W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, so you're talking about the tax that they're proposing to pay for some of the spending that is that cap-and- tax situation which is going to devastate small business, and small business, of course, is where these jobs are created; is that correct?

Mr. AKIN. So once again we have another projection of this example of Washington thinking they know how to do everything, deciding who's going to be the president of General Motors. All of this money that belongs to our constituents, we're going to dump this money into various companies, and then we're going to try and manage. We can't manage D.C. What makes us think we can manage car companies? What an example of--and I think there are some other examples of what's going on with some of this spending. And I see that we're also joined by Congresswoman Lummis from Wyoming, I believe. So we've got the West pretty much covered. We've got Iowa covered. We're going to have Georgia in just a minute. Please join us.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, so $15 million, and then you wake up one morning and you get this thing in the mail and it says your $15 million just basically vaporized, didn't it?

Mr. AKIN. Ninety years, and their dealership was assessed at, what was the value of it?

Mr. AKIN. Just reclaiming my time, so you have a dealer who's been in business in your town for what, 90 years or something I think you were saying?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I'm just trying put myself in the shoes of the family who owned that dealership that you're talking about.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time just a minute, what you just said is so important for people to understand, and that's because we don't have quite the sense of history. We've just heard from one of our other guests just a minute ago that this is a 25-year high in unemployment. But what you've just talked about is, when the President goes in and fires the president of General Motors and appoints the people a board and decides to rewrite the bankruptcy laws, this is unprecedented. And I think, my good friend, you have a specific example from your district about what this could mean to Main Street America. I wish you'd saw share that with us tonight.

Mr. AKIN. Well, reclaiming my time, I think you're right. And I'd like to just take a moment and get into--these numbers are easy for us to rattle off, just off the tip of our tongue, but let's take a look. First of all, you've got $700 billion in this Wall Street bailout. Now, some of this came under President Bush, and I think the people in this room voted against this thing because it didn't make a lot of sense. Half of it, though, is the beginning of this year, and we keep dumping all this money out, and it's not quite clear what we got for it. And then we get to this thing here, this economic stimulus which is supposed to be fixing this unemployment problem. And what's going on in this bill? I've got a few, just choice examples I'll share, but I know others of you here have some examples. We're joined by a number of fantastic Congresspeople, and here's one. This is one here, this is you can't afford a bicycle after purchasing a $1 million home. Okay. This is money for Washington, D.C., part of the stimulus money that's supposed to be helping us with jobs. Washington, D.C., Department of Transportation will spend $3 million in stimulus money to expand its Smart Bike program. The money will increase the program by five times, from 10 bike racks to 50 bike racks, and from 100 bikes to 500 bikes. Neighborhoods expected to get the new bike racks include Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Capitol Hill, Anacostia and Georgetown, where the average single-family home runs at $1.2 million. Boy, now there is an interesting use of money. May be a wonderful thing to do, but I'm not sure what we should be taxing everybody to try to create jobs. And we've got a lot of other fun examples. I'm joined by my good friend Congresswoman Bachmann, and Congresswoman Bachmann is articulate and a good friend to people who care about jobs and care about fiscal sanity. I yield time.

Mr. AKIN. Just reclaiming my time a minute. What would the press have said if, under the Bush administration, they claimed that they created 100,000 to 150,000 jobs and they didn't have any documentation for that? Say, Where in the world did you get that number, because the numbers that have just come out show that we've lost jobs. It's gone the other direction. If you had a track record like that--this is just the year, this year. This is starting in February, March, April, this is another March, 14, 28, April, April, May and May, this is just a few months here. And this is what's going on with unemployment. And you're out here and you claim, Hey, we just created a whole lot of jobs. People would kind of wonder, I would think the press corps would say, Wait a minute. Where'd you come up with this 100,000 to 150,000 jobs that he claimed last week that they created? I supposed he'd say, Well, if we hadn't passed this great big porkulus bill, why, by golly, it would be worse. Of course he hasn't learned from Henry Morgenthau. I yield back.

Mr. AKIN. Just affirming that, reclaiming my time and affirming that number, yes, it is now 9.4 percent. You recall that there was a promise when we got to this great big--they call it a stimulus bill. We call it the porkulus bill. When we got to this porkulus bill, they said, If you don't pass this bill, if you don't do that, why we may have unemployment at 8 percent. And here we are at 9.7 percent, and we did pass the bill. And so the excuse is, well, this thing is really helping us a lot. Well, I sure hope it doesn't help us in that direction too much longer because that was what was supposed to be. But I think you're right. Your number is 9.7. I yield.

