Dave Brat

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to discuss the case being heard before the Supreme Court, United States v. Texas, and the President's unconstitutional executive actions on immigration and the need for the restoration of the balance of powers between the branches of government. This case is the challenge to President Obama's executive actions for illegal immigrants, the so-called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, otherwise known as DAPA, an expansion of the earlier Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, otherwise known as DACA. The lawsuit was brought by Governors and attorneys general from the Texas Supreme Court and 25 other States. That is significant, in and of itself. Under these unconstitutional programs, President Obama claims the right to, by executive fiat, make an illegal immigrant ``lawfully present.'' Let me say that again real slow. The President claims, by right, by executive fiat, to make an illegal immigrant ``lawfully present'' in the United States and eligible to receive a work permit after an application is reviewed and a fee is paid. This is straight out of ``1984.'' The language is upside down. The government is handing out work permits and making illegal immigrants eligible to work in the United States as well as receive Social Security, unemployment, and disability benefits. But this only hurts American citizens and taxpayers. What has Congress done about this? Not enough. The real issue in this case is not discretion, but whether or not there is any limit at all on Presidential power. The Founders recognized these distinctions, and they made Congress the first branch among equals of the Federal Government and the most accountable branch to the American people--and thus, Article I, not II. The Congress is Article I. The Founders created a system of checks and balances to ensure no individual could gain absolute power within the government without a check, not even George Washington, whom they all loved. Under our Constitution, the Congress is entrusted with ``all legislative powers''--all, including the power ``to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.'' The Founders drafted the Constitution to clearly state that it is not the President who writes the laws; Congress does. Much of the President's job is to faithfully execute these laws passed by Congress. In fact, neither any immigration law nor the Constitution empowers the Executive to authorize, let alone facilitate, the violation of the laws passed by Congress. The President even acknowledged this 22 times on TV before using his pen and phone to act alone without Congress. This imbalance of powers is a threat to self-government itself. Our inaction, time and again, has expanded the administrative state and left the American people without a voice in Washington. The Presidential elections on both sides of the aisle are making this abundantly clear. For starters, we can advocate for reforms in four principled areas: reclaiming Congress' power of the purse, reforming executive-empowering legislative ``cliffs,'' restoring congressional authority over regulations and regulators, and reining in executive discretion. I have sponsored simple legislation to do just that: return power back to Congress. I introduced a bill to reform this process with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS, the primary agency for implementing the President's immigration executive order. USCIS funds itself through application fees, which insulates it from the will of the American people as expressed through their Representatives in Congress. Congress cannot effectively exercise its powers through the appropriations process to perform basic oversight functions and ensure the agency is executing the laws faithfully. My proposal, the Use Spending for Congressional Immigration Supervision, USCIS, Act, will make unaccountable agencies like the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services accountable to Congress and, therefore, accountable to the American people. Putting USCIS on appropriations ensures that unelected bureaucrats are held accountable and provides transparency for how the Federal Government is raising and spending your money. Congress needs to reassert its power of the purse by making agency budgets subject to appropriations, but we cannot stop there. There is more Congress has to do to restore Congress' power to hold the executive branch accountable. The Constitution still gives Congress all its powers. It is up to Congress to step up and start using them.

