Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Quayle).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, let me just say how nice it is to have you presiding and another Arizonan controlling time on that side and so many in the delegation here today. We are a close delegation. I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions).

Mr. FLAKE. I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks).

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to thank Speaker Boehner and the leadership on both sides of the aisle for bringing this resolution to the floor. This is indeed Congress at its best. None of us will ever forget the feeling we had when we heard the news of the shooting last Saturday--one of the victims which was our dear friend and colleague, Gabby Giffords. A few hours after the first news broke, I was in attendance at the press conference in Tucson at the medical center. Amid the turmoil and the anguish of the occasion, there were audible expressions of joy and relief around that room and around the country when Dr. Rhee announced that Gabby could listen and respond. Gabby's progress over the past few days has been measured in much the same manner--the squeeze of a hand, the raising of two fingers, a thumbs-up sign, each gesture letting us know that she hears, that she is listening and responding. These traits, listening and responding, have defined Gabby Giffords' career as a legislator. Let me give but one example borne of another tragedy just 10 months ago. Longtime Arizonan Bob Krentz, known to provide assistance to those he found in need, was murdered on his ranch near Arizona's southern border. Farmers and ranchers in Arizona were understandably alarmed. Gabby listened and responded. Over and over she contacted and visited those affected, reassuring them that help was on its way. She convened monthly conference calls for the farming and ranching communities involving the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Justice Department and other Federal agencies, each month broadening the circle to include more stakeholders. We learned of her efforts in delegation meetings here in Washington, where she enlisted additional support. Last August, much as a result of Gabby's persistent efforts, the Congress acted, providing unprecedented resources to improve security in the area. Gabby listened, she responded, and, in the end, Congress responded as well. We are responding here today by giving thanks for the service of Federal Judge John Roll and Gabe Zimmerman for the public service they have rendered. We are responding today by recognizing the heroic lifesaving efforts of people like Daniel Hernandez, who delivered aid to Congresswoman Giffords; to those who tackled the gunman; to Dorwan Stoddard, who shielded his wife from the gunfire, selflessly giving his own life that she might live. We are responding today by joining John and Roxanna Green in mourning the loss of their 9-year-old daughter, Christina, as well as the friends and families of Dorothy Morris and Phyllis Schneck. We in the Arizona delegation are proud of the wonderful State that we, together with more than 6 million of our friends and neighbors, call home. Arizona is defined not by the actions of a lone crazed gunman, but by the heroism and bravery of those who left us on Saturday and those, like our friend and colleague, Gabby Giffords, who will continue to lead us in the future. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert).

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a valued member of the Arizona delegation, John Shadegg. John Shadegg is ending his service to this institution after 16 years. He came here in 1994 and has served the State of Arizona extremely well during that time. During his time here, John promoted the principles of limited government, economic freedom, and individual responsibility, and has stayed true to his ideals while proudly serving the people of Arizona's Third District. Arizona has a habit of producing great legislators, including Barry Goldwater, Mo Udall, Carl Hayden, and others; John Shadegg's name will certainly be added to that illustrious list. I want to pay tribute to John today and tell him how much the Arizona delegation, and all of us will miss his steady, constant, principled leadership here in the House of Representatives. Well done, John Shadegg.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a valued member of the Arizona delegation, John Shadegg. John Shadegg is ending his service to this institution after 16 years. John came here in 1994 and has served the State of Arizona extremely well during that time. He has promoted the principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility, and has stayed true to his principles and been a valued member of the Arizona delegation. Arizona has a habit of producing great legislators, including Barry Goldwater, Mo Udall, Carl Hayden, and others; and John now adds his name to that list of great Arizona legislators. I just want to pay tribute to him and tell him how much the Arizona delegation and all of us will miss his steady, constant, principled leadership here in the House of Representatives. Well done, John. Well done, John Shadegg.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I don't have time to detail all that is wrong with this bill, so I will focus on one very small part of it. It's the Social Security payroll reduction. I want everybody in this body to remember this figure, this one number: $2,136. $2,136--that's the raise that we're all giving ourselves with this bill. That's the raise that we're giving ourselves, and we're borrowing every penny of it from our kids and our grandkids, or probably China. $2,136. We don't know where that came from. I asked people in this body, How did that provision get in here? It's not part of extending current tax rates, keeping the tax rates current. This is something completely new. We're told, Oh, somebody in the Senate put that in. But nobody has sought to remove it here. But keep in mind, again, $2,136. That's how much every Member of this body--because all of us make more than $106,000 a year, so all of us are giving ourselves a $2,136 raise with this legislation. We had better remember it because the voters certainly will. As I mentioned, we're borrowing this money. We don't have it. We can't pull it from another account. There is nothing in the Social Security Trust Fund to take it from, so we're borrowing it, every penny of it. So just remember that number, $2,136. That's the raise we are giving ourselves with this legislation. I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this tax package that the House will consider shortly. While there may not be unfunded mandates per se in the bill, this will impose a burden on States and local governments and everyone else here. And particularly it will add a huge burden to our kids and our grandkids, because we are borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars that will go directly to the deficit and directly to our $14 trillion national debt. On November 2, I think we got a pretty good message from the taxpayers. They wanted us to stop running deficits and to start paying down the debt. Yet before we even get to the new year, just weeks away from the election, here we are, adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit and to the debt. This compromise shows that Washington just doesn't get it yet. We simply didn't get the message we were supposed to on November 2. I do support the extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that were enacted, and we also have to find a remedy for the death tax. But we've got to do it in a different way than this. Congress can take swift action to ensure that taxes don't go up, but we shouldn't be adding the other items that we're doing here. It's taken on the seasonal theme again, of course. It's become a Christmas tree. I'll explain a few of the items in it. But it just notes, more than anything, that we haven't gotten the message, that we're just going about things the same way we always have. Let me just take one provision here, ethanol. We've been subsidizing ethanol now for nearly 30 years. It's about a $6 billion a year subsidy. They have the trifecta, the ethanol industry. We mandate its use. We impose tariffs to imports to make sure we can compete, and then we subsidize as well. And we're going to continue to do all those things here for an industry that should be mature at this time, but it's continuing to get subsidies. How in the world that belongs as part of this tax package I'll leave for the voters to decide. But it just shows that we haven't changed. When are we going to wake up to the fact that we can't continue to do business like this anymore? With regard to ethanol, one of the former backers was former Vice President Al Gore. He said the other day: One of the reasons I made this mistake--this mistake being supporting the subsidizing of ethanol--is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home State of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the State of Iowa because I was about to run for President. Now, that's a pretty candid admission. And the reason we have ethanol subsidies is that all Presidential campaigns begin in Iowa. But that's no reason to saddle the rest of the country with this kind of burden. And also the negative impacts on the environment are huge and growing from ethanol, yet we continue to do it just to buy a couple of votes to get this tax bill over the top. With that, I reserve the balance of my time

