W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, and I note that you are not so different in age than I am, and I'm just asking the same question I asked earlier this evening about our parents' generation. They've been called by some people the greatest generation. And they were called the greatest generation, because, among other things they had this intrinsic compass that said, we're going to leave our Nation better than it was when we were here. And they went to Europe, and they went to the China Seas and they did their bit and they left us a freer country. And they may not have gone through college themselves, but they saved their money so we could go through college, so that we could have a little bit better lifestyle. Some of those people now are like my own parents. They're just still alive, but they still have that attitude of making this a better country. And it breaks my heart to say, when I take a look at these numbers, that instead of leaving it a better country, we're leaving debt as an inheritance for our children. And that's tragic. I thank everyone for joining us this evening; look forward to next Wednesday night.

Mr. AKIN. It is a generational theft. It is a budget that taxes too much, spends too much and borrows too much. The other thing that is kind of interesting to me was, reclaiming my time, if you take a look at this map of the country, these are manufacturing jobs. These are those businesses that are going to be hurt by this cap-and-tax. If you take a look, the ones that are the most orange are the ones that are hurt the most by this. You notice that our friends in New England and out on the West Coast don't seem to be affected by this tax very much. But somehow, the Midwestern States are going to get clobbered by this tax. And the tax is justified on the worry about global warming. But it is not popular to say ``global warming'' anymore because the world isn't really warming, so we call it climate change. So the problem is they are claiming we are making too much CO2. So we are going to then tax nuclear reactors for the CO2 they generate. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it, because they don't generate any CO2. Yet we are going to tax them anyway. So a lot of these manufacturing States where there are a lot of jobs tied to energy, they are going to get hammered with this proposal. So not only is the budget out of control, but now we are trying to raise money with this hair-brained scheme of taxing energy, which is just going to really hurt our productivity, and that is the thing that either chases jobs overseas or it prevents jobs from being created in the first place. I yield to my good friend from Texas.

Mr. AKIN. Good evening, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for recognizing me. I am interested tonight in talking about a subject that I think is on the minds of Americans everywhere and has gotten people not just on their minds, but on their hearts as well. They're exercised, they're concerned, they're worried. And that is the subject of taxes, and really reckless overspending on the part of the Federal Government. We have heard over the past about 6 years or 7 years the high cost of the war, particularly in Iraq. People say, hey, we are spending a tremendous amount of money every day in Iraq, what are we getting for our money? This thing is breaking our budget. We're spending too much money. This is terrible. And then what we see here in the first 5 weeks of the Congress meeting, we saw them passing what was supposed to be a stimulus bill--or I call it a porkulus bill--and that bill, at $840 billion, was more money than we spent in 6 and 7 years, respectively, in the war in Iraq added to the war in Afghanistan. So we were really burning some serious money just in the first 5 weeks. Now, let's add to that, turn forward a little bit, and the American public is becoming exercised about this subject. And just this last week, on the day when filing of taxes is due, we saw all across our country a massive turnout of people, just average citizens, largely--at least certainly that's what it was in the St. Louis area--having these TEA parties. And they were very upset. And they carried all kinds of signs to express their concern about this problem of reckless overspending on the part of the Federal Government. Some of the signs read--and they were fairly clever--``Give Me Liberty, Not Debt,'' obviously taking off of Patrick Henry. And it said ``No More Pork.'' Here's one, ``Got Taxes? Got Government? Get Liberty.'' Then there was a 6 year-old that carried the sign, ``I am 6 years old and I owe $36,400 in taxes.'' And there were a number of other ones that were fairly pointed, ``Freedom, not socialism'' and things like that. People are really getting very concerned and with very good reason about our reckless overspending. In fact, there was enough pressure from all of these different events that happened all over the country that the President felt like he had to make some kind of a statement or gesture. And so he said, very graciously, look, I will tell you what we are going to do. We are going to try to find $100 million in the budget of wasted spending, to get rid of $100 million. Well, we have illustrated that point here graphically to my left. This first circle is $410 billion, and that was called an omnibus bill. That was just finishing up the spending for this year. Then we had two of this supposedly stimulus bill, which is what I was just talking about, at $787 billion in its final version, and then on top of that is the proposed $3.69 trillion, so these graphically represent the amount of money we are overspending and Obama's requested budget cuts represented by this spot, even on this chart, the size of an eraser. To try to put that into perspective, let's say that your family budget is $100,000. You have a $100,000 budget for the year, but you are $34,000 behind. That's like calling the whole family together and saying to them, now, here is what I am going to do. I am going to give up a $3 Starbucks coffee. That's what this $100 million is equivalent to: $3 on a $100,000 budget. So these numbers show the fact that the administration and the current Congress just doesn't get it. This overspending problem is really serious, and the public is getting, as I said, very concerned about it. I have a statement from one of my constituents here, this is what he wrote to me. He said, this is William from the Saint Louis area, ``I am a small businessman in Union, Missouri, employing 12 people. I built my business from practically nothing to a company worth enough to retire on, or so I thought. I am 62 years old and plan to sell my business in 3 years and to retire on the proceeds. ``In the year I sell my Federal tax rate will be 39 percent, that is assuming that Obama does not raise it even further by then, and my Missouri tax rate will be 6 percent. Since I am a service company, we have no real assets to sell. Virtually all of the proceeds will be taxed as ordinary income. ``That means that I worked a good part of my life to build a future and the taxing authorities are going to take 45 percent. ``Since my IRA accounts have been decimated thanks to,'' I believe he is talking about Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd,'' it looks like I will have to work until I die.'' And then, bitterly, ``Only in America.'' People around America are very upset about what's going on. I have a good friend, a Congressman from Georgia, Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, I believe that you have a chart also depicting in a different way the seriousness of what's going on with our excessive overspending.

