Sean Duffy

Mr. DUFFY

Mr. DUFFY. I would agree with the gentleman. And I think it's interesting, as a guy who's come here from central and northern Wisconsin, Wisconsin's Seventh Congressional District, I see that this is a House that will continually talk about political spin and political positioning instead of actual policies that are going to work for American families and American businesses. I think it's interesting the President likes to talk about corporate jet loopholes. For me, I think it's important that we're clear. The tax increases that the President and my friends across the aisle in the Democrat Party are talking about, these are tax increases on the small job creators in my district, the ones, the same ones that we are asking to expand and grow and create jobs and put our hardworking families of Wisconsin back to work. It's those people that they're asking to raise taxes on, and I think that's absolutely wrong. I always hear my friends across the aisle talk about the nineties and how great things were in the nineties. They were great. And they talk about the tax rates of the nineties. I think it's important to note that even Bill Clinton has said, listen, this isn't 1990 anymore. He has looked at our proposal and basically said, listen, let's make our top rates more competitive in this global marketplace. If we make it more competitive, in the end we are going to be more competitive. And I just think it's so important that we take a hard look at the regulations and the taxes that come from this town because, in the end, if we engage, if we have policies that allow our people to do what they do best, which is innovate and grow and expand and reap the benefits of their hard work, I think we're going to see America great again and create jobs. But if we stifle that, I think we're going to have a new America that I think none of us would recognize.

Mr. DUFFY. I appreciate the gentleman yielding, and I agree with most everything that you have said here, and very well said. The one point I disagree with is the President has no other plan, no doubt. With the PPACA bill, the health care reform bill, he does deal with Medicare, make no mistake. That is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, the IPAB board, that is going to systematically reduce reimbursements for seniors. I think the gentleman said it very well when the President acknowledged that these programs can't sustain themselves on their current course, and so he has addressed it, and my friends across the aisle voted for it. And basically, this is a form of reducing reimbursement, which is a form of reducing access to care for current seniors to reduce the outlays of Medicare. It's a disingenuous, I think, way of basically coming around the corner and saying, You know what? We're going to ration care for our seniors. And I find that to be absolutely unacceptable.

Mr. DUFFY. Well said to the gentleman from Arkansas. You know, jobs have been a key component of the debates here in this House because there is a 9.2 percent unemployment rate, and the effective rate is far higher--those who have stopped looking for work or those who are underemployed. People are suffering in our States and districts. We have seen what proposals have come out from the other side of the aisle. Let's take a walk down memory lane. They told us that ObamaCare was going to create jobs. Well, all it did was give us a health care reform bill that is not going to get the job done, and it is going to cost us an extra trillion dollars over the next 10 years. They gave us a trillion-dollar stimulus bill, and we weren't supposed to see unemployment over 8 percent if that passed. We just found out for every job created or saved, it cost the taxpayer over $250,000 per job. That is not a job-creating bill. And now what has happened is they have come into this House and they want to tell the American people that we can create jobs in America if we raise taxes on the job creators. You ask any economist, or you just use common sense, to raise taxes on job creators, to take money away from them, and to think they are going to create jobs when they have less money doesn't make any economic sense. You raise taxes on your job creators, you have less jobs. And if you have less jobs, then you have less people paying taxes. And if you have less people paying taxes, you have less money coming into the Federal coffers. Let's put America back to work. When America works, they get off the unemployment track and start getting paychecks. I want to see Americans and Wisconsinites getting paychecks. But a lot of the circles around this debt that we face in this country, and I know in my own district, there are people who need help from the government. I want to make sure we have a safety net in place to help those people. I see them all the time, and they need help from the government. I want to make sure that we're there to provide that assistance that they need. Or for those who fall on hard times, I want to make sure that we have a safety net in place to help them. But let me tell you what, if we continue to borrow and spend this way, there isn't going to be money for those who need the most help. Look to Greece. If you want to see America's future, if we stay on this current course, look to Greece. Look at the protests. When you make promises to people that you can't keep, what happens? They take to the streets and they riot. Let's not lie to the American people. Let's tell them the truth. Let's not Greece be America's future. Let's make sure we have a great and prosperous country, the same that our Forefathers passed to us. But to have that, we have to fight for it because the status quo is this: massive debt. And with that massive debt, you have Greece-like riots in the streets. That is unacceptable. Let's face this challenge head on and make sure that we leave an America that is prosperous, bright, and full of hope for the next generation.

