W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Right. The first thing is on the taxation point, why would taxation kill jobs? You know, if you think about it--first of all, let's say, whereabouts are jobs? Well, 80 percent of jobs in America are businesses with 500 or fewer employees. So as you're saying you've got these small business guys out there, and all of a sudden the government just lets them have it with a whole bunch of taxes, the small businessman, the profit that his little business makes is viewed as he made a ton of money.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. In expectation of this thing. So what you are saying is really not very outlandish, from a commonsense point of view. It is not like you are speculating and saying this thing is not going to work. We have seen European socialized medicine. We have next door the Canadian socialized medicine model. And I think it was about 10 years ago the head of Canada, their prime minister said, We have got the best health care system in the world, as long as you are healthy. It was that little ``as long as you are healthy'' piece that is the problem. If you are not healthy, you go down to America to get it taken care of. So we have seen it not work in Europe. I am a cancer survivor. I see what the cancer rate statistics are in England. I don't want to be a cancer guy in England. I wouldn't want to be a cancer guy here. So you see it hasn't worked in England, it hasn't worked in Canada, as well as our system currently works. Then, of course, we saw Massachusetts and Tennessee take bold forays into this socialized medicine field, and they got hammered by it. So what do we do? We do the same dumb thing. I was going to jump to something even more basic, though, if you think about it, and this was a statistic that kind of surprised me-- some of them are in the Congressional Record--and that was the number of people that were killed by their own governments. If you take a look, you know, at the good old communists. You look at Stalin, he basically had murdered about 40 million people. Now, he was pretty good at murdering people, but not nearly as good as Chairman Mao in China, who has credit for killing about 60 million Chinese. Now, this is government-on-citizen crime. This was not a war. In fact, if you add just the people killed in various communist countries that killed their own population, the governments killing their own population, you have more people killed by just communism alone than all the wars in history since the time of Christ. So the question is, is it really rational for human beings to put so much trust in government? That is not talking about Nazis or the other types of dictators that killed lots of their own citizens. So why do we have this great faith in government, when we see it doesn't work for health care, yet we have the government in charge of that? We are putting government in charge of student loans and in charge of insurance for flooding, and we have got the Federal Government in charge of housing and in charge of education. We have got the Federal Government in charge of car companies, insurance companies and all. Let's see, the Soviet Union, what was their model? The government was in charge of, well, let's see, education, health care, your house, your food and your job. It didn't work for them. Why do we want to do the same thing here?

Mr. AKIN. It seems like people think politics is complicated, and all this economic stuff is complicated. It doesn't have to be nearly as complicated as people think it is. For instance, take a look between the parties. The Democrats, their basic idea of a solution to a problem is that the government has to get bigger and spend more money. That's the way they always look at it. They think that the solution is the government, and we think that the problem is the government. This thing here is an indication that with a completely Democrat House and Senate and President, this is what happens. We triple this amount of deficit to the point now when the Federal Government spends $1 today, 41 cents of that $1 is borrowed. Aside from this just insane level of spending money that we don't have, which is basically taxing our grandchildren--I have some grandchildren, I've gotten old enough, and I don't like the idea of taxing them any more than paying taxes myself. My background is engineering and the manufacturing business. You know, this idea about unemployment is not that complicated. It is really very basic. Anybody who has tried to run a little lemonade stand knows more or less how businesses work. What I have done, I have created a list that if you want to kill jobs, if you want to declare war on business in America, these are the things that you want to do to create unemployment. And the tragedy is we are doing all of the things that are well calculated to create unemployment. Now, I guess the good news is that the jobs that would have been created here by American businesses and American ingenuity are simply going to be done in plants that are overseas, and so those jobs go to other countries. We will still use our intelligence. In my own city of St. Louis, we have a guy who is the president of Emerson Electric, it is a big company, and it has all kinds of divisions and it has all kinds of technology. They create tons of jobs. The president of Emerson says, Look, when you do all of these things to us, you are forcing us. We will still grow. Our stock will do well. We will create jobs, it just won't be jobs in the U.S., they will be somewhere else. So what do you do? If you think about this, it is not very complicated. The first thing is, if you have a tremendous amount of uncertainty, you don't know what nutty thing the government is going to do next; if you're a businessman, you're going to say, I think I'm going to hunker down. I'm not going to make any big decisions because I'm not sure whether the last couple of dollars I have in reserve I am going to need for some other harebrained idea that these guys in Washington come up with. So if there is economic uncertainty of any kind, that is going to tend to undermine job creation. And then if there is a slowdown, that is what we have been seeing, that doesn't help because you don't have the orders coming in. And here is the big one, excessive taxation, because what President Obama has promised is that he is going to tax those people in the $250,000 bracket. Well, I'm glad he is going to do that because I don't make that much money, so I don't need to worry, right. Oh, no, I do need to worry. I need to worry because the people who are making $250,000, a lot of those are the guys owning these small businesses that make all of the jobs. And the guy who is making $250,000, you say, I don't feel sorry for him. But you better, and here is why: because that guy is going to put that money back into his business to put a new wing on a building, put a new machine tool there, or develop a new process. Which is going to hire more people. So if you kill him, if you take all of his money away through excessive taxation, he won't invest in his business.

