W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Yeah, you are absolutely right.

Mr. AKIN. And we started out tonight talking about the overall fiscal problem we have in America, and the fact that it's really unique. This is a pretty scary situation that America's in. And the solution, as Ronald Reagan said, the solution is simple, but it's not easy. And the solution really comes in two sides. The first is we have to be cutting all of what the government is spending. We have to do some cuts. But on the other hand, what we have to do is to selectively do the tax cuts to allow the economy to really get back in a strong recovery. The one thing I agree with that the Democrats are saying is that the recovery is fragile. I think they picked that up from Bernanke, the Secretary. But I think it is. I think it's fragile because of the fact we've still got the problem of excessive taxes, excessive red tape, and a whole lot of uncertainty in the markets.

Mr. AKIN. Congressman Walberg, with you and the other great people at work down here and the American public, I believe we can do it. It's time for us to roll up our sleeves. Let's get busy cutting, let's do things the right way. Design programs that work and not threaten people, and let's move forward, because there are brighter days ahead.

Mr. AKIN. If we can do those, that's going to help. So the first thing is we've got to cut taxes, but we tremendously have to cut the overhead. And the thing here, and I think the public is becoming aware of this fact, we can't make it by cutting defense and non-defense discretionary. That was the budget we were doing 2 weeks ago on the floor. We cut $100 billion out of that. If you know what the real problem is, as we talked about earlier, the total of these entitlements plus debt service is $2.2 trillion. The Federal revenue is $2.2 trillion. You can zero this and this out, and you just barely have a balanced budget; and that's not talking about the out-years, when it gets worse. So these areas must be dealt with. Now, supposedly if you talk about changing anything with Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, lightning will fall and you'll be struck dead politically. But the fact of the matter is we must deal with these. How we deal with them is one of those things that we need to have a conversation on it. But to do what the President did and submit the 2012 budget and not deal with these at all is being disingenuous. It's kicking the can down the road and ignoring this massive problem, which is a little bit like that gorilla in the tent. I started, my dear friend from Michigan, I started by talking about-- and it's sort of sometimes I think about this: What would it be like to be in the year 1850 and be a Congressman or Senator and you have this huge issue of slavery and we didn't deal with it? We just ignored it, and then we got slammed by the Civil War. And my question is, are we as Americans going to deal with the fact that our entitlements and debt service is using up the entire revenue of the country? I mean, that's not just a little bit of a budget problem; that says we have a fiscal crisis on our hands and we're responsible. And our American citizens that elected us here expect us to deal with this problem. And the first way to deal with it is to at least acknowledge that we got the problem.

Mr. AKIN. That's exactly the point.

Mr. AKIN. You see the point of the matter is is there are people who are dependent upon these programs, older people. They are going to be in trouble if the wheels fall off this thing. So what we need to do is craft a solution that allows the older people that are on these programs to stay there, and as people become younger, give them alternatives and to have a transition so that you can get these costs under control. That is the way to manage a solution. Everybody has got to suffer a little bit. But at least we are not allowing the whole thing literally to crash like some sort of a train off the edge of a cliff.

Mr. AKIN. You know, and I think that is a thing that's so exciting, because I don't think you are being a Pollyanna by saying what you just said.

