W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Sixty-five days. I just thought it would be helpful to have those numbers up there. The main thing was the Wall Street bailout, then this porkulus bill and then this appropriations bill. I yield.

Mr. AKIN. $350 billion. Then, under President Obama, we got the other $350 billion. So half of this is Bush and half of this is President Obama. Then we've got this economic stimulus--I call this the porkulus bill--and that was $787 billion in its final form. Then we've got the appropriations bill that we passed. That's another $410 billion. So, you know, we are well over $1 trillion here in less than--what is it?--3 months.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time just for a second, you are talking about these different tax increases and different things that are spending money. It's starting to get a little bit hazy because there are a number of them coming along, and it's easy to get them confused in your mind where it was that we spent money and how much. So I have put together some of the real big ticket items. I mean we're only into March, right? I mean it's only the first quarter. Let's take a look here. This is the Wall Street bailout. It started, actually, at the end of the Bush administration. They did, I think it was, $300 billion or $350 billion, something like that.

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to join you this evening and to talk about some issues that are of significance to all of us. And I thought that what we might do this evening, starting out, was just take a look at--many people are conscious of the fact that we've got some challenges and troubles with the economy. People are aware that we have a problem with jobs and having enough jobs to go around. We have some difficulties on Wall Street, as people know. We have difficulties on Main Street. We have been told over a period of the last six or 7 years that we spent a whole lot, too much money in the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. In fact, we have been regaled every day with stories about oh, we're spending more and more money. But just to kind of put perspective on how much we have been spending lately, let's just consider the 6 years of the war in Iraq and add up all the money we spent in the war in Iraq, and then let's add to that the amount of money that we spent in Afghanistan. And you put the two together, and it's less money than we've spent in the first five weeks when this Congress was in session. That's kind of an amazing number. We spent this, supposedly stimulus bill, $840 billion. What is $840 billion? Well, it's more money than we've spent in both of these wars over the past six and 7 years all added up, combined. So how did we get into this situation that we are spending so tremendously much money? I recall, the President made a statement. It said, ``We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences.'' And many of the President's statements are noteworthy. This is a good statement. ``We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences.'' The only question is, when you take a look at the level of spending, these blue bars was President Bush, and these red bars, now, become the Democrats and particularly, here, this is this year. Now, this is not, doesn't have projections in it for economists making all kinds of predictions. This is actually what we are spending. And you see how much the spending has gone up. And so this line doesn't square too well with ``We can't simply spend as we please and defer the consequences.'' So how did we get into this really heavy, big spending kind of situation? I think it's helpful--people say, oh, we just have to keep looking ahead and solving problems. I think it's good to look ahead and solve problems. I think it's also possible to take a look and see where did we make mistakes and what do we need to make sure that we don't do again. I90[H25MR9-R1]{H4012} And if you take a look at how we got the economy in trouble, the story goes back, actually, a good number of years. It goes back even as far back as 1968, and that was when Fannie Mae was created. It's called a government-sponsored enterprise. It's not really private. It's not really government. It's sort of half and half. And so '68 we created Fannie Mae, and then in 1970, Freddie Mac. And the purpose of these organizations was to make it so that Americans could afford to own homes. And that is, of course a good thing. We all appreciate the American dream, particularly having, when you come home after a hard day's work, have a place that's really your palace. Maybe not a fancy palace, but it's at least a place where there should be some peace and when you can say yeah, this is my house. And that's always been part of the American dream. And the idea was to create these agencies, to allow more people to have a chance to own their own home. And that was what a good enough idea to start with. But then we started to tamper with the idea some in 1977 with the Community Reinvestment Act, which mandated that Freddie and Fannie--or in the Community Reinvestment Act it mandated more banks had to make loans that were risky loans, not the sort of loan that a local bank would know the people living in their area and they'd say, oh, this is a good guy and he wants to buy a home, but we know he'll be able to pay his loan, so we'll go ahead and make that loan and we'll keep that on our books and allow that to go forward. And then every month we know this man in our community, we know he'll pay off his loan and soon he'll be a proud homeowner. No, this was not what happened with the Community Reinvestment Act. What we're saying now is that banks have to lend money to people who might not be able to repay those loans, and the government's starting to say, you've got to make these loans that are not so good. Well, in 1992, the Federal Housing Enterprise Financial Safety and Soundness Act mandated that Freddie and Fannie buy risky loans from the banks. So now pretty soon, you've got this and it's gone a little further. It's not just that the bank is going to make some risky loans, but