Mr. AKIN. Right. You know, I appreciate your bringing that up because one of the things that Americans intuitively understand, they are not really buying this idea that by spending tons of money the Federal Government is going to make everything better. Maybe some ivory-tower people, but most people on the street know that doesn't make any sense. They also know we as Republicans did the wrong thing; we spent too much money. And the worst year in terms of spending too much money was Bush's last year in office and our deficit was $459 billion. That is this box here. The reason it is red is because this is when the Pelosi Congress took over, so it was George Bush with the Pelosi Congress. And of all of the years that President Bush had spent too much money, this was his worst year right here. We follow that up with 2009 and this $459 billion jumps to $1.4 trillion. Now when you really think about it, that is really a tripling of the amount of deficit.

Mr. AKIN. The President says here that families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions, the Federal Government should do the same. Yes, we should do the same, but what are we doing? Let's take a look at the policies: Wall Street bailout, $700 billion; stimulus package, another $700 billion; then in this House we passed that goofy cap-and-tax bill which is going to put the government in charge of trying to reduce CO2 in the country by making the Federal Government in charge of all of the building codes for houses. You can't even add an addition to your house without making sure that it is safe from a global warming point of view. And there goes another number of billions of dollars in taxes. And then, of course, socialized medicine that we just got done with, which is absolutely the biggest government takeover. It is one-sixth of the U.S. economy. The government can't run Medicare and Medicaid and keep them in the black, so what are we going to do, take over all of health care? The families are tightening their belts, so what is the Federal Government going to do? They are just absolutely going to go on another spending spree. So what does that do? Excessive taxation. What's that do? It kills jobs. What does that do? It takes away freedom because it makes you little and Big Government big. Here is a question for you. Thinking back about what phenomenon in all of human history should human beings be most concerned about, should it be the problem of war or should it be the problem of Big Government? It is an interesting question. Why do we have this faith, why do the Democrats have this faith in Big Government? Is there anything historical to suggest that they are a solution or is it more to suggest that they are a problem.

Mr. AKIN. A little island in the Caribbean, come on down. A big hospital and a landing strip.

Mr. AKIN. Don't forget the trillions. We are working on trillions right now.

Mr. AKIN. And that is really what you are saying, is basically you are losing your freedom; a little bit here, a little bit here. You are losing your freedom, and pretty soon you feel frustrated, you feel angry, because you have some common sense, and you know what it takes to make jobs, and we are doing all the wrong things. But there are so many people on the street, and they are looking to you, they are looking to me, to try to help turn this thing around and get jobs going. And, of course, we don't have enough votes to turn these policies around. Another one of these things that is really tough on jobs is insufficient liquidity. What that means is that a business needs to be able to borrow money. But the banking regulators are so tight now that a lot of businessmen can't get the loans they need to make their business go. Of course, excessive government spending, we have been talking about that, and excessive government mandates and red tapes. Boy, talk about that. And this health care bill, of course, is leading the charge and damaged all these areas. And the end result is what? Well, unemployment. Not a big surprise, particularly, because we are doing everything wrong. And yet here is an interesting question. Apparently what is happening is Wall Street seems to be doing a lot better. Is it because we have turned these bad policies around and are doing the right thing in D.C.? No. We are still doing everything wrong, and yet Wall Street seems to be doing better. Well, what is the logic of that? Well, you know, to some degree it goes back to that same problem that got us into this housing bubble, and that is the crack cocaine of the government Federal system. That is, they can create unlimited liquidity.

Mr. AKIN. Unlimited amounts of money and very low interest rates. So you have got lots of money with very low interest rates, and it comes down and starts to create these bubbles. So we really haven't fixed the job problem.

Mr. AKIN. Right. If we didn't pass it, 8 percent.