Mr. AKIN. The reason I say that is because we have been through, as Americans, a lot of dicey situations. Our own parents, known as the Greatest Generation, as they would say it, did their bit. My father was with Patton in Europe, and they fought World War II. And then there were the days when Ronald Reagan came to a discouraged Nation, and he said America's got brighter days ahead. With that twinkle in his eye, and he had such a way of putting it, you know the solution is simple but it's not easy. We have come to another one of those pivotal times in history where it is our responsibility to deal with a massive problem and not to ignore and try to pretend it doesn't exist and just try to lie to people and let the government run a little longer until we are gone, and then everything comes down in a big heap. That's not what the American public wanted of their leadership. As long as you and I are kicking, my friend, we are going to stay here. We are going to talk about this. We are going to talk about the great days ahead for America and some of the things that could possibly be. You know, we take a look at some of these medical costs. They are really, really busting the budget. Maybe one of the things we need to do is to say, hey--I think it was 1950, somebody calculated the cost of polio that had cost us a trillion dollars a year in America today, the polio costs. They forgot something. We figured out a cure for polio. Maybe it's time for us to target the most expensive diseases, things like diabetes or Alzheimer's, things that are very, very big-ticket items. Maybe that's part of that American exceptionalism to leave the world a better place, to leave our kids freer, not taxed into the dirt, to leave our economy the strongest of any in the world, that America could be a shining city on the hill, a light to the people around the world. That was the vision of our forefathers. Why don't we grab ahold of that have and say, hey, we have got way too much government that we could afford. Let's turn loose the American people and let's not trust so much in government. I think that's the big question coming up. Do we really want more government, more taxes, more spending, more debt, and less freedom, or do we want more freedom and a whole lot less government, and the government that's there to really be a servant to the people and not have the attitude that they know better than everybody else. Don't you think that's where we are?

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. I was intending to offer amendment No. 181, Mr. Chairman, but I decided to withdraw the amendment, and was going to simply speak on the subject.

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Chairman, my concern is that the Department of Defense may interpret this language as direction from Congress to terminate EFV in this year, regardless of any recommendations made by Congress during debate on the fiscal year 2012 budget. No matter how this issue is resolved by Congress in fiscal year 2012, orderly conclusion of the fiscal year 2011 SDD activities that are already under contract and well underway is essential for the Nation to get a usable product for its $3 billion investment. My reading of this language is that it provides sufficient flexibility for the Department to continue through SDD, and we encourage the Department to do just that. Mr. Chairman, is it the intent of the committee to provide sufficient flexibility for the Department to continue SDD activities related to the EFV?

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the goal of this colloquy is to clarify language associated with funds provided for the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, or EFV, in the Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Navy section of the bill. It is my understanding that the accompanying table states that $145 million of the funds provided for the EFV termination liability may be released only for use in system development and demonstration activities upon certification by the Secretary. Mr. Chairman, is that the language included in the report accompanying this bill?

Mr. AKIN. Chairman Young, I would appreciate a commitment from you to work together on the issue, the Appropriations Committee and the Armed Services Committee, as we consider the fiscal 2012 defense budget. The Congress must ensure that marines have the equipment they need to successfully accomplish the missions they are asked to perform, and that includes amphibious assault. I appreciate your willingness to work on this. I think that what we're doing is we've got $3 billion already invested. As you say, it doesn't make sense to waste that investment, especially when you're talking about a very small amount of money to finish up. It leaves the flexibility to take a really good look at how do we accomplish that critical mission of moving marines from the ocean to the shore. So I appreciate your working on this colloquy and agreeing to where we're going.

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I was thinking I was going to offer, and actually we can't, is on the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. It's an interesting topic because we're going back again once more to the subject of mercury; but, really, we're going to a more basic subject than mercury, and that is the subject of freedom because this Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is a de facto ban on the plain old lightbulb that Americans have known a long time. It's the incandescent bulb. And this de facto ban essentially says that all the new lightbulbs have to be these mercury vapor fluorescent lightbulbs. And so the question that comes to my mind is, aside from the benefits of one type of lightbulb over another--and you could argue the benefits, the mercury vapor lightbulb is a little more expensive but it saves energy, but the incandescent lightbulb burns more energy. But it doesn't have any mercury you're bringing into your living room. But the point, though, is don't we trust our constituents to pick the kind of lightbulb that they want? I'm just wondering if there's anybody in this Chamber who wants to stand up and vote and say, I'm going to tell my constituents what kind of lightbulb they ought to buy. I mean, lightbulbs are used in a lot of different contexts, a lot of different situations; and if people want one of those mercury vapor bulbs that's got good efficiency, fine, let them buy one. But don't tell them they can't buy another kind of bulb that may meet their circumstances. And I think that's the kind of arrogance that the public is really fed up with out of Congress is when we have this arrogant attitude that we're going to tell people even what kind of lightbulb to buy. And so what my amendment was going to do was, of course, to strike this piece of legislation. Technically, we can't do that on this appropriations bill so we have to wait for a different venue in order to do it. But I would conclude with the observation that for decade after decade in America the symbol of innovation and bright ideas was always the lightbulb, and unfortunately this bill is a bulb that just seems to barely get dim. Amendment No. 204 Offered by Mr. Scalise

