Rob Bishop

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the sponsor of this bill who has found a program that flat-out doesn't work, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Dold).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 150 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, this resolution provides for a modified open rule for the consideration of H.R. 830, the FHA Refinance Program Termination Act. It provides for 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Financial Services, and for consideration of any amendments proposed by Members that conform to House rules and which were preprinted in the Congressional Record no later than March 9, today. Mr. Speaker, I am also pleased to stand before the House today in support of this rule and the underlying legislation, H.R. 830, the FHA Refinance Program Termination Act. I appreciate the hard work of the distinguished chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Bachus, as well as the hard work of the bill's chief sponsor, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Dold), in creating this piece of legislation which will help this Congress continue to take concrete steps to rein in the out-of-control Federal mandatory spending. The FHA Refinance Program was originally promoted by the current administration as a way to bail out the so-called underwater borrowers who for whatever reason found themselves in over their heads in personal and mortgage debt and unable to pay their mortgages. The 110th Congress passed TARP, which was enabling legislation for this new program, thereby effectively allowing lenders to transfer high-risk mortgages, through the FHA, onto the backs of taxpayers in the case of likely default. The $8 billion in TARP funds was originally identified for this new expansive program. While no one likes to see homeowners in distress and at risk of losing their homes, the fact of the matter is that this new program, no matter how well intentioned, is expensive and has also proven to be a woefully ineffective program at its best. Originally it was asserted by the administration that this program would allow up to 1\1/2\ million homeowners or, as some reports in the papers said, 3 million to 4 million distressed homeowners to obtain more favorable mortgage terms, all guaranteed by U.S. taxpayers in case of ultimate default. However, Mr. Speaker, there are several problems with this new mortgage bailout program. First, in some and perhaps in many cases, this program would subsidize irresponsible lenders and borrowers and insulate them from the consequences of bad choices and, in some cases, intentionally speculative financial choices that were made during the housing boom, thus shifting the economic impact of those bad choices and decisions onto the backs of responsible homeowners and the taxpayers. This is troubling, for this should not be the role of the Federal Government-- to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. While homeownership in this country is certainly to be encouraged, this program is exactly the wrong way to go about it. The program basically tells a lender, Don't worry, it's okay. So what if you knowingly encouraged or lent more than you knew the borrower could afford? We'll bail you out of your predicament so you don't have to feel any of the economic consequences of your actions. The program tells borrowers, So what if you took out the maximum loan and got the most expensive house that you could buy even though you knew it was highly unlikely that you would be able to afford those payments in the future. We will bail you out too and insulate you from the consequences of actions as well, and we'll shift all the costs and send the bill, via the FHA, onto the backs of the already overburdened taxpayers. That's apparently where the buck stops in this program. It stops on the back of already burdened taxpayers and the Nation that itself is $14 trillion underwater in a crushing and unprecedented debt. Second, it appears that in spite of the urgent housing crisis, this so-called emergency program to bail out underwater mortgages hasn't actually helped anyone. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development statistics, as of February 3, only 44 refinancing applications have been processed by the agency. That's 44 homeowners out of the potentially 3 million to 4 million as originally asserted by the program's sponsors. Mr. Lamar Wooley, a spokesman for HUD, was quoted in a National Journal Daily article last week as saying ``the department has not yet spent any of the money for the FHA program.'' Even the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program testified before the Financial Services Committee last week that it was ``somewhat shameful'' how the administration has mishandled this program. Those are his words, not mine. And, finally, FHA Administrator Stevens also testified before that committee last week that ``these new loans may perform worse than refinanced loans that were not previously underwater.'' In other words, Mr. Stevens' statement indicates that many new loans made under this program for underwater loans are far less likely to be repaid, which will weaken the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, hurting other taxpayers and other potential homeowners and exposing them to an even higher risk. As a result, this program privatizes profit, socializes losses, and at its foundation, this program appears to be built on a misguided economic principle of income redistribution, leaving other taxpayers and future generations to hold the bag with interest. In testimony before the Rules Committee yesterday, it was mentioned that the private sector, the private mortgage industry, has on its own and without any interference by the Federal Government worked with troubled borrowers to refinance over 3 million loans in order to keep these homes from foreclosure. So there clearly appears to be a far more effective private sector solution to this crisis than to inject a layer of Federal Government regulation and spending through this expensive program. We must have the courage to admit when a program is ineffective or too expensive or based on wrong-headed principles of subsidizing personal greed and irresponsibility. With our Nation itself underwater with monstrous debt, passage of this bill to terminate this expensive and ineffective program is a step in the right direction. It's a good and fair rule. It opens it up for anyone to have access to this bill, and a good underlying bill, and I urge their adoption. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I thank the gentleman from Indiana. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to be here and be part of this significant issue. In the Constitution it says that certain things are self-evident. And what are the things that were self-evident in the Declaration of Independence? I have to get words right, don't I? In the Declaration of Independence there are things that are self-evident. And what was self- evident is that all men are created equal in a political sense. And because of that, because all men are equal, the Creator has given us certain inalienable rights. And then it goes on to say the next step in that process is once you have those inalienable rights, it is the purpose of government to secure those rights. That's what we are talking about here, that within the concept of our country, which was written and established in the brilliant prose of Thomas Jefferson, every individual has an innate-- almost divine--worth within them which signifies that they all have certain rights that are there from the Creator. In England, those rights were established in law starting with the Magna Carta and then building on, so that at the time of our country's founding, everyone knew what the rights of Englishmen were. Our Revolutionary War was not about taxes being too high. It was, not as some revisionist historians will say, about impressment of colonials into the British Navy. It was about the rights of Englishmen which were being denied British subjects living in America at the time. That's what they argued about. That's what in Philadelphia they were talking about is the denial of those individual rights which are basic to all people because we all have that spark of divinity and we have those inalienable rights. That's why as part of the debate that was established there was an exchange in which Benjamin Franklin took part in which he was talking with another person that said, there are more important things in life than simply having our rights protected. The fact is we are British citizens. To which Franklin then said, to be called a British citizen without given the rights of a British citizen is like calling an ox a bull. He is grateful for the honor, but would much rather have restored what was rightfully his. That's the key element to which we were talking here. With that, the Constitution was written as a fortification of those individual rights and freedoms. And it is the purpose of limited government to protect those individual liberties. The Constitution created limited government, the purpose of which was to protect our individual liberties. Now as I try and talk to my old students to try and sometimes define the term ``individual liberties,'' because it becomes somewhat vague in the minds of people, I look at individual liberties as the concept that individuals have choices in their personal lives. It is not the role of government to pick winners and losers in society, whether that be socially or economically. That is our rights as individuals. It is the right to have choices in my life. You know, I look around the world in which we are, and it seems like all the time I am given choices and options, even when I don't want them. I can pick a cell phone plan from a myriad of options that are there. If I want a breakfast cereal, there is a whole row of choices that are there. Even if I want Pringles potato chips, there are 16 kinds of varieties for me. The entrepreneurial world has understood that people in America want choices and options. That's their liberty. It is only government, especially here in Washington, that seems to see that one size fits all and mandates so that the government chooses winners and losers rather than allowing that for individuals. It is only us it seems who have not learned what is yearning within the soul of all Americans that they understood when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and then formalized the Constitution of the United States. I wish to quote someone here, and I don't know who actually wrote this, but it is brilliant so I am going to claim that I said it: In the first 150 years of this country, under the Constitution, we can sum up in the following way. In the early years of this country, measures to expand government's power beyond those enumerated in the Constitution rarely got out of Congress because they were stopped by the objections in that branch. Constitutional objections in Congress. Members of Congress actually debated whether they had the power to do whatever it was that was being proposed. They didn't simply assume they had the power and then leave it to the courts to check them, Congress took the Constitution and the limits it imposed on congressional action seriously. Then when constitutionally dubious bills did by chance get out of Congress, Presidents vetoed them not simply on policy but on constitutional grounds. Indeed, the first six Presidents thought the veto was supposed to be used only for constitutional purposes. And finally, when that brake failed, the courts stepped in. In short, the system of checks and balances worked because the Constitution was taken seriously by a sufficient number of those who had sworn to uphold it. We seem to have forgotten that in probably the last 60, 70, maybe even 100 years. If I can give a religious reference, at some time the children of Israel, as we read in the Old Testament, wanted to have a king so they could be likened to all other nations. They went to the prophet who tried to dissuade them, but they were insistent that they have a king to be likened to all other nations, so the king could do marvelous things. And, indeed, they had a king. And the first kings did great things. They unified a nation; they built a beautiful temple. But ultimately, those kings became the millstone around the neck of the people that brought them down to destruction. We have a change that took place almost 100 years ago where people decided to change what