Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, the trauma that has been visited upon many, many thousands of women in this country has brought about the beginnings of an entire organization, of a movement that has significant inertia and membership, and that is called Women Deserve Better. They come to this city continually and make the case that women deserve better. They deserve proper psychological and medical counsel. They deserve to be treated with respect. They deserve to understand what is going on, and they do not deserve to be told that they are going to feel relief or that it used to be but is no longer a traumatic experience.

Mr. KING of Iowa. But they may reflect the majority of the input that is going into the ears of the President as these decisions are being made, and they would reflect the position of the Office of Legal Counsel if Dawn Johnson is confirmed by the United States Senate. Now, we can expect that these ideas--this philosophy, this pejorative approach--is not balanced and that they do not bring a sense of legality or legal scholarship or constitutional analysis. They bring a bias into this discussion. These kinds of biased positions would be reflected throughout the President's positions because he is the one who has chosen her. It does reflect his positions to some degree.

Mr. KING of Iowa. And he argued in favor of it. The foundational principle that he argued for, Madam Speaker, was: A woman who sought to have an abortion had a right to a dead baby even if they botched the abortion and the baby survived. That is not a moral principle. That is not a legal principle. It is a myopic principle that is pulled up within the political lobbying that comes out of Planned Parenthood. It cannot be based on anything moral; it cannot be based in law. The philosophy of the President was also reflected during the campaign trail when he was speaking as if his daughters got pregnant--out of wedlock, I presume is what he was referring to. He said, ``I don't want my daughters punished with a baby.'' I listened to that tape tonight to be sure I heard it right. Those are the words of the President of the United States. He actually said, referring to his daughters, ``I don't want them punished with a baby.'' I don't believe a baby is punishment. I believe a baby is a gift and that the people whom I know who love their children as we do ours and our grandchildren as we do ours see them all as gifts, all as gifts from God.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady. I have one more shocking statement made by Dawn Johnson. Now, remember, this is the person who would be doing the constitutional analysis, making that decision and making the same thing as a legal opinion, a binding legal opinion to the entire executive branch to one degree or another. She would have the ear of the President. I think Dawn Johnson has a major flaw in her jurisprudence even though she is probably very well trained. This is what she says about the difference between the Bush administration and the Clinton administration on balance. She calls the Bush administration's claims to executive power ``extreme, extraordinary, implausible, illegitimate, appalling, and abusive.'' By comparison, as to the Clinton administration, ``I do not have any specific criticisms of the Clinton administration in these regards.'' Well, I think that tells us about the lack of partisanship that is there. Let's see. I was looking for a quote. I have it in front of me. I will take it back to the slavery issue where Dawn Johnson said, ``Statutes that can curtail a woman's abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the 13th amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the State's asserted interest.'' Slavery? I could read through that Constitution dozens of times over. I could pour through this case law over and over again. I invite the law school creative people. I don't know who would come up with the idea that the opportunity to be a mother was equivalent to slavery. For a couple of minutes, I will yield to the gentlelady.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady. And I would just remind the gentlelady, the Speaker, that we have, by letter, called upon the President to withdraw the name of Don Johnson to head up his Office of Legal Council for these reasons that we have argued here tonight, for a multitude of reasons that we didn't get to in the time that we had, for moral reasons, constitutional reasons, statutory reasons, reasons of logic, common sense, and understanding the nature of humanity; for reasons that we want to see this Nation continue to ascend in all of the levels of morality, and economics, and national defense, and culture, and vision so that this country can be moved to the next level of its destiny that's positive, one that we can be proud of, one that will carry us forward and make our children proud, one day that our children can come to the floor of the House of Representatives, somebody's children, the next generation, and say, We stand on the shoulders of our forefathers, our predecessors, the people who stood up for life, the people who stood up for what is right, the people who stood up for the Constitution and the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that are embodied in the Declaration of Independence; and the argument that these rights come from God, and they are not to be torn asunder by someone who is a liberal activist who would lay out this list of offenses against life and family itself, the very core and foundation of American life. That is what we have going on here. No good can come of it. This is the reminder that we have. This is the letter with 62 signatures that we sent to the President to withdraw the name of Don Johnson, appoint someone with a Constitutional understanding and a commitment to those principles and not an activist. We don't need an activist to head up this Office of Legal Council. We need someone who will understand the Constitution and the law and respect life. And with that, Madam Speaker, I would thank the gentlelady from Minnesota. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman. This good idea, I don't know that it has ever lost a debate and probably never will. I am looking around and I am seeing a lot of my colleagues from south of the Mason-Dixon line--I'm glad there is one from the north side of the Mason-Dixon line. But before we go there, I have never met a Republican from Tennessee I didn't like. And we have one on the floor with us tonight, Mr. Speaker, and that's Mr. Duncan from Tennessee. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) for coming down and standing up for the one big policy before this Congress that will give us back our freedom. He wouldn't be the only individual from Florida who would be on and be a supporter of the Fair Tax. As I cast my eyes around this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, I pick up another one. It would be the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) whom I would like to yield to and ask him if he can add to this cause that is led by Mr. Linder. As I came to this Congress, I looked around to find John Linder, because I knew that I wanted to tie up with him on this Fair Tax cause. I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica).

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Florida. I would just add that the Fair Tax does everything good that anybody else's tax proposal does that is good, it does them all, and it does them all better. And I do that right before I yield to the real American leader on the Fair Tax, an individual whom I met when I was a State legislator at an American Legislative Exchange Council meeting, and I heard from John Linder in that meeting. I had no idea at the time I was going to get to be his colleague, and I had no idea at the time I would be able to yield some time to our national leader on the Fair Tax, Mr. John Linder.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman for coming down and weighing in on this subject matter. I appreciate each of you as you weigh in. Hopefully we will be able to do this more often in the future weeks. I would like to then yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, again, it is a privilege to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, and also to have the chance to lay out here before you and our colleagues and ultimately the American people a point on the cause that we are involved in. We have dealt with crisis after crisis here on the floor of Congress, and I look back at many of the things that have taken place historically here, and I could list them long. But I will say that I think the most colossal mistake that this Congress ever made was passing the President's Stimulus Act. I think we have a budget hanging out today that may be a more colossal error. In fact, this budget that lays in front of us, President Obama's budget, spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much. And what it turns into is their party, that side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, has become the Party of Owe, the party of debt, the party of borrow. Not the party of ``no,'' the party of ``owe.'' They can't say ``no'' to anything; they just want to owe everything and everybody, even to the extent where this budget projects out by CBO to go to 200 percent deficit of GDP. Unheard of. The highest we have ever had in history was 1945, the end of World War II. Now, the President's budget takes this to that place. This takes us to, in the middle of this economic crisis where we have seen the equity and the stock market drop by a huge percentage, by one- third or 40 percent or, in many cases, even more. It takes us to this point where the President said to us that he believes that FDR's New Deal actually would have worked, it actually was working, and that he just simply lost his nerve and didn't spend enough money. Can you imagine? When he said that to us back in, I think, early February, I didn't think he was completely serious about having more commitment to spending a massively larger amount of money than FDR did in the New Deal. But history hasn't served us very well in the way they reported the New Deal, because a lot of young people for two generations have been taught that the New Deal was a good deal and it got us out of the Depression. Mr. Speaker, by the time the stock market got back to where it was in October of 1929, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been dead for 9 years; we had fought two wars, World War II and Korea, and finally in 1954 the markets got to where they were in 1929. There is no way that a logical objective historian can say that the Keynesian idea of borrowing and spending was a good deal when it was the New Deal. Nor is there any model in history that says that the new New Deal, the Obama Uber New New Deal, would be as good a deal as the bad old deal or a better deal than the old New Deal. This is the new New Deal, it is a bad deal, and Keynesian economics have failed wherever they have been tried. We need to turn ourselves around to real solutions, Mr. Speaker, real solutions for the American people, real solutions that will take America to the next level of its destiny, not the level down, not in the direction where we put our children and grandchildren and our great grandchildren in debt, not to where little babies born today are looking at thousands of dollars in debt, for every child that is born in America that they are going to have to work off. And we can either print a lot of money and devalue our currency, or we can suppress our economy for generations to come by all of this debt that is on us. And what