W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. You are talking so fast and what you are saying is so good, you are really referring to three different times in history, where instead of doing what FDR did and Henry Morgenthau tried to do, and came before Congress and said it failed, it doesn't work, this stimulus idea, this Keynesian idea, what has worked was what JFK did, what Ronald Reagan did, and what George Bush did, three separate times at 20-year different intervals, and that was they actually cut the taxes, and this seems like water going uphill, and the revenues of the Federal Government went up. That is kind of an interesting phenomena, but it has happened time after time. And the reason behind that, I will go ahead and yield and let the gentleman explain that.

Mr. AKIN. Congressman Scalise, I really appreciate your positives and giving very specific kinds of things that can be done to turn the economy around, to reduce this level of spending. We are just about out of time. I appreciate your expertise and joining us tonight. I am going to just recognize my friend Judge Carter for a minute, and then we are going to have to wrap things up and I will come back to you.

Mr. AKIN. It was basically labeled a Communist rant and an idiot's Bible, I think, by various people that reviewed that book. Going last to my good friend, a very senior and distinguished Congressman from Texas, Kevin Brady.

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate all of you joining us in this nice family discussion and hope that it has been of interest to our colleagues. I just ask us please to do a little better in the next 100 days.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, there are some records being broken, aren't there? What we've seen is a lot of complaints over the last years about the high cost of the war in Iraq, the high cost of war in Afghanistan, President Bush just squandering and spending way too much money. And a number of us voted not to spend some of that money. But there were a lot of complaints. And then you take a look, you add up the entire cost of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, add it together, and within the first 5 weeks here in the Congress, the Democrats passed a bill at $840 billion that was more than those two wars combined over a 6- and 7-year period. This is a record-setting Congress when it comes to spending. If spending is going to make the economy strong, we're going to have the best economy the world has ever seen. We're joined by a good friend from Louisiana, Congressman Scalise. Comment on this first hundred days. Let's talk about records and what kinds of things we've seen here.

Mr. AKIN. Gentleman, you just said that you are talking about a deficit, was it $2.1 trillion just for the next 2 years?

Mr. AKIN. So in that regard, he hasn't broken a promise. He's just proposing it. But then how about this SCHIP that we voted on? This thing has got a tax increase in it for people making less than $250,000. You know, this kind of thing, saying one thing, doing something different, is what creates some of that tension, that frustration that we saw in the people with tea bags wanting to dump them in the Mississippi River. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. AKIN. I would like to get back to that before we close tonight because I want to contrast that mentality with the mentality of what has been called the Greatest Generation, the generation of our parents and what they did. Judge Carter.

Mr. AKIN. Yes, I yield.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, let's take a look. What you're talking about is some of the promises that the President started out by saying, ``I want you to hold our government accountable. I want you to hold me accountable.'' So what we've done here, I've got some slides, and these are things that are quotes out of the President's speeches and all. This one, as you recall, he says, ``I can make a firm pledge under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.'' Now, when I heard that, I breathed a sigh of relief. By golly, I don't make $250,000. I don't need to worry about any tax increase because he promised me that. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. Now, he repeated this promise to all of us in this Chamber before, saying, hey, if you're making $250,000 a year, don't worry about paying any taxes. And now you're getting me very upset, judge, because what you're telling me is he's going to put a tax on energy. And my family doesn't make $250,000 a year, but we turn on light switches. We burn propane gas, and we also burn gasoline in the cars.

