better to not only bring you home in body from war serving our country but in mine. because we know that suicide rates are off the charts, unacceptable. we know that what they're facing is unacceptable, and we need to be the ones to come in there and shed some light on their lives so they don't have to rely on service dogs, we don't have to rely on anything else but their potential to live their own independent lives free for themselves without any dependence on anybody else. and we can do that if we put our commitment out there. professing like we did today that we care about our first responders. hey, let's put it into action and invest in these things that will bring our veterans home not only in body but in mind. and in the meantime we can make sure they have service dogs, which this congress provided $5 million for to expand the definition for those who are suffering from other neurological disorders other than eyesight loss.

that's a good thing, but let's not make it the answer, the band-aid. let's get to the real solution and save these veterans from being held hostage to their terminal situations that could not be terminal if we dedicate ourselves to intervening and intervening soon on their behalf. i thank my colleagues for giving me the patience of letting me explain myself with respect to these service dogs because they do a lot of good things, but we need to make sure our people are also given some support and independence by not having to rely on dogs in the future. thank you. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from tennessee is recognized. mr. cohen: continue to reserve. . the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from south carolina.

mr. coble: i yield back. mr. cohen: i know about police service dogs and they ought to be protected and respected and i yield back the remainder of my time and unanimous support of this resolution. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields. the question is will the house suspend the rules and agree to house resolution 1614. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the resolution is agreed to and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. for what purpose does the gentleman from new york rise? mr. arcuri: i send to the desk a privileged report fl the committee of rules for filing under the rule. the clerk: report to accompany house resolution 1620, resolution providing for consideration of the bill h.r. 4785 to amend the miss rural

development provisions of the farm security and rural investment act of 2002 to authorize the secretary of agriculture to make loans to certain entities that will use the funds to make loans to consumers to implement energy efficient measures involving structural improvements and investments in cost effective commercial off-the-shelf technologies to improve home energy use. the speaker pro tempore: referred to the house calendar and ordered printed. mr. arcuri: thank you, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the chair will entertain requests for one-minute speeches. for what purpose does the gentleman from nebraska rise? >> request permission to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. fortenberry: mr. speaker, he was called a young man of

integrity and respect, a great marine who loved the marine corps, a loving husband and father. this is how the late staff sergeant michael a. bach was remembered by those who knew him. he was conducting operations in the hellman province in afghanistan when his patrol came under fire and died from those injuries on august 13. he had served four deployments in beeth iraq and afghanistan and was awarded the purple heart, navy and marine corps achievement medals and combat action ribbon and raised in springfield, nebraska and attended mount michael high school where he met his future wife tiffany. they also had a thre son. zander's birth was the happiest moment in his life and while in afghanistan he watched online as his son blew out three birthday

candles. for valentine's day he recorded a message and sent it to his young son. now i'm certain zander will carry his father's voice in his heart. on behalf of a grateful nation, i offer my condolences to the bach family and may god bless staff sergeant bach and grant eternal unto him. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from indiana rise? >> address the house for one minute and revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection.. mr. burton: mr. speaker, army specialist chad clemmons 26-year-old died on monday while serving in afghanistan. he was one of my constituents. he was born march 16, 1984 in san diego, california and after he graduated from high school in

indiana, he decided he wanted to serve in the u.s. army. upon his graduation from basic training, chad reported to the first armored battalion and deployed shortly after that in support of operation enduring freedom. chad's distinguished career, he received multiple awards for his service. the bronze star medal, the purple heart, the army good conduct medal, the national defense service medal, the afghanistan campaign medal, the global war on terrorism medal, the nato international security assistance force medal, the army service ribbon, the overseas service ribbon and the combat action badge. he has been promoted from private first class to army specialist. expertise and enthusiasm for his job and the united states army was insurmountable. to the citizens of the state of indiana, his fellow troops and countless people he touched,

chad will be remembered as a hero. he was preceded in death by his father daniel and our thoughts and prayers and deepest condolences go out to his mother and stepfather, sister, step brother and step sister. these are some of the things we hate to talk about on this floor, mr. speaker, but unfortunately, war brings us to these kinds of conclusions. we just wish all of those like chad will never be forgotten for the service they have given our country. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from tennessee rise? >> ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. roe: i rise to honor the heroic of sullivan central high school carolyn dodger and all the officers and staff who acted quickly to keep the faculty safe from a gunman on august 30,

2010. a gunman aimed a handgun at the principal. she moved herself between the gunman and the principal and lured the gunman to an isolated area of the school. two deputies shot the gunman after he refused to release his weapon. she prevented the gunman from ininjuring or killing anyone. we should commend and honor officer gudger and everyone involved. i would like to thank sheriff wayne anderson who is in charge of these officers. all these individuals make our community proud and i salute them for their courage and good work they do each and every day. mr. chairman, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from indiana rise? mr. burton: i ask unanimous consent that today following

legislative business and any special orders heretofore entered into, the following members may be permitted to address the house, revise and extend their remarks and include therein extraneous material, mr. poe, september 22, for five minutes. mr. jones, september 22, for five minutes. mr. coffman today for five minutes and mr. bishop today for five minutes. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. for what purpose does the gentleman from california -- the gentlewoman from california seek recognition? >> i ask unanimous consent that today following legislative business and any special orders heretofore entered into, the following members may be permitted to address the house for five minutes to revise and extend their remarks and include therein extraneous material, mr. etheridge for five minutes plfment bright for five minutes. ms. woolsey for five minutes. ms. speier for five minutes.

mr. defazio for five minutes. ms. kaptur for five minutes. mr. kennedy for five minutes. and ms. velazquez for five minutes. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, and under the previous order of the house, the following members are recognized for five minutes each. mr. etheridge of north carolina. mr. poe of texas. mr. bright of alabama. the gentleman from alabama is recognized for five minutes. mr. bright: mr. speaker, thank you very much. after traveling my district over the august work period, it's my clear that my constituents top

concerns are jobs and the economy. these are the same concerns they have raised for nearly two years since i have been in congress indicating that not enough has been done to get americans back to work. they also expressed deep worry that the tax relief passed in 2001 and 2003 will soon expire. in an economy still struggling to recover, allowing taxes to increase on all americans is unacceptable. though many in washington seem to have just awakened to the idea that tax cuts are going to go up next year unless tax is taken. we took the lead in calling for the current tax rate to be extended for two years as a way to ensure economic stability. our economy is in trouble. we need to stabilize it. give it the opportunity to get back on its feet and move forward. there is widespread bipartisan consensus for some of these tax breaks to be temporarily extended.

instead of using the issue to score political points, let's come together and find a way to extend the tax breaks for two years and revisit the issue when the economy is on better footing. least we can do to provide economic stability. we need to work for america for a change, not for party labels. you can't tell me that all republicans are right and all democrats are wrong. we need to come together as americans and stabilize our economy for the benefit and long-term benefit of our country as a whole. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields. mr. jones of north carolina. ms. woolsey of california. ms. speier: i would like to claim the time of ms. woolsey. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. the gentlelady is recognized for five minutes. the speaker: on thursday, september 9, 2010, a few minutes before 6:30, life changed

forever in san bruno, california. the first view from my district office, one of my staffers believed a plane crashed in the hills. airline jets fly over nearby san francisco international airport routinely passing over san bruno every day. the flames shot up over 100 feet in the air. after 15 minutes, the flames didn't subside. it was as if a giant torch had been placed on what is normally a virgin hillside. this was a distant view of the natural gas pipeline explosion. closer up at the scene was horrific. four confirmed dead, scores of people hospitalized with second and third disagree burns, some with over 50% of their bodies. and six days after this tragedy,

three people are still missing. 37 homes were completely destroyed. nothing but concrete pads left or a chimney, indicating what once had been. 12 homes were standing shells and another 10 were damaged. we are at day six. the smoke has cleared. the ash has settled and one thing that is really very clear. the community of san bruno rose together. the mayor jim lane, city manager connie jackson, the police chief, the fire chief, all showed extraordinary leadership and courage in bringing this community together in securing the flames within a box so that more homes were not destroyed and more lives destroyed as a result.

but another front, questions remain. in fact, they are multiplying about the causes of this immense pain and suffering that has been visited upon san bruno and surrounding areas. but no question, i repeat, no question, has been more penetrating to me than asked by sue bollus a day after the explosion. i walked into the center that was set up to establish relief and support for the family and sitting at a table by herself, looking distant was this woman. she looked at me and said she couldn't locate her mother in law, she couldn't locate her husband, she couldn't locate her son. six days later, they still have not been found. the explosion was so hot that glass windshields on cars

melted, bones have been found, the blast epicenter functions as a morgan sue bollus who lives at 1690 clairemont is hoping and praying for an answer. . she has nothing but hope and now that hope will have to be converted to inner strength if she is to go on. i will help her get her documents, her insurance payments from pg&e and i will try to ease her pain just as thousands of others are helping to ease the pain caused by this explosion. but nothing is going to relieve the pain that she has coping with the loss of three of her family members. on friday we will bury jacqueline and gentleman necessarya -- jenessa grieg.

jacqueline worked at the public utility commission in the gas pipeline area. her daughter, janessa, was an eighth grader at st. about a sillias school. -- bascilisa school. on saturday we will bury jessica morales, the fiancee of a young man who is now in intensive care with 50% of his body burned. jessica was just coming into her own. finding her way, finding work and employment and opportunities at school. we have just found out that elizabeth toress, an 81-year-old mother who has two family members still in the burn unit, has passed away. and she, too, will be remembered as well. people are anxious to return to

their homes to retrieve those belongings that remain. some may want to rebuild. a few may not. we face months and months of hard work, but at this moment, this very moment, i bow my head in silence for the family of sue, jacqueline, janessa, jessica and elizabeth. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman's time has expired. mr. gohmert of texas. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas seek recognition? >> permission to reclaim time. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. poe: in early august, it was august 7, to be exact, in

houston, texas, right after the sun had gone down about 9:00 p.m. on a hot summer night, a young girl was walking home, jatava anderson, she went by ta, and she was walking down the street not far from where she lived, modest community, happy child. she was confronted by two individuals who apple burned her -- ambushed her, who robbed her and as she tried to get away, one of her shot her in the back and murdered her not far from where she lived. this is who ta was. this is her in the pink. she is next to her mother, keisha lambert. she's a real person, mr. speaker, a real victim of criminal conduct.

died in the early teenage years. ta's father said, leroy anderson said his beautiful daughter loved life. and you can tell by looking at her. she's a happy, spirited child. it could have been any of our children. over the years in my career as a judge at the courthouse in houston, texas, 22 to be exact, i've seen a lot of criminal cases, tried a lot, cost many victims. this case has bothered me a great deal. i don't know the reason. maybe it's because i have four children, three of them girls, eight grandchildren, five of them are girls, just by looking at what this young lady was. ambushed by two individuals who were caught by the houston police department, melvin alvar aido, -- alvarado, the person

that shot her. he likes to drink and drive. it turns out, of course, like so many others, he was illegally in the united states. he had been deported twice before to his native country of el salvador but that didn't stop him from coming back to houston and robbed this precious child of not only some money but he stole her life when he came back and shot her in the back not far from where she lived. there was another individual, jonathan lopez torres, the getaway driver of the car as they snuck away in the darkness of the night after murdering this beautiful shot. he's from honduras, although he was legally in the united states, he had been arrested for auto theft. the houston police department said when these criminals were arrested they showed no remorse, no sadness, almost arrogant in the crime that they committed here in the united

states. melvin alvarado confessed to this crime and told the police what he had done. joe lambert, the uncle of ta, said this about this crime. illegals are a big problem in houston. it is really senseless what happened to my niece and i don't like it. they are starting to come over here and they do whatever they want to do. what is happening is they are given the green light and do whatever they want. yes, that's what these two arrogant criminals did, that they can do whatever they want. they wanted little property from this young laidy. they shot her because she tried to get away. these are real people, real children, real victims of crime. the duty of government, mr. speaker, is to protect the public. that's why we have government. to protect us. the national government has failed totally in protecting people in the united states

from those criminals who come over here to commit crime. we a wink and a nod to border security. they get crossed. they get sent back home. they come over again because the border is not secure, mr. speaker. it's time the federal government can secure the border so more children tonight get murdered by those illegals who come over here for the purpose of committing crime. we are talking about one child who was murdered by one. the answer is not of course amnesty, as some advocate in this house, who know nothing about the real world. this is putting the national guard on the border to prevent people from crossing and make sure when we deport those people they don't come back to the united states. these individuals, alvarado, stole the most precious thing we have, that's a human life. no parent wants to lose their child before its time and what's worse is to see a child

die. and when this young lady was murdered by these criminals they stole everyone she was and everything she will be and that ought not to be. and maybe that should hopefully make us as a body do something about cross-border crime. the time is now and that's just the way it is. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields. mr. burton of indiana. mr. burton: let me just say before i start my five-minute special order, mr. speaker, i concur with what my colleague from texas, mr. poe, just said. there are enumerable crimes being committed by people who are illegal aliens. he's absolutely correct, we have to secure that border and do whatever is necessary and the president of the united states has a responsibility to protect that border, an he needs to get on with it. states like -- and he needs to get on with it. states like arizona are

concerned what's going on. there is a sign in arizona that says, don't go south of here because it's not safe. that's unconscionable. the american people should not have to worry when they're in their own country about terrorists or criminals coming across the border from another country to kill them. so i just like to say to mr. poe i really appreciate your comments. let me just say in my special order there was a book called "a tale of two cities" said it was the best of times and the worst of times. i heard from some of my colleagues on the other side that we really ought to do something about extending the tax cuts that are in place that were put there during the brushing. we really need to do that. if you're -- bush administration. we really need to do that. if you are 15% that is unemployed or unemployable right now, you realize how really bad it is. we live in the greatest country on the face of the earth, in the history of the earth, so from that standpoint it's the best of times.