the Federal Government was designed to do. It is not that they did not understand the Constitution. They understood it perfectly; they just didn't like it because it prohibited us from doing marvelous things. We have now run through almost two generations, three generations of individuals under a system of government in which we look not to limit what government does to protect individual liberties, but to try to make sure that government does those marvelous things. We have come to a period of time where economically and socially we are now in a period of distress simply because we forgot the original foundation of this country, the purpose of the Constitution, the joy and brilliance of limited government whose sole purpose should be to protect individual liberties, not for government to do marvelous things. If we restore ourselves to that purpose and reinvigorate the concepts for which this country was established, which I do believe to be the concepts of federalism and limited government here, then indeed we have a chance of restoring this country and solving our problems. If not, we face very dark and difficult times indeed. For the first 150 years, they understood that. They acted that way. We can do the same thing again. We have the same spark of divinity within us that they had back then. We can do it; we should do it. I thank you for this opportunity of being here. I know you have other speakers who will speak on this particular issue far more eloquently than I, and I yield back to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Kids in the West, their education is underfunded, their teacher salaries are depressed, and my retirement is threatened because of this particular situation. When this changes, there will be no more need for PILT. But until that time comes, this is not welfare; this is rent on the land you control. To be honest, we'd rather have the land back, but until that time, pay for what you control.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, the map you see in front of you is not the coverage area for Verizon. Everything that is red on this map is land that is owned by the Federal Government. One in every 3 acres in America is owned by the Federal Government and as you can clearly see it is disproportionate here in the West. This of course is the gentlewoman from Ohio's region. This is my district. And until such time as my district resembles her district, in the ability of us to control our future and our resources, payment in lieu of taxes is not welfare to the West, it is simply rent on the land that you control; until such time as the Secretary of the Interior's decision--which the Inspector General said was capricious and arbitrary--does not destroy 3,000 jobs in a county with only 31,000 inhabitants; until such time as $1.9 billion in investment leaves the West to go to the East where there are fewer regulations; until such time as somebody from the East who comes to frolic in the public lands of the West and consumes the entire county's search and rescue budget in 1 day, until that is changed, PILT is not welfare, it is rent on the land you control. I want you to look carefully at this map. See where the red is. Then I also want you to look at this particular map. States in red are the States that have the hardest time funding their education system. That is the slowest growth in education. I hope you realize there is a similarity between the two particular maps. Because the bottom line is, individuals in the West pay more in State and Federal taxes than in the East. There are more kids in the West. We have larger class sizes in the West. Our education system has a harder time to fund itself in the West because this map prohibits us from developing our property taxes, developing our energy royalties, developing high-paying jobs with income taxes, so kids are hurt in the West. This map and this situation means that kids are underfunded.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, the NLCS, which is a redundant administrative system, was codified by legislation. In the 110th session of Congress, the House passed an amended bill which went over to the Senate and died. In the 111th session, the Senate picked up that bill, stripped all the House amendments off and put it into the omnibus lands bill where, without any hearing or debate, it was hidden in the bowels and sent over to us where, once again, we had no hearings, limited debate, none of which was on this particular system. This redundant system, since I have introduced a resolution to try and streamline the Department of the Interior by streamlining those functions, I have heard some of the most amazing accusations of what would happen if we were to indeed do that, everything from having the sun come up in the west to the immediate beginning of the Mayan calendar.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. With the time that we are at right now and with the further indication that during this session our committee will definitely review this particular administrative system for further investigation, I would ask, with permission of the Chair, to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Now, we have heard a lot about this particular fund and the difficulty it has and some exaggerations as to where it actually goes, what it actually does. The problem is severalfold, one of which is that since 1994 there has been no clearinghouse of information. We do not know what has been funded. We do not know what has been used. We do not know what has been abused. And repeated requests to try and find that information have fallen on deaf ears. In this CR, which is for a limited time, this particular provision would, once again, as I heard other people saying yesterday, raise attention to this issue and give someone a reason to actually give that information. It is estimated in the last 15 years there have been around 1,100 lawsuits, and that doesn't even include administratively brought actions that go before Interior Land Boards, and within the Forest Service. So all of those are part of the situation. I heard some great speeches about how this would hurt poor people. And he's actually right, except you're not looking at who are the poor people who are hurt with the current situation. Under the