing resolution but under a regular appropriations process, Mr. Speaker, it's been since December of 2009. December of 2009 is when we last passed an appropriations bill.

Now granted appropriations bills come in all sorts and sizes. The one we're dealing with today came in the large size. We'll call that the jumbo size. I know the minority whip shares my passion for that. My hope is we will be able to get to regular order next year and go through each appropriations bill one by one by one.

But what I say to you, Mr. Speaker, is that I came to this body a year ago to make a difference, and I wanted to make all the difference last January, I'll be honest with you. And when I couldn't do it all in January, I hoped that we could do it all in February. When we couldn't do it all in February, I hoped we could do it all in March. And, of course, we were able to pass the budget here in the House, the budget that took the first step towards reforming entitlements that we've seen come out of this body since I would argue Lyndon Johnson began these programs in the 1960s. But we have begun to make a difference.

As I look at this stack of papers here that represent the spending, the appropriations process, for 2012, Mr. Speaker, it's the first time in 2 years we've had that. Of course, over a thousand days since the Senate has been able to pass a budget. We have made progress. As 2011 comes to a close, I hope we can celebrate some of those successes along the way.

Because in terms of real spending, Mr. Speaker, in this document what we see is for the second year in a row, the first time since World War II, two consecutive years, Mr. Speaker, with this leadership team and this appropriations committee and this bipartisan House, we've been able to reduce Federal discretionary spending--$95 billion.

A lot of folks say, well, Rob, is that going to be funny math? Is that going to be just some items but not all

items? As you know, Mr. Speaker, that's everything. That's the regular appropriations process, that's the so-called emergency spending, that's the war spending, what they call the OCO account. That's everything. And we've brought it down $95 billion in just 1 year, just the 1 year you and I have been here, Mr. Speaker.

But it can't all be done in appropriations bills, Mr. Speaker, you know. Only about a third of all of the money that goes out the door here in Washington, D.C., goes out the door through this process that we did today, the appropriations process. The rest of it goes out through mandatory spending programs--Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest on the national debt--those mandatory spending programs.

In fact, as you know, Mr. Speaker, we could zero out everything else. We could decide there will be no Congress, there will be no White House, there will be no FBI, there will be no Army, there will be no Navy, no Marine Corps, no Coast Guard, no Air Force, no parks, no Environmental Protection Agency, no Education Department, no nothing. We could zero out absolutely everything that we fund through the appropriations process and the budget still wouldn't be balanced. Not cutting it. Zeroing it out. And we still couldn't balance the budget just on appropriations bills alone.

There's two sides of every budget balancing operation, Mr. Speaker, as you know. There's the spending side, and there's the revenue side. I want to talk about the revenue side here for just a minute.

I put up a poster here, Mr. Speaker. You can't see it from where you sit. It says H.R. 25, the FairTax. I'm going to leave it up here the whole half hour, Mr. Speaker, because H.R. 25, named the FairTax, is the only tax bill in Congress, the only piece of legislation on either the House side or the Senate side that goes into the Tax Code and says every exception, exemption, exclusion, special carve-outs, special favor, anything that gives you a break over your neighbor, your company an advantage over the one next door, all of those tax breaks, special exceptions, loopholes--gone.

It's the only bill in either the House or the Senate that does it.

But that's not even the good news, Mr. Speaker. The good news is it's also the most popular fundamental tax bill in either the House or Senate as well. That's right. More Members of this body have cosponsored the FairTax than any other fundamental tax reform legislation that's been introduced here. And more United States Senators in the other body have cosponsored their version of the FairTax than any other fundamental tax reform proposal in the Senate.

Now, why is that important? Why is it important to end all the loopholes?

Well, Mr. Speaker, the chart I have here is the cost of tax expenditures. Now tax expenditures--I've got to tell you that's a tough word in conservative circles because the government doesn't actually have any money. As you know, Mr. Speaker, every nickel that gets spent in Washington, D.C., got sucked into Washington, D.C., from the heartland from back in my district in Georgia, from back in your district, from somebody's family kitchen table. Every nickel that gets spent in Washington got sucked up here to Washington, D.C.

Oftentimes when we talk about taxes and we talk about giving people their money back, that's not spending, that's giving people their own hard-earned money back.

Today, Mr. Speaker, when we have $15 trillion in national debt, when the amount of money we owe has eclipsed the entire productive capacity of America for an entire year, our entire annual GDP, the question now is when you have a tax break, when you agree to let a loophole into the Tax Code and let somebody else pay less, what happens? Well, what happens is that we then borrow more.

That's a new debate, Mr. Speaker, because so often we can talk about tax cuts like the capital gains tax cut, like interest in dividends. We can talk about tax cuts that stimulate the economy, tax cuts that we think will help the economy grow faster and bring more revenue in; but all tax cuts aren't like that. Some tax cuts are just free money that you're giving away to people. Instead of passing a bill that says, I hereby give you a hundred dollars, it makes Congress feel better to pass a bill that says, I hereby tax you a hundred dollars less. I'm going to bill your neighbors for it, and I'm going to bill your kids for it, and I'm going to bill your grandkids for it, but I'm going to tax you a hundred dollars less.

It's time, Mr. Speaker, for us as conservatives to be honest about where the Tax Code takes this country when we fill it full of loopholes and exemptions, because I will tell you, and you know better than most, Mr. Speaker, the art of the loophole is a time-honored Washington tradition.

It's not something that has been perfected by Republicans. It's not something that has been perfected by Democrats. It's not even something that was perfected by the Whigs, Mr. Speaker. It's been around as long as taxes have been around.

And the folks who work in this town who try to manipulate the Tax Code have been around just as long as well.

But let's look at this. Let's look at what's happening in 2012, just in 2012. The annual budget deficit for 2012, Mr. Speaker, is projected by the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Research Service to be $1.1 trillion and change. It's a $1.1 trillion projected budget deficit for 2012.

How much money do you think we've carved out in loopholes and exceptions and exemptions and carve-outs and deductions and credit? How much money do you think we've carved out? $1.065 trillion. That's a powerful message, Mr. Speaker. We could balance the budget this year if we eliminated every single tax break in the U.S. Tax Code.

Now, that's a debate worth having.

I don't want to eliminate every single deduction in the U.S. Tax Code, every single credit in the U.S. Tax Code. Every credit in the U.S. Tax Code is not created equally. Every deduction in the U.S. Tax Code is not created equally. There are some that help move this economy forward, and there are some that don't. That's the debate that we have, and this is the end result of it.

What if we started over from scratch, Mr. Speaker? What if we started over from scratch with a bill like the FairTax--with something that ends all loopholes by starting a Tax Code that has no loopholes, that ends the loopholes by starting a Tax Code that has no loopholes?

So often we talk about reforming the Tax Code as if we're stuck with the Tax Code that we've got. Are we? I tell you we're not. That's what this body does. This body could zero out the entire Tax Code and start again with a blank sheet of paper tomorrow. We have that ability; we have that authority; and we ought to use it.

If we used it today--again, just to understand the magnitude of the exceptions and exemptions in the Tax Code, when you go and you say, Golly, I'm in the 15 percent bracket; I'm in the 25 percent bracket; I'm in the 10 percent bracket--when you talk about those things, the exceptions and exemptions total over $1 trillion in 2012 alone.

Now, where are those? Where are those exceptions and exemptions going, Mr. Speaker? This next chart quantifies those.

Number one, a list of exceptions and exemptions: exclusion of employer contributions for medical insurance premiums and medical care, $609 billion.

Hear that, Mr. Speaker. Half of all the money that's included in loopholes, exemptions, exceptions, exclusions, carve-outs in the United States Tax Code goes to employers to subsidize their purchases of health insurance for their employees.

Candidly, Mr. Speaker, I hear from employees day after day after day, and they say, Rob, how come I don't get those same tax breaks to purchase my own insurance? Why am I held captive--captive--by my employer? Since when did my employer get entrusted to make the best health decisions for me and my family?

I will tell you that this provision that originated in World War II, with wage controls here in Congress, has led to so many of the third- party payer problems, the health insurance inflation challenges, that we have in this country today.

$609 billion is what you, Mr. Speaker, and your family and every other American family has to pay more because we've chosen to subsidize the business

purchase of health insurance, which has the secondary and tertiary effects of trapping you in the job that you have because you can't get insurance at your next job; that has the effect of trapping you with the insurance policy that you have because your employer only offers one policy; that has the effect of your having a third-party payer so that it insulates you from the true cost of health care.

Trouble after trouble after trouble with the American health care system comes from the United States Tax Code, Mr. Speaker--and we can do better.

$357 billion is the deductibility of mortgage insurance on owner- occupied homes. It's the mortgage insurance deduction--again, a deduction that millions of American families take advantage of. It's a deduction that, arguably, has a tremendous effect on the real estate market and on our real estate agents and on our construction companies--on and on and on. There are things tied into the deductibility of mortgage insurance.

I remember once upon a time, Mr. Speaker, I was listening to an elected official talk. He had some folks in his office, and they said, We have to, have to, have to have the deductibility of mortgage insurance because the only reason we're able to sell real estate in this country is that folks are able to deduct their interest, and that makes a difference.

This elected official said, Well, how about if we double interest rates? Is that going to help us sell more homes?--because it'll certainly help folks deduct more interest. The answer was no.

What we need are low interest rates to sell homes. We have low interest rates in this country today, but it's one of those things that, whether Republicans or Democrats, folks have agreed that we want to subsidize interest payments for folks who own homes. There is no such subsidy program for folks who rent.

Is there a good reason for that? Maybe there is. Certainly, the argument has been made time and time again, but it's something that we have chosen to do in this country, Mr. Speaker.

I don't know that, even for those Americans who defend this deduction to their dying breaths, do they know that it comprises a full third of the value of every deduction, exemption, exclusion that exists in the United States Tax Code, because it does--half of the deductions and exclusions come in from the mortgage interest deduction, others from the medical insurance and premium deductions for employers.

Finally, of the biggest of our deductions and exemptions is the deduction for 401(k) plans, which is down here at the bottom, of $356 billion--again, deducting money that we're saving, right?--because the power to tax is the power to destroy, Mr. Speaker--you know that--time and time again as you advocate for lower taxes, because what we tax today is income and what income is is a measure of your productivity, and what we need in today's economy is more productivity, not less productivity. The power to tax is the power to destroy.

So rather than taxing savings--because we don't have enough retirement savings happening in this country, because we don't have enough thrifts happening in this country--we've given folks a tax break to encourage them to save.

Is that a laudable public goal, Mr. Speaker? I'm sure it is. I'm sure that it is.

We need more Americans to take saving for their retirement more seriously. The question is, What's the best way to get that done? Is it the United States Tax Code? But does America know that that's what's happening today, that today $356 billion of tax revenue is forgone in the name of encouraging retirement savings?

It's a debate that has to happen in Washington, D.C.--these are the big ones--because so often we argue about things as if it's the little ones that find the dollar. It's not the little ones that find the dollar; it's the little ones that find the headlines. You don't find headlines about the mortgage interest deduction or the employer health insurance deduction. You find headlines about the ``bridge to nowhere'' and how in the world that got in the Transportation bill. But understand that this is big business.

Now, I'm not here to pick on lobbyists, Mr. Speaker. I think lobbyists perform an important role in this town. I can't be an expert on every issue, and I can't hire staff. I've got Alex Poirot on my staff down here today. He knows a lot about a lot, but he can't know everything about everything. So, when I need more information, I will go to folks involved in the industry. We call those folks ``lobbyists.''

I'll tell you, the best lobbyists in the world are the ones who fly up from back home--the teachers in your community, the caretakers in your community, the physicians in your community. Those members of your community who come up here to talk about their issues are the best lobbyists in town, but there are firms up here that have lobbyists as well.

There is a line in ``The Distinguished Gentleman.'' Mr. Speaker, I'm going to date myself by going back to when Eddie Murphy's movies were funny, back in the day. ``The Distinguished Gentleman'' was a tale of a fellow who got elected to Congress by accident. And he was going along with the process, and he walked up to a powerful committee chairman. And the committee chairman said, How do you feel about sugar subsidies? Eddie Murphy, being Eddie Murphy and a new Congressman said, Well, Mr. Chairman, how should I feel about sugar subsidies? And the chairman said, It doesn't matter, because if you support sugar subsidies, we're going to get you money from the confectioners and the bakers. And if you oppose sugar subsidies, we're going to get your money from the cane growers and the beet growers.

There are folks on every side of the issue in this town. So whenever there's an issue that's a contentious issue, you can call in one side, you can call in the other, and you can hear both sides of the argument. Folks who are experts, folks who have been working on these issues for decade after decade after decade. Well, when the Federal tax bill for America's businesses is $10 billion, it doesn't take much of an investment in lobbying for special exemptions in the Tax Code to make that happen.

Now let me go back and look at corporate income taxes over time. I'm in the camp that tells you, corporations don't pay taxes, Mr. Speaker. Corporations do not pay taxes. Consumers pay taxes. I'm from Atlanta. If you add a tax on the Coca-Cola Company, what do you think is going to happen? They're going to raise the price of Coca-Cola. Right? That's what happens every single time that--we already have a competitive market. Coke and Pepsi are competing in a cutthroat beverage market out there today. They're already suppressing their prices as much as they can. There is only one taxpayer in America, and it is the American consumer. When we tax businesses, we just make the businesses the tax collector, and they raise their prices. I end up paying the tax when I buy the goods. They collect those taxes, and pass them on.

But according to our friends at Citizens for Tax Justice--and you are not going to hear me quoting Citizens for Tax Justice very often, Mr. Speaker, because we don't agree a lot. But they pay a lot of attention to how much money is being spent in this town to manipulate the Tax Code. They say $475 million is being spent to manipulate the Tax Code in this town. Now, folks, it's our fault. We created the Tax Code. I don't blame the IRS for the way the Tax Code works. Congress created the Tax Code. Congress tells the IRS what to do. So for businesses to spend $475 million, for individuals to pay folks to come and lobby for the United States Tax Code, that makes sense. Why do you rob banks? Because that's where the money is. Why do you lobby the Tax Code? Because that's where the money is--not in these appropriations bills that we're doing today, but in the Tax Code.

Trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in revenue, Mr. Speaker. And with the stroke of a pen, a loophole, an exception, exemption hidden somewhere in what is now 76,000 pages of code, you can save money for your client. You can get a break that your competitor doesn't get. And who ends up paying that bill? Every other American family. And if we don't pay that

bill today, we end up borrowing that money, and our kids pay the bill, and our grandkids pay the bill for years and years and years to come.

This isn't rocket science, Mr. Speaker. This is Economics 101. I do it when I go to speak to high school classes. I say, you know, I've got a job in my congressional office. You're going to get to serve your neighbors. You're going to get to serve your country. It is going to be a wonderful thing. And I pay $10 an hour. Who wants to come? All the hands go up around the room. Then I say, But I'm going to have to put a tax on that because we have bills to pay in this country. So I am going to put a $9 an hour tax on that, but you will still be able to take home that last dollar. Who wants to come work 80 hours a week for me for $1 an hour? And all the hands go down, Mr. Speaker. That's economics 101. There is a sweet spot here. They called it the Laffer curve in the 1980s. There's a sweet spot where you can raise tax rates and continue to raise income for the government--tax receipts, and if you exceed that rate, you begin to shrink tax receipts for the government.

