Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received as part of the FY 2009 Omnibus. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Natural Resources Conservation Service, Conservation Operations Amount: $282,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Hungry Canyons Alliance Address of Requesting Entity: 712 S. Hwy. 6 & 59, Oakland, Iowa 51560 Description of Request: Funds are made available to counties to protect infrastructure and farmland from the erosive powers of stream degradation. For every $1 invested in Hungry Canyons Project streambed stabilization structures, more than $4.25 of property value and an average of 1.05 tons of sediment are protected. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Natural Resources Conservation Service, Watershed/Flood Prevention Operations Amount: $1,146,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Natural Resources Conservation Service of Iowa Address of Requesting Entity: 693 Federal Building, Des Moines, IA 50309 Description of Request: The funding would be used to continue the implementation of the Little Sioux Flood Prevention Project. This project continues to reduce flood damage, gully erosion damage, stream channel degradation, and improve water quality within the Little Sioux River Watershed of western Iowa. This will assist about 85 landowners and five communities that need assistance in installing soil and water conservation practices to slow water runoff and reduce erosion damage to agricultural land, public infrastructure including roads and bridges, and to reduce sediment and associated agricultural nutrients and pesticides being delivered to streams and rivers. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Natural Resources Conservation Service, Conservation Operations Amount: $288,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Iowa Soybean Association Address of Requesting Entity: 4554 114th St., Urbandale, IA 50322 Description of Request: Iowa Soybean Association's Certified Environmental Management Systems for Agriculture (CEMSA) program's overarching goal is to develop and disseminate a means for farmers to assess and improve their environmental performance, while improving agronomic and economic performance, using an adaptive management tool based on ISO 14001 and NRCS's 9-step planning process. This adaptive management system employs science-based applied evaluation tools to give each farmer baseline data, in the first year, then performance data in subsequent years giving them real feedback from their own operation on which to make management decisions regarding nutrients, soil, pests, energy uses and sources, wildlife habitat, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and other atmospheric resources he or she may prioritize. ISA staff train and oversee contracted Certified Crop Advisors who provide technical assistance to producers in developing and maintaining their CEMSA plan. Cost and profit data is also plugged into the plan to guide the producer in determining the economic sustainability of environmental performance. The public now demands from crop producers both increased production of food, fiber, fuel, and other biobased product feedstocks and increased, documented environmental performance to conserve soils, sequester carbon, improve water quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy efficiency and increase wildlife habitat. As independent business persons, farmers in the Upper Mississippi River (UMR) Basin and across the country need management systems to help them incorporate the best tools of science and business to measure and improve both agronomic and environmental performance while sustaining profitability. This program has developed and piloted the basic management system and the technical assistance model producers in Iowa, the UMR Basin, and other agricultural regions need to meet these 21st Century demands. Expanding the scale of CEMSA in FY09, integrating individual planning with watershed planning, linking performance reporting to NRCS's system, and establishing recognized certification have significant implications in transferability of CEMSA throughout the UMR Basin and nationally. CEMSA is one of the ISA programs recognized by the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council's study on the Mississippi River Water Quality and the Clean Water Act as exemplary of the performance-based, public-private partnership projects that should be expanded throughout the UMR Basin. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Natural Resources Conservation Service, Conservation Operations Amount: $134,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Iowa Soybean Association Address of Requesting Entity: 4554 114th Street, Urbandale, IA 50322 Description of Request: The Iowa Soybean Association's Watershed Management and Demonstration Program is a continuing project that links public and private resources and expertise to provide technical assistance to individual farmers, groups of farmers, and other stakeholders in Iowa watersheds for the purpose of improving agriculture's environmental performance and watershed health. The project supports expert staff to assist watershed organizations and groups of farmers in developing and maintaining adaptive management plans and in measuring and reporting performance in optimizing fertilizer use efficiency, remediating agricultural pollutants, decreasing soil erosion, building soil carbon, improving on-farm energy efficiency, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing wildlife habitat, and maintaining or increasing yield and profitability. Private-public partnerships among agencies, private industry, producers, environmental groups, all levels of government, water utilities, and the university are fundamental to the design of this project, and those functioning partnerships to achieve the above project objectives are a measure of the project's success. This project also enables farmers to engage in watershed leadership and planning, employing their expertise and motivating more effective environmental management practices. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Department of Justice, COPS Meth Amount: $500,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Sioux City Police Department Address of Requesting Entity: 601 Douglas St., Sioux City, IA 51101 Description of Request: National Meth Training Center--An informal poll of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs in the region conducted by the Sioux City Police Department, revealed that most rural communities had received little or no training in drug identification, investigative methods, intelligence gathering, search warrant preparation and execution or in the hazards of clandestine methamphetamine laboratories prior to the inception of the training center. The Sioux City Police Department National Training Center maintains a vision of providing the most current and relevant training in the area of narcotics law enforcement. The training center's mission is to support the overall effort to control and reduce methamphetamine production, trafficking and distribution on the local, regional and national level. The Sioux City Police Department is providing the leadership in developing training now and for the future. To that end the NTC strives to: Provide the most current and relevant training in all areas of narcotics law enforcement provided by the most highly skilled instructors available. Provide skills based training through the use of simulation and scenario based practicals. Provide a central clearinghouse for the organization, coordination, research and curriculum development targeted towards the continued education of those in the law enforcement profession. Provide current situational awareness regarding the connections between narcotics trafficking and terrorist activities. The NTC is in a unique position at this time to assist law enforcement professionals across the nation in their fight against illegal drugs. Officers and administrators from 40 states have attended training at our facility. Instructors and students who have attended training in Sioux City have also spread the word about the unique training opportunities available at the NTC. Students from as far away as Alaska, California, New York and Florida have attended training at the NTC. Officers have come from as far away as Oklahoma using their own vacation time just to attend the training provided by the training center because that same training would otherwise be unavailable to them. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Department of Justice, OJP--Byrne Discretionary Grants Amount: $600,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Heartland Family Services, Inc. Address of Requesting Entity: 515 East Broadway, Council Bluffs, IA 51503 Description of Request: Heartland Family Services Residential Methamphetamine Treatment in Southwest Iowa--The need for the Southwest Iowa Methamphetamine Treatment Program centers around the epidemic of methamphetamine use. One in three child protective investigations in the Council Bluffs area involves this drug. Some babies are born with methamphetamine in their system, and children are exposed to use of the drug in their home. Some children live in homes where methamphetamine is being manufactured. This project will be a collaborative effort between Heartland Family Services, the Iowa Department of Human Services, the courts, and other social service agencies. It is a clinically managed low-intensity residential service for substance abuse patients, using Heartland Family Service's established residential treatment and counseling facilities. The program offers women an interim residential treatment service, and at the same time allows them to continue parenting their children. Treatment is directed toward applying recovery skills, preventing relapse, promoting personal responsibility and reintegrating the patient into work, education and family life. Services include individual, group and family therapy. This level of care is a missing piece in the substance abuse treatment continuum of care in Southwest Iowa. Patients who complete residential programming ordinarily go directly home and receive outpatient treatment. To prevent relapse, many of these patients would benefit from a monitored interim treatment setting. Each patient has clinical oversight by a professional counselor who assesses the psychosocial history of a substance abuser to determine the most appropriate treatment plan. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Corps of Engineers, Section 206 Amount: $0--It is a named project Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Iowa Department of Natural Resources Address of Requesting Entity: 502 East Ninth Street, Des Moines, IA 50319 Description of Request: Little Storm Lake Aquatic 206 Restoration Project--This joint project between the local Storm Lake Improvement Group, the US Army COE and the IDNR has as an objective to improve the aquatic species habitat in the Storm Lake watershed and to restore the wetland function of Little Storm Lake. Any funding made available to this project will be used to continue design and construction of the Little Storm Lake Aquatic 206 Restoration Project critical to improve aquatic species habitat and restore wetland function. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Bureau of Reclamation, Water and Related Resources Amount: $27,000,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Lewis and Clark Regional Water System Address of Requesting Entity: 401 E 8th Street, Suite 306, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 Description of Request: When completed, Lewis & Clark Regional Water System will be a wholesale supplier of treated water to 20 cities and rural water systems in northwest Iowa, southeast South Dakota and southwest Minnesota (an area the size of Connecticut). Over 300,000 people in the tri-state region will benefit from the project. Iowa members include Hull, Rock Rapids, Sheldon, Sibley and Sioux Center. L&C will have an immense impact on the quality of life and economic development of the tri-state region. The project is a unique cooperative agreement among the federal government, three states and 20 local governments. This type of cooperation and consolidation, which in L&C's case involves 20 cities and rural water cities banding together to address common water needs, is a model of efficiency that the federal government is encouraging. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Environmental Protection Agency, STAG Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Project Amount: $150,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: The City of Spencer, Iowa Address of Requesting Entity: 418 2nd Ave. West, Spencer, Iowa 51301 Description of Request: To continue design and construction of the Combined Sewer Separation Projects critical to eliminate the overflow of sewage into the basements of City of Spencer citizens during major thunderstorms. The City of Spencer continues to dedicate significant funding toward separating storm and sanitary sewers over 100 years old, which serves one-third of City of Spencer residents. Since 1990, five projects have been completed towards this goal. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration--Health Facilities and Services Amount: $476,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Iowa Western Community College Address of Requesting Entity: 2700 College Road, Council Bluffs, IA 51502 Description of Request: Iowa Western Nursing Center of Excellence-- Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs will use these funds to increase the number of highly skilled nurses in the state of Iowa. Since 2003, 100% of Iowa Western Community College's graduates have passed the state nursing certification test on the first attempt, which is better than many of the state's, as well as the region's, four-year institutions. Because Iowa Western Community College currently graduates many of the state's top dental assistants, dental hygienists, practical nurses, registered nurses, surgical technologists, medical assistants and emergency medical technicians, enrollment could be greatly increased to meet demand if the college had the necessary equipment and expanded faculties. Therefore, Iowa Western Community College proposes a new Iowa Western Nursing Center of Excellence, with multiple laboratories and high-tech equipment on which to train thousands of future nurses within the next decade. The college, community and private donors have recently committed at least $10,000,000 to the Center's construction. The new laboratories and equipment will strongly enhance substantial job creation within Iowa, improve access to health care for Iowans and expand the creation of a scientifically qualified workforce in the medical and health services arena. By greatly enhancing the teaching environment, as well as the physical learning space and equipment, Iowa Western Community College will alleviate the region's nurse shortage and double the number of nurses it trains annually by 2012. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration--Health Facilities and Services Amount: $428,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Northwestern College Address of Requesting Entity: 101 7th St SW, Orange City, IA 51041 Description of Request: Northwestern College's Health and Healing Nursing Project is designed to meet the needs of its growing Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program; the staff educational needs of the Orange City Area Health System (OCAHS); and continued collaboration between OCAHS and Northwestern. Funding is requested for equipment for the nursing arts laboratory that is being built as part of the College's Health and Healing Nursing Project. Operating collaboratively with the Orange City Area Health System, the project will directly address the nation's impending nursing shortage by providing excellent new BSN nurses in a particularly rural area, while also providing for the ongoing educational and assessment needs of the hospital. Western Iowa will gain a critical opportunity to educate new nurses at an advanced level, as the need for advanced nursing education in rural western Iowa is well documented. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Transportation, Community, and System Preservation Amount: $570,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Iowa Department of Transportation Address of Requesting Entity: 800 Lincoln Way, Ames, IA 50010 Description of Request: Requested funding will be used to continue construction of four-lane US 20 in northwest Iowa from the county line of Sac and Calhoun counties in Iowa to Moville, Iowa. The Iowa Department of Transportation continues to dedicate significant funding toward completing the final 90 miles of this expansion project. Activity ranging from grading to environmental study and design is taking place on each of the 90 miles with 45.5 miles in the DOT's Five Year Plan in the construction phase. The funding will assist in this critical project to increase traveler safety, economic development and stem population loss in one of the state's most productive regions. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Transportation, Community, and System Preservation Amount: $237,500 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: City of Council Bluffs Address of Requesting Entity: 209 Pearl Street, Council Bluffs, IA 51503 Description of Request: The funding will be used to reconstruct 24th St from I-80 to 23rd Ave in order to accommodate traffic volumes, improve safety, and provide alternate routes for I-80 traffic. The 24th St interchange with I-80 directs more than 11 million annual visitors to the city's entertainment corridor. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Economic Development Initiatives Amount: $475,000 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: City of Council Bluffs Address of Requesting Entity: 209 Pearl Street, Council Bluffs, IA 51503 Description of Request: The funding will be used to implement a targeted program of single family rehabilitation and new construction, acquisition/rehabilitation of single family properties and blight removal and site development in the Playland Park neighborhood. The significance of this project will be felt not only locally but regionally as well. The project's location is highly visible and is a gateway into Council Bluffs. It will complement a sizeable ongoing ``Rivers Edge'' project estimated at $50 million. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Transportation, Community, and System Preservation Amount: $427,500 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Iowa Department of Transportation Address of Requesting Entity: 800 Lincoln Way, Ames, IA 50010 Description of Request: The funding will be used for the planning and construction of the U.S. 34 bridge in Mills County, Iowa. The project begins at Interstate 29/US 34 interchange west of Glenwood, Iowa. From that point it curves northwesterly crossing the Missouri River north of the confluence with the Platte River. The relocated US 34 alignment intersects with US 75 (Kennedy Expressway) south of Bellevue, NE. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King Bill Number: H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009 Account: Interstate Maintenance Discretionary Amount: $1,092,500 Legal Name of Requesting Entity: City of Sioux City Address of Requesting Entity: 405 6th Street PO Box 447 Sioux City, IA 51102 Description of Request: Interstate 29 Utility Relocation Project in Sioux City, IA--The Iowa Department of Transportation has included the much needed reconstruction of Interstate 29 through Sioux City in their 2008-2012 Highway Program. The project currently has $87 million committed for interstate reconstruction in fiscal years 2009-2012. With reconstruction begun in calendar 2008, the City of Sioux City must relocate utilities existing within the Interstate 29 right-of-way. The funding will be used for design, construction, and contract administration costs of the utilities move.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Illinois and appreciate listening to him. I have listened also to the President of the United States. And one of the pieces of this recovery package as he describes it and in the stimulus package as some others describe it and the ``porkulous'' package as others describe it, is that there would be no earmarks. I remember the Presidential campaign. I remember John McCain and Barack Obama both taking the pledge that there would be no earmarks in their administration. And I want to point out that President Obama made the point specifically about this recovery package that there would be no earmarks. And he said, ``we will ban all earmarks in the recovery package.'' I'm quoting the President of the United States. ``And I describe earmarks as the process by which individual Members insert pet projects without review. So what I'm saying is, we're not having earmarks in the recovery package, period.'' That is the clear statement the President of the United States recently made within the context of this recovery package. And so, Madam Speaker, I brought along this little poster to illustrate how a deal doesn't long stay a deal. We've already heard that we were going to have a bill up for 48 hours for public scrutiny before it would come to the floor for a vote. That looks like that is a thing of the past. Remember the language, ``individual Members will not be inserting pet projects without review. So what I'm saying is, we're not having earmarks in the recovery package, period,'' Barack Obama. Well, Madam Speaker, here we have a pet, a mouse, a pet project, a pet project of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. This little mouse here, a desert mouse, I don't know what he is, a sand mouse, it is a mouse that Nancy Pelosi has been seeking to create habitat for for some time. It is her pet project, this pet mouse.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I appreciate so much the privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives on this 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. I've watched, of course, Lincoln's life and history from the perspective of actually a youth who was pointed out to me by my family back in those years. So I have always paid a lot of attention to Abraham Lincoln. As our 16th President of the United States, the man who saved the Union--who did a lot of things--but a man who saved the Union, kept us from being forever divided. I played a little with the history and the question of that. What would have happened if the Civil War would have ended with a division rather than the unity of the United States of America? All history that flows from that date--from the 1860s--of this country, would be changed. The history of any involvement that we might have had during the Spanish-American conflict; during World War II; as we heard, from Judge Poe; World War II; Korea; Vietnam, all of the wars, but also the geopolitics, the economy. We would not have become the preeminent economic power in the world if Abraham Lincoln hadn't come along and this Nation hadn't been blessed with him at the time it was. His perseverance to save the Union has positioned this Nation to go forward to a level of destiny I believe unimagined by our Founding Fathers and unimagined by Abraham Lincoln himself. One cannot say enough about what Abraham Lincoln did for this country or for the free world, Madam Speaker. But here we are today, on the 200th anniversary of his birth, celebrating these two centuries of prosperity that we've had, and I mean the prosperity of liberty, the prosperity of freedom, the prosperity of the Union holding together, and the constitutional point being preserved that this is an indissolvable Union of the States, of the several States and, today, of the 50 States, Madam Speaker. I can't help but reflect that today is the day that it was planned by our current President of the United States, President Obama, to bring this huge spending stimulus package to the floor of the House of Representatives for what they anticipated and hoped would be a final passage vote of the conference report here in the House so that the bill may or may not have been handled by the Senate today, but so it had the chance to at least have been passed in this Chamber--this Chamber--where Abraham Lincoln served one term before he went back and went through some political bumps in the road and then became President of the United States. And one can walk through those doors and down the hallway and stand on the brass plate, the very spot where Abraham Lincoln's desk was when he served this country in this United States House of Representatives, where we are today, Madam Speaker. Abraham Lincoln, the man who saved the Union, the man who stood on constitutional principles, the man who abhorred slavery but still understood that the language in the Constitution allowed for it. The man who cleared the way so we could pass the 13th and 14th and 15th amendments. The man who made it possible that we could have constitutional protection for rights of all men, and later paved the way for the rights of all women. Abraham Lincoln, Madam Speaker. Abraham Lincoln, his ghost is with us, his spirit is with us today. But this was the day that the man who's postured himself as a second Lincoln wanted to see this massive stimulus plan come to this floor for a final passage. It's not going to happen today, Madam Speaker. And I'm grateful it's not going to happen today because for me to hold back my tears thinking about what that says about the memory of Abraham Lincoln, to move an agenda that is a massive, irresponsible spending agenda to the floor of the House as a way of commemorating and connecting the 44th President of the United States, who is from Illinois, with the 16th President of the United States, who was a conservative from Illinois who stood for these constitutional principles. I can't think how they can be any further apart from a monetary perspective, Abraham Lincoln and President Obama, than what we see here today. Abraham Lincoln was a conservative, Madam Speaker. Abraham Lincoln was a constitutionalist. Abraham Lincoln was on a strong national defense. Abraham Lincoln believed a series of things that I think this Chamber needs to hear about. And they don't fit very well with the legislation that has been pushed out of the White House today, or with the legislation that has been pushed from the Speaker's office. And so, Madam Speaker, Lincoln--Lincoln, the conservative; Lincoln, the objective person who believed in personal responsibility; Lincoln, the man who was credited with saying, You can't help the poor by punishing the rich, You can't help the weak by weakening the strong; the whole series of those other statements made by President