way this is administered correctly, any nonprofit, regardless of the amount of money they have, is eligible for these funds. But a for-profit individual, these poor farmers you're talking about, if they have over $7 million in net worth, which means a farmer, a rancher who is land rich and cash poor, have several options. They can just sit out and hope something happens for them, or they can put money out of their own pocket to try and force their way into this particular situation. Let me tell you how this has been abused. I'll go with one case that took place in Federal courts in Idaho in which there was a settlement. No one was right. No one was wrong. They came to an agreement. And yet, even though that settlement which represented no admission of fault on behalf of the government or what it did, the environmental special interest lawyers were given $43,000 in attorney fees under this proposal, under this program. And we don't know if that's just the top, or the tip, of the iceberg or how far it particularly goes. This is simply an element that we have. We have an unfair balance of who is available to get these funds. We have an unfair balance of what happens if someone prevails, and we have an unfair balance if certain groups get paid with taxpayer money, even though they didn't win the case, even though the government did nothing wrong. This system is broken; and this is a good amendment to say, all right, for the rest of the termination of the CR, we're not going to spend any more funds in a system that does not work, and we're going to demand some transparency so we can make some changes. This halts spending only for a short period of time till we can find out who was given what and what was spent from whom and to whom. And that's the point of the amendment. I urge everyone to support it. I yield back.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Once again, in the West, thousands of jobs have been lost. Millions of dollars that should be going to schools on trust lands have been lost. Billions in capital investment have been lost because of this war on the West through regulation. It's time to end the war. It's time to help the people out. I look forward to this process.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, last year the Senate and House Western Caucus produced a document that was entitled the War on Western Jobs, in which we discovered 10 areas in which regulations from this administration and past administrations have created specific problems and specific loss of jobs to the West. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has said that the West has the highest regional unemployment for the past year; that, indeed, six of the top 12 States that had the largest decline in employment-to-population ratio since the recession began were found in the West. Three of the top five States showing the most stress were found in the West, and Washington's misguided policies were making the matter worse. Whether it was in the areas of energy use, takeover of water, domestic energy mandates, prioritization of species, multiple use on national forests, overregulating, seizing Western lands, bureaucratic overreach, all 10 of those areas illustrate the problems that we face in the West. In Western public lands, it is essential to have a resource management plan. It is an effort where professionals on the ground were able to come up--in the case of Utah after 6 to 10 years of planning-- following the law, including the public process to come up with a policy and procedures for our plans, all of which have been turned upside down by arbitrary regulations coming out of the Interior Department here in Washington. Let me give you simply two examples: an arbitrary decision that made a restrictive new regulatory framework for U.S. oil shale. The U.S. Geological Survey said in a 16,000-square-mile area of Utah, Wyoming, and parts of Colorado, they estimate at least 2 trillion barrels of oil shale--that is equal to what Canada is enriching themselves through their tar sands proposal--were available and experimental programs were moving forward until a regulation stopped it. The estimate: a potential loss of 100,000 jobs and $1.9 trillion to the GDP of this country was lost in that particular project. The day after the last day of our lame duck session, the Secretary of the Interior, using questionable authorities, created a new or announced a new wild land policy which, once again, stopped those management plans in their tracks. The result of that, let me simply give you one example: one company in two counties of my State, having 300 high-paying jobs, that had been working for 3 years with leasing and environmental review process with the BLM, within hours of that wild lands announcement, special interest groups recommended the area they were working being managed as wild lands; and their leasing process was delayed indefinitely for a potential wild lands inventory, despite the fact that this entire area consists of 800 drill holes with cement casings, roads, man-made Earth berms, and every other sign of man that would be prohibited if it was a wilderness designation. Local governments desperately need those management plans because they provide the consistency for business to understand that.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. That certainly does not represent your thinking anyway.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. It is alarming, but that is actually accurate. As we found out in that experience, the best tax is, obviously, something paid by somebody else. It was estimated when that original income tax was in place that 80 percent of it would actually come from only four States. Apparently, four States were fighting it, and the rest of the States kind of liked it. Unfortunately, there was--and I'm not impugning anybody here--a Representative from Missouri at the time who actually did say that a new dawn has broken with this new income tax and that, actually, the government would be more careful with people's money now that we are taking it directly from them than in the past when we simply ran government by taxes coming from tariffs or land sales.