but for those who are out of work and struggling right now, it's the worst of times. i had town meetings this past week and i can't tell you how many people told me how bad it was and how soon they were going to lose their jobs or their husbands or wives had lost their jobs and they're suffering. and so what we need to do is we need to take the steps necessary to bring about economic recovery. and as i've said many times on this floor when ronald reagan took office in the early 1980's, he came in and instead of raising taxes he cut taxes. and we had 20 years of prosperity. we had 12% unemployment and 14% inflation. and what happened was he came in and when they said he had to raise taxes in order to get the economy moving and he did just the opposite, the economy took off. and that's what we ought to be doing today. and if i were talking, if i could talk to the president, and i know i can't because i'm here on the floor, i would say,

mr. president, will be at history. look at john f. kennedy, a great democrat president, and look at ronald reagan, who i think was the greatest republican president in our lifetime, and see what they did to bring about economic recovery. and that is cut taxes, cut government spending, move the country in the right direction, even if it's just for a couple of years that we have the tax cuts in place but right now is the wrong time to be increasing taxes or letting the bush tax cuts expire. and i don't want to be political but i think i have to say to my colleagues who may be paying attention in their offices right now, there will be a price to be paid in about six weeks for those who don't heed the message that's coming from the american people. they want economic recovery, and they understand what needs to be done and they're going to hold those of us who don't listen to them accountable on november 2. and with that i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the

gentleman yields. mr. coffman of colorado. >> i ask unanimous consent to address the house for five minutes. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. coffman: the united states army chaplain darrell gets, an air force veteran, with ties to colorado joined the army chaplaincy out of a strong desire to help others. captain dale getz and his wife, christy, both graduated from baptist bible college in 1995. he was a former pastor of first baptist church in white, south dakota, before being stationed at military bases throughout the world. earlier this year captain getz was assigned to the first battalion, 66th armored regiment, first brigade combat team, fourth infantry division

at fort carson, colorado, and the family moved to colorado springs in january of 2010. this allowed his wife, christy, and their son, landon, joel to be closer to his mother, hope getz, a commissioner. captain getz and his family joined high country baptist church in colorado springs the day before he deployed to afghanistan. captain getz, who previously served in iraq, cared about the soldiers he cared with as army chaplain. and according to his church in colorado springs, his goal as a chaplain was not to be a social worker but to be a spiritual guide. captain getz is described as

having a calm demeanor that help soldiers find strength in the darkest of times. according to reverend stewart swanky, a fellow pastor, he had gone through ministerial training with. on august 30, 2010, captain getz was on a mission in the river valley of afghanistan when insurgents attacked his unit with an scombrow advised explosive device which detonated near their military vehicle. he was wounded and died of injuries sustained during the attack. four of his fellow soldiers from fort carson, colorado, were also killed in action as a result of the incident. captain dale a. getz is a shining example of the united states army's service and sacrifice. as a former member of the united states army and retired

marine corps vet veteran, my deepest sympathies go out to his mother, hope getz, his wife, christy, their sons landon, joel, and his sisters, ann and kim. . pifment mr. defazio of oregon. ms. ros-lehtinen of florida. ms. kaptur of ohio. mr. kennedy of rhode island. ms. velazquez of new york. under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, the gentleman from california, mr. garamendi, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the

majority leader. mr. garamendi: mr. speaker, thank you so much. i will engage in a colloquy here with the permission of the chair to discuss an important issue for america. that is manufacturing. if america's going to make it, we're going to have to make it in america. before i go into the subject of how we can restart and rebuild the american manufacturing sector and make it in america, i would like to do a little review of history first. years and years ago, i played

football at the university of california and it's football season and my friends have accused me of using football analogies, and well, it happens to be true. so, ok, football season. let's consider for a moment that it's not football that we're dealing with, but rather it's the economy. and if we were to consider the first quarter, we would have to look at the george bush and the republican first quarter. what happened? beginning in 2007, we began to see the extraordinary crash of the american economy. it just bled jobs. eight million jobs were lost, peaking in december of 2008, just before the onset of the obama administration. nearly 800,000 jobs were lost

that month alone, totalling eight million during that period of time. you see the incredible decline in the american job market. and this is just the proist employment sector. this was replicated in the public sector also. so that was the first quarter. how did it happen? why did it happen? well, crazy tax policy for start. tax policies that gave extraordinary breaks to the very wealthy, modest breaks to the middle class, two wars that were not paid for. the money was borrowed. the medicare drug benefit not paid for, creating an enormous deficit and the regulators stepped back. the period of no regulation occurred during that first quarter. wall street went crazy. collateralized debt obligations. the meltdown of the housing industry, subprime loans. all of those things led to this

extraordinary decline. in january of 2009, president obama came in and we began the second quarter. tough situation going into that second quarter, but we began to see immediate action taken. the wall street stablization programs went into effect and the way in which that was administered began to stabilize wall street. we had the stimulus program, the american recovery and reinvestment act. it went into effect. and we saw numerous other pieces of legislation go into effect during the obama second quarter. i'm going to go through some of these very, very quickly. the stimulus program, three million jobs as a direct result of that since it went into effect in february of 2009. we saw the homeowners and business assistance act trying

to keep people in their homes and provide tax relief for small businesses. we saw the student aid and financial responsibility act, the biggest effort since the g.i. bill in the 1950's to give people an opportunity to get job training and new skills when they got back into the job market. cash for clunkers, stabilizing the automobile industry. and we also saw the american government stepping in to save two great icons in the american industry and thousands of small businesses that depended upon the auto industry with the bailout of general motors and chrysler. it's a good effect. we were able to maintain those small business jobs that were directly impacted there. we saw the credit cardholders' bill of rights. how many have reached in our pockets and said, i know the

banks are going to screw me one more time. no more. no more because we have passed the credit cardholders' bill of rights. one law that just passed three weeks ago was the teachers and medical legislation that went into effect, fully paid for, 160,000 teachers will stay in the classrooms providing that education that our students need and paid for by ending an extraordinarily bad piece of policy that's been in effect for many years that gave a tax break to american corporations that offshored american jobs. what do you mean? you mean to tell me that american corporations were ail to get a tax break every time they sent a job offshore? yes. that is over today as a result of action taken. on every one of these bills, every single effort made by this

congress to bring jobs back, to stabilize the economy. we found virtually no republican support. in the stimulus, none at all. in the credit card, only a handful of republicans. republican opposition was uniform for every single effort made by this house, by the democrats. the result of our work without republican support has been a steady improvement so that for the last eight months, we have seen private sector jobs actually increase. not as much as we need, not as much as we want. but we have seen a clear differentiation between the first quarter with the bush quarter and the rebuilding of the american economy in the second quarter. where are we today? we're at half time. we're in the locker room here in washington, d.c.

we're in congress. and we're working to complete our plan for the second half. the resurgence and rebuilding of the american economy. and in this half, we had a series of bills that we put forward, some already law, others that will go into effect in the months ahead, hopefully pass. we would love to have the support of our republican colleagues, but as of this moment, the seats are empty. but when they're filled, they still vote no on every effort to rebuild the american economy. it's half time. the question for the american public is, which team is going to go back on the field for the second half, for 2011 and 2012, which team is going back on the field? the team that brought us the great crash of the american economy or the team that has slowly, but every month, brought

progress back to the american economy. we're talking now about making it in america. joining me today for this discussion is my colleague from the great state of minnesota -- mr. kagen: wisconsin. mr. garamendi: why do i want to say you are from minnesota. dr. kagen is going to talk about some of the efforts he's made and some of the issues that face his district in making it in america and the things that we need to do. dr. kagen from wisconsin. mr. kagen: absolutely. thank you very much for yielding and thank you for organizing this hour where we can begin to have a conversation, a very constructive conversation with the american people about making it in america. and you know, manufacturing does matter and making it in america really is important. and just maybe, perhaps we should change the slogan from make it in america and add on,

not china. because where i live on, people say, doc, we have to get our jobs back from china and money back from wall street and jobs back from china. and one of my constituents, who is nearly 80 years old sent me this note asking the question about whose side are we on. you mentioned a ball game, a football game. could be peewee, little league, nfl, look, we are all on the same page, same boat and amazing things will happen when we begin to paddle in the same direction. we've got to work together to get through the most difficult economic time of our generation. elaine from my district wrote me this note, quote. i'm soon an 80-year-old woman and widow. my husband and i farmed and now the years are harder for old

people. oil companies take a huge profit. the c.e.o.'s make a salary no man on earth is worth. pill companies are taking huge profits with no consideration for old people. the people of my generation lived through the depression, world war ii and two more wars and now in our old age, we face other obstacles. well, elaine, we are working hard to rebuild our economy. we are working hard to generate the jobs. we need to work our way back into prosperity. we have passed an essential bill on health care legislation. we now have a new health care law that guarantees that, elaine, the doughnut hole is going to be closed over a period of time. we are closing it by $250 straightaway and made medicare stronger and better and we made sure you have preventative services at no co-pay or deductible. this is coming your way.

a new day in america where no longer will any family have the fear of going broke and losing their home because of an accident or because someone gets sick. but we just didn't act for elaine and every other family in america to guarantee them access to health care, we lowered their taxes. the quote here says tax bills in 2009 at lowest level since 1950 from "usa today." we have lowered taxes from the people who need it the most, the middle class. this is not my point of view, but the point of view of the former domestic policy adviser to president reagan and treasury department economist to president george herbert walker bush. mr. bruce bartlett, federal taxes are lower by every measure since obama became president. $787 billion stimulus bill enacted with no republican

support reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and $222 billion in 2010. mr. garamendi: if you might yield for a moment, dr. kagen. the stimulus bill was actually a tax cut bill? mr. kagen: biggest tax cut in american history. we were in such a decline economically, no one felt it. we did it economically. we didn't mail people a check. we made sure they got the tax cut on the other end. it was more economical. never before has such a tax cut been enacted and it was the democrats without the republican support that guaranteed middle-class families would pay less in taxes. mr. garamendi: if i might, you and i were talking earlier about a program you have been doing in your district for the last couple of weeks and you have been going to communities. and along the way, you reached out and said, we need to make it

in america. you were talking about the paper industry. i suppose you have a paper industry in your district? mr. kagen: i live in paper valley. we didn't invent manufacturing paper but perfected the science and technology. kimberly clark, kleenex, proctor and gambel, puffs, everything in the tissue and paper world and everything in between. and one of those manufacturers, tomorrow, has a case before the international trade commission and i brought with me a picture of a family. . this is tony, his wife, sherry, corey and kayla. and what are they doing? well, he works at appleton

paper. he has a problem because china has been competing illegally by dumping their paper products into our united states marketplace below our cost of production. now, i know you're thinking, how does that happen? but before i get there, let me read you the hand-written note that mr. swanson sent to me. congressman steve kagen, i've been employed in the paper industry for 18 years. i'm grateful for the ability to provide for my family that the industry has provided. the dumping of foreign paper into the united states from companies that are subsidized by their own governments creates a market lace that seriously threatens my family and countless other families throughout the united states. the ability to sell paper at a price that is less than the cost to produce it places our companies and families at a severe disadvantage. i have been able to maintain employment through four layoffs

due to mill sales and the paper mill shutdowns. it's a challenge that me and my fellow union brothers and sisters throughout the united states cannot survive, closed quote. you see, what china has been doing -- and i have a case against china. they didn't just manipulate their currency. they don't have any environmental protection. they don't have a social safety net. they don't have occupational safety and health administration. they don't have osha. they don't have an e.p.a. they have sacrificed their environment for their economic development and they couldn't yet have a middle class. now, i have nothing against a middle nation lifting its people up out of poverty and do it at our expense. we shouldn't have to sacrifice our middle class solely to build up theirs. it's unfair. >> if the gentleman will yield on that point?