Lincoln-- and here we are with this massive spending bill, this $838 billion spending bill. And when you add the interest on it, it has been back down now to something like $791 billion in the negotiations. And you add the interest on it and you come to $1.138 trillion sitting today in a conference report that is being printed, we think, with the idea that America's economy will be stimulated if we just spend enough money. John Maynard Keynes wasn't born in time to influence Abraham Lincoln's philosophy. If he had been, I do not think he would have found favor with Abraham Lincoln or the cabinet. But Keynes was a contemporary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Keynes did advocate that spending money stimulated the economy. Just by the virtue of spending the money, it stimulated the economy. And so the simplest way to describe that would be--first, I need to tie this together. That President Obama has often articulated his belief that spending money stimulates the economy. He has said that-- and the language is, ``Stimulus is spending,'' if we remember his angry speech the other day. ``Stimulus is spending.'' And so he's advocated this spending as if it doesn't matter where it goes, it just matters the size of it. And as I've listened to him speak, my disagreement is I don't believe the New Deal worked. His argument is that if FDR would have just not lost his nerve, if FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, father of the New Deal, which has directly reflected the policies promoted by John Maynard Keynes, if FDR had just spent enough money, the New Deal would have gotten us out of the Depression. Well, Madam Speaker, it didn't get us out of the Depression. And the President, the current President, President Obama, has said that we are going to grow this economy by spending. Stimulus is spending. And indexing it into this belief of Keynes. Here's what Keynes said. ``When it comes to public works, the more wasteful, the better.'' Because if you waste a lot of money spending it on public works, at least you're not competing directly with the private sector and taking away the things they might be doing that actually stimulate the economy. That private sector is generally the productive sector of the economy, Madam Speaker. And, Keynes went on. Now, remember, this is at the basis, the foundation for FDR's New Deal, which is the basis for Barack Obama's new ``new deal,'' this uber new deal that hangs out above us today, that seems to have been at least temporarily suspended by the image of Abraham Lincoln and maybe the conscience of Abraham Lincoln, holding this thing back, maybe for another day, maybe longer. Here is what Keynes said: If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez fair to dig the notes up again, there need be no more unemployment. Keynes said if we would just print a lot of Federal money and put it in bottles and go to the coal mine and bury it in the ground, and then dump the coal mine full of garbage and step back and watch the flurry of activity, that we would solve unemployment. That seems to be the approach that is brought today. It brings to mind for me the movie that the Beatles published some years ago, Magic Christian. If you remember the scene in Magic Christian where there was all kinds of garbage and refuse and just revolting material dumped into this swimming pool along with a lot of money, and there you had greedy people diving into the swimming pool and fighting each other for the money to get their hands on it. The same image: Keynes, the Beatles, Magic Christian; Keynes, FDR, Barack Obama. Their economic policy is the same. Nancy Pelosi's economic policy, the same. We are here today doing all we can to hold back this disaster that is intergenerational theft of hundreds of billions of dollars cumulating into multiple trillions of dollars that are debt that we will not pay in our lifetime but will be debt that is passed along to our children and grandchildren. And if we saddle this economy, they may not be able to pay it in their lifetime, even if they come to the senses that we can't seem to get in a majority on the floor of this House. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Missouri. I am looking forward to the input that he would have on this economic issue, Mr. Akin, such time as he may consume.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, and thanking the gentleman from Missouri for his many hours here and for his many hours in front and behind the scenes standing up for our American values. It triggers in my memory how much money an aircraft carrier can be built for. Bloomberg reported on Monday that if you add up the commitments that the United States has made within the last year in economic stimulus plan in one kind or another, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including the rebate check, including the $700 billion bailout, the risk in Fannie and Freddie and these bailouts, it comes to $9.7 trillion. That is with a ``T.'' And if we applied the $9.7 trillion to the home mortgages in America, it would pay off 90 percent of the home mortgages in America. That is how much money is at risk here, taxpayers' money, the people's money in this country, Madam Speaker. I would be so happy to yield so much time as she might want to utilize to the gentlelady from Minnesota, Mrs. Bachmann.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota for the quick mind that she has and the background that she has not only as a tax attorney, but also as a mother and a foster parent. She is someone who has also plied the trade and understands taxes and the incentives that are involved. She has been involved in the private sector for many years starting and operating businesses successfully. All of this background gets threaded into the judgment that comes here. And that was how it was envisioned, that we would bring our skills from our private life to this Congress and work together. The stimulus package, I might add, Madam Speaker, is not one of those. It didn't benefit from one side of the aisle here. It didn't have the bipartisan negotiations. It didn't really reflect the free market attitudes of the Republicans. It only reflects the grow government, grow entitlement and grow the dependency philosophy of Democrats. And part of me says, well, if it is going to be one or the other, then let the people decide. And if they can't decide for allowing for a legitimate debate and amendment process here on the floor of the House, then perhaps they will decide in the next election, Madam Speaker. And that is what this is about is making this case. I'm very well aware of the inertia that is there. But I still say, maybe, maybe the image of Abraham Lincoln is holding this disastrous stimulus plan back. Maybe America will come to pass and actually people will wake up tomorrow morning having had an epiphany and come to their senses that spending money for the sake of spending money is the equivalent, as Keynes said, of digging a hole and burying it. And the President said we're not just digging a hole and filling it back up. But yes, we are. We are with about $2 out of every $3 in the stimulus plan. I recognize some Members here on the floor. Since I have spoken to the Illinois issue, I have been looking forward to hearing from a son of Illinois, since this is the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, the gentleman with all of the vigor that Illinois could muster on any given day, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo) for so much time as he may consume.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman. Hopefully I didn't offend the mouse. He is a salt marsh mouse, a salt marsh mouse from California, and conservatives are more numerous, I recognize. However, this $30 million is an earmark in the stimulus plan, in the recovery plan. It is a direct violation of the mark laid down by the President of the United States that there wouldn't be any special projects set up by individual Members, period. No earmarks. Well, here is $30 million for the salt marsh water mouse of California. This mouse, who has not affected my life in any way whatsoever, but will affect yours soon, because we will be paying taxes, interest and debt on this $30 million mouse.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I would yield.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, we would soon have Al Franken's version of fair and balanced. And before we go to the salt marsh mouse expert of California, I just want to point out that President Obama said that there would be no pet projects, and no earmarks. But we have this pet project of the pet of the Speaker of the House, this San Francisco $30 million winner of this stimulus plan, even though it violates all the rules that have been laid out here, except maybe he will be on display for 48 hours before he comes to final passage. Gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren) for so much time as he may consume.