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to be able to join you and my colleagues and others who are gathered here to talk about something that has been on our minds for some considerable time now--many months, even 1\1/2\ to 2 years--and that is the subject of the economy and jobs and what's really going on in America. I'm a person who is of that baby boomer-type cycle--I'm 62--and there are many other people such as myself in America that have done a lot of work and tried to save our money and all of a sudden something seemed to go wrong in the economy. We lost a lot of money in 2008, and there is a real concern out there about jobs, the economy, and what's going on in the policies. And so I thought, in that we have 1 hour--we don't have to do everything in 1 minute or 5 minutes, but we have 1 full hour today--that I would open the subject. I will invite my other Republican colleagues to join me. You may see some coming in before long. And I want to talk about this whole situation, and because we have more time, I can go back just a little bit. I would like to go back to how is it that we were kind of cruising along, things seemed to be going pretty well by about 2006 or so with the economy, 2007, and then all of a sudden, in 2008, we really seem to have come to ``grief on a reef,'' so to speak. So what went on? Well, let's go back to an interesting article in the New York Times, not exactly a conservative oracle. It was September 11--not in 2001, but September 11 in 2003--the New York Times reported this, that there is a new agency proposed to oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Well, why would there be a new agency to oversee Freddie and Fannie? Well, Freddie and Fannie were these quasi-governmental agencies, and their job was to help provide Americans with affordable loans so Americans could buy houses. So here we have in this article, it says: The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Oh, my goodness. So President Bush is saying we need to overhaul Freddie and Fannie. They were quasi-private, quasi-public. Why would he want to overhaul? Well, they just had misplaced a few hundreds of millions of dollars and gave people a lot of concern that maybe Freddie and Fannie were not in good shape economically. Well, then the question becomes, if they're not in good shape, what would that mean? Well, that would mean, guess what? The American taxpayer may be asked to bail out Freddie and Fannie. So the President is saying, Hey, I need some more authority to make sure that Freddie and Fannie don't do some dumb things that cost us a whole lot of money. So that's what the President is saying in this article. Again, this is 2003. Following that, we read further in the article, and we have another interesting situation here where we have the gentleman now who is in charge of trying to fix these Wall Street institutions, that is, our current Congressman Barney Frank. And this was his statement in the same article in 2003: These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing. So this is something we have a clear party line difference. The President is saying Freddie and Fannie are not managing things properly, they were a risk to our economy, and you have a Democrat, who is now the ranking guy on this committee, that's saying, no, they're fine, Freddie and Fannie are just fine. Well, of course, hindsight is always 20/20. It was obvious that what was said here by Congressman Frank was completely wrong. Freddie and Fannie were in trouble. They did mismanage things, and they have now been taken over by the Federal Government, more or less. And guess who has to pick up the tab? You guessed it. The American taxpayer. Now, how did this whole situation develop and what happened? Well, part of what happened was people came to the conclusion some number of years ago that it would be nice if people could get loans to buy houses. And what happens for the people who don't have very good credit ratings? How about the people who are a bad security risk? What are we going to do with them? Well, we're going to say, You can get a loan, too. That's what he's saying in terms of affordable housing. So somehow, in the name of compassion, we came up with this idea that the government was going to allow people to get loans and not check whether the person had a capacity to repay the loans. And at the height of the big bubble that was going up on home prices, just about anybody, regardless of their credit rating or anything else, what job they had, could go in and get a loan to buy a great big house. And it worked pretty well for a couple of years. You could go in, buy a house, and then wait a couple of years. The price of the house would double, and you would sell it and buy some other big house. And you could pyramid your money up even though you were borrowing money and you didn't have any way to pay it back, because these loans were so good you wouldn't have to pay anything for a number of years at all. You could get a loan that would say you don't have to pay anything for a couple of years at least. So you could buy something. It would appreciate. You could sell it, and then move on and do that. And so people were starting to do that with houses. The trouble was, of course, that the bubble burst, and all of the house of cards came tumbling down. Now, we understand what caused the problem originally was the concept that the government requires the banks to make loans to people who can't afford to pay. That's a bad policy, because when people can't pay, somebody's going to have to pick up the tab. And guess what happened? You guessed it once again. It was Uncle Sam passes it on to the taxpayer to pick up the tab for this failed policy. So you want to ask, How did we end up with this 10 percent unemployment? How did we end up with a very weak economy? How did we get into this trouble? The trouble was caused, about 90 percent, by the U.S. Government. It was caused by people who meet in this Chamber and various administrations. At the end of the Clinton administration, the Clintons decided that what they were going to do was to increase the percentage of those bad loans that banks had to approve. What did the banks do with them? They passed them on to Freddie and Fannie. What happened to Freddie and Fannie? Well, Wall Street sliced and diced the loans up and sold them all over the world, and Freddie and Fannie then get into a big problem. Now, what was the political organization that forced all of these loans to be made to people who couldn't afford to pay it? You guessed it. It was ACORN. ACORN was involved in a lot of voter fraud, but it also was involved in forcing banks locally to take loans that they shouldn't have taken. So this is a piece of what happened. The other piece was the policy of the Federal Reserve. Because of the recession that we came into in 2001 when I was first elected, the Federal Reserve decided to increase liquidity. But particularly what was happening, Greenspan decided to reduce the interest rate. Now, this idea of increasing liquidity is the equivalent of the crack cocaine of economics. What it is is it's a government--in the old-fashioned world, you would say the government is running the printing presses. Well, that's what we did. We ran the printing presses, but we also reduced the cost of money to very low, to about zero percent, and held it there for some period of time. By dumping lots and lots of dollars into the economic system, people that had the dollars go, Hey, I'm getting these dollars for a very, very low interest rate. What can I invest in? Hey, why not invest in the housing business, because housing prices are going up like a