Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge the President not to waive the Federal law on emission standards that is currently protecting Californians from Governor Schwarzenegger's crusade to save our planet by destroying our economy. Putting aside the highly questionable junk science behind the Governor's proposal, the net effect would add up to $5,000 to the price of a new car.

Automobile sales normally account for one-fifth of California's sales taxes, which have already fallen by $1\1/2\ billion over the past 12 months. Ironically, the Governor's also asking the President to bail out California's growing budget deficit at the same time.

So I would respectfully suggest to the President that California's economic folly is not something that he should be copying.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution presents this House with its last chance to admit that the Bush bailout has not worked, and it will not work, because of a simple and self-evident truth: government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of the economy. It is true that if I take a dollar from Peter and give it to bail out Paul, Paul has got one more dollar to spend; that dollar will ripple through the economy. But we forget the other half of that equation: Peter now has one less dollar to spend, meaning one less dollar to ripple through the economy. In short, it nets to zero. In fact, it nets to less than zero, because you are shifting enormous amounts of capital from investments that would have been made strictly by economic calculations to investments that are being made entirely by political calculations. We are not helping the economy with these bailouts; we are hurting it. If they actually worked, we would be now enjoying a period of unprecedented prosperity and economic expansion.

I have heard it said today, well, it is just the way that the Bush administration administered it. Well, let me pose to them this simple question: When in the entire history of civilization have such bailouts actually worked? They didn't work in Japan in the 1990s, they didn't work in America in the 1930s, and they aren't working today.

Fortunately, we know what does work. Reductions in marginal tax rates and reductions in taxes on investment consistently do stimulate the economy. They worked when John F. Kennedy used them in the early 1960s, they worked when Ronald Reagan used them in the early 1980s. When taxes are reduced on productivity, productivity increases. But how typical of government to resist what we know works and embrace what we know doesn't work.

This resolution offers the House one last fleeting chance to admit its mistakes, to step away from rigid adherence to failed policy, and to offer the change that the people of this Nation deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my hope that the President will not leave office before using his pardon to correct one of the great injustices of our time, the imprisonment of Border Patrol officers Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. They are the officers who wounded a drug smuggler as he tried to escape. The drug smuggler got immunity; Ramos and Compean got lengthy prison sentences.

This injustice sends a chilling message to Border Patrol officers who are heroically trying to defend the integrity of our borders against enormous odds and with inadequate resources. It is an injustice that cannot be allowed to stand.

Thank you.