one of the things that's been happening for a long time of chinese currency manipulation by the chinese government. mr. ryan: and it is -- we do not have to have growth in the united states at the expense of growth in china. if the chinese would allow their currency to float it would actually be worth more. so the chinese consumer would be able to have more buying power for american goods that would be shipped over there, for other companies who are selling within china. there's just a small group of people within china who own primarily state-owned businesses who like the currency low, artificially reduced, so they can ship product to the united states cheaper and subsidize to put american workers out of business. so what we're saying when we say make it in america and manufacture again can actually

help lift up a lot of these folks in countries like china if we play by the rules. mr. garamendi: excuse me for a moment, gentlemen. but part of our agenda as democrats is to make sure that we have fair trade, that we have a fair balance between our nation, our manufacturers and those in other countries who may be -- not may be but are subsidizing their exports, like chinese, and the currency thing. dr. kagen -- this is a colloquy. mr. kagen: i'm getting excited because china has been caught cheating. they don't just manipulate their currency. they provide free energy. they provide no taxation. they provide cheap labor. 80 cents an hour. they have been buying raw materials for nothing, giving it to a company and then they load it up on a boat and float it outside oakland and dump it

into our nation into our domestic market below the cost of production. let me put it very succinctly. they have targeted everything we make for extinction. not just paper. it's high technology. it's automobiles. it's steel. it's textiles. we have to restore our manufacturing base. yes, in part by compelling other nations to stop cheating, by not manipulating their currency, by playing fair. one way to play fair is to instead of stealing our jobs, why don't you take our values, take our values about clean air and clean water? because they're polluting the air that we're breathing. it's not that far away. if a man in china sneezes you're going to get it in the back of your head. it's going to come over here. we have studies that scientific show that great dust storm that they had in china dropped that dust over on our west coast. we're all here in the same

boat. so yet we have to push back not just for fair trade but for balance trade in order for our companies to compete. i'll just relate one story that -- one educational experience. in i believe it was february of 2007 just after i was sent here i had the opportunity with my class of 2006 to sit down with eight c.e.o.'s of major manufacturing companies, high-tech companies, h.p., i.b.m., del and the like. and i asked him what's your biggest component of overhead and they all said, people, people, people. they would explain why you're taking our jobs over to india and china because you can hire them for less. and right across from me was michael dell and he said, congressman kagen, i'm competing with these guys. i have to chase the lowest cost of production around the world or i'm out of business and i have to after all represent my people which are my

stockholders. so we have to make things in america. manufacturing does matter but we need a level playing field. mr. garamendi: let's continue on. i know another colleague has joined us from the great state of new york. let's turn to another colleague who was raising the point about chinese currency. mr. ryan: yeah. i would say if it's balance -- and i think if all the business people in america would say this, if china's not manipulating their currency, if there was some balance with human rights and worker rights we would compete with anybody. but we have -- we have and now under the current trading system with china blatantly manipulating our currency. we had almost everybody at this hearing today acknowledging that china is cheating on their currency. democrats and republicans. but we had a lot of republicans on the other side saying we just don't think this is the

approach. and it gets back to these multinational corporations that have a strangle hold on a lot of the politics going on here in the united states capitol. but we need to bring this bill to the floor of the house of representatives and we need to pass it and we need to take on the chinese. we're not going to have a country left in a decade or so if we're not making things. that -- you get the spinoff, you get the technology, you get the patent, you get five, six, seven spinoff jobs for every one job. you're actually making something and you improve it and add value and pass it along and add value and then it's assembled and then it's trucked. there's this spinoff we get with manufacturing. that's how we're going to resuscitate the middle class. and my fear is as we have lost manufacturing, and if you charter it you can see it decline, you know, from 39% in post-world war ii down to 10%, you can see the decline, my

fear is that as we move into the development of solar panels, as we move into the development of windmills, that's exactly it. as we develop the green technology and all of the component parts, you will begin to see china taking the lead on green manufacturing. and we can't see that ground because that is the future. as much as our friends on the other side of the aisle want to bury their heads in the sand and hope this goes away, you know, that's not the world we live in. so we need to take a firm approach with china, respect them but make sure they play by the rules. we got to play by the rules. everyone else has got to play by the rules. and i'll use one example real briefly. we had a steel company, oil country tubular products for oil and gas. you know, the steelworkers, the trade groups, the local businesses all went around, petitioned the international trade commission, got approval,

the president was kind enough to put on a tariff for these oil country tubular goods coming in. they end up investing $615 million in the factory in youngstown, ohio, 400 construction jobs, 350 permanent jobs, the spinoff, the whole nine yards, because our government enforced the rules and leveled the playing field. that's what we're saying about currency, tires, paper, textiles, right down the line. mr. garamendi: let me bring it back to something you were talking about. you mentioned the wind turbines and the solar system. we develop the technology here in the united states and in fact the stimulus bill that provided the largest increase ever in research is going to once again put the united states in a position where we can dominate these green industries. so that research is there. incidentally not one republican voted for that emormous

research program and tax cut and jobs program and infrastructure program. not one republican voted for the program that created three million jobs. but there's something going on here that we need to pay attention to and this is a piece of legislation that i introduced. we're spending billions of dollars to promote the wind industry, the solar industry. these are tax credits that we give to companies for production tax credit or for someone that's putting a solar cell on their house. we need to make sure that that tax money is spent on american-made wind touchins and american-made sole -- turbines and american-made solar panels and other green technologies. if it's our tax money, then buy america, buy america. a little later here i suspect -- i want one of our colleagues, marcy kaptur, to come and talk to us about a bill that passed oud of this house just -- out of this house just hours ago that would

require you and i, not just talk the talk but we walk the walk, and that in the equipment we purchase for our offices it be made in america. once again, american tax money used to buy american-made products. the piece of legislation i've introduced, i like it. i like it because it's going to create in my industry wind turbines that are going to actually not only be on the hills but made in america. i notice my colleague from new york, mr. paul tonko, has joined us. you've been at this a long time. you were in one of the original manufacturing sectors of america. mr. tonko: absolutely. mr. garamendi: please tell us. mr. tonko: thank you, representative garamendi, for bringing us together. i represent the area that houses the erie canal bed and it's a necklace of communities called mill town that was the centers of invention and innovation. and that pioneer spirit still

exists, i'm convinced, in america. and during our recent work period break where we all went back to our districts and had a six-week stretch to connect to our constituents i did tuesday tours and the tuesday tours were about manufacturing, making it in america and where we need to invest and where the success stories might rest. and it's amazing to see the stories that were impacted by the recovery act, work done by water efficiency, energy efficiency, the m.e.t. programming, the manufacturing extension partnership, which the other administration wanted to tpwhrour out. i went to a group called x-ray obstacles. and because of small innovative research moneys this group is employing people. they never dropped during the recession. they were a steady pulse. and they are exporting. just when we say we're not exporting and we have lost our

manufacturing sector. we lost a third of our manufacturing jobs over the last decade thanks to the weakened policy on manufacturing, but we still have you know, enough jobs that purchase us -- who places us on the top of that manufacturing list globally. but we can't afford that present trend which would see us losing more manufacturing jobs. so we've turned that around. those 1/3 of manufacturing jobs lost in the last decade equates to 4.6 million jobs lost. but now with the recovery act, with a new focus on manufacturing, i think there's a stronger sense that we can move forward and proclaim accurately that we want to make it in america. representative garamendi, let me just tell you that at x-ray obstacles they're exporting to asia and to europe. they're dealing for testing for toxins. they manufacture equipment that is the testing product for toxins in toys, in fuel, in a

number of owe times where they can -- items where they can save a lot of money in the upfront part of their process. and, again, it's a high-tech operation where they had the investment and partnership with the federal government so that we can do it smarter, not necessarily cheaper, we can do it smarter and then we're competitive at that global marketplace. another venture was a state-of-the-art operation within the baby food industry, and in my district we have a new facility that qualifies for a silver status lead building, a green building that has water efficiency and energy efficiency as a major aspect of the work they're doing, saving them cost of production and allowing them to stretch again that opportunity to translate it into jobs. now, that was a government partnership to provide for water and energy efficiency. .

a third one was an outcome of the arpa e grant money. get a load of this. before i came to congress, there was an opportunity to do that program beyond rhetoric. but the bush presidency proclaimed we we were going to have that program without funding it. and $800 million from the recovery act that went to the program. created situations lir. darpa created situations like internet for the defense systems and stealth bombers. we took that success that goes back to the nasa days and overlaid that into the energy thinking, the energy realm. arpa-e is enabling this industry, another tour location, to advance superconducttive

cable and storage for intermittent power. mr. garamendi: could you share with us where the arpa-e money came into the system? >> it came from the recovery act. mr. garamendi: the recovery act, most people don't know what it is. they think of the stimulus program. one of the stimulus programs. mr. tonko: the majority in this house supported the recovery act. mr. garamendi: that is the democrats supported and passed the stimulus program, the american recovery and reinvestment act. mr. tonko: and our friends on the other side said no. mr. garamendi: for research, specific programs for energy, research and small businesses that got grants and loans to develop. the democrats know that we have to improve the private sector, make jobs.

mr. tonko: let me tell you, representative garamendi, with that money that the democrats supported and republicans said no to, we are able for ones now, finally, appropriate monies for the science, technology, the basic research. what they will do as superpower is develop that final model that will be deployed into a manufacturing concept that will allow us to create the storage potential for exactly what you were talking about, solar energy, wind energy, which is intermittent in nature, if we get the storage issue and battery issue resolved, it becomes even more powerful. it's not just taking a garage idea and creating a manufactured product out of it, but also creating jobs, which then enables us to create better energy solutions. so all of this in a big picture form at is an idea where they

all get their hands in the action, where we develop a product line which requires manufacturing jobs, but that product will enable us to respond more favorly and fully to the energy solutions that we can do here domestically and be nor energy self-sufficient and energy independent. it uses the american workers' intellect and all happens with us saying yes to a partnership like that in the stimulus package. mr. garamendi: we know the area of the erie canal was one of the birth places of the industrial revolution. my colleagues from the midwest may have something to add to it. ohio, i believe. you still make things in ohio? mr. ryan: yes, we do. and we are right in line to continue down the road of innovation, whether it is aerospace, the steel industry in

youngstown and eastern part of my district, the rubber industry in akron, which is the western part of my district which i share with representative sutton. we had in youngstown, the highest per capita income in the country in the late 1950's, early 1960's, steel workers working hard, long hours, making good money, good wages, raising their family and a good middle class. the big bands would come through town and go to the park -- you know, the story of america that we all remember. and today, what we're seeing is, we understand that it's not going to be 1950 and frank sinatra isn't going to come become and start singing songs again. we have to create our own era of prosperity. and that means in this country,

we have got to get tough with globalization and enforcing trade laws. and that means as a country, we got to suck it up and we got to say to the multinational corporations who quite frankly don't have the national interests at heart. they have their bottom line at heart, which is what they do. but as a country, we've got the national interests and need to protect the national interests. so tough with china. level the playing field. drive investment back into the united states so we can make that bus, those solar panels, those windmills, the batteries, right down the line. and we aren't foolish enough -- we aren't going to make everything. we know there's going to be stuff manufactured in china for the chinese market, great. and i hope american companies do that. but what we're saying is, we can't be weak-kneed with the chinese.