I remember a story, Mr. Speaker, this was over on the Senate side, a Senator from Washington State who ran the Finance Committee at the time. And the question was, What would happen if we raised taxes to 100 percent on all Americans who make over $250,000 a year? What would happen? What would happen if we raised taxes on all Americans making over $250,000 a year to 100 percent? Well, he asked that question to the tax scoring committee, and folks got excited, sent back a good message, and said, Oh, golly, if we did that, we'd raise this big pot of money to help pay Federal bills. Big pot of money.

Well, come on, Mr. Speaker, you tell me, what would happen if we raised taxes on you to 100 percent? Well, I tell you, you would quit coming to work. You have got a heart for service. But you also have bills to pay. Folks would adjust their behavior. No one would make over $250,000 a year anymore.

The power to tax is the power to destroy. When you tax at 100 percent, you destroy 100 percent of all that economic production. You know what's sad, as I look at this Economics 101 chart, Mr. Speaker? It's that it's America that has this disastrous, destructive, detrimental Tax Code. The former Soviet Bloc countries, Mr. Speaker, they have flat taxes. They have consumption taxes. They started with a blank slate after the fall of the Soviet Union, and they created tax codes that work. They rejected the communist system and said, What if we have a flat tax on everything that's easy to pay?

Mr. Speaker, I know we have to have taxes in this country, and I don't mind paying them. I don't mind paying them. I love the freedom that we have in this country, and I know freedom isn't free. What I don't like, Mr. Speaker, is having to pay someone to help me pay my taxes--I'm a smart guy--to have to pay someone to help me pay my taxes.

If we're going to collect taxes from folks, it ought to be easy, and the more complicated we make it, the less revenue we collect. And who has proven that point? The former Soviet Bloc countries. That's where we look for economic vibrance today, Mr. Speaker. That's where we look for Tax Code success today. Country after country after country threw out their old code, adopted a flat consumption tax, a flat income tax, made it easy to pay, easy to comply with, and raised the revenues to their national treasury. We could do that very same thing. There's a sweet spot, and we are not in it.

Mr. Speaker, we sometimes get swept up in partisanship here in the House. I know you avoid it. I try to avoid it. But sometimes it happens. But when it comes to the issue of reforming the Tax Code, it's not a partisan issue. I'll point to this quote from President Barack Obama in a speech he was making on international tax policy reform. He says, Our Tax Code is full of corporate loopholes that make it perfectly legal for companies to avoid paying their fair share. Now his take on it is a little different from mine.

You know, the U.S. Tax Code defines what folks have to do. I almost think it's your patriotic duty to pay as little tax as you legally can. Don't send your extra money up here. Whoever is encouraging you to do that, don't do it. Keep as much of your own money as you can because I promise you, you're going to spend it better than I will.

It's not from lack of trying. It's not from lack of trying. Keep your own money in your pocket; send as little as you legally can.

But, yes, the Tax Code has been warped over time to make it very difficult to tell what is someone's fair share. What is their fair share?

Now, the top 10 percent of all income earners in this country, Mr. Speaker, pay 60 percent of all of the income taxes. The top 10 percent pay 60 percent of all the income taxes. The top 50 percent pay 100 percent of all the income taxes. About half of America today pays no income taxes whatsoever. In fact, a growing amount of American families are actually receiving money from the Tax Code instead of paying money into the Tax Code. That's not what the Tax Code is for.

But on both sides of the aisle, we agree that this Tax Code isn't working. The President thinks it isn't working because it allows folks to pay nothing, and that's not fair. I'd tell you it's not working because it allows one company to pay one amount and its neighbor company to have to pay twice that amount, and that's not fair. Equity is what's fair. And I'll tell you, Tax Code for corporations, it shouldn't go from the 30s down to the 20s. It shouldn't go from the 30s down to the teens. It should go from the 30s down to zero, Mr. Speaker, to zero because businesses don't pay taxes. Their consumers pay taxes.

I pay taxes when I shop at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart's not paying the tax. They're raising the price on the good, and I'm paying the tax and you're paying the tax and every American family that shops there is paying the tax.

So how do we get to something that defines our fair share? Well, Mr. Speaker, that brings me to the heart of the FairTax. I don't like the divisive games that are being played in America today, Mr. Speaker. I don't know why it is that what we see in the media and what we sometimes hear from the podiums is language designed to divide America. I can't think of a single strength of this country, I can't think of a single trait that makes this country great that is enhanced by dividing America. That's why we always talk about the American Dream, Mr. Speaker, something that unites us, something that brings all of our disparate views and hopes and dreams together into one understanding of what makes this country different from any other country on the planet.

Mr. Speaker, my idea of fair when I sit down with a blank sheet of paper to try to design a brand new Tax Code for this country, fair doesn't mean that we're going to try to ensure equal outcomes for every American. Fair means we're going to start with a level playing field for every American.

Have you ever been in a community, Mr. Speaker, and you see somebody driving a brand-new Porsche and you wonder if they're paying their fair share? Have you ever been walking past a clothing store, you and I might be on our way down to the Goodwill or Salvation Army or T.J.Maxx or to Marshall's and you see somebody walking into Brooks Brothers and you wonder if they're paying their fair share?

You know, I remember growing up, I had a good friend who lived next door. The family had everything--boats, lake houses, beach houses, brand-new cars, fancy clothes. And when it came time to apply for college aid, we both filled out our applications. I didn't get a penny in Federal financial aid because I got a note back that said: Dear Sir, Your family saved too much.

Your family saved too much.

My buddy next door--fancy cars, fancy houses, fancy clothes, he got back a note that said: Congratulations, you qualify for a subsidized college education.

You qualify for a subsidized college education.

Why? Because in all of these flush years that your family has had, you spent it all. So now in your time of need, you have nothing and you qualify for a bonus.

Mr. Speaker, that is not anything that makes this country great. What makes this country great is people being able to make their own choices about how they're going to live their life and the Federal Government doesn't bail them out.

Mr. Speaker, you and I weren't here when the bailouts came down the pipe, but I guarantee you that we would've both voted ``no.'' We would have both voted ``no'' for every penny of bailout money that came down the pipe because the American Government is not supposed to be about bailing out anybody. The America Government is supposed to be about protecting the freedom of the American people. And that includes, Mr. Speaker, freedom to fail. Freedom to fail.

You get to make the choices you want to make about your life, but you also have to bear the consequences. If you want to take great risks, if you have great success, you benefit from that. And if you have great failure, you pay the price for that. We cannot insulate people, Mr. Speaker, from the consequences of their actions. But over and over again, that's what the Tax Code does.

Oh, if you lose money, we want to protect you. If you make money, we want to punish you. I don't get that. I don't understand that. Fairness for me is a level playing field for opportunity, not a level playing field for outcomes.

Mr. Speaker, you know we talk every day in this Chamber about jobs; and by talk, we act every day to promote an environment in this Nation that grows jobs.

What do you think, Mr. Speaker, the American Tax Code does when a multinational corporation is trying to decide where it's going to put its next plant? What do you think it does? Because I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, with absolute certainty that America has the highest corporate tax rate of any nation on the planet. The number one highest.

So you're a business person, Mr. Speaker. Where do you want to locate? Do you want to locate in a country that has ended all of the loopholes, that has restored a fairness to the marketplace for a level playing field, that allows our free enterprise system to work? Or do you want to locate your business in the country that has the single highest corporate tax rate in the world? Those are easy decisions, Mr. Speaker, and companies are making them every day.

I talked to a CEO in my district about 6 months ago. He said, Rob, I'm going to be leaving. He said, The government has made it hard to pack up and leave. It's going to take me about 2 years, but I'm taking every job that's in this district and I'm moving them to Switzerland because it's just not worth doing business in America any more.

Mr. Speaker, we have the hardest working workforce on the planet. We have the best education and transportation infrastructure on the planet. We have the finest education system on the planet. Nobody, nobody gives you more bang for your buck than the American worker, and yet people are deciding to take those jobs overseas. Why? It's not the American workers' fault, Mr. Speaker. It's our fault as we have crafted a Tax Code that doesn't work, as we have crafted a regulatory structure that doesn't work. But the good news is--and it's good news, Mr. Speaker--that there's nothing wrong with America that this body can't fix. Because I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker, there's nothing wrong with America that this body didn't cause.

Government is not the solution to our problems, and many times government is the creator of our problems. I do not want this body, no matter how august, I do not want my 435 colleagues, no matter how well- studied and well-intended, to decide for me how my life should be led. That's never been what America was about. What America is about is making your own decisions for yourself, making your own decisions for your family, and knowing with absolute certainty, Mr. Speaker, absolute certainty, that by the sweat of your brow, by the power of your ideas, by the commitment that you make, you can make your tomorrow better than your today.

I'll tell you, that's the American Dream, Mr. Speaker. It's not about how much money you have in your pocket. It's not about what kind of house you live in or what kind of car you drive. It's about that you can decide today that you're going to take actions for yourself and for your family and you're going to make tomorrow better.

Hope, Mr. Speaker. Hope is a priceless commodity. A priceless commodity. And I fear we're not growing hope in this country, Mr. Speaker, like we used to. I fear we are extinguishing the candle of hope in this country. And not out of malice, Mr. Speaker. That's what makes it so insidious. It's not out of malice. It's out of folks who believe in their heart deep down inside that they're passing these policies because they want to make America better.

Mr. Speaker, America was better when Americans were running America. The whole idea of a Republic isn't that we get to be king of this land collectively. Our job is simple. It is to protect the freedom of individuals back home so that individuals back home can make the decisions that work best for them.

I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, I come from the great State of Georgia. We're a little conservative in our part of the world and proud of it. If anyone is looking for a good conservative part of the world to be a part of, I invite you to come down. We've got some good real estate prices and a good job market. Come on down and be a part of what we have, Mr. Speaker.

But I read a story about my friends in California. Now, I enjoy visiting California. I don't want to move there. But it was a story about the Teamsters unionizing marijuana growers in California because medicinal marijuana is a big business out there in California these days. And so they unionized the marijuana growers. So if you work hard, apply yourself and join the union, you can be a junior marijuana grower at $25 an hour I'm told. And if you really work hard and really apply yourself, you can exceed where you start and become a senior marijuana grower and get close to $35 an hour. That's what I'm hold.

Mr. Speaker, I think that's wonderful for those folks in California. We're not bringing unionized marijuana-growing to the great State of Georgia. I'm not trying to stop the folks in California from doing what they want to do, but it's not going to come to our great State of Georgia. And that's what makes this country great. We can choose for ourselves, as individuals, as families, as communities, and as States how it is that we want to live our life--but not with the United States Tax Code.

Mr. Speaker, the Tax Code manipulates every facet of your life--every facet of your life. If you're going to buy a green car, we're going to pay you money. If you buy a car that burns too much gasoline, we're going to charge you a fuel premium. If you receive your income from dividends, we're going to give you a tax break. If you receive your income from working hard on the line every day, you're going to pay full freight. If you've had a great year this year, even if you hadn't made another penny in the rest of your life, we're going to tax you like you're rich. If you make a little bit this year, even though you've made millions every other year for the rest of your life, we're going to tax you like you're poor.

Mr. Speaker, we manipulate behavior in line item after line item after line item in the United States Code; and, candidly, folks on both sides of the aisle defend it. They defend it as if we're really smart here. And I'll tell you, folks here work hard. I'm not down on Congress. Folks here in Congress work hard. But they don't know everything, nor can they, nor should they be burdened with that responsibility. But that's what happens in the Tax Code: let me pass this tax incentive, because if only we encourage this behavior, all of America will be happier. And it's easy to hide things in the Tax Code. Again, it's 75,000 pages.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage you to take a look at H.R. 25, again, the single most widely cosponsored piece of fundamental tax reform legislation in either the House or the Senate. And, in fact, it's the most widely cosponsored piece of tax reform legislation in both Chambers. It ends every loophole.

Mr. Speaker, you hear folks every day down here on the House floor: I want you to end the loopholes for rich people; I want you to end the loopholes for oil companies; I want you to end the loopholes for Solyndra and the solar companies; I want you to end loophole, loophole, loophole, loophole. Mr. Speaker, there's one bill in the House that does it all, and its H.R. 25. No loopholes, no exemptions. We all

pay the same. And it lets our free enterprise system work, Mr. Speaker.

We talk about creating jobs in this country, Mr. Speaker. We have to do that. But our Tax Code is destroying jobs. We have to create new jobs; but, Mr. Speaker, that's hard. Preserving the jobs we already have has to be a part of that. And yet we run jobs overseas each and every day in large part because of our Tax Code.

More importantly, Mr. Speaker, the FairTax is revenue neutral. So many folks think about a conservative Republican like me liking every tax cut he can get his hands on. I do. I'm a big proponent of leaving more money in individuals' pockets. I will always believe the American family will spend their own money better than we will spend it on their behalf in Washington. Always. But, Mr. Speaker, there are bills to pay in Washington. We do need to support our troops, we do need to defend our homeland, and we do need to protect our border. And so the FairTax brings in every penny of revenue that we bring in today. It's revenue neutral.

In fact, given the bill that's in front of the Senate right now on payroll taxes, we're actually going to bring in more revenue with the FairTax than we bring in with the current system, but it's designed to be revenue neutral because I know that we must pay taxes. But we mustn't make it hard to do. That's a choice we've made in this body, and it's the wrong one.

Mr. Speaker, take a look at H.R. 25, the FairTax. You can find out all about it at www.fairtax.org, all the information, all the studies. We started with a blank sheet of paper, we came up with a plan that starts everyone on a level playing field. And so far, Mr. Speaker, we've attracted enough cosponsors on both sides of the Hill to make it the single most popular fundamental tax reform bill in Congress.

I thank you for giving me this time this afternoon to talk about it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet on Monday next, at noon for morning- hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time.

You know, for folks who aren't accustomed to seeing what you and I just saw, I think that's quite a treat. In about--what does it turn out to be? In about 45 minutes, we've had the majority leader for the Republicans and the minority whip for the Democrats lay out in intricate detail the differences that we're facing here as well as the commonalities that we're facing here. That hasn't happened in a little while. It was a little more spirited today than it sometimes is as they come down on Friday afternoons to share with each other what the schedule will be going forward, but that's always a treat to see, and I hope folks enjoyed being able to be a part of that.

What I have on my mind today is twofold. We're talking about jobs. All day, every day in this body we're talking about jobs. And much like you saw the majority leader and the minority whip lay out competing opinions, competing views of what America should look like going forward, we have competing views about what creates American jobs. And I will tell you that, Mr. Speaker, we sometimes spend too much time talking about the creation side that we ignore the destruction side. Because it's absolutely about creating jobs, but it's so much easier to stop killing jobs.

Creating jobs, we can disagree about how to make that happen--lots of different proposals on the table--but destroying jobs should be something that we agree today should never happen, should be something that we say day in and day out we're not going to let happen. And that's the case as we talk about energy independence. Energy independence.

I'm going to quote my Georgia colleague, Jimmy Carter, Mr. Speaker. He was giving a speech in 1979. He said: ``In a little more than two decades, we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half of the oil we use comes from foreign countries at prices that are going through the roof.''

Sound familiar? Mr. Speaker, does it sound familiar? This was a speech given in 1979. ``In a little more than two decades, we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries at prices that are going through the roof.''

I'll tell you what else my Georgia colleague, President Carter, said: ``I am, tonight''--in his 1979 speech--``setting a goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment,'' he said, ``this Nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977--never.''