Mr. DUFFY. One point, we don't want to do a cabernet dance here. There is no doubt that the proposal that came out the House and passed, it is now going to go to the President. Most Americans know when you buy a house or a car, you make an offer. When you make an offer, the seller makes a counteroffer. We'll wait for the President's counterproposal, if he is going to lead, the leader of the free world. Let's see him put his ideas on paper. Let him show the American people what his ideas are, just as we have shown the American people what our ideas are. I encourage him to do that. I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for hosting tonight's conversation.

Mr. DUFFY

Mr. DUFFY. I agree. Americans are sick of being lied to. We're going to level with the American people. We just had a joint economic hearing a couple of days ago, and we learned that it is 18 percent more expensive to manufacture in America as opposed to other countries, and that's outside of wages. That's our Tax Code and our regulations. It's more expensive to manufacture in America. Those are the policies right here in Washington that are making it more expensive. That's absolutely wrong. I've got to tell you I had a chance to listen to our colleagues on the Democrat side of the aisle go on about tax breaks for big oil companies. I don't know if anyone heard their great conversation about tax breaks for big oil companies. But I just got here in January. I'm a freshman. I'm new to this, but I don't recall our passing any bills that had tax breaks for oil companies. And they had control of this House for 4 years. Where were their bills to deal with tax breaks for big oil companies? I never saw them. I hear this commentary that tries to get people ginned up, and it takes our eye off the ball, which is true job creation and making us more competitive in a global economy.

Mr. DUFFY. Will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. DUFFY. I thank the gentlelady for yielding. I agree with most everything you said tonight, but I have to disagree with you on one point. With regard to Medicare, the President does have a plan. I talk to seniors all over my district. One of the things that makes our seniors so angry is that over the course of their lifetime, the money that they have put in their Social Security accounts, it's been robbed. It's been taken out and spent for other things. So what the President does in ObamaCare is he takes half a trillion dollars out of Medicare and uses it to spend for ObamaCare. Everyone agrees that we have to fix Medicare. The President agrees there's a problem, Bill Clinton agrees there's a problem, Republicans agree there's a problem. How do we fix it? Well, what the President does is says, I'm going to institute the IPAD board, the Independent Payment Advisory Board. This is a board that's going to look at prices that we pay our health care providers, and it's going to reduce those reimbursements--reimbursements that are already incredibly low. What does that mean? It's going to affect the access to care for our current seniors. That is absolutely unacceptable. We have a plan in place that's going to save Medicare, it's going to protect Medicare, and we're going to continue this great program for future generations. Let's not be mistaken. The President has a plan that is going to kill Medicare and provide a lack of service to our seniors. I do want to move from that to jobs, though, because that is what is on everyone's mind. As I travel central and northern Wisconsin, people are concerned about jobs. There's a lack of opportunity. There's a lack of prosperity. And so I want to review what the Democrats did, which is they talked to folks who will come up with abstract theories. They went and talked to university professors, and they came up with an $800 billion-plus stimulus bill. Remember, that was their jobs plan: $800 billion of government spending. They said government spending will lead to economic growth, prosperity, wealth, and sustainable jobs. We know that government spending doesn't lead to sustainable jobs. It has never worked. It doesn't work. And that's why when they promised that we would have unemployment of only 8 percent and we would create millions of jobs, the alternative happened. We've lost millions of jobs, and we've had unemployment reach almost 10 percent. What we've done is not talk to the professors who sit in the classroom. I've gone out and talked to job creators, people who are actually putting people in my community back to work. And what do they say? Why aren't they creating jobs? They continually talk about uncertainty in the marketplace. What does that mean? When they talk about uncertainty, they talk about a $14.3 trillion debt, the fact that we're going to borrow $12.5 trillion this year alone. We're going to borrow a trillion dollars every year for the next 10 years. As the gentleman from Illinois said, we are cascading towards a cliff and there's a road sign that says: Danger: Pump the breaks. You're about to go over. That's what we're going to do. Our job creators are saying, Listen, with this massive debt, it creates uncertainty. It creates uncertainty because we don't know what interest rates are going to be in the very near future. We're concerned about inflation because government is printing money to purchase our debt. They're concerned about punishing tax increases. They're concerned about health care costs with ObamaCare. As the gentlelady from Alabama said, they're concerned about regulation. In my district, we have a great forest product industry. We make paper in my district. Boiler MACT is going to kill jobs in central Wisconsin and send them to China where they have no regulation. All these things have come together to create uncertainty, which means our job creators aren't reinvesting; they're not expanding; they're not growing; they're not innovating. Do you know what? It doesn't hurt the job creator. It hurts the families in our communities because they have a lack of opportunity for jobs. I want to just point to a chart that we have here. When we have recessions, there is what's called ``symmetry.'' If you have a U-shaped decline in this recession, you'll have a U-shaped recovery. If you have a V-shaped decline, you'll have a V-shaped recovery. That's our history, and you'll see that in this chart. What has happened differently in this recession, the great recession, is we've had a V-shaped decline; the recovery has ticked up a little bit, and then it has flat-lined. Why has it flat-lined?--because of the uncertainty that has been created coming from Washington: from our Democrat colleagues on the other side of the aisle and this administration. It's causing a lack of willingness for our job creators to reinvest. I want to bring up one last point. I continually hear how our friends want to increase taxes on our job creators. I think anyone who looks at that says we will not create jobs by taxing the job creator. I think it's a good example. If those who say we should raise taxes are concerned about jobs going overseas, it's a pretty simple example that I use: You have Wal-Mart and Target and Kmart--all the big-box retailers. They compete against one another, right? They're competing. Yet Kmart is not doing so well. They're laying people off. They're closing stores, right? My friends on the other side of the aisle, the Democrats, they would come in and they would advise Kmart. They'd say, Listen. You have to bring in more revenue. You have to keep these people employed. You have to keep these stores open. You need more revenue. To bring in more revenue, all you have to do is raise your prices. If you raise your prices, you'll bring in more revenue. We all know that's not what will happen. If you raise your prices at Kmart, you will drive more shoppers to Wal-Mart and Target. If you raise the cost of doing business in America, you are going to send more of our jobs to China, India, Mexico, Vietnam; but you're going to outsource these jobs because you're raising the cost of doing business in America. Let's make sure we make America a competitive place where our job creators can do what they do best, which is to create jobs and to put our hardworking families back to work.

