Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 603, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 327 I was unable to cast my vote on the House floor because I was ill. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it's my privilege to be addressing you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. It's always interesting for me to sit here and listen to the other Members deliver their impression of what goes on and how they envision the future, and I enjoyed the gentleman from Illinois's presentation, and the gentleman from California, and particularly the gentleman from Arizona, who came here to talk about the balanced budget amendment. And so I take that issue up as we get ready to close out the evening, and I would like to add some of the points that I have to this. That is, when I was first elected to office, it was in the State senate in 1996, and I believed that if I just simply made a cogent argument on principle that it would sway my colleagues over to my side. I didn't think it was all that complicated. It wouldn't be hard to talk about balancing the budget, keeping the spending within our times. Because, after all, each year government always provides more and more of what people were providing for themselves the years before. So this encroachment of government that is the growth in the nanny state and the decrease in personal responsibility had been going along for years back then. It's been accelerated in the last few years. But the question I'd ask at this point is: What should government not do? What is it that is too much for government to do? Where should we draw the line? And as now I am halfway into the ninth year in this United States Congress, Mr. Speaker, I have been engaged in so many debates and pushed so many bills and supported and opposed so much legislation that I see the pattern. I see a pattern. It's over here on this side, they believe the government should do everything and that anybody that is investing their capital and returning an income off of that and making some money is somehow an evil capitalist, victimizing the proletariats and the workers. I get a little disappointed even with my own colleagues that constantly repeat this message that rings off the walls of the White House and rang off of the walls of the Speaker's office when Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker: Where are the jobs? Well, okay, it's a legitimate question. But underneath that question is: Where are the profits? Where are the profits? Why would an individual invest their capital and their brainpower and their back power, their sweat equity, if they didn't have an opportunity to take that little pile of capital and build it up a little bit bigger, if they didn't have an opportunity to get a better return on their investment, if they just simply stuck it in U.S. Treasury bills? People who invest money have to expect to have a profit. And then out of the profit, they pay the wages. And if they're making money off of the people they hire, they hire more people if they can see a model that will do that. That's how this worm turns. But it isn't evil capitalists. I think Mr. Franks said it pretty well, but I will say this, that free enterprise capitalism has done more good for the world than any other system that's out there. It has gotten people out of bed in the morning. It's kept them up late at night. It's caused them to find another way to be more efficient. Competition makes us more efficient. And the desire to do well, sometimes just for the pure sake of the challenge of it all, that desire to do well drives many of us. So the people that are out there creating jobs are doing so because there is a prospect for profit. That's where the jobs are. If the prospect for profit isn't there, if the degree of risk is not proportional to the potential for profit, they're not going to take the risk. It's that simple, Mr. Speaker. And over on this side, I hear sometimes this lack of resolve that, yes, we ought to have a balanced budget and we need to get there, but it's just too soon to rush there, the resistance to the idea that we should take a look at this spending now and cut this spending now, get it under control now. When I first came into this Congress and swore in here on this floor in January of 2003, shortly after that I went over to the chairman of the Budget Committee and said where is the balanced budget, 2003. And he said to me, we can't balance the budget. Why not? It's too hard. Why is it too hard? Because we have too many expenses, too many burdens. Don't you know, don't you know, green freshman Congressman in 2003, that we have been hit by the enemy on September 11, 2001? Don't you know we had to create an entire TSA and put this huge security system up and merge together the Department of Homeland Security? Don't you know that we had to organize and deploy the military over to places like Afghanistan? Didn't I know that we were mobilizing to go into Iraq at that very time, that our expenses were too high, we couldn't balance the budget, couldn't provide a balanced budget because it was too hard. It was too hard to balance the budget because our financial system had taken a hard hit on September 11, 2001, and because we had a war to fight--actually two wars to fight, and because we had to create all of this billions of dollars worth of security so we could keep ourselves safe. And didn't I know that that was right on the tail end of the first thing of the dot-com bubble that was a false economy, that bubble that actually was a huge component in getting the budget balanced during those late Clinton years--that dot-com bubble had to burst because it wasn't built on the ability to produce a good or a service and deliver it more efficiently, but it was built on the speculation that we could store information and transfer it more efficiently than ever before, and we could. But that didn't necessarily translate into the efficiencies that come that create the profit. So the dot-com bubble burst, September 11 came, TSA was created, Homeland Security was created, two wars were fought, and through all of that we lost that sight of austerity. And I wish that President Bush had said to us, tighten your belt, we are going to pay for this conflict, and we are going to pay for this tragedy that happened to the United States of America by all of us sharing the sacrifice by tightening our belt, not by raising taxes on people that are producing jobs. But it didn't happen that way, and I made my arguments, and I made them every year. And I went through a lot to try to produce a balanced budget throughout those years. We never got a balanced budget that we could bring to the floor, not that balanced in a single year. But I will say, Mr. Speaker, during the height of the Iraq war, when things looked as bad as they could have looked, and about the time that George Bush was preparing to order the surge, about that period of time, we had a budget that came within $160 billion of balancing, $160 billion, Mr. Speaker. Now that $160 billion, boy, how do I wish we would have found a way to tighten it down so we didn't have that deficit, that we could have balanced that budget in that year. We came very, very close--$160 billion didn't sound close. It's close, it's really close compared to what we have today. And so the President offers a budget that nobody will pick up and vote for and support, but it's a $1.65 trillion deficit spending budget, $1.65 trillion. And I listen to people that will say to me, Republicans overspent. Yes, we did. I make that confession. But the overspending of $160 billion compared to the overspending of $1.65 trillion is 10-1 Obama administration versus the Bush administration, 10-1. And here we are now with a number that is greater than $3 trillion, maybe less than $5 trillion, and a deficit that has been created by the Obama administration with no end in sight. And the President insisted that this Congress grant to him $2.4 trillion in unfettered debt ceiling increase, a clean debt ceiling increase bill, no strings attached, $2.4 trillion. Now, that was irresponsible, and when you find yourself with a divided government like we have, this government would have gone in that direction in a heartbeat if Nancy Pelosi had still been the Speaker. I can tell you if she would have been in charge, if Democrats would have had the majority here in the House of Representatives and Harry Reid would be running the shop down that hallway through there in the Senate, and the President asked for $2.4 trillion there would hardly have been a debate, Mr. Speaker, hardly a debate at all. They would have brought a bill under a closed rule down here to the floor with a limited amount of debate. And if they thought there was going to be negative publicity, it would have happened at the time of the night that the press was not going to be able to report it so that the American people would pay attention. And, yes, it would have leaked out, there wouldn't have been a lid on the secret. But neither would it have been with a great deal of fanfare. It would have been $2.4 trillion, rubberstamped by this Congress, House, and Senate and sent to the President for his signature, business as usual, and off we would have gone. And we would have seen ourselves then with a national debt of, oh, let's say, $16.7 