Hear that. The speech given in 1979 by the President who created the Department of Energy, whose sole mission was to wean the United States from foreign oil and create domestic capacity to meet all of America's energy needs, not just because of jobs but because of national security is what the President said. ``Beginning at this moment, this Nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977--never.''

Well, sadly, that has not come to fruition, and we're going to talk a little bit more about why that is.

Quoting again from President Jimmy Carter: ``From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks.''

Folks, this is President Jimmy Carter--I would argue one of the more liberal Presidents that we've had in our lifetime--from my great State of Georgia. I'm going to be one of the most conservative Members that we have in this U.S. House of Representatives, and I agree with absolutely everything he said. I was 9 years old when he said it: never use more foreign oil than we use at this moment in 1977; every new demand for domestic energy will come from domestic energy production.

Who disagrees with that? Who disagrees with one of our most forward- thinking, energy-independent Presidents that we've had? Who disagrees?

Let's move forward. Let's look at U.S. oil consumption. 1973 to 2004 are the numbers I brought down today. This top line, U.S. oil consumption. U.S. oil consumption. Here we are in 1979 when the President was giving his speech: All the new demand, he said, will come from U.S. energy supplies.

The red lines are oil imports. Red line is the amount of oil that we are bringing in from overseas. Here's the President's speech in 1979. Here's that peak year in 1977. He was giving the speech in '79, but he said let's look at 1977, a peak year for our imports across the globe. We will never import that much oil again.

Well, look out there. Look right out there, 1996, 1997, 1998 through today, we absolutely are. And why? And why? The why is because of U.S. oil production.

You know, we talk--and again, you saw it with the majority leader and the minority whip. When they were talking about their competing visions for a direction for America, they were talking about jobs. And the minority leader asked, he said: Name one economist who will tell you that reducing regulation creates jobs? That was an honest question. Name one economist who agrees that reducing government regulation creates jobs.

Folks, look at the Gulf of Mexico. Look at the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Speaker, you know as I do, as you are from that part of the world, that America's largest shallow water oil drilling company declared bankruptcy in the midst of some of the highest costs per barrel of oil that the world has ever seen. Why? Why, Mr. Speaker, would a U.S. oil producer, the largest in the country, declare bankruptcy when the price that we're getting for a barrel of oil is among the highest in world history?

I'll give you the answer: Because the United States government wouldn't give them a single permit to drill. Hear that. More oil imports from around the world than ever before in American history, focus on both sides of the aisle on creating jobs, and the largest shallow water oil producer in America goes out of business because the American Government won't give them permits.

Tell me, who believes, Mr. Speaker, that that didn't cost jobs, that that regulatory decision to refuse to allow Americans to drill for American oil in American waters, as they have for decades, who believes that didn't cost us a job?

Now, good news. Good news. Those rigs that we would have been using to drill for American oil, they're not being moth-balled. They've just gone overseas to drill for foreign oil that we'll then be able to pay top dollar to get back in America.

Folks, why? Why?

This is an energy independence issue, and it is a jobs issue, and it is a national security issue.

Look back: 1980, after President Jimmy Carter's speech that said we will never import more oil, importing, here, six million, almost seven million, barrels a day.

Fast forward, 2008. That number's almost doubled to 13. It's almost doubled to 13. Folks, we're rich with energy in this country.

Mr. Speaker, you know, as I do, we have been blessed. There are countries around this world that don't have access to fresh water. We do. There are countries around this world that don't have access to beaches and to mountains and to waterways, and we do. There are countries around this globe that don't have access to energy, but we do.

Mr. Speaker, who is it who decides that we can't harness U.S. energy? Who is it? Is it some sort of natural law of nature that says we can't harness U.S. energy?

No. It's the folks who sit in these chairs. It's the folks who sit in these

chairs day in and day out who decide, no, no, you cannot harness American energy. You know where you ought to get your energy? Get it from overseas. Get it from overseas.

Now, you might ask, where is it we have to go overseas to get our energy? And I think that's a fair question, something that we don't talk about very much when we talk about free trade. You know, every single nation that America has had a free trade agreement with, we have a manufactured goods surplus.

We talk so much, Mr. Speaker, about the trade deficit that we have with the world. You've heard it. You hear it all the time, a trade deficit that we have with the world.

Why? It's energy. It's importing energy that creates the trade deficit. Those jobs we talk about, manufacturing jobs, good, high- paying manufacturing jobs, in everybody's district in the country, we have a trade surplus with every single nation with which we have a free trade agreement. What we don't have is an energy surplus.

These are the top oil-producing countries in the world, top oil- producing countries in the world. Our green line up top is the former Soviet Union; it changes over to Russia. You see it's right up there at the top even as we enter 2010.

This beige line is Saudi Arabia. It is also up there at the top as we enter 2010.

Down here you see the next biggest oil producers, China in purple, and Iran in blue. You tell me if that's who you want to import our energy resources from.

And here, in red, is the United States of America. This is production in millions of barrels per day. This line should be going up. This line should be going up, and this line is going down, and the question is, why? Why?

Look again to the seats in this room, Mr. Speaker. Look again to the policymakers in this country. Bill after bill after bill we have passed in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, that would free up the American energy production that would create jobs, not tomorrow, not a week from tomorrow, not a year from tomorrow, but today, that would create jobs today, and those bills languish in the Senate.

Do not tell me that regulations don't impact jobs. Asking the question, does an economist agree that regulation removal would create jobs, folks, we don't need an economist. We need any mom or dad in the country. We could get a sixth grader to come and say what's going to happen. If regulations put people out of business, removing those regulations will let them come back in.

Largest oil-producing countries in the world, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China and the United States of America--we're in good company. We are in good company, Mr. Speaker, in the top five oil-producing countries in the world; but we're going down while every other country is going up. We are producing less, while folks with whom we have fundamental disagreements about a world view, their production goes up.

And so who do we get our oil from, Mr. Speaker? Are we able to find enough oil in this global market to buy only from our friends? No, we're not. We buy from anybody who'll sell to us. And I don't need to speculate on what they do with the dollars we give them. I think we all have suspicions of our own.

This chart, Mr. Speaker, is American oil production, U.S. field production of crude oil. We had a slow start back in the 1800s. We didn't know how powerful it was going to be. I'm not going to fault us for that.

We started to sort out the technology, Mr. Speaker; we started to put it to good use. You see that spike running right up into the 1970s when President Carter was giving his speech. In fact, there's a little jog in the chart here, Mr. Speaker. You can't see it, but oil production went down, and Jimmy Carter gave a speech. He said, we are going to find domestic sources for American energy. We are not going to sell our future away to the world for the price of a barrel of oil. We are going to do it ourselves. And so you see an uptick.

President Carter, you know, he's known for oil, oil embargoes, this energy speech. But really solar energy for which I would say I remember President Carter most fondly. He began that huge push for alternative sources of energy, and he was focused on that throughout this time. But his commitment to energy independence was every bit as large as his commitment to solar energy, and we began to produce more oil.

Now, follow that line, Mr. Speaker, from 1990 straight down through 2010. Straight down.

It's not that we're not blessed with energy, Mr. Speaker. It's that we're also blessed--I'll use the word loosely--with a Congress that believes, or at least believed before this freshman class got here, that they're the smartest folks in the room, and if only the rest of America will do what they want them to do, America will be better off.

Mr. Speaker, the decisions in my community about what makes the families in my community better off are made around the family dinner table, not 640 miles away in Washington, D.C. The decisions about how to make ends meet are made around that dinner table, not 640 miles away in Washington, D.C. The decisions about the environment, about transportation and about jobs are happening at that local level until we destroy that opportunity from Washington, D.C.

We have the oil. We could turn this chart around today; but, regulatorily, we won't allow it to happen.

Next time, Mr. Speaker, someone talks about a jobs proposal, I hope you'll direct them to jobs.gop.gov. Because you know as I know, Mr. Speaker, at jobs.gop.gov you will find the list of more than 20 pieces of legislation that we have passed in this Chamber that sit idle in the Senate that will create jobs, again, not tomorrow, not next week, not next year, but today. Today.

Where's an economist that believes reducing regulation creates jobs? Folks, that's not the question. The question is, is there a family in America that doesn't know for a fact that reducing regulations creates jobs? We're not talking about thwarting clean water, folks. I drink out of the same spigot everybody else does. We're not talking about thwarting clean air. I sniff out of the same air that everybody else does. We're not talking about those public health and safety issues. We're talking about national security.

When you look at this chart, Mr. Speaker, it talks about the nations that produce oil, the oil that we need to run this country, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China.

Is there an environmental issue when it comes to energy production? You bet there is. But I propose this, Mr. Speaker. Give us energy independence. Give us energy independence in this country, Mr. Speaker, by whatever means necessary, by hook, by crook, you drill, you dig, you put the solar panels on the roof. Do whatever you have to do. Give us energy independence today. And I'll be glad to have the discussion that the President from my great State of Georgia started in the late 1970s about having enough alternative energy sources to fund this country.

Folks, who doesn't love green? Green's wonderful. I saw a study the other day that said it's the most soothing color for children. Green's wonderful.

Green's not what we get when we have to bargain with Russia, with Saudi Arabia, with China, and with Iran to get the lifeblood that keeps the American economy going. Green is not what we get.

Folks, drill, dig, do whatever you have to today to achieve energy independence to reduce this imported number. Twice as much oil being imported today as we were when President Carter gave his speech that it would never rise again.

We can do it, Mr. Speaker. We're Americans. We're the greatest engineers on this planet. We have the hardest working workforce on this planet. We have folks who are willing to save and sacrifice like nobody else on this planet. We can do it. The question is, Mr. Speaker, are we in the U.S. House, in the United States Senate, down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House, are we going to free the American people to pursue that goal?

You know, I came to this Congress about freedom. I don't actually view my job as the job of being the smartest person in the room. I view my job as

protecting the freedom of folks back home, because if you've not been down to the seventh district of Georgia, Mr. Speaker, I'll tell you you're going to find some of the smartest folks in the land right down there. It's kind of the north metro suburbs of Atlanta. And folks run this country from there with the decisions they make every day of the week.

We don't need a Federal law that tells you whether to buy a Snickers or a Twix. I'm sure we could have a spirited debate about that here in this Chamber. But we don't need a law to do it because folks just make that decision every day. Are there enough peanuts in Snickers, Mr. Speaker? Do you think we should have them add some more?

You know, those are the kinds of things we decide we're going to regulate out of this body in the name of making everybody happy. The children, when they get their trick or treat bags on Halloween that have the mini-Snickers in there, how much happier would they be if each of those mini-Snickers bars had eight peanuts in them instead of just seven? They'd be so much happier. And it would help peanut farmers in Georgia. It would be a home State jobs creation initiative. We should regulate that from Washington, DC. No. Because families regulate that. If you don't like the peanuts on the Snickers, you're going to get a Payday bar. If there are not enough peanuts in Payday, you're going to go on to the next one.

We as Americans, Mr. Speaker, not as congressmen, as Americans, we sort out these decisions a thousand times a day. How do we get more freedom then, Mr. Speaker, back into individuals' hands?

We're talking about jobs, and that's, again, energy independence. It's a national security issue. It should be the focus of everything we do in this House because it's a national security issue. If you don't believe we would make different foreign policy decisions, Mr. Speaker, if we were not dependent on people who hate us to fuel this economy with their oil, I'd have to disagree because I'm absolutely certain of it. We would make better foreign policy decisions if we produced our own energy resources--and we can.

We're the Saudi Arabia of coal, for Pete's sake. What has this body over the past several years been trying to regulate right out of existence? Coal. The one resource that we have in abundance more than anyone else on the planet. And folks in their wisdom have decided that it would be better not to harvest our coal and instead import oil from people who hate us.

Folks, that's not freedom. That's decisionmaking going on right here. And I promise you we'll get it right in the Seventh District of Georgia more often than not. And when folks believe they're the brightest people in the room, they start to make mistakes.

That brings me to the FairTax.

Oh, Mr. Speaker. You know the FairTax is a tax bill, but at its heart, it's a freedom bill. What the FairTax is, Mr. Speaker, if you haven't looked at it recently, it's a fundamental change in the way we tax America. Today we tax income, and of course, the power to tax is the power to destroy.

I ask young people when I go to schools to speak, I say, Who wants to come to work for me? I'm going to work you hard, and I'm going to work you long. And I'm going to give you $10 an hour. I get a couple of hands that go up. Apparently $10 an hour is not as much today as it was back in my day. I would have jumped at $10 an hour. But I get hands that go up for $10 an hour. Then I say but I'm going to have to tax you $9 of that so you're only going to be able to take home $1. Now who wants to come work long hours for me? All of the hands go down.

The power to tax productivity is the power to destroy productivity. The power to tax income is the power to destroy income. Why? Why do we want to destroy that which makes this country great?

So the FairTax shifts that paradigm. Instead of taxing what people produce, we want to tax what people consume. A consumption tax. You've all seen it. It's in your sales tax. Back home in your State you get taxed on what you consume. And we could do it.

I'll tell you, the FairTax is a jobs program, because when we stop taxing productivity, we get more of it. That creates jobs. I'll tell you, the FairTax is about transparency.

You know, Mr. Speaker, the payroll tax, that 15.3 cents out of every dollar that comes out of your paycheck, that FICA line that you see, now 7.65 percent comes from the employee, the other 7.65 is hidden as an employer tax, but it's a 15.3 percent payroll tax.

Did you know, Mr. Speaker, that 80 percent of American families pay more in the payroll tax than they do in the income tax? Eighty percent of American families pay more in the payroll tax than they do in the income tax.

Now, I just got back from Thanksgiving. I've got doctors in my family, I've got teachers in my family, I've got all sorts of folks so I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, I got an earful throughout the entire Thanksgiving dinner. It was more of a three-day festival for me. Different sides of the family coming into town, and I got lots of good advice about how we should do things differently up here.

But you know not one person mentioned the payroll tax. The income tax was a hot topic. But nobody mentioned the payroll tax, and it's the biggest tax that 80 percent of Americans pay. Why? Because the payroll tax is hidden in every single paycheck that you get. You don't feel it. The government gets its share first. You get your share second. You don't feel it go away unless, Mr. Speaker, you're one of the self- employed folks in America. And instead of paying the 15.3 percent payroll tax, you pay the equivalent 15.3 percent self-employment tax. And then you feel the bite of that tax each and every day. You know that's the biggest tax that you pay.

The FairTax, instead of allowing all of those taxes to be hidden, hidden in business taxes, hidden in income taxes, hidden in payroll taxes separated out so you don't feel the pain, the FairTax takes your entire Federal tax burden and sticks it into one rate, a sales tax on everything that you buy. One rate.

Now, that rate would have to be 23 percent. That's a big number. Twenty-three percent is what the sales tax rate, the FairTax rate would need to be in order to replace Federal income taxes on businesses, on individuals, Federal payroll taxes on businesses, on individuals, the gift tax, the death tax, the capital gains tax, the dividend tax, all of those Federal taxes on income, the FairTax could replace them all with a 23 percent personal consumption tax there at the cash register.

And you'd see it, Mr. Speaker. Can you imagine? Today I can just raise an excise tax here, raise a quarter of a percent on income tax there. I can do lots of funny math as they like to do in Washington, DC, because folks can't feel the pain. They always think it's not going to tax me. It's going to tax somebody else. Yes, I vote ``yes'' because it's going to tax him instead of me. The FairTax puts us all in the same boat and let's us see how much the United States Government costs us.