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Chairman, this is a debate and a discussion that has been going on for some period of time. As has been noted before, there are many of us who serve on the Armed Services Committee who have a little different view than does the Pentagon on this subject. So what are the benefits of the second engine? Several of those have been mentioned. First of all, it is the sense of security. You've got basically an aircraft now that is going to be serving the Marine Corps, the Navy, and the Air Force. All of our services will be dependent on this one aircraft, which is the Joint Strike Fighter. That particular Joint Strike Fighter has one engine. Obviously, if you want it to work well, the engine has to run right. The Armed Services Committees have taken a look at this, and those with a few more whiskers here understand the problem that came along on the F-16, where we had an engine manufacturer that couldn't get the engine done, and the whole airframe was at risk. In this case, you have the airframe for the Marine Corps, the Navy, and the Air Force, so this Congress wisely decided that we're going to have two engines. First of all, from a security point of view, what this allows us to do is to make sure that we have an engine that is on time and on delivery. Certainly, the competition is another good point. You save a lot of money. If you've got two different contractors bidding against each other, we're going to get a good price on the engines, and that's going to be important, particularly year in and year out. Now, there are a couple of other things that have not been mentioned that I've heard this evening. One of them is that the second engine also has 10 to 15 percent more thrust. What does that mean? Well, it's interesting. If you happen to be a Marine Corps guy, the marine version of this is called a STOVL. It has to take off from just sitting on a deck, and it takes off straight up. That takes a lot of thrust. The first engine is absolutely maxed out, and what we see over time is we want to put more stuff in our airplanes. When you do that, it gets heavier, and you need more thrust. The second engine offers that 10 to 15 percent more thrust. I don't know if there is a financial consideration to define what that is worth, but that extra 10 or 15 percent could make the difference of a stable aircraft that could carry some particular additional piece of equipment that we may need in the future. The other point that I've not heard made and is actually kind of new to us is that these engines are big suckers. They are very, very big turbines, and they have a tremendous amount of power that they're generating. Now, if we've got this one turbine that works for the Marine Corps, for the Navy and the Air Force, what would happen if we were to use that turbine in other applications? You'd get all the more benefit of having fewer parts and having interchangeability. These engines are bolt-for-bolt interchangeable. So what happens when we start to look at the design for a future deep strike bomber? One of the questions on that will be: How many engines do you need? Is it going to be a four-engine bomber or a two-engine? Four is a lot more expensive. What happens if you could get the power of two engines into one and make it a two-engine bomber and use the same engines that are going into JSFs? So now you've got a universal engine working for a number of platforms. There is a whole lot of simplicity and cost savings for that type of thing. If we're going to put our eggs in one basket, we want to make sure we've got at least two people and that we have the competition, the capability of using this engine in other ways, and the additional thrust for the second engine. I would recommend a ``no'' vote on this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. In other words, I think your point is, Paul, that in our debate this week, first of all, almost all of the discussion is centered right over in this--it looks like Campbell's tomato soup on my chart here--it's in this section, and it's ignoring all of this which is equal to the entire revenue of the Federal Government. So you can see that you could cut this to zero, and you still aren't going to fix the problem. On the other hand, it doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking for savings and cutting everything we can. But you are putting in perspective this whole week. I think that's tremendously helpful, Paul, to do that. And I think, as I recall, there is about $16 billion being taken out of defense which is not as deep a cut as what the non-defense discretionary is getting; is that correct?