trillion, no questions asked, no strings attached. That's what would have happened. But the American people rose up over the last couple of years, and they formed organizations around this country spontaneously, Project 912 organizations, Tea Party organizations, not by the dozens or the scores--by the hundreds, by the thousands, Mr. Speaker. Organizations by the thousands across this country, some organized, some not, loosely organized, affiliated on each other's email list, paying attention, having meetings, energizing themselves, identifying candidates, running some of their own candidates, becoming candidates themselves, supporting people that will come to this Congress and to the State legislatures all across this land and put our fiscal house in order. That's what's been going on over the last couple of years in this country. And another thing that mobilized the people in this country was ObamaCare. When the ruling troika at the time, I called it, that would be the Obama -Pelosi-Reid ruling troika, decided that they were going to force-feed ObamaCare down the throat of this country, we saw tens of thousands mobilized to come to this Capitol, to surround this Capitol, to jam the Capitol to, heck, keep it so packed that people couldn't get in or out, so that they couldn't do business; demand, do not take American liberty, do not nationalize the second-most-sovereign thing we have, which is our health, our skin and everything inside it, but they did. By legislative shenanigans and unprecedented maneuvering they did force ObamaCare care on us, and we are now hanging in the balance of whether we are able to repeal ObamaCare or whether it becomes the institutionalized roots down deep, permanent and perpetual law of the land. I thought a wise statement was made a week ago Wednesday morning at a breakfast that I host when the guest speaker said that he believes if Barack Obama is reelected President that ObamaCare gets institutionalized in perpetuity as the law of the land. And if Barack Obama is not reelected, then we will repeal ObamaCare and pull it out by the roots. That's one of the big things that are at stake, and I have staked a lot of my efforts over the last 23 or so months in working to first defeat and then to repeal ObamaCare. And when we passed the repeal here in the House of Representatives and the language that I drafted went over to the Senate, shortly after that, some weeks after that we took up the defunding of ObamaCare and we passed that legislation with the CR over to the Senate, where it was peeled off and voted down. But every Republican in the House of Representatives and every Republican in the United States Senate has voted to repeal ObamaCare and has voted to shut off all funding to implement or enforce ObamaCare, every one, and it's been a bipartisan effort also to get those things done. That's a piece of this large deficit spending that we have, and people said, what does it take for you to vote for this debt ceiling increase that passed the House tonight? And my answer immediately is, just put the repeal of ObamaCare and attach it to the debt ceiling increase, and I will salivate to vote for that. The first full 10 years and outlays for ObamaCare are $2.6 trillion, according to the chairman of the Budget Committee, $2.6 trillion. So, in comparison, it stays consistent with Speaker Boehner's standard for, are we going to have more dollars in cuts than we have in debt ceiling increase; a 2.4 or actually down around a 2.2 debt ceiling increase, compared to a $2.6 trillion repeal of ObamaCare, I think is an okay bargain because we get back our liberty. We get back the chance to manage our health care and purchase a health insurance policy of our choice, one that's created by the market that's produced by the demand of the American people and not one that's managed and defined by the bureaucrats in Washington. Mr. Speaker, I will just give you an example of what goes on and the oppressive nature of ObamaCare, a socialized medicine proposal that decides what kind of policy we can have and what kind of policy we can't have. Now, that's a constraint that I just can't abide in a free country. If I want to buy a health insurance policy that has a $10,000 deductible, I want to do that. That's my business. If I want to buy a policy that has a 50 percent copayment for the first million dollars and I want to do that, that's my business. I don't need nanny state telling me what I can and can't buy, but they do. And now they have concluded, as of a notice that came out today, that every health insurance policy in America that is approved by the Federal Government--that will be every one that you can buy under ObamaCare--shall cover contraceptives--no copayment, no charge, except it gets averaged across everybody else's premium. Contraceptives will become, by edict of the Federal Government, a component of everybody's health insurance policy under ObamaCare. Now, think about that. We have people that are single, we have people that are past reproductive age, and we have priests that are celibate, all of them paying insurance premiums that cover contraceptives so that somebody else doesn't have to pay the full fare of that? And they have called it preventative medicine--preventative medicine. Well, if you apply that preventative medicine universally, what you end up with is you have prevented a generation. Preventing babies from being born is not medicine. That's not constructive to our culture and our civilization. If we let our birth rate down below the replacement rate, we are a dying civilization. And right now we are at about 2.1 babies per woman. That is just the replacement rate, that's all it is. And Teddy Roosevelt wrote about that. It isn't committed verbatim to my memory, but he said that any race that doesn't care enough about itself to reproduce itself will essentially become extinct. And he said, I, for one, will not lament their loss, and I shall welcome the advent of a new generation, a new group of people who will care enough to have their own babies. And now we have a Federal Government that has not just subsidized contraceptives but has written an edict that every health insurance policy will include contraceptives because they consider it to be preventative health care. Now, none of us would have health to worry about if they prevented us, would we, Mr. Speaker? Now, that is bizarre. It is Orwellian. It is not even counterintuitive. But that's an example of what's going on in this country today, one of the reasons why we have to reverse the political power that is in the White House and in the Senate. Mr. Speaker, the $2.6 trillion in the first full 10 years of outlays of the Obama administration is a piece of this irresponsible spending that we have been involved in. And now the administration is driving that 3 to maybe as much as $5 trillion in unnecessary and irresponsible spending and projecting this national debt that goes from $14 trillion on up to $16.7 trillion. Here are some examples of what we need to do to solve this problem. One, as I said, repeal ObamaCare. Rip it out by the roots, lock, stock and barrel. Pull out all the vestiges of ObamaCare without any particle of DNA left behind so that it can't reproduce and grow back on us. We cannot let that happen. It's an unconstitutional taking of American liberty. It has got to go. It diminishes our vitality, it diminishes our future, and it diminishes our American potential. Pulling ObamaCare out by the roots is one big piece of the solution. Another big piece of the solution, Mr. Speaker, is to pass the FairTax, the national sales tax, to end the IRS as we know it, and stop punishing people who are producing. We need people in the private sector that are out there creating a profit by their own nature of industriousness, intuitiveness, and entrepreneurialism. And we need to grow the private sector. We need to reward people for doing that. And instead, we punish them. Uncle Sam has the first lien on all productivity in the country, every bit of it: if you have earnings, savings or investment, if you punch a time clock, if you have a passbook savings, if you have dividends or interest payments that are coming your way or an estate that is coming your way, or if you have capital gains that are coming your way. How about the rent check for an apartment complex that you might have invested in? How about the per acre rent on a farm? How about anything you might sell that you have produced, whether you've got a lemonade stand or whether you are the Donald, Uncle Sam is going to tax your productivity. He stands there by that time clock day after day. And when you go to work on Monday morning at 8 o'clock and you punch the time clock, you hear that thunk and his hand comes out of his pocket and he holds it out and you go to work. And each dollar you earn goes into his hand until Uncle Sam has enough to satisfy his appetite for the fruits of your labor. When that moment comes in that day--you punch the time card at 8 o'clock--it might be 11 o'clock, it might be 11:30, it might be noon, it might be after lunch that you've finally earned enough that Uncle Sam will put all those dollars you have earned in his pocket and walk away for the day. Then you can go to work for the Governor. It's not as much. He puts that in his pocket. Now you're down to