Tim Griffin

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. Reclaiming my time, I just want to point out that in Arkansas the President predicted that the stimulus would create 30,000 jobs. I think, in the end, the government funded about 4,800 jobs at a cost of around $300,000 per job. Now, if someone would've just given me the checkbook, I could have created more jobs writing people checks and could have saved people all the work. I mean, the idea that you create jobs at $300,000 a job is just unbelievable.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I thank the gentleman from Illinois. It's stimulus, the sequel. I would just like to point out that you made a really good point. The government is not going to be the answer in terms of creating jobs. The government can help create an environment where the private sector can innovate, can grow, and can create jobs. We can assist by creating an environment in a country where businesses and job creators flourish, and that's what we want do. I yield now to the gentlelady from Alabama.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I thank the gentlelady from Alabama. I would say, when I sit down and meet with constituents, whether it be here or back home in Little Rock, one of the complaints that I hear the most is that Federal Government continues to over-regulate, continues to burden us with regulations that are excessive, that just don't make sense, and they're implementing them without checking with the folks that they're going to most impact, or ignoring the folks that they will most impact. There are a number of agencies that are doing that. We hear a lot about the EPA, but it's not just the EPA. You can just go right down the list of Federal agencies and they're issuing new regulations, many of which are almost impossible to comply with. Today we voted on the concrete MACT and the boiler MACT legislation to help prohibit, to prohibit the EPA from implementing some of these harmful rules. And I can just tell you, talking to folks back in my district, these rules will have a specific impact on them. It will cost them millions of dollars to implement; and ultimately, it costs jobs.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I yield to the gentlelady from Alabama.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. That's the real impact that these rules will have if they're implemented. I would like to say, before I yield to the gentleman from New York, these regulations continue. It's almost every week there's a new one. I don't think anyone here is against regulation. This is not an issue of do we regulate or not. Of course we need regulations. We need commonsense regulations that protect Americans. What we're talking about are excessive regulations. What we're talking about is an unprecedented growth of regulations over the last few years that are stifling and crushing business. One thing I'll mention with regard to health care, businesses aren't just concerned about the regulations that exist. They're concerned about the regulations that are in the pipeline that they haven't seen yet because it adds uncertainty to doing business. So a business may have some money set aside that they want to invest and expand their factory and they want to hire new people, but they don't yet know what the impact of the recently passed health care law is going to be. So they put that money aside and they sit on it. I've had constituent after constituent tell me that if this health care law that recently passed is fully implemented, it will have a devastating impact on my business, and we will start paying an additional $100,000 or $200,000 or $300,000, or whatever the amount is, for that particular business. So they're putting money aside waiting to see what they'll have to spend to comply with this new law. The same situation with Dodd-Frank and a lot of the new financial regulations. There was a gentleman speaking earlier. He talked about small businesses needing access to credit. Well, let me tell you, the Dodd-Frank bill is part of the problem. If you really wanted to inspire confidence in job creators, the President ought to call a press conference today and say he's going to do everything he can to repeal his two big mistakes--ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank. That would give job creators a shot of confidence, and I guarantee you the markets would respond likewise. I now yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I thank the gentleman from New York. I will in a minute yield some time to the gentleman from Michigan, but I want to first yield some time to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. Reclaiming my time, what you have just described is the fact that we can't mandate companies to come back to the United States. We can't mandate companies to invest in the United States. We have to attract them. We have to create an environment where they want to do business, and we've got to create an environment where they want to invest. We want people to look at the United States and say, that's the only place in the world to do business, that's where I want to create jobs, that's where I want to innovate, and that's where I want to invest. And as you say, a lot of the rules that we've set up have run folks off. So they're creating jobs, but they're creating them somewhere else. I yield to the gentlelady from Alabama.