can transform us as a country? What will ever grow our economy out of this anchor that we are now dragging? They are going to be pitching more anchors off the side of this great economic ship, of the greatest economic machinery that has ever been built in the United States of America, and our free market system. But in the bailout bill last fall, we pitched an anchor over the side, and we have been dragging that anchor. And then we have the stimulus plan that is another anchor we pitched over the side that we are dragging along bottom. And we have got the President's budget as another anchor that we are going to have to drag. And, now, they are talking about another stimulus plan. And burden after burden heaped on top of the American people, the free market system cannot sustain this kind of a load. We need to do something transformative. The transformative component that I am advocating here tonight is the one that Mr. Stearns of Florida advocated a little bit earlier, Mr. Speaker. And I'll take you this way on the fair tax, and that is this: I was audited one too many years in a row early on when I first started my construction business. The IRS showed up every year for a while, and they decided they were going to justify their existence by milking the little bit of blood that there was out of this fledging turnip of a company that King Construction was back in those years. And after they audited me one too many years in a row and I shut the doors on my business for 4 days so that I could be there and personally hand them the documents and justify the expenses, so that I could minimize the loss that was going to come to me from the IRS, because I had experience with that, and it cost me money, and I had to make a calculation on whether I was going to--I believe I did everything right. And I had to make a calculation on whether I was going to stand on principle and go and fight the IRS, in which case it was almost inevitable that I would lose my business in the process, because I couldn't afford to be away from my business and still keep it going. Or, borrow the money to pay the IRS a bill that I still don't believe that I owed in order to be able to keep operating. Well, that was one of the times when I didn't commit suicide on principle for the business, but I borrowed the money, paid the IRS. And then I went out and climbed in the seat of one of my bulldozers, and the smoke went up out of the exhaust stack, and it went out of my ears. And I began to think, what is the IRS doing in my office? Why are they impeding my production? Why are they making Monday morning quarterback decisions on me and my life when I am doing the best I can to comply with the laws that are passed by Congress? Well, I didn't know then that it was impossible for the new head of the IRS to figure out the Tax Code. So, Mr. Speaker, when Timothy Geithner can't figure it out even with Turbo Tax, and if Tom Daschle can't figure it out, I guess I shouldn't have felt so angry. But I am glad today that I was angry, because I did a little fast-forward in my mind and it was, I want rid of the IRS. I want to be rid of that intrusive organization that can come in and take away the sweat of my brow and diminish the creativity and the energy and the entrepreneurial spirit that it takes for any business to get started, especially a small business, and especially a highly capital-intensive business like mine was. I understand how this works. So I just leaped to this conclusion. The next day I decided, I want rid of the IRS, and I want to repeal the entire Federal Income Tax Code. Now, I didn't think about how you get that done. I am working on how you get that done today. But what I thought about was, how do you replace the revenue? Because the government has to have some money to run on, and the only way you replace the revenue is if you go to a national sales tax, and it starts with about three principles to know: Businesses transfer the cost of those taxes on to their customers. Yes, I wrote a check for those taxes, but I had to pass those costs on to my customers if I was going to stay in business. Corporations don't really pay taxes, businesses don't pay taxes. They are tax collectors for Uncle Sam. But here is the transformative principle No. 1: Ronald Reagan, quoted by Mr. Stearns of Florida, and I will give you a different quote from Ronald Reagan. He said, ``what you tax, you get less of. A tax is a punishment.'' But Uncle Sam, the Federal Government, has the first lien on all productivity in America. If you have earnings, savings or investments, Uncle Sam is there with his hand out. When you walk in and punch the time clock at 8 o'clock on Monday morning, Uncle Sam is right there figuratively with his hand out, and you work until he gets what he wants. Then he puts that in his pocket and figuratively goes away, and then you can start working for the rest of the interest. If it is earnings, savings or investment, if it is productivity, the Federal Government has the first lien on all productivity in America. So a taxation is a punishment. It is a disincentive. We have less production than we would have otherwise because we tax it first. We tax all earnings, savings and investment. If you go to a national sales tax, ``the Fair Tax,'' and tax the last stop on the retail for personal consumption of sales and service, that way you're actually levying the tax against the people that are the consumers that are using it. So we lift the tax off of all production in America, off of all earnings, savings and investments in America, then we cut those anchor chains that we are dragging. The cost of tax compliance is a cost to this economy, because we have lawyers that are tied up and business decision makers who have to, in every single business decision, do a tax calculation. We eliminate all of that and take that burden