maybe you're doing it for the wife and kids, or the husband and the kids as the case may be. Not a lot is left for us. But the next morning, that wolf is at the door again. And you punch the time clock again, and there stands Uncle Sam, and out comes his hand, and in goes each dollar you earn until he is satisfied and he puts it in his pocket and he walks away. You do it every single day. And so why do people go to work when we have over 72 means-tested Federal welfare programs that reward people for not working? Over 72 of them. It can be a heat subsidy, a rent subsidy, SNAP--that's the food stamp program. Now, they had to rename it because ``food stamps'' had a bad image--and the TANF program, and the list goes on and on and on. No one can name all of them from the top of their head, which means no one can analyze how they interrelate or how they motivate people to go to work or not to go to work. And I will tell you, people will do what you pay them to do. If you pay them to stay home, they'll stay home. If you pay them to have babies, they'll have babies. If you pay them to go to work, they'll go to work. If you give them an unemployment check and you say that you're not going to get this check if you go to work, they're not going to work anymore. Some will out of conscience, yes. We have good, decent people in this country. But by and large, if you pay people not to work, they're not going to show up to work. So what we need to do is take all that tax off of productivity, put it over on the consumption side, let everybody go to work and earn all they want to earn, save all they want to save, and invest all they want to invest. They get 56 percent more in their paycheck under the FairTax, 56 percent more. The goods and services that we buy go down in price an average of 22 percent, because in the price of what we're buying is the income tax and the payroll tax of the wages of the people that produced it. Employers have to, companies have to build that price in because they don't pay the tax. Last stop, consumers pay the tax--not corporations, not companies, not producers. They are the collectors. But they are not the payers. They are the tax collectors. So if we go down that line and cut off and shut off the IRS and repeal and abolish the IRS Tax Code and let people earn all they want to earn and invest all they want to invest and save all they want to save, there will be an incentive there also for savings and investment, and our economy grows dynamically again. And the goods and services that are being produced in foreign countries start to come back here to be produced again. We, Mr. Speaker, have gotten ourselves in a bad fix. We have exported, because of our tax structure and the bureaucratic burden and the regulatory burden, we have exported a lot of American industry to places like China. And now we buy Chinese goods and we borrow the money from the Chinese to buy the product of the industry that they've created that we've shipped there. And it has been a colossal mistake to turn us in the opposite direction from the industrialized, productive America into the America that sends IOUs to China and brings goods in from China that we used to make while we pay people not to work--$212 billion. Most of it went for unemployment benefits last December. We pay people not to work. Not just the unemployment benefits; we pay people not to work by the 70-some means-tested welfare programs. And some of those that will work are nudged out of the job because we have a number of 12 million or more illegals in this country, of which about 8 million are statistically working in this economy, every one of them taking a job that an American or a legal immigrant can do. It is bizarre for us, Mr. Speaker, to pay millions not to work through 70-plus means-tested welfare programs, pay others not to work on unemployment, and accept the idea that illegals come into America and take jobs from Americans, all the while while we shift our industry over to places like China and borrow money from the Chinese and the Saudis to buy things from the Chinese and the Saudis, let alone develop our own energy here domestically where we can, drill in ANWR, the Outer Continental Shelf, more drilling in the Gulf. And yes, I'd trade with Canada and bring that pipeline down here. Let's do business with our best trading partners. While all of that is going on, and that's a list of some of the things that I lament, Mr. Speaker, but I'd add to that list, we are spending ourselves so deeply into debt that we aren't very many years from not being able to figure out a way to come out. And a constitutional balanced budget amendment is the only solution that I can see that can crack the intransigence of the people over here that believe that we can live in deficit spending in perpetuity, that we can run the debt up in perpetuity, and that we're never going to be held accountable, that we can always borrow and always spend, and we can borrow enough money to buy all of the wants that they have politically so they can pacify their constituents. And yes, it happens over on this side, some, too. But I want to see a balanced budget amendment come through, and the stage is now set for us to spend the next couple of months marketing the idea of a balanced budget amendment. I want to see the balanced budget amendment that we marked up in the Judiciary Committee. It took 3 days to do so. Bob Goodlatte drafted and introduced a balanced budget amendment that requires that this Federal Government live under a balanced budget, and it requires that there be a three-fifths majority in both Houses in order to waive that balance. So if the body here and there decides we have to break that pledge to balance, we have to vote to do so, three-fifths; 60 percent supermajority. If we're going to raise the debt limit, it takes a supermajority of three-fifths to do so under the balanced budget amendment of Bob Goodlatte. It requires that we spend below the cap of 18 percent of GDP, and we must not exceed an 18 percent gross domestic product cap. That's all the Federal Government can consume. We are up now to 23-something percent. We have to dial it down to a historic average of 18 percent. That is a two-thirds majority to spend above the 18 percent cap of GDP, and it requires a two-thirds majority to increase taxes. Those are all standards that we need to hold to in this Congress, and it's going to take a two-thirds majority in this Congress to send that balanced budget over to the Senate and on to the States. I will be working to see to it that that happens. Meanwhile, I just want to speak into the record that I voted no on this bill today that raised the debt ceiling, and I did so for a number of reasons. One of them is the standards that I have just put into the record for a balanced budget amendment are not written into the bill. So a balanced budget amendment might take any form. It might be a form that can simply be waived by a majority of the House and the Senate. That seems a little ridiculous, but I take you to that point because the definition doesn't hold us to any standard. I want to hold to the standard that I have just stated. Another thing is this bill today does cuts as a condition to increase the debt ceiling; but those cuts are only $17 billion out of discretionary spending for the 1 year that we control, that is 2012 fiscal year. The Ryan budget produced $31 billion in cuts out of the 2012 fiscal year and discretionary; $24 billion less cuts already. It shows we don't have the resolve to do the early cutting, only the promise to do the late cutting. So if you have the late cutting instead of the early cutting, that means we may not be held accountable down the line. Politicians want to push that off on to future Congresses. They don't want to go home and face their constituents in this time. So I urge that we pass a balanced budget here out of this Congress. We realize that we have taken a small step today. We have to take big steps if we are going to get this country where it belongs. And I look forward to the day I can say to my grandchildren: We did clear a path for you. We did do it right. We did get to a balanced budget, now it's up to you to take this country to the next level of its destiny. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your attention, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 323 I was unable to cast my vote on the House floor because I was ill. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 324, I was unable to cast my vote on the House floor because I was ill, had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 325 I was unable to cast my vote on the House floor because I was ill. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 326 I was unable to cast my vote on the House floor because I was ill. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Arizona for leading on this Special Order, and all my colleagues that have come to the floor to raise the issue of the balanced budget amendment. I wanted to just point a few things out as to where this sits. Now, the chairman of the Constitution Committee standing before me, Mr. Franks, has presided over the shaping of a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. And I certainly favor the one that was authored by Bob Goodlatte and marked up in our full Judiciary Committee. It took three full days, and those days spanned over a couple weeks' period of time trying to find the time to get this to work out. And I want to express, Mr. Speaker, that a balanced budget amendment that is written by someone who doesn't believe in a balanced budget amendment probably isn't going to yield the result that we all want from that amendment. And the worst case scenario would be the drafting and the passage of a balanced budget amendment that would be the constitutional equivalent of PAYGO. You could draft a balanced budget amendment that would say, Thou shalt balance the budget, and not put provisions in there, such as a cap on GDP, or a supermajority required to raise taxes, or a supermajority required to raise the debt limit, or of course the cap, as I said. And if it were just the barest of bones, the bare minimum of a definition of a balanced budget amendment, then that could be a balanced budget amendment that would allow a majority vote of the House of Representatives and a majority vote of the Senate to waive the balanced budget amendment. That would be the amendment equivalent of PAYGO, pay-as-you-go, waive it or raise taxes in order to calculate that you balanced it. So I would caution that we need to do a prudent job of promoting a balanced budget amendment, continually defining that balanced budget amendment to be something that gives us fiscal responsibility. I will go more deeply into this perhaps in a half hour or so, but I wanted to also add that this legislation that has passed through the House of Representatives today--and I'm as joyous and delighted that Gabby Giffords was able to cast a vote on this bill today, as perhaps almost anybody in this place, save the folks that are closer friends and relations of hers, but what a day, what a day for this Congress to feel that emotion of her coming in this room and putting that vote up on the board and to hear that cheer go up when that light turned green. We are on opposite sides of the issue, but as I said, it is a deep feeling of just great pleasure and gratitude and thanks that she can come into this place and do that. But here's the point I wanted to make, Mr. Speaker, and that is that, if we do nothing, if we had not addressed this debt ceiling and dialed this spending curve down, in 10 years from now--this is what the lack of a balanced budget amendment will do: In 10 years from now, our national debt, our debt that we addressed today that's about $14.3 trillion, would be $28 trillion in 10 years if we just go along business as usual and the projections of the March baseline are projected out for a decade as we do; $28 trillion in debt. If we accept the--I'll call it the Boehner proposal that passed the House here today, because the numbers in it actually reflect the first Boehner bill of last Friday. Then this bill that passed the House today, our national debt is still, if this bill effectively turns this spending increase down in the way it's supposed to, and the deficit down, we're going to be looking at $26 trillion in our debt anyway in 10 years by 2021, $26 trillion. So we've gone from, when we got up this morning, projections of $28 trillion in debt in 2021, in 10 years from now, dialed it down to $26 trillion. If we just held the line on the Ryan budget, we would have dialed it down to $23 trillion, and I'm not satisfied with that. When I see a budget that came out that balances in 26 years--now we've backed up some on that--I think we need to be stronger, not weaker. I think we need to step up and advocate and take these next few months and do all we can to sell America on the idea, selling the people that don't believe we should ever live under a balanced budget that we must do so. And as I sat for those 3 days in the Judiciary Committee while we debated and marked up this balanced budget amendment that does these things that I said--a three-fifths supermajority to waive the balance, or three- fifths to raise the debt ceiling, or two-thirds to exceed the 18 percent GDP cap, or two-thirds to increase taxes, all of those things-- and it requires the President also to offer a balanced budget and allows a balanced budget requirement to be waived if we declare war or a national emergency that is significant--those things, if we don't do those things, then we end up with perpetual debt. And the people on the other side of the aisle that debated against a balanced budget amendment completely convinced me that they never want to live under a balanced budget amendment unless it is a confiscation of all of the wealth of this land and put it back through the money machine here in Washington. It would suppress the economy, it would starve and eventually kill the goose that lays the golden egg. So $28 trillion is projected. That's the projected national debt in 10 years. The bill that passed today takes it down to $26 trillion. Ryan took it to 23, so we lost a little bit of leverage here today. But the people on the other side, and the President has convinced me also, he never wants to live under a balanced budget and certainly doesn't want to have a Constitution that would order that that be so. So what do the American people have to say about people who are committed to deficit spending in perpetuity, what do they think happens, where do they think America goes if we take our hands off of the ``whoa back'' on the reins and the spending goes on and we borrow the money to fill all of the wants of the American people for now. And what happens to our children and grandchildren when they have to service that debt or when the roof caves in when no one will loan us money anymore and we became mega Greece? This has been an intense debate here all around this country. It came to a certain head today. It is a long ways from over. This is a start. It's not the end. It is just a start. I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 307 I was delayed in leaving a meeting with a constituent off the House floor during this two minute votes series and was unable to cast my vote before the vote was closed. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 308, I was delayed in leaving a meeting with a constituent off the House floor during this two-minute votes series and was unable to cast my vote before the vote was closed. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 630, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 632, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 633, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 634, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 636, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 631, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 635, I was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I always appreciate the honor and the privilege. I, like every Member in this Congress, and most Americans, have some strong opinions about the workings and the necessity for this Congress to step up and lead, as we have led, on the issue of the debt ceiling. And I will start with this: Some weeks ago, the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, laid out a date; and he said August 2 is a hard break deadline beyond which we can't extend our borrowing and our spending and that the government will not be able to pay its bills, and we will have to default on our debt. That, I think, Madam Speaker, is an irresponsible statement on the part of the Secretary of the Treasury, and we should keep in mind that his first boss is the President of the United States. So the things that come out of the mouth of the Secretary of the Treasury often reflect the best interests of the President and perhaps are explicit or implied directive that comes from the President. And I happen to have this belief that when someone goes to work for the President, their judgment becomes what they think the President would do if he happened to be doing their job. I have watched the transition of executive offices over the years, in places like the Governor's office in Iowa, where I come from and have served in the Iowa Senate before I came here. I watched as the transition in the executive branch took place, and I watched as some of the people that survived the transition did so by accommodating their positions to that of their new chief executive officer, their new Governor. I watched as the United States of America has transitioned from a George W. Bush administration to a Barack Obama administration. And I have watched as some of the survivors of that transition accommodated their positions to their new President, their new Commander in Chief. So I'm a little cynical about the knowledge base and what is declared to be the deep convictions of some of the appointees of the President. When I hear the Secretary of the Treasury say, This August 2 date is the date beyond which we can't go, we can't borrow beyond that, and so we'll have to start defaulting on our debt, why does Tim Geithner say that? I say he does because that accommodates the President's argument that this ``we've got to put up or shut up date'' is a hard date, August 2, beyond which is a financial calamity. I don't believe that, Madam Speaker. I don't believe we get into a financial calamity if we go on the other side of August 2. It may be a fairly accurate calculated date, beyond which we won't have the borrowing capacity to