master of the policy of stimulating the economy with big spending. well, maybe we haven't been doing a good enough job on stimulating the economy with big spending. so let's just take a look and see what we have come up with here in the last just in the last year or so. . i'm joined by a number of my good friends and colleagues who are going to help us in unpacking some of what's in this spending that we have and also going to help talk about this incredible statement that was made by the president last week that somehow or other, that his administration had created 100,000 to 150,000 new jobs. it's kind of amazing because all of the actual numbers from the government show he that that's not true at all. so we have quite an interesting evening together. and i'm joined by a good friend of mine from iowa, congressman king, who is here to join us in our conversation tonight.

i hope that everybody else will feel comfortable to just tune right in and join us. we're going to have a little bit of fun and take a look at some of the economics. it's a serious picture but it's an example to us that we must learn from history and it's also an example of the fact that america is on the wrong track, as we take a look at what's going on with job losses. i think many americans, congressman king, understand the fact that all is not right and that unemployment number jumping up as high as 9%-something is not acceptable. i would yield time to my good friend from iowa, congressman king. mr. king: i thank mr. akin for pulling this hour together. and i listened to the first flash of illumination of common sense here coming from deep within history of the franklin roosevelt's administration, his treasurer, henry morgenthau, saying that kens rainy commix does not work -- keynesian commix does not work. so i wanted to add to this, john

may narcotic keynes' philosophy that he spoke about during that period of time of the implementation of the new deal that was presented by f.d.r. and historians have taught for years at f.d.r.'s new deal saved us from the great depression, although there isn't any evidence of that and especially f.d.r.'s secretary of the treasury making the statement that keynesian economics does not work. henry morgenthau was a contemporary of keynes and keynes became prominent in the 1920's and throughout the 1930's and kind of wrapped up his career in the 1940's. but keynes described how keynesian economics worked and his description was this. he said, i can solve all the unemployment in the united states, all with we need to do is go find an abandoned coal mine and go out in that abandoned coal mine and drill a whole group of holes out there and then take american cash, tap it down into those holes and then fill the abandoned coal mine up with garbage and turn

the entrepreneurs loose to dig up the money. that would solve all the unemployment in the united states of america. now, that doesn't sound very rational when i say this on the floor of the house of representatives but that came out of the mouth of -- mr. akin: i think -- mr. king: this keynesian commix and -- economics and morgenthau's response. i yield back. mr. akin: i have to wonder what he was drinking when he came up with the theory like that. that's be a interesting tidbit of history. mr. king: he didn't have e.p.a. approval either. mr. akin: i'm sure he would have gotten in trouble with that. just a treat to have also my good friend, congressman lamborn who is joining us tonight as well, and we're just getting started now talking a little bit about this idea that somehow all of this spending that we've been seeing in this last year that we've been here together, this incredible level of spending is supposed to help with this unemployment problem and yet just as morgenthau would have predicted, we're seeing unemployment going up and the

spending just totally out of control. i yield time to my good friend. mr. lamborn: i thank the gentleman from missouri for letting me have this time. it's good to join you for a few minutes with this time that you've put together to speak and present to the american people and to have a dialogue between each other, what the spending is really costing us and so far it's not producing jobs. i think we hit 9.4%, if i have that correct, of what the latest unemployment figures are. mr. akin: just affirming that, reclaiming my time, affirming that number, yes, it is now 9.4%. you recall that there was a promise when we got to this great big -- they call it a stimulus bill, we call it the porkulous bill, well, we got to this porkulous bill, they said, if you don't pass this bill, if you don't do that, why, we may have unemployment at 8%. and here we are at 9.7% and we did pass the bill and so the excuse is, well, this thing is really helping us a lot, well, i hope it doesn't help us in that direction too much longer. because that's what was supposed

to be -- but you're right, your number is 9.7%. i yield. mr. lamborn: thank you. with that amount, 9.4%, which i think is the high point for 25 years, unfortunately it's the high point in unemployment in our country for 2 1/2 decades, and i just wanted to mention, it's so inconsistent or even hypocritical for the press to say that this is not anything other than an unmitigated disaster. they're falling all over themsselves trying to put a spin on them -- themselves trying to put a spin on this thing, saying, it's really not as bad as it seems. the rate of growth of unemployed people has slowed down or it's less than we thought it was going to be. can you imagine if we were 12 months ago, 24 mobblets ago when george bush was president, what the press would have said? they would have said, it's horrible and the policies are doing this and -- mr. akin: just reclaiming my time a minute. what would the press have said

if under the bush administration they claimed that they created 100,000 to 150,000 jobs and they didn't have any documentation for that? where in the world did you get that number? because the numbers that have just come out show that we've lost jobs. it's gone the other direction. if you had a track record like that, this is just the year this year. this is starting in february, march, april, this is another march, 14, 28, april, april, may and may. this is just a few months here. and this is what's going on with unemployment. and you're out here and you claim, hey, we just created a whole lot of jobs. people would kind of wonder, i would think the press corps would say, wait a minute, where add you come up with this 100,000 to 150,000 jobs that he claimed last week that they created? i suppose he'd say, well, if we hadn't passed this great big porkulous bill, why, by golly, it would be worse.