now the bank has the option of dumping the risky loans on Freddie and Fannie. So you can see where this is going. What's starting to happen is that we're passing the accountability. And guess who's finally going to end up holding the bag? You guessed it, the U.S. taxpayer. Well, here's what's going on. Now, this enterprise is saying you can take these bad loans, pass them on to Freddie and Fannie. Well. Then we go to 1999, and under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, this is where President Clinton expanded the number of bad loans, not maybe bad loans, but much more risky loans that Freddie and Fannie had to take. And so Freddie and Fannie now are picking up more and more of loans where it's not so clear people are going to be able to pay these things. And so Freddie and Fannie start to do some exciting footwork with their finances, and start packaging these loans up in unique ways, and selling them, through Wall Street, all over the world. And so this is going on in '99. Now, other things are starting to take effect here. The economy was not so good in '99. And so, Greenspan, at that time, lowered the interest rate, took it way down so it created a whole lot of available liquidity, and the housing bubble starts going. And this was the year that I was elected to Congress, 2000. So 2001, if I'd come down here, I was really kicking myself by 2005 because anybody who bought a house in Washington, D.C., why, that house would have doubled in value in about 5 years. You're saying why in the world didn't I buy some big house in D.C.? And then later on you think, I'm glad I didn't. But anyway, we haven't gotten there yet. So this is what's happening in 1999. Then things start to--the train starts to come off the track. In 2003, Freddie and Fannie get investigated by The Securities and Exchange, and they admit that $1.2 billion accounting error. At that particular time, President Bush, seeing that, had been warned. Now there'd been some warnings before, back in 1999. New York Times, there's an editorial saying, we are setting up a problem. And here's the problem. You've got a whole bunch of loans that are very questionable, more and more questionable loans. And who is going to back up those loans? Who's going to end up having to pay for them if people default on their loans? So this is, who's going to pay? Well, Freddie and Fannie have all of these things. What's the implication? Well, Freddie and Fannie are backed by who? By the U.S. government. So if the loans are bad, now the U.S. government is, maybe not obligated, but pretty much obligated. By this time, Freddie and Fannie have got more than half of the home loans in America. So is the government going to turn their back and say, oops, all of this is stuff is just going to go away? No, of course. So this is starting to come along. By 2003, the President sees these problems, and in this article, on September 11, 2003, the article, this is New York Times, September 11, 2003, it says hear, ``The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.'' So here you have, Republican President Bush is saying, uh-oh, guys. We've got trouble. We need to get into Freddie and Fannie. We need to regulate them some because they're starting to get wild and wooly with their financial wheeling and dealing, and what's going to happen is the government and the taxpayer are going to end up getting caught on the hook. Well, what was the response? And did we go ahead and take the President's recommendation and move forward with further regulations of Freddie and Fannie? Well, he was opposed. The same article in the New York Times, same one, September 11, 2003, the ranking Democrat of the Financial Services Committee, Congressman Frank, is quoted in this article. ``These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts. Now, I think he didn't think they were facing any particular kind of crisis. But he was the ranking member on this committee. That means he was in the minority party in 2003. But he was opposed to what the President was suggesting, and that was a strong reining in of Freddie and Fannie's practices. Now, he, by himself, of course, couldn't stop a legislation because he was in the minority party. So, following 2003, you have, in addition, you have the Bush administration in 2004, again, this is committee testimony saying, we've got to get on to Freddie and Fannie. And then by 2005, a bill was passed in the House. It was mostly, the one in the House was mostly voted for by Republicans. It was opposed by a majority of Democrats, or quite a number of Democrats. And the bill passes out of the House and then goes over to the Senate. Now, the Senate is kind of an odd body because over there it takes 60 votes to get something passed. And as the New York Times reported, the Democrats were not in favor of this additional regulation on Freddie and Fannie. So here is another version, the Senate bill 190, it's the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act 2005. And the Senate, it was passed out of the Committee on Banking and Housing and Urban Affairs, but the floor action was blocked by the Democrat minority. So there's a difference, a political difference here, that the Republicans were in support of more regulation of Freddie and Fannie. Democrats were opposed to that, killed it over in the Senate. Now, what happened then, of course, is that all of these bad loans spiraled more and more out of control, and as they did so, they started to create havoc in other parts of the economy. Now, was this problem created entirely because Democrats refused to regulate Freddie and Fannie? No, not entirely because of that. It was a very important component. Certainly, the bad loans are what put us on track for a very serious world economic situation. There was more to it, though. There were people on Wall Street, such as Standard & Poor's and two other rating agencies--the ones that give us our credit ratings personally. They are the ones that said that all of these mortgage- backed securities were a AAA rating. Well, that turns out to also have been not a very wise thing, and they were not AAA rated. In