off and cut those anchor chains that we are dragging, and we turn those brains of H&R Block and tax lawyers, tax accountants and people that are strategizing business off of the advice that they get from their tax lawyers, and there are those people that have to make those decisions without the benefit of counsel, all of that mental energy, all of that time goes from, I'm going to just say this in a nice, gentle way since it is St. Patrick's Day, it goes from the parasitic sector of the economy to the productive sector of the economy. And the productive sector is the free market sector that produces goods and services that has value to people. That is the first transformative thing about the Fair Tax, of taking that burden off of the production, the taxation that is on production, and cuts all of those anchor chains, and it puts the taxation over on consumption where we can use a little bit of an incentive for savings and investment. And it lets people decide when to pay their taxes by when they make their purchases. I watched a little YouTube clip of the majority leader in the United States Senate, Harry Reid. It was just not quite a year ago. He said, ``we have a voluntary tax system.'' Well, it is hard to make that argument stick. No. We have a confiscatory tax system. It is not voluntary. You don't today get to pay taxes when you want to. If you fail to pay your taxes, the IRS will show up, and they will charge you interest and penalty for failure to pay your taxes. If you still don't pay your taxes, they will garnish your wages. They can come in and put a title on your vehicle, assign themselves a new title to the vehicle, sell that vehicle and credit your account. But the interest and the penalty probably is going on faster than you can sell a car to get that back out of there. There is nothing that the IRS can't touch if they are going to collect your taxes. And when they are done, if they think you have avoided taxes, they will encourage prosecution. We have people in federal penitentiaries today for tax avoidance. So it is a confiscatory, mandatory taxation today. I want to go to what Harry Reid calls a ``voluntary tax system.'' That is the Fair Tax. People volunteer to pay the tax when they make their purchases. There are other components to this, but I want to make one more point before I yield, and that is the other transformative point. The first transformative point is that what you tax, you get less of. The Fair Tax takes the tax off of all production in America. All earnings, savings and investment is not punished. You get to keep it. The other transformative component is this, and a lot of people have been credited with this statement. I will give the general one, Mr. Speaker, and then we will perhaps give credit all where it is due before this discussion is over. But there have been many of our Founders and statesmen that have referenced what happens to a country that claims to be a democracy, and I will call us a constitutional Republic, when more than half of the people figure out they can vote themselves benefits out of the public Treasury, on that day our democracy ceases to exist. The future of the Republic ceases to exist. Many of us think we have crossed that line already. And if we listen to the promises that were made in the last campaign that came from our now President, Mr. Speaker, about how everybody was going to get a tax cut, even those that weren't paying taxes were getting tax cuts, those are refundable tax credits. It is a transfer of wealth from the wealthy to the unwealthy, a transfer of wealth internally. When that happens, when the American people become dependent upon someone else for their livelihood, when they lose their sense of self-responsibility, that sense of self-sustainability, when they stop teaching their children, Mr. Speaker, that they cannot be a burden on this society, that they must be a contributor to this society, then our freedom is diminished, and perhaps our constitutional Republic ceases to exist. Mr. Speaker, I will submit this. There is a way we can pass this Fair Tax, and if we do so, no one any longer pays any federal income tax. Everybody gets roughly 56 percent more in their paycheck. And how do we transform this sense of responsibility? In this way, in billions of transactions at a time. When little Michael Dicks stepped up to the counter when he was 8 years old, he said, ``I want to buy this.'' He put a box of Skittles on the counter. It was 89 cents. He counted out his 89 cents. The lady at the checkout register said, ``that will be fine. I need 96 cents.'' And he looked at his father and said, ``Dad, I've only got 89 cents. The price says 89 cents and the lady at the register says you have to pay the sales tax for the Governor.'' He looked at his father with a pained look in his eyes. He said, ``Dad, I have to pay tax on Skittles?'' ``Yes, you have to pay tax on Skittles, Son.'' Think what that does. If every little child growing up in America, when they buy their Skittles or their Barbie doll clothes or their baseball cards, or whatever they spend their money on, if they have to put a couple of dimes up on the counter for Uncle Sam, they will be reminded at every transaction, millions of young people, billions of transactions, how expensive our Federal Government is. When that happens, it will slowly transform America, the core of America, the core of American responsibility. The two things transformational are we stop punishing production and we raise generations of fiscally responsible, independent-minded Americans. Those are the two transformational principles. I would like to go to whichever one of my colleagues is the most urgently here. So, I would be happy to yield then to the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Nathan Deal. Mr. DEAL from Georgia. I want to thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to join him in talking about the Fair Tax issue and to thank my colleague, John Linder, who is here on the floor, who is the primary sponsor of this legislation in the House. We all talk about change. We all talk about reform. I can't think of a single bill that is before this House, in committee at least, that would have the transformational effect of passing a Fair Tax. As the name implies, it is a matter of fairness. It would do many things, and you're going to hear, in addition to Mr. King who has already addressed the topic, you're going to hear others today talk about some of the benefits that would be derived from this kind of legislation. First of all, it gives people a choice, a choice over how they spend their money. We know that our country is in a deficit in terms of savings. This approach to taxation would say to every American, if you choose to save, then you're going to be able to do so, and the government is not going to tax you as a result of making that choice. If you choose to spend and to consume, then that is the basis on which your taxation will be founded. Those are the kinds of things that give people more of an involvement and a control over their own financial destiny. Of course, as has been referred to, it does much to restore our balance in the international trading community. Coming from a part of the country in the Southeast which was the old textile belt, we have seen those jobs virtually disappear. It happened for a variety of reasons. But one of the things that made it at a great disadvantage was the tax structure that our country has in place. If we are going to compete in the international marketplace, then a system that does not add on a cost at every stage of the production cycle in the form of taxation is the best way to begin to make us competitive. I think it will be a step toward having those industries, many of whom have left for a variety of reasons, but taxation being one of them, to see them return back to our shores and to restore those job opportunities back to the American people. For this and many other reasons, I support the Fair Tax. I urge those committees in this House who have jurisdiction over that issue to discharge it from their committee and give this House the opportunity for the elected representatives to express the will of their constituents on this very critical and important reform, the Fair Tax. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia and all the participants.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for coming down and joining in this discussion, Mr. Speaker, and I am hopeful that we will have many more like this. I want to reiterate a point that I made at the conclusion of Mr. Linder's delivery, and that is, as he went down through the list of all the taxes that get eliminated, corporate and personal income tax and payroll tax and inheritance tax and the list goes on and on and on, the Fair Tax provides an incentive for earnings, savings, and investment. Here's my point, and I want to make this clear and I will stand on it and I'll defend it and I have made this statement across the country, and it is this: The Fair Tax does everything good that anybody's tax proposal does that is good for our economy and the American people. It does all of them and it does them all better. Now, that sounds like a real big position to take, and I'm taking it because I'm solid in that, and I'm happy to debate that. I'd be happy to debate anybody from the other side of the aisle that can come over here and tell me that any part of that's wrong and then let's have that discussion. When you take the punishment off of people who are producing, earning, saving, and investing, and you let them earn, save, and invest all they want to produce, and then you provide that incentive for that savings and investment on the other side, as John Linder said, the Fair Tax eliminates the taxes on capital and labor. Now, Adam Smith said the sum total of the cost of anything that you produce or buy is the cost of the capital plus the cost of the labor. But we are taxing all capital and labor in America under the Federal income tax along with the whole array of other Federal taxes that we have. We have to be able to give that all back and let people earn, save, and invest all they want to earn, save, and invest. And I just urge that this Congress take a look at this Fair Tax. And let's get some hearings. Let's get something moving through the Ways and Means Committee. Let's continue to make this point. Also, I will say this: I came to this conclusion in 1980. That's 29 years ago. I have looked at this Rubik's Cube of the Fair Tax every way I can possibly turn it. I turn it one way and another way. The colors show a little bit differently, but every time I turn it again, it looks better and better and better. The more I know about it, the better I like it. And I don't know if anybody has studied it as long as I have, 29 years, before there was anybody that had any science, any background on this. I took this to the people and economists and the tax lawyers that I knew. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia. I know that this country is going to call upon him many times as we move forward in this debate. I want to make the point that I have been challenged in the past, and people will say, well, I know that the Fair Tax is a great idea, I'm convinced that you're right on the economics of it--in fact, thinking economists won't disagree; but the rebuttal that I get is, well, you can't get it passed. My answer to that is, if it gets passed under two different scenarios. One is, if we elect a President who has run on it and receives a mandate from the American people for the Fair Tax. And the other one is, when you are in a downward economic spiral and Americans are actively looking for solutions, this is it. I will yield back to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia, my good, longtime friend from the first day I arrived in this Congress. I look forward to more of these opportunities in this fashion. To conserve our time, I will happily and quickly yield to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Broun.