continue to pay our bills on time. I think that's probably close to August 2. I don't know that it's the accurate date of August 2, however. So I just caution people to think about what it really means when you hear a Cabinet official take a position and promise Americans that they can count on their word. You know, they're sometimes falling on their sword for the President of the United States. In fact, the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, doesn't give me a lot of confidence. Just a few weeks ago as he was under oath before the Small Business Committee, I asked him his opinion on several of the top economists that America and the world have produced throughout history. A couple of those people would be Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes. And Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner's response was--and I remind you, Madam Speaker, under oath-- his response was, he is not an economist; therefore, he wouldn't offer an opinion on lead economists in the history of the country and the world because he's not a trained economist. So when Tim Geithner tells us that we have a deadline of August 2 and it's a potential calamity, is he giving us an economic opinion? He refused to give an economic opinion when he was under oath. So when he's in front of the press, is that a different equation? Is he an economist or isn't he? He says he's not. If he says he's not, then should I accept his word that the Secretary of the Treasury is not an economist? Therefore, I would have to tell you, Madam Speaker, I would discount his opinion because he's a self-professed noneconomist. And it seems as though America wants to accept the word of the Secretary of the Treasury even though he has put disclaimers out there on his own credibility multiple times. And I will just put another disclaimer out there on his own credibility by saying the President of the United States impacts the opinion of his Cabinet members and his other appointees. So here's what the President has said, Madam Speaker, and that's this. In so many words, speaking of it, he said, I can't guarantee that the pensions of our military or that Social Security for our seniors will be paid on time. That was a statement that he made a little over a week ago. Yet I listened to that. Madam Speaker, I have to tell you that it wasn't a directly factual statement made by the President. He has to know this. He has to know the truth. The truth is the President of the United States is the only person who can guarantee that our military pensions are paid on time, and he's the only person that can guarantee our Social Security is paid on time. He's the only person that can guarantee that the revenue stream that's coming in, which is $200 billion a month, on average, would be used in a priority fashion to service our debt, to pay our military on time, to pay the military pensions on time, to take care of our national security interests, to pay the Social Security on time, and to pay the Medicare bills on time. Take the seniors off the table, along with our military, as I have clearly advocated when I introduced the Promises Act a little over a week ago. The Promises Act pays our military first, services our debt second; goes no further than that. We did a major press conference on that issue--myself, Congressman Gohmert, and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. We laid that principle out. There are others that have good bills out here. Tom McClintock has a good bill that requires that we service our debt, pay the debt on time. It's called the Full Faith and Credit Act. It's mirrored, I believe, off of that of Pat Toomey in the Senate. It has a good number of cosponsors. Louie Gohmert has a good bill that guarantees that our troops are paid on time every time. It doesn't go far enough. It's got a sunset date on it. It doesn't happen to include hitting a debt ceiling. It addresses the funding gap that came from the CR a few months ago, but the concept of it is good, and he's led very well on it. Dan Webster from Florida has a very good prioritization bill. His bill, and should we send it to to the President and it becomes law, services the debt first. That's about $20 billion a month. It pays the military second. That's about $11 billion a month. And now that's $31 billion. If you divide 31 billion by 200 billion, 31 divided by 200 works out to be 15.2 percent. So 15.2 percent of the incoming revenue stream is all that it takes to guarantee that our military is paid on time every time, and that they, in harm's way, defending our liberty with their lives on the line and sacrificing their lives from time to time, should never have to wonder if their earned paycheck is going to be transferred into their account for their family on time every time. That should be a guarantee that this Congress makes, and it should be a guarantee that lasts for all time. My bill does that. I believe the language in Daniel Webster's bill does that as well. But, in any case, his services the debt first, pays the military second, provides that the President can direct funding into national security issues third, pays the Social Security fourth and the Medicare bills fifth. I actually think his is the best bill. I would take it and massage it and flip a couple of things within it, but I am not taking a deep objection to it, nor do I think that we wouldn't get the job done with Dan Webster's bill. I think we would. But I would like to see a prioritization bill be moved here in the House of Representatives and send it over to the Senate. We've already passed Cut, Cap, and Balance. We've said, Here's the debt ceiling increase. You send a constitutional amendment to the States so they can ratify an amendment that guarantees that this Congress would be bound to a balanced budget. The balanced budget amendment passed here in this House in 1995, and it was messaged down that hallway to the Senate in '95. And it was brought up on the floor of the Senate with the votes counted for passage. One Senator flipped unexpectedly, and the balanced budget amendment failed on the floor of the Senate that day in '95. Had that balanced budget amendment passed, it would have been messaged to the States for ratification. It requires three-quarters of the States to ratify a constitutional amendment, which clearly would have been the case for a balanced budget amendment. Had the States had that opportunity, I believe they would have ratified a balanced budget amendment. Had they done so, I believe, Madam Speaker, that we would not be having this discussion today. I believe that we would have enshrined in our Constitution a requirement that this Congress be bound by the same standards that most of the States are, balanced budget amendments. And if that had been the case, we would not be having this discussion. We wouldn't have this overspending. We wouldn't have more than $3 trillion in deficit spending that's been driven by the President of the United States. Some say Republicans are responsible, too. Republicans spent too much money, too, and in that case, I'd agree with that. But here's the real comparison, and it's this: During the height of the Iraq war, with expenses going out in armed conflict in the Middle East, when things were going badly there, this Congress came within $160 billion of balancing the budget. A little bit more economic activity, a little tweak here or there, and we would have seen a balanced budget in the middle of the past decade, in the middle of the Iraq war. We fell $160 billion short. All right. I'll take that on us. We should have done a better job. We should have had enough cushion that we achieved a balanced budget. We didn't get that done. But today, the President's deficit is $1.65 trillion. And I no longer have to say trillion with a ``t.'' I used to have to say billion with a ``b.'' Sometimes people were thinking million when you said billion. But now we talk about trillions, and then the concept of we don't have to say trillion with a ``t'' anymore. It comes out of our mouths. We're discussing trillions of dollars. So the President has given us a $1.65 trillion single-year deficit, more than 10 times greater than the $160 billion deficit that Republicans had during the height of the Iraq war. That's his responsibility, over $3 trillion in deficit spending in two short budget years. By the way, no budget approved by Democrats during that period of time. Nothing brought up in the Senate now. We did pass the Ryan budget. We voted on an RSC budget. I stuck with the toughest and the strongest budget that we could bring to this floor, one that balanced in less than 9 years. I'm a little embarrassed to say that. I'm a little embarrassed to say a budget that balances in less than 9 years, but it's easier to say that than it is a budget that balances in 26 years. And that's the budget that Democrats voted against because it didn't spend enough money. The Ryan budget balances in 26 years, when my sons are ready for retirement. That's too long. I want something much shorter than that. I'd like to find a way to balance this budget tomorrow if I could, but the price to do that would be too many calamities across this country. So we need to get there as fast as we can before the financial markets leave us. We need to get there before we become the Greece of the