Mr. AKIN. What you are seeing is a very serious attempt to get into reducing the size of the government. I mean, we are stepping on all kinds of political toes just to say, hey, it may be a nice program, but we're in trouble. I was asked by a reporter--I believe it was earlier today--whether or not the position that I was taking on these cuts and everything was like a Tea Party position. I said, You know, I guess we all reflect, to a degree, our training. I was trained as an engineer; and to me, this is just plain math. It isn't liberal math. It isn't conservative math. It's just flat-out, this is how much money these entitlements are taking, and this is how much money is coming in. The two are equal, and we don't have any money for these things. I don't know if this is politically liberal or conservative or anything else. It's just the reality of the political deficit. Now the one thing we haven't added here--this is just this year--we haven't added the perspective of time. I think it's helpful if we take a look at what time does to this in several regards. The first is, one of the things that is happening to those little pieces of the pie is, they're growing. This has got Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. And it shows over time what's going on without the other entitlements and without the debt service. You see that those of us--I hate to admit my age--but some of us baby boomers, as we get older, we are going to be leaning on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid more. There are more people there, so that's going to make these numbers go up. What we've seen is that the revenue the Federal Government collects hovers in here at 18 percent. There are times, historically, when we've raised the tax rate tremendously, and yet it seems like it's still 18 percent of GDP. So if this 18 percent is not that flexible, whether you raise or lower taxes, then when you get down to this problem, you say, uh-oh. Because before you could say, our revenue was equal to all of these entitlements. Well, raise taxes. No problem. Yes, there is a problem. Because as you raise it, you won't collect any more money. You crash the economy, and the entitlements are still growing. Over time these entitlements are still growing. So this picture here, as scary as it is, is not as scary as it really is because it doesn't take into effect that the entitlement pieces are growing rapidly. Here is the other piece from a time point of view. And that is, this red line is the growth of entitlements. This is 1965. And we're going over here to 2010. You notice the entitlements are 2.5 percent in 1965. This is just Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. It's up to 9.9 percent. But really, when you add the other entitlements and debt service, you are getting up closer to 18 percent. So what's happened is, the entitlements are going out of control. Even if you assume that the other entitlements are roughly 12 percent or something, you're at 500 percent growth in entitlements. And yet here is defense spending. It's 7.4 percent here. It goes up as high as over 9 percent here and drops all the way down to 4.9. So defense spending is going down; entitlements are going up. And now we get to the point where you could cut defense to zero and still could not compensate with this incredible growth in entitlements. I want to let you jump in, Paul, because I think that people now can start to see what it is and why it is a whole lot of Americans--not just Republicans or Democrats--but just plain old Americans are saying, Hey, we have got to pay attention to what's going on because these numbers are very scary.

Mr. AKIN. Do you have to hire people to fill that paperwork out all the time?

Mr. AKIN. So, in a way, it's creating a job for people to deal with government redtape, but it doesn't really create any wealth, does it?

Mr. AKIN. So, in effect, what it's doing to the economy is the government is making you less efficient as a business, and that redtape then adds to your cost of doing business, which then tends to dry up jobs.