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I would like to now yield quickly to our friend from the other side of the aisle who has joined us, the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I would like to say a few things, if I could, about the President's so-called jobs bill. We've heard about the desire for bipartisanship. We've heard about the desire to work together and find common ground. Well, not too long ago, the President visited us here in the House. He spoke from the podium and he talked about his new jobs bill. Well, he didn't talk about finding common ground. He didn't really talk about meeting us halfway, finding areas we could agree on. He just said, Pass my bill; pass it as it is. Then he ran around the country saying, Pass my bill; pass it as it is. Well, at that time there wasn't even a bill here in the House to pass. And when we finally did get the text of it, we saw that it certainly didn't reflect bipartisan agreement, certainly didn't reflect meeting halfway. It was stimulus 2, stimulus the sequel, and we know how ineffective the first stimulus was. I'm here to work with other folks, find areas where we can agree and move forward. But there hasn't been a shortage of bills and legislation passed in this House. As we talked about earlier, we've passed bill after bill after bill that will help create an environment in this country where the private sector will want to do business and grow jobs. When the President's bill finally got here, the so-called jobs plan, we found out there are not even enough Democrats to pass it in the Senate. I see just a few minutes ago the Republican leader in the Senate wanted to have an immediate vote on the President's jobs bill, and he has been blocked. He has been blocked by the Democrat majority leader in the Senate. He doesn't want to allow a vote on the President's jobs bill. I suspect that has something to do with the fact that most of the Democrats over there aren't going to vote for it either. They didn't just get here. They were around when the last stimulus passed and they realize how ineffective it was. And so the President can't even convince his own party to support his so-called jobs bill. I think at the end of the day we can agree here that we want to pass legislation that will help the private sector grow and create jobs, no question. No question. We've passed a number of those here, and we're willing to work on more. What we need is the Senate to actually take up some of the stuff that we've passed, because I'll just say this: I've talked to a lot of job creators in the Second Congressional District of Arkansas, which is basically central Arkansas, with Little Rock at the core, and a lot of them, they have money to invest and expand and create jobs, but they're holding on to it. Why? Because they're uncertain about the future. They don't have confidence in the direction of this country. They're worried. So businesses, job creators do what families do. They hold tightly to their money, save up, hoping that things will get better, hoping that they will gain some confidence in the direction of the country so that they can then spend that money to expand a plant and hire more people and what have you. So what makes them uncertain? What makes them worried? Well, what I hear is overregulation, the need for tax reform so that we can be competitive with other countries, the health care bill that passed last year. That's got a bunch of folks worried because they don't know what the impact is going to be. The Dodd-Frank bill is absolutely killing our small town community banks that are a critical source of credit for small businesses and families. They're worried to death. All of this stuff. And let's not leave out the debt. People are concerned about the debt because the national debt affects the markets. It affects interest rates. It affects the value of our currency. And folks see what's going on in Europe and they say, man, if we don't get this under control, we're next. All of that, all of those different concerns, those worries, add to the uncertainty. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I think you were there yesterday when we had a visit from some folks in the cement/concrete industry. I was taught yesterday the difference between cement and concrete. Cement is what we use to create concrete. And he sat there, and he said, Look, I've got a lot of employees. I want to hire more. I want to grow. But this regulation, this Cement MACT regulation is going to kill a lot of our businesses because it's going to set a standard way beyond the European standard, and it's going to set a regulatory standard that our businesses cannot meet no matter how much they spend. I think he mentioned that one company had spent $20 million trying to comply, trying to tighten up their operations to meet some of these regulations. He even said, This regulation is so stringent, you can't even measure what the EPA is trying to achieve. It's beyond our ability to measure. It's not that these guys are against regulations. He said in our meeting, We've been regulated for years. We're going to continue to be regulated, and we're cool with that. We get that. We understand that. But this type of regulation will put us out of business, and the only people making cement will be elsewhere. He said, The cement business is growing big time in China, and to compete, we've got to have commonsense regulation. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I appreciate it. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I thank the gentleman. I yield to the gentleman from Kansas.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. Can I interject that overregulation kills jobs?