fact, most of them have gone into default enough so that there is no longer any market for these mortgage-backed securities. So now we are at the point in the last year or two where we have what is clearly a recession on our hands. So what do you do with a recession? There are two basic theories about how you handle this. The first one goes back to FDR and to his Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau. Morgenthau, along with a guy, little Lord Keynes--he was a little weird, but he was an economist anyway--came up with this idea that when the economy gets in trouble what you have got to do is to stimulate it, and so what we are going to do is spend a whole lot of money, and that is going to make the economy a lot better. So they tried that during the Great Depression. After 8 years of stimulating-- that is, spending tons and tons of taxpayer money--you have the guy who really came up with this scheme, Henry Morgenthau, now appearing before the House Ways and Means Committee in the year 1939. He talks about: How well does it work if the government spends a whole lot of money to get itself out of an economic fix? Well, here is what his quote was: ``We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work.'' This is the guy who supports this Keynesian model of economics, which says, hey, the more you spend money, the more it's going to fix the economy. After 8 years of the administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started--and an enormous debt to boot. Now, this is a lesson that Henry Morgenthau learned in 1939. He learned it at the cost of 8 years of Americans being out of jobs. He realized that this does not work. The Japanese did not learn the lesson, and in the '70s, they took their economy through 10 years of big government spending to try to get their economy going, and it did not work. So what we have then is the problem of an approach to fixing an economic crisis which creates unemployment, and of course unemployment--lost jobs--really, really hurt an awful lot of common people. A lot of people who have worked hard all of their lives, who are trying to pay their mortgages off, lose their jobs, and now their houses are foreclosed. I think sometimes, in my own mind, of being the father of a family with a wife and with kids depending on me. I think of what it would be like to come home at night and see your living room furniture sitting on the sidewalk, and you're being tossed out of your house. That is the kind of thing we risk when we start using bad government policies. When we start to take this process of having people being encouraged to take loans that they cannot afford to take, we lose jobs, and things start to come undone. There is a different approach, another way, of dealing with a recession. One way of dealing with a recession that we mentioned is, of course, the Keynesian model, or the idea of spending your way out of trouble. Now, we need a little bit of common sense down in Washington, D.C. We need a little common sense in Congress. Most people in a lot of our districts know that, if you get in trouble economically, the thing you do is you don't go buy a brand new car and spend money like mad, hoping it's going to get better. That's just plain crazy, and yet that seems to be what the government is doing. Let's take a look and see what our response has been, because there is another approach. There was the same approach that was used by JFK, by Ronald Reagan and by President Bush, all three times effectively turning a recession into good, solid economic times. I've got a couple of charts here. I just want to throw a couple of these up because this is the heart of where we are in America today, and it affects every man, woman and child in our country. What I have here right in front of me is the danger of using that Keynesian model--spending money out of control. Let's take a look at this chart. This is a pretty easy one to understand. I know charts are sometimes a little confusing or you have to try and figure out what they're saying, but this just tells you whether or not the family budget got balanced. Every single one of these bars is a line, and if the line goes down, it means the government spent too much money. If the line goes up, it says we actually did not spend as much as we took in. So, just like the family budget, the down lines mean, uh-oh, we went into debt. We're going back all the way here to 1980 and are going out here to this very year where we are. So what has happened? Well, we've been spending too much money for a long time here. About how much too much? Well, you know, $3 billion to $400 billion worth. That's a lot of money. Here we had a couple of good years where we actually made some money. This was a Republican Congress. Bill Clinton and the Congress said we're not going to spend much money, and there were some disagreements. We actually saved some money for a couple of years. These years right in here are the 8 years of Bush, and Bush was criticized for spending too much money. I voted against some of that spending, and here is what the spending was: You can see that probably the worst spending was somewhere in the range of about $400 billion. Now take a look at what happened this year in 2009. My goodness, this is absolutely unprecedented. That is the level of spending in 2009. Guess what? We're not done with 2009 yet. So this tells you that we have taken an approach which is saying, boy, are we going to spend some money. You can say that, maybe, President Bush spent too much money. I think he did, but it is nowhere near what we're seeing, and so this spending pattern seems to be in great contradiction with the statement that says: We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences. This is what he said, but look at what we are doing. I am joined here in the Chamber tonight by a very good friend of mine from Louisiana, Congressman Scalise. I know that you've been paying attention to some of these issues and have already, rapidly, distinguished yourself here in the Congress. I would appreciate it if you would give us your perspective on what's going on this evening.