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, it is a treat to be able to join my colleagues here this evening and to consider this great discussion and debate that is taking place over the past months, but particularly during this week as we approach the question about what are we going to do with funding the remainder of this year. There, of course, was no budget decided on last year, and so they do a thing called a continuing resolution. So there's a lot of discussion as to how much can we be affording to spend of the taxpayers' dollar. And I thought that it might be appropriate this evening to take a look at that, not so much in a lot of minuscule detail, but at the magnitude of the overall question that's before us and how the math just doesn't work. I will also try, as we have a chance to get into a discussion this evening, to connect it to the problem of unemployment, because all of these things are connected, and still I think it's helpful to look from an overall perspective. So what I have here is one of those--we always have these pie charts. I particularly like pie. And this particular pie chart here shows some different areas of the Federal budget. Now, this is the total of Federal spending here and the pieces of pie are roughly proportional. What I would like to start with this evening, so we have a big picture of how serious the excessive spending in the Federal Government is, is to start by making a distinction between a couple of types of spending. The first kind of spending--and maybe to some people this sounds like sort of Washington, D.C., talk but they call it mandatory spending or entitlements. And mandatory spending may be not necessarily mandatory, but what that means is that legislators, maybe as much as 50 years ago, passed a series of laws, and those laws then automatically spit out dollar bills out of the Treasury. So anytime somebody who happens to be the right person waves their hand in front of the little machine, out pops a dollar bill. And so we have these things, and they're called entitlements or mandatory spending. So these are places where the Federal Government just is automatically spending money, and there are some of them that are very familiar with most people: Social Security here, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those are the three big, as they call it, entitlements or mandatory spending. There are other entitlements that are smaller, and that's in this category over here, the other quote, mandatory spending. So these are not Medicare or Medicaid, Social Security, but they are the other mandatory. And then there's another thing that acts just about like mandatory spending, and that is the interest on our debt. When the Treasury decides to sell a Treasury bill, the reason people buy a Treasury bill is because it is going to pay some interest to them. So we have to pay the interest on our debt, and in that sense, when we decide to spend money that we don't have, we are creating what is, in essence, like a little machine that spits out dollar bills. Let's say that you take all of this mandatory spending, or entitlement spending, and add it to the interest on the debt, how much does that add up to? It adds up to about $2.3 trillion for this year. Now what in the world does $2.3 trillion mean? Most of us don't have a good sense of perspective. Well, $2.3 trillion happens to be the revenue that the Federal Government collects this year. In other words, what we're saying is, if you take this purple and this aqua color and this gold color and light and dark blue here, you add this all together, this is equal to the revenue that comes in for the Federal Government. What, then, does that leave out? Well, it leaves out these two other pieces of pie. One is defense, and one is non-defense. They're called discretionary because each year we decide how much money you're going to spend in those categories. So what we're saying is--and I think this is really chilling--it sounds maybe a little boring to explain it. But just think about this a little bit: The entitlements and the debt service equals our revenue. That means if we want to balance the budget this year, what we would have to do would be to get rid of all of defense. Not one soldier, not one plane, not one tank, not one ship, nothing. There would be nothing in defense. And nothing in the non- defense discretionary. No Department of Energy, no Department of Commerce, no Department of Education. There would be no Park Service. There would be no prisons. There would be no Homeland Security. There are all kinds of things that the Federal Government does that we fund every year which would be gone. So there would be no defense and no non-defense discretionary. Well, the country wouldn't survive very well under those conditions. So that's the problem. These entitlements have grown so much that they have eaten up the whole budget. Now this week, we're going to be debating how we're going to cut this non-defense discretionary, cutting a little bit from defense but mostly non-defense discretionary; and we're talking about $100 billion. Is that a lot of money? Sure, it's a lot of money. Is it a lot of money compared to the fact that we're about $1.3 trillion or $1.5 trillion over? Not so much then when you compare $100 billion to about $1.5 trillion. I am joined tonight by a good friend of mine, a freshman congressman from Arizona, Paul Gosar. We had a chance to talk about this a little bit last week, and I invite you to jump in because what I hope that people are starting to understand here is that we have got a big financial problem down here. Our entitlements and debt service is equal to how much revenue we take in, and that's assuming you have zero for defense and zero for this other, non-defense discretionary. I mean, there is no money to run the government with. That is a fairly significant problem. Let's talk about it, my friend.

Mr. AKIN. So what you're saying is, one of the things that is affecting this is just the condition of our economy. And I was planning to get into this a little bit with you. When we started, I wanted to talk and work in the problem of unemployment and how do we deal with the level of unemployment in our economy today. We've got the government saying it's 9-point-something percent unemployment. And that's an optimistic number, because if you've been unemployed more than a year, they drop your name off the list. You may still be looking for a job. So the real level of unemployment people are saying is well beyond 10 percent. So one of the ways you can--I guess this may be a backwards way of looking at it. What are the things that are creating that unemployment? And I went to, believe it or not, to a Main Street in my district, and I got a whole bunch of businesses there and I said, Now, what is it that's causing this unemployment? And I asked all these different people, and I was encouraged because they told me the very same things that my common sense told me and everybody else is saying. Anybody who has run a business knows what makes the unemployment. The first thing is when you start taxing the owners of small businesses heavily, they can't put money back into their business because they're busy paying taxes. I believe, gentleman, is it true that you were a doctor?

Mr. AKIN. And did you have a clinic of your own?