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I thank the gentleman. I want to use a little analogy and have a little fun here for a second. If you have two runners and they're lined up ready to race and one runner is simply going to run straight to the finish line and the other runner has to run through an obstacle course, who do you think is going to win? I think we would all agree that the one who's just going to run straight, not going to have to jump over anything, not going to have to swim or climb a rope or whatever, go through tires, just run straight to the finish line, that runner is going to have a big advantage over the other runner. The other runner is going to have to climb a rope, go over a wall, go through the tires, do all the things that you do in an obstacle course. The obstacle course, that's regulation. We need basic, fundamental regulation to keep us safe, keep our kids safe. I understand that. But that shows you what we're dealing with. You've got some countries who have little or no regulations, so their runners are just running down that track straight, unimpeded. We're putting up walls for ours, and then we wonder, Why can't we compete? Why aren't people investing? Why aren't they creating jobs in the private sector? Well, it has a lot to do with Washington, DC., my friend. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. ``If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the opportunity to create jobs on our shores.'' That was President Obama, President Obama in January of 2010, recognizing the importance of trade agreements to creating jobs in the United States. Today, the President finally submitted to Congress, over a year and a half later, he finally submitted to Congress three critical trade agreements for our approval. Because of what these trade agreements mean for job creators, this is welcome news. But the fact that these three trade agreements, one of which was signed nearly a half decade ago, have been stalled for so long cannot go unnoticed. Korea, the Korean trade agreement was signed on June 30, 2007. But that South Korean agreement is not the only one. The one with Panama was signed in June of 2007, and the one with Colombia, November of 2006. President Obama even stated on July 8 of 2011 and during his August tour through the Midwest that all three of the trade agreements would be law by now if it weren't just for that obstructionist Congress. He said that the deals are something ``Congress could do right now.'' Well, that's not true. It wasn't true then. We couldn't pass the agreements because they were still on his desk waiting to be sent to Congress. Well, we're glad they're here now, and we will join the President in moving quickly on these agreements. While we have waited on President Obama to act on these long-pending, job-creating export agreements, our foreign competitors--Europe and Canada, in particular--are rapidly increasing their market share and cultivating relationships with trading partners in those countries while American businesses sit on the sidelines. Make no mistake: More American exports mean more American jobs. In my home State of Arkansas and in the Second Congressional District, these trade agreements will be very helpful for job creation. Arkansas unemployment is above 8 percent, and we need pro-job creation policies in Washington to stop that from going even higher. We need pro-American export policies to sell more of our products overseas so that Arkansans get the jobs and our manufacturers and farmers get the business. The three pending export agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea will increase U.S. exports and will create over 250,000 new jobs. Right now, more than 320,000 Arkansas jobs depend on exports, and these agreements will only increase that number. Full implementation of the South Korea trade agreement alone could generate more than 2,500 new jobs in Arkansas. Manufacturing exports are the strongest part of Arkansas' economy. Exports directly support 14 percent of Arkansas' manufacturing jobs, and 66,000 total jobs in all sectors of the economy are supported by manufactured goods exports. Since 2003, Arkansas manufacturing exports rose twice as fast as the State's overall economy. Seventy-seven percent of Arkansas exporters are small businesses. And, in fact, Arkansas exported over $2 billion of manufactured goods to free trade partners in 2010. That's 45 percent of Arkansas' total. That number will only continue to grow with the approval of these agreements. These agreements are critical not only to the country at large, but to Arkansas in particular. With 95 percent of the world's consumers outside the United States, we now need to give American businesses the opportunity to build stronger trade ties with countries seeking our goods and services, the best goods and services in the world. Now that the President has finally sent the three pending export agreements to Congress, we can pass them and help American companies compete and create jobs. I am confident that Congress will act quickly to approve these important bills.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2218, the Empowering Parents Through Quality Charter Schools Act. This bill strikes close to home for me and my district in Arkansas where one charter school program, the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP, as it is called, has had a profound impact on the lives of its students and their families. In one of the poorest cities in America, the town of Helena-West Helena has instituted a charter school that empowers students from high poverty communities to develop the character, knowledge, and skills necessary to follow their dreams and, more importantly, learn to value a life in pursuit of knowledge and truth. KIPP students go above and beyond what is required; and for that, our country is a better place. These students have their parents and teachers to thank. They are always accessible and always committed to their education and their well-being. The KIPP approach shows that high standards overcome the obstacles created by socioeconomics and circumstances, as evidenced by KIPP Delta's first graduating class, 100 percent of which now attend college, and the establishment of a new KIPP school in Blytheville, Arkansas. I urge my colleagues to pass this bill so children and their families all across the country have the opportunity to empower their own lives, their families, and their communities.