Paul Broun

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of veterans and military personnel in America. As one who believes in the Constitution under the original intent of the writers of that document and one who believes that most of what we do here in this House and in this Congress is unconstitutional, according to that original intent, supporting our veterans and our military personnel is absolutely critical for the national security of America. We are not doing what we are supposed to do for our veterans. We have broken promises over and over again. The veterans are not getting the benefits that they have been promised; and I think that is immoral and verges on criminal, because we have broken as a Federal Government the promises that we have made to the veterans and military personnel in America. We need to fulfill those promises. We need to do what we have said we would do for them, and that is to take care of them, to take care of their spouses. We need to do so for their lifetime. On the other hand, what we are doing here is we are going further and further down the road away from the Constitution and the original intent. We are stealing our grandchildren's future by spending more and more money that we don't have. It is right and good and proper for us to spend money on national defense and supporting our veterans. It is right and good and proper to spend money on military personnel, on the national defense, on homeland security. It is not right and proper for us to continue spending our grandchildren's future. The American people are going to have to stand up and say no to this robbing their future. They are going to have to contact their Members of Congress and say no to cap-and-trade, no to bailing out Big Business, no to doing all the things that we are doing over and over again here in this Congress. It is up to the American people to stand up and say no. I say yes to veterans, yes to the military, yes to strong national defense, yes to good policies for the veterans, and no to this steamroll to socialism.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, all the symptoms are clear. As a medical doctor, I rise today to diagnose the Obama administration and the majority leadership in this Congress with an addiction to raising taxes. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama budget calls for more than $1.1 trillion in new taxes over the course of the next decade, including $646 billion in new taxes for their cap-and-tax scheme alone. Cap-and-tax will raise the American family's energy costs by more than $3,100 each year. That amounts to the largest tax increase in the history of our Nation. Cap-and-tax is an overdose of new taxes. And mark my words, it will lead to catastrophic consequences. Experts almost unanimously agree that the cap-and-tax will destroy millions of jobs and devastate our economy, all of this while having marginal, if any, impact on global emissions. I urge my colleagues and the American people to stand up against these tax increases and oppose this legislation.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Recently, while I was on a hunting trip up north, I flew out of an airport in Montana. The number of screeners actually outnumbered the number of passengers. So, when this bill came before the Homeland Security Committee, I offered several amendments, one of which would have required a GAO study of the current staffing levels at TSA to determine their appropriateness and whether or not staffing levels could be reduced by consolidation of duties and functions or by enhanced use of technology. In March 2009, GAO reported that, ``TSA has not followed Federal internal control standards to assist it in implementing DHS's risk management framework and informing resource allocation.'' I wanted to ensure that hard-earned taxpayer funds were being used in the most cost-effective and efficient manner and ensure that TSA wouldn't become known as Thousands Standing Around. I'm disappointed that my amendment was not accepted. A number of commonsense provisions were not included by the majority, or were watered down to avoid the jurisdiction of other committees. Rather than produce a good bill and negotiate final language with other committees, our committee only allowed provisions to be considered in committee that were wholly within the Committee on Homeland Security's rule 10 jurisdiction. This bill could be much better. For example, the majority showed that they saw no value in affirming TSA employees' rights to protect themselves during a public health emergency. One of my amendments offered in committee would have simply allowed any TSA employee to choose to wear a protective face mask in the event of a pandemic flu outbreak or other public health emergency. TSA employees encounter 2 million domestic and international passengers every day and should not be prohibited by their supervisors from wearing the appropriate personal protective equipment in the event of a public health emergency, particularly when the disease is both contagious and deadly. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents many of the employees, voiced strong support for this provision designed to protect the TSA's frontline officers. The only reason this provision was essentially gutted by the majority with a ``perfecting'' amendment and any references to public health emergency was removed is because the provision could have allowed the Committee on Energy and Commerce to review the language requiring the Secretary of Homeland Security to collaborate with the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Other changes were made to weaken other Republican amendments as well. At the markup, I, along with my fellow Republican members of the committee, unanimously supported an amendment authored by Representative Mark Souder that would have placed any detainee that is housed down at Guantanamo Bay on or after January 1, 2009, to place them on TSA's No Fly List. I think that makes sense. Again, this amendment was gutted, giving the President the sole authority to determine if a former Guantanamo detainee should be assigned to the No Fly List. The committee must assert its jurisdiction and conduct vigorous oversight of the transfer or release of detainees currently housed at Guantanamo Bay. The Homeland Security Committee is the primary authorizing committee for the Department of Homeland Security, which was created after the 9/ 11 attacks to protect our homeland. We cannot shirk our responsibility. It is justified and necessary for this committee to take a lead role in protecting and securing American citizens. I'm pleased, however, that my cybersecurity amendment was included with others in the bipartisan en bloc amendment adopted by the committee. My amendment adds the vulnerability of cyberattack to the list of risks to be assessed and ranked by TSA. Reports indicate that civilian air traffic computer networks have been penetrated multiple times in recent years.