W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Well, I appreciate your perspective there, particularly with your working on that committee. That is very helpful. Here are a couple of other charts that I thought were interesting. This gives a little bit of a sense of progress on a 20-year increment. This is 1970. The foreign holdings of our debt were 5 percent. This is who owns our debt. Foreign holdings were 5 percent in 1970. Jump forward 20 years to 1990. Foreign holdings were 19 percent. In 2010, foreign holdings are 47 percent. So not only are we being asked to pass another one of these stimulus bills to bail out these States that have been irresponsible in managing their pensions, but we are now asking foreign countries to come in and to underwrite our silly economic policies. Now, after a while, these foreign countries are going to ask, Wait a minute. What's going on over there? What are you guys thinking?

Mr. AKIN. Gentlemen, fortunately for you, or maybe unfortunately for you, you are on the committee that is dealing with that. To me--and just tell me if I'm confused about this because I work more of the Armed Services side of things and the national security and the national defense side, and we've got a lot of bad news over there, but I'm not going to share that tonight. There is an irony here that the Federal Reserve has created this huge, massive liquidity. Yet it's like they've choked the funnel off so tightly that the liquidity can't drip down. The Democrats used to talk about trickle-down economics. I mean, this truly is kind of a trickle- down scheme. You have all this liquidity created by the Fed. Yet it can't get down to the small business guy because, I assume, that part of this is the banking regulators and the banking policies that are saying to the local banks, That's not a good enough amount of security on that loan. You've got to go back because that loan is upside down. Even though that business has been there for 100 years, even though you know the family, even though you know they're going to pay off, even though they always pay on time, it's not good enough. You've got to go get a whole bunch more cash from them to make your books look right for your bank.

Mr. AKIN. So that was this one. But what happens when you put Chairman Spratt together with President Obama?

Mr. AKIN. Originated in the House.

Mr. AKIN. I do yield.

Mr. AKIN. I think I've got that chart, gentleman. Maybe we'll proceed. I have one other chart here I think that's kind of interesting, because we've heard these statements now from the Democrat leadership saying budgets are critical, and as you know, you know the punch line, the decision is we're not going to have a budget. So here you have, this is The Hill, a newspaper. It says, Skipping a budget resolution this year would be unprecedented. The House has never failed to pass an annual budget resolution since the current budget rules were put into place in 1974, according to Congressional Research Service. Now, that's a fairly reliable report; at least they can get the history of whether we passed a budget in the House. They said we have always, since 1974, passed a budget, and yet we're not going to pass a budget this year. That's unprecedented.

Mr. AKIN. I guess he was being gentle at least, trying to give us a little nudge in the right direction.

Mr. AKIN. What would be the first step in living within your means? Would it not be putting a realistic budget together, perhaps?

Mr. AKIN. So local spending, the average family of four, is a hundred thousand bucks of debt, per family of four?

Mr. AKIN. I don't know if that's good bragging rights or not. That's pretty scary.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Good.

Mr. AKIN. I am very concerned about our discussion tonight because I am afraid somebody may be watching and they are thinking, oh, my goodness, there isn't any hope, things are terrible and bad. Yeah, we are in a big financial mess because we have been doing the wrong policies. But I want to take about 10 minutes, I want to talk about let's wipe the slate clean. Let's stop all of this foolishness and let's talk about what we do to fix it. Because we can do that. I want to go first of all to my good friend----

Mr. AKIN. Let's talk something positive.

Mr. AKIN. I love talking about solutions, because you know what those solutions are about? Those solutions are about freedom. And that's a good word. And that's what America has always stood for. And that's what we need to talk about for a minute. But I do want to yield to my good friend, Congresswoman Lummis.

Mr. AKIN. Five million?

Mr. AKIN. You didn't even mention that little small detail of the government becoming the master. The government is getting so big, the government employees are making so much money it's effectively becoming not the servant, but the master.

Mr. AKIN. I think that's good. It paints a vivid picture, but there is a problem with Freddie and Fannie.

Mr. AKIN. The problem with Freddie and Fannie is you don't get something for nothing. I'm an engineer. I mean, it's one of those things, if it isn't there, it isn't there. So what we're doing is we're using Freddie and Fannie to make loans to a certain number of people who can't afford to pay them. Then that means, Where is the money going to come from?

Mr. AKIN. I think what you're saying is important. You're using some doctors' analogies.

Mr. AKIN. How are you going to pay that mortgage payment now?

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey.)

Mr. AKIN. Freedom is a beautiful thing, but we have to realize there are a couple of things that come along with freedom. If you really want to be free, you're going to have to be responsible as well. You can't assume Big Brother government is going to do it all for you. The other thing is, if you want to be free, you have to tolerate the fact that other people near you may be successful. You have to suffer with some guy next door that's made millions of dollars and he gets to get in a fancy motorboat and ride around and maybe you'll feel jealous and even covetous of him. But that's freedom. You have to allow people to succeed, and you have to realize that you can also make a mistake and fail but you can have the freedom to get up and try again, but at least the government won't chain you down with regulations and bureaucracy and red tape and drive you into the dirt like an airplane that's not being flown right. I thank you very much for joining me, Congresswoman Lummis and Congressman Broun.