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate you sharing that and particularly asking that question of just regular people. I am the same as you are, flying back and forth to Missouri, the Show-Me State, or some people like to call it the Great River State. And I am not sure that their perspective is quite the same as it is in D.C. as well. Judge Carter, did you have a thought or two about other kinds of records or unique circumstances? I think there are quite a few things as we start to think about it.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, the argument is going to be made as we slash the defense budget, we see a lot of things that are being axed, being on the Armed Services Committee, I am seeing those. And the argument is going to be made, Hey, you know, you can't just afford everything. And what struck me was when we came here after the first 5 weeks the Congress had been in session, we're going to pass this, quote, stimulus--which I still call a porkulus bill--and I came across this floor--we just smoked $840 billion. I started dividing that thing out because in the committee that I serve on, the biggest thing you spend money on is aircraft carriers. I mean, even the average person on the street knows aircraft carriers are big and expensive. They have got a whole wing of airplanes on them and thousands of people on board. Aircraft carriers, that's a substantial investment. So we have 11 aircraft carriers. You take the average cost of that and divide that, about $3 billion, into $840 billion. Oh my goodness. You picture this. You're looking at 250 aircraft carriers end-to-end. I don't know how long they would go, but you're talking about a lot of aircraft carriers. So we start talking about, well, we're going to cut missile defense right at the time when the North Koreans launch their missile. And then the other thing--talk about juxtaposition in timing--the Obama team sent a video to the Iranian people talking about a shared hope, and the Iranians responded by opening a plant to produce weapons-grade uranium. Somehow or other it's like ships passing in the night here. It's like, wait a minute, what are we talking about here? We've been joined by another great Texan, a Congressman from the Brady district. Kevin, we would be happy if you want to join us in our little discussion. We're taking a look at the last 100 days and different things, records that are being set, things that are a little unusual, distinctive characteristics. I yield.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, she really did get a present on Debt Day in a sense because that debt is being unloaded on her, isn't it?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, it seems to me that pretty much everybody in Washington, D.C., and across the country, as we started this 100 days, if you asked what do you think the main deal needs to be? What does Washington, what does our political leadership, what does the President have to be paying attention to? Wouldn't you agree that that would be the economy? I mean I think everybody, regardless of your political stripe, would say you've got to pay attention to the economy. And so if you take a look, one of the ways we measure the economy is the gross domestic product. That's how are things working? Is the machine oiled properly? Is it tuned properly? Is it running smoothly? And we got a number today. As I understand it, we set another record. We have a lot of records we've been setting. Unfortunately, they haven't been very good ones. And that was that the gross domestic product number for this quarter, the first quarter of the year, was that we had shrunk the economy by over 6 percent, which is how much the economy shrunk in the previous quarter. When you put those two together, it's the biggest shrinking in the economy in 60 years. Now, that's a record. I'm 61 years old. That's a record for me. But that's not a very good record. And some of you who are on committees that deal immediately with the budget might want to comment. What does it mean to have the gross domestic product in this country shrink by 6 something percent? That never happened under President Bush's leadership. Anybody want to comment? I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I also had a chance to go to the TEA party in St. Louis, and parking in St. Louis is a real pain in the rear. And yet you had 7,000 people jammed into this square, and they were exercised. I mean, this was not politics-as-usual in America. And I think you're right. I think the high level of spending, but I think there were other things that were getting them energized. There are some of these sort of interesting juxtapositions. Here's one that caught my attention. The Obama administration announced a $1.4 billion cut to missile defense, and the same week, North Korea launches their missile. That's the sort of thing people go, Wait a minute. I don't understand this. The North Koreans just launched this big missile. They are obviously working on nuclear devices and developing the technology through a missile to deliver a nuclear device and so they are shooting off their missile and we are cutting missile defense. That's the kind of thing in our TEA party, people were really mad. When I went down there they said to me, By golly, you've got courage to even show up down here because you come from Washington, D.C. Judge Carter.