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I thank the chairman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, when I announced and wanted to run for Congress, my focus primarily was on the debt, on the issue of the debt and the impact that the debt was going to have on my daughter and my little boy. My daughter, Mary Katherine, is sitting with me right here today for this historic day. It's critically important to me. And a lot of the folks back home that I hear from, when they contact me, they contact me about the debt and about spending. Now I came up here to do something about it, and I have been watching this debate closely, and I have been a supporter of the Speaker both on the plan last week, and I am a supporter of the agreement that is going to come before us today. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Is it great? Absolutely not. It is good? It's a good first step. I would say this: If a President and a Senate that I agreed with put this type of plan forward, I would reject it out of hand.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. If a deal, an agreement like this, came from a President with which I generally agree, and a Senate with which I generally agreed, I would reject it out of hand. But that's not what we have. We have divided government. We have this Chamber controlled by a different vision for America. So I believe this is about as good as we are going to get, and I am supporting it because it is consistent with my principles. There are no tax increases. It controls spending now, controls spending in the future, and allows us to vote on a balanced budget amendment. These are all things that I can support. These are the principles that we have been fighting for over the last few months. And I would say this: If this were the only step ever in dealing with the debt, I would vote ``no,'' but it's not. It's only the beginning. We didn't get in this mess with one bill or one piece of legislation. It took a long time and a lot of votes, and it's going to take a long time and a lot of battles to get out of it. And this is a good first step. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to some of the speeches here tonight, and I thought I would take a little time to address some of the arguments. But first I would like to just welcome my friend from Wisconsin, Representative Duffy, who joins me here on the floor tonight. I've been listening, first and foremost, to the discussion of tax loopholes, tax exemptions, deductions. Specifically, I heard a lot of talk about tax deductions for oil companies. Well, I'm glad that the gentleman from the other side raised that tonight because I was thinking, and before I got here in January, for the last 2 years, this House was controlled by Speaker Pelosi and the other side of the aisle. The Senate, down the way here, is controlled by the same party, and the White House, President Obama. Now, if my math is correct, that means that Democrats were in control of the House; they were in control of the Senate; and they were in control of the White House. Now, Mr. Speaker, it puzzles me that they were in control of all of those parts of government, yet not once did they eliminate these subsidies that they're talking about. They had control of the last Congress, 2 years, and nothing was done. I guess they decided only this year that subsidies for U.S. businesses should be eliminated. Well, I'm not sure why they didn't do anything about that in the last Congress, but I will say that I am pleased that they understand the House budget that we passed because in our House budget that we passed a few months ago, that's exactly what we voted to do. We voted for a framework that eliminates tax deductions, tax exemptions, credits, loopholes, whatever you want to call them. That's what our budget does. And in doing so, we're following some of the proposals put forth by the President's own debt commission, a debt commission that he has yet to follow; but they recommended some similar proposals. What we do is we lower the top rate and eliminate a bunch of the deductions that, admittedly, upper income folks take. So we eliminate those. But at the same time, we lower the top rate so that we can be more competitive, and we can have a pro-growth, pro-jobs Tax Code. So what we end up with is a fairer, flatter Tax Code, one that encourages private sector job creation. You might ask, Mr. Speaker, Well, then, why do you disagree with the President on this particular issue? Well, like I said, we're happy that he's decided to come our way and that he sees the light on tax reform and closing loopholes. The reason the House leadership is opposed to the President's posture on this in the debt ceiling negotiations is because they want to have their cake and eat it too. The President wants to have his cake and eat it too on this issue. He wants to close all the loopholes, yes; and at the same time, he wants to raise taxes. So he wants to increase taxes two ways; whereas, his own debt commission and our House leadership want to reduce the top rate, close the loopholes so that we have a fairer, flatter, simpler, less complex tax system. So here's the contrast: we agree on closing the loopholes, although we can't figure out what happened last Congress when the Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and White House and did nothing about it. We did something about it. We approved a budget that addresses precisely this issue. So I just wanted to clarify our position on that. I see that my friend from Wisconsin would like to say a few words. Please join right in.