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for coming to the floor and engaging in this discussion. Mr. Speaker, as we move through this and we get down to the last 10 minutes available in this hour, I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Illinois. I appreciate the recognition. I wanted to come down here and thank John Shimkus for leading on energy all summer long with an intense effort, and for standing up for the fuel that means so much to the parts of this country, this massive supply of coal that we have, as a big piece of the entire picture of energy that we need to do. What happens if they put this cap-and-tax on us? We are going to need more and more articulate voices to defend our values and to defend our economy. And the very idea that we can put a tax on energy is a tax on every consumer, it is a tax on our economy, it shrinks the American economy, and it lets the rest of the world out-compete us. And I just appreciate a minute to say so. I thank you. And congratulations to the gentleman from Illinois. I yield back.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman. When you describe this, this cap and trade tax that is on everything, I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that we illuminate this for the American people. Think if America were a continent unto itself, what if we were a planet unto ourselves; would we manage ourselves this way? And I would say no. Because we are wasting all kinds of resources; we are wasting labor, we are wasting capital--we're not even using sound science--if we were a planet unto ourselves. But we have to compete with the rest of the planet. So this cap and trade proposal ties our hands, ties our legs. And we are like Gulliver tied up by the Lilliputians with the cap and trade legislation that looks like it's coming down the pike which will immobilize America's economy while India's and China's are growing. And not only are they growing, but they're emitting CO2 gas and greenhouse gases at an accelerating rate. So our little piece of this pie that we could possibly effect is so minimal a century from now that it really can't be measured by science. Sound science doesn't support this. Sound economics doesn't support this. And there are many better solutions, even if there was a prediction that could be made accurately.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would. I think I like where you're going.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I appreciate the judgment of the good judge from east Texas. I was listening to this dialogue, and I thought I would come over here and engage in it. And I appreciate you recognizing me and yielding. The point that the gentleman from Texas makes that--I'll say it succinctly--corporations don't pay taxes, corporations collect taxes that are imposed upon their bookkeeping system and aggregate the money from people and customers and flow that money to the Federal Government into the Treasury. That's how the corporations function, they are tax collectors for the government. But it is always the people that have to pay the taxes, it is always the customers that have to pay the taxes. And by the way, neither do LLCs pay taxes, neither do sole proprietorships, or partnerships, or any other business configuration that has customers out there pay taxes. They have to transfer those to their customers. They have to add it in and calculate it in. I made payroll out for 28 years. I transferred a lot of those costs onto my customers. I had to. And if you didn't do that, in the first place you couldn't cash flow a business; you would never get it started in the first place. You would never get it to expand. You've got to have capital. By the way, Adam Smith made this real clear. This is something I like to tell the people that will not respond to this charge. There are two components to the cost of everything we buy, it is the cost of capital and the cost of labor. And the capital cost is included in everything that we purchase. And so if we are going to have policy in this legislature that raises the cost of capital--which takes place easily when you see the tax increase--if you increase taxes on businesses that are doing business, that are investing, that are holding mortgage-backed securities, there is a capital cost to that. If you raise the cost of capital, then you are putting more burden on the economy. And the other component is labor. Adam Smith wrote it this way: ``The price of gold plummeted in Europe as the Spanish galleons began arriving on the continent from the new world.'' Adam Smith didn't say that because they stole the gold from the Incas and the Aztecs. He described it as they lowered the cost of labor for getting that gold out of the ground and getting it into the marketplace. And that's how this economy works. But corporations have been demonized by the people on the left side of the aisle because they don't understand that simple equation; the cost of capital and the cost of labor is the sum total of all of the things that we buy, and that the businesses in the country have been enlisted, by law, to collect those taxes from people, impose them on people. And what do we do? We impose the acrimony on top of the businesses that are the tax collectors for the government. I'm with Louie Gohmert; let's take the tax off of all these corporations. Let's take all the tax off of productivity, actually.