Mr. AKIN. I've heard of optimists before, but this stretches the long arm of conscience.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to be able to join you, my colleagues and friends this evening. The topic for our Wednesday evening discussion is ``the first 100 days.'' It has become kind of a tradition for people to take a look back at previous Presidents and at the current President and say, ``What happened in the first 100 days? What kind of records were set? What sort of tone was set? What were the accomplishments? What was sort of the pace of how the new President has approached the office?'' It's quite interesting. Obviously, there are very different Presidents, different political points of view, different things that they're going to focus on, and there are different times and different challenges. Tonight, we're going to take a look at that. We're going to take a look at those first 100 days. There were some records that were set, and there was a record that was set in a unique situation because, unlike any other time and for a long time, the Democrats have been totally in charge in Washington, DC. In the case of our own House here, this is a body that, as to whichever side has the majority of votes, it pretty much does what it wants without too much regard for the other side. That has been fairly traditional, but it is even more so now under the Congress of Speaker Pelosi. They can do what they want, and they do do what they want. In fact, a lot of the legislation is written directly with the staff, and it comes to the floor and is voted on. The Senate is a different matter. The Senate has always required 60 votes to get a bill before the Senate for just a regular vote. So you have 100 Senators. If you have 51 Senators voting in favor of something, you can pass a bill, but unless you have 60 votes, you can't get it to the floor to get it passed. It's kind of an odd rule. Many people don't know that. Of course, the Democrats almost have the 60 votes they need to control the Senate as well, and of course they have the Presidency. So we have here on the flip chart ``100 Days of Democrat Dominance.'' It is certainly the case. Now, as to one of the things that the President challenged Americans to do when he came to office, he said, ``I want you to hold our government accountable. I want you to hold me accountable.'' So we're going to take a look at these first 100 days and see accountable and what regard and what sort of records have been set. One of the records that we set was accumulated debt. That's kind of an interesting number. If you take a look at President Clinton, in his first 100 days, he managed to rack up $86 billion of debt. This is President Clinton. President Bush didn't rack up any debt at all. In fact, he had $70 billion of surplus at the end of his first 100 days. The clear winner in this regard is President Obama with $564 billion of debt. That's half of $1 trillion of debt. So the clear winner in the accumulated debt contest has to go to President Obama. Now, in coordination with this, if you take a look at National Debt Day--and we have a National Debt Day. That's the time when we have finished spending all of the money we've collected that year in taxes. As you know, we get the taxes in on April 15. People send their taxes in. The government gets its money, and it has been spending since the beginning of the year. The question is, ``How far do you get into the year before you run out of money?'' A lot of families have that problem in terms of the family budget, but usually what happens is we get to about, you know, August, sometimes to July in a bad year or to September. Not so this year. We have set another record in terms of debt day. It's already gone. It was 2 days ago. It was April 26. By April 26, we'd spent all of the money that was coming into the Federal Government in taxes this year. That's not a good sign. That says we're creating a tremendous amount of debt. Therefore, that leads to another record. We have a clear winner in terms of who can pile up the most debt in a very short period of time. If you take all of the Presidents added together from George Washington to George Bush--the two Georges--you have a total of $8.5 trillion in Federal debt. With President Obama--with his own numbers and with his proposed budgets--you have $8.7 trillion, so he beats by 1\1/2\, just by his own spending alone, all of the other Presidents combined. So we have another great record that was set. There have been other kinds of records, but I notice my good friend is here, the gentleman from Texas, Judge Carter, a highly respected judge. There's something about judging, and there's something about Texas which sort of combines common sense and not putting up with a lot of flowery kind of stuff. Judge, you're known as a man who gets right to the point, so I'd like to yield you time. Help us and join in. Take a look at these last 100 days. Let's talk about records. Let's talk about holding people accountable. What has been going on?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, that's cheating. I thought it was A to F. You're going all the way to ``L'' for ``liberal.''

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, how do you explain this promise in the context of what you're saying? I yield.

Mr. AKIN. What do you do when people do that? Don't you put them in jail?

Mr. AKIN. What you're saying is A to F, is that what you're suggesting?

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, there are two very good reasons to vote ``no'' on this bill. This bill is called the hate crimes bill. The first major reason to vote ``no'' is that this bill increases hatred in America. I will say it again. This bill increases hatred in America. How does that happen? It can be easily illustrated. Let's say that you're a parent and that you have a number of children but that you don't give the children equal laws. Some you favor and some you don't. What quicker formula to create animosity between children? This law violates the most basic principle of law. Lady Justice is always supposed to have a blindfold across her face because, regardless of who you are when you appear before Lady Justice--whether you're black or white, male or female, rich or poor, fat or skinny--Lady Justice does not notice. This bill violates that basic principle. It creates animosity by elevating one group over another group; thus, it creates hatred. This is counter to everything American law has ever stood for, and it will increase hatred in America. For that reason alone, there should be a vote of ``no.'' A second good reason to vote ``no'' on this bill is that our courts have a large backlog of various cases. Our judges and juries have to take a look at a certain set of facts and must determine whether or not somebody did or did not do something that is specifically illegal in the law. This law says that now we're going to try and turn them all into psychologists and have them figure out whether the criminals had good attitudes or not when they did the crimes. That does not make sense to waste precious judicial resources in trying to make everybody psychologists to determine whether or not some specially protected class gets a special privilege. It's a good reason, and there are many good reasons to vote ``no.''

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I think he's the one that created that hurricane, isn't he?

Mr. AKIN. Well, reclaiming my time, what we've got now very clearly is a huge majority of Democrats running the House; they're running the Senate, and they control the administration. So they have everything. And now what you are saying is, this is the equivalent, I mean, this is really hair-raising what you're saying, the gentlelady from North Carolina. What you're suggesting is that essentially we're like a family and we've been given some money to spend for a year. And we've only gotten to April, April 28th. That's just a little after the deadline that taxes are due, and we've already spent it all. In other words, by April 28, that's next week, we're going to have spent all the money that comes in in taxes in the year 2009. And that's what these different charts are showing in very different ways. But, you know, you've got the tax day, when you have to have your income taxes in, April 15. And now we've got Debt Day, which is April 28. My goodness.

Mr. AKIN. 26 is it? Yeah. Yielding to the gentleman from Texas.