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman) for yielding to me and for setting up this special session. It is the most important economic issue of our times. I have taught economics for 20 years or so, and I went to seminary before that. I ran on bringing economics and ethics to Congress, and that was usually kind of a joke in the stump speech, but most people catch it. It matters, linking economics and ethics together. There is no better issue from which to view this challenge as the issue before us today dealing with the monumental increase in mandatory spending. Congress has been monumentally irresponsible. Promises were made that can't be kept. Politicians sold out the future in favor of immediate gratification, and that future is now. We see headlines every day in the newspapers about promising more and making promises and not keeping them, but today the evidence is overwhelming. The major promise that has been made that has not been kept is balancing our budget. We promise program after program after program that we cannot pay for, and we have not kept our word. As we will show, the folks who will pay for this are the only folks who don't have a lobbyist in this city, and that is our kids and the next generation. The U.S. Government has $19 trillion right now in total public debt outstanding. Debt per citizen currently stands at $60,000. That is separate from the chart here. We will get to that in a minute. The gap between Federal revenue and Federal spending over the next 75 years is about $118 trillion, according to Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron. That number, $118 trillion, is roughly $368,000 per person in America today--$400,000, if you round up, per person in America today. The deficit is increasing as far as the eye can see. Today is Super Tuesday, and many people from across the Nation are going to the polls. They are, rightly, upset with the fiscal mismanagement in this city over the last couple of decades. What are they upset about? Here are a few numbers. The deficit is increasing as far as the eye can see. It was $439 billion in 2015, and it is up--by a $105 billion increase--to $544 billion in 2016. That is just the deficit. That is the amount we add to the debt each and every year. By 2022, CBO, who are the folks who forecast the economic figures for the country--the deficit, the amount we add to the debt in 1 year, will be $1 trillion. By 2026, it will be $1.3 trillion. In total, by 2026--not that far off--10 years away and high school graduates this year will be 28 years old--the debt will reach nearly $30 trillion. That is what we are handing to the next generation. We are having the pizza party and we are going to give the next generation the tab. More important than the debt--or at least a bigger economic number-- autopilot spending is exploding. This is complex. Not many folks know about this issue. Many terms are linked: autopilot spending, entitlement spending, mandatory spending. Sometimes these terms can be used interchangeably. Sometimes they can. You have got to get down in the weeds. And we will do that today. But, in general, autopilot spending is, as the gentleman before me just referred, net interest payments, Social Security payments, Federal health programs, Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare, Federal civilian military pensions, and welfare programs. In 1966, these made up 33 percent of Federal spending and 5.6 percent of GDP, the economy. In 2027, these programs will make up 78 percent of Federal spending and 18 percent of GDP, as Congressman Westerman's graph showed. That is assuming that we will be able to borrow in the future. Another way to look at autopilot spending, on the graph right here, it shows that, in 1966, autopilot spending made up 33.9 percent of Federal revenue. But, by 2027, it will eat up 100 percent of Federal revenue. So you see the Pac-Man here is getting hungrier by the minute. The autopilot spending is 34 percent in 1966, 68 percent in 2006. Autopilots will consume all Federal revenues in 2027. Again, it is not that far out. Again, you can go to CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--and this is one of the primary graphs you will see in the first few pages at the Congressional Budget Office. So, in restatement, in just 11 years--2027--1 year beyond the 10-year budget window--autopilot programs will consume all Federal revenue incoming. If you are paying attention, what does that mean? That means there will be zero revenue left for law enforcement, medical research, national defense, education, transportation, or even intelligence. The government will have to borrow 100 percent to finance itself, starting in 2027. More and more autopilot spending will be debt that is financed as well. Is this sustainable? Our friends on the other side are always talking about environmental sustainability. That is a great thing. But what about financial sustainability? What about the sustainability of our Nation? What about the sustainability of Western civilization? For an answer to that, you may look at the cradle of Western civilization. You can look to Greece. How is Greece doing when it comes to fiscal responsibilities? What happens to your country when your debt load becomes too heavy? Significant problems emerge and it is very hard to return to a normal, functioning economy. This is absolutely crucial to the sustainability of American civilization. It is critical that we address this problem for our children's sake. We cannot do this without reforming Federal programs and boosting growth by creating opportunities for people to support themselves. We need to restore civil society. After all, we are not just physically bankrupt. The government also has a moral, ethical, and spiritual deficit. Why is that? How can you see the ethical deficit? Many government policies weaken families, as Congressman Westerman just showed you on a graph. We weaken communities, churches, and other faith organizations, clubs, associations, and even businesses. Small startups are not starting up. This is a tragedy. The only hope for the young kids is to enter business. There is no other way to make money. And we are capping their futures. These critical institutions just don't provide resources and help our communities. They also foster responsibility, mutual accountability, fellowship, and a sense of purpose in our society. How do you see the ethical deficit in other ways? It is pretty easy to see. The two major mandatory spending programs, Medicare and Social Security, will both be insolvent in 2034. That is about 18 years out. So our 18-year-olds will be 36 years old. The major programs that seniors rely on today will be insolvent in 2024, and by the time our kids retire, nothing is certain. That is a deficit in ethics. It is interesting that President Johnson's war on poverty hasn't really eliminated poverty, at least as the government measures it. It is striking that the massive increase in government spending tracks more closely with family breakdown and other concerning trends. Before the war on poverty--and this is fairly well known--began in the 1960s, self-sufficiency was going up, up, up. The percentage of those in poverty was going down, down, down, down, down. After the war on poverty begins and all the Federal programs go, that line flattens out and our progress on self-sufficiency comes to an end. We need to expand opportunities for productive work and fix welfare so earning income always makes people better off. We now spend half a trillion dollars on welfare programs. And what do we get? We get a flat line with no measurable progress toward self- sufficiency where people can be proud of their work product and the incomes they bring home and the progress of their kids. Congress is managing too many programs. States need the flexibility so that they can take on these responsibilities. That is the way our Founders intended things to be set up. All of human history was ruled from the top down until about 1800. All of human history was also marked by subsistence living. For all of human history, the average person made $500 per year to live on. We need to break away from this top-down approach before it is too late. The free market system has lifted us up from $500 a year closer to $50,000 per person per year. More recently, the Chinese and the Indians have moved their way out of top-down government toward free markets. Chinese incomes in the past 20 years have gone from $1,000 a year to $9,000 a year. If you add up the Chinese population and the Indian population, we have 2.5 billion people on this planet that have seen the most massive increase in human welfare imaginable. That came about because they got rid of top-down, central government planning and they moved toward the free market system. The free market system is not perfect because human beings are not perfect, but there is no debate in the economic textbooks about all of human history versus the move toward human freedom. We all know that human freedom is a great future and something we need to aim for. Even more important in politics these days is to ask yourself this question: Does this city, Washington, D.C., serve the powerful or does Washington, D.C., truly serve the poor? Look at the towers going up. Look at the consulting class. Look at the special interests. Look at the millions and millions of dollars that pour into this city. Does this city serve the powerful or the poor? Tonight, in elections across the Nation, I think you are going to see a resounding answer to some of these questions. Let's move government back to the people so that we can solve our significant debt problems, our mandatory spending problems, and give our kids hope for their own futures.