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would add to this. Again, take it back to a big picture, and that is this is about freedom. It's about preserving the freedom we have, defending the freedom we have, and, in fact, we should be expanding the freedom that we have. Our freedom has diminished generation by generation since the founders established this country. When you move to the left, it always includes an increase in taxes and an increase in government interference in every aspect of our lives, from raising our families to micro-managing energy to sticking their fingers into education, every aspect of our lives. So when you expand the role of government, you expand also the taxation and you diminish the freedom. And whether you do it insidiously by saying I'm going to take your child now at age 3 or 2 or 1 as opposed to 5 or 6, as it used to be, or whether you do it in a blatant way by saying we're going to impose this Draconian regime on everybody in America and we're going to confiscate your income, the point that's been made by this administration and this majority, not in so quite many words is this: You're not really entitled to the money you earn, in their view, but the people that claim they have a need are entitled to the money that you earn. That's the philosophical divide that's been turned. When you go to the left, you give up freedom and it's diminished. When you move policy to the right, you expand freed and it's enhanced. We need to be about expanding everyone's freedom in this country. That's the foundation of America, and that's where our vitality comes from. That's why we are the unchallenged greatest Nation in the world, because our vitality comes from our freedoms. Acts that diminish it diminish our vitality and handicap us. I thank the gentleman from Texas for his indulgence.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding. This is an issue that will bring me to this floor every opportunity I get. I believe I would be the one Member of this Congress who has lived under the oppressive burden of the Davis-Bacon Act the longest and been impacted by it the most. There is a second-generation King Construction that is impacted by this now, not of my interest. The gentleman from Minnesota knows how much respect I have for him. I appreciate him bringing up Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover did sign this Davis-Bacon Act bill. It was about the same time that he was initiating the beginnings of the old New Deal. And I don't agree with either one of those decisions of Herbert Hoover, but I will defend his legacy when he's right. This time, Herbert Hoover was wrong, and here is the reason: that we should, as consenting adults, have a protected right to enter into an agreement of our choice. If two consenting adults sit down and decide-- if I want to work for my neighbor for $10 an hour, what business is it of this Congress to tell me and my neighbor that I can't do that job for $10 an hour? Under the 10th amendment, the Federalism concept, the powers that belong to the States stay with the States. This reaches across into the Constitution and it says to the States, this revolving fund, even if it's your own money, you can't make those decisions any longer at the State level, you have to let the people in Congress make that decision--which I know they're going to go back and say, well, this is a prevailing wage. Well, no, it's a union scale. If it were a prevailing wage, you wouldn't need to have the Department of Labor looking in to keep all of these records. I have had them come and ask me what are we paying our people. Sometimes it's more than union scale, sometimes it's less than union scale; it depends on where the job is. But if you report the prevailing wage as a merit shop contractor--which I have spent nearly 30 years doing--you can bet that the union organizers will show up at your door. And so for that reason, smart merit shop contractors don't submit themselves to that kind of organization. They just don't report the prevailing wage, so it becomes de facto union scale. That is the reality of this. And my numbers are this--this is out of King Construction's books: The additional cost, when we go into a Davis-Bacon job, is between 8 and 35 percent. It depends on the region, and it depends on the amount of materials. This reaches down into this and tells the States, you're going to have to pay this for the remaining States that do not have many Davis-Bacon laws, like Florida, like Iowa. It imposes a Federal Davis-Bacon wage scale on all of us. I have not heard a rational argument that upholds the side of Davis- Bacon from proponents of it. I stand in support of this amendment. We cannot take away the 10th amendment rights of our States to do business as they see fit with their money. That is a violation of the Constitution, in my view. There has to be a rational argument. But I will add one more argument to this, and that is: Herbert Hoover may have signed the bill, but this is the last Jim Crow law that I know that's on the books, and that can't be defended.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida. The timing around this place being such as it is, I appreciate a chance to speak to the Jim Leach Resolution, the resolution that names the United States Courthouse at 131 East 4th Street in Davenport, Iowa, as the James A. Leach United States Courthouse. Jim Leach served in this Congress for over a quarter of a century and he had friends on both sides of the aisle. If you know Jim Leach, you know that he is an intellectual. He is an individual that his cerebrum, his cerebellum, and medulla oblongata were all connected and all functioning. And I say that because he has a significant ability to retain in his memory and manipulate the information. He also is a champion wrestler. So his athletic and intellectual capabilities that he demonstrated here, mostly his intellectual capabilities on the floor of this House. Although I have felt that temptation on the athletic from time to time, not Jim Leach. Jim Leach was a consummate statesman, someone who could work with Democrats and the Republicans, and is an individual who was the epitome of the balance between the two as he served here in Congress and today contributes to our overall broader society. So I am very pleased to rise in support of the resolution naming the Federal Courthouse in Davenport, Iowa, the James A. Leach Courthouse. And I am happy to call him a friend, a former colleague, and someone who has brought honor upon this institution every day of his service here in the United States House of Representatives. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota. And I really appreciate your bringing up the suspension of the capital gains tax. That's an issue that I have advocated for strongly. I have advocated for suspending it for 2 years. I like the idea of 3 years. I'm not going to quibble over the 3rd year. But there is so much capital that's out there on the sidelines today. There is at least, or there was, at least, before the market spun downward, $13 trillion in U.S. capital that's stranded overseas because it's faced with capital gains tax if it comes back into the U.S. marketplace. If we suspend the capital gains tax, theoretically all that money could come back into the U.S. market. It will find the smartest place for it to be invested. I don't think it will be $13 trillion. I think it could be $2 to $3 trillion, which is a tremendously large number. I want to also suspend capital gains tax on rescue capital that would pick up these toxic assets. That has shifted since then, since I introduced that legislation, but suspending capital gains tax does the job, and it freezes up the capital that sits along on the sidelines. And in our corporate income tax, the second highest in the industrial world, to scare our capital out of the United States and send it overseas and then try to legislate a way that we can chase it with the IRS taxman is the wrong way to go. There's a reason why that capital is going overseas. Because it's a smarter investment. Capital is always smart, and the death tax is just cruel. It is cruel. I have, and I think many Members have, received calls from constituents whose mother or father was lying in the hospital and they're making a decision whether to put them on life support or to take them off life support. And every time this subject is ginned up here in this Congress about whether and when the death tax will be repealed or, as people on the other side of the aisle advocate, whether it's going to be put back on again and there won't be any relief, there are decisions made that are just perverse, to put a family through having to make a decision on whether they're going to plug somebody in or unplug someone in an end-of-life decision. That's what government does. So for me, I would eliminate the IRS and the entire Federal Income Tax Code. I would take the tax off of productivity. It was Ronald Reagan that said that what you tax you get less of. But the Federal Government in its presumed wisdom has the first lien on all productivity in America. If you have earnings, savings, or investment, Uncle Sam is there with his hand out to take the cash and put it in his pocket before you get the share you're working for. If you go to work tomorrow morning and you punch in at eight o'clock, just kind of think of that little ding when you punch the timecard. Uncle Sam's goes out. ``I want mine,'' he says, in a nice subtle way until he gets it and he puts his hand in his pocket. If you're investing, if you're selling real estate, if you're collecting interest on a deposit in the bank, your earnings, your savings, your investment, stocks and dividends and shares, all of that that's converted to Uncle Sam, he's there getting his share out of productivity. But if we adopt the fair tax, the national sales tax, then the result of that is we take the tax off of production and we unleash the American production machine and everyone can be an entrepreneur, produce all they want to produce, earn all they want to earn, save all they want to save, invest all they want to invest, and then make the decision on when they want to pay taxes by when they do their purchases. Not a VAT tax, the last stop on the retail purchase, sales and service. It totally transforms the dynamic, and it gives America a 28 percent marketing advantage over products made in the United States versus products that are imported into the United States. That saves Detroit. It saves the UAW. It saves the National Association of Manufacturers. It puts them on the profit side and makes America again the industrial powerhouse for the world and improves our national security all at the same time. In fact, to wrap it up in a little nutshell here, everything good that anybody's tax proposal does is done by the fair tax. And everything that anybody's tax proposal does that's good is done by the fair tax. It does them all. It does them all better. It changes the dynamics of taxation. It unleashes the free market economy. But instead of that, we're here punishing producers. We're punishing the people that earn, save, and invest. We want to raise taxes on everybody in America. This 95 percent of Americans getting tax relief and taxing the top 2 percent or 5 percent under this idea of the President, Mr. Speaker, doesn't hold up. We've got the carbon tax at least that's imposed on this. That's a tax on everyone in America that uses anything that uses energy. And I would defy anyone to come up with anything we use that doesn't use energy. And the people who are at the lowest end of the economic scale are the ones that are paying the highest percentage of their income for energy. They'll pay the highest taxes as well. I yield to the gentlewoman.