and i like what i saw today at the hearing and hearing within our caucus to possibly bring a bill to the floor that would get tough with china and get us making things in america again. mr. garamendi: you said something a moment ago, talking about the multinational corporations and whether we are willing to stand up to the multinational corporations and bring jobs back to america. two weeks ago, we came back from our session working out in our districts to pick up a piece of legislation called the education, jobs and medical assistance act. 160,000 teachers are employed as a result of that across the nation and police and firemen and public safety officials and medical services are being provided in the communities. a major piece of that legislation dealt precisely with the issue you discussed a moment ago about multinationals. under the previous law,

multinational companies that took jobs to china or somewhere else actually got a tax break. we closed that loophole. we closed that tax hole, that tax loophole, bringing $10 billion back to the treasury and discouraging american corporations, ending their incentives. mr. tonko, if you would like to jump in. mr. tonko: not only is that true, but also during the bush presidency, there was a strong focus on a portion of our economy, on our jobs, and somewhat a weak commitment to other sectors. as we all know, when you break down the jobs or the economy issue, it's agriculture, it's manufacturing, it's the service sector. the emphasis on agricultural and manufacturing was exreamly weak. we see the problems in the agricultural community. i see it in my dairy sector in

my district. it's painful to see the lack of attention that's been paid to dairy farmers. in manufacturing, it was ignored heavily. they wanted to zero out the manufacturing extension partnership which produced a lot of success for x-ray opticals where now they are exporting. and what they did, they turned their back to regulation, to overview, to kind of stewardship of a sector of the economy that when left to control itself brought down because of greed the american economy and wreaked damage upon us. so what i would say is, we need to put the focus back into manufacturing. the programs we have done here after the damage that was allowed to occur are now going to bring back a strong response in manufacturing. and i can't say well enough how strong the democratic agenda has been here to grow the make it in

america campaign. make it in america is something that people have been asking for and can't understand, why is it our manufacturing can't work here. we see where the intellect is being invested in and growing a strong partnership with small business, the springboard to our economy. they are providing a percentage of new jobs in our economy. the democrats bring a working agenda that will be a profitable situation for all of us, with job creation and the kind of stability and local infusion that is essential after it was ignored for far too long. mr. garamendi: the gentleman from ohio. mr. ryan: you want to talk about an example, the illustration of what democrats stand for when it comes to manufacturing. come to my district and last week, we unveiled the rollout of a third shift at the general

motor plant that is making the crews car, a hot car that is being sold all over the world. think about what would have happened to manufacturing in the united states had this president and this congress and the senate say, let the auto industry go. i remember watching tv programs hearing the other side of the aisle saying, let the free market work, you know. let it crash. and we would have lost an essential component to manufacturing in the united states. we would have lost general motors for sure, sold off in pieces and who knows who would have come in and ate up that market share from somewhere else in the world, but we said no. we said we need to have manufacturing. we need to be a leader in the auto industry. this is something we believe in. and we are seeing that increase because of the stimulus package and what the president and this

democratic congress did for the auto industry. mr. garamendi: dr. kagen. mr. kagen: if you don't make anything, you won't have anything? you have to make things to have things. and it's manufacturing that brings us a higher wage job. but when we brought the bill you referred to to the house floor, only 12 republicans voted to close the very corporate tax loopholes that ship our jobs overseas. we cannot continue to reward corporations for stealing our jobs and taking them overseas. whose side are we on? you have to be on the side of the middle class. when it came time to consider, as we are now in discussions, to making permanent tax cuts for the middle class, it is a -- the democratic party that stands up to make it possible to have a permanent tax cut. the other side of the aisle is promoting, what? more and more debt to reward the

top 1% or 2% income earners in the united states. that's just not right. it's not right for our cities in wisconsin. it's not right for america. the other aspect, our side of the aisle, the gentlemen have an idea about social security, to phase it out. phase out social security? mr. garamendi: wait. wait. wait. you mean the republican party actually has as one of their political planks? mr. kagen: in the state of wisconsin it's in their party platform to phase out social security. but social security is a sacred contract between one generation to the next. it's the most successful social program. it guarantees people will be in their house, not the poor house, when they become old. it's not a retirement plan, but something where if you put your money in and did the work, you've got to be able to get

your money out. when it comes to social security, we're here to protect it and enhance it. our opposition seeks to destroy it. there should be no question about whose side we're on. but getting back to making it in america. making it in america is not only about manufacturing. it's about guaranteing that your children have, that the children have a great education. it's about guaranteing that you have access to affordable health care when and where you need it. it's about guaranteing that our manufacturing base that creates the higher wage jobs can compete on a level playing field. this is something that makes sense, but around here, if it makes sense, it's going to be hard to do. i would join with my colleagues in encouraging your bill to move forward to make certain that this administration and any administration moving forward

holds china accountable to stop manipulating its currency. the big picture i get to see that i didn't see before coming here. you know i'm a doctor? i always tell my patients it's going to take you as long to get better as it took you to get sick. it's going to take us a while to work our way back into prosperity. but making it, we're going to make it in america, not just with manufacturing once again, but by making sure we hold china and other nato nations held accountable. the idea of free market capitalism has bumped into a brick wall, the chinese wall. the asian model of capitalism where the government owns the corporation, controls the currency, offers slave-like wages for labor, environmental conditions for work that we just would not tolerate, not even for our animals.

so what we have to ship overseas are not just our jobs but american values. and that's who we are. and the voters will make decisions about whose side we are on when it comes to tax cuts for the middle class, protecting social security and making things in america, closing those tax loopholes, the democrats on on their side and i yield. . mr. garamendi: we've talked about the way in which we have to make sure that our tax laws support programs and hiring in the united states rather than offshoring. in all of these things, i hope your republican colleagues come along and work with us to make it in america, but on maybe 20 different bills we've moved out of this house, there's been virtually now republican support. there are other opportunities and then we offer these

opportunities to our republican colleagues to come along with us on some other programs a piece of legislation that i'm working on deals with these buses that were once made in the midwest, in ohio, and still made in california. right now, we spend about $6 billion of our gasoline tax money to buy buses, light rail, trains, inner city rail system -- intercity rail systems for amtrak and the light. in the law, there are four waivers that allow the department of transportation to ignore the buy america rules. so what's happened over the last 20 years or so is that those waivers are routinely used and transit districts simply buy buses that are made overseas. our tax money flows out of the country. our jobs disappear and our industry, the transportation industry is almost gone.

my legislation tells the department of transportation, no, no. those waivers are finish. three of the four waivers are gone. if there's an extraordinary cost difference, ok. but we want that money spent on american jobs system of that when in the san francisco bay area, the bay area rapt transit system, bart, goes out, as they will, to buy $300 million of train sets for the bart system where will those trains be made? will they be made in china? given the monetary advantage that china has, quite possibly they could win the bid. given the issues of worker safety and environmental issues that china ignores they may win the bid. but my legislation says, no, we're going to make these trains in america, $300 million there, $760 billion across the nation, we can make it in

america if we bring our tax money back. it's our tax money, let's spend it in america, remake the manufacturing system and make it in america. would that be a good thing for ohio? mr. kagen: we're all for it. -- mr. ryan: we're all for it. if you think about the bush doctrine that we want to go back to, and they're blatant about say, we want to go back to the bush doctrine on taxes, on every other energy and all of this and the economy and not regulating wall street, they want to go back to the bush doctrine of economic policy. now, i understand that we're having this tax debate now because the tax cuts for the wealthiest americans and everyone are going to expire, we need to remember that these were the tax cuts that were

going to unleash the economy in the united states. we were going to have all this growth because of the bush tax cuts. cut taxes for the wealthy. explosion among developers. explosion among the economy, we're going to have, you know, low unemployment and everything el. where did it end? the absolute collapse of the united states economy. what we're saying is not only tax cuts for the wealthiest in the country, but tax cuts to offshore work. incentives for business, offshore work out of the country. tax cuts for the wealthiest, offshore work do, a prescription drug plan you don't pay for, borrow money from the chinese to run two wars. this is the bush doctrine. privatize social security and medicare, bush doctrine. we're saying don't privatize social security and medicare. let's invest back into these programs. let's give tax cuts to the

middle class, let's give tax cuts to businesses who will locate and create jobs in the united states, let's get a manufacturing policy in the united states, that we can have auto industry, steel industry, paper industry, textile industry, and most importantly the future green engineering design and manufacturing of the future economy in green. a clear contrast between the bush policies our republican friends clearcally still -- clearly still trumpet and want to go back to, and what we have done to reverse the trend in that chart there and continue to investbacks, -- back in america and continue to make things. mr. garamendi: you talk about investment, a week ago, president obama talked about making it in america and spoke about the need to give a

significant tax break to businesses that want to invest capital to expand their business, expand their manufacturing base. it's a very, very powerful notion, i was meeting with three of my friends who are in the business community, they're manufactures, one in the food industry, another in the high tech industry. i was talking to them about this notion of, would you increase your business, would you increase your capital investment on your production line, you could write off in one year the cost of that capital? and they said, absolutely. you put that into law and i'm investing tomorrow. i'm going to put people to work building my manufacturing base. so the president has now spoken to this, it's one of the proposals he's put forward, today i introduced a piece of legislation that would do exactly that, any business that wants an increase in capital investment in that business,

broadband, production lines, machine tools, whatever it is, they could write it off in year one. we can restart the american manufacturing system if we are committed to making it in america. a whole series of legislation. ending tax breaks for offshoring. ending tax breaks for businesses that are routinely killing the american economy by sending jobs offshore. using our tax money to build the green economy here in america rather than buying it from manufacture -- manufacturers overseas. making sure our buses, trains, planes, are made in america. and dr. kagen, you've been in the high tech industry in the medical industry, you understand these issues. your kinds of businesses. schaefer with us your perspective as we begin to wrap this up in the next six minutes. mr. kagen: i'll make a brief comment about the investment tax credit that's so critical

for emerging pharmaceutical companies, for biotechnology in particular. when you reward people for doing good work, instead of rewarding corporations and people for their wealth you begin to get that engine of america going that small business engine that really creates all the jobs we need. i would summarize what mr. ryan had to say as this, the bush dockcrine, the -- doctrine, the reagan doctrine, of trickle down economics, has failed miserably. it has rewarded people for their wealth instead of their work. what we must begin to do again is to encourage people in small business in particular and small banks to take that risk to take that chance and reward you for your risk taking and for your hard work. that will start the economic engine and rebuild our economy as we go through this transformation over the next decade of becoming energy infeint -- independent. we may not be totally as a nation independent, grow our

own energy, develop our own energy, but we have the resources here at home. making it in america means not just manufacturing, making things here. it also means investing our hard-earned tack dollars in our own nation's infrastructure. what i object to so greatly is that we take our resources, like our children, and send them off to iraq and afghanistan at $2 billion a week into afghanistan, rebuilding buildings we've never destroyed. building schools they may need but we need schools as well. water treatment plants, look, if we're going to build an infrastructure, it could be here -- it should be here in these united states. that's where my people live. i don't represent people overseas. finally, manufacturing, investing in infrastructure, we also balance our trade deals as you and i have had discussions about the asian nations to make sure our trade is balanced that way we can generate the higher

wage jobs we need here at home, jobs that will keep people in our home, feed our tax base, rebuild our schools and our middle class. the speaker pro tempore: thank you for -- mr. garamendi: mr. kagen, thank you for joining us. as i started this i used the analogy of a football game. we're talking about the most important game of all -- it's not a game, the most important thing of all, the american economy and how to keep it growing and growing. to go back over it, in the bush years two wars that were not -- on which money was borrowed, create the enormous deficit, the deregulation of wall street, anything go the collapse of wall street, the issues of tax policy where the wealthy were rewarded for the wealth not the work, led to the largest decline in the american economy since the great depression in 1930. it was plain to see. obama came in that was the first quarter. in the second quarter, president obama came in and we began to see policies put forth

by the democratic party and the democratic administration that began to restore the american economy. a steady upward climb. not where we need to be, but we're on the road and we did all of that with almost no republican help at all. you go back through all of those votes and the republican party was standing over there saying no. no to the programs that actually brought us back and we continue on today. we're in the locker room, ready for the second half which begins in january, 2011. the question is, which team are you going to put back on the field? where do you stand? we know pretty clearly where the republican party stands. it stands with the old, failed policies of the george w. bush administration. it stands for ending social security. ending medicare. stands for anything goes no regulation, let it rip and it's

ripped us off. it stands for tax breakers in wealthy and to heck with the middle class. that's where the republican party stands. the democratic party wants to make it in america. to rebuild the american manufacturing base and the american manufacturing industry. put the picture back up in you would, dr. kagen, of a family. of a family in your district. in the paper industry that is losing their job because of unfair competition. a very successful, if we were to use the capital investment program, perhaps that company, together with the program that you talked about of fairness and trade, that family and families in my district would be able to have a well-paid, middle class american job. dr. kagen would you like to close out off here and bring us back to real america? mr. kagen: thank you for

yielding. i'm just summarize. the swanson family wants nothing more than any other family in the united states. they want an opportunity to go to work, where it's safe, where they can earn a living wage. where they can begin to pay off their own debts and make it on their own, to have their own home, to have a living wage sufficient enough to educate themselves and the next generationing their children that is, after all, what every family wants. that's american dream that's been stolen away by illegal dumping of paper into our area and when china has targeted everything else we make for extinction, it's time to stand up and fight for our own job here's at home. we're going to make it in america when we all begin to paddle in the same direction, let's get on board and take that train ride together. mr. garamendi: dr. kagen, thank you for joining us. thank you to my colleagues. we put forth many, many policies and programs, we ask

our republican colleagues to join us in making it in america. i yield back my time, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from california yields back. under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, the gentleman from missouri, mr. akin, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader. . mr. akin: thank you, mr. speaker. good evening. it's a pleasure to be able to join you. i had a chance to listen on some of the last hour presented by the democrats and their views on the economy. it seemed like a fair amount of

excuses and blaming things on bush and the chinese. and so i'm going to be presenting and maybe even have some guests here presenting a different perspective on the economy and the american people will be the judge of that debate and discussion in november. now, i would suggest that the democrats and their policies are actually destructive to the economy. i don't think it's a could iran sid dens that -- cow insi dens that if you look at people below the poverty level, that those cities have been managed, every one of them, for many years by democrats. you can blame the chinese and

president bush but i will show in the next hour in plain simple terms why the democrat policies are literally destroying the economy. now, you can say, well, i don't like that or maybe you are being partisan. i'm not really quite so concerned about partisan. i'm concerned with america. i'm concerned with the people who don't have jobs. and i'm concerned that not only are we creating unemployment, but we are systemically destroying the businesses that can create employment in the future. so let's take a look at these questions. those are strong charges to say that the democrats are the ones that are actually responsible for what's been going on. i think a lot of americans have some sense that that may be true. we have -- sometimes it's fun to take a look at some of these