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Chair, on rollcall No. 72, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.'' Stated against:

Mr. BRAT. I thank the gentleman from Texas very much. Mr. Chair, I had some prepared remarks, but the opposition just brought up rhetoric and unicorns in the same sentence, and so I feel obliged to respond with a couple of preliminary remarks. I will just make four. The rhetoric is easy to come by in this city, but the facts are very clear. I have never seen a Democrat budget that has been smaller than a Republican budget. Every year they turn in a budget that is significantly bigger than ours. That is just fact number one. Fact number two, our budget balances in 10 years. I have never seen, in my history here, a Democrat budget that balances in any time horizon--and we are talking about the debt. Point number three, we are talking about the President and his commitment to fiscal sanity. I have never heard the current President mention our unfunded liability problem, which is in the $100 trillion range. That is the most serious number and economic challenge our country faces. I have never heard our President bring that up as a problem to solve. And finally, when it comes to fiscal restraint on the other side, the winner of the New Hampshire primary on the opposition side is calling for 90 percent tax rates and free everything. So, when it comes to rhetoric, those are just four simple facts I offer to the other side when it comes to fiscal responsibility. I want to move forward and commend Representative Marchant for putting this bill forward. This country desperately needs to have an honest conversation about our fiscal problems, the full range, from the debt of $19 trillion to the unfunded liabilities at $100 trillion. Total outstanding public debt exceeds $19 trillion. We just passed that this week or so. The unfunded liabilities are multiples of that. Deficits are exploding, in the $500 billion range per year. Deficits by 2026 will be about $1 trillion a year. That will bring the total debt to about $30 trillion in a decade. All of this is on the back of our children. If we continue on the path of the status quo, we will end in a debt crisis as China is in now. That is why I support this bill, because it advances the dialogue exactly when Presidential leadership is most needed, when the debt limit looms. Having leadership from a responsible President could make a world of difference. Of course, talking isn't the end goal. Talk must spur action. These problems get harder to solve the longer we wait. According to CBO's 2015 long-term budget outlook, if we wait 10 years, the costs will be nearly one-third greater as a percentage of GDP, and even larger in dollar terms. That is why it is so important we address this critical issue head-on now. It is also getting harder to address the drivers of debt. Annual spending bills cover only 30 percent of Federal spending, and it will be 22 percent in 10 years. The rest of Federal spending is on autopilot. Back in 1966, autopilot consumed 34 percent of Federal revenues. By 2026, autopilot spending is on track to be 98.7 percent of revenue in a vastly larger economy.