Mr. DUFFY. And if you look at tapping into these oil reserves, what does that do to endanger the security of this country? As the gentlelady knows, in the South, whether it's tornadoes or whether it's floods or whether it's hurricanes, things happen in the gulf where we would have to tap into the reserve because our energy supply could be at risk. And here for political purposes to try to drive prices down over the summer driving season, the President has tapped into that reserve. I think that's absolutely unacceptable for political purposes, especially, as we know, that real risks come up that can cause us a need for that energy supply.

Mr. DUFFY

Mr. DUFFY. I appreciate the gentleman from Louisiana for yielding. And I would echo the sentiment as stated by the gentleman from Connecticut. I think he's right. You look at the families and how they suffer when they lose one of their sons or daughters or fathers or mothers. It truly is felt. I think it was well said. Just quickly, as we were on this trip, we had a chance not just to go to Afghanistan, but this bipartisan delegation had a chance to go see many of our great allies in the conflict in Afghanistan. We stopped over in Georgia and Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic. What I thought was so unique as I went to those countries was their unabashed support for American principles, not just American principles, human principles of freedom and liberty and prosperity. And when we look around the world and people talk about America, oftentimes they pay us great lip service. They tell us they're our friend and they're supportive of what we're doing in the world. But oftentimes their actions don't meet their words. But you look at these three countries that we visited. They just don't express by word their support for what we do here in America, but they show their support. And they've shown that support most definitely by way of sending their troops to Afghanistan to fight for the freedom of those Afghanis who want to see some form of democracy in their country. Again, while we were in Afghanistan, we participated in a memorial ceremony for the nine Americans who were shot at the airport and were killed. I want to remember tonight Major Philip Ambard, one of those who lost his life last week in that attack. He was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on the 4th of April, 1967. He lived in Venezuela until he was 12 years old, at which time he moved to America, and he was then living in Edmonds, Washington. Now, he started his military career in 1985. He enlisted in the United States Air Force. With a stellar enlisted career, he rose to the rank of master sergeant. From there he attended night school, all the while raising a young family, and he obtained his bachelor's degree. He was then selected to go to Officer Training School in 2000. He was given his most recent assignment as a foreign language professor at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He taught both Spanish and French. As we've discussed here, the loss of one of our military men or women is felt throughout the family. Major Ambard was survived not only by his wife, Linda, but by his five children--Alexander, Timothy, Joshua, Patrick, and his daughter, Emily; by his mother and father; and by his sister, Diana. I know, as they go into this week and into the coming months and years, they will mourn the loss of their father, their son, their brother, their husband. I just want Major Ambard's family to know that we are grateful for his service, that we are grateful for the sacrifice he made for his country, and that we are grateful to them for the sacrifice they are making, for they don't have their loved one at home with them tonight, sharing a meal, and they're not going to have Christmases and birthday parties together. That, most definitely, is a sacrifice they will feel for a lifetime. I am grateful for what he has done in paying the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