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady. I would hope they would not be San Franciscan monk mice. But I appreciate they are salt marsh mice with San Francisco leanings. And I might say also if you take a look at this mouse real closely, there has got to be an earmark right there in that mouse. The salt marsh mouse with San Francisco leanings, not a monk mouse, has an earmark in him. And it is a $30 million notch punched in there that is identified by the Speaker of the House, who has taken positions against earmarks, but has not apparently sworn off them for herself. And so this is just one piece. This is $30 million out of what is over $1 trillion stimulus package, a porkulous package. This is just a symbol of what we're up against. And by the way, nobody has seen the draft of this bill yet. We only see the reports on the discussions that leak out of the rooms where it is being drafted. It is not going to be hanging up on the Web for 48 hours. It is not going to have the scrutiny of the public. It is simply going to be a bill that is written in the dark and rushed to the floor under a rule that doesn't allow open discussion beyond a limited amount of debate on the rules and a limited amount of debate on the conference report. So, since we have had a good look at this salt marsh mouse, and we have had a good look at his earmark, I think it is important to go to someone from California who knows a little bit about conservatives in California who I think hopefully are not an endangered species like the salt marsh mouse, the gentleman, Mr. McClintock, from California.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from California. And picking up on the point that you've made so succinctly, the projection, as reported this morning, is that this ``porkulus'' plan will create or save 3,675,000 thousand jobs. And the formula is that, this is a rule of thumb formula that's also used by the Federal Reserve, that if you spend enough money to increase the Gross Domestic Product by 1 percent, that equates into roughly 1 million new jobs. So if you increase it by 3.675 percent, by spending money, whether you dig a hole and bury it in the coal mine, as we talked earlier, wherever it goes, that's the rule of thumb. And I'd point out also that the President has taken this position that it's create or save. Well, anything can save a job. Doing nothing would save jobs. And this formula that's only indexed back to a loose idea that investing, spending money, just spending money creates jobs, that's all it is. It's just that formula, that rule of thumb. And looking at the order of arrival on the floor, I think it might be appropriate to hear a little from Texas before we go back to the other coast. And I'd appreciate it if the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), my good friend, would illuminate us with some of his wisdom.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time and thanking the gentleman from Texas. I'd like to briefly recognize the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann) before I go to California for an insert here of a piece of knowledge I think we need.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from California. I happen to remember that debate. The last one I heard on Fannie and Freddie was an amendment offered by Congressman Leach on October 26, 2005 right here, and it was the chairman of the Financial Services Committee today who came down and who most vigorously opposed requiring the capitalization and regulation of Fannie and Freddie, and they're beginning to clean up that which is now a $5.5 trillion contingent liability for the taxpayers of America. I would like to turn to Ohio. I recognize our time is a little short, but we will grant however much latitude the gentleman from Ohio might like to have. Mr. Latta.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Ohio, and I thank all the folks who have come down here to lend some wisdom. Recognizing we have about 2 minutes left, unless he should run out of material, I will be happy to yield the balance of time, or so much time as he might consume, to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to thank you for your indulgence this evening, and I appreciate your attention. I would yield back the balance of my time.

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. It's an honor and a privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. It's interesting and intriguing for me to listen to the dialog that flows forth from earlier this evening, the gentleman from Texas, and now the voices of the Congressional Progressive Caucus as they put their poster up on the floor that directs people to their Web site and make their argument as to the things that are in this stimulus package that they believe should stay and the things that are not in and may have been taken out that they believe should have stayed in or be put back in. I think, Mr. Speaker, that this debate that we have is much deeper and much more profound than the components that have been discussed here in the previous hour. I think it goes to our vision of America itself. And the question that is before this country is, in some sense, What will we do in the middle of this economic crisis, this one that came tumbling down upon us on September 19, the date that Secretary of the Treasury Paulson came to the Capitol and very intensely insisted that we provide $700 billion for him to spend at his discretion, without a lot of oversight, perhaps with no oversight, and provided that bailout money in two different increments, $350 billion in the first increment, and then congressional disapproval would have been required in order to block the second $350 billion. So the entire $700 billion of the bailout money has been advanced into the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury who has some problems of his own. Those would be of his own intent to pay his taxes, et cetera, Mr. Speaker. This discussion that we are in, this discussion that is being led by the President of the United States and his position that we must do something, we must do it fast, we can't do it halfway, we must do it all the way, and his insistence that we not flag and that we not fail, and that we come forward and support this stimulus plan has galvanized its support in the House of Representatives and in the Senate behind a single simple philosophy that seems to justify the capitulation of the responsibility to each of us Members to draw a reason and informed judgment and do the right thing for our country, for our State, for our district. And this decision is this. Pulling back in behind this logic, which is, President Obama has called for a stimulus plan. It shall spend $800 billion, or more, plus the interest, which will be about $350 billion in addition to that, and it will have a mix that has some small business stimulation in it, some infrastructure in it, and a lot of other things, which are the bells and whistles and wish list to the left, Mr. Speaker. It's all packed in there. And the Members, especially the Members on the Democrat side of the aisle here, and the U.S. Senators of the same political party, they will argue and defend component by component. But the rationale that's going on in the minds of the Members and the caucus is this: Well, we must do something. We know we have an economic crisis. This is the only thing that we can choose from because that is what has been served up to this Congress by the Speaker of the House, by the majority leader in the United States Senate, and by the President of the United States, who happened to be, not coincidentally, the three people in the United States that could come together in one room and set the direction for this entire country and not have to go outside that room and ask anybody for their input, for their knowledge, their wisdom base, that of their constituents. A lesson from history, a look through the looking glass into the future? Sometimes it feels like we have gone through the looking glass here, Mr. Speaker. But here's the question that is before us. In an economic crisis, with a crisis of confidence in our financial institutions, a crisis of capital that arises more out of that lack of confidence than it does out of a slowdown of production or slowdown in the markets--it's the other way around. It's the crisis in the capital that is backing up and causing these slowdowns. But to look through the history of the economy of the United States, or the free world, for that matter, and for an economist to ask themselves, and all of us should be at least amateur economists here. We're making decisions for the people of the United States of America. But they ask themselves, What has happened historically and economically that we have addressed from this Congress that has been improved, and how did we do so? So, we take ourselves back through this history, and I can think of the economic crisis we had in the eighties. I saw the charts, Mr. Speaker, that were put up here on the