I'm a cost-conscious shopper, Mr. Speaker. I brought a marker down here with me today in case I had to write any big red marks on my chart. This was free with rebates at Office Max last week. I don't know if anybody else got it. Free with rebates for this marker. Dollars and cents matter. We make different decisions in our personal purchasing life when we experience those costs.

Transparency let's you know how much your government is costing you.

Does everybody want a free marker? Yes. Does everybody want to pay the $6.95 it would have been if it weren't free with a rebate? I think not.

It puts the entire cost of government out where you can see it. Most importantly, the FairTax is about individual freedom.

Folks, have you thought about how the Tax Code manipulates your life?

It doesn't matter whether you sit on the far right over here with the Republicans or if you sit on the far left over there with the Democrats. Sometimes something happens when you show up in Washington, D.C.--and you do. You believe you're the smartest person in the room. Everybody tells you how wonderful you are. You think your ideas are so great. Then you decide--you know what?--that I should reward people for doing this behavior and that

I should punish them for doing that behavior, and if I do it, they'll be happier and America will be better.

So what am I going to do?

I'm going to put a tax on gasoline because I don't want people driving to work. That's bad. Then I'm going to put a tax credit on electric vehicles--right?--because that's green. We were talking about green earlier, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to put a tax credit on electric vehicles. So I'm going to punish those people who buy oil at the community gas station, and I'm going to reward those people who go out and buy these $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 electric vehicles.

I don't actually think that's very good tax policy, but we have the power to do that. We can manipulate your behavior every day of the week by changing how the Tax Code touches your pocketbook. I was talking about that electric vehicle tax credit. That wasn't just an example. That wasn't just something I made up.

Do you remember when this President passed his energy bill? It included in it a tax credit of $6,500 for everyone who would go out and buy an electric vehicle. Well, again, the Volt was not on the market at the time in the 40s, and the only vehicles out there were in the $80,000-$90,000 range. But Americans are industrious, which is why, if you leave America to Americans, we're going to be just fine. Americans are industrious.

What they found out was, if they put brake lights on their golf carts, as well as some side view mirrors, some good seatbelts up front, some headlights and windshield wipers, that the Department of Transportation would certify those golf carts as road-ready vehicles, and they could get the $6,500 tax credit. Ah. Now it turns out you can't buy an American-made golf cart for $6,500. Our golf carts are a little more expensive than that. Yet our friends in China are not only willing to share their oil with us--guess what?--they're willing to share their golf carts with us, too. So it turned out, at the end of tax year 2009, Americans were literally standing in line for VIN numbers for Chinese golf carts so that they could claim this tax credit. Free golf carts for all.

Did anybody get one, Mr. Speaker? Did you get that free golf cart? Don't tell me if you did. I know some folks who did. I'm not proud of it, but I know some folks who did. Free golf carts for all from the United States Tax Code.

Folks, when we bring all that power and all that authority here, it gives us the power to manipulate your life, and we don't always manipulate it for the powers of good. I would tell you, even when we're trying to manipulate it for the powers of good, as the President was trying to manipulate it for the powers of good in his energy bill, we run afoul. Why do we need to pay people to engage in behavior? We make those decisions each and every day.

The FairTax abolishes the income tax code so that no longer can people who think they're the smartest people in the room in Washington tell you how to live your life. It's not just a crazy conservative, Republican idea. No. We have that idea from folks on the other side of the aisle, too.

Let me quote President Obama:

You've got too many companies ending up making decisions based on what their tax director says instead of what their engineer designs or what their factories produce, and that puts our entire economy at a disadvantage.

You were here, Mr. Speaker, when the minority whip asked: Is there any economist who believes that regulations destroy jobs or that removing regulations would create jobs?

We don't need an economist. We've got the President of the United States:

Too many companies make decisions based on what their tax director says, based on tax regulation, instead of what their engineer designs or what their factories produce, and that puts our entire economy at a disadvantage.

President Barack Obama.

We'll go more:

We need to make America the best place on Earth to do business. A barrier government can remove is a burdensome corporate tax code with one of the highest rates in the world.

The minority whip asked: Where is the economist that believes that repealing regulation is going to create jobs?

It's the President of the United States:

A barrier that government can remove is a burdensome corporate tax code with one of the highest rates in the world.

We can do that. We don't need world approval. We don't need to shop that around for a decade. We could do that here, and we have legislation drafted to make it so.

I'll quote Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

Our tax system is broken, and it needs to be fixed.

I probably could have quoted any American and would have gotten that same sentence. I don't think there is anybody who disagrees with that, Mr. Speaker. Our tax system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. Where are the ideas to fix it? I tell you they are here in this House, Mr. Speaker--the FairTax. The FairTax, this personal consumption tax that I'm talking about, has more cosponsors on it--more Members of Congress who have added their names to the bill who have said they want to be a part of that--than any fundamental tax reform legislation in either the House or the Senate. It has the most Members in both bodies. We have proposals to fix it.

Let me quote House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi:

Any tax reform and closing of loopholes, which is really important for us to do as a sense of fairness, must also reduce the deficit.

The minority leader knows we've got to cut out these loopholes, these tax breaks, these deductions, these exemptions. We hear that down here, Mr. Speaker, and you've heard me go on about it in the Rules Committee. Folks come down here, and they say, Oh, I hate this tax break or I hate that tax break. Oh, this loophole is unfair or that loophole is unfair.

Folks, every loophole is unfair. Don't just pick on the oil companies because you don't like oil companies. Don't just pick on the solar panel companies because you don't like solar panel companies. Every loophole is unfair. Everything that advantages your business over another business is unfair. Everything that advantages your family over another family is unfair. There is no secret spot that we go to here in the Congress to get money to pay our bills. There's not one. There's no secret spot. It comes out of American taxpayers' pockets--every penny.

When you cut a special break to a special interest, only one of two things is going to happen--they're going to pay less. So either you, the American taxpayer, is paying more, Mr. Speaker, or we, collective America, are borrowing more and passing that bill on to our children and grandchildren.

Why? Why do we give the special tax breaks and the loopholes? Who elected us, Mr. Speaker, to decide who wins and who loses? My people sent me here to protect their freedom. They're going to decide who wins and who loses by the sweat of their brow and by the power of their ideas. They didn't send me here to choose.

The Tax Code is not supposed to be about picking winners and losers. It's supposed to be collecting whatever revenue there is that we need to run this country. You can't run a country for nothing. I'm not a guy who says let's abolish all taxes all the time. We have a social contract in this country, and we have to collect dollars to pay for national defense. We have to collect dollars to pay for homeland security. We don't need to dispense favors from the Tax Code.

I challenge you, Mr. Speaker, to help me challenge our colleagues. If you want a special favor for that special interest in your district, don't hide it in the Tax Code. Bring it down here as a spending bill. Let's debate it. Instead of saying, Oh, my favorite special interest back home, I want to give you a 50 percent tax break--instead of that, why not just come to the House floor and say, Hey, I just want to write you a big check for 50 percent of your tax bill--because that's what it is. That's all it is--every single tax break, every single tax loophole, deduction, exemption, on and on.

We call it part of the Tax Code; it's just the government writing you a check. Folks we're broke, 15 trillion in debt that we're passing on to our children and our grandchildren. We can't write those checks.

The FairTax does away with that. All the exceptions and exemptions make

the Tax Code transparent for people to understand. Now, one of the things I hear these days in this tough economic time--and it is a tough economic time--folks say, but, Rob, if we had a consumption tax like what you're proposing, people are consuming less in these tough times, and so we're not going to have enough money to run the government.

Well, folks are right. We are absolutely consuming less in these tough times, and I encourage you to consume even less going forward, tighten the belt. Think about that next purchase. Make those decisions. Tighten it as much as you can. Saving is the virtue.

For far too long, we've celebrated consumption as the virtue. We have a chance right now, and it's only right now, Mr. Speaker. We haven't had this chance in almost 100 years. America used to produce what the rest of the world wanted. America used to be the exporting giant that sent the world the goods that it needed and the middle class prospered as a result.

Well, we've gotten out of that habit. We've gotten out of the production business. We're putting more businesses out of business every day with the regulations we've talked about earlier. Now we're in the importing business; now we're in the borrowing business.

But, Mr. Speaker, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity right now. Why? Because there are a billion new middle class Chinese consumers coming online today, and they want what we make. There are a billion new Indian middle class consumers coming online today, and they want what we make. We do not have to buy everything from the world. We can produce everything for the world.

Consumption is not to be celebrated. Production is to be celebrated, which is why I want to take the tax off production and put it on consumption.

This chart represents--the blue is personal consumption through the years, the last decade. The red is personal income. And what you'll see is the red line drops below the blue in bad times and above the blue line in good times. What does that mean?

The red line is income. The blue line is consumption. Yes, it's true that in bad economic times we consume less but, guess what, we earn even less than that.

Is there less personal consumption going on today, Mr. Speaker? There is, but also less personal income going on today. Folks don't have jobs. When you tax income, you tax one thing and one thing only and that's the production that you had today.

When you tax consumption, you tax, perhaps production from today, also savings from yesterday and also borrowing from tomorrow. It's a much more stable income stream for the government. And let me tell you why that's important.

Mr. Speaker, you know, we've only been in this House 11 months now, part of the biggest freshman class this body has seen in a generation. But in just this period of time, we have learned that it's hard to cut spending, hard to find agreement. It takes 218 votes to cut spending. I'm having a hard time finding those 218 votes on programs I want to eliminate. It's hard.

But because income drops lower in tough economic times than consumption, and because income rises higher in good economic times than consumption, what happens is in the bad times, because we have an income tax, we end up borrowing more to pay our bills and in the good times when we have a surplus, how much did we save? Mr. Speaker, do you remember? How much did we save and put a way for a rainy day during those 3 years of surplus in the 1990s? A lot? No, it was zero. Oh, but we spent some more. Oh, boy, did we spend.

And by ``we,'' Mr. Speaker, I know you weren't here. But, boy, did this Congress spend. In good times if you send this Congress the money, it's going to spend it. Don't send it. Don't send it. Because the consumption tax flattens out the volatility of the tax receipts in this country so that in bad times we don't have to borrow as much and in good times we don't spend as much.

That's important because that gets multiplied over Congress after Congress after Congress. You know, the FairTax isn't some sort of amazing record-breaking idea. It just says get the government out of the way. You know, when this Republic was founded, the only way we funded this government was through consumption. That was the only tax we had, a consumption tax.

That's how we funded the government because our Founding Fathers said, if you have enough money to import china from China and silver from India, then you have enough money to help to keep this country afloat. If you have enough money to spend big, you have enough money to pay taxes big.

But let's talk about the individual American family for a moment. You know, back when the income Tax Code started in the 20th century, the Tax Code was 400 pages long, 400 pages long. Now, I read a lot of legislation around here, Mr. Speaker, as you do, and 400 pages is a lot of pages to get through, but I can sort that out. By World War II, 1945, the Tax Code was 8,000 pages long, grew 20 fold in the first part of the century.

By 1984, its was 26,000 pages long; and, Mr. Speaker, we're getting past the amount of pages that I can digest. We're getting past the amount of pages that I can sort out on my own. I'm having to hire professional help now. I've got to hire staff like I.S. Dunklin here in order to sort through all of this Tax Code. That's 1984--26,000 pages; 2004--60,000 pages; 2011--72,000 pages, Mr. Speaker.

Who is it? Which is that American family that has so much extra time on their hands today they've sorted through 72,000 pages of Tax Code to figure out what the tax bill is. It makes a criminal out of all of us, out of all of us.

Did you see the article in Money Magazine? They brought in about 20 different tax preparers, gave them average, middle class families, incomes and deductions and credits, you know, their life, of 20 different tax preparers who looked at this one family's circumstances. How many of them do you think came up with the same answer? How many of them came up with the same tax bill? Zero.

Twenty different tax preparers, 20 different answers about what this middle class American family would owe. You can't sort through 72,000 pages; and, why, this is the thing about the FairTax, Mr. Speaker. We have inherited this Tax Code. This Congress has inherited this Tax Code from those who have gone before us, but we don't have to keep it. That's what's so great about America. We get to choose; we get to decide.

We could erase the Tax Code today. Instead of 72,000 pages, we could have this. We could have a blank page, and we could begin anew to decide what we want the American Tax Code to look like.

Folks, I don't mind paying taxes. I just don't want to pay someone to help me pay the taxes. I don't mind paying taxes, but I don't want to be at risk of getting arrested because I didn't do it right. I only spent 60 hours trying to sort it out, and it should have taken 70 hours.

Folks, if you have to pay the government, if the government has to get the money before your family gets the money, why can't we make it easy? And I'll tell you that we can. Making it easy is what it's about for the American family, but making it easy also has an impact on jobs.

You know, don't think for a minute that we don't live in a global economy. Why, it hasn't always been true. Back in the 1970s we were a little more insular. As a Nation, we could make some different choices.

But today money can leave this country with the click of a mouse. One click of a mouse and you can transfer a trillion dollars from here to Zurich. And guess what, the big CEOs can get on their plane and they can fly to Zurich too. And guess what, the folks who live in Zurich they want jobs too. Everything that has to do with the prosperity of this country can get up and leave, except for the American worker.

You and I are here. You and I aren't going anywhere. So we are invested in making sure that those people who provide the jobs for us stay here too.

Look at the average effect of tax rates. This is effective tax rates. I have got some other charts that talk about the statutory rate, because the statutory rate for business taxes in America is the single highest statutory rate in the world. Again, you can create a

company with a click of a mouse. You can move your trillions with a click of a mouse.

Where are you going to move them? You are going to move them to the country that has the highest rate in the world as America does, or you can move them somewhere that has a lower tax rate.

Folks, as the minority whip was asking if we had an economist, we don't need an economist to sort that out. Every high school student who has had a semester in economics knows if somebody is taxing here and somebody is taxing here, the money is going to go to the low tax jurisdiction. That's the marginal tax rate.

But look at the effective tax rate, because you might be thinking, but, Rob, you just told me about all of the loopholes and the exemptions and the credits. I bet that's how America stays competitive. We just give away all of these freebies kind of under the table to all of our businesses, and that keeps them afloat? No and no.

The effective rate is the rate that folks are paying after you factor in all of those loopholes and exemptions, United States, 27.7 percent. The 58 other countries in the OECD, that group of economically developed countries from around the world, those people who are competitors in a global marketplace, their average rate, 19.5, 19.5. Our friends in the European Union, you have probably been following them. They have got this breed of socialism that's been pervasive over there. It's putting their business out of business one by one by one by one.

You probably think they've got the really big tax rate. No, no, they're just 21.9. The big tax rate belongs to the land of the free and home of the brave. Folks you don't need an economist to sort this out.

Mr. Speaker, we know if we charge employers more to stay here, they're going to do what? Leave. And if we charge employers less in America, they're going to do what? They're going to stay, and more importantly, they're going to come. They're going to come. The Tax Code is a business opportunity. It does not have to be a burden. We have simply made it a burden in this country.

This map shows you what the global tax rates are around the globe. We're here in orange in the 30 to 39 percent rate. We're actually at 39. So we're the highest of the orange countries. Look here who is in 10-19. Here we are, we're up here around 40 in America. Look at our friends to the north. Anybody been to Canada recently? It's not a bad place. They've got good schools, good energy infrastructure. Wars don't break out there very often. Nobody's out to get them. It's pretty pleasant. They charge businesses about half of what we charge for them to have the pleasure of doing business there.