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I just want to ask the gentleman, what will it take for folks here to start wondering why businesses are leaving the country? It seems as if they always want to point the finger to someone else or some third party, some external cause. Maybe we should think about the fact that the policies adopted by the Federal Government have an impact. Businesses react to policies passed in this Congress, in the Senate, and particularly to regulations drafted, promulgated by the administration. At some point we have to say wait a minute. Businesses are leaving, taking their jobs elsewhere. Maybe, just maybe, they're doing it because we're running them off. We need to ask that question. Back in my district, in the Second District of Arkansas, in Little Rock and the surrounding area, I like to say, we've got big job creators and small job creators, but the common denominator is they're job creators. I don't ask that people like business or be in business or whatever. I just ask that they acknowledge that businesses create jobs. And if we run businesses off, if we adopt policies that curtail economic growth and chase businesses away to other countries, we're going to lose jobs. That's not hard to figure out.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I think ultimately the standard for me is: Am I doing things that make the United States more attractive to job creators or less attractive? We want to be a country where job creators around the world and here say, America is where I want to do business. America is where I want to innovate. America is where I want to create. America is where I want to pursue technological advancement and create jobs. America is the only place to do business. America is the only place to create jobs. That's the America that I want to help create. I don't want to create an America that punishes job creators in such a way that they flee the country. And that's exactly, on many fronts, what we're doing. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I appreciate the gentleman raising the issue of Medicare. I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about some of the things I've heard here on the floor tonight. First of all, if you're just joining us, I can just tell you that a little earlier tonight here on the floor there was a poster being used and the poster showed a tombstone. It showed a tombstone, and it said, ``Medicare.'' And the implication was that Medicare was going to be killed; Medicare was going to be eliminated. And nothing could be further from the truth if we take action to save Medicare. If we allow Medicare to continue as it currently is with no changes, it goes bankrupt in anywhere from 5 to 10 years, if we do nothing. Now, some of us have done something to save Medicare. What did we do? Well, we came up with a plan as part of our budget in the House to save Medicare for future generations. Now, what other plans are out there? Right now, none. The Senate doesn't have a budget. The Senate doesn't have a plan to save Medicare. The President's budget doubles the debt in 5 years, triples it in 10 years, doesn't even deal with entitlements. It got zero votes in the U.S. Senate and does nothing to save Medicare. In fact, it was so silent on Medicare and entitlements that the President had to come and give a Mulligan speech after we proposed our budget in the House. He gave a speech saying, Well, what I really meant was, and he laid out some ideas, not enough specifics--so few specifics, in fact, that the Congressional Budget Office said, We can't analyze that speech; we can't score that speech, not enough specifics. So the Senate doesn't have a plan to save it. The President doesn't have a plan to save Medicare. We have a plan to save Medicare. So what has happened? What has happened is the folks on the other side of the aisle made a conscious decision to attack our plan to save Medicare, and by doing so they engaged in a fiscal fantasy. What does that mean? Well, it means that they compare our reform with the way things are now with Medicare. They say, You're ending Medicare as we know it. Well, the problem with that is Medicare as we know it, on the path that it's currently on, goes bankrupt. It would be one thing if they were comparing their reform plan to save Medicare with our reform plan to save Medicare, but they're not because they don't have a plan. So they prefer to compare our plan with the way things are now, even though they know the way things are now is going away. In fact, I'd like to read just a couple of quick quotes here. President Obama has said: ``If you look at the numbers, Medicare in particular will run out of money and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up. I mean, it's not an option for us to just sit by and do nothing.'' Now, that's President Obama acknowledging that Medicare is going bankrupt, acknowledging that we must do something to save it, yet he hasn't proposed a plan to save it. And another quick quote, Senator Lieberman, former Vice Presidential candidate nominee for the Democrat Party, now an Independent, he said: ``The truth is that we cannot save Medicare as we know it. We can save Medicare only if we change it.'' That is the hard reality, and that is what we are trying to do is save Medicare. And that is precisely what we did in our budget that we adopted this year. If you're 55 or over, there's no change. If you're under 55, you would be in the new program, as Medicare would be constituted, what we call Premium Support. If you're 55 and over, as the gentleman said, there are no changes to you. We give folks time to transition to a new way of living under Medicare, a different kind of Medicare, but what we think would be more effective at reducing cost by putting in some market forces and saving Medicare for future generations. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. Just real quickly I wanted to point out, just to clarify, I totally agree that he has a plan. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a plan to save Medicare. He only has the plan that he passed in his health care law. And as you pointed out, with the cuts that were in the President's health care law, President Obama's health care law ended Medicare as we know it, because it took $500 billion out and introduced this unelected board, the IPAB that you so eloquently describe. So I just wanted to clarify, he has a plan. He doesn't have a plan to save Medicare.

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas

Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.