floor that show--well, what shall I call them? Bush 41's recession and then Bush 43's recession. That seems that's how it was presented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. No. We have had some real economic crises in our past. One of them was what we called in the Midwest the farm crisis, which was not limited to the farm crisis but it also was a real estate and an energy crisis. And during those years of the eighties, when things were very tough economically and statistically worse than they are today, although I won't argue that things today will not get that bad, Mr. Speaker. But in the eighties we lost 3,000 banks. Many, many farms went under. We lost a lot of oil rigs out there that they were producing and tapping into our energy. The crisis in the real estate was a big piece of it too. Three thousand banks. The FDIC came in and closed a lot of them. In fact, they shut my bank down on April 26, Friday afternoon, three o'clock, 1985. I remember the red tag on the door. Closed by order of the banking commissioner. Highway patrol guarding the door, Mr. Speaker. Those were some tough times. And what did we do then? Well, we didn't do a lot of the things that are being proposed today. There was some plans that came out. One of the things we did was we provided net worth certificates to shore up some of the banks that needed some collateral. They accepted a look over their shoulder from the FDIC and asked them to shore up their operations. Those banks that received that kind of collateralization, all came out of it. Every one of them was part of that. All succeeded. We found a way through this, and we sold some real estate down to the value of the real estate. New buyers came in that could borrow the money or had the cash to make the purchases because there were some bargains out there. When those bargains got picked up, the markets came up. Real estate prices stabilized. Banks became stable again. The confidence was back in our economy again. That was a long decades of the eighties. A lot was wrong. A lot was more wrong going into the eighties than we are seeing today. We had high unemployment then. We had high inflation then--inflation that ran up towards 20 percent. And I personally paid 22 percent interest for operating capital to keep my business running through a tough, tough decade of economic times. We are not seeing 22 percent interest today, Mr. Speaker. And our employment rates, yes, they are going up, and we have over 10 million people in America that are at least statistically looking for jobs. It is not as bad as it was then, yet. And the eighties were not as bad as they were in the thirties. And when we look at the thirties, there should be some lessons there for us. And I sat in classroom after classroom getting my classical education; and one historian, government teacher, economist after another would fill our little brains full of the knowledge base that has been learned from history, that we had an economic calamity in 1929 and the stock market crashed and people jumped out of the windows to their death because they couldn't sustain the grief of watching their net worth go down. Well, if you look historically, it is pretty hard to find anybody that jumped out of the window. It wasn't as bad as they said, from that standpoint of Wall Street suicides, at least. Then, through those times Herbert Hoover was President, and he had great confidence in his ability to manage. And so he came forward with the Smoot-Hawley Act, which was trade protectionism, and there was global retaliation. And then our industry and our manufacturing and our exports lost a lot of their markets because of the trade protectionism. Each country around the world did a lot of the same thing; they pulled back within themselves, and the economies began to shut down in that fashion. They opened up the legislation so that unions had a little more powerful leverage when it came to striking. They passed the Davis- Bacon Wage Act; that followed. But as this economy went down, Herbert Hoover believed that he could manage his way through that. He didn't trust the marketplaces like Calvin Coolidge did, but he trusted his ability to manage, and he lost his reelect. My only Iowa President lost his reelect in 1932 to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Franklin Delano Roosevelt came in, and he had been influenced by the famous economist Keynes, who advocated that if government just spends enough money, it will create an economy that will have apparently its own inertia, and it will bring us out of this great depression. So FDR's programs came in one after another, the WTPA, the PWA, the CCC, on and on and on, the TVA. And each time that the Federal Government stepped in and started another program, they competed with the private sector; they competed with the private sector for capital and they competed with the private sector for labor. Now, if you go back and look at wealthy nations and see what Adam Smith has to say about the value of any product, he will say and he has written there very extensively that the value of any product is the sum total of the capital and the labor that it takes to produce it, deliver it, market it, and get it into the hands of the consumer. So if you buy a gallon of milk, you add up so many ounces of milk is for the capital that it took, and the balance of it is for the labor that it took for it to deliver. And that is how Adam Smith analyzed it. But the capital and the labor in the United States was being swallowed up in government. And capital, when it comes in significant quantities in the private sector, the productive sector of the economy, smart money goes to the sidelines rather than compete with government. And that is what happened in the thirties during the great depression: The smart money went to the sidelines, our economy stagnated, and we had soup lines and we had make-work projects and we had hand labor, stoop labor building dams and roads and parks. We commissioned and paid people to go out into the cemeteries and write down everything that they could read off of the stones in the cemeteries so there would be a record. We paid writers to write; we paid painters to paint, because we wanted to pay people to do something, or nothing, so that the borrowed money and those tax dollars could flow out into the economy, into the hands of the people that would spend it. Sounding pretty familiar right now, Mr. Speaker, this idea of taking dollars and putting it into the hands of people so that they spend it to stimulate the economy. In fact, Keynes himself had I think some fairly radical ideas: Spending money would stimulate the economy. In fact, his approach was that the worse utility that a project had, the more useful it was from a government perspective, from the standpoint that if the government spent money on something that was completely ridiculous, at least they weren't competing with the private sector. So Keynes understood some of the argument that I have just made. He went so far to make the argument that he could solve the unemployment problem during the thirties if we would just take those good old Treasury notes or Federal bills, greenbacks, U.S. cash, put them in jars and take them out to a big old abandoned coal mine and bury those jars around there in that old abandoned coal mine--this is Keynes talking--and then fill the old coal mine up with garbage and turn the laissez fair loose, the free enterprise loose. Let the entrepreneurs go out and dig through the garbage to dig up the money, and that would solve, through the competition of digging up this money that had been buried by the Federal Government, that would solve unemployment. Now, he may have been a little facetious in that description, I don't know his personality, so I can only speculate that. I hope he was a little facetious. But I think his point that he wanted to make, that it didn't need to be useful work, it didn't need to be productive work. President Obama said, ``Well, we are not just going to pay people to dig a hole and fill it back up.'' I thought that was my vernacular; I am the person who spent my life in that business of moving dirt, and on one occasion actually did dig a hole and fill it back up with nothing in it, only one occasion. The man changed his mind in the middle of that operation. But for the President to say we are not just going to dig a hole and fill it back up, but he is modeling his economic model, the President's ``new'' new deal off of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ``old'' new deal, which really was dig a hole and fill it back up sometimes. And here is the point that I intend to make, Mr. Speaker; and that is, however one would analyze the ``old'' new deal in the thirties, it is not possible to look at the numbers and come to the conclusion that the new deal solved the depression, the great depression for America. In fact, the best conclusion that one can come to, the most charitable conclusion is that it may have, may