political cartoons. we have the president here now talking to the guy that owns the china shop, now give me one good reason why you aren't hiring, health care reform storming in and cap and tax or cap and trade and the taxes that are impending and all and the point of the cartoon is the fact that the policies that we've seen are creating the unemployment. let's look at that again just a little bit closer. now, we talk about the economy and there are different ways of measuring it. well, wall street doing well? am i happy with my job? are things going comfortably for me? those are measures that we use. we look also at the rate of the federal government, how much it's spending money and how much it's borrowing. what does that mean? but particularly, it's very personal when we talk about unemployment and it becomes not

a political issue, but a personal issue when it's job that was just lost. now, we were told that we had to come up with this economic stimulus bill last year. we were told that if you don't pass this economic stimulus bill, this unemployment could get above where it is now. it's going up. but if you don't pass it, why, we could have -- well, we could have 9% unemployment if you don't pass the stimulus bill. and so the democrats all by themselves passed this $800 billion bill to supposedly stimulate the economy. and after they passed it, what happened? well, now we've got this unemployment here at 9.7%. the numbers vary but pretty

close to 10%. if you lost your job more than a year, you don't get to count in the statistics anymore. the unemployment rate is well over 10% in america. now, we were told that if you pass the stimulus bill, that we could keep it underneath 8%. that's the words that the democrats brought to this floor a year ago. the fact is, they were wrong. anybody can see they're wrong. look at the unemployment numbers. they don't bear it out. they spent $800 billion and where did it all go? did it go for a lot of projects or more bailouts? in fact, it had a lot of bailout money in it that didn't go for things that f.d.r. would have considered an economic stimulus package. so that's what's going on. we have a high level of unemployment. the stimulus package that was

passed here and the republicans they said didn't help any. we didn't think it would work. i stood here on the floor on a wednesday night and said, it's not going to work. but they did it anyway. and now we can see it didn't work. what are they going to do? they are going to do more stimulus packages. is it going to work? no. it is based on faulty economics. it will never work. they should have listened to the director of the treasury under f.d.r., henry morgan thaw. he is back -- henry morgenthau. he said we have spent money to get the economy going. we are in a tremendous amount of debt and unemployment has not changed. he said it does not work to this house, ways and means committee. henry morgenthau said it doesn't

work. and here we go, we are doing it again. let's look at what the democrat policies are that are in conflict with creating jobs, because i would suggest that the democrats have got this problem. the problem is that everything they stand for is specifically going to be in conflict with creating jobs. one of the things -- what are the things they stand for? let's take a look at where jobs come from. and this is the linkage they don't want you to figure out. and that is, if you get a job, you have to get a job from somebody. who's the from somebody? you can't separate employers and people who run businesses from jobs. jobs just don't hang out there floating around somewhere. they are created by an employer somewhere. and if you create conditions

economically that make it impossible for the employers, then guess what's going to happen? you aren't going to have jobs. it's not very complicated. it's as simple as the lemonade stand and i'm going to use that illustration, to hammer through the simple truth and it's very important because it's the economic future that the american family hangs on in understanding these principles. jobs come from an employer. and if you harm the employer, you're not going to have the jobs. and if you do it bad enough, as f.d.r. did and hammer them down enough, you'll put the employers out of business and then it's going to be a long time before the company starts up and new jobs can be created. let's take a look at what happens. let's say you have a lemonade stand and you happen to have a very fortunate piece of property and a whole lot of people are

through there and hot, sweaty and tired and you have the one piece of property you put up the lemonade stand and you start out and hire your younger brother and sister to work there and you squeeze the lemons and get sugar from the store and put it all together and get some ice and you have a pretty good day. you sell a lot of lemonade and you realize there is a whole lot more demand for your lemonade than you have the capacity to make this stuff. you start thinking, man, i wonder if i should buy a lemon squeezer and shaker machine, ice machine. i will hire five or six more people, not just my younger brother or sister and they can all work at the lemonade stand and will make a whole lot more lemonade. but for me to buy that ice machine and the lemon squeezer and all, i'm going to have to have some money and i have to make sure there is going to be

enough money coming in from lemonade to pay off the cost of that machinery. so if you are an owner of a business, one of the things you have to figure out is you have to have enough money to be able to create new jobs. if you go with your plan and you buy the lemon squeezer and ice machine, you can hire eight more people to make lemonade and you can sell it, but it requires that you have to have some money to buy the ice machine and lemon squeezer. you are making good money and see how you could pay it off in a couple of months, but don't have the money right now. so, as a businessman, you are saying well, somehow i have to get this money and there comes a question about liquidity. now, what happens to this lemon -- lemonade stand guy and all of a sudden you say, we are going to charge 50 cent tax on a

glass. the man isn't going to have the money to pay off the ice machine and lemon squeezer and will hunker down. he will pay the tax and he says man, this is a hostile environment. they are taxing every glass of lemonade i make and so i'm not going to create as many jobs. it's not complicated. if you tax the owners of businesses heavily, they aren't going to have the money to make the investments to create new jobs. and it's that linkage which the democrats refuse to understand and it is so obvious and so simple. and our policies are going after the owners of businesses and we are calling them rich guys and we are saying you have to punish the rich guys by taking their money so everyone else can be ok. this is the bailout mindset, this is the bailout fever that has infected this city, the

bailout concept that the government has to redistribute wealth and when you take it away from the guys that own the business, you aren't going to be creating jobs and that's the mechanics of how economics works. you don't have to like it. i didn't invent it. i'm just explaining what is common sense and most americans can understand. jobs come from employers. if you destroy employers, you aren't going to have jobs. and how do you destroy employers? the best way to do it, tax them. there are other ways to destroy businesses, but taxing them is a pretty good way to do it. let's take a look at other questions. i like the lemonade stand example. if the owner of the business, maybe he is making good profit but doesn't have a huge bank account of money saved up, he will want to go to the bank and borrow money for his ice machine and lemon squeezer. he goes to the bank and tries to

get a loan from the bank. but the policies on banks are so tight, even though the fed has released tons of money, that the bankers are afraid to loan money to businesses. and businesses are afraid to borrow it. that is not a good condition if you are trying to korea ate jobs because you have to -- if you are trying to create jobs because you have to have money to get the marketplace going. another thing that is a huge killer of jobs. if the businessman doesn't know what's going to happen. the owner of the lemonade stand knows the season is changing and fall is coming and not sure he will sell that lemonade. he has some unknowns and that's the weather. and that's what the people in washington, d.c. is going to do

to businesses next. and if the businessman doesn't know what's going to happen, he doesn't know what's going to happen, he hunkers down like a towed in a hailstorm. hunker down because they aren't sure what these guys in washington, d.c. are going to be doing. if they are going to pass a health care bill and crank taxes up and pass the tax increase, there is uncertainty there. if you think the economy is really bad and everybody's struggling and not much demand because nobody has jobs and the whole economy is sort of sluggish and sitting like a stone, then you are going to be very careful about doing anything in terms of increasing your productivity and how fast or how efficiently you can make something because you say i have to make a big investment. i don't know i can sell enough product with the taxes and everything to pay it off. so uncertainty is a killer in terms of jobs. and then, of course, red tape

and government mandates. if you make that lemonade stand tax to make sure every single glass is crystal pure and you have to file a report with the e.p.a. that every single glass of lemonade has been certified and tested on equipment to be sure, what that does is that red tape makes your cost of product go up and makes it harder for the guy to run his business. and when you do that, he's not going to hire as many people. all of these things are things that are going to make the unemployment rate go up in america. these are the main things. i haven't invented this. i have talked to all kinds of businesses. now, give us the list of things that make it hard to hire people. this is the list of things they come up with. this isn't any surprise. this isn't any kind of rocket science.

the democrat policies are basically in conflict with creating jobs. let's look at what those policiesr because we have examples of them. we have been told all of this woe that the economy is in is president bush's problem. democrat tax increases. we talked about tax increases, the number one enemy of creating jobs, obamacare, socialized medicine, $570 billion that's what that is supposed to be. that's a lot of money. who is going to pay it? the guys that own those businesses. is that going to make for more jobs? no, it's not. schip, $65 billion. the stimulus, $7 billion, benefits and home buyer credits, $23 billion, hire act, $6 billion, total package, $671

billion in tax increases. is that the way to create jobs? no. democrats don't have to look at republicans to get the right answer. they can look at history. they could look at j.f.k. j.f.k. was a democrat he understood this stuff. he got it right. j.f.k. came into a time when there was a recession and he did the right thing he knew what the right thing to do was, he cut taxes. when he did, the economy rebounded. the democrats could learn from j.f.k. but they refuse to. they don't want to hear this because they like spending money. their solution to everything is more money and more government. more government spending, more government programs. they're not listening to j.f.k. they should have. they could have listened to ronald reagan but they don't like him too well. they could listen to j.f.k. they could also listen to bush who inherited a recession in 2000 and 2001 and 2002, 2003,

did a punch of tax cuts and those got the economy going again. they could learn from examples. but they're not. instead, they're following the path of f.d.r. who turned a recession into a great depression and they're not listening to henry morgenthau, the secretary of finance under f.d.r. these are tax increases. does that help the jobs situation in not at all. in fact, they harm it. well, what other tax increases have we got going? not only are we going toin crease taxes for all these programs, what we're going to do is, we're going to allow all the tax cuts that took place under bush, which were designed specifically to get the economy going, and we're going to allow those things all to expire, or some portion of them to expire, which means that whatever effect they had, because we did move from a recession into some

good, strong economic activity in 2004, 2005, 2006, whatever effect they have is going to boomerang and hurt us in the same amount in the downside as the other helps us in the upside. the ordinary income, the top income rates in 2010, 35%, they're going to jump to just under 40%. capital gains is going to go from 15% to 20%. qualified dividends, 15% to almost 40%. and the death tax will go from 0% to 55%. let's take an example of what this death tax is going to do. you've got a couple of guys running a farm, a thousand acres and some good equipment, it's a dad and son. tragically, the dad gets old and dies. the farm was owned by the dad, the son wants to take it over. they hire 10 people to work their farm for them. i just made up the number 10,,

i don't think they need that many, maybe. but anyhow, they've got people hired to do that. so the death tax comes along and says to the son, hey, you owe the government, because we're going to tax your dad for dying. we want 55% of the value of that farm. son takes a look and says, mr. government, i had to sell half theland i'd be from 1,000 to 500 acres and i'd have to choose which tractors i sell. i couldn't make the farm work if you take 55% out of -- out of it. the government says, i don't care. just give me my 55%. it may not be a farm. it may be a small business but that's what this death tax does. that's why we got are rid of the death tax because we want those businesses to keep going. we want that money to be plowed in and we're willing to live with the fact that somebody may be very well to do and very comfortable and having a very nice life. we don't begrudge it to

somebody to work hard, save money and do well. because we realize if you allow that guy to do well, he's going to hire other people and that's what creates jobs and increases everybody's standard of living this policy, allow this thing to go back to 55%, is going to hurt the job situation. it's going to hurt the economy and hurt americans. the other thing here, capital gains is the same kind of thing. if you keep taxing businesses a lot, now there's this other thing, child tax credit, the marriage penalty and the average, those things are changing back again. the lowest tax bracket gos from 10% to 15%. the democrats may change this a little bit and make it look pretty to people but if you don't deal with things like the death tax and capital gains, these kinds of things, these are the things that make the difference of whether or not there's going to be jobs, whether or not we'll have

companies go bankrupt. you got the message. it's dumb to be raising taxes when the economy is having a hard time. everybody can tell you that. it just isn't smart. there aren't many people who have been dumb enough economically when the economy is in trouble to want to go ahead and push for the largest tax increase in the history of our country. now i notice my democrat colleagues were talking about how bad it is that things weren't made in america. they said, we've got to bring those jobs back in the country. how are you going to bring jobs back in the couldn't arery when we create a set of rules that makes it so expensive to build something here that you have a huge advantage somewhere else to build it in another place. what sort of things would that be, congressman akin? you tell me that america has policies that make it so people don't want to produce things in

america? yeah. take a look at this. this is the corporate tax rates of a whole bunch of countries, you may not be able to read them all down here but this is ireland down here, a 13%, and as you go down the line, let's see, this is turkey over here, it's got ton 20%, and then let's -- gotten to 20%. then here's sweden, they're pretty socialistic, they're at 26%. then all the way over there to canada and france, and that green line, that's the united states. we're second only to japan in terms of corporate tax rates. now, it's pretty hard for me to see the logic of complaining about things being made overseas, when what we do with our tax policy is tax corporations so heavily that you create an incentive to