of course he hasn't learned from henry morgenthau. i yield back. mr. lamborn: the gentleman from missouri is correct. it is so inconsistent. if this was the previous president, the press would just be laying right into him. right now they're giving the president a pass. and it's inconsistent and i think the american people can see through that. and, congressman, you also mentioned, what are these phantom jobs out there that were saved? anyone can claim, well, there's a 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 jobs out there that were saved, i can't document it but take my word for it, and the press isn't looking at that either. i wish the press would do their job of being an honest, objective observer and reporter of what the facts are. and until the press does that, the mesh people are really not being -- the american people are really not being served well. mr. akin: i think you're right. and i'd like to just take a moment and get into -- these

numbers are easy for us to rattle off, just off the tip of our tongue. but let's take a look. first of all, you've got $700 billion in this wall street bailout. now some of this came under president bush. i think the people in this room voted against this thing because it didn't make a lot of sense. half of it, though, is the beginning of this year and we keep dumping all this money out and it's not quite clear what we gotter to it and then we get to this thing here, had this economic stimulus, which is supposed to be fixing this unemployment problem and what's going on in this bill? yeah, i've got a few just choice examples i'll share but i know others of you here have some examples. we're joined by a number of fantastic congresspeople and here's a couple, this is one here, this is -- you can't afford a bicycle after purchasing a $1 million home. this is money for washington, d.c. part of this stimulus money that's supposed to be helping with us jobs. washington, d.c., department of transportation, will spend $3

million in stimulus moneto expand its smart bike program. the money will increase the program by five times from 10 bike racks to 50 bike racks and from 100 bikes to 500 bikes. neighborhoods expected to get the new bike racks include adams morgan, columbia heights, capitol hill, anacostia and georgetown where the average single family home runs at $1.2 million. boy, now there's an interesting use of money. maybe a wonderful thing to do but i'm not sure what we should be taxing everybody to try to create jobs. we've got a lot of other fun examples. i'm joined by my good friend, bachmann, and congressman bachmann is articulate and a good friend to people who care about jobs and care about fiscal sanity. i yield time. mrs. bachmann: i thank the gentleman from missouri for calling this together so that we could call attention to the job losses that are happening all across the united states. it's in your district, it's in my district, it's every one of our districts here that are represented this evening and i

was absolutely shocked as i've been watching this play out of the federal government jumping in and taking over private businesses. beginning with chrysler and then now with general motors. we're seeing something that we haven't seen, i don't know if we ever have seen anything like this in the history of our country and i am still livid over the conversation i had today. mr. akin: what you just said is so important for people to understand. that's because we don't have quite the sense of history. we've just heard from one of our other guests, just a minute ago, that this is a 25-year high in unemployment. but what you've just talked about is when the president goes in and fires the president of general motors and appoints the people on board and decides to rewrite the bankruptcy laws, this is unprecedented. and i think my good friend, you have a specific example from your district about what this

could mean to main street america. i wish you'd share that with us tonight. mrs. bachmann: i do. i met with dealers in my district before from chrysler and they looked me in the eye and said they were just flabbergasted. they couldn't believe that they got a pink slip that they were going to be out of business by the end of the month. all the cars that they had on their lot they'd have to sell. they were going to have to wrap up and go out of business by the end of the month. they were one of the most successful chrysler dealerships not just in minnesota but in the nation. they performed 160% better than the top performers in the country. they met all the criteria for staying open for chrysler and still they were pink slipped. no one could understand. mr. akin: reclaiming my time. i'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of the family who owned that dealership that you're talking about. mrs. bachmann: this particular family, congressman, had put $5 million into this dealership just prior to receiving this

notice. they were slated to adding another jeep dealership to the chrysler business that they already had. significant amount of money and they produced tax revenue to the amount of $3 million every year on that five-acre parcel that they utilized. mr. akin: so you have, just reclaiming my time, so you have a dealer who's been in business in your town for, what, 90 years or something? mrs. bachmann: this particular dealer had been in business since the early 1920's. the one that i spoke with today had been in business for 90 years. they were a general motors dealership. mr. akin: 90 years and their dealership was assessed -- what was the value of it? mrs. bachmann: there was recent appraisal done on this dealership, very successful dealership, they have all the debts paid, they own everything out and clear and the appraiser said, this dealership is worth $15 million. mr. akin: so, reclaiming my time, so $15 million and then you wake up one morning and you