rocket. I can borrow money at a couple percent, or even less, and I can double my money, almost, in the housing business in a couple, 3, 4 years. So why not do it? Well, everybody did for a while until this very low interest rate, the high level of liquidity, and boom, you get another bubble. It's like the high-tech bubble, because we're using liquidity to try and pull ourselves out of problems. We'll come back to that in a little while. So what was it that really caused the economic crisis? Well, first of all, it was lousy policy set right here in Congress about making loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them and then not holding Freddie and Fannie accountable for what they're doing. And by doing that, we ended up with the beginning of the recession. Now, following that, we start to go into recession. The idea then was, just in Bush's last year or so and when I was here, we had Paulson come to us and say, Hey, look, everything's in trouble. You guys have got two choices: Either the entire world economic system is going to melt down--I mean, the Earth is going to crack. Hailstones are going to come from heaven. I mean, it's going to be terrible, and there's going to be riots in the streets because the dollar bill won't work anymore and the banking system will collapse--or your other alternative is, give me $700 billion in unmarked bills in a brown paper bag. Those are your two choices, Congress, and we're going to the public and letting everybody know. And if you do the right thing, hopefully there will not be this terrible calamity. And so Congress was supposed to give $700 billion to Hank Paulson. Well, did he really need that? No, he didn't need it. In fact, it was part of the same mistake that we make frequently here, and that is that every time there's a problem economically, the government has to jump in and fix it, bailout fever. And this was, of course, the beginning of the big Wall Street bailout. Unfortunately, some Republicans supported that idea, along with most of the Democrats, and we took $700 billion away from the American taxpayer to buy these supposedly troubled assets that had been created by Wall Street. Well, it's pretty hard to buy something when there isn't a market in it, so we took $700 billion out of the market--about $350 supposedly spent during Bush's last year, another $350 in Obama's first year--and that was the beginning of our big spending. And again, it's based on this concept that the government should jump in and fix everything and that the government is going to be able to fix the U.S. economy. That turns out to be a troubling assumption, and it continued to get us in trouble over the last year or two, which has then made the economic situation even worse. The next thing that happened was, after we did this Wall Street bailout, we decided that what we had to do next was a stimulus package. The proposal was that we're going to do this stimulus. Now, the whole concept of stimulus is pretty much like the idea of, if you had a pair of boots on, what you're going to do is to reach down, grab your bootstraps and lift hard, and if you lift hard enough, you can float around the room. And this is the concept in economics that was known as Keynesianism. It was the idea that if the Federal Government just spends a whole lot of money, it will make the economy better when you have a tough economy. If you think about that from a commonsense point of view, picture you're trying to run your family and you realize, hey, there's really some economic problems our family is having, so the solution is go out and just spend money like mad. Now, would you think that would be a very smart idea? Well, most commonsense people--certainly people from my State, the State of Missouri, would say that's not very smart just to go out and spend a whole lot of money. Has that idea been tried before? Well, yes, it has. It was tried by Henry Morgenthau back when Little Lord Keynes was first proposing this theory. It's a lovely theory if you're in government, because the theory says you can just spend lots and lots of money that's not your money. People in politics think that's nice because people like it when I spend lots of government money. The problem is that Henry Morgenthau, who was Secretary of the Treasury under FDR, managed to use this policy to take a recession and turn it into the Great Depression. And so he came, at the end of 8 years, before the House Ways and Means Committee here, and Henry Morgenthau says that we have tried this theory of spending money. We've spent and spent and spent, and we have not seen any change in unemployment. We have terrible unemployment and a huge debt and deficit to boot. So this is the guy right alongside with Little Lord Keynes that said this didn't work. We tried it for 8 years, and it just created the Great Depression in America. We should learn something from history, but, no, we decide what we're going to do is we're going to come up with the ``stimulus bill,'' another 700-and-something billion dollars, $787 billion. And here we have our new President here. He says, like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest what we need and sacrifice what we don't. The things on this side of the chart sound pretty good. If I heard somebody say that that was my President, I would say, Hah, this is a pretty good idea. This is what the President said at the beginning of the year. The only trouble is there is this huge gap between what is said and what is done. So what we do, we start with: Is it any real serious budget reform? No, it is not really budget reform at all. In fact, what has happened in terms of the Federal spending? Have we learned anything after the stimulus bill? What should we have learned from the stimulus bill? Well, we were told that if you do not pass the stimulus bill, if you don't pass it, here is what is going to happen, so you better look out. If you don't pass the stimulus bill, that is what is going to happen to unemployment, this line here. But if you pass a stimulus bill, here is what is going to happen, it will keep this unemployment down. So we were told that if you don't pass the stimulus bill, unemployment could go as high as 8 percent. And if you pass it, it will bring it on down. Well, that was all based on this silly idea that if you spent lots and lots of money, everything would be okay. This really wasn't even a good FDR stimulus bill because if he had been doing it, it would have had a lot of concrete in it. It would have been hydroelectric plants and roads. This had much more food stamps and aid to States that overspent their budgets and things like that. So we spent $787 billion on the stimulus bill, and here is what happened. This red line. So you think a whole lot of government spending is going to fix unemployment? Absolutely not. We have already tried it. One more time, if we didn't learn our lesson from Henry Morgenthau, we have another chance. Here we go. Same dumb idea, still doesn't work. You can try it as many times as you want. It is not going to work. So the unemployment now jumps up. In many places it is more than 10 percent. These numbers are pretty conservative. If you have been looking for a job for more than a year, you are not counted anymore in these statistics. So people without a job for a year--maybe some have given up in despair of ever getting a job--they are not even counted in these numbers. So this idea of a whole lot of government spending didn't work, and so we have unemployment. I am joined by a good friend of mine, Dr. Price, who is really on top of some of these things. I would ask if he would like to join in the conversation a little bit here this afternoon.