chase production overseas. if you're a businessman, you're competing. you're competing with all these other countries and what you're going to have to do is be competitive or else people won't by your product. so for us in congress to complain about foreign imports and things, when we've got a corporate tax rate that's second highest in the world, is once again an example of democrat tax policy being completely at odds with the goal of a strong economy and lots of jobs. you can't keep taxing the creator of jobs without losing your jobs. i think it's straightforward. i'm trying to make it simple. because there's one example after the other that our policies just don't make sense. here's a chart that's done a little more colorful way, we compete with france, spain, u.k., china. we talk about china, they've got 25%. we've got a 40% corporate tax

rate. why in the world would we want to be doing that? it just doesn't make sense. that's why, that's why our economy is in trouble. if we don't fix this, it'll get worse. what you do, you hammer a business and hammer a business and you hammer a business, sooner or later it's going to go out of business and then it's going to be a whole lot harder for somebody to start up a new company and try to put those jobs that could have been there otherwise if our policies had been more favorable. now, here's what happened when we did the stimulus. the democrats' answer to this is, the government can direct things and make things work and they'll really make it good. you've got to take a whole lot of money away from all of those taxpayers. let's grab a whole bunch of money from the taxpayer and we're going to spend it in this lovely stimulus bill, which by the way went to pay, aamong other thing the teachers' union in california because they overspent their pensions and

were getting near bankruptcy, same thing in illinois system of we're taking the stimulus bill, taking money away from states like mine in missouri and giving the money to states that couldn't manage their budgets, like california and illinois, and taxing the taxpayers all across america to bail out people who were irresponsible. that's where a lot of that stimulus money went. it also went to other various miscellaneous projects. what was the throiflt stimulus spending? we've lost $2 -- we've lost 2.6 billion jobs since this stimulus started. henry morgenthau was right. it's not logical that if goth spends a lot of money it makes the economy better. if you ran your household and you're in trouble economically, you've got a whole lot of loan payments coming due, you don't have enough salary to pay those things, you've got medical bills, everything is not right

in your economic family, and you say to your wife, hey, here's what i'm going to do, i'm going to go out and get this credit card and spend money like mad and that way we can fix our problems here with our little family. your wife would think you were nuts. she'd tell you to stay away from the bar or stop smoking theme funny cigarettes because anyone has the common sense to know if you're in economic trouble you don't spend money like mad. yet here we are in economic trouble, we spend money like mad and then we're wondering how come we lost all these jobs? what in the world are we thinking? it isn't the job -- the federal government cannot create jobs by spending lots of money. the federal government can spend a lot of money and they can hire people you say, wait a minute, federal government take $1 billion an hires these people, isn't that going to create jobs? because you've got people working for the government. here's the trouble with that line of reasoning. it's true, you have government

employees, but for every government employee, you've taken money out of the economy which could have been used in the private sector and when you do that, you lose more than two jobs out of the private sector for every government employee you hire. obviously you can't do that very long. pretty soon you've got more government employees than people working in the private sector. when you've got that you've got a country that doesn't work anymore economically and we are rapidly marching toward that point where these economic policies are going to bring a great deal of trouble down on our heads if we don't get sober and start taking a look at the hard facts about economics. now there are a whole lot of people now suffering with unemployment but it's important for them to understand the principle that you have got to allow businesses to prosper if you want to have employment. this is where the democrats should do some reading. this isn't too much reading to

do for maybe a week or so. here it is. henry her again thaw, franklin delano roosevelt's treasury secretary, before the house ways and means committee, 1939. we have tried spending money. we are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. i say after eight years of the administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot. how many times do we have to replay the sad lessons of history? i can hear all sorts of things, democrats just saying, well, the chinese are fiddling with the currency and president bush's policies, they're the ones that brought us all this trouble. no, it's not. no it's not. it's not president bush's policy. president bush spent too much money. his worst year was 2008, when

nancy pelosi was speaker of the house here. he had a deficit of $450 billion. too much. shouldn't have had $450 million. -- $450 billion. the first year of president obama's $350 trillion, three times the worst year of president bush's year, the amount of debt incurred in that year was three times 2009, what bush's worst was. obama makes bush look like ebenezer scrooge. he's a mere piker when it comes to spending money you don't have and 2010, you say, was -- 2010, was it any bet her it was worse, $2.5 trillion in deficit spending. we aren't listening to henry morgenthau. we should learn from henry morgenthau. we should learn from j.f.k. if you want jobs, you can't destroy the businesses. take a look at these government

deficits, that's the number that i'm talking about here. this gives you a little bit of a -- little bit of a sense. you can't run your family that way and over a period of time what we're going to find out is you can't run a country this way either. because when you have deficits like this, what's going to happen eventually is somewhere along the line you got to pay and who's going to pay? well, that hasn't totally been determined but you can guess one thing. when the economy goes bad, everybody suffers. in fact, if i were a happy little socialist, and i'm not, but if i were a happy little socialist, what i would want to do is implement an economic policy that made the economy strong because i'd get more government revenues to slop around to my friends. if the job of the government is to redistribute money, is to be experts at bailout, which it should not be, but if that is your goal, at least you should adopt policies that are going to provide as much revenue to the

government as possible. in 2001 and 2002, if you took a look at the items that the economists would say were the big ticket items of george bush, one was the war on terror and the other was the tax cuts and people said, oh, look at all the money the government lost from the tax cuts. so you add the war on terror and you add the cost of the tax cuts and what you find is that the money that the government was losing in 2001 and 2002 and 2003, in terms of the economy getting bad, was worse than the tax cut plus the war on terror. and so when the economy is bad, not only do people not have jobs and poor people suffer and more well to do people suffer, government suffers too. the governments don't have the money. if you have to be a state governor and you have a balanced budget amendment in your constitution such as missouri, you're in big trouble if you're the governor because you got to do some serious cutting and

you're not going to be very popular when the economy goes bad and you happen to be a governor. on the other hand, if the economy is doing well it makes you look like a hero because you have plenty of money for everything and you can be benevolent. so when the economy goes bad, it sinks all boats. everybody. including government, as well. so this deficit, this level of deficit spending is unparalleled in our history and it's going to destroy our country if we continue along the line. here's one way of looking at the destruction right here. this is -- see when we have the chinese buying up our debt, the chinese are buying treasury bills and the chinese are happy because they're getting paid a certain number of percent by the federal government nor every treasury bill. so they're willing to sit that there quietly buying up america and they're getting their percent. well, what happens when we spend so much money that all the money that we're taking in with taxes can't afford to pay for what our

debt service is? this would be the equivalent, if you're at home and you've got these credit cards, the credit card companies really like you and everything, so your family budget, well, you're spending a little more each month, a little more each month and pretty soon you find out, when you add everything all up, that you take a look at your credit card debts and the interest rate that you're paying on all those credit cards is more than the amount of money you make. what's that mean? that means you're in deep doo-doo. you're paying more in interest than you're getting in terms of how much money you make. when the federal government gets to this point, what's going to happen is that the amount of tax revenue is going to be less than what we're paying on all this debt that we're buying. that's another way of picturing the fact that this economic shen an begans that are going on cannot continue forever.

people understand that. it doesn't make a difference if you're a liberal or conservative. if you have any understanding of economics you're going to say, look, you just -- this is not sustainable. and that's kind of where we are. this is the social security and medicare, this is what their entitlements are going to cost. this is what the u.s. economy is. you can't sustain this with this. it just doesn't work. so that's where we are. i started with the premise that the democrat policies, the democrat policies are actually destructive to the economy and they're destructive to creating jobs. and what are those policies? one after the other they are policies of increased taxation, more government programs, more government red tape and the combination of those things along with excessive federal spending basically creates a

suction where there is no money in the economy for small businesses and you don't create any jobs. and that's what's going on. so as i said, as i began, it's not a coincidence that the 10 poorest cities in america, the cities that have the highest percent of people below the poverty level, have all been run by democrats, some for over 100 years. and they keep electing democrats because we don't understand the basic idea that jobs come from businesses. if you want a healthy economy and businesses you're going to have a loy some people to prosper -- allow some people to prosper and grit your teeth when you say it. some people are going to get filthy rich. but the benefit of allowing a few people to get wealthy means you're going to have some healthy companies and companies that are growing and hiring people and when the economy does better, everybody prospers. you got a guy on the street, just a little kid, trying to make some money. he goes around mowing lawns.

if that kid lived -- would he rather be mowing lawns in a rich neighborhood or a poor neighborhood? i would suggest the kid may be dirt poor. but he'd do better in a neighborhood of millionaires because when he mows the lawn they're going to give him a little bit better price. another neighborhood full of people that can barely afford to put food on the table, they're not going to pay him much to mow their yard for him. when the economy gets bet tier helps everybody. when you drive the economy into the dirt, then everybody suffers at the same time. we may not like it, but we're all hooked together in this great country called america. now, i think there are some ways we can get a little bit philosophical here. i think there are some places where we as americans have to take a look at our forefathers and maybe learn some lessons from them. our forefathers bled and died, sacrificed greatly for freedom. their understanding of freedom was maybe a little different than the way we are today in america.

their understanding of freedom was -- it was a sturdy dependence, a sturdy character of hard work and wise decision making. honest business transactions, courteousness. a sense of neighborhood and community service. it was so many things think a heard at an eagle scout ceremony on sunday. all of these virtues about being courteous and cheerful and hardworking and diligent and all these kinds of things and that was the freedom of our forefathers. it seems to me that to some degree now in america we've started to adopt an idea of freedom that it means that anybody can do anything they want regardless of whether it's very smart to do or not and when things don't go well we just want the government to come and bail us out. that's what i call bailout

fever. i don't think that's the freedom of our forefathers. i don't think the idea is instead of saving for your retirement that you go out and buy the ski boat or whatever it is that you don't really have money to buy. you buy it on credit and you buy a house too big for what you can afford and then when things don't go right, we say, i'm a victim. those rich somebody or others did this. it was george bush's fault. no, it was the chinese's fault. it's not my fault that i spent all that money on the ski boat. that's not freedom. that's not being responsible. freedom doesn't mean do whatever you want to do and expect the government or somebody to bail you out and blame someone else. it doesn't mean you're dependent on the government or other people. freedom means that you have a right to certain basic, inalienable rights. the inalienable right of life. to be alive so people don't kill you. and liberty so that you have a right to free speech, to share with your neighbor what you think the truth is, to share your opinions. to be able to get into a town

hall meeting and challenge people and say, where did you spend that money and why did we do that? to call it free speech and pursue happiness. that means whatever gifts god gave you, whatever desires or interests that you can pursue that career and you can succeed or you can fail based on whether or not you made good decisions. based on your being responsible. when the founders a couple of hundred years ago used the word government, when they talked about government, they did not think about capital domes. they didn't think about washington, d.c. they thought about the government that a man exercises over his own life. whether he was honest, hardworking, trustworthy, whether he was friendly, whether he was a good citizen in the community. that was the use of the word government. today we tend to think of government in terms of capital domes -- capitol domes.

we need to get back to the tradition of view of things in america and not look at freedom as license to do things that are irresponsible and then ask big brother government to come pick up the pieces because the government can't afford to do that anymore. a recent -- recent statistics have just come out. i think it was the front page of "the wall street journal" saying that a good number of households in america, almost half of them, there's someone in the household that's getting government bailout of some kind. some type of government subsidy. now, obviously if you keep doing that more and more there's going to come a point where it doesn't work. and that's where what all of these graphs and charts are showing, that you can't continuously have the federal government spend more and more money without the wheels falling off of everything. and we've come to that point. and the point has to be turned around not even so much by people in washington, d.c. it has to be turned around by

the good citizens of america. that look back to the strong parts of our past that have made america such a unique nation, a totally unique nation in the history of the world. and we have to go back to those virtues and that self-government that's necessary to rewhether this country -- to rebuild this country. america was built by these crade crazy people that came here with all these crazy ideas. they didn't know what can't meant. they didn't know what i can't do it means. they just tried. some dream became a vague possibility, then possibility and then eventually that dream became reality and america was built one dream at a time. it became so common we gave it a name. we called it the american dream. it was a phenomena of freedom, of citizens being able to be free to succeed or fail without all kinds of government red tape, without excessive government taxation, without bureaucrats looking over your

shoulder, they could go out and try. and a lot of them failed. there's one guy, his name was edison, he failed a lot. he's trying to make light bulbs. he made a hundred of them. every one of them didn't work. when he got done with a hundred, he said, well, now i know a hundred ways not to make a light bulb and he kept on trying. that was that american can-do spirit. he didn't have the government to subsidize his light bulb company. he didn't go to the government for a bailout. he didn't say his mom didn't give him enough chocolate chip cookies so he was really a victim. no. he just went back to the drawing board. he kept on working. and that was the american dream. so america became a more and more unique country. we came to be the oldest country with a written constitution that we have. we were known for going all over the world when there's a hurricane or there's a tragedy, where there's a war where people are being oppressed, you find the american soldiers there.