have, Mr. Speaker, diminished the depths to which we might have fallen without the new deal in place. Maybe the economy would have gone into a complete straightjacket and tanked and gone forever downward and waited another decade or two to get its confidence back. Maybe. Maybe. I don't believe it would have, but that is the best that one can say. And the trade-off is, if a new deal, a huge massive spending gets poured into the economy for make- work projects, if that diminishes the depths to which we might otherwise fall, the trade-off is certainly it delays the recovery as well. It delays the recovery, because smart money sits on the sidelines. Entrepreneurs have been hired by the government to dig a hole and fill it back up, and smart money always goes where there is some profit, and right now smart money is pulled back to the sidelines. That is why we had some bonds that actually went into the red for just a little bit, for a little while. There are two sectors of this economy, Mr. Speaker, that we don't talk about very often. The one that is being stimulated and is attempted to be stimulated by the President's proposal, by the components of it that are the Speaker's proposal, or the Senate's proposal, in its aggregate, that one seeks to spend money for the sake of getting it in the hands of consumers. We did that with the rebate program not quite a year ago; and you can look back on the charts for that, Mr. Speaker, and you will not see a blip that that money was spent and injected as stimulus into the economy. $150 billion in the hands of the American people, and about 30 percent of it actually got spent on new goods and about 70 percent of it went to pay off credit card bills or went into savings. So only 30 percent of the overall proposal, less than $50 billion, actually went into the economy. It doesn't even show up as a little tick on the line. Now, $150 billion I understand, Mr. Speaker, is chump change compared to this massive piece that the Senate has now passed that we expect will be before us very soon. And this piece, when you add it all together, is over $1 trillion, but it is not much of it money spent that is going into the productive sector of the economy. The productive sector of the economy is the private sector of the economy; it is the sector that actually produces goods and services that have value. And I have said from this microphone many times, Mr. Speaker, all new wealth comes from the land. You either raise it out of the soil, or you mine it out of the earth. You can seine some fish out of the ocean. That is about the end of it. Otherwise, it comes out of the land. And it has to start there. And out of it comes food and fiber, and from the food and fiber comes the thing we need to live. And as we add on to that, the services that come from the food and the fiber, then you get your insurance man and your doctors and your lawyers and your teachers, and all of the facets of our economy flow from the new wealth that comes from the land. But the things that we need in order to live, the housing, the clothing, the food, the necessities of life and then the niceties of life, they come from the productive sector of the economy. Then, we have this nonproductive sector of the economy that I sometimes call the parasitic of the economy; and that is the sector that looks over the shoulder of the productive sector and decides: Well, I am going to regulate you and I am going to tax you, and I am going to justify my existence by making it harder for the productive sector to produce. That is what government often does. Government overdoes the overseeing, the overregulating, the taxation, and inhibits production. So, on the one hand we have the productive sector of the economy that has to carry the entire burden of government, the entire burden of, let me say, the nonproductive sector of the economy in my charitable moments, and we are loading up on the nonproductive sector of the economy and we are not giving enough relief to the productive sector of the economy. That is what this argument is about: Are you going to have an economy that is stimulated by producing more things that have value, and building the kind of infrastructure that supports commerce and trade, and reducing the kind of taxes that allow smart money to make investments with the confidence that they won't be punished for their success by a Congress or a President that has the idea that a windfall profits tax, for example, is a good way to punish someone who turns a resource into value and puts it into our economy and pays their share of taxes as it is. We are heading down this wrong road, this road that the President has identified as: We have to construct the leg of a stool. He didn't say how many legs, but generally, if it is a three-legged stool, they will say so. If it is a two-legged stool, they will say so. It is not a milking stool, I wish it were, Mr. Speaker. But this single leg of this multi-legged stool that the President announces we have to construct and we are going to do it one leg at a time without an idea of what the stool looks like or what the other legs look like or what they are made out of except money. We have one leg that may be back to the floor of this Congress tomorrow and likely this week that cost $150 billion for a rebate plan not quite a year ago, $700 billion-plus for the bailout last fall, and 830 or so billion dollars plus $350 billion in interest on that that is sitting here now waiting to land on the floor of this House. Just add it up in round terms, Mr. Speaker, let's just call it $2 trillion: $2 trillion to construct a single leg, and I am tracking the President's words, of a stool that is supposedly going to get us out of this mess that we are in; $2 trillion. And no one will stand up and say: Here is the effect of this money? Here is what you can expect with the economic indicators? Here is how you will see jobs in the productive sector of the economy grow or investment increase or capital be freed up for entrepreneurs? None of that is there, except to say that we are going to create or save, well, 2.5 million, 3 million, then 4 million jobs. And sometimes they get a little lazy and forget to say create or save, and they just say create 4 million jobs, but in their lucid moments they revert back to the create or save. Now, I would like to be the one who would announce that I am here, Mr. Speaker, and I am going to create or save 10 million jobs. And 10 years from now you can go back and look, and even if I didn't point to a single job that I created, I can easily point to 10 million jobs that have been saved. A saved job is not a measurable, quantifiable means of determining any level of success. But it's a word that lets you slip away from being held accountable for a policy that is utterly destined to fail. The New Deal failed. It was a mistake. Historians looking back on it and economists looking back on it can only point to high employment numbers, low economic activity and a stock market that crashed in October of 1929. And in spite of all of the billions of dollars in new Federal spending in the New Deal program, the stock market still didn't reach the peak that it was at in 1929 until 1954. Now, Mr. Speaker, the President says that World War II was the best, the largest economic stimulus plan ever. Now I don't exactly quibble with those words on their face. I would just add to that, that it makes it clear that the New Deal didn't solve the Great Depression. He understands that. He argues that FDR should have spent more money, not less, that he lost his nerve, he shouldn't have worried about a balanced budget, and if he had just done enough, if he had just doubled down two or three more times, he would have come out of there as a winner. But World War II came along as the largest economic stimulus plan ever. I won't disagree with that statement. But I will say this: It didn't quite solve our economic problems. But I believe it did start us on the path to recovery. And by the end of World War II, we hadn't yet recovered. The stock market was still 9 years away from reaching its former apex that it was at in 1929. But I believe that the post-World War II industrial might of the United States, because we were the only industrialized nation in the world that hadn't seen our industry devastated in World War II, gave us a comparative advantage. The greenback was good currency all over the world. We built products for everybody because we could. And many of them had to put back their entire infrastructure in order to be up and running again. So, yes, World War II was a stimulus plan. But the aftermath of World War II gave a marketplace for America's industrial might to continue, to switch from making tanks to making cars and making other products and exporting them around the world. So a quarter of a century later, after the stock market crashed in 1929, we reached the previous apex and Dow Jones Industrial Average, if that is our measure of recovery, in 25 years. So here we are