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. What happened is, within a short period of time, using World War I as the excuse, that top rate was not at 2 percent or at 5. It was at 75 percent. Now, what we found out is the actual amount of money coming into the country was in a decline, not in an incline. So, when President Coolidge came into power and initiated the first tax cuts by reducing the rates across the board, the amount of revenue coming into the country actually increased. The same thing happened when President Kennedy tried it, President Reagan, and President Bush, because what we found out was that people with money are not stupid. They had money for a reason and that it was not that they were avoiding their taxes. They had just found an alternative way of investing--in the case of World War I, it was a lot of municipal funds that were going in there that were not taxed--or they simply did not invest their money. They sat on it until such time as they actually had control of their money again. So the bottom line here is, if we look at the tax pot, or proposal, as a way of solving our problem, all we do when we allow taxes to increase is allow Congress to actually spend more. It's like going on a diet, which I desperately need. I may change my diet to my only eating good food; but if I eat a whole lot more of good food, it's not going to really solve the problem. There is another problem, too, that goes onto the spending side, which is I can actually be full and malnourished at the same time. If I only eat potatoes as a diet, I may be full; but I'm not helping my body. When we look at the spending side, which is really the only option that we have, and when we don't look at it in a way of looking at how we are spending, all we're doing is malnourishing us. All the CRs we passed last year, without actually doing a real budget or a real appropriations act, may have flat-lined our spending, but it didn't help us out. It was like eating potatoes all the time, which in moderation are good; but if that's the only consumption you have, we are making serious problems.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Well, so am I, and I have to admit I love potato chips; but, yes, that's where we're going. What we need to do is, I think, what this Congress is looking at, which is to try and readjust what we are doing and look at our spending levels, which is why 2008 spending will be a starting point to adjust and look at what we are doing. We have to look at our spending in prioritization so we're not just spending everything. We have to look at what our responsibility as a government is, and we have to look at the spending side seriously. As the gentleman from Ohio stated and you stated with your charts, if we do not take the spending side seriously as the solution to our problem, we will never find a solution to our problem; and the end result will be disastrous for this country.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I thank the gentleman from Missouri for allowing me to have some time here, and I appreciate the comments of the gentleman from Ohio illustrating what happens in the States. I think oftentimes we should be looking to the States as an example of what does and what does not work, and we can emulate those concepts here in Washington. You are right, as you initially said, we have a severe budget problem. There are really only two ways of trying to reconcile that budget problem: We can either raise taxes or we can cut spending. I think it is interesting to look at some other States. Cal Thomas had a wonderful article this morning--maybe it was last night--that talked about comparing what other States have done. So we see the State of Illinois, another midwestern State whose solution to their problem was to raise the personal income tax 67 percent and their corporate tax rate by over 46 percent.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Sixty-seven is what I heard, and 46 percent on corporate taxes. And let's face it, corporate taxes are paid by consumers anyway. So you get hit with it coming or going. You can compare that with what other States have done, like the neighboring State of Indiana or Wisconsin, Virginia, New Jersey, my home State of Utah, which decided to solve their problem simply by reducing their spending. I am told that Indiana, since 2004, reduced spending by 40 percent.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. And it will be interesting to see if the Illinois experience will replicate what happened in Indiana and those other States I listed, and my gut guess is it probably will not. But when we instituted income tax for the first time in this country, the statute that did that would cap the maximum rate of income tax at 2 percent, even though we only applied a 0.5 percent income tax. I think if people would look at their paychecks today, they would see it slightly different from that original time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Thank you, Mr. Kildee. I appreciate it. Mr. Speaker, the young men and women who are standing behind the bar and at the back of our Chamber here today are great young men and women who have served us well over this past semester. We appreciate you. Both Ms. Keating and Ms. Sampson have said this is probably the best behaved group of pages we've ever had. I don't know if you want to take it further than that, but you have done a great job and we appreciate you.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate that very well, because, to be very honest, this is not an easy task which this Congress faces. We have spent probably eight or nine decades digging the hole which we are in. To think that there is a simple way of getting out of it is naive. To think that in one year we could get out of this is maybe also naive. We have to think in terms of moving forward in a general direction that would go there. I am very proud that the rules that were passed yesterday will enable this body, if we decide to do it, to take the time to think outside the box with new ideas. The idea that for the first time since the 1960s we have set aside a specific time during the day so that the committees could function will allow every Member on this floor to sit and work in a committee to come up with ideas to reach this goal of how we can control or at least limit the runaway spending that we have had.