Mr. AKIN. You are absolutely right, and it doesn't involve the government taking everything over. We're going to take a break and yield because I believe there is some business that needs to be taken care of.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Of course, you know, that is really kind of a thing. Maybe people feel safe to say, hey, we are just going to tax all those rich guys; don't you worry about all the policies we have got. Well, you know, when you do that Wall Street bailout where the government is going to pick winners and losers, then you do the big stimulus thing, where you are taking taxpayer money and giving it to States that don't manage their State properly, and you are increasing the number of food stamps and all these other kinds of things that if you want to believe in big government they think they need to do, and then you are going to do this cap-and-tax thing, so everybody's energy cost is going to go up. Now, the President said, I guarantee you, I am not going to raise taxes on people making less than $250,000, and yet in this Chamber we pass a tax that as soon as you flip a light switch you are going to start paying more taxes. Now, that's not people making $250,000, that's an average guy that wants to turn his lights on. So you say, well, shoot, we're going to tax the rich guys. The trouble is those rich guys are the ones that are hiring you and your kids.

Mr. AKIN. I would like to stop you for a minute. If I had to pick one on here, because we just had a jobs summit actually on Main Street, back in St. Charles in my district. We had to do one on Main Street because everybody talks about Main Street. I asked a whole bunch of small business leaders--we had probably 30 or 40 of them, and we created a list of job killers, and this chart was made before that time. I asked them to give me their list and then rate them in terms of priority which is the most deadly in terms of killing jobs. They came to exactly what you said, which is excessive taxation because when you take that tax out of the hide of the owner of the business, you really make it so that he cannot then invest in those jobs. So excessive taxation was the deal. Of course, what we have done is we have got, what is it, the people in the upper tenth of the income bracket are paying something like, what is it, 50 percent of all of the taxes in the country or something. So we are just hammering these small business owners with taxes. Then we wonder why we don't have jobs. And you have the same experience, I gather.