Mr. FLAKE. I appreciate the comments of the gentlelady. She brings up that this is a technicality, that we're just speaking here on a point of order when we should be speaking on the bill and that we should debate this bill on the merits. I would like to. That's why I actually submitted an amendment to the gentlelady's committee, to the Rules Committee, to debate the ethanol provision; yet it wasn't included. We weren't allowed to debate that. And so if we're not allowed to debate that then under the rule, then we have to debate it some other time. I would love to hear an explanation from the Rules Committee as to why this wasn't included and why only amendments that may make Members feel good about voting on but have no possibility of delaying this package were even considered.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order against H. Res. 1766 because the resolution violates section 426(a) of the Congressional Budget Act. The resolution contains a waiver of all points of order against consideration of the bill, which includes a waiver of section 425 of the Congressional Budget Act, which causes the violation of 426(a).

Mr. FLAKE. May I inquire as to the time remaining?

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman. Just continuing on the ethanol theme, Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute said recently: ``Between 1999 and 2009, while U.S. ethanol production increased sevenfold to more than 700,000 barrels a day, U.S. oil imports actually increased by more than 800,000 barrels per day. Furthermore, and perhaps more surprising, during the same period, U.S. oil exports--yes, exports--more than doubled to more than 2 million barrels per day. ``Data from the Energy Information Administration show that oil imports closely track U.S. oil consumption. Over the past decade, as domestic oil demand grew, imports increased. When consumption fell, imports dropped. Ramped-up ethanol production levels simply had no apparent effect on oil imports or consumption.'' We have every level of the administration, anybody who analyzes this says that this is a boondoggle; and yet it reappears here, a $6 billion item, not insubstantial, not small. But it appears here in this tax package simply to get it over the line. That simply can't happen anymore if we're going to get control on this debt and deficit. Let me talk about one other provision of the tax bill. All of us talk about the burden that the payroll tax has, and it is big. And it's tough for taxpayers to pay the payroll tax. I would like to lower it. I think everybody would like to lower it. But the payroll tax is dedicated specifically for Social Security. It goes into the Social Security trust fund. Under this legislation, we'll have a 2 percent reduction in the payroll tax on the employee side. That will net somebody like me or any Member of Congress here about $2,000 a year. What does it do for the deficit? It will balloon the deficit by $120 billion a year. One year from now, because it's only a 1-year reduction, we'll be faced with this same problem. What do we do as Republicans? We always say we're not going to raise taxes on anybody, no matter how temporary the tax. We'll be forced politically, with the situation, where do we increase this tax? Do we let it go? If we let it continue, that's another $120 billion hole in the deficit and in the Social Security trust fund. Why are we doing that? If we do have payroll tax deductions, we may well want to, but at least let's have commensurate benefit cuts on the other side. Let's address benefits on the other side. If we're not going to lower them, then we shouldn't lower this. This is simply irresponsible for us to take a bill like this and assume that it's not going to have an impact on the deficit and not going to have an impact on the debt. Where are we now? Just a few weeks ago, every one of us, I tell you, every one of us running for office said to the voters, we're going to get control of the debt and the deficit. All of us said that. And yet our first actions here, before we even go into the next Congress, is to put a bill on the floor that's going to balloon the debt and deficit. How can we do that? We can't. We shouldn't. That's why I am raising this point of order. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Again, this is a package that we simply cannot afford. We cannot go on as if the deficit and the debt don't matter. Not only that they don't matter, but we expand them considerably. We can continue the tax cuts for every American. We can do that without these extra things in the bill. Let's wait until January. Let's wait until we have a new Congress, and let's do a different deal than this. This is not a deal that is good for the taxpayer; it is not a deal that is good for this institution. We have said that we will change and that we got the message. This is evidence that we haven't. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, when the Obama administration was faced with a massive omnibus in January of 2009, the President stated that he had to sign it because this is simply last year's business that he had no part of. Well, he's going to face another omnibus this year. This was all done under his watch by the Congress. It's not his fault, but he has a veto pen and he should use it. This omnibus that's going to come to the President is going to contain more than 6,000 earmarks for things like a couple of hundred thousand that was mentioned for maple syrup research or $500,000 for biodiesel research from sewage-based biodiesel and thousands and thousands of other earmarks like this. The President recently said: I agree with those Republican and Democrat Members of Congress who have recently said that, in these challenging days, we simply can't afford what are called earmarks. Well, Mr. President, please make good on that statement. Veto this omnibus bill coming. Better yet, convince your colleagues in the House and the Senate to reject it before it comes to the floor.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the tax deal negotiated between congressional leadership and the White House. Although we have yet to see the language of the bill, it is clear that it will represent a level of spending that should be unacceptable to those who are serious about our ballooning deficit. What is striking about this legislation is the failure for either party to make tough choices. Where are the cuts? Take, for example, the 2 percent payroll tax deduction. If it is a good idea to reduce the payroll tax, it is imperative that we couple it with a reduction in benefits on the other side; but we make no such choices here. Again, we eat a sumptuous meal and pass the bill on to our kids and our grandkids because we lack the decency to pay for it ourselves. If we can't make difficult choices now, Madam Speaker, when will we? Are we waiting for our New Year's resolutions to kick in? We're just a few years away from the fate of Greece and Ireland, and is this the best we can do? We can and should do better.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman from California for yielding. I rise in opposition to this CR. Having failed to present one of the 12 annual appropriation bills for fiscal year 2011 to the President, this body finds itself once again in the position of scrambling at the last minute to pass legislation just to keep the government running. This year is different. This year the outgoing majority wants us to accomplish much of its agenda long before Republicans take control. It would seem that if you failed to pass legislation in regular order that would fund the government for the coming year that you should at least recognize that we have had an election. And if you can't finish the work, allow those who are coming in to go ahead with their own budget. Republicans have called to cut spending to fiscal 2008 levels. This, I think, continues funding at 2010 levels. That might not seem significant until you realize that's a $100 billion difference. And when you are running these kinds of deficits, when you have this kind of debt, that makes a difference. If the first rule when you are in a hole is to stop digging, certainly the first rule when you are running a deficit like we are is to stop spending. And if we can cut it to fiscal 2008 levels rather than 2010, we should do it. We are just digging a deeper hole that we will have to fill in later and make deeper cuts later on. So I would encourage everyone to reject this CR; pass a short-term CR so we can deal with this responsibly in January or February rather than continuing funding at an unsustainable level.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in opposition to this bill. There's no denying that there are issues related to Chinese currency valuation. Unfortunately, the passage of this bill today will do little to address those concerns. Instead, approval of this bill will likely only result in retaliatory actions on the part of the Chinese. A recent letter was penned to leaders of the House of Representatives by a variety of business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, National Foreign Trade Council, and others. They wrote: ``Unilateral legislation, which seeks to increase tariffs on imports from China, is unlikely to incentivize China to move expeditiously to modify its exchange policies. Rather, it would likely have the opposite effect and could engender retaliation against U.S. exports into the Chinese market, currently the fastest growing market for U.S. exports.'' Courting retaliation with no direct benefit likely qualifies for what you would call the very definition of counterproductive trade policy. And it's unfortunate that, as has been said here today before, in 2 years this is about the only trade legislation that we've considered. Certainly, very little to open up new markets. We have three pending trade agreements that languish that should be approved, and yet this is what we're doing. That's really sad. Later today I think we're considering something like a Made in America Flag Act or something to require that we not import any flags made outside of the U.S. into the U.S. I don't know what's next. Maybe requiring Americans to eat apple pie while they make flags. I don't know. But we're into the crazy season here where we're simply pandering instead of actually addressing what will open new markets and help create jobs in the private sector. I urge opposition to H.R. 2378.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, those who advocate for this legislation are forgetting one very, very important thing: we are broke.