helping out. and people around europe can be cynical but when there's trouble they sure like it when america's around. and america was different in other ways, too. and in its perhaps most important way. america was unique because we were built on a religious principle. we believe that there is a god and that that god granted to all human beings certain basic fundamental rights. we wrote it in a thing called the declaration of independence. we believe that every individual should be the right to be alive. you shouldn't just shoot people. people should have a right to be alive unless they do something terrible. and second of all, that they should have a right to liberty. the liberty to speak their own, to have the right to free speech and to own property. not to have their property stolen from them by the government and given to someone else. we didn't believe it was ever the government's job to take money from one person and give it to the other.

that was socialism. that was theft. that was immoral. you had the right to own what you worked hard for. and you also had the right to pursue whatever it was that god had gifted you to do. if you're tog to be a singer, god would say, go out and be strong and be a good job being a singer. if you're going to be a businessman, be a good businessman. treat your employees well, work hard, be diligent, don't waste, don't pollute. if you're going to be someone who is a doctor, go to the top of your profession, do a good job, take care of people well, come up with new procedures and new drugs so that people can be more healthy and over a period of time the standard of living increased in america because we believed in these basic ideas, these traditions of america, but freedom never was a license to take from other people, it was never a license to make the government the big bailout expert. if we go back to this other approach, it doesn't work economically system of

americans again, in november, they have a choice. you can believe all of the so fistry and the blame of -- the sophistry and blame of george bush, but we have seen the stimulus bill and it flat didn't work. we've seen taxation of small businesses, we've seen unemployment go up and up and up and people have a sense that all is not right economically hi at the tremendous rate we're spending money. they know we can't keep on this path. 10 the choice is to be made in november. which approach are we going to take? i think the approach of our forefathers, a sturdy, hard-work ethic, integrity, and each person being responsible and accountable for their own decisions, and scaling back that federal government, i think a lot of americans today believe that in an effort to maybe in a good intended effort to do right things, we have

made the government no longer a servant but a master. i think the majority of americans now are threatened by the government. age lot of americans realize the government is the problem, not the answer. now i believe those people are going to be rendering a verdict on that regard -- to that regard. there's a point when the government becomes the master, not the servant. how close are we to that point? how much control do we have to the machine that is promising so much more than anybody has any reasonable expectation that there's revenue to pay for? how much control do you have when the government agent talks to you about runoff of water? how much control do you have when you want to look for a loan for your kid to go to college and the government is the only people doing it? the government is the in the flood business, the automobile business, we've got government motor, not general motors. they're in the insurance business. the government is going to take over health care.

how much do you want the government to run and how good a job are they doing? and the department of energy, created to make certain we're not dependent on foreign oil. so glad we've got that department working on. and the department of education. that's a wonder too. the government runs the department of education. "the wall street journal" said a few weeks ago the a.c.t. test scores of kids that are being tested that want to go to college, 24% of them are ready for college. that's amazing, isn't it? you've got a government product, state government and federal government product where 24% of them are acceptable. if you bought gasoline and every tank of gas, out of 100 tanks, 24 of them worked and the other 76 of them didn't work, you wouldn't buy gas there very much. that's what -- so are we going to let that government agency then run our health care? is this what we really want in america?

i don't think sthosme people of missouri had a referendum on that socialized medicine bill and they passed by 80% a measure to challenge that in court. as unconstitutional to require people to buy health insurance to be part of this big government bail lout socialized medicine boondoggle. they didn't want it. i'm sure there are a lot of other states full of people who are tired of the government being the master and the attitude that freedom means do whatever you want and if things go wrong, you'll live with the bail lout. -- bailout. we can't continue the level of taxation we have done, we have to continue thinking. i think there are a lot of people that think if we got things right in washington, d.c., everything would take care of itself. that's not right. freedom starts in the hearts of individuals and believe -- that believe that god gives them basic rights. when the federal government starts to take away the basic rights that god gives you, that's when there's big trouble. that's where there's a clash. that's where true patriots

stand up and say, enough already. that's what happened in the war of independence. that's what happened in the other wars of america's past. when people threatened our premise that god gives you certain basic rights and they got in the way of that, that's when americans stood up and they contacted. -- and they acted. and today, there are a lot of americans saying to our fovet, no. this is not what america is built on. our government was built on justice. it was built on the concept that people are equal before the law. if you're a rich man or poor man, it makes no difference. everybody is equal before the law. that's not bailout fever. we have given up jissties and gone to socialism. it hasn't worked in europe, didn't work for the u.s.s.r. and won't work for us. we need to go back to what works, and that is people are equal before the law and people are free to take a gamble, try to run their business and if it doesn't work, they've got to pick themselves up and try again and not complain that they need more bailouts.

in short, there is a reason why there's unemployment today. there's unemployment today because it was created by government policy. and those government policies have to change. we have to take the chains off of american business and we have to go back to the principles that work. we've talked about a couple of very philosophical kind of things, justice, which is a very important word, justice does not mean that lady justice who has the blindfold over her eyes is peeking. it does not mean she peeks and gives a special deal to one person or another person. we've created now with the law a special bill to create a whole bailout section of the federal government so lady justice can peek and give money to one person, maybe not to another person. what confidence does the individual american have that

the government's going to come and bail them out when they need it? is the government going to be there? dewpoint to ber is -- do you want to be servant to big government? do you want to breathe the fresh air and sunshine of being free? knowing that you also have to be responsible or do you, instead, choose the gloommy path of the promise that the government will take care of you even though you know it can't economically or it will not take care of you well and allow you to live in some sort of sue do tree dom where you don't -- of pseudofreedom where you don't need to worry. that's where we are as americans, it has to start in our hearts. freedom starts in the hearts of self-governing people who love god, lowe their family and love their country. america is full of those people. i have confidence that the american public still has a passion for freedom. still has a love for this

country. still cares about the american dream. wants to live in an environment where they can be free to exercise their god-given gifts and abilities. they want their children to grow up in a better condition than they are. they want to see civilization building and cuffering going down. but the only way to do that, you have to allow some people to prosper. you can't knock down all of the businesses and anybody who makes money and expect to have jobs. you can't do that. it doesn't work system of we come back -- as we started. you want jobs, get rid of the exissive taxation. let's do what every president in the past has done when there's a recession, j.f.k., ronald reagan, bush, let's cut the taxes. that's what we've got to do.

we've got to change the regulations in the banking so there's liquidity for businessmen to raise money. we have to create an environment where people aren't afraid of some new wacky idea coming down the pike and changing the business climate. we have to create a condition where people have confidence that there will be a stable government in this clint which is not poss hostile to business and we've got to cut think red tape an government mandates. basically, we need to take a look at the federal government and we need to say, anything that the federal government does not have to do, it has to be just gotten rid of. we need to delegate it back to the states or the local government, we need to get the federal government out of all kinds of businesses, they have no constitutional reason to be in, and we have to focus on the basic things, which are justice. you need to make sure there's a level playing field at home for people to do their work and there has to be a secure environment internationally which means we need national defense. those are the basic functions of justice, those should be the

functions of limited government, when the government gets too expensive, you have to go back and say, let's do the basics, let's do the basics well and everything else the federal government does not have to do, let's get rid of it. that's where we have to be going. that's a clear path. it's something that's not going to happen overnight because it has to change in the hearts of americans and the families of america and the churches and places of worship, there has to be an understanding that it's not the job of the government to take care of theavering goes wrong in everybody's life because it won't work. then, then washington, d.c. will change. reluctantly, but washington, d.c. will change and we will see a new america and a brighter day and a better day for americans, we'll see a place where people are employed and excited about their work and where there's an -- a responsibility and vigor and vitality that was so common in the old yankee the europeans used to make fun of.

yankee doodle they used to sing about it to make fun of us. but as we've seen tsunamis and hurricanes and all kinds of crises around the world, they like old yankee doodle to come help them system of i'm proid to be an american. i know that you're proud to be americans. we have to move back to the policies that made this country great. i see that a very good friend of mine a former judge a congressman if the great state of texas sk here to join us before long and perhaps he'll carry on along these lines. i know he is a man who loves god, he fears god, he loves his country and he loves his family, that's why i love him. i think the next hour will be exciting and i urge you to stick with us here. thank you, and madam speaker, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from massachusetts yields back. without objection, the ordering of a five-minute special order in favor of the gentleman from texas, mr. gohmert is vacated.

under the speaker's announced spoifl january 6, 2009, the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. gohmert, for 60 minutes. mr. gohmert spst it is always an honor to speak here on the house floor, to have the opportunity that was provided by those willing to show the greatest love according to jesus, lay down their lives for their friends, their countrymen, that we could have these freedoms. and when you look at the declaration of independence, it talks about, you know, we're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights and all men were created equal. not with equal talent, not with equal abilities, not with equal

money or substances. that was not the point. in god's eyes we are equal. in the eyes of the creator, we're equal. so we're supposed to do the best we can with what we've got. and as my friend from missouri was talking about light bulbs, i couldn't help but scratch my head because here in washington, we're told that the most environmentally friendly majority in the history of the country is in charge now. but i wanted a light bulb that was incandescent, so i can see better because it takes so dad gum long for those other, with the curl in there, to warm up where you can see.

and sometimes, there's a tiny closet there and i flip the light switch on, well i just need to flip it on and off. now i've got to leave the energy on long enough to where the bulb warms up that i can see what's in there and it's interesting. you can't find -- you will not be provided an incandescent light bulb. and we read the past week that the last incandescent manufacturing plant in the united states proper is now gone out of business. so what have we done as the most environmentally conscientious congress in history? we have got light bulbs that have mercury in them. mercury. the substance that does not go away. if you get mercury in your system, you don't get it out. you get too much, it's lethal.

it builds up over time. so what are we doing? we are raising the level of mercury as high as we can get it, this lethal substance, what is going on? how can we be environmentally friendly when we're forcing everybody on capitol hill to have mercury throughout their offices? just one of those things. if we're all created equal, and the thing we're endowed with by our creator, inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not -- nobody is guaranteed happiness. but the right to pursue happiness. nobody is guaranteed under our declaration or in the

constitution that everybody is going to share and share alike. that's called a socialist manifesto. from those who have -- from those according to the ability to those according to their needs. it's a lovely idea but it has never worked. it always goes bankrupt because, as i found when i was in the soviet union as an exchange student talking to farmers who had not been out in their field all day on a great day, it was in the middle of the morning, but to that point, i mean, that was prime time to work. they all -- when i said, spoke a little russian back then, when do you work in the field? and they laughed and one of them said, i make the same number of rubles if i'm out there, pointing out in the sun, in the field that really looked bad, or i'm here in the shade. so i'm here in the shade. that's why socialism doesn't

work. if you're going to pay somebody the same thing to be out in a hot field getting sweaty and wearing themselves out, then -- and pay them the same as if they sit in the shade and don't do anything but laugh and cut up with their friends, they're going to be in the shade. it always fails. now, the reason free market systems fail is not because a free market system doesn't work. it works beautifully. you do need a government to make sure everybody plays fairly, not to take away from those who are able to produce more than others, not to kill the incentive for people to actually produce, but to provide a level playing field where everybody can compete equally. that's the job that we're supposed to have. that's the job of the government. and we've gotten too busy in this body trying to tell

everybody what they can do and as the president said, trying to share the wealth, spread it around, spread the wealth. you kill incentive, you kill productivity. so when you get right down to it historically, what always brings free market systems to an end is when a governing authority begins to meddle and ruin the free market system and start converting it over to a socialist system and once a governing authority is able to manipulate the free market system over into a socialist system where you're trying to spread the wealth, you're killing incentive, you're creating class warfare, you're creating all kinds of problems, you're trying to do the things this government is right now, then you kill the free market system. not because it doesn't work, but because you've now converted it to a socialist system which

always fails by its own weight. and then that obviously requires a dictator, somebody who forces the sharing of the wealth, the killing of incentives across the board, so that people do all they can to sit in the shade and not do anything and not produce and not help out their neighbors. because they don't have to. so, it broke my heart to keep hearing our president talking about the rich. anybody making over $200,000. he's talking about small business people, he's talking about people that i have had come pleading to me, stop destroying what i've spent my life building. i had nothing, had nothing,

worked 20 hours a day, put what little bit i had at risk and eventually was able to hire another employee and another employee and another employee and finally i've got, in some cases, 20, 30, 140 in one case, one man that was talking to me, 140, now he's down to about 60, i think he said. but you're killing me. you're killing my business. and you make people hate me because of how hard i worked and how much i sacrificed to build this small business. and in the process you made me put 80 people out of work. we should not be about class envy. the reason a free market society works is because there is fairness, when you have a government that is about

fairness, and people compete. entrepreneurship just springs up all around. people come up with ideas and it's worth a try. it's worth risking what they have to make things work. that's free enterprise. and when we have an administration that is so business -- busy stirring up class envy and trying to get people to hate the people that have come to me and said, yeah, i've been making over $200,000 and i power every dime back in my business, it grows and grows, we've been able to hire more people and now i'm having to lay them off. and you got people hating me because they think i'm rich. and now we've got a president saying, i don't deserve the same tax rate that everybody else does. that i deserve to be punished

because i took risk and i sacrificed and i grew my business and i hired people and i was fair to them and they loved their jobs and they worked hard and it grew even bigger and better and we had a great product and now i have a president that's getting people to hate me and saying i don't deserve to pay the same rate as other people. i mean, how much must a person despise those kind of entrepreneurs who have built a business and created out of nothing, they worked hard with ingenuity and sacrifice, created a thriving business, how much must a president or administration despise those people who say, i am willing not to help the people that i call middle class if i have to get

the same rate -- give the same rate to the people who make above $200,000. i'm willing to punish the middle class and not let them have the same rate as they do now. i'm willing to let their tax rates zoom up with the biggest tax increase in american history come january 1, i'm willing to let that tax rate go up there if you try to make me allow those entrepreneurs that have built a business on their own, if you try to make me give them the same tax rate as the middle class. because, see, i want to punish them. they've made too much money. they took risks, they laid it all out there on the line. one fella talking about, you know, he didn't even own his own trailer. it was a pitiful trailer. those kind of things. and he built a business and now our president says he's rich so he needs to be punished.