Mr. AKIN. I really appreciate the gentleman for joining me tonight. We, in a way, as Americans have got two choices here. One choice is the path to freedom, and the other path is the path of servitude to Big Brother government. Every solution that we've seen coming from the Democrats--now, we've seen an unusual year-and-a-half. I have been in Congress now 10 years. I've never seen a year-and-a-half like this. This is a total one-party rule. Almost every bill that passes, Democrats all vote one way, Republicans the other, and the Democrats have such a majority, and everywhere along the line they can do whatever they want and they have. And the solution is always more taxes, more government, and more government control. So, on the one hand, you have the world of the Big Brother government taking care of things, and you're guaranteed that you can't fail because the government will always be there to bail you out, not just as a big corporation but as an individual. You can make bad choices. The government will be there to bail you out; that's what they promise, but it doesn't work that way. In fact, what all of human history shows us is that one of the most dangerous things to human beings is big government because big government has killed more human beings than all the wars of history combined. Just take communism alone, which is a big government theory. Just communism alone has killed more people than all the wars since the time of Christ, and so this faith in big government is a very, very unlikely thing to put your faith in. The other choice is freedom, the bright light and the fresh air of saying go out and do the best you can; you may fall on your face but get up and try again. That's what America was always founded on, the idea that government should just protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My good friend, Congressman Broun.

Mr. AKIN. It seems to me, gentlemen, that President Bush was Ebenezer Scrooge by comparison to what we've got here. I mean, this is runaway spending. And this is created not just by TARP, not just by the, quote, ``jobs bill'' where we just dumped all kinds of money into increasing various government handouts and things. It wasn't concrete and roads; it was just government-handout kinds of things. But this tremendous level of spending then creates the very problem which creates the unemployment, and it threatens our economy. If you take a look at where this is going, you take a look at these numbers, and you start to put it--these seem like a lot of money. This one here is $1.4 trillion. Well, what does $1.4 trillion mean? Well, let's put it into context. Here's the context right here. This is a comparison to these other countries over in Europe. This is deficit as a percent of GDP. United States, 10.3. We've got Greece at 9.4. Now, Greece has been in the news. It's been causing a whole lot of trouble in the European Union. And its deficit as a percent of GDP is 9.4, and we're 10.3? These are not good numbers. I think it's helpful to compare to the others. United Kingdom is a little worse off than we are. If you go debt, this is a larger term, this is going year after year after year, you see United States here is at 99, debt as a percent of GDP. And you've got Greece and Italy that are worse off than we are. That's not a good sign when we're in third place to Greece and Italy from an economic point of view. So this rate of spending just does not work. This is a glide path. I used the analogy of, you know, the guys, the World War I pilots that used to fly those airplanes, whatever it was that Snoopy used to fly. Many of those planes, they would get into that spiral and they would just start to head down for the Earth. And that is what has happened, is, because of lousy economics, we are in essentially a graveyard spiral in America. And you, my friends, know what the solution is to fix this. And there was a solution to the graveyard spiral. And maybe it seemed a little counterintuitive, but from a pilot's point of view, what they're supposed to do--their instinct is to pull back on the stick to pull the nose up. Instead, you had to do the counterintuitive thing, which is push the stick down. And that would stop the spiral, the plane would start diving, and when they had control, then they could pull the stick back up again. And there's the same kind of thing in our economy, which we have to do or this economy is going to crash. And if you think 10 percent is bad for unemployment, it could get a whole lot worse. I yield to my good friend, Congresswoman Lummis.

Mr. AKIN. That's a great point. And let's repeat that. What you just said was, you don't raise taxes during a recession. And what we are going to talk about here tonight--there are some bad assumptions that were made that are destroying our country and that are destroying our budget, our economy, and just killing jobs in America and creating a whole lot of hardship. But it doesn't have to be that way. There is potentially good news. But we just have to follow the principles, just like airplanes follow aerodynamics, we have to follow the principles of economics. And one of those--you just got to the bottom line--is, you've got to ease off on the taxes. And there is a logical reason for it. Let's just take a look, though, so people understand the gravity of what we are looking at. This is who owns our debt. This debt is created because we are promising all kinds of benefits to American citizens, all kinds of promises that we are going to give them health care and we are going to give them housing and food and education and all the stuff that the Soviet Union also promised their citizens. And who is picking up the tab? A lot of foreigners are buying our debt. Here it is. Foreign holding of American debt was 5 percent in 1970. That was when I graduated from college. Foreign holdings, 1990, 20 years later, go from 5 to 19 percent in 20 years. Now, 20 years later, in 1210, foreign holdings, 47 percent. Is that healthy? How much longer are the Chinese and the other foreign countries going to continue to pay us money that we don't have to pay off American voters just to keep them happy? This is a glide path that will end up in a crash. The gentlewoman, Congresswoman Lummis, has suggested that, even now, trying to pull this thing out is going to take a number of years. This isn't something that can be turned around overnight. And I think this 20-year kind of pattern reflects the fact that what we are talking about is really serious here, but it still is basic economic principles.