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. They include an attack that partially shut down air traffic data systems in Alaska. Our transportation systems are networked. Train switches can operate remotely. Even some metro buses can change a traffic light as they approach. It is a very important amendment, and I thank my colleagues for accepting it. In closing, I would like to thank my colleagues and the staff on this committee from both sides of the aisle for working together on this bill and on numerous other amendments in a bipartisan manner. I'm sorry we cannot come to agreement on all of our amendments. Going forward, I hope that we can work together to address the jurisdiction concerns that have caused so many problems for our committee.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I just want to bring out a point that you were talking about what it's going to do. Let me tell you something that it won't do, and you may want to talk about this, too. It's not going to solve the global warming problem. In fact, they don't talk about global warming here in America anymore in the government. They talk about climate change. And why? The reason they don't talk about global warming anymore is because we've had global cooling for almost a decade now, global cooling. And the experts say that if we marginally reduce the carbon emissions like this bill proposes, it's going to be less than one degree of improvement in the global temperatures. In fact, it's only a smidgen of the total carbon put out throughout history that we're going to be affecting. So it's not going to accomplish the thing that they're trying to sell it on, and that's affecting climate change. It's all about getting more money, more money for a socialistic government that's going to control people's lives. And that's what it's all about. The socialized medicine and care for this steamroller of socialism that they're trying to shove down the throats of the American people, and we've got to stop it.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank my good friend, Mr. Bishop from Utah, for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in very strong opposition to the Waxman- Markey cap-and-tax boondoggle. That's what it is. It's a boondoggle. This energy tax is the largest tax increase in American history, an estimate of almost $2 trillion tax increase. It will probably cost every family, it's estimated to cost every single family, rich, poor and in between, over $3,100 for every family in additional energy costs and will drive millions of good-paying American jobs overseas. In fact, I have several plants in my district in northeast Georgia that have told me that, if this onerous bill passes, they'll have to lock the door. And those manufacturing jobs will go overseas because they cannot afford to pay this high energy tax. It will devastate their business, and we'll lose jobs. This is an outrageous tax on every family that drives a car, who buys American products, or even flips on their light switch when they come home. So that means you, it means every single family in this country is going to pay over $3,100 per family for this increased energy tax. Senior citizens, the poor, the unemployed will be hit hardest by this tax increase, as experts agree that they spend a greater proportion of what money that they have, their income, on energy consumption and on products that have high energy consumption and, thus, will have higher costs for those goods and services. In fact, it's going to raise the cost of every single product, every single service in this country, because of this outrageous energy tax. This is a time when we should be promoting policies that stimulate our economy and not tear it down. Various studies suggest that as many as 7 million jobs will be lost. In fact, our President has held forth as a paradigm the country of Spain that put in an energy tax similar to this one and about the green jobs that were created there. We just talked to a man who serves in their legislature in Spain, and for every single green job produced in Spain, they lost 2.2 additional jobs. So they had a net loss of 1.2 jobs for every job that was created. It's not right. It's not in the best interest of our Nation. Make no mistake that the Democrats' airtight tax-and-cap will suffocate America's small business, and it will strangle America's respiratory system, the free enterprise system. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle will claim that that tax-and-cap will help clean up the environment. However, this doesn't seem like it's even about the environment or about global warming anymore. This has turned into a revenue generator, a revenue generator for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, for their radical agenda that includes socialized medicine. And, in fact, the President said, if we don't pass this, that he's not going to have the funds to force this socialized medicine system that he's proposing down the throats of the American people. It's a socialized medicine system that's going to take your health decisions from you and your doctor and put it in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. That's why they want this tax-and-cap, as I call it, bill passed, so that they can afford, have the money to grow this huge socialized health care system that's going to destroy the quality of health care. Fortunately, Republicans have offered an alternative, an alternative to this unaffordable energy tax. We believe you can clean up the environment. We can clean up the environment. We must be good stewards of the environment. We can clean up the environment. We can keep jobs and keep money in peoples' pockets all at the same time. Our solutions include American energy, American energy produced by American workers to create American jobs. Our all-of-the-above energy plan brings us closer to energy independence, which is critical for our own national security. It encourages greater efficiency. It encourages conservation. It promotes the use of alternative fuels, and it will lower gasoline prices. Lower gasoline prices. This cap-and-tax bill isn't the only disguise we've seen here lately. In the last hundred-plus days