Mr. AKIN. You are absolutely right. 2010 should be a little better year because of a weird thing. And that is the Bush cuts in capital gains expire next year. So if you have any capital gains in something, there is a huge incentive this year to sell whatever it is and get your capital gains tax paid this year at 20 percent because in 2011 it's going to jump to 35 percent. Because you know the Democrats are not going to allow that tax cut to stay. And so you are creating an artificial opportunity for 2010 to look better, when we are going to get hammered in 2011 because everybody's going to sell everything that they have capital gains on that they're going to take that tax hit on. But here is what's really going on. If you take a look, these are the receipts. This is the money coming into the Federal Government. That's this blue dot. And this pink and red dot is how much we are spending. You take a look at the size of the two, and you are going uh-oh, something's wrong here. And that's why I said that when we spend a dollar, the dollar we spend of Federal money, 41 cents is borrowed. You take a look over here at our outlays, what's going on? Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those are the three big entitlements. They are now bigger than all the rest of the spending. I am on the Armed Services Committee. Guess what I am seeing. We are gutting defense. Why? Because we don't have enough money here and we have too much over here. Now obviously the Democrats are not that worried about balancing the budget. They are spending a ton on all kinds of entitlements and bailouts and all that kind of stuff. But sooner or later with this amount of entitlement, this amount of defense, we are going to pick up the other problem, which is we are not going to be able to defend ourselves. And you are seeing severe cuts in defense spending now, particularly missile defense and our offensive weapons, which have always been the thing that have kept Americans safe. All of these problems don't stay tightly inside a box. One thing spills over into the other. But these huge outlays of big government have got to be brought under control for our Nation to survive. And just another infusion of running the printing presses and dropping the interest rate, that crack cocaine works for a little while, but it comes back with a whale of a hangover.

Mr. AKIN. I think maybe we could get too negative here, because there are solutions to these problems. This stuff is not new. Other Presidents and other people in different decades have dealt with these problems. There is a solution to getting the economy up and going. And the funny thing is it's sad, but the Democrats haven't learned from JFK. JFK had the formula right. He reduced taxes. As he reduced taxes, what that meant was the private sector started to grow. It created jobs. And guess what happened? The government actually got more revenue by reducing taxes, which seems a little bit odd. But by getting the taxes off the backs of the American public, the businesses prospered when they did. The taxes that were there brought in more revenue to the government than if they hadn't done that. So by cutting taxes, JFK understood that you could get the economy going. Ronald Reagan did the same thing. George Bush II did the same thing. By cutting taxes, you allow private citizens to invest their money. When they do that, it gets the economy going. The government doesn't get the economy going. All the government can do is to create an environment that helps. So it's not like these problems, it's not like there's no answer and doom and gloom. There are clear-cut answers. That's what's so terribly frustrating when you see our government at war with business and the President saying, oh, we've got to be sensitive to jobs and this and that, and every single policy proposed is destructive to job creation and the economy. Now, here is the funny thing. Here are the regulations. This is overall economic freedom index. You see America in 2001, here it's sixth. It's already down to eighth. If you take a look at corporate taxes, we are the second highest corporate taxes of any country in the world, behind only Japan. And so our policies are not set to help us with these problems. We are doing all the wrong things. And yet the economy could rebound. Why would it rebound? Well, it would be a little bit like this. I want you to picture, you've got a weak heart. You've had a four-way heart bypass. You also have diabetes. You also have several other medical maladies. So you're not feeling too super strong. And all of a sudden somebody gives you some crack cocaine, and you feel like you're Superman and you're doing great. Well, that's what's just happened to the U.S. economy. We're doing everything wrong from a point of view of policy. We're doing everything to kill jobs. But we are doing one thing that's going to make people think everything is okay. And that is the Federal Reserve has increased a tremendous amount of liquidity with a very low interest rate. And that trumps all of the bad policy decisions we have been making. And so you see Wall Street starting to pick up and stock prices starting to go up and all. Why is that happening? It's happening because we have allowed the Fed to create all this liquidity and basically put our economy on steroids. And that's not going to work for very long, and it's not going to fix that unemployment problem. And before long, we are going to jump from unemployment to an incredible level of inflation. Again, this stuff isn't so rocket sciencey. We know what's the right thing to do, but we are unwilling to do it. We are unwilling to get off the big spending kick. That's what really has to change. I yield to my friend.

Mr. AKIN. The trouble is that it's people in your and my district that are going to get hung with the cost of this deal. They are the ones that are struggling to make ends meet. They are the ones whose families are having a hard time. They are the ones that are getting taxed out of house and home. And they are the ones that are saying, I don't trust what Washington, D.C. is doing. I don't trust what Wall Street is doing. I don't know what to do with the last of my savings that just shrunk out from underneath me because of all of these policies. We have to get back to some sanity and do the basic things that work. We have got to stop taxing the people who run the businesses. We have to get liquidity to business owners so that they have money to invest. What we have to do is to stop all the red tape. We have to basically change the banking rules so that there is some liquidity that way. And particularly, we have got to get off of the big spending. We just can't keep running this kind of deficit. This is just something that will not work mechanically. And so we are going to have to make some tough decisions. What we are going to have to do is let free enterprise work again, because that's the thing that pulls us out of this mess is good old American freedom, just allowing the U.S. citizens to be unfettered, have a chance to keep some of what they make, invest in their businesses, invest in Americans, and stop this whole sort of covetousness idea that any time somebody makes any money, the government's got to take it away from them. If we want jobs, if we want a strong economy, and if we want money for the government to be able to spend to pay the government's bills, we are going to have to allow freedom to flourish in America instead of trying to stomp it out, which is what we are doing. We are following the failed model of the Soviet Union, and we are stomping out freedom. Thank you, gentleman. I really appreciate Pennsylvania for sending GT down. It is a treat to serve with you. Thank you all.