world. This isn't going to wait 26 years to be resolved. And if you want to push the American economy and our credit over the edge, just adopt the ideas that come out of the Democrat side of the aisle or out of the Harry Reid majority in the Senate--the ideas that we should extend the debt ceiling without restraint; whatever the President asks for, give it to him; let him borrow and spend money--and somehow or another, the magic of Obamanomics is going to create this huge economic chain letter of spending. There's always another sucker in a chain letter, isn't there? The President believes that. He believes there's always another sucker in a chain letter. And so he wants to borrow and borrow and borrow and spend and spend and spend and take something like FDR's New Deal to the infinite power and apply it to today's economy, and somehow the magic of the consumer-driven economy will save us from our lack of discipline, and the economy will start to grow again. I'll submit, Madam Speaker, another viewpoint on this. I think this. I think that last summer was not ``recovery summer'' as it was declared to be by the President of the United States. Nobody is saying this summer is ``recovery summer'' with 9.2 percent unemployment. I would submit instead that we have to recover from Obamanomics before we actually will be in recovery. We may have already recovered from the downward spiral of the recession that was the financial crisis that came to us in the fall of 2008. We may have already recovered from that, but we've not recovered from Obamanomics. We've not recovered from the economic stimulus plan. We've not recovered from the $3 trillion in unnecessary spending. We have interest. We have to service this debt. I think there are a good number of Americans by now that have lived through this, and on the other side of this recession that we've been in, they will be learning this again, this thing that I know from experience, and it's this: If you are too highly leveraged, another loan--borrowing more money with more interest to pay and more principal to pay--doesn't sometimes help you. Sometimes when you're too highly leveraged, you just simply have to go broke and declare that you're insolvent, and now maybe you get a chance to start again. But businesses have been beaten down, beaten down, beaten down, and along comes a natural disaster, like, for example--to inject it into this Congressional Record--the natural disaster of the Missouri River floods of 2011 that go on right now. We have victims that are underwater now and that are so far behind that a disaster loan at low interest rates over a long term doesn't help them because they won't be able to service their loan. They won't have the cash flow to do it. They will just have another interest payment; they will just have another principal payment, and it weighs them down to the point where they can't recover. This Federal Government could find itself in the same position. The Federal Government has to pay the interest; the Federal Government has to pay the principal. Who's going to pay that? The American people. It has to come out of the profits of the private sector in order for that to happen. And when we look at the growth in government spending and government spending-created jobs when it's created from borrowed money, it's got to come from somewhere. Where does it come from? It comes from the private sector. What does the private sector produce that can be tapped and taxed by, let's say, Tim Geithner, the IRS? Well, first of all, the Federal Government taxes all productivity in America. Every single thing that's productive the Federal Government has figured out how to tax. If you punch a time clock in the morning--let's say Monday morning, 8 o'clock, Americans by the millions step up and punch that time clock. From that instant forward, Uncle Sam has his hand out. It just comes out automatically. He hears the time clock, and his hand goes out. It's like a Pavlovian reflex that comes from Uncle Sam. There's a mystical little image of Uncle Sam there beside that time clock, and when he hears that noise, it's like Pavlov's dog. When he heard the bell ring, he salivated because he got fed when the bell rang. And when the time clock kicks in, Uncle Sam's hand goes out. And all the money that you earn from that moment forward until he gets his fill goes into Uncle Sam's hand for that day. And some time-- oh, maybe, if you're lucky, before noon--he gets enough of it that he can put his hand in his pocket and walk away for the day. Uncle Sam has taxed--he has punished, actually--your productivity because there is a disincentive to produce if the government is going to take your production from you and put it in its pocket. Now, we don't mind sharing some of this. I mean, we go to church and provide our donations there, and Americans are very generous people when it comes to charity. There is no one more generous than Americans when it comes to that. But it is discouraging to have the Federal Government take the first dollar from the first hour and every dollar from every hour until they get all that they want. But that's what happens. But out of that, out of that first lien on all productivity--and by the way, Madam Speaker, it's not just those people who punch the time clock; it's those people that work on commission, too. If your commission check is, say, 10 percent of what you sell, Uncle Sam is going to get his out of that before you get your commission. You all know that. If you have earnings, savings or investment, Uncle Sam is going to get his tax out of that, too. It is a punishment for productivity. The Federal Government taxes all productivity in America, and they tax it first. They have the first lien on all earnings, savings and investment in America. And then out of that--and by the way, that private sector that I'm talking about produces goods and services that have a marketable value here in this country and abroad. That's our export market. That's what has value. And the rest of all of this is just what supports it and what runs off of taxes on it, but you have to increase the productivity of your goods and services that have a marketable value domestically and abroad if you're going to recover from this economy. The private sector in America has to produce those goods and services in a volume and in a competitive way adequate to recover now from Obamanomics, to recover from the more than $3 trillion in irresponsible spending. And it has to have enough confidence that the government is not going to step in and punish that productivity and tax that productivity by increasing taxes on it or putting that heavy burden of regulation on it, and someone put out a number here a couple of weeks ago that the annual burden of regulation is something like $1.7 trillion a year in America. I can tell you, Madam Speaker, what it was like for me when I started a business up in 1975. I didn't have any money, I didn't have any capital, but I thought I knew how to do something that had a marketable value, and I had enough confidence to step up and do that; but my fear was, not that I couldn't do the work or that I couldn't market, sell my skills or that I couldn't manage the books or fix the equipment or get it moved to the location or do the job, do all the things that were part of the function of the business that I started. My fear was that the government would come in and punish me in a way that I didn't expect, that the government would come in and maybe do an IRS audit at a time that--we all feared the IRS then. I think we do now. That happened. It happened over and over again. It looked like the IRS wanted to haunt me there for a while. And to this day, I don't think that I did anything other than comply with all of those laws. I was punished anyway. Another fear I had was: What about government regulation? How could I possibly know which government regulator would come swooping in on me and shut my business down and punish me with penalties that I couldn't anticipate? Fortunately, I was never really at that point where the regulators came in and shut me down in that fashion, but many businesses have been. The weight of this regulation--if that's the number, $1.7 trillion a year--is a tremendous amount of American capital that is consumed in trying to comply with regulators. I would pose this question, Madam Speaker: Out of the millions of businesses that there are, let's just say, does anyone know of a single business in America that has ever uttered a statement or put up on their Web site or printed a business card that would say words to the effect of: ``We are in compliance with all government regulations''? Can anybody think of a single business that has made such a statement or taken such a stand? I'd say not. Now, I ask that question because it is a good question that calls us to examine why it is that no business claims that they're complying with all government regulations. The reason is because it's impossible, Madam Speaker. Years ago, I had a task of doing seminars in five different States at State conventions. And one of the things that I began to do was ask my colleagues who were in similar business--and these were self-employed people. Most of them started the businesses themselves. Sometimes they were second- and third-generation businesses as King Construction is today, a