Mr. AKIN. This isn't the year of 32,000. This is the year 2009.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of H.R. 918, legislation to designate the post office in Jamestown, New York, as the ``Stan Lundine Post Office Building.'' Stan Lundine is one of Jamestown, New York's most steadfast public servants. He served as mayor of Jamestown, as a United States Representative and as Lieutenant Governor of New York. A Jamestown native, Stan Lundine was elected mayor of his hometown in 1970, just 6 years after graduating from New York University School of Law. Realizing his success as a mayor, the people of New York's 39th District elected Lundine to the House of Representatives in 1976. In his five terms as congressman from New York, Lundine continued to focus on labor/management issues. In the Congress, he focused on finance and banking servicing as subcommittee chairman of the House Banking Committee. After his House career, he was elected Lieutenant Governor of New York under Mario Cuomo and served New York working on housing, technology, and economic development initiatives, as well as training and programming policies. Putting his labor management skills to use, he now serves as a director of the National Forge Company, U.S. Investment Services, and John Ullman Associates. He also serves as executive director of the Chautauqua County Health Network, a group of four hospitals and their physicians dedicated to improving the local health care delivery system in his community. In recognition of Congressman Stan Lundine's contributions to the country, the State of New York and the city of Jamestown, let us now commemorate his 25 years of public service by naming the post office in his hometown of Jamestown, New York, as the ``Stan Lundine Post Office Building.'' Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. I yield such time as he may consume to a highly respected and distinguished colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Platts).

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Last week, the devastation of traumatic brain injury was once again brought to our attention with the death of actress Natasha Richardson. This tragedy was but one type of traumatic brain injury that brings about death or physical debilitation to over 1.4 million people each year. While the leading cause of traumatic brain injury is the result of falls, they are followed by automobile accidents, being struck by or against a hard surface, and assault. Men are at the greatest risk of brain injury, and African Americans have the highest death rate from this injury. All of these cold, hard facts do not tell the story of shattered lives of the individual, if they survive, and untold heartache and lifelong impact on loved ones and friends of the injured. In America, there are 125,000 citizens living with life-long disabilities from traumatic brain injuries. These head injuries come about in many ways, not the least of which are the injuries sustained by our soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The cost in lives and the ongoing suffering is tragic for these brave men and women. Their injuries will continue to require costly medical assistance from State, Federal, and local agencies. Generally, a concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury that is caused by an injury to the head that many people underestimate. It is critical to recovery that any type of blow to the head, whether it is a child's fall from a swing to a teen sport or automobile accident, be taken seriously. Often, symptoms don't show up immediately, so keeping a close watch on the injured person is imperative so that medical attention can be sought, if needed. We are grateful for organizations such as the Brain Injury Association of America who are invaluable in generating understanding and awareness of brain injury. We join with all who wish to broadcast a message of hope and action of this often underestimated condition during March, which has been designated as the National Brain Injury Awareness Month. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Today I rise in strong support of H.R. 1218, a bill I introduced to honor the life of Drew W. Weaver by designating the post office in St. Charles, Missouri, as the ``Lance Corporal Drew W. Weaver Post Office Building.'' A resident of St. Charles, Missouri, Lance Corporal Drew W. Weaver was part of the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. On February 21, 2007, Lance Corporal Weaver died while conducting combat operations in the al Anbar province of Iraq. As Captain Mark C. Brown noted, Drew was ``known for his enthusiasm and his ability to motivate people around him.'' Drew's contribution to his country was honored by his community when hundreds, maybe more than hundreds actually, showed up for his memorial service and procession. A graduate of St. Charles West High School, friends and family of Drew remember him as an energetic young man who was eager to serve his country. Ryan Hanson, his best friend and a fellow serviceman, said, ``Drew loved what he was doing and was proud of what he did for the Marine Corps.'' As a father of two marines, one of whom has served in Iraq and in Fallujah, it is a privilege to stand here today to honor one of our fallen soldiers. Drew's commitment and dedication to his country is a shining example of how our military men and women are the finest our Nation has to offer. His and his family's sacrifice should serve as a reminder to all that the freedom we enjoy as Americans is not always free but the result of tremendous bravery and selfless service of men and women willing to put themselves in harm's way for freedom's cause. As Reverend James Benz noted during Drew's funeral, ``I think we can learn from them that the freedom we enjoy in this country is precious, that it is special, and that it must be preserved sometimes at great personal cost.'' Our Nation will be forever indebted to Lance Corporal Drew Weaver. Mr. Speaker, I ask that my colleagues join me today in honoring Lance Corporal Drew Weaver. Vote ``yes'' on H.R. 1218. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. And that President Bush was being beat up because the Republicans were spending too much money. Now, was that true?

Mr. AKIN. My heart might not handle that. I notice we have been joined here by Congressman Rooney from Florida, who is bringing a little bit of southern perspective on these charts. I yield to Congressman Rooney.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, to summarize what we have been talking about in a way, first of all, we're taxing too much; second of all, we're spending too much; and third of all, we're borrowing too much. That's basically the way things are going. We have tried that approach before. We tried it during the Great Depression. It turned a recession into the Great Depression. Henry Morgenthau was the one who made it clear that it hadn't worked. And take a look at what's going on here in the situation with the jobs that have been lost since the Democrat majority, and you see what's going on is this thing is really going up in terms of jobs lost. Why is that? Well, because small businesses are getting hammered and they're the source of a great number of those jobs. So if we do not have the liquidity and we don't allow the small businessman to keep some of what he earns and to invest in his company, we lose jobs. And this is what's going on. It's predictable. It's happened this way for years, all throughout history. And the solution is straightforward. There is a solution. We don't have to go down this path. But it means that we have to stop spending, we've got to stop taxing, we've got to stop borrowing, and what we have to do is let some liquidity back for the small businessman, and you'll see this job thing turn around.

Mr. AKIN. I will yield.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, gentleman, when you talk about consequences, just taking a look at that one bill alone, which was the thing they called the ``stimulus'' bill or the ``porkulus'' bill at $800 billion, $800 billion that we don't have. We only have a 300-ship Navy. We're talking 250 aircraft carriers as the equivalent cost. But let's talk about what the indebtedness of that is. Just that one bill, what that would mean would be nine new aircraft carriers every year. That's just the cost of the debt that we're getting into.