today, Mr. Speaker, with an economy that has had its ups and downs. And I could take you back through the short-term history of this. We have created a lot of capital, trillions of dollars worth of capital. Some of it was false. Some of it didn't represent the actual, real value of the assets underneath it. Some of it was because Wall Street had run amok, and they were betting on a long run of a bull market. And the checks and balances weren't in place. And AIG was not calculating the risk and didn't have the capital underneath them in order to back up the insurance that they were providing. So this has tumbled. But in the end, we need to come back to what is the real estate worth that is underneath this? What are the businesses worth that are part of the shares that are there in our stock market? Let's get down to some real values. And the $2 trillion leg on a multi- legged stool and not knowing what the stool looks like or how many legs there are, but we just know the idea is spend money, spend money, spend money, and spend it over here, and spending brings us back out of this economic situation that we are in. Production will do that. Mr. Speaker, I submit that we need to suspend capital gains taxes and do so for 2 years. Let that smart money find a place to go without being penalized for coming back into this economy. The smart money that is on the sidelines, the $13 trillion or so that are overseas that are invested in the economy in other parts of the world that are faced with a capital gains tax, if it is corporate, if it comes back into the United States, we can free that up, Mr. Speaker. And that $13 trillion is a number as of last September. So chances are that today it's not quite $13 trillion any more. And we won't get it all back. But we will get back 1 or 2 or $3 trillion. We will get back more money that is stranded outside the U.S. economy because of the impediment of facing capital gains tax that we're going to be able to put into this economy with this so-called stimulus plan that is before us, this Congress, as we speak. We will get more money into the economy. And then the groan goes up on this side of the aisle because if we suspended capital gains tax, we will be giving up an opportunity to tax one of these greedy capitalists. How could you live with yourself if you passed up a chance to tax somebody and you let their money come in and get invested in our economy? Well, I can live with myself to do that. If you have a good argument, I will be happy to yield and hear that argument. But I don't think you have one. We need to bring this capital back into the United States and get it into this economy. But the lost revenue for an immediate suspension of capital gains if we did so for the year 2009 would be, Mr. Speaker, $68 billion. Now I'm going to say this: Only $68 billion as compared to a couple of trillion dollars in bailout money, $68 billion in lost revenue for suspending capital gains taxes to bring in $1 or $2 or $3 trillion from overseas, maybe more, into this economy to find its way to where it would do the most good, because smart investors will do that. If we suspend capital gains tax on picking up the toxic debt that is there, those were Secretary Paulson's words, suspend capital gains tax on the income off of those investments, smart money would go pick up these mortgage- backed securities. They would take them off the marketplace. Smart money would then go out into the communities and work with the people that have been evicted, or I should say about to be evicted, from their homes, find a way to renegotiate some of those terms or sell the home, turn around and remarket it to somebody that can make some reasonable payments. But we've got to go through this. We've got to bite the bullet. We've got to take the pain. We've got to make the adjustments. And it is not going to work for us to borrow from our children, our grandchildren and our grandchildren's children trillions of dollars with no idea of how to pay them back and no way to even move towards a balanced budget, but to put all that demand out there in the world market for capital, borrowed money from the United States Government. And where will we borrow that money from, Mr. Speaker? Do we borrow that money, then, from China with their economy going south? Because when we catch a cold, the Chinese get sick, as well. They're tied to our economy. Are the Saudis going to have that kind of cash that they will loan to us? Perhaps. But the interest rates are going to go up. To borrow that kind of money and put it into the economy in that fashion is irresponsible. It denies the very values of the economic lessons that we know. It denies that we need to produce something that has value. Now, if Keynes is right and we can go out, borrow the money and then bury it in the coal mine, cover it up with garbage and turn people loose to dig it up and that would solve the unemployment problem, then I think he is way off, Mr. Speaker. I'm of the other side, of the supply side of this economy. Let me take this to another step. Immediately, I would suspend capital gains tax for 2 years. I would lock it in in stone so smart money would know they had 2 years to find a place to settle it. And maybe I would back it up even and look at the numbers, perhaps even 1 year. But if it's 2 years, we will be giving up $68 billion worth of revenue for not collecting any capital gains tax for 2009, $61 billion for 2010, that's it, $129 billion, that would be the total cost of putting 3 to 5 or more trillion dollars into this U.S. economy in the right place where smart money would go. Now that is one of the things we could do. We can go down through the list. We ought to be talking about reform. We ought to be talking about repealing the Community Reinvestment Act and about privatizing Fannie and Freddie and requiring them to be capitalized and regulated like the other banks are. And we need to be talking about amending the mark-to- market accounting rules, the credit-default-swap rules, putting these trades up on the Internet so that there is sunlight on all of them so they can be tracked and they can have oversight. All of those things need to happen, Mr. Speaker, and all of those things are things that should be done immediately, along with having a commission to examine the situation of the finances in this country and the economy in this country to come to a conclusion as to where we went wrong and to make some more of those changes. I have listed some. What we need to do is build a structure so it doesn't happen again. It's unlikely to happen, Mr. Speaker, when we have the chairs of the committees that have been part of the problem in the first place. Albert Einstein once said that you never solve a problem with the same mindset that created it. And we're dealing with people that have gavels that have the same mindset that created this problem. All of these things I have talked about need to be done in the short term and in the temporary. There is a broader solution that needs to come, Mr. Speaker, and that is to set up our taxes so that we can be free of these kind of burdens for all time. I have many times come to this floor and spoken about the need to eliminate the IRS, to move to a national sales tax and to understand a principle which is this, that what you tax you get less of. The Federal Government and the United States has the first lien on all productivity in America. If you're going to earn, Mr. Speaker, Uncle Sam is there with his hand out to tax. If you're going to save, he taxes the earnings off the savings. He taxes your proceeds off your investment. Uncle Sam is there with his hand out to tax it, earnings, savings and investment. If you're a producer, you're punished by being taxed. If you're a consumer, that's fine. Some of the States, many of the States have a sales tax. Beyond that, consumers consume without being taxed except for an additional excise tax that exists in some places as well. What you tax you get less of. But we tax all of the productivity in America. And taxing all the productivity in America virtually ensures that there won't be as much productivity in this country as there would be if we passed a national sales tax. The Fair Tax, Mr. Speaker, took the tax off of our production and put it over on consumption. If we do that, we will allow the American producers an unlimited amount that they can produce, they can earn, save and invest all they want to earn, save and invest. When I think about people that are working a job and they're working the angles on that job and they're thinking, well, let me see, I have got my 40 hours in this week, now when I start working overtime, I go into a different bracket, my withholding is a little different, I don't know, my payroll per hour isn't as good as I would like to have it, I'm going to limit the overtime hours I'm going to work. Or it might be somebody in sales that gets paid on commission. And they do a calculation on the taxes that they would pay the IRS. And