Mr. DUFFY. I'm grateful for the gentleman from Pennsylvania. You know, we were on a trip together, a bipartisan trip to Afghanistan, and as we were able to tour the country and meet with our military leaders, our CIA and our State Department, it was for me an interesting trip in that you see that support of our young men and women who are overseas fighting for their country does not have political boundaries. Our group on this trip came together and unanimously were supportive of the men and women who we have sent to defend this country, and I think it was quite remarkable to see this team come together. Before I talk further, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. DUFFY. I'm grateful to the gentleman from Louisiana for yielding. I do want to briefly talk about one of our Wisconsin heroes who last week was fighting for his country in the Wardak Province. It's Matthew Hermanson, who is pictured here in the lower left corner of our diagram. He is from Appleton, Wisconsin, and he is survived by his wife and his parents. He was, again, last week fighting for his country. He was part of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, and the division's 4th Brigade is stationed in Fort Polk. In Wisconsin, we have like many States suffered losses recently, and our hearts go out to the family, the parents of Matt and to his wife, who at a time when many Americans are celebrating what has happened in Pakistan with Osama bin Laden, this family and other families are grieving the loss of their loved one. And here is a great Wisconsin hero, a great American hero who was fighting for his country who gave us the ultimate sacrifice in his pursuit for freedom. And I am grateful for all that he has given his State and his country, and we are proud of him.

Mr. DUFFY

Mr. DUFFY. And if you do that, you still can't balance the budget. You cannot tax your way out of this problem. We have to reduce our spending. If we reduce our spending and we reform our Tax Code, we can bring prosperity back to this country. But to sit here in this House and tell the American people that we can tax our way out, the bottom line is you can tax every penny of every profit of the wealthiest Americans and you can't balance the budget. Madam Chairwoman, I think we have to take a serious look at Congressman Ryan's budget. I'm willing to consider other commonsense solutions that are going to get this country back on track, but ones where we are going to demagogue plans and say we just have to raise taxes and not reform are not real solutions. That is going to give us more of the same.

Mr. DUFFY. No, I won't. I think we have to be honest with the American people, come out and say you know what, this is a program that if we can reform it, we can save it for our retirees. But not only that, those who are about to retire, 55 and older, we can save the program for them as well. And we can modify the program for those of us in later generations. But let's not try to scare our seniors tonight and tell them that this plan is going to take away their care, because it's not. This plan, and its proposal, is that those who are 55 and older are going to continue to get the same plan that exists today. The reforms are for future generations, and with those reforms we are guaranteeing that current retirees get the benefits that we promised them. If you say you care about our seniors, you would join with us, and we would all work to resolve this issue and make sure our grandmas and our grandpas continue to get the benefits that our country has promised them.

Mr. DUFFY. Madam Chairwoman, in reference to one of the charts we just saw from the gentleman from California, I found it interesting that he laid out many different debts and deficits from prior Presidents, but the one he failed to present to this House was the one from President Obama. On the day that the President took office, we were projected, over the course of 10 years, to borrow $1.8 trillion, from the CBO, and today we are projected to borrow $9.4 trillion. We have inherited now a fiscal mess. Let's review where we're at. This country owes $14 trillion. This year we are going to borrow $1.6 trillion. Last year we borrowed over $1 trillion. The year before that we borrowed over $1 trillion. Let's look out 10 years. For the next 10 years, on average, we're going to borrow $1 trillion every single year. This is unsustainable. We cannot continue on this course. Listen, I wasn't a big fan of President Bush's spending, but his biggest year of deficit spending was $460 billion. That pales in comparison to the $1.6 trillion we're going to borrow today. I mean, I know we've all seen these charts so often, but this is our debt chart from the CBO. We have a sea of red, a sea of debt that we are going to leave off to the next generation. This is unconscionable. What does this mean for future generations? This means higher interest rates. This means massive tax increases. This means a lower standard of living for our next generation. And I guess I will present to this House, if you were to ask your grandma and grandpa what they thought about leaving this off to our next generation, they would be outraged. They would be furious that this is their legacy, that this is what their grandchildren are going to inherit. We need to fix the problem. Let's talk about the budget proposal that has been made. Congressman Paul Ryan and the Budget Committee, they propose reducing spending by $6.2 trillion over the course of 10 years. Yes, they also talk about tax reform, a fair, flatter Tax Code. And you know what? We have to realize this isn't 1980. We are in a global marketplace. We compete against China and India, Mexico, Vietnam. And you know what? This isn't just against Kansas and Kentucky. We have to engage. We have to have an environment where our businesses can compete, succeed, and win. And when they do, who benefits? The people that benefit are our families because they have jobs, they have opportunity. But if we build walls around this country with more mandates and more regulation and more taxes, we are going to see more businesses go overseas and fewer jobs for our families. And as we've been talking about tonight, we will have less revenue in the Federal Reserve. I've heard a lot this evening, Madam Chairwoman, about Medicare and a lot of demagoguery across the aisle about what it's going to do. Let's be clear with the American people. Let's be honest with the American people that if we don't reform Medicare, the CBO says it's going broke in 9 years. We have to fix it. We have to fix it to make sure we can preserve it for our current seniors. So let's not sit here and scare people and tell our seniors we're taking away their Medicare. We are not. We are working on solutions that are going to preserve it. And so when we talk about reform, to be clear, we're not talking about reform for our current seniors or even those who are about to retire. The reforms we are talking about are for my generation. And what's beautiful about this is if we reform Social Security, we get to guarantee the benefits for our current seniors, but then you allow me to plan for the benefits I'm going to have when I retire. And if we do it, we can succeed in this reform. We've heard a lot about taxes as well. And so we all know here that the top tax rate, 35 percent, and a family who makes $350,000 a year falls into that tax category. And so I would, Madam Chairwoman, suggest to my friends on the left, why don't we do this. Let's bump that tax rate up--not to 35 percent, maybe 50 percent. No, let's go 100 percent. Let's take every dollar of a family that makes $350,000 a year or more, let's take every single dollar from them. And if we do that, we still can't balance the budget. So let's go to the next level. Let's go to the next highest rung of income earners, those who make $200,000 or more as a family. A mom makes $100,000; a dad makes $100,000. We would all agree they're wealthy. Let's take 100 percent of every dollar they make as well.