Mr. AKIN. That does raise, though, an interesting question. Because here we are, we are in the middle of this whole situation. We understood that there wasn't time to look at what was in the bill. We know that this prominent Senator, that is in the same home as AIG, who has got that 3 percent loan on his house, he has received more money than any other Member of Congress--House or Senate--from AIG, that he put the amendment in to protect those bonuses. And the administration knew that was in there, and yet there is this sort of a mock sense of, hey, we are really upset about this. So what we are going to do is we are going to just ignore the Constitution and tax these guys at 90 percent. And then that puts us in a trick box as Republicans; do we vote to ignore the U.S. Constitution or do we vote to try to make some claim on these guys' salaries?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I like to get right up because we are talking about something that has been happening today. This is on the news. I think this is a very interesting kind of scenario. So what happened a couple of weeks ago was, first of all, you had this tremendously expensive bill which was called stimulus--that I call porkulus. It came along. We were promised we would have 48 hours, we did not. It came to the floor. The Republicans voted ``no'' on the bill because it was way too much money, but also, we didn't even have a chance to know what was in it. But who did know what was in it? Well, certainly, according to ABC, Senator Dodd knew that he had allowed these executives from AIG to have this $165 million in bonuses for shipwrecking their company. Now what we have going on is we find out in testimony today that the administration knew that that was in the bill; obviously they would have probably had some people scan it before the President signed it. So now that the President, the administration, was aware that this was in the bill, that the executives were going to get their $165 million, that it was put in there by a Senator--who, by the way, had a loan for 3 percent on his home, who also got more money from AIG than any other Congressman. AIG gave him over $100,000 in 2008. The only second-place contender was the President. So the President and the Senator both received over $100,000 from AIG. This amendment was slipped into this bill--and we, of course, didn't know it when we voted ``no'' on the bill. So, what is going to happen tomorrow? I am going to finish what is going to happen tomorrow, and then I would encourage some discussion, because this is kind of like a little case study. Because now the Democrats have put this amendment in, these executives are getting their $165 million, and the public is going crazy. They are mad. They are ready for somebody's scalp. And so we are going to bring a bill to the floor which is going to say that we are going to tax these executives at a rate of 90 percent. Well, that's interesting, isn't it? We already knew they were going to get paid, and so now we are trying to somehow put the toothpaste back in the tube. We are going to tax a couple of specialized, specifically named people at 90 percent--which, of course, is unconstitutional. How would you like it if somebody could single you out as the only guy on your block and we are going to tax you at 90 percent, but nobody else? It is completely unconstitutional. So they are going to bring a bill to tax these guys at a 90 percent tax rate, which will make a lot of Americans on the surface think, oh, this is a pretty good idea. And if we vote no because it's unconstitutional--because we took an oath of office to protect the Constitution--- we look like we are defending people getting $165 million for crashing this company. So that's a pretty clever thing to do; it's a good diversion. I thought it was a brilliant piece of strategy to try to cover the fact that the Democratic Party knew that this thing was in the bill all along, did not take any actions. Now people caught them. Now people are mad. And so what we are going to do is we are going to start this unconstitutional policy of taxing somebody. Now, the question then becomes, what are the Republicans going to do tomorrow morning? That's going to be an interesting question. I yield to my good friend, the doctor from Atlanta, Georgia, Congressman Gingrey.

Mr. AKIN. So a thousand more than this executive pay thing?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, when you start talking about debt, the public understands one thing; you have a bunch of executives who have run a company into the ground, and then they're picking up $165 million in bonuses for doing it, and out of the pockets of the U.S. taxpayer. The one thing is if you think people are mad now, if $165 million bothers them, when they start looking at the billions and trillions that are being wasted with no transparency at all, they are really going to be getting mad. We are also joined, I see, by my friend, Congressman Scalise from Louisiana. I will yield to the gentleman.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time for a second, you just gave us a number thing. It is hard to keep all those zeros straight. You are saying that we just gave--as I recall the number was $173 billion to AIG. How does that compare to $165 million? What was the ratio?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, so what happens? We vote for 48 hours, the bill comes along and we are supposed to have 48 hours, and we get a copy of it at 11:30 Thursday night; 1,100-plus pages, more than a thousand pages, as you said. So we get a copy of it. And, of course, we have lots of staffers sitting around at 11:30 just waiting for the bill, right. The next day what do we do, we vote on the bill. Now of course what happened was the Republicans voted ``no.'' There was talk about we are going to have transparency and we are going to have bipartisanship on the floor. Republicans asked, Hey, I thought we had 48 hours? Do we have any way to get our 48 hours? The answer was: No, we are going to vote on it. We didn't like that, partly because of the tremendous cost of it, and also because what is hidden in those thousand-plus pages? That brings us up to today. Where we are today is we find that hidden in this bill in conference, put in according to ABC by Senator Dodd, was an amendment that says that the executives from AIG insurance company, and a lot of them live in his district, that those executives can keep their $165 million in bonuses. Now the public is upset about $165 million in bonuses, and I can't say that I blame them. But on the other hand, they should be even more upset. It is not just millions, you have to look at that letter, it is billions or trillions. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, gentleman, you have moved into a subject that I definitely wanted to get to tonight. I think this is something that our other congressional friends who are joining us tonight, and others, perhaps, would want to understand because this is an extremely exciting juncture really where we are timewise today and tomorrow. I want to recreate what happened here on the floor less than 2 weeks ago. First of all, we voted for a measure that said when this great big bill, this supposedly stimulus bill, which I somehow call ``porkulus'' bill, when it comes out, we will have 48 hours to read the thousand- plus pages so we have some idea what is in this bill. And everybody on this floor voted that we would have 48 hours to have time to look at what was in this bill. It was $700-plus billion. We are talking about enough money to buy at the rate of--I think of big things because I am on Armed Services, you could buy at the average cost 250 aircraft carriers with this much money that we don't have. And we only have 11 in our country.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, there are two general theories going way back in our past in America about what do we do when we start into a recession. One of the theories was started back in FDR's day back in the 1930s. We started into a recession, and there was a guy, Henry Morgenthau, and he was the Secretary of Treasury under FDR. He had the idea that we will spend a whole lot of government money, which will stimulate demand and get the economy going. People today still talk about stimulating demand by a whole lot of government spending. That guy's name was Henry Morgenthau. So how well did it work? He was joined in that theory by a little fellow by the name of Lord Keynes; a strange fellow. Because of his name, we called it Keynesian economics. And so at the end of 8 years of a tremendous level of government spending, Henry Morgenthau meets in the U.S. Congress in the Ways and Means Committee, and there is a quotation I have which says, ``We tried spending. We spent and spent, and it doesn't work.'' This is a guy whose theory it was you have to spend a whole lot of money. He said, ``It didn't work, and unemployment is as bad as it was 8 years ago. And what is more, we are tremendously in debt.'' The Japanese tried it in the 1970s, and it didn't work for them. So what is the other theory than this Keynesian idea, the theory you are talking about, sometimes called supply side. JFK, who is obviously a Democrat, did a significant tax cut, and the economy improved. Ronald Reagan, another almost 20 years beyond him, did the same thing. You get this big kick, and then what you are showing there is President Bush. So this has been done a number of times. The one thing I regret, and you could have assumed from your chart, was that every tax cut is going to produce this improvement to the economy. I think the facts of the matter are it is not every tax cut, but certain specific tax cuts, particularly targeted, as the gentlemen that were guests before were talking about, toward what is going to affect that small business. So the tax cuts that really work are things like dividends, capital gains tax, death tax, and things along those lines because those allow the small businessman to have the liquidity to invest in his own company, and that is what really works. So it is not like Republicans just say no. It is just what we are saying no to is an absolute runaway train of government spending. We have been joined by the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise).

Mr. AKIN. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts).

Mr. AKIN. Basically there are a bunch of people that are old geezers like I am. I'm a baby boomer. And you have saved money for years and years and years, and all of a sudden half of your money is gone because of the entire economic crisis which is a result of these kinds of socialistic policies which say that we are going to give loans to a whole lot of people that couldn't afford to pay, and we created this entire loan crisis. The loan crisis then spreads to the rest of the economy. So now you have people who are not very eager to be putting money into small businesses because they just lost their life savings on the stock market. So what they are going to be spending money on is gold bricks to stick under their pillow or other kinds of things. But they are not going to want to take those risks. We have been joined by my good friend from Ohio, Congressman Latta. Welcome to our discussion. I yield time.

Mr. AKIN. They are the ones making over $250,000. So first off, we are going to tax the very source of 70 percent or 80 percent of the jobs in America. Then we are going to whack them with a tax on energy, first in their own home, but then in their businesses. Depending on if it is a small job, it may or may not be an energy dependent kind of business. So we are going to hit them again. Then we are going to hit them again by allowing the dividends and capital gains tax cut, which very much helps small businesses, and the death tax, all that is going to be allowed to expire. So now we are going to whack them the third time. After you get done beating them and beating them and beating them, then what we are going to do is spend money like mad on government programs, which the gentleman from Pennsylvania's chart is showing is unprecedented, we are in uncharted waters, so we are going to vacuum all the liquidity out of the economy so it makes it harder for the small businessman to get a loan and make an investment.