we've seen the following: We've seen a nonstimulus stimulus package. We've seen secretive bills in what was supposed to be an open and transparent Congress, and we've seen bigger government creating trillion dollar commitments versus fiscal responsibility. In fact, what we have seen is downright fiscal irresponsibility. So far this year, Washington Democrats have forced taxpayers to pay for the following: A $1 trillion stimulus spending bill; a nonstimulus bill that, in spite of the administration's repeated attempts to spin it in a positive light, is riddled with waste and inefficiency on projects such as a skateboard park in Rhode Island, a new auxiliary runway at Representative John Murtha's airport for no one. It's even worse than the bridge to nowhere, an airport for no one in Pennsylvania. And even checks have been sent to deceased people who've been deceased for many years in Maryland, and who knows wherever else in this country those checks have been sent. We've seen a 400-plus billion dollar omnibus bill, a spending bill loaded with more than 9,000 unscrutinized earmarks. We've seen a budget that adds a staggering $13 trillion to the debt. It doubles our national debt over the next 5 years and triples it over the next 10. Triples our debt. Who's going to pay for that? It's stealing our grandchildren's future because they're going to have to pick up the bill. We've seen a $50 billion check written in financial aid to General Motors, which seems to have only brought a bankruptcy filing. And it's only June the 3rd. The sad fact is that this administration has added more debt than every single President combined, from George Washington all the way through George W. Bush. We hear it here on the floor all the time that our financial problems were caused by George Bush, but we've created, we're creating, more debt in the next 5 years, listen, people, more debt in the next 5 years than every single President from George Washington through George W. Bush all combined created. This eclipsed, in less than 5 months, what it's taken more than 230 years to establish. And now they're calling for the largest tax increase in American history. Enough is enough. I urge the American people to stand up and say ``no.'' No more of these policies that will create more and more debt and will actually bring down our economy even worse than it is today. And it will steal our children's and grandchildren's future. We must say ``no'' to our Representatives and Senators in this Congress to oppose the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax or, as I call it, tax- and-cap legislation, and we need to begin to return to some fiscal responsibility here in Washington, D.C. Republicans have offered, over and over again, multiple alternatives, multiple alternatives, but the Speaker has been an obstructionist. She's obstructed every effort to get to this floor the proposals that the Republicans have brought. She's blocked every effort that we have had for all of these proposals to stimulate our economy, to solve our energy crisis, to put America back on the right track economically, to solve the housing crisis in America. We've proposed solutions, commonsense, market-based solutions that would not have cost American jobs, would not increase taxes, would not have stolen our grandchildren's future. And the American people need to stand up and say ``yes'' to all these other proposals, and say ``no'' to Waxman-Markey, ``no'' to the course that this administration and the leadership in this House and over in the Senate are taking us, because it's going to bring financial ruin to America if we don't. So it's up to the American people to say ``no'' to your Congressman, say ``no'' to your two U.S. Senators to this tax-and-trade or cap-and- tax or tax-and-cap legislation that's going to ruin America, cost American jobs, and it's going to be a tremendous financial burden on you and your family. So say ``no'' and resist this as we are here on the Republican side in the U.S. House of Representatives. I thank my colleague for yielding, and I applaud all your efforts to bring forth our proposals to the American public, the proposals that make sense economically. And I thank you, Mr. Bishop. You're doing a great job, and I applaud that.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Madam Speaker, today, I missed the following votes: Rollcall Nos. 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, and 300. If I had been able to make these votes, I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall votes 296, 298, and 299, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall votes 295, 297, and 300.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Madam Speaker, today, I was unable to vote on the following bills: H.J. Res. 40, H. Res. 421, and H. Res. 489. If I had been able to make these votes, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I think the American people need to understand what this is going to mean to them directly. I think these charts are great. As Judge Carter said, I think the facts that Mr. Shimkus gave us were absolutely sobering, but there are a number of people in this House of Representatives who have openly said that they would like to see gas go up to $10 a gallon. They think that that will start people conserving gas in America. Well, most folks can't afford $10 a gallon gas. There are people in this House who want to federalize--nationalize--the whole of the energy system, and there are many Members of the Democrat majority who are promoting that. I think this may very well be the opening for them to try to nationalize it, just like Hugo Chavez has done in Venezuela, and that's exactly the picture that we see here in America. What Nancy Pelosi and company are doing here in this Congress is they're going down the same road, and they're trying to force America into the same policies and down the same road that Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has taken that country down. Yet what is it going to cost each individual family? It is estimated that every family is going to pay over $1,000 in increased electricity costs. It's estimated that the tax, itself--I've seen various estimates--will be anywhere from over $3,000 per family in America to over $4,000 per family in America per year in increased taxes. It's going to increase the cost of food and of medicines. Every single good and service in this country is going to go up because every bit of food and every medicine--every good and service in America--is dependent upon energy. If you flip on the light switch, your bill is going up. If you go to the gas pump, your bill is going up. If you ride public transportation, the bill is going up. The bill is going up. The bill is going up for everything in this country. The American people need to say ``no'' to this idiotic, what I call, ``tax-and-cap.'' The reason I call it ``tax-and-cap'' is because it is a huge tax. It's not about the environment. The President, himself, said that this needs to pass so that he can fund his socialistic agenda. He didn't call it a ``socialistic agenda,'' but that's exactly what it is. It's a big government agenda for health care. For every single thing that this country does, they want to do that.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. We are less.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Well, it has not made America energy independent whatsoever.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Absolutely. It was created to make America energy independent.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. It's a great question. In my district in Georgia, the 10th Congressional District in Georgia where many counties already have right now, today, right at a 14 percent unemployment rate, I've been told by a number of manufacturers that are still left here in this country that if this cap-and-tax bill goes through, they're shutting the doors. They're moving offshore. They cannot afford to continue to operate in this country. And they're going to do that. It's going to drive up the unemployment rate in my district that's already at 14 percent in many counties.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Absolutely. Nothing could be worse except for maybe the budget that has been produced by this administration.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I absolutely agree with you, Mr. King. I don't believe there's been a bigger colossal failure to the American people than this proposed cap-and-tax--tax-and-cap, as I call it. It's going to be disastrous for our economy. It's going to be disastrous for everything that we believe in as a Nation. Right now today, this government is spending too much money, it's taxing too much, as Judge Carter was talking about. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, which is driving companies offshore and it's causing unemployment. We're borrowing too much. We're borrowing our children's and our grandchildren's future. They're going to live at a lower standard of living than we do today with the policies that we've seen just over the last about 120 days already today. And this cap-and-tax policy is going to make it magnified markedly. We've got to stop the spending. We've got to stop the taxing. We've got to stop the borrowing, and we've got to put America back on track. And what I want to say before I yield back is that the American people need to understand that the Republicans are the ``party of know,'' k-n-o-w, because we know how to solve all these problems if we'll just be allowed to do so.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. King, for bringing this up. The American people need to understand this. And I think this is something that you made very clear. What they did is all of your hard work, and all of Energy and Commerce's hard work, was just thrown in the trash can. And who was involved in doing that? It was the leadership of this House. It was thrown in the trash can. It didn't go through the normal process, normal ``order'' as we call it here. It was thrown in the trash can. And something else was produced by just a very small handful of people. And we had no way of changing that, no way of amending it and no way of doing anything with it. It was shoved down our throats. That is an oligarchy type of rule. It is a dictatorial manner of running things. And the American people need to know that that's what is going on up here. And the Republicans are offering solution after solution to all these things. The American people need to start demanding something different. It is up to the American people. Because we are in a minority, we can be here talking tonight and every night, as we are, and Mr. Akin has been here week after week, and you too have, Mr. King. But the American people need to stand up and say ``no'' to the way this business is going on up here. Let's go back to regular order. Let's go back to having debate and being able to bring forth ideas from both sides of the aisle. But we are not allowed to do that by the leadership of this House. It is wrong. It is immoral. It needs to stop. And the American people need to demand it to be stopped.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. You are absolutely correct, Mr. King. That is exactly what has happened. That is what has happened over and over again. And I want to remind the gentleman from Iowa, my dear friend, that over and over again, we see these bills come to the floor with what is called a closed rule. Now we know here in the House what that means. That means we cannot amend the bill. They will not accept our amendments. They have their bills shoved down the throats of the American people. That is the reason I'm calling what is going on here a steamroller of socialism. That is being shoved down the throats of the American people and strangling the American economy

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Absolutely. And I thank you for asking because that is exactly what I was referring to. Every single idea, my idea as well as many others, have been blocked. They have been obstructed. My amendment was considered not to be valid. And they just totally would not allow my amendment to even be considered on this floor.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Absolutely. And I have offered an amendment to the non-stimulus bill. I offered an amendment that said, let's bail out the American people instead of bailing out all these favorable groups, the payback groups. In fact, the Democrats were bent on spending $835 billion of our grandchildren's and children's future. I said, if we are going to do that, let's really do something that stimulates the economy. Let's send that money to the legal resident taxpayers in this country. And I introduced an amendment that would have sent a check for almost $9,000 per legal resident taxpayer. A couple would have gotten $18,000. That would have stimulated the economy because they would have paid off credit card bills. They would have saved it. They would have bought education or food.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Absolutely.

Mr. BROUN of Georgia

Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.