Mr. BRAT. Some say it is all demographics. That is a narrow view. As society changes, our institutions have to keep up. That is what we are trying to do in this bill. We cannot continue to ignore the looming fiscal debt crisis until it becomes catastrophic. Let's address it now while we can still make meaningful reforms. I thank Congressman Marchant for taking steps in that direction by proposing this bill. Let's come together, pass this bill, and continue with the reforms that will make the economic outlook for our children and for future generations greater and brighter. Our fellow citizens expect no less.

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to honor my friend, former Congressman Tom Bliley, who proudly represented Virginia's Seventh District for 20 consecutive years, on the occasion of his 84th birthday. He began his political career in 1968, when he was elected to the City Council of Richmond, Virginia, moving on to serve as mayor from 1970 to 1977. He was elected to his first congressional term in 1980, and under a Democratic President he helped pass legislation that modernized the regulation of pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and the financial markets. I hope he had a wonderful birthday, and I wish him many more.

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 3, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the two Virginia National Guard- based aviation units who will be deploying to Kuwait. According to an announcement made December 4, 2015, by Major General Timothy P. Williams, the Adjutant General of Virginia, approximately 40 of our brave U.S. soldiers assigned to Company A, 2nd Battalion, 224th Aviation Regiment, and Detachment 2, Company B, 777th Aviation Support Battalion, are scheduled to begin serving on Federal Active Duty in early June 2016. I am especially proud of my former intern and Virginia native, Specialist Jack Neblett. Jack has served in the Virginia National Guard for 4 years. Jack will be leaving his family and friends for at least 1 year while on tour. When interviewed about the deployment, Jack said: ``I think it's most important to recognize we're on a mission to defend the Constitution of the United States. We're all family, and I have great friends here. They're all professionals, and they love doing what they do.'' I am truly grateful and proud of our men and women in uniform. They courageously defend our Nation and preserve our freedom, and they will continue to do so. We must remember daily the sacrifices our military servicemembers make to protect our freedom. Our Nation must keep its commitments to those who sacrifice to keep us free.

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and work of ``Fearless'' Phyllis Galanti, an amazing woman and a true American hero. On Tuesday, the House passed H.R. 2693 which honors Phyllis Galanti by naming the arboretum at the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia, as the Phyllis E. Galanti Arboretum. When her husband, Paul Galanti, was shot down and taken as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam in June 1966, Phyllis did not respond with fear but, instead, became a tireless advocate for American POWs around the world. ``Fearless Phyllis,'' as she became known, sought an audience with the North Vietnamese leaders, collected almost half a million letters from the Richmond area, and personally delivered them to the North Vietnamese embassy in Stockholm. She also gave hundreds of policy presentations to leaders like President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, becoming nationally known for her dedication to bringing home POWs. Mr. Speaker, after over 7 years of separation, Paul and Phyllis were reunited in February of 1973 in Norfolk, Virginia. Even with her husband home, Phyllis continued her work, confronting not only Vietnam, but also the Soviet Union and Iran in her tireless quest to bring our boys home, eventually earning The American Legion Service Medal. Her dedication to our prisoners of war is truly inspirational. We all are grateful that this bill passed the House, and I owe a special thanks to former POW Representative Sam Johnson; Veterans Committee Chairman Jeff Miller; my good friend from Richmond, Representative Bobby Scott; and the entire Virginia delegation.