Mr. AKIN. He didn't have EPA to put the garbage in the mine. I'm sure he would have gotten in trouble with that. It's just a treat to have, also, my good friend Congressman Lamborn who's joining us tonight as well. And we're just getting started now, talking a little bit about this idea that somehow all of this spending that we've been seeing in this last year that we've been here together, this incredible level of spending, is supposed to help with this unemployment problem. And yet, just as Morgenthau would have predicted, we're seeing unemployment going up and the spending just totally out of control. I yield time to my good friend, Congressman Lamborn.

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate that vivid example of more wasted time. I am going to yield again to my good friend Congresswoman Bachmann from Minnesota.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, as for the green jobs that are being talked about, we're going to create all of these green jobs in Spain. They call them ``subprime jobs,'' you see. This is the same old warmed over Keynesian economics that we've been hearing since the days of FDR. That is, if the government taxes everybody a whole lot and takes the money and pays people to do stuff, then we've somehow created jobs. The trouble is, when you tax them, you have prevented other jobs from being created. So, in effect, what you've done is, yes, you've created jobs, but you've lost 2.2 jobs. So what sort of math is that? That's not a very good mathematical formula. So there's this talk about green jobs. In Spain, they call them ``subprime jobs,'' and they've now got, I think, 17.5 percent unemployment as a result of this nifty project that they're doing to get rid of CO2. The trouble is, even measured on the face of it, they're making more CO2 than they did before, so it isn't working. Anyway, proceed, Doctor.

Mr. AKIN. It's a treat to have you. I think you brought up a couple of very, very significant things. First of all, we stood in this Chamber just a couple of months ago and heard the President say that anybody making less than $250,000 doesn't need to worry about any tax increases. Yet, this tax increase that is being proposed happens to anybody who flips a light switch. That means you could make a lot less than $250,000 a year and get hit with a tax. This cap-and-tax--these circles here--represent different, expensive things that America has bought. This is the war in Iraq and this is the Korean war, and you have got the gulf war over here. Over in the far right you've got Hurricane Katrina, different things like this. This is World War II, this big blue one. This is this tax: $1.9 trillion worth of tax. That's what's being proposed here. And we're just told if you're making $250,000 or less, you won't get any tax, and yet this taxes you when you turn the lights on, when you turn the thermostat up, when you start your car. That's what this tax is about right here. And when you eat food, that's what this tax is about.

Mr. AKIN. If I could just interrupt and go over to my good friend from Pennsylvania, to Congressman Thompson, let's flesh out this idea. If you do this solution that the Democrats are proposing, which is a cap-and-tax or a cap-and-trade or whatever you want to call it, how does that end up with our losing jobs? Let's go through that very specifically so that people can understand it, because that's what we're talking about. That's what happened in Spain. Let's go through that model and identify where those jobs went. The brag that the Democrats were saying an hour ago was that they're going to create jobs and that everything is going to be better. Yet the very thing they're proposing in Spain has gotten them to 17.5 percent unemployment. Let's go through how that happens. Can you please help us with that, Congressman Thompson?

Mr. AKIN. Well, now you're really hurting me when you start to get into that, but you know, that idea is that what you're doing is you're doing something that makes the economy sicker. That doesn't seem to be the thing that we want to do. You know, the thing that strikes me, too, who is going to be paying this big tax? It's going to be the guy that is using electricity, the guy that's using natural gas, the guy that's buying food. Who is that? Is that rich people? No. That's, as you say, those are average Americans just trying to get along, barely got their lips above water, economy's in trouble, they're wondering whether they're going to have a job, they may have a kid home because the kid lost a job. What are we talking about? We're talking about with this cap-and-tax, this proposal that's been proposed by the Democrats, what we're talking about here is every year you're going to have to come up with the amount of money you spend on for the average family on meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, produce, juices and vegetables, that is how much extra it's going to cost you. Or you want to put it in something else, consider furniture, appliances, carpet, and other furnishings. That's how much. All of these different categories here are smaller than what this tax is going to cost the average family. This isn't something that the President says, hey, $250,000, don't worry, we're not going to tax you. This is taxing all of these families, and that's why we get excited about it, and it doesn't need to be done. The fact of the matter is that we can have that energy independence just by using basic freedom. I'm going to go to my friend from Louisiana. Congressman Scalise, if you could join us.