Now, I'm just asking, Mr. Speaker, you see the young people that come through this Capitol. Ask them, where would you start your business? Would you start it in the country that has the 40 percent tax rate or would you start it in a country that has a 20 percent tax rate? Businesses don't pay taxes. Consumers pay taxes, and when we burden our businesses, we not only reduce the number of jobs that are available in this country, but we reduce the competitiveness of our goods overseas, and that's where the American competitive future lies. We must become the exporter to the world, and we cannot do it when we hide taxes in the price of everything we pay.

Have you ever walked up to a Coke machine? I'm from Atlanta, as you know, Mr. Speaker, and we're the home of Coca-Cola, and I like to say wonderful things about Coca-Cola, and I do on a regular basis. But when I walk up to a vending machine out here on Independence Avenue, and there's a Coke machine there and there's a Pepsi machine there, the price is always the same whether you want to buy a Coke or Pepsi. Why is that? Why is the price the same? Why doesn't Coke decide they just want to make a whole lot of money and they're going to charge $2 while Pepsi is only charging $1? Even better, why doesn't Coke charge $5, while Pepsi is charging $1? And the answer is competition.

There comes a time when you cannot sell your product because the price is too high. These orange Nations are raising the price of those products. The green Nations are lowering the price of their products. Look at the green: it's our neighbors in Canada, it's our neighbors in Europe. We cannot compete today with this Tax Code. And who gets to change it? How hard is it, Mr. Speaker? Where do we have to go to find the wisdom to change the Tax Code? Oh, good news. It's right here, right here with us in this body. We can erase the code and start fresh tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, people talk about these things as if they're unattainable. The income tax hasn't always been in this country. It started in the early part of the 19th century. We can stop it just as effectively as they started it. We get to choose.

Looking at the top 75 countries--you're going to have a tough time reading it, Mr. Speaker. These are 75 Nations around the world ranked by how easy it is for businesses to pay taxes in those countries, ranked by the ease of tax compliance. Let's see, we've got a lot of smart guys in America. Maybe we're up here at number one? No. There's Hong Kong at number three. That's a thriving economy. Ireland here at number five. We've got Canada here. We knew they were going to do well. Denmark, Switzerland. No, there's America, over in column number four at number 69. Mr. Speaker, it's an embarrassment. Top 75 countries by ease of paying your tax bill, America is number 69. There are dictators in these other countries that write the tax codes. There are monarchs in these countries that write the tax code. We're the land of the free and home of the brave. We write our Tax Code, and you want to know where the jobs have gone, Mr. Speaker? We have run the jobs off one by one by one. Stop the nonsense about talking about growing jobs and you're still running jobs out. Keep the jobs we've got and the new jobs will come. We can fix this.

Sixty-nine out of 183 countries America ranks, and in terms of the level of the corporate income tax, the level, 131 out of 183. People wonder, they ask the question all the time, why are jobs leaving America? I don't think government can stop it. Government stopping it? Government's causing it. Get that: Government's causing it, and we can stop it, and we must.

But you might be thinking, well, good news, Rob. At least if we've got this terribly burdensome Tax Code and at least if we've got the highest corporate rates in the world, at least if we're doing things more stringently than anyone else on the planet is doing them, we must be getting a lot of money for it; businesses must just be paying tons here. Oh, no. No. Revenues as a percent of GDP, you see the U.S. down there in red. Here is the OECD, the average. We're down there at the bottom.

For all the pain and suffering that we put businesses through to make them pay their taxes, for all the jobs that we lose in this country because businesses know it's too complicated to do business here, we don't get much for it.

Interesting sideline, Mr. Speaker: If you go over to the former Soviet bloc countries, you'll find most of them have flat taxes these days. The flat tax, consumption tax, sales tax, all of these taxes that we know generate job growth. We can't get one in America, but the former Soviet bloc countries got one. They all got them. Why? Because they were starting new countries where they could start from scratch and do it any way they wanted to. And when you start from scratch, you end up with a flat tax. You end up with a consumption tax. You end up with something that's going to grow your economy instead of punish it. We're punishing our economy, and we're not getting a thing for it.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 25 is the FairTax. H.R. 25. Folks can find it at thomas.loc.gov. That's the Library of Congress' Web site that does all of the legislation, posted for all Americans to see and read. It's only about 115 pages long. It's a short read, not 75,000 but 115 pages long, talking about what we could do if we had the will to do it. I think we do have the will. We have more cosponsors of the FairTax than any other tax bill in the House. The Senate, the Senate version of the FairTax, more cosponsors on the Senate version of FairTax than any other fundamental tax reform bill in the Senate. We can do it, Mr. Speaker, but it's a heavy lift.

And if folks have suggestions, Mr. Speaker, if you would encourage folks, if it's about the FairTax, if they know how we can get this country back on track, they can send an email to [email protected] and you will be able to see it. If it's about energy independence and how we can change national security in this country, how we can reclaim all of the bounty with which God has bestowed this country, [email protected], Mr. Speaker, is an email address that folks can send their ideas to about how we can get this going forward, because I am certain as I am that the sky is blue that the best ideas for saving America in this time of crisis, Mr. Speaker, they are more likely to come from the family dinner table back home than the committee hearing room here.

That's who we are here. We're just folks who used to be at the family dinner table back home, and we've taken 2 years out of our lives to come up here and be a part of a larger discussion, but the good ideas still come from back home. Mr. Speaker, if folks would send in those ideas, we can begin to change this Chamber one seat at a time. We can begin to effect this process one Member of Congress at a time. Members of Congress don't change their minds or change their votes because of lobbyists on Capitol Hill. No, they change their minds and change their votes because of lobbyists back home, and that lobbyist is named Sally the pharmacist, and that lobbyist is named Steve who works at the foundry. Those lobbyists are the individual voters back home. That's what effects change in this place. That's what causes change to happen in Washington, DC.

The American people still run this Republic. I see it every day, and Mr. Speaker, if the American people would reclaim this House, reclaim this House by reclaiming their Representatives, by pushing forward those commonsense ideas--we don't need an economist to tell us, we know it to be true--we can reclaim this country.

I'm not telling you it can happen overnight. I'm not telling you it's going to be easy. But if there is one thing I am certain about America, Mr. Speaker, is in times of crisis we get the job done. If there's one thing I know about the American family, it's if you tell the American family they can't, then they will. We can do it, Mr. Speaker. 300 million Americans together can do this, but their ideas have to be heard.

This big freshman class, I would argue, is doing a better job of making the families' hopes and dreams heard on Capitol Hill than we've seen in my lifetime. But we can still do better. [email protected] and [email protected]. We will get those ideas heard.

Mr. Speaker, I'm grateful to you for providing me the time this afternoon. I yield back the balance of my time.

I'm happy to be down here this morning. I often come down here with something on my mind, Mr. Speaker. Invariably, one of my colleagues says something that inspires me even more than what I had on my mind when I came down. That's the case this morning.

My colleague who was here right before me said the value of higher education in terms of future earnings is undisputable. The value of higher education, Mr. Speaker, in terms of future earnings, is undisputable. And he then went on to talk about all the Federal programs that provide money so that people can seek higher education.

Now my question is, Mr. Speaker: If the value is undisputable, why do we have to pay people to do it? If the value is undisputable, why do we have to pay people to do it? That's what happens in this Chamber too often, Mr. Speaker.

I think back to 1787 and the passage of the Constitution. The Constitution, as conservative as it is in terms of preserving individual liberties, would not have passed, would not have been ratified, without the addition of the Bill of Rights. Our Founding Fathers were so concerned about a Federal Government trying to do too much that the colonies would not ratify the Constitution in the absence of the Bill of Rights--the Bill of Rights, which sole purpose is to protect individual liberties.

Mr. Speaker, as I look around at what makes America great, it's never something that comes out of this United States House of Representatives. It's something that comes out of a family next door back home. It's something that comes out of a community back home. It's something that comes out of individual liberty and freedom back home. And my job as the representative of 900,000 folks in the great State of Georgia is to protect their liberties from the natural inclination that exists in this body to think they have all the right answers.

We talk about higher education Mr. Speaker. In the great State of Georgia, we have what's called the HOPE Scholarship program. It's funded by lottery money. I would have voted against the lottery, but the lottery won anyway, and now it funds higher education for all Georgians. It's a huge job creation tool. Folks want to come and relocate their business to Georgia because they know kids with an accomplished high school record are going to be able to go to college for free.

That's a State initiative, Mr. Speaker. We're not going to pass a national lottery up here and try to provide free college education for everybody in the country. That's not the right answer. The right answer is to have States and local communities exercise those freedoms and implement their ideas back home.

When I was growing up--and it didn't occur to me at the time, Mr. Speaker, how meaningful it would be--but there used be a cliche that when something was really hard, you'd say: It takes an act of Congress to solve it. Have you heard that cliche, Mr. Speaker? It takes an act of Congress to solve that because the problem is so hard and it's hard to pass something in Congress. It's hard to get an act of Congress. And yet every time we make a mistake, Mr. Speaker, in the name of trying to do good, in the name of trying to have the best idea, in the name of trying to tell everybody in America if only they'll do what we tell them to do they will be happier, every time we make a mistake it literally takes an act of Congress to fix it.

Mr. Speaker, we're not in charge of providing happiness to America. We are in charge of preserving Americans' freedoms so that they can find their own happiness.

Mr. Speaker, there are lots of countries on this planet that do not share the freedoms that we have. There is only one country on this planet that protects individual liberty and freedom as we do. When we talk about the direction of America, Mr. Speaker, we have to decide are we going to protect those things that have always made this country great--individual liberty and individual freedom--or are we going to go the way of the rest of the world, which is looking to a central government that thinks it has all the right answers.

Mr. Speaker, they had it right in the summer of 1787. I hope we get it right here in this Congress.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 477 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Madam Speaker, House Resolution 477 is a structured rule for the consideration of three bills: H.R. 527, the Regulatory Flexibility Act; H.R. 3010, the Regulatory Accountability Act; and H.R. 3463, a measure to terminate the Election Assistance Commission and end taxpayer financing of presidential elections and campaigns.

Not only do these bills show this House's commitment to small businesses, but they also demand that agency rulemaking be held accountable, reclaiming that authority that is vested here in this House.

H.R. 527, the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act, requires agencies to analyze the impact that a new regulation would have on small businesses before the regulation is adopted. By requiring all Federal agencies to obtain input and develop and conduct regular regulatory reviews of existing regulations, this bill, I believe, complements and codifies President Barack Obama's commitment in Executive Order 13563 that directs agencies to review their regulations and solicit public input.

H.R. 3010, the Regulatory Accountability Act, makes further positive changes. It reforms and modernizes the Administrative Procedure Act. It makes agencies more accountable and regulations more cost effective. In a recent study, Madam Speaker, that the Small Business Administration commissioned, they estimated the cost of the U.S. Federal regulatory burden at $1.75 trillion. Now, that's not to say there aren't benefits that outweigh that burden; but when the burden is that substantial, Madam Speaker, we have to have a process in place that balances those benefits and those burdens, and that's all H.R. 3010 asks to do.

Madam Speaker, time and time again the American people have demanded more accountability from their Congress, more accountability from their government. This collection of bills today not only provides that accountability of Congress, but requires that accountability of our executive branch agencies.

As we talk about accountability, Madam Speaker, it's important to note that these bills are paid for by terminating the Election Assistance Commission. You will remember, Madam Speaker, that was a commission created in 2002 that was supposed to sunset by 2005 and yet has continued even until today. That commission was set up in the aftermath of the hanging chads of the 2000 Presidential election to help States implement election reforms, to help States make sure the integrity of their electoral process was preserved. And yet today, 6 years after the expected sunset of that commission, we hear from our Secretaries of State that they no longer need that commission, that that commission is not providing useful benefits to them. By terminating that, we're going to save the American taxpayer more than $600 million over the next decade.

Madam Speaker, taken together, these three measures, H.R. 527, H.R. 3010, and H.R. 3463, help small businesses, increase agency transparency, and increase public participation in the entire regulatory process. They save money for hardworking American taxpayers and are positive reforms that this Congress can pass in a bipartisan way.

I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support these underlying measures, and I hope they will support this rule so that we may consider them today.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I look at the clock above your head. I think it's been about 11 minutes since my colleague Debbie Wasserman Schultz called for a toning down of the rhetoric and focusing more on policy. I don't think we were able to make it to minute 15.

I will quote my friend as he referred to Republicans: Either they don't care about the economy, or they are just acting for political gain.

Is that all there is? Either folks don't care, or they're just acting for political gain. It could be that their principles are different. It could be that their principles are different, but I don't actually believe that. I believe our principles are the same, because what these bills do is one thing and one thing only. Let's balance the regulatory burden with the benefits that it provides.

Madam Speaker, who is it in America that does not believe that balance is important in what we do here in Congress? I hear it back home all the time: Rob, balance. I want you to get things done, but I don't want you to get things done that are the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. I want you to come together and work on these issues.

Who is it, Madam Speaker, that does not believe that regulation to protect health and safety is important? I do. I come from one of the farthest right districts in the country. I believe health and safety are important things to regulate, but I believe we should balance those regulations.

When we doubled the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency between 2008 and 2009, where do you think that money went, Madam Speaker? The environment that I live in in Georgia was clean and thriving in 2008. But when you double the amount of money that you give to regulators, they have only one thing that they can do with it, and that's regulate more, regulate more.

We need balance, and that's all these bills are asking for. I have all the committee reports here, Madam Speaker, if any of my colleagues would like to come and look at them. There is not a line in any of these pages that says: Thou shalt not regulate. Not one. What they say is: Thou shalt regulate with balance--with balance.

A friend of mine was walking through the Occupy Atlanta protest the other day, Madam Speaker. A fellow came up and shook his fist at him. One of the protesters shook his fist at my friend and said, It's all about jobs. And my friend looked him in the eye and said, You know, you're exactly right. You should go out and hire somebody. You should go out and hire somebody. The fellow said, I'm not talking about providing jobs. I'm talking about I want a job myself.

Well, that's right. Every single bill that this Congress considers that helps job creators helps jobs.

We've got to end the rhetoric of loving jobs and hating job creators, Madam Speaker. There's only one opportunity that we, as Americans, have for employment, and that is finding an employer. And line after line after line of these bills say, before you punish American industry, make sure the balance is there, because, let's be clear, Madam Speaker, it's not that these jobs don't have to be performed.

Time and time again I hear my colleagues bemoaning the fact that we're not creating jobs. I, too, bemoan the fact that this administration has not created jobs. But that's not our only problem. Our problem is jobs that are leaving this country, Madam Speaker. Our problem is destroying even more jobs.

Industry is going to continue to operate around this planet. We can either embrace it here in this country in a balanced way or we can run them all overseas.

There's something that I believe we sometimes do disagree about here in this Congress, and that is that government cannot create jobs. Government can create an environment in which job creators can create jobs.

I cannot pass a bill in this Congress, no matter how hard I try, Madam Speaker, no matter how hard I work, that will make everybody in this country rich. I cannot do it. But this Congress has succeeded all too often at passing bills that can make everybody poor.