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 543 I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Chair, on rollcall No. 514 I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.'' Amendment No. 9 Offered by Ms. Jackson Lee

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Chair, on rollcall No. 443, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.'' Amendment No. 7 Offered by Mr. LaMalfa

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 446, my vote did not register. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BRAT. Madam Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes. I rise to support my amendment against the creation of a new mandatory program. Some on the other side have called my amendment a poison pill. I consider that a compliment. A poison pill was reserved for the man who brought human reason to Greece. I similarly would like to bring a bit of reason to bear on the budget process of the United States. We are currently $127 trillion light on mandatory spending at present. This means by 2027, all Federal revenues will be spent on only mandatory programs. This is a disaster. My children right now are 13 and 16. By the time they are about 30, we will have zero dollars for running the government because all dollars will be spent on these mandatory programs. We all want cures, and I am for the underlying bill--make no mistake--but in economics, rationality requires that we rank our preferences in order and fund the best programs. This is one of them. There is no issue finding $2 billion out of a $3.5 trillion budget, but currently, there is no discipline up here in this city. We just fund everything and hand the bill to the next generation. Every mandatory program starts off with high hopes, but go to the trustee reports on the major mandatory programs today, and you will find that they are all insolvent by around 2030 as well. Today, you will hear all sorts of fancy terminology about pay-fors and oil reserves and deficits, but don't be fooled. Our annual deficit spending is about $500 billion right now and on its way to a trillion in a few more years. We are off course on every front. We always talk about the children, but at present, we are handing our children $18 trillion in debt and another $127 trillion in mandatory programs. You want the truth? The children are the only group up here on Capitol Hill without a lobbyist, and that is why they are getting trashed. If you want a cure, go to a doctor; but if you want to clean up the U.S. economy, please consult an economist or two. The numbers in the story I have given are not in dispute. The only issue is whether we have the resolve to balance our budgets and leave our children a brighter day. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BRAT. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).

Mr. BRAT. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).

Mr. BRAT. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa).