second-generation business. But I would ask the question, How many agencies regulate our trade, Earth-moving business? How many agencies regulate our trade? And so they would say, well, the EPA does and the DNR does and the IRS does and the DOT does and the tax man does. And as we began writing that down on a--it was a chalkboard in those days--we came to this conclusion that we were directly regulated by 43 different agencies. So I would begin to ask the question--in a closed room, no press--are you in compliance with these EPA regulations? And then we would have a long discussion about how hard it was. And they were never comfortable, even back then in the eighties, that they were in compliance with the EPA regulations, because they could always be read in a different way by the next generation of environmental extremists that would get a job. Where would you go? What if you're genetically born to be an environmental extremist? Where would you look for a job? The EPA. And wouldn't you think that you had a cause that was as worthy as the cause of your father or your mother, who advanced the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act and a number of the other environmental legislation that passed through here without a lot of restraint in the seventies, and had some justification then, and did clean up our waters and our sewers and our landfills and continue to do so to this day? They had a cause. They were on a crusade of environmental clean-up back in the seventies, and now their children have jobs working for the EPA, and they have a belief and a conviction and a crusade that is as powerful to them as it was to their parents or their successors, the earlier generation. But we've cleaned up the environment a lot since the seventies. Most people now enjoy clean water and good sanitary sewer systems and a pretty good system of handling the waste that comes out of society. But the people that are involved as regulators don't see it that way because they have a cause, and now they think they need to trudge forward on a cause. They will never be satisfied because that's what they do. So regulations are never going to be all complied with; they keep changing the rules as you go forward. Now they want to regulate anybody that has a 1,000-gallon fuel tank, that it has to have a storage levee or dike built around it or some type of a structural containment for that, as if there's going to be a spill in every location and it can't be cleaned up. Well, we know they can be cleaned up. We don't have a problem, but they have a solution for us regardless. That's just the EPA. And we can go on down the line. Is anybody in compliance with every IRS opinion? The old story goes this way. If you want an argument, just ask two lawyers their opinion. Well, if you want an argument, just ask two representatives of the IRS their opinion and you will get two different opinions, almost as a rule. Anything that's halfway contentious, you'll get two different opinions, which means no one can be confident they are in compliance with the IRS rules because the rules aren't clear enough. Even the people who enforce them can't agree what they are. We can go on down the line. In my State, the Department of Natural Resources, they do enforce the EPA rules. There are conflicting opinions there, and the conflicting opinions go on and on and on. But, Madam Speaker, it's not just 43 agencies. Those are the 43 that we identified that regulated my trade back in the 1980s. Now there's a Web site called Constitution Daily that counted these all up a couple of years ago, and they came up with 682 different agencies. Now, I'll admit, these are departments and divisions of agencies, but 682 entities that regulate in America--682. No one person could memorize them all. It's impossible to know all of the regulations that they have written. We have ObamaCare now coming at us, grinding up and consuming American liberty. And what do we get out of that? 2,600 pages of legislation, and the regulations at this point have reached over 8,700 pages of regulations just on ObamaCare. And we saw here the other day that the CEO of Home Depot said he believes that ObamaCare, itself, will generate over 150,000 pages of regulation. Now, it makes it real clear, even if you are a huge, huge corporation, you cannot analyze all of this and be sure that you are in compliance with regulations. So what do businesses do? One is they don't start up because of fear of all of this. Who in their right mind would start up a business right now that employed 51 people, for starters? They would be under the requirement to establish the health insurance plan that the government would approve for every one of their employees. So instead, they sit on their capital and they don't invest, and part of it is the tax burden. Another thing we know is if this Congress doesn't act between now and the end of 2012, we will see a huge tax increase. That was part of the negotiations last fall that bridged us over until we get past another Presidential election. So we have a huge tax increase ahead of us when the Bush brackets expire, and it triggers back in all of those brackets--all of that going on--while there is $23.6 billion that is automatically appropriated, that $23.6 billion of the $105.5 billion that is automatically appropriated, and I say deceptively appropriated in ObamaCare, itself. So we have ObamaCare regulations going in place. The roots of ObamaCare are going down. The American people are starting to think that we don't have the determination here in this House to repeal ObamaCare. I come here, Madam Speaker, to remind you and anybody that might be listening to this deliberation here on the floor of the House that this House has passed the repeal of ObamaCare. Every Republican voted to repeal ObamaCare. We sent it over to the Senate. The Senate also held a vote, and every Republican in the Senate voted to repeal ObamaCare. However, they didn't pass the repeal in the Senate, and so the repeal failed. Well, that had something to do with the President, who has a lot of belief in his signature piece of legislation. His future and his destiny are wrapped up in ObamaCare. However, we know that the American people have said that they want all of ObamaCare ripped out by the roots. They want it gone, lock, stock, and barrel, with not one shred, not one DNA particle of ObamaCare left behind. The American people understand that ObamaCare is a malignant tumor that is metastasizing and consuming the liberty of the American people, and it must be repealed. This House is resolute in their repealing of ObamaCare. We have also passed out of this House with a significant majority the legislation that cuts off all funding that would be used to enforce or implement ObamaCare. We did that as a part of the CR that came out of here that finally the President signed. They stripped the funding out of it and voted it out in the Senate at the direction of Harry Reid. So, Madam Speaker, this House is resolute. The American people are resolute. And I will make this prediction that I think needs to be understood, and that is this: If President Obama is reelected in 2012, that will guarantee that all of ObamaCare will be implemented and enforced. That operation of its implementation will be completed by 2014. That's kind of the schedule that it's on now. If the President is reelected, we get ObamaCare as the law of the land in perpetuity. If he is not and we elect another President, a different President, that will be on the foundation that we will repeal ObamaCare under the signature of the next President of the United States. I see that the Speaker of the House has arrived on the floor, and I'd be happy to yield to whatever cause that might be.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am very happy that the Speaker arrived on the floor to make that point. The point is this: We have passed Cut, Cap, and Balance. We have done our job. Now the challenge is for the United States Senate and the President of the United States to do their job. I would prefer they just accept the model that has been messaged down that hallway over to the Senate, and I'd prefer that the President would endorse that and step up in the next few minutes and say let's get this done. This can be done in a very short period of time. All we have to do is agree. Instead, the President and the Democrats in the majority in the Senate seem to want to insist upon tax increases being part of any package that might come through. Well, this goose that lays the golden egg is the free enterprise private sector goose. This goose has to live off of some profits, and they have to have profit in order to have jobs. I would add to the Speaker's statement the question about it has been about jobs. We've done our job. This is about jobs. But I think we fail to remind the American people that wages are what pay for jobs. Nobody is going to say, I have a job, but it doesn't pay. The money has to come from somewhere. Where does it come from? That needs to be stated and restated that the money for wages that pays for jobs has to come out of profit. Nobody can operate at a loss, so companies have to make some money. If they don't have an opportunity to do so because of the burden of taxes or because of the burden of regulation or the burden of the indecision in not