Balance, Madam Speaker, is what these bills contain. What this rule does--and it's important because it's a new operation that we're doing here in this House; and I'm very proud of it, and I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle are proud.

This is not an open rule today. I don't want to claim that it is. It's not on open rule. What we did, though, as the Rules Committee, is we asked all of our colleagues, anyone who has a proposal that they believe will make these bills better, send those amendments to the Rules Committee for consideration. Anybody--Democrat, Republican--send those amendments to the Rules Committee for consideration. This is what we did in the Rules Committee.

We received six Democratic amendments for H.R. 527, six ideas from the 435 Members in this House, six ideas for making these bills better. They all came from the Democratic side of the aisle, and we made every single one of those ideas available for debate here on the House floor today. You didn't used to see that. You didn't used to see it under Republican administrations. You didn't used to see it under Democrat administrations. That's what we're doing here today in a bipartisan way.

H.R. 3010, sent out a notice to the entire Congress, Send your ideas for making H.R. 3010 better. Send them to the Rules Committee so that we can consider them for consideration on the House floor. There were 12 ideas that were submitted, Madam Speaker--one Republican idea, 11 Democrat ideas. Three of those Democrat ideas were later withdrawn, said, We don't want to bring those ideas to the floor. So that leaves us with eight, and we brought all but one.

My colleague from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), his amendment was not made in order because my colleague from Texas (Mr. Olson) had an amendment that was substantially similar, and knowing that time is valuable on the House floor, we wanted to consider all ideas, but not all ideas from everybody, each idea only once.

Seven Democratic amendments, one Republican amendment made in order because we invited the entire United States House into this process.

This is the time on the rule, Madam Speaker. I'm not here to debate the underlying provisions. We've provided time to do that. But I do want to defend this rule as an example of what we ought to do.

Is it a little more convoluted than I would have liked? Yes, it is.

Is it a little outside of my issue areas? Yes, it is.

But does it make in order all of the amendments that our colleagues want to submit? It provides for time for debate on every single idea submitted.

That's an important change in this House, Madam Speaker. I'm grateful that we've been able to do it, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Even though I'm a freshman in this body, I have been working hard to try to find metrics by which I can judge what's happening here because this body is not like so much that happens back home. The metric that I have found while we're debating a rule is that the less folks are talking about the rule, I think the better job we did crafting it. I think that's right. Because if it was an awful rule, we'd spend our time talking about what an awful rule it is. When it's a pretty good rule, we spend our time talking about other issues on the floor.

I happen to agree with my friend from New Jersey. A thousand dollars for a family earning $50,000, that's real money. Now, I would say, though, to my friend from Massachusetts that if you take that $1.75 trillion burden that the Small Business Administration tells us is upon the American people because of regulations, that's actually $5,000 per person. That's $15,000 per a three-member family. And so yes, I agree with my friend from New Jersey that we should absolutely cooperate on focusing on those burdens. The burden we're focusing on today? Even larger, by orders of magnitude.

I'd be happy to yield.

My friend flatters me by thinking I have the answer to that information as a young freshman on the House floor, but I'll tell you this. I'll tell you that two things are true, and it is a puzzler for me on the payroll tax holiday that's gone on this year.

On the one hand I will tell you that Republicans are absolutely the party of lower taxes and not higher taxes and that actually speaks to this issue. We're also the party of making sure that we're paying for those commitments that we're making. Social Security is different from any other tax, and when I go and talk to my grandfather, he'll say, ``Rob, I want that Social Security. I paid into it all my life.''

Well, we're not paying into it right now. The proposal is not to pay into it next year, the proposal was not to pay into it last year. I'd be interested to ask my friend if he's prepared to support lowering those Social Security benefits because, again, this is something we're paying into.

I'd be happy to yield.

I would say to my friend that the majority, again speaking out of school as a young freshman here on the House floor, but I know enough about my leadership to know the majority is absolutely committed to protecting and preserving Social Security not just for this generation but the next generation and beyond. And the question is going to be can we find a proposal, because the one that was passed last year was not a proposal that both lowered tax burdens and protected the solvency of Medicare and Social Security.

We must be sure not to further bankrupt a program that we all agree is already going bankrupt. I look forward to that debate, Madam Speaker, between now and the end of the year.

And it's not just that tax that's expiring. I know my friend is also concerned about the Bush-Obama tax cuts that were extended in December of 2010 and wants to be sure that those will be extended in 2011 on into 2013.

I'll be happy to yield.

I would say to my friend that I happen to support up- down votes on all sorts of things. I'm an open rules guy, and I'm very proud of our Speaker who believes that the House works best when the House works its will. That's really one of the changes that I understand we've seen in this year that we haven't seen in years past.

I think that's important, Madam Speaker, for us to be able to bring those votes to the floor.

But it's also important to make sure that folks have all of the information in the same way that folks might be tempted to mischaracterize these balancing provisions that we're bringing forth today as some sort of Republican chicanery.

Folks might also be tempted to characterize something that is going to hasten the bankruptcy of Social Security as being something that has no consequence at all. There really are consequences to this decision. And to say to my friend I look forward to a robust debate on that because it's an important issue for American families.

With that, Madam Speaker, I would like to reiterate that on H.R. 527, six Democratic amendments offered, six Democrat amendments made in order. The House works best when the House works its will. The rule today is providing that opportunity.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume, Mr. Speaker, to say I'm always happy to find things that I agree on with those across the aisle.

I'll say to my friend from California that we're both new in this House and that I spent my Saturday doing those very same things. My small business owners told me that very same thing, though they told me one more thing.

They said, Do get the foot of government off the throat of my small business. They did say, Rob, you cannot help me by doing more, but you can help me by doing less. You can help me by getting out of the way and by letting me do what I do.

The question then becomes how we get those customers in that store, and there are absolutely two visions for making that happen. We can either try to dispense more favors from Washington, DC, Mr. Speaker. We can try to pump more money that we don't have out of Washington, DC, money that we're borrowing from our children and grandchildren; or we can try to get folks higher- and better-paying jobs--more jobs--which is what this rule is about today.

We are running jobs out of this country. We are forcing jobs out of this country. The new report came out of over 150 nations, Mr. Speaker. We are number 69 in how easy it is for businesses to comply with their tax burdens, for example. Number 69. We should be the best place on Earth to do business.

What is it that raises salaries?

Sometimes my friend on the left suggests that we could just raise the minimum wage and just guarantee everybody money, but I don't believe we can. What we can do is give folks an opportunity to increase their productivity. No worker on the planet works harder than the American worker. No worker on the planet has more productivity than the American worker, and regulation after regulation after regulation slows the American worker down. If you want to put more money in the American worker's pocket, you let the American worker be more productive by providing some balance.

Again, nothing we're talking about today, Mr. Speaker, says thou shalt not regulate. We know we're going to regulate. What we're saying is, let's regulate with balance. Then my friend's small businesses and my small businesses will have those customers that they need to get this economy moving again.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I could likely go back and forth all day long with my friend from Massachusetts believing that he loves workers more, with my believing that I love workers more and with his believing that to define ``loving of workers'' means we have to regulate them differently from Washington, D.C. For me, ``loving workers'' means we're going to free them to do those things that they do best, which is to produce.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

I'm proud to be here with you today, Mr. Speaker. When we talk about jobs, jobs, jobs, that's why I came to Congress, and that is exactly what we're talking about in this rule today. And I hope, Mr. Speaker, you have seen with great concern what I have seen here today, and that is a complete disconnect, it appears, with my colleagues on the other side with the understanding that increasing regulation, needlessly increasing regulation, burdens the American worker, undermines the American economy, thwarts jobs. And I say, Mr. Speaker, this is one of those things on which if we disagree we're just going to have to agree to disagree, because it is as clear to me as it is that the sky is blue that when you increase the regulatory burden you make the American family poorer for it.

I know I can't ask for a show of hands here, Mr. Speaker, but if I did and said, Who is it, who wants dirtier drinking water back home in their district? Who is it that doesn't drink from the same spigot as the rest of us? Who is it that doesn't shop at the same grocery stores as the rest of us? Who is it who doesn't drive on the same roads as the rest of us? We're all in this boat together. We're all this boat together, Mr. Speaker.

I come from the Deep South, and whenever we start talking about environmental issues, it always gets me so pumped up, because, dad gum it, nobody spends more time outside than I do. Nobody cares more about the environment than I do. And yet time and time again you hear that characterization that somehow asking for a balanced regulatory environment, a balanced regulatory environment, is somehow anti- environment or anti-American.

I must tell you, Mr. Speaker, these bills before us today, the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act, the Regulatory Accountability Act, that's why I came to Congress. That is why I came to Congress.

We cannot make everybody rich, but we can make everybody poor. And when we regulate without regard to the benefits of that regulation, without regard to the burdens of that regulation, that's exactly what we do.

My friend quoted the OMB, talking about the values of regulations. I don't dispute that at all. I'm absolutely certain there are some regulatory initiatives that do, in fact, produce a benefit. All I'm asking for is that we balance that benefit with whatever burden it causes, because--and this is a rhetorical question, Mr. Speaker, but do folks honestly believe that the regulatory burden should exist irrespective of the benefits that it provides. That's what we do. In these two pieces of legislation, Mr. Speaker, we ask regulatory agencies to examine those benefits and burdens.

Now, as my friend from Massachusetts talks about partisan politics, I come from a district that was a proud ``no'' vote on both the ridiculous stimulus bill from the Bush administration and the ridiculous stimulus bill from the Obama administration.

We are equal opportunity ``no'' votes on ridiculousness. And that is what we have here as we try to reclaim some regulatory authority from the executive branch agencies.

I'll be the first to say, Mr. Speaker, that I think the Congress went a little light on President Bush. And I certainly believe the last 2 years of the Democratic Congress went a little light on President Obama. I think we have a constitutional duty to defend our legislative prerogative to make the rules that this Nation abides by, not an unelected bureaucrat downtown, but elected officials right here in Washington, D.C., here in the people's House, those of us who have to go home and subject ourselves to voters every 2 years. This is where that authority belongs. And we should have those votes. Yes and no, we should have those votes on whether or not that's our shared vision of America.

Now I'm going to get a little off topic, Mr. Speaker. It's clear to me that we're going to be talking about the payroll tax over the next week or 10 days. I want to encourage all of my colleagues to understand that's not a free discussion. Every penny that you choose not to deposit in the Social Security trust fund is a penny closer to bankruptcy the Social Security trust fund comes.

It's easy to say you're going to get something for nothing, but we're not. $15 trillion in debt, Mr. Speaker; $15 trillion. We've already been giving away something for nothing for far too long. The question is how can we both help the middle class taxpayer with their tax burden and preserve Social Security for generations to come. It's not a freebie, Mr. Speaker. These are tough questions that require serious answers, not on a motion to recommit, not on a motion to instruct, but in thoughtful committee consideration.

I'll get back to the rule now because this has had thoughtful committee consideration. Both the underlying provision and the rule itself have gone through regular order. Mr. Speaker, there's no need to rush these bills to the floor. We can take them through the process to make sure that they are thoughtfully examined line by line by line. And these bills have been.

Interestingly enough, Mr. Speaker, that's all these bills are asking of our administrative branch agencies--that the regulations that they're promulgating be examined line by line by line to make certain that the benefits outweigh the burdens.

It's a surprise to me, Mr. Speaker, that it's even something that we're arguing about today. I would have thought that this is common sense. Certainly in my district it's common sense. Perhaps other constituencies feel differently--balancing the benefits with the burdens. Don't let folks tell you, Mr. Speaker, that regulations come without a burden. I'll give you an example. I have a cardboard box manufacturer in my district, manufactures cardboard boxes. It may not be glamorous work, but it's important work. I was visiting the plant the other day. They said: Rob, when they were talking about the ethanol regulations, did they ever talk about the impact the ethanol regulations would have on cardboard box manufacturers?

I said I wasn't in Congress then, but I never heard about it.

They said when you decided that you were going to insert ethanol in every gallon of gasoline, you also decided you were going to raise the price of corn. And we use corn starch in the glue that holds our boxes together, and we use corn starch with our fiber to make our boxes stronger. And every time you pass a regulation that increases the use of ethanol and decreases the availability of corn to other sources, you raise the price of our boxes. You can produce boxes anywhere in the world; and if we can't stay competitive, we're going to lose this business overseas.

Mr. Speaker, there are unintended consequences to the work of this body every single day, and the arrogance to believe we can foresee them all astonishes me. We must understand our fallibility. We must understand that we cannot foresee all of those consequences.

So every time we have an opportunity to measure, Mr. Speaker, every time we have an opportunity to look at the pros and the cons to ensure that we're getting it right, Mr. Speaker, every time we pass a regulation, we steal freedom from someone somewhere. Understand that. Every time we pass a regulation, we steal freedom from somebody somewhere.

Our government is a social contract where we agree to give up individual liberty so we can exist collectively. We have public services for safety and fire, on and on and on. But every single one of those comes at the expense of personal liberty. But we have decided that the expense is worth it.

Mr. Speaker, these bills do that today: balance benefits and burdens, provide that information to the American voter, and let's make sure that what we're doing is worth it.

Mr. Speaker, this is an example of how one ought to do a rule, how one ought to open up the process, how one ought to encourage debate on all of the ideas that are brought to this House floor. I encourage strong support for this rule. I encourage strong support for the underlying legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

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

We have just gotten back from Thanksgiving, a uniquely American holiday. We're grateful for all of the blessings that we have, blessings that come from God the Father and blessings that come from having won the birth lottery and being born an American.

As I watch the challenges that are going on around the globe, Mr. Speaker--I look at the challenges in Europe, I look at the challenges in Africa, I look at the challenges in Asia--we need to be proud of American exceptionalism. We need to focus on those things that exist here and here alone. Mr. Speaker, in the coming weeks with the challenges that we are going to face, let us not look to nations around the world and see how they are doing it. Let's look to those values and principles that have made this country great for over 200 years, and let's double down on those.

Mr. Speaker, this is my first time down here as a freshman during Special Orders, my first time trying to coordinate charts and talk the talk and walk the walk all at the same time.

But I'm excited about it because I'm down here to talk about the Fair Tax. And if folks don't know what the Fair Tax is, it's H.R. 25. You can find it at www.thomas.gov, that site that everybody should have bookmarked if you care about what goes on here on the House floor. Because if you don't know, everything that goes on here is available in realtime at www.thomas.gov. It's done through the Library of Congress. It's not a Republican thing or a Democrat thing. It's just the real deal, what's actually happening down here.

And if you go and you look up H.R. 25, it's the Fair Tax. What the Fair Tax is is a bill that repeals all income-based Federal taxes and replaces them with consumption-based taxes.

Now, my friend from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) was just down here on the House floor, Mr. Speaker. He was talking about our Founding Fathers and those things that were happening between 1776 and 1787. And in that time, we funded all the Federal Government with consumption taxes--it was not income taxes; it was consumption taxes--under the theory that if you had enough resources to go out and buy that silver tea set from England, then you had enough resources to help fund the Republic. And if you spent all your time working on your farm, and you just barely had enough money to buy thread at the local five-and-dime, then we weren't going to tax you as heavily.