get this thing in the mail and it says your $15 million just basically vaporized, didn't it? mrs. bachmann: it was worthless. now the only thing their dealership is worth today is the underlying property that the building sits on. they put all sorts of money into building their building which is now free and clear. they worked hard to make sure they could pay for it and now it's a dealership building. as most americans know who are listening to us speak this evening, if you have a dealership building, you can't use it for much else other than a dealership. and trust me, there's no one out there right now who's too interested in buying an old, used dealership building because there's not new car dealers going up out there. mr. akin: once again we have another projection of this example of washington thinking they know how to do everything, deciding who's going to be the president of general motors, who's going to -- dump all of this money that belongs to our constituents, we're going to dump this money into various companies and then we're going

to try to manage -- we can't manage d.c., what makes us think we can manage car companies? what an example of -- and i think there's some other examples of what's going on with some of this understand spending and i see that we're also -- some of this spending and i see that we're also joined by congresswoman lummis from wyoming so we have the west pretty much coveraged -- covered. we have iowa covered. we'll have georgia in a minute. please join us. mrs. lummis: in wyoming, and i thank the gentleman from missouri for pulling us together this evening for this discussion, in wyoming our economy is very much based in the energy industry because we have coal, oil, gas, uranium, wind, solar, biomass and that is the main stay of our economy by far. so as we watch the 350 to 375 very small businesses that are drilling for oil and gas and see the legislation that is coming

before this congress at the behest of the democratic party, it will devastate our businesses. mr. akin: so you're talking, reclaiming my time, you're talking about this -- the tax that they're proposing to pay for some of this spending, that is that cap and tax situation, which is going to devastate small business and small business of course is where these jobs are created is that correct? mrs. lummis: absolutely. i think a lot of americans have the perception that big oil is who is recovering these natural resources but even those firms hire very small, literally mom and pop operations, five and six employees, to go out and do the drilling, to do some environmental compliance, to do the surveying and to complete those wells and do the fracturing of the deep seams

that are required to cause the gas to flow into a natural gas well. . in wyoming, over 350 businesses. what we see on the horizon through the national energy tax called cap and trade would be devastating to those businesses. mr. akin: reclaiming my time, what you're doing is making a tremendously important connection. and i think a lot of people do get that impression that all the jobs in america like general motors or general electric, or, you know, mobile oil or whatever it happens to be. but in reality, what we find is, you define small business as about 500 or so employees or less. small businesses create almost 80% of the new jobs in america. what you're saying is exactly spot on to what our data shows.

and if you're looking at 80% of the new jobs and you're looking here at an increasing level of unemployment, what you should be paying attention is what you are doing for small business. and we are doing something, you are going to slap a great big tax on them to cover up all of this spending. and what's going to happen is your's going to dry up the potential of those new jobs that can come from small business. i will jump over to my the gentleman from georgia and he has a passion about freedom and economic issues. my good friend, dr. broun from the atlanta area? mr. broun: s south of athens georgia. and i represent northeast georgia.

if you put the date of this week on the next bar going back to what bachmann was just talking about, these dealerships are shutting the doors. dealerships may have 20 employees, 30 or 40 employees. i have met with a number of them. there is a dealer in my district, right up on the north carolina line, that called me this week and he got one of those pink slips. he is a customer of the auto maker and that's what these dealersr customers. and what is happening, this administration is forcing the big three auto makers to fire their customers and that makes no economic sense. but this dealer doesn't do any floor planning. he doesn't have to borrow money from the auto maker to put the

cars on his lot. he owns them all. he's paid for them all. he owns his dealership. he doesn't owe anything to the car maker, but they have fired him. and in doing so, this administration has fired all the employees. and so the next bar for all these dealerships, i think it's 780 some odd just this week that are going to be fired, the dealership is going to be fired and all the employees are going to be fired, and that's going to on put that bar even higher. and that's not right. this is an unprecedented takeover from the private sector by this administration by the car czar that's been set up by this president. and it is totally unconstitutional and totally against freedom and totally unprecedented and exactly the same thing that hugo chavez is

doing down in venezuela. imagine the next bar on that graph, it's going to be higher than it is. mr. akin: just reclaiming my time. you are a medical doctor and not claiming to be an economic expert, this 9.7% unemployment that we have got right now is not the end of this problem and the idea of the tremendous level of spending that we're seeing is not going to help. you're agreeing with henry morgenthau from 1939 that all the spending is not going to make this any better. what's more, a lot of the spending is going to result in more unemployment rather than less. is that the bottom line? mr. broun: absolutely that's what's going to happen. you can't borrow and spend yourself to economic prosperity. we are borrowing too much, taxing too much and spending too much and it's going to cost