Mr. AKIN. The thing that's amazing about that to me, I am an engineer by training, and let's assume that all of this global warming supposedly science were all true, which we now know, particularly since East Anglia and the scandal there that all of these guys were doctoring the numbers and everything, but let's just assume for sake of argument that CO2 is really a bad gas and aside from the fact that all of us have to stop breathing because we breathe out carbon dioxide. Aside from that, let's just assume that that's true. If you really wanted to get rid of CO2 in America, regardless of what other nations in the world are doing, you think this is our moral obligation to get rid of CO2, we could get rid of all the CO2 produced by all the passenger cars in America, the equivalent of that amount of CO2, by simply taking the electric generation that's done in our country that's done with coal- fired plants, we currently have 20 percent of electricity in America is made by nuclear, if we were to go from 20 to 40 percent nuclear, we would get rid of all the CO2 produced by every passenger car in America. So if you are a Democrat and you really think CO2 is so bad, why not come out here with a couple of page bill saying we're just going to gradually phase in nuclear plants in place of these coal-fired plants, and we would get rid of all the CO2 produced by every passenger car in America. No, that's not what comes out. We come out with this thousand-page bill, 300 pages, passed at 3 o'clock in the morning. People don't know what's in it. There isn't even a copy of the bill on the floor. And we vote for this piece of trash, which fortunately the Senate wasn't dumb enough to have passed. And anybody who flips a light switch would have been taxed. Your State would have gotten a 30 percent increase in electric. Now, what does that do to jobs?

Mr. AKIN. It just kills jobs. So this excessive taxation, combined with things like amount of government mandates and red tape, this starts to gang up. And one thing on top of the next on top of the next, and you get unemployment. Go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt. We're talking about a light switch tax. You were in the business that's getting the wheelchair tax. It's interesting to see what people want to tax. Now we are going to want to tax wheelchairs. That's with that socialized medicine bill.

Mr. AKIN. Get him a job, yes.

Mr. AKIN. Do you think people want to be bailed out? Do you think people want their unemployment to be extended? Would they rather be sitting being unemployed, or would they rather have a good job with really good prospects and a bright future? I think people would rather have a strong economy.

Mr. AKIN. The gentleman is right. I think, if I recall, if you take 500 employees or less, that is 80 percent of the jobs in America. So 500 employees or less, which 500 is kind of more of a medium size, but 500 down, that is 80 percent of U.S. employment. So policies that affect those small businesses are a big deal in terms of jobs.