Mr. AKIN. Just reclaiming my time, I think you're being reasonable. You're talking about there's a contrast, two different approaches to solving where we're going with energy. And one of them is we're going to use the instrument of a great big tax increase and a lot of government regulations, and the other one is free enterprise. What you're talking about is the fact that you're exploring. You're talking about finding more natural gas. I don't know if people are aware of it, but by things that have been passed on this congressional floor, eighty-some percent of our continental shelves are off limits for any exploration. What's the logic of that? I remember thinking the reason that the liberals didn't like nuclear was because of the waste, and yet we had a 100 percent vote in the Science Committee not to recycle nuclear waste. I appreciate your joining us tonight. I think these are things that are of importance to Americans. Thank you all. And thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate that great plug for freedom. I think there is something--there are a few statistics that all of our guests here tonight know these things. But an awful lot of people don't know about it, and here's something that I thought was just amazing. If I were to say to you that this place where we work here, the U.S. Congress, is polarized between Republicans and Democrats on the abortion issue, you'd go, yawn, well of course they're polarized. But what I don't think a lot of people know is that this Chamber is more polarized on the energy issue than we are on the abortion issue. We went back and took a look at about 8 years of voting between the two parties on developing American energy. And you know what we found? It's no surprise to you gentlemen. Ninety percent of the time where there is some proposal to help the development of American energy, Republicans voted for it, and even in the most mundane or the most easy to get along with politically, 86 to 88 percent of the Democrats voted ``no.'' There is a huge party-line difference on the development of American energy. And I just think a lot of people aren't aware of that, but people say there's no difference between the parties. Boy, there sure is on this issue, isn't there? And my good friend Dr. Fleming, I would appreciate you again joining us in the discussion here.

Mr. AKIN. Now you're getting me excited. You're talking about freedom instead of a whole bunch of government taxes and bureaucracy. What you're talking about allows Americans, empowering Americans to use the resources that we have, the technology, the innovation, and to develop energy from all different kinds of ways within our country and let that energy compete in a free market sense and let people buy the energy they want to buy.

Mr. AKIN. What you're saying is, in simple terms, this cap-and-tax not only won't work; it's going to make a bad situation worse. It's not only going to create unemployment, but it's going to create more CO2. The amusing thing is there is a chart here that--I just discovered this. If we were to double our nuclear power production--we're currently producing about 20 percent of our electric power through nuclear, 25 percent, somewhere in that range. If we were to double it, it would have the same effect as taking almost every passenger car off the road in terms of getting rid of CO2. And yet the funny thing is, do you know what happened in Spain, what they did with nuclear? They shut their nuclear stuff down, which is absolutely insane, because nuclear is the one kind of energy that doesn't make any CO2 at all and yet they shut it down. So this whole thing about CO2 being such a big problem, it seems like we're talking out of both sides of our mouth. I promised my good friend from Utah I would let him have the last word before he had to scoot out of here. Okay. We'll go back over to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. AKIN. Now, just reclaiming my time. Now, my understanding was what we heard from the guy from Spain, he said that they had been able to get a lot of windmills and solar panels out there and that it was a significant part of what they generated. But he said here was the problem: When the weather didn't cooperate, they had to tell the big industries, You can't make any aluminum today because we don't have any electricity because the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining. And they told the steel manufacturers, You can't make any steel. And so these companies are moving guess where? To America. They're moving out of Spain because of the fact that the energy is no longer reliable. To make things worse--what they described to me was really chilling, and I need to jump over to my good friend from Louisiana who is also here on this, but this is what really stuck in my mind. He said what they did was they took a whole bunch of bureaucrats and they guaranteed them that they could sell energy to the government at a certain high price so those people would invest in solar panels and windmills. They guaranteed the price, and now they've got this thing created and it's a political monster because you have all of these people with windmills and solar panels and they don't want to politically change it because that's where their revenue is coming from. So they've created this thing that's driving over 17 percent unemployment and all kinds of people are in on the government take and they don't want to change it. My good friend from Louisiana, Congressman Scalise, please jump into the conversation.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time. Those numbers are incredible. What you're saying is we want to maintain--maybe we don't want to maintain our current standard of living but we want to go back to a pre-Pilgrim America in terms of CO2 output?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time. They're talking about using that for socialized medicine or something, right? It has nothing to do with CO2 at all.

Mr. AKIN. I can't help but jump in here.

Mr. AKIN. Just reclaiming for a moment here, just to support what you're saying, this is kind of interesting. This is a Gallup poll about how do different people that are concerned with the environment, how do they rank global warming as compared to other kinds of environmental issues. And this is March 2008 and March 2009. You can see both of these charts. It hasn't changed that much over a year, but the thing that was the most important to people in terms of environmental was the pollution of drinking water. That was their number one thing, and then they wanted water pollution, was also eighty-something percent, very important to people in terms of environmental concerns. All the way down, all the way over here to the smaller side, global warming is the last one, and yet that's all we've been doing for a month is global warming, and it suggests that maybe global warming isn't the real issue. Maybe that's just the horse that's supposed to pull a big fat tax increase. That's what we're starting to see here, and I yield to my friend from Georgia.