that's the way you end a free market system. you spread the wealth evenly from those who risk it all and give to those who have been sitting in the shade, watching them work. you kill the free market system. you kill the jobs. so, while we had an administration out there saying, we're all about jobs, that is our main focus, but by the way, we're going to push through this health care bill that the majority of america says, don't, don't, don't, and he pushed through. and then you see people laid offso, many people have come to me about -- off. so many people have come to me about family members, themselves, cuts in pay, getting laid off, because the cost of the health care that were supposed to go down when this administration ramrodded and

crammed this bill down america's throat without letting people truly understand all that was in it. you lose your country if it's based on a free market system when an administration and a congress tries to make it socialist. now, i realize some people think, oh, socialist is such a horrible word. it's really a very nice concept, actually. if you look at it, you know, we want to have everyone share and share alike. sometimes we're told that growing up. we want to share and share alike. and as a parent i try to make sure that all three of our gills -- girls shared and shared alike. but if one of those children could take what she was given and parly a that into something even better -- par lay that into something even better and more productive, that was hers. whether she shared or not was

completely up to her. we'd encourage her to use and develop the talent and what she's been provided. now, it is true, there's no -- there's an awful lot of people around here who are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. and there's an arrogance that goes with that. and sometimes if somebody comes from a poor family, has everything handed to them, and then they think they hit a triple. because somebody else placed them on third base. either way, we're supposed to never forget that the founders believed and most americans according to the polls believe that the blessings we have are a gift of god. and if we turn our back on him long enough, eventually, though

he's long suffering patient, full of grace, eventually, ok, you've turned your back on me long enough, now i turn my back on you. and you disappear. you head to the dust bin of history. now, i wasn't going to bring up this matter. i was very pleased that the president was talking about the tax holiday concept. the problem is he's bringing it up over a year and a half later than it was brought to his attention. by me. i told him at the time, look, you promised everybody a tax cut, you know, of course you put a $250,000 cap on income, i don't think it ought to be there, but moody's did an independent studdy, they said the tax holiday idea, it

increases the one-year g.d.p. more than any other stimulus proposal, and if we pass the stimulus, i mean, if we pass this stimulus, tax holiday idea that just said, you know, for the next two or three months, every dime you make stays in your check, it does not go to the federal government. you get to keep your income tax in your check, whether you want to make it two, three months, you keep it. if we passed it today and the president signed it today, tomorrow they have that money in their check, it doesn't come to washington. and at the time, it was going to cost so little money compared to the money the government was spending. in fact, that's where i got the idea in 2008 when we were hearing that the federal reserve was -- of course we had the $700 billion wall street bailout that

was a huge mistake. and i hope our leaders do finally realize that. but it was a huge mistake, both sides of the aisle had half of their members buy into it. but it was a huge -- $700 billion. that could have provided four months of every worker in america getting every dime of their income tax back, along with all of their social security money for those two months and let the employer keep the two months of matching money that he normally has to put in to match what the worker puts in. and that would have given businesses a boost, it would have given employees this tremendous boost and we did a little survey of people in our district, what would you do? look at your check and how much money's going to washington, what would you do with it?

some said, look, we've got a gas guzzler and it's worth less than we owe for it, so we can't trade it in, we can't get another car, we're stuck. but if we got to have two months of our own income tax in our check, we'd be able to go finally buy a good fuel efficient car, we'd be able to save money on gas in the future and the truth is, g.m., chrysler wouldn't have needed to be bailed out because people would have been out there buying cars. and actually the idea for the tax holiday, when i had it in 2008, came from seeing that $700 billion for the wall street bailout and then hearing here in washington that the federal reserve, between the federal reserve and the things this government was going to do, would probably end up costing between $3 trillion and $9 trillion just to try to get the

economy going again. that's when i inquired, how much do we anticipate will be paid for the whole year of 2008 in federal personal income tax, and it was around $1237b91 -- it was around $1.21 trillion. i like the $1.21 trillion, it's at least three to 10 times cheaper and it's people keeping their own money that they earned and then you don't need all the bailouts. and everybody could are have kept all their income tax for a whole year. and i don't like a government not paying its bills as it goes along, it's not a good idea. but to say no income tax, no personal income tax for a year, when that is so much cheaper

than what the bush administration pushed with the $700 billion stimulus, and now the -- or the bailout. the $800 billion that's now $900 billion porkulous bill in january of 2009 under president obama, $400 billion land omnibus bill the following week, all these stimulus package so called, man. it would have been so much cheaper to say, people, just keep all your income tax for a year. there weren't many people here on capitol hill that felt like they could politically risk signing on to a four-year -- to a full year of no income tax. my position was, you take, especially after january, when you had the $800 billion, you could take the $800 billion stimulus package and what was left of the orangal $700 billion wall street bailout, take that money and pay for a

whole year of no income tax being paid, just take the money from those stimulus packages and bailout, and use those to let everybody keep their own income tax for a year. john shadegg was one, he loved -- throveed idea of a whole year of no income tax. talk about a stimulated economy. people would have been buying cars, eating out, buying products buying new homes, even with two months of people's own income tax, newt gingrich's folks ran the numbers for me, he was very helpful, and as i recall, an average family, average household in america, just two months could have had around $5,000 or so of extra money. some people said, we got behind on our mortgage when gasoline got to $4 the year before and

have not been able to catch up. but you let us have all our income tax for a couple of month, we'll catch up and you don't have to do all these ridiculous government programs to try to save people's mortgages. there are other things that need to be done but i brought this up when i met the president, back when he very first came to a republican conference, here in the capitol, down in the basement, and i said, look, i don't care who gets the credit, you can put your name on it and do it, moody says it will help the g.d.p. more in one year than any proposal that's been proposed, including our own leadership's proposal wasn't going to do that much good in one year in the republican party. i don't care who gets the credit. i wouldn't have minded if he took the idea back then and used it. but to wait a year and a half, over a year and a half, and then start describing virtually almost verbatim the way i described it over a year and a

half ago and then in some of the same speeches say, but you know what, the republicans have -- don't have any good ideas. i don't mind somebody taking credit, as the old saying go, reagan said it often, it's amazing what you can get done here in washington if you don't mind who gets the credit. i don't mind other people taking credit for the idea. i do mind when it's followed or even preceded by the words, but republicans don't have one good idea. i think we need to play for the president's memory, i know the pressure is great, i know it's awesome responsibility, it's easy to forget things, boy, do i know that. my wife will sure tell you that. it's easy to forget things. but before you go alleging that republicans have no good ideas, think for a moment where you got the idea you're proposing.

that's what i would offer, mr. speaker. and you know, we keep hearing president -- the president and others here on the floor saying republicans have not one good idea. they're the party of no. no good inside. none at all. none at all? we need to pray for people's hearing. because there are a lot of fantastic proposals that have been tossed out there. that would be wonderful. we do need major tax reforms. i'll never forget how depressed i was after i left the republican annual retreat in early 2006, i'd been elected, sworn in, january of 2005, started congress with all kinds of hopes and dreeps of making the country a better place, a year later, we're told, look, there's a tiny chance we might not have the majority next

year, it's possible we could lose, we don't think it'll happen, but -- so we know we talked about major tax reform this year but instead, we're just going to try to just get through this year and not do anything big that'll make people mad or one way or the other. keep the majority next november and then we'll come back in january of 2007 and do the major stuff like major tax reform. well, we lost a lot of people who have been defeated since then. because america wants to see us keep our promises. and there have been a lot of promises made by this administration this majority, of things that were going to be done, i mean, even on the crap and trade bill that passed here last year, the promises were made over and over, oh, no, this bill is not going to cost jobs. it's going to create jobs. create green jobs. after seeing what the people in

charge have done and taken away incandescent light bulbs, makes me wonder, are those green jobs going to have to carry around mercury too? but the american people are letting it be known they're not happy with people not keeping their promises here. and actually, truth is, i have a real fear as a republican that we only get the majority back one more time in my lifetime and if we do not keep our word, this time, we'll never get it back again in my lifetime. and so there are some great ideas, there are things we should be done, we've talked about balanced budgets for years. and there are some in the prior administration that equated compassion with paying money. there are an awful lot of people in the current administration that equate compassion with giving away

somebody else's money. but that's not compassion. that's hurting free enterprise. killing incentives. killing jobs. and when you take away somebody's job, you have hurt them, you know, psychologists say that's one of the most devastating blows to a person, mentally, emotionally to lose a job. losing a spouse is up there, losing a child is right up at the top, losing a job is one of the most devastating things that can happen. here we keep doing things over and over, the crap and trade bill is hanging out threrk rumors are there could be a lame duck session, people that have lost their seats who were afraid to vote for it before in the house or senate will vote for in it a lame duck session because they've already been voted out, they've got nothing to lose, maybe hoping if they

vote for it in november or december, maybe the administration will give them a job if they really kater to them and help them do that. that would be disastrous. but if you go back and read the crap and trade bill, as i did, you find out that back there, it seemed like i read from it standing over there, around page 900 and something, there was a fund that was created in the bill that would reimburse people or give them a little allowance for those people who lost their jobs as a result of that bill being passed. now, i know my friends across the aisle who stood up over and over and said this isn't going to cost jobs, it's going to create green jobs they obviously had not read the bill. i know them well enough to know they wouldn't have stood up and intentionally lied. they wouldn't have done that it's just that they had not read the bill so they were not

aware that whoever's staffer or special interest group wrote that bill, they knew people would lose their johns and that's why they were creating a fund in the bill to give an allowance to people that lost their jobs as a result of the bill. i pointed out then, good news, i guess to those who voted for that bill, is that if it becomes law, no doubt in my mind, a lot of people that voted for that bill will lose their job as a result of voting for that bill and they've got an argument that they're entitled to funds from the bill for losing their job as a result of the bill. so they may have created the fund that will help them out. but we should have a balanced budget amendment, and it's a shame on the republicans for not getting that done when we had the white house, the house, and the senate. we should have gotten it done. shame on the republicans for, in the last administration, when we had the majority,

agreeing to tax cuts that we knew would stimulate the economy. and but for those tax cuts, we would have gone into a massive depression. but the economy was stimulated. and we brought in more money into the federal treasury than had ever been brought into the treasury, but the problem was, we spent more than had ever been spent in history, up until, of course this administration. and whereas i can remember being over here on this side and hearing colleagues beat up on republicans because we were in the majority and to have a $160 billion deficit was unthinkable. it was just so irresponsible. until, of course, the obama administration, the democratic majority, and then actually 10 times that much of a deficit is ok. it was not ok at $160 billion. and it's certainly not ok at 10

times that. people in me american public were promised change. and yet what they got was not really change, they got 10 times more of what they had before. i don't know why president bush is being demonized, because this administration and this congress is pushing 10 times more of exactly what the prior administration did, they ought to be instead of condemning the bush administration and the republican majority, they ought to be rightfully saying, you know what, we thought you had a good idea when you ran up $160 billion deficit, that was such a good idea, we have gone 10 times that. we are really running up a deficit now. shame on republicans when we had the chance in 2005 and president bush ran on, you

know, shoring up social security. now there was all kinds of discussion, privatization, what does it mean, what is it going to do? and by september of 2005, it was obviously the president's political capital was gone, and what ehe had hepped to -- hoped to do would not be done, but i still had hope. because i knew what had been done with the texas employment retirement system they took real money from people's checks that were supposed to go toward retirement and put it in a retirement account. real money in a real retirement account. that was invested and it got hit pretty hard after 9/11. got hit very hard after chicken little paulson ran around saying the financial sky was falling if we didn't give him the $700 billion slush fund he wanted. and so the market fell 777 points in one day,