knowing what the government is going to do next, which keeps a lot of that capital on the sidelines, they are not going to expand or do new hires. In fact, they're not going to provide wages and benefit packages of increases unless they have profit. So I'm one of those people that thinks I want businesses to make money. I want them to make money, and I want them to expand the jobs, and I want them to invest the money with confidence they can make more. If it goes to their head too far and they become too vertically integrated or too monopolistic, then it's up to the entrepreneurs out there to take a look and say, I think I can gather the capital together and compete against them and provide a good or a service that has a better value--and make money doing it. And in doing so, that profit turns into jobs. I am one who has met payroll for over 1,440 consecutive weeks. I made it every week on time. There were times that we didn't do very well in our household because I paid me last. I paid the employees first because they're the frontline troops. I paid the interest at the bank second because I had to have the capital to operate. You set those priorities when you go through those things. But jobs come from profit. And let's have a scenario that allows businesses to invest and to have confidence in the future. And Cut, Cap, and Balance does lay out the right scenario. I know that Speaker Boehner has been concerned about hitting this August 2 deadline that I think is not as hard a deadline as Tim Geithner believes it is. I think the Secretary of the Treasury is carrying water for the President of the United States and putting statements out there. I think the President of the United States is willfully scaring seniors. I think he's doing so when he says that he can't guarantee that military pensions or Social Security would be paid on time. Mr. Speaker, yes, they can. The only person on the planet that can guarantee they would be paid on time is the President of the United States. So you couldn't be any more wrong than when he says he can't guarantee it. Yes, he can. Does he know this truth? Can he not understand his job? He seems to exert his power where it doesn't exist. Doesn't he know that he can exert his power where it does exist? I'll just tell this anecdote that was part of a political commercial, and I'll let people draw their own conclusions on this. Back in 1996, when Bill Clinton was up for reelection, there was a commercial that was run, and it was the face and voice of--a lot of us think of him as Moses since he passed away--Charlton Heston. He looked into the camera, and he was speaking presumably to President Clinton when he said, Mr. President, when you say something that's wrong and you don't know that it's wrong, that's a mistake. But when you say something that's wrong and you know that it's wrong, that's a lie. That was what Charlton Heston said back in 1996. I reflect upon those words today, and I make this point that I know the truth. The American people need to know the truth. And that truth is the President of the United States can set the priorities on how to spend the $200 billion a month on average that comes in in revenue stream. All he has to do is step outside the Oval Office, step up to the microphones in the East Room or outside in this nice, beautiful, warm summertime we have in Washington, D.C., and say, I'm going to set those priorities. If we can't make a deal with Speaker Boehner, who was just here on the floor, and with Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell and all the folks that have to vote in the Senate--and by the way, the people that have to vote here in the House--if we can't make a deal, here's what I'd do. The President could do this in the next minute. I'm going to make sure our troops get paid first--on time every time. He can say that. He can say, And right behind that $11 billion a month comes $20 billion a month out of the funding stream we have. Whether we borrow or not, I'm going to guarantee that we service our debt, $20 billion. And then, I want to make sure to take care of the national security issues. Those things will change, but I'll work those priorities. Right behind that we'll pay Social Security, and right behind that we'll pay Medicare. If the President stood up and said that, we would have confidence that he isn't going to be in the business of scaring seniors or putting doubt into the minds of our military while they are dodging bullets in places like Afghanistan. We would have confidence. But instead, he says he can't guarantee. Mr. Speaker, we know he can. We know he can guarantee. We should push that on him out of this House to let him know where we stand so the American people understand there is a moral standard here. One is: Tell the truth. The second moral standard is: Pay our military. The third moral standard is: Guarantee the full faith and credit of the United States Government. I've laid out the rest of these priorities, Mr. Speaker. Cut, Cap, and Balance is an important position to stand on. This leverage that's here now must be used or we shirk our responsibility. Had the leverage been stronger back in 1995, that extra vote in the Senate that I spoke about some minutes ago would have been there, I believe. I believe the balanced budget amendment would have been sent to the States, and I believe the States would have ratified it. If that had been part of the Constitution the day I came here in January of 2003, I wouldn't have had to walk around on this floor and go find the chairman of the Budget Committee and say, Where's our balanced budget? And I wouldn't have gotten the answer back that I did get that day, We can't balance the budget. It's too hard. Well, if it was too hard in January of 2003, how hard is it now? It is a lot harder. Yes, we can balance the budget. The States do that. The question becomes: When we send a balanced budget amendment to the States, do they ratify it? A lot of them would right away. Some of them would hold a special session to ratify a balanced budget to send that message as quickly as possible. But then you get out there to some of those States that have decided that they want to do irresponsible spending. California and Illinois come to mind. A lot of States went to austerity. They decided, We're going to borrow money, and we're going to ask the Federal Government to bail us out. In those States, if they're needed for ratification, there will have to be a changing of the political guard within their State legislatures. That means constitutional conservatives will step up, step out of their normal walk of life, advance themselves as candidates to run for State legislatures on the agenda of: I will go there, and I will push to ratify a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget. Those candidates that stand on that position will be elected in significant numbers in the States where they're needed. And over a period of time we have a chance that the State legislatures would ratify--three- quarters of them--a balanced budget amendment. If that happens, it would be a wonderful gift for our posterity. It would be one of the best things that we could do in a generation, Mr. Speaker. And I urge that the American people weigh in on this and demand that the Senate and the President embrace Cut, Cap, and Balance. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for yielding, and I rise in support of the gentleman's amendment. And the reason for it is this: As I watched the structure of the OCE be set up--and I'd say to the gentleman, for over 200 years we've had the Ethics Committee to take care of this business. If we want to amend the rules of the House, let's go back to what the rules of the House are. But the OCE has crossed the line over and over again. And I would make this point: that they have gone on witch hunts. They have taken pieces of information that came from political opposition on either side and embellished that into things. And they have violated Roman law, English common law, and the decency of the House by this: Classified confidential information used against Members of Congress who don't have an opportunity to face their accuser, whose reputations have been damaged by sometimes--I'll just say certainly leaks to the press, sometimes, I suspect, willful leaks to the press. We need to go back to the Ethics Committee dealing with this business as it has been for over two centuries. This bill only passed by one vote a few years ago, and now we have a whole machinery out there whose sole purpose it is is to ask activist organizations on both sides to come in and send information in that would be used against Members of Congress. I support the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 229, I was delayed in leaving a Members meeting and was unable to reach the House floor to cast my vote before the vote was closed. Had I been present, I would have voted, ``no''.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 137 I was detained off the House floor during this 2 minute vote series and was unable to cast my vote before the vote was closed. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 138, I was detained off the House floor during this 2 minute vote series and was unable to cast my vote before the vote was closed. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''