If you look at this poster, Mr. Speaker, in 1913, right before the income tax began, we had 400 pages of Tax Code in America. Just the last century, in the 1900s, 400 pages of Tax Code and regulations. By World War II, that 400 pages had grown to 8,000 pages, 20 times as much Tax Code by the end of World War II. By the time we were in Korea, 14,000 pages of code and regulation. By the 1970s, 19,000 pages of code and regulation. And in the 1980s, 26,300 pages of Tax Code and regulation.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I'm a reader. I love to sit down and educate myself through the written word; but I have to tell you, 26,000 pages of Tax Code and regulation is going to make a criminal out of all of us because you can't possibly understand all of the ramifications of the tax consequences of your decision.

Do you remember 1986? That was the last time we fundamentally overhauled the Tax Code. 1986. In fact, if you go to www.Thomas.gov, like I suggested, and you look at the laws and regulations, you'll see the Tax Code of 1986. It was the Tax Code of 1954, updated Tax Code to 1986. That was the last time we flattened rates and broadened the basis. Flattened the rates and broadened the base. And where did we end up? Between 1984 when we had 26,000 pages of Tax Code and regulation, we went through this process of simplifying the income tax, and 10 years later in 1995, we have 40,000 pages of Tax Code. By simplifying the income tax, we grew it from 26,000 pages to 40,000 pages.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if you're like me, you go out and you shop around. Are you going to use the H&R Block tax software? Are you going to use the Microsoft tax software? What kind of tax software are you going to use, because you hate paying accountants to do your taxes for you.

You know, I used to just sit down with a pen and paper and do it myself. I used to go through with my calculator and do it myself, but it has gotten too complicated. Why? Because since I have reached the age of majority in 1988, here we have 1995 when I'm coming out of college, between 1995 and 2004, we added another 20,000 pages to the Tax Code, from 40,000 pages to 60,000 pages. In 2007, to 67,000 pages; 2008 kept it to just a little over 67,000 pages. And in 2009, it jumped another 3,000 pages; 70,000 pages of tax legislation.

And to be clear, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about tax legislation, we're talking about the ways in which the government separates you and me and all of the American people from our paycheck. That's all there is in the Tax Code. All the Tax Code is, is how do we separate the American people from their productivity? It takes 70,000 pages in 2009 to sort that out. And 71,000 pages in 2010. And now, 72,000 pages of Tax Code in 2011.

Folks, what the FAIR Tax does, H.R. 25, it asks the question that if we could start from scratch--and by scratch I mean from the 72,000 pages that we do today, to just a blank sheet of paper--if you could start from scratch and draft the Tax Code that America ought to have instead of the one that has been forced upon us, what would you do? What would you do?

Well, there's a lot of difference of opinion on what to do, but simplification seems to be one of those things that we can all agree on.

You know, I didn't come to this House to try to be a good Republican. I came to this House to try to be a good American, and there are lots of opportunities to do that. I like to think those things occur simultaneously more often than not. But look at what folks are saying about the United States Tax Code.

I'll quote House minority leader Nancy Pelosi: Any tax reform and

closing of loopholes, which is really important for us to do as a sense of fairness, must also reduce the deficit.

Right, because if you close the loopholes, if you close all of the lobbyist-funded loopholes, close all of the special exemptions and exceptions and carve-outs, by definition it brings in more money.

Mr. Speaker, did you get the free golf cart in the 2009 tax bill? Does anyone want to admit to having gotten the free golf cart?

In 2009, in the name of a good energy bill, in the name of green energy, we in the wisdom here in the U.S. House and across the way in the United States Senate, of course I wasn't here at that time, but in our wisdom we created a tax credit, a $6,500 tax credit if you would go out and buy an electric vehicle.

Well, Americans are smart, and I love that about America. We are ingenious folks. And what folks figured out was that the $6,500 that folks were giving them if they'd go out and buy an electric vehicle, if you put brake lights, seat belts and side view mirrors on your golf cart, you could get yourself a free golf cart.

Well, it turns out, because we produce golf carts in the great State of Georgia, you couldn't actually get an American golf cart for $6,500. But our friends in China were willing to import a golf cart to America for $6,500, Mr. Speaker.

And so in the fall of 2009 and the spring of 2010, the IRS had to release guidance--hear this, Mr. Speaker--the IRS had to release guidance that said when we first crafted the free golf cart regulations, we said you actually had to have delivery of the cart by December 31. But so many Americans are trying to avail themselves of the free golf cart provision that we're going to change the rules here in late December and say really all you need is a VIN number from the manufacturer, and that'll give them several more months to fill all the orders.

Really, Mr. Speaker? Is that what we need in the Tax Code, a Tax Code that distributes free golf carts to folks who likely didn't even want a golf cart but it was free, and so they availed themselves of it?

Nancy Pelosi agrees with me that we need to get rid of those loopholes.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid: Our tax system is broken and needs to be fixed.

Let's take the poll, Mr. Speaker. Let's go to the most liberal Democrat in the House, to the most conservative Republican in the House, who doesn't agree with majority leader Harry Reid? Our tax system is broken and needs to be fixed.

And we have the ability to start with a blank sheet of paper and make it the way we want to make it. Listen to our President, Mr. Speaker.

This is President Barack Obama: You've got too many companies ending up making decisions based on what their tax director says instead of what their engineer designs or factories produce, and that puts our entire economy at a disadvantage.

That's true. Talk to any small business owner, find anybody who's at a CFO or CEO level in a business close to you and ask that question: Are you making business decisions, or are you making tax decisions?

And every single time they make a tax decision instead of a business decision, America loses. Their shareholders may win in the short term. Profits may gain in the short term. But when we in America decide we're going to do something to comply with these ridiculous 75,000 pages of Tax Code, instead of doing what's best for business, instead of what's best for customers, instead of what makes sense, America loses. And in these challenging economic times, we cannot lose that productivity.

Let me go back to President Barack Obama. He says this: We need to make America the best place on Earth to do business. The Tax Code is a barrier government can remove, a burdensome corporate Tax Code with one of the highest rates in the world.

Hear that. We talk so much about Republicans and Democrats. Here, common sense coming from the President of the United States: We need to make America the best place on Earth to do business. A barrier government can remove is a burdensome corporate Tax Code with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.

Folks, that's agreement. I will tell you, if I had to characterize him, Mr. Speaker, I would tell you that the President sits a little further to the left than I do. If I had to characterize my own voting record, I'd say I sit a little further to the right than most folks here in this House. But this is common is ground that we can all agree on.

Let me just show you what that tax rate is.

I hope the colors are showing up, Mr. Speaker, for folks back in their offices watching on TV because the red line here is the U.S. corporate tax rate. The blue line is the OECD average excluding the U.S. Now the OECD is that group of developed nations around the world, those folks that we would say have free economies and growing economies.

This chart goes back to 1981. It goes back to the beginning of the Reagan era. You see America's corporate tax rate higher than the average tax rate in the rest of the world. This is that tax reform that I talked about in 1986 where you see the tax rate dramatically drop-- dramatically drop--and for a short period of time, Mr. Speaker, we became, on the red line, more productive and more competitive with the rest of the world as the rest of the world was on the blue line.

And look at those years. Do you remember those years--1988, 1989, 1990? Do you remember those productive years? I think that's when the yuppie label came around and folks were buying all their fancy automobiles and the first of the big houses. I was just coming of age in that time, but I remember the conspicuous consumption. And why? Because America was creating wealth. And then what happened? Here's the tax increase of the Clinton years, bumps right up there, and you see a flat line of American corporate taxation at about 39 percent, that flat red line of corporate taxation. Fair enough. I prefer predictability. I think we ought to know the direction things are going, and I think we ought to be able to plan to make business decisions.

Here is a very predictable line of corporate taxation. But what's the rest of the world doing? While America has a very predictable 39 percent tax rate, what's the rest of the world doing? Getting lower and lower and lower. Lower and lower and lower and lower. Folks, do you know who can't leave America? The American worker. Folks in my district. They can't leave. Capital can leave. A click of a mouse and you can take a billion dollars and move it overseas. If you have a business in America, you can pack up your bags and go. I talk to CEOs every day who do exactly that. They say, Rob, it's just not worth it doing business in America.

Why? Because we're not competitive. Do you want to talk about growing jobs? Mr. Speaker, let's talk about keeping the jobs that we've already got.

I see in the Chamber my friend from Iowa, Mr. Steve King, who has struggled with these issues firsthand and who I know understands as a small businessman before he came to this House what it means to be out there trying to make payroll and trying to stay competitive.

And if the gentleman would indulge me, what do you think it would mean for jobs in America if we got this U.S. corporate tax rate line below that world average, if we, once again, made it competitive to build jobs in America?

I would be happy to yield.

Taking it to zero?

Why not take it to zero? Well, I'll tell you what I might hear back home, I say to my friend. And what do you want to do? Do you want to give business a free pass? Because my understanding is there are only two places we can get taxes. We can either take them from me or we can take them from McDonald's. And wouldn't I rather tax McDonald's than tax me?

I'd be happy to yield.

But you ask the all important question, I say to my friend. Why not take the rate to zero? Why are we arguing about whether it ought to be 25 or 23? I just quoted the President of the United States. He said, let's make America the most competitive place in the world to do business. Well, if we were to lower it to 10, maybe somebody else is going to lower it to 9. If we lower it to 8, maybe somebody else lowers it to 7. What if we take it to zero? And I have voiced my concern that, well, if you take it to zero, that means I, as the American consumer, have to pay all the taxes because corporations won't be paying taxes anymore.

And what my friend, who has years and years, decades and decades of experience in the private sector says is, there's no secret drawer where American businesses get the money to pay taxes. I go out and I buy a Coca-Cola. Where does Coca-Cola get the money to pay taxes? They charge it to me in the price of the product.

My friend is saying that the only taxpayer in America today is the American consumer. There is no other taxpayer. Businesses don't pay taxes--people pay taxes, whether it's the CEO of that business who has a high salary and he pays taxes on his salary, whether it's the consumer of that business who pays in a higher price, or whether it's the shareholder of that business who pays through lower dividends and lower rates of return.

Why not take the corporate tax rate to zero so we will be the most competitive economy in the world?

I yield to my friend.

As Coca-Cola is spread out all over the world, where they happen to have their corporate headquarters in Atlanta, but for how long? But for how long? We talk so much about trying to grow jobs in America. What about just trying to keep the jobs that we've got? What about just trying to make it a joy to do business in America instead of making it a hassle to do business in America?

You might not believe this, Mr. Speaker, but this is a $10 haircut I just got over the weekend. You probably think I paid a lot more than that for this haircut. But as you think about what the gentleman from Iowa said about where costs are hidden, where taxes are hidden, I paid $10 for this haircut. But Derek, my barber, he had to pay 15.3 percent in self-employment taxes. So $1.50 of that $10 went straight to the Federal Government in self-employment taxes. Now he's a good barber, so I suspect he is in higher than the 15 percent tax bracket, but let's just say for the sake of argument, he's in the 15 percent income tax bracket. So out of my $10 haircut, he had to take a $1.50 right off the bat and send it to the government in self-employment taxes, then take another $1.50 right off the bat and send it to the Federal Government in income taxes. So for the $10 haircut he charged me, he's only taking home $7 to feed his wife and kids. So is it a $10 hair cut, or is it a $7 haircut?

What we tell Americans is, oh, we're going to lower your tax burden. But what we've done is to hide that tax burden in the cost of everything we buy because if Derek didn't have to pay those $3, he'd be charging me $7 for a haircut, and he would still take $7 home to feed his kids.

To have an honest discussion about what kind of spending we ought to do in this place, I think we have to bring all of those hidden taxes out of price. Not only does it make us more competitive, as you suggested, but it makes it possible for us as Americans to have an honest discussion about is government doing too little or is government doing too much.

And I think, as you suggested the studies suggest, it's about 22 percent of the cost of everything that we buy, on average, that is hidden taxes that we think we're getting away with, but that we are actually paying at the checkout counter.

Well, I would say to my friend, you talk about cultural transformation, I would tell you that transformation is actually taking us back to that entrepreneurial, self-reliant experience that America began as a Nation. This business of hiding taxes and trying to make people think they're getting something for nothing, that's a relatively new experience in American culture, and it has transformed this country.

I'm big on saying you've got to have skin in the game. To make good decisions you have to have skin in the game. Right now, 50 percent of the American population isn't paying any income taxes. They don't think they have skin in the game. Now, they do because they're paying tax in all of these hidden consumption opportunities that you and I are talking about, but they vote as if they're getting something for free.

And as a Nation, if we're going to make responsible decisions-- particularly as it comes to borrowing from our children and our grandchildren--we have to let Americans know what they are really paying for the size and scope of government. And that's not to say they can't say, I understand how much I'm paying and I'm willing to pay even more, or I hate how much I'm paying and I'm going to pay less. But it will absolutely bring us away from a culture that believes there is a free lunch and back to a culture that understands that decisions have consequences and that there is no taxpayer in America except for we, the American consumers.

I'm happy to yield.

I thank my friend.

You're absolutely right. When I talk to young people--I try to get out to the middle schools and high schools in my district every week when we have time back home--I say, I've got a $10-an-hour job in my congressional office. Who wants to come to work for me? Who wants to come to work for me? And I just gave a powerful presentation about how you can come here and return America to its foundational roots. All the hands go up. And I say, now, just to be clear, though, we're going to have to put a $9 income tax on that $10 an hour, so you're only going to be able to take home $1 at the end of the day. Now, who wants to come work 80 hours a week for me? And all of the hands go down.

The power to tax is the power to destroy, and we use that power here. With all due respect to our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, the Fair Tax that I supported--that you were such a strong supporter of--it has detractors on both sides of the aisle, because what the Fair Tax says is we're not going to manipulate your behavior through the Tax Code anymore. Because the Tax Code allows us to say, if you buy wool sweaters, we're going to give you a tax credit; if you buy polyester sweaters, we're going to take taxes away from you. If you go out and buy Levi's jeans, we're going to give you a tax credit; if you go out and buy Lee jeans, we're going to take taxes away from you.

Over and over and over again we decide who's supposed to win and who's supposed to lose, and we punish or reward the American people and the American small business environment through the Tax Code. And what you and I have said in the Fair Tax is, I don't want that power in Washington. I give that power back to the American people. You choose what kind of jeans you want to wear. You choose what kind of sweater you want to buy. You choose whether you want a golf cart or not.

We are not in the business of picking winners and losers. We're in the business of raising as little revenue as is necessary to run this Federal Government. And that takes power away from this body right here. And it is only those folks who believe that the American people are still smarter than you and I are who want to return that power. And I thank you for being my partner in that.

If the gavel is in the air, I'll just say to the Speaker, if you needed more information, Mr. Speaker, you could find it at www.fairtax.org, or you could visit my Web page at Woodall.house.gov. This really does speak to the challenges of America.

I thank the Speaker for the time, and I thank my friend from Iowa.

Mr. Speaker, it's always nice to come to the House floor after someone has just said ``God bless America.'' It makes me feel good, sir, and I want to associate myself with those remarks.

Candidly, I'm a little worried about what happens here in this country. Mr. Speaker, I know you have the pleasures I do of seeing all the folks from across America who come here to see the procedures that go on here on the House floor, and I know folks often wonder and probably ask you, Mr. Speaker, Where is everybody? What's going on? Well, of course, with the exception of those of us on the House floor, everybody is in their office watching on the

closed-circuit TV so you can multitask and do it all. I came down here to bring words to those folks who are watching on TV.