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, we are just taking apart a little bit some of what has been happening the last couple of years, why the economy has been struggling some, and why we are having a lot of unemployment and problems. Some people have a hard time understanding why it is that we are having a hard time. This little cartoon kind of comes along the same lines. ``Now, give me one reason why you are not hiring.'' And you have coming into the China shop a couple of bulls. You have the health care reform and the cap-and-tax and the war on business tax. That is basically businesses getting just hammered with taxes. Of course, the picture here is we are not doing the right things that we need to be doing to keep the economy going and to create jobs. In fact, we are creating a perfect storm. People have said we have a war going on business, and we really do. We are doing everything wrong to try to create jobs and try to get the economy going. So, on the one hand, we are making the statement here that families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The Federal Government has got to do the same. What is the Federal Government doing? Oh, we are doing the Wall Street bailout, we are doing the stimulus bill, we are doing the cap-and-tax bill, we are doing the socialized medicine bill. And now we are proposing institutionalizing bailouts, so that anytime anything goes wrong, the Federal Government takes your tax dollars and goes in and picks the winners and losers and bails companies out. That is exactly the wrong message. I am joined by a good friend of mine from the wonderful State of Pennsylvania, and I would yield to him just a moment to share along the same line.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Madam Speaker, today I recognize and pay tribute to Major Speros Koumparakis, United States Marine Corps, on the occasion of his transfer from the liaison office. I, and many other members of this Chamber, have had the pleasure of working with him over the past 3 years that he has served as part of U.S. Marine Corps Office of Legislative Affairs and as the Deputy Director of the USMC Liaison Office in the U.S. House of Representatives. From his arrival in the October of 2006 to his departure in May 2010, Major Speros Koumparakis has represented the Marine Corps on all matters pertaining to the U.S. House of Representatives. During his time in the House Liaison Office, Major Koumparakis planned, led and executed many of the Marine Corps' most difficult and challenging legislative initiatives and distinguished himself as a leader and as a visible example of Marine Corps professionalism and values. Through his direct and skillful engagement with numerous Members of Congress and Professional Staff Members, he ensured that the Marine Corps' concepts, programs, and requirements were widely understood; resulting in the greatest possible support to the Marine Corps. His initiative, leadership, and tireless efforts as a fellow, legislative liaison officer and as the Deputy Director of the House Liaison Office have had a direct and lasting impact on improving the war fighting capabilities and the quality of life for Marines throughout the Marine Corps. Among his many achievements are: Major Koumparakis consistently demonstrated his expertise and knowledge by providing timely and accurate information to the Members of Congress and their respective staffs. He was a vital asset for all matters relating to the Marine Corps and their relationship with the House of Representatives. Major Koumparakis' straightforward and professional work garnered the respect of Members and staffers alike. His candor and knowledge were key attributes in maintaining the Marine Corps' superb relationships with the many Members of the House of Representatives. Throughout his tour, Major Koumparakis personally responded to hundreds of congressional inquiries, many of which gained national level attention. Through his exceptional inter-personal skills and broad knowledge in a wide range of military affairs, he assisted the Director, Marine Corps House of Representatives Liaison Office, in gaining the Members' support for issues critical to the Marine Corps. This exemplary customer service provided the Marine Corps latitude and time to reach appropriate solutions in each case. Major Koumparakis directly contributed to the Marine Corps' high degree of success in these matters that may not have been otherwise achieved. Major Koumparakis successfully planned, coordinated, and escorted more than 50 international domestic trips for high-level Congressional and Staff Delegations. These delegations often included senior leadership Representatives, such as the Minority Leader of the House, Chairs and Ranking Members of the House Armed Services Committee and other Committees of jurisdiction. These delegations traveled world-wide and visited heads of state, military commands, and deployed U.S. military personnel. His meticulous planning, attention to detail and anticipation of requirements allowed the Representatives and staff personnel to focus on fact-finding and learning new information to guide critical decisions made by the Members of Congress. These trips enabled our elected leaders to understand both the successes and challenges facing our Marines that could only be gleaned from first-hand observation and face-to-face interaction. These trips led to increased Congressional support for funding the needs of our deployed Marines and led to a greater appreciation and admiration for the sacrifices made by our Marines and their families. The close relationships developed on these trips paid dividends for the Marine Corps in all areas of legislative affairs. Another example of this Marine's impact on Capitol Hill was Major Koumparakis' having led or assisted in the planning, coordination, and execution of countless events, receptions, and meetings on Capitol Hill. These events included New Member Orientation for the Freshman Congressional Class of the 110th and 111th Congresses which took place both on Capitol Hill and in Williamsburg, Virginia; Four Marine Corps Birthday Cake Cutting Ceremonies with the U.S. House of Representatives; countless House Armed Services and House Foreign Affairs Committee hearings and events, promotion ceremonies, awards ceremonies, retirement ceremonies, and guided tours of the Capitol. He also scheduled and facilitated several hundred office calls for the leadership of the Marine Corps to include the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, and numerous other General Officers conducting business on Capitol Hill. Utilizing his particular expertise in Communications, Major Koumparakis was instrumental in designing and implementing an engagement tracking system for use within the liaison office shared drive. His efforts digitized a complex and cumbersome system and enabled all liaisons to have easy access to shared information, allowing them to focus on their work and create unity of effort in the office. In addition to the administrative requirements of the Marine Liaison Office, Major Koumparakis was instrumental in leading the planning and execution of the Capitol Hill Running Club for the past two years. This club met several times weekly, preparing hundreds of Capitol Hill staffers and military personnel to run the Marine Corps Marathon. Due to his hard work, the Club offered the Marine Corps an opportunity to engage with Congressional Staffers through physical training and raised the level of Marine Corps Marathon awareness on Capitol Hill. On a personal note, Major Koumparakis served as a military fellow on my staff in 2007. Speros was a fantastic addition to our office and was an invaluable resource to me in my duties on the House Armed Services Committee. His smiling face will never be forgotten by me or my staff. Major Koumparakis, through his dedication to professional, exemplary engagement with Congress has contributed immeasurably to the Marine Corps' solid reputation throughout Capitol Hill. The rapport he developed with Members of the House of Representatives and the Professional Staff Members have made a lasting impression with these Members and Staff and have set the tone for a lasting partnership between the Marine Corps and Congress for years to come. The time he has spent supporting Members of the House has been truly noteworthy. He has made lasting contributions to the House of Representatives.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. You're saying we are training this year 600 primary care physicians?