Mr. AKIN. Those are the actual economic facts of where we are. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, what you're saying is America could not join the European Union now because our debt is so high?

Mr. AKIN. I see my friend from Georgia here wanting to get a word in. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. AKIN. This goes back to 1980.

Mr. AKIN. That's correct. Yes.

Mr. AKIN. You are talking about one-third of that $100,000, they are overspending $34,000, right.

Mr. AKIN. That's correct. That's why when you say $100 million with a $3.69 trillion proposed budget, it's almost a joke. It's almost a joke. By comparison, that spot is $100 million. That's the size of a pencil. This looks like the sun. It looks like a small Moon falling into the sun. That's what we are talking about here. Three dollars, they would laugh you out of the family meeting.

Mr. AKIN. What you are saying is that right after September 11, we are already starting to spend some serious money there. And what you are saying is that by the time we got to September, we had pretty much used up all the taxpayers' money that had paid their taxes that year, and beyond that point, every day beyond that where we are spending money, that's all becoming part of our debt. Is that what you are saying?

Mr. AKIN. Gentlemen, what was going on there was starting about 2003 or 2004 we started to benefit from the fact that the recession had turned around because of the tax cuts and the economy was doing well and the Federal revenues were coming in pretty strong.

Mr. AKIN. That's why we were able to hold things up into that August- September kind of timeframe, even though there was some spending going on.

Mr. AKIN. Gentleman, that number really stands out, because what you are saying is we got all the way through the summer all these previous years when we were screaming about spending too much money. And you and I agreed we shouldn't have been spending as much as we did. But that being the case, what you are saying is this year we barely got the taxes in on April 15, and by the time we get to April 26th, which is that next week----

Mr. AKIN. We are out of money already.

Mr. AKIN. I am surprised they haven't put us in jail.

Mr. AKIN. You were talking about the budget, the study committee, which is actually a balanced budget, a certain number of years out, it balances out.

Mr. AKIN. Don't you think that's what the people at these tea parties were trying to say, hey, what's wrong with the concept like every other American, you have to balance your budget. What's the problem with us getting this concept down here in Washington D.C.?

Mr. AKIN. Well, we are going to get into that a little bit too. We are joined this evening by my good friend from Indiana, Congressman Burton, a long-time leader in this House, a very respected gentleman. I would like to yield to him to talk on the same subject. I know it's something you know quite a bit about.

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate the gentleman from Indiana. Congressman, before you go, just let me ask you a question, you know, both of us grew up and we saw our parents, that had come out of the World War II time period, and they were people that worked very, very hard. They had been called the Greatest Generation, and one of the things that I remember that was just ingrained in my own parents, and I want to ask you whether you had the same experience, but it was the attitude that they were going to do something better for us than they had been able to have for themselves. It was this driving ambition to leave something better, to leave America a better place, a freer country, a safer country. And so they would say, and their words were, yes, I am going over to Europe or to the Pacific to do my bit, that they were going to give their lives or their limbs. And they had this ideal of leaving America a better place. And what you are talking about is the opposite. Is that not right, Gentleman?

Mr. AKIN. Congressman Burton, the distinguished guest from the State of Indiana. We are very thankful for the good people that Indiana sends. We also have joining us here tonight a judge from Texas. When you get a judge from Texas you're talking about somebody that kind of keeps an eye on things. I would like to yield to Judge Carter, a good friend of mine and a great and patriotic American and an American, as I understand, with some pretty good stories to boot.

Mr. AKIN. Let me reclaim my time. What you're saying is kind of radical here. What you're saying is a bunch of socialistic Europeans are telling us that what we should be doing is providing liquidity for small business to create jobs and to pull our Nation out of recession. That's what I'm hearing you say. You're telling me that these people in Europe are telling us this? I yield.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, the alternative minimum tax, usually we have rolled that back every year. Are you saying they're not going to do that this time?

Mr. AKIN. That's kind of a unique accounting principle. If you did that in the free market, judge, and let me just yield, what would happen if a businessman were to do to that? What would you do to him if he came in your courtroom?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I would like to ask a question whether either of you when you were in maybe first or second grade ever saw these workbooks and they had the pictures, what is the line that doesn't fit in? And they'd have a couple of dogs and they'd have a cat in the line or something like that. Well, let me just ask you, if you take a look at this chart to my left, can you see the thing that doesn't fit in here? These are either budget deficits or surpluses by year, all through these different Presidents here. This is when you had a Republican Congress and a Democrat President and we actually had a couple of surpluses here. This is September 11. We had the war in Iraq; so we were running some deficits. Do you see the line that doesn't quite fit in there? I yield to my friend from Texas.