But really, Mr. Speaker, it's about the youngest folks we have in the country. It's about the economy that you and I are going to leave to the next generation of Americans. And we can do things here in this House today that guarantee a better economy in the years to come. Right now--right now--I don't tweet. I don't use Twitter. I'm not that interesting that I have something to say to folks every moment of the day, but if I were tweeting, I would say that right now in the Joint Economic Committee there's a hearing on fundamental tax reform, asking the question can tax reform boost investment and job creation? And the answer is absolutely, it can.

Here, in this country, what we tax, we destroy. Think about that. The power to tax is the power to destroy.

Mr. Speaker, when I go to speak to high school students, I say, okay, I've got a $20-an-hour job working in my congressional office. Who wants to come work for me? Everybody raises their hand. I said, I'm going to need to tax you about $19 an hour on that, so you're only going to get to take home 1. Who wants to come work for me? And all the hands go down. The hands go down because they don't want to work for $1 an hour. They want to keep what they earn.

The power to tax is the power to destroy. Today, in this country, we tax income. We are the only Nation in the OECD that does not have a consumption tax. We tax income. And when you tax income, which is productivity, you destroy productivity.

I have a proposal that is the most widely cosponsored fundamental tax reform proposal in either the House or the Senate, and it's called the Fair Tax. It's H.R. 25 here on the House side. And I have the great pleasure of working with so many of my colleagues to push that bill forward. It abolishes the income tax in favor of a consumption tax.

Now, when we're in a tough economy like this, folks say, But Rob, I'm cutting back on my consumption. Would we still be able to bring in the revenue that we need with a consumption tax? Well, I bring charts. What you see here in the blue line is personal consumption, and what you see in the red line is personal income. The red line represents what we tax in the income tax, and the blue line represents what we would tax in the consumption tax. And what you see are two things. Number one, they are roughly the same--roughly the same.

Yes, we can tax consumption and bring in the same revenue we get today by taxing income, but when they're different, it's because the volatility of the income is greater than the volatility of consumption. When you tax income, all you get to tax is income. When you tax consumption, you end up taxing income, plus savings people are spending, plus borrowing that they're doing. It's a much more stable tax.

Why is that important? Mr. Speaker, what you know in your time here in the House, as I know from my time here in the House, is that if you give this House more money, we're going to spend it. I don't want to spend it. I wish we wouldn't. And I'm going to vote ``no,'' but I'm going to lose.

If you tax something that's volatile, in the boom years, the money comes pouring in. Do you think we save it for a rainy day? We don't. We spend it. And then when the down year comes, folks are accustomed to a high spending level. What do we do? We borrow it from our children and our grandchildren and spend it anew.

Having a stable income stream that doesn't have the highs and doesn't have the lows will lead to a better Federal budgeting process. And taxing consumption, which is what we take out of the economy, instead of taxing the income, which is what we put into the economy, will grow it;

Mr. Speaker, a few years ago, the Joint Tax Committee here did a study and said, How would we evaluate consumption tax? We don't even have a model for it. How would we do it if we did away with the income tax and brought in the consumption tax? They brought in economic groups from the left and the right. Of course they disagreed about absolutely everything, those groups from the left to the right, all the way across the spectrum, except for one thing, Mr. Speaker. Every single economic model and group agreed that if we moved to a consumption tax from today's income tax, America's economy would grow faster.

Mr. Speaker, every dollar we can grow, every job we can create, they matter today. And I encourage folks to take a look at H.R. 25, the Fair Tax, as a mechanism for making that happen.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I love the Second Amendment. I got my first gun from Santa Claus when I was 6 years old. The first handgun I ever fired wasn't my dad's or my uncle's or my grandfather's--it was my mother's. I got my first concealed-carry application filled out as a freshman in law school. I lived in a bad neighborhood and needed it for self protection. I've had it for the last 20 years. I love the Second Amendment.

But if the Second Amendment protects my rights to carry my concealed weapon from State to State to State, I don't need another Federal law that says, yeah, I really mean it. It's already protected. If the Second Amendment doesn't protect my right to carry a concealed weapon from State to State to State, then the Ninth and 10th Amendments leave that responsibility to individuals and the States to regulate on their own.

I came to Congress to protect freedom. I don't believe the Second Amendment was put in the Bill of Rights to allow me to shoot targets. I don't believe the Second Amendment was put in the Bill of Rights to allow me to hunt for deer and turkey. I think the Second Amendment was put in the Bill of Rights so that I could defend my freedom against an overbearing Federal Government.

I don't want the Federal Government in any issue of the law where the Constitution does not require it.

And it does not require it here.

Don't tell me it's an Interstate Commerce Clause issue; we dismiss that on my side of the aisle regularly. Don't tell me it's necessary and proper; we dismiss that on our side of the aisle regularly. And don't tell me it's full faith and credit because we dismiss that on our side of the aisle regularly.

The temptation to legislate is great. The temptation is great. I absolutely believe in the intent of this legislation. I want the right to carry from coast to coast. Georgia has already orchestrated reciprocity agreements with 25 States. We've got 24 more to go. The Second Amendment exists so that we can keep and bear arms to defend ourselves against government, no matter how well-intended. Rather than arms, I ask my colleagues to use their voting cards today to defend us against the overreach of the Federal Government, no matter how well- intended.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The amendment I have introduced today, because I have such appreciation for the goal of H.R. 822, says: Understanding what we are trying to get is reciprocity across the Nation for all of those States and for all of those citizens that have already labored in the vineyards to achieve reciprocity, let's leave those State agreements in place. If we must take more Federal responsibility, let's not take it from those areas where the States are working, where the process is working. If you live in my next-door neighbor State, in Alabama, you already recognize 22 other States' permits; in Georgia, we recognize 23; in Florida, to our south, 33. The system is working today. Legislatures are working out these agreements today. If we must expand the size and scope of the Federal reach in the gun law legislation, let's not trample on those agreements that already exist to achieve this goal that so many share.

I absolutely support the goal of H.R. 822, which is to ensure that all Americans have concealed-carry reciprocity across the Nation. That is already happening today, Mr. Chairman, through State legislatures, through State attorneys general, through State Governors negotiating these agreements. My amendment would leave those agreements in place and preserve the rights of States to continue to legislate and regulate in this area.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, in closing, I thank the chairman of the committee for his work on these issues. I agree with so much of what he had to say, that it is absolutely true that the merit of this legislation is that it eliminates the patchwork of reciprocity agreements that go on across this country. And the price we pay for eliminating that patchwork is trampling upon the work of the States.

Now, I'm a freshman in this House, Mr. Chairman, and I think small government conservatives in previous Congresses have lost their way, particularly during the Bush administration. They went along with a huge expansion of government regulation, with the very best of intentions. They went along with the huge expansion of the size of government, with the very best of intentions. They increased the regulatory burden of the Federal Government, with the very best of intentions.

And this bill today is brought with the very best of intentions. But when previous Congresses have gone along with the very best of intentions, personal freedom and liberty have been eroded, even with the very best of intentions.

Mr. Chairman, the only thing that happens if the Woodall amendment passes today is that agreements that already exist for reciprocity, and any future agreements made for reciprocity, will be held supreme over a unified Federal standard. I ask my colleagues, my Republican colleagues and my Democratic colleagues, isn't it worth it? Isn't sacrificing a uniform framework worth it to protect the rights of State legislatures and the work of citizens across this country that they have put in to protect, preserve, and promote Second Amendment rights across this Nation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. I appreciate the time.

I'm coming to the floor today with joy in my heart, and candidly I would like to come to the floor every day Mr. Speaker, but I don't always get to. But today, I'm here because we're voting on a balanced budget amendment this week. The first time in 15 years.

Now, I'm a freshman in this House, Mr. Speaker. I've been watching the process for a long time, but I've only had a voting card for 10 months. And I came to this Congress to do the big things, not to argue about the petty things. And I tell folks, Mr. Speaker, that very rarely are we arguing about the petty things, that there's a constituent focus to absolutely everything that we do. But the big things. The big things that change the direction of this country that ensure that this experiment in democracy, that our Republic, survives for another generation.

Fifteen trillion dollars in debt, Mr. Speaker.

Do you remember, Mr. Speaker, you don't have the gray hair that I do, but back in the days of Ronald Reagan we were running $200 billion and $300 billion annual deficits. And folks thought the world might be coming to the end. Now, it put the Soviet Union out of business, but it was big money. Who'd of thought we would come to a day where we're actually running $1.4 trillion, $1.5 trillion, $1.6 trillion deficits every year?

Mr. Speaker, as you know, in the people's House where the people's will gets done, we have choices here. In my district, for example, folks want to tax less and spend less. I hear it every day. Rob, tax less and spend less. I'm sure I've got some colleagues on the other side of the aisle whose constituencies want to tax more and spend more.

That is a legitimate debate for us to have in this House. We should have it. But we ought to be able to agree that spending money we don't have harms the future of this Republic. That spending money we don't have mortgages the future of everyone under the age of 20 and threatens the security of everyone over the age of 60.

A balanced budget amendment is one of those things that we can agree on, one of those issues that is not Republican, it's not Democrat, it's not conservative, it's not liberal--it is American.

Thomas Jefferson said if he could have added but one amendment to the Constitution, it would have been one to abolish the power of the government to borrow, because with that one amendment alone, he would be certain of the security of these United States.

Mr. Speaker, that chance is here with us this week for the first time in 15 years.

Now, I confess when I came to Congress, Mr. Speaker, I didn't expect to

have to vote for a balanced budget. I just thought we were going to be able to do the right thing and balance the budget on our own. I thought that's the job of the Congress. Do what you're supposed to do. Do what's right. Why do you need an amendment to the Constitution to do what's right? Mr. Speaker, it turned out to be a bigger job than I anticipated. The disagreements turned out to be more fundamental than I anticipated, and the desire of constituents back home turned out to be more complicated than I anticipated. This is our opportunity, though.

I have a copy of the Constitution that we have here. It's right behind my job creators card. And I keep it behind the job creators card because balancing the budget in this country has everything to do with preserving economic opportunity in this country and everything to do with growing our economy in the generation to come. My copy of the Constitution has a little space right there after amendment number 27. A space right here, Mr. Speaker, where we can put amendment number 28 today and ensure that our Republic survives for another generation.

You see what's going on in Europe. There but for the grace of God go we. This is our opportunity. It is not a divisive issue.

It is not an issue that divides north or south, east or west, Republicans or Democrats. It is an issue that unites America. It was a huge bipartisan vote in 1995, and it will be a huge bipartisan vote today.

I hope your telephone lines, Mr. Speaker, are ringing as are mine. If not, why not, Mr. Speaker? Why hasn't everyone in your district called to say, Please support the balanced budget amendment? Why, Mr. Speaker, hasn't everyone in my district called to say, Please support the balanced budget amendment?

Raise taxes, lower taxes; cut spending, raise spending--that's an American decision that we get to decide, but borrowing and putting off those tough decisions to another day is immoral. We have a chance this week to change that.

I thank my friend on the Rules Committee for yielding.

I rise in strong support of this rule today. Now, I hear a lot of conversation about States' rights here on the House floor--federalism, you know, that debate that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had more than two centuries ago. It's an important debate to have, and I hope we have that debate on every single thing that we do in this body. I hope we ask ourselves that question every single day: Is this a responsibility and a role the Federal Government ought to be playing, or should this be something that's left to the States?

Sadly, I've heard more of that enthusiasm today than I usually hear down here, but I welcome it--not as a step in the wrong direction, but a step towards that new beginning. I believe that we can absolutely come together around those kinds of uniting issues: Does the Federal Government need to be involved in this or does it not?

The reason I'm in strong support of this rule, however, is that it made 10 amendments in order. You know, this bill, this concealed-carry reciprocity bill--and in fairness, full disclosure, I'm literally a card-carrying member of the concealed-carry bandwagon. I've got my Georgia carry permit here in my pocket, I have since I was 22 and living in a neighborhood that I thought I needed some self-protection living in.

This is a discussion that this body has been trying to have for about 15 years. As long as I can remember watching Congress, this bill has been knocking around in Congress and no one has ever brought it to the floor of the House despite a broad bipartisan majority of the body cosponsoring it. I've always wondered why, because for Pete's sakes, if it's something that a majority of the body is going to cosponsor, then it ought to be something that the majority of the body is going to support, and we ought to bring it to the House floor and let the House work its will.

I'm still struggling with the underlying legislation, but I appreciate this leadership and this Rules Committee for bringing a bill to the floor when more than a majority of the House has cosponsored it. And I appreciate this leadership and this Rules Committee for giving us 10 amendments from which to choose to improve the bill. There are opt- in provisions if you're worried about federalism. There are honor State compact amendments if you're worried about federalism. There are study amendments with the GAO to sort out whether or not there are unintended consequences with regard to nonresident permits.

These choices are out there for us. Not only did this Rules Committee bring forward a bill that other Congresses have not had the courage to bring forward, but it brought it forward in a way that this body can work its will. Eight Democratic amendments, as I recall, two Republican amendments. That's the kind of House I came to Congress as a freshman to work in.

I appreciate the work the Rules Committee did to make this possible, and I appreciate, Madam Speaker, the work of the leadership in guiding us down this path.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time this morning. I came down to talk about jobs too, and I brought with me a card that folks may have seen--I know you've seen it, Mr. Speaker--that goes through the House-passed jobs agenda. I try to keep it here in my pocket so I'll be accurate when we talk about all of the good work that is happening in the people's House to promote jobs and promote the economy.

Because the truth is, Mr. Speaker, as you know, we only have two pockets we can dig into. We can dig into the pocket where we talk about government regulations that we are repealing to help job creators, we can dig into the pocket where we talk about government mandates that we're repealing to take the foot of government off the throat of small businesses, or we can dig into the other pocket. And the other pocket is where America's checkbook is. Because it's not my checkbook, as your Congressman. As you know, Mr. Speaker, when I dig into the pocket for the checkbook, I'm digging into your pocket. Every penny that we spend comes out of your pocket.

So we have two choices as we talk about jobs and the economy. Are we going to dig into the pocket of the American taxpayers' checkbook? Or are we going to get the regulatory burden off of America's small businesses? For me, the choice is easy. But the choice hasn't always been easy in this House. Time and time again, this House goes to the American people's checkbook to find solutions for America's problems. And I will tell you that there's no problem in America that taking money out of somebody else's pocket is going to fix.

The challenges in America are going to come when we get government out of the way. I represent, Mr. Speaker, as you know, a wonderful district in Georgia. I go back home and I talk about what's going on in the United States House. I ask folks what they want to happen on the United States House of Representatives floor, and they say, Rob, stop helping. Stop. Just get out of

the way. Stop helping. You don't have the answers, just get out of the way.

If folks go, as you have gone, Mr. Speaker, to jobs.gop.gov, they see this House's effort to get government out of the way. And we've been successful. We were successful in passing the repeal of the President's health care bill's 1099 provision that burdens small businesses, and the President signed that bill. We've been successful in passing three free trade agreements, and the President has signed. As we know, we have manufacturing surpluses with every nation with which we have a free trade agreement.

But the work still has to be done, Mr. Speaker. There are jobs bills languishing in the Senate. We call them the ``forgotten 15''--15 bills that the Senate could pass tomorrow to get government out of the way and get Americans back to work.

Two pockets we have, Mr. Speaker, the American taxpayers' pocket and the pocket that contains the job-killing regulations that we can repeal today. Let's choose correctly, Mr. Speaker--let's get jobs.gop.gov, let's get this agenda done.