Mr. DUFFY. Madam Chairwoman, as a freshman in this House, it has been unique to sit and see one of the age-old tactics that takes place, scaring seniors, not to move the ball down the field, but for political points. The gentleman was just referencing Medicare and telling the American people that it's not broken, that it's going to continue to work. These are CBO charts. If you take a look at them, it's broken. We can't afford it. We have to reform this program to save it, and to deny that is trying to scare seniors for your own political gain, and I think that's shameless.

Mr. DUFFY

Mr. DUFFY. First of all, I think many of us here in this House want to see the government to continue to be funded. But let's review what has happened here. Last year, the Democrats failed to pass a budget. They failed to propose a budget. So this Congress, we're here doing the work of last year's House and Senate. We proposed a bill to fund the government, and in that bill, we cut $61 billion. That is under the backstop of the fact that we're going to borrow $1.6 trillion this year alone. Our national debt is $14 trillion. The Democrats in the Senate say they don't like our proposal. That's okay. If you don't like it, pass your own proposal. Give us a counterproposal, and we will consider it. But the bottom line is the Senate has failed to act. They haven't sent us a counterproposal. So what we've done is we've passed two extensions to fund the government, and again yesterday we passed a third. The Senate isn't going to take it up. Again, if you don't like our proposal, give us your own. We can't negotiate with ourselves. We're willing to sit down and talk, but we can't continue to put out our proposals and our ideas and have you fail to give us a response.

Mr. DUFFY

Mr. DUFFY. I thank the chairman for yielding time to me to address the issue today with regard to unspent, unobligated stimulus money. Two years ago, this Congress voted to spend nearly a trillion dollars of stimulus money. They said that we could borrow and spend our way to prosperity. Well, 2 years later we are well aware that borrowing and spending doesn't lead to economic prosperity, growth and sustainable jobs. We know it comes from the private sector--people who invest in their businesses and ideas. And from there, they expand and grow. That's how we create jobs in this great country. Now we are stuck with a $14 trillion debt. This year, we're going to borrow $1.5 trillion. More borrowing, more spending, is going to lead to job-crushing taxes and passing this debt on to our next generation. It's unacceptable. I am encouraged that we are working on sending all unobligated stimulus money back to the Fed so we can pay down our debt.

Mr. DUFFY

Mr. DUFFY. Mr. Speaker, Americans have wanted health care reform for some time now, but they don't want what passed last spring. This is a 2,000-page bill that gives us more mandates and more regulation. It doesn't accomplish the goal of reducing cost and increasing access; and it puts our health care decisions in the hands of bureaucrats, not in the hands of patients and family members where it belongs. There is a better way. With today's repeal, this is the first step. Tomorrow we begin the process of replacement with commonsense market- based solutions that are going to bring costs down, solutions like competition across State lines, portability, price transparency, tax parity, and allowing folks who have preexisting conditions to obtain coverage. I look forward, starting tomorrow, to working with not only my friends here on the right but also my colleagues here on the left to craft a bill that's going to work for the American people.