jobs. we will discuss what the gentlelady from wyoming was just talking about, because there is something else that is going to cost a lot of jobs in this country, but the point i want to make is this, we're going down the road that is going to hurt our economy. it's going to cost jobs as we see an increasing number of unemployment. and it's taking away from the future of our children and grandchildren. mr. akin: and that's the bottom line. a lot of us staying here this evening talking about this is this is critical, a very significant problem. i would like to jump back to my friend from iowa, congressman king. gentleman who has run his own private business for many years before he came to congress, knows a little bit about small business, knows a little bit about taxation and red tape and

also understands what some of these massive government spending programs in the last year, what they are liable to do in terms of the effects on our economy. yield to my friend from iowa. mr. king: i thank my friend from missouri. i started a business in 1975 with a negative net worth. and i remember prior to that, looking for a job. i applied for a good number of jobs, worked for a number of people, worked for me. i had to build the business up a component at a time. one of the points i think that would illuminate this, when i look at the numbers on the chart, $700 billion in the wall street, $780 billion in the stimulus plan. and i remind everyone here, i would be reminding the speaker that president obama said that his stimulus plan was going to save or create 3.5 million jobs.

and now -- and that was back a cousm of months ago back at the timeline of $787 billion. i thought at the time, how do you measure a saved job? it was there when you started and there when you're done. it's one that the economic plan didn't destroy but not one that your pn saved. the white house is claiming that they saved or created 150,000 little jobs when their endeavor is 3. million jobs. that number is not out of thin air. that is off of the white house's website. and those numbers are real. another image that flashes through my mind when i hear the gentleman from georgia talk about hugo chavez, i had a flashback of a conversation between president obama and hugo chavez down in central america

and i recall that we needed to have a strong message from the president of the united states that would embrace columbia and ask for a vote on the floor of this house as was agreed to under those terms. we didn't get that meeting, but we got a happy-face meeting between hugo chavez and president obama. and i remember the image that flashed in my mind. one of them is hugo chavez could declare our president to be el diablo. and just a few months later, we have president obama glad-handing with hugo chavez. and the great nationalizer of the industries in venezuela who had just nationalized a rice plant that belonged to a minnesota plant was standing there smiling next to president obama who was the greatest

nationalizer of all. he nationalized two of the large est car makers in the world and watched the nationalization of our banking institutions. the free market system from top down is being swallowed up and nationalized, instead of privatized and i would make this point that our president today was elected at least in part because he challenged president bush and criticized president bush for going into iraq without an exit strategy. this president has declared that he doesn't want to own or manage, freddie mac or fannie mae, the financial institutions or the auto makers of america, but he has engaged in all of that without an exit strategy. i call on president obama to come up with an exit strategy to divest the american taxpayers that he makes hugo chave3 that he makes hugo chavez a

piker. mr. akin: that is a summary of where we're are. this disease that struck the washington area a year or two ago, it's bailout fever and we got into this idea that we will bail everybody out. if you're a small business, you will go bankrupt. if you are a car dealership, you go bankrupt and lose $15 million but we're going to nationalize all of this. and what's going on in unemployment is this nationalizing of business. i think there are a lot of people that are having some very extreme second thoughts. this was not going to happen if we voted for that great big porkulous bill. when you say $787 billion, that's more than my paycheck. how much is that? how much money is that? and the biggest thing we deal with on my committee is aircraft carriers.

they are big things. you could play a game of football on the deck. they are really big and cost a ton of money. we have 11 in our total fleet and cost about $3 billion a piece. if you look what happened to us in the first five weeks after we have been told that president bush is spending way too much money, we put this bill in place, this was the trimmed down version. on this floor we voted for $870 billion. that would be over 250 aircraft carriers anchored end to end. you could make a highway across them. that is how much money that is in this package alone. that's not the wall street bailout and that's -- this appropriations bill -- that's not the international monetary bailout. we're going to take defense money and give it to foreign countries and put it in a fund so chavez and the iranians and other people can take defense money out of the united states

away from our taxpayers so they can fund their governments. and we are wondering why in the world do we have this unemployment? i think we are making some big mistakes economically. i would like to jump back over to my very good friend congresswoman bachmann, who is a great articulator of free enterprise principles and is a wonderful credit to minnesota. we are delighted that you're here and please chip in. mrs. bachmann: i thank the gentleman from missouri. and i'm concerned about these motor takeovers by the federal government. a story came out today where there has been approximately 1, 500 letters that have gone out to gm dealerships. there is a dealership that i know of that applied to their democratic senator to appeal for help to stay open. that senator was able to arrange

a completing between the dealer and the officials at gm. gm is government motors. it has been nationalized. there's no private corporation the way we used to think of gm. the main stock holder is the american government. the democrat senator was able to secure a meeting with the car dealership and general motors. that is great. there is another article that i saw where a constituent contacted one of the democrat representative here in this chamber, representative barney frank. barney frank was able to get this dealership back open. is that what we have come to in this country, that rather than a private business with a private contract with another private corporation, they are no longer able to work out their agre