Mr. BRAT. I yield back the balance of my time. Announcement by the Acting Chair

Mr. BRAT. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Thank you, Mr. Walker. Mr. Speaker, earlier this month, more details emerged about the IRS' targeting of conservative groups, where the agency tried to extort information on donors, find out what Members talked about at their meetings and probe into what Members did in their very free time. We learned this month that the IRS had set up yet another roadblock to prevent Congress and the American people from getting to the bottom of this scandal. The IRS established a team of hundreds of lawyers to redact information from the documents Congress had requested for its investigations. This obstruction makes me extremely concerned for every American who voices political beliefs that don't agree with this administration's, whether they are conservative, liberal, green, religious, or agnostic. I am grateful for the organization in my own district that exposed this scandal to the American people. The Richmond Tea Party was the first in the country to go public with the IRS' abuse. Once it was exposed, conservative groups from all over the country came forward and revealed that they were victims of the same IRS tactics. The IRS specifically targeted groups with ``Tea Party'' and ``patriot'' in their names because of their political positions. The IRS targeted them for increased scrutiny, and it delayed processing their applications for nonprofit status. Let me go over that again just real slowly so the American people understand what is going on here. The Tea Party group, the T stands for ``taxed enough already.'' They are being targeted by the very government agency tasked with ensuring fairness in our tax revenue collections system. The irony could not be clearer. The groups were subjected to unprecedented and intimidating questioning. The IRS demanded resumes of board members, lists of all donors, and screen shots of blogs and social media posts to determine if their speech was acceptable to the Big Brother government. The agency asked some groups for minutes of every board meeting as well as lists of positions they took on certain issues. On April 15, 2009, thousands of average Virginians showed up to the Richmond Tea Party's first rally in the pouring rain to stand together against government run amuck and President Obama's promise to fundamentally transform America. People became engaged--many for the first time. After word of IRS targeting broke, people stopped coming to meetings and stopped giving money for fear of being targeted themselves. It has been 2 years since the Justice Department opened its investigation, and it has been 2 years of waiting as nothing ever seems to happen. The IRS has tried to cover its tracks at every turn. It lied to the public and to this Congress about its secret targeting program. To this day, document requests submitted by Congress remain unfulfilled. The IRS complained it had lost thousands of emails belonging to Lois Lerner. Since then, the inspector general recovered more than 6,000 of them. They were located where anyone would expect: in the IRS data backup facility. Congress held Lois Lerner in contempt after she claimed she knew nothing about the targeting and refused to answer questions about it. Yet the Obama Justice Department--the Justice Department--has never prosecuted her. This all creates the frightening potential that we could foresee a repeat of this very same behavior in the future. We need this President and this administration to live up to their promise of transparency rather than their practice of obstruction. Mr. Speaker, we in Congress can put an end to this kind of mistreatment of our citizens by passing a fair tax or a flat tax. Either tax system would treat citizens more equally and would take away the IRS' power to discriminate and investigate against Americans who hold beliefs contrary to those in power. Ladies and gentlemen, the right to express your political views is so critical to the foundation of a free society that it is enshrined in our First Amendment--the First Amendment. Our very freedoms and the future of our constitutional form of government depend on the ability of all Americans to freely exercise that right. That is why it is incumbent upon this Congress to put forth every effort to protect that precious right and to hold those who would infringe upon it accountable to the fullest extent of the law.

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Chair, on rollcall No. 261 I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to follow my fellow Congressman from the great State of Ohio and follow our leader, Ken Buck. I am an economist who has been working on international trade policy and economics for more than two decades. I support free trade and equal treatment under the law. I oppose special privileges. Everyone likes free money, and that gets to the crux of this issue, and I want to go real slowly over this issue because everyone knows there is no such thing as free money or a free lunch. Every economics student learns that in their first course in economics. Let's just be real clear on that one point and take our time. If you get free money, right, if a corporation gets free money or you get free money, that is good for you, and you are going to hear a lot of people up here saying: Hey, this hurts business, this hurts my company because I am getting free money. The flip side of that free money is someone is paying the tab for that. Guess who that is, that is you. That is the public. That is the taxpayer. You are footing the bill for this free money that falls out of heaven up here, working through special interests and corporate cronies. The Export-Import Bank provides cheap, below-market credit to certain exporters. ``Below market,'' that means the market system is not working, and something has jumped in to distort free markets. Below market is just a fancy way of saying ``disguised subsidies.'' Subsidized exporters and their foreign customers like the goodies. For example, Boeing and its airline customers in the United Arab Emirates, India, South Korea, Chile, China, Ethiopia, and Turkey, among others, appreciate U.S. taxpayers helping to subsidize their planes, or any other good you want to name. So at first, the Export-Import Bank just looks like a bank that is helping our firms export. But then go and look at the size and the bottom line of the foreign firms who are offering these products more cheaply to their customers, the folks we export to. That is the issue. Banks in this country also like this program since they get lighter regulation on U.S. Government-backed loans and related products. That is a good thing. But, again, the backstop is you, the taxpayer. If this system ever fails--and we have just seen failure of a massive order with the financial crisis of 2008. And who paid the bill at the end of that failure? The taxpayer. You are the backstop for any failure. Whenever you hear someone say, Hey, I am getting low interest rates-- what a great deal. The low interest rates are being paid for by you; and the risk, which is just as important and is easy to hide, is also being borne by you, the taxpayer. So the Export-Import Bank does not advance the public interest. Export-Import imposes real costs on you, the American consumer, taxpayers, and other businesses through risk, market distortions, and misallocation of resources. Let me bring a little economics into this. Export subsidies don't--do not--increase net exports, and there is plenty of economic literature to support this claim. Sure, subsidized exports increase. Of course they do. But unsubsidized exports--the folks without the deal--drop, and imports increase in response. So someone is getting a benefit, but there is always someone else that is not receiving the benefit, that is being harmed by this free money out of heaven. As the Government Accountability Office noted in a study on Ex-Im's jobs claims: ``Additional exports may result in jobs shifting from one firm to another, without an increase in total employment.'' Let me read that again. The study claims: ``Additional exports may result in jobs''--that is what we care about up here--``jobs shifting from one firm''--who loses them--``to another''--who has the free money--but ``without an increase in total employment.'' I think that is what Americans care about. I think you care about increasing total employment, and this program does not accomplish that goal. What is true for employment is also true for production in general and for net exports, which are all part of our GDP. These economic outcomes are driven by major macroeconomic factors. These are the things we should care about. These are the things that really do improve our economy: worker productivity, United States capital stock, our business climate, and how much we save or borrow. Those are the fundamentals that we need to improve if we want to do better in the rest of the world. And we should also include the United States education system in the mix as well. The Export-Import Bank doesn't change any of these fundamental market drivers. It just benefits some at the expense of the rest of us. America is supposed to embody free enterprise and equal opportunity for all people--equal opportunity. ``Equal'' means equal, no special deals for anyone. Getting ahead shouldn't require having friends in Washington, D.C. Besides, how can we address the entitlement crisis and the legitimate welfare issues we have on the domestic front, as the gentleman from Ohio, Jim Jordan, just noted, and other domestic reforms if we can't even tackle a narrow corporate welfare program? I will just close by drawing another comparison with the great financial crisis we had in '07-'08. Fannie and Freddie had a network across 50 States. It was almost a shadow Congress of power that even Members of Congress didn't want to go up against because they were so powerful. And what happened as Fannie and Freddie helped to generate mortgages to people who could not pay their mortgages; right? Subsidized rates-- is it sounding familiar? Subsidized rates to folks who didn't have incomes, liar loans, and utter financial collapse starting in the housing sector, spreading over to the financial sector, all too good to be true, all free money falling from heaven, just like I am describing here with the Export-Import Bank. And at the end of the day, who paid the bill? You did, the American taxpayer. So the Export-Import Bank is building the same infrastructure throughout the country. They are going State by State by State, Member by Member by Member, saying: Hey, you have companies who really need this special deal. They like the deal. We have shown, I have shown: it is good for them, but it is not good for you. These special interest subsidies need to end, starting with the end of the Export-Import Bank.

Mr. BRAT

Mr. BRAT. Mr. Speaker, I think everyone in this body knows what it means to run for office. We each represent 700,000 people, and we each take that job very seriously. So it is a sad day today. Everybody in this body has fought very hard to try to come to agreement. Unfortunately, Members in the other body have not allowed us to do that. The fault lies in the U.S. Senate. We have asked and we have trusted our leadership to come up with a strong fight, strong messaging, whatever we can do to solve this constitutional problem for the last 2 months, and at the last minute of the day, the Senate has delayed, delayed, and delayed. So what is really going on is they are not standing up and representing their people at home. We in this body owe it to the American people to represent their views, and the Senate will not even allow a vote to bring up a debate. Mr. Speaker, I implore everyone back at home and in my district and across the country to ask your kids; ask your ninth graders, your college kids, ask everybody. It is fairly simple. The Congress and the Senate have to work together.

Mr. BRAT. I think the truth in ethics is often pretty easy to see. Go to your kids. Go to your ninth graders in high school civics class and ask them how these bodies are supposed to operate. Ask them to investigate. I think when our kids go home and investigate and we investigate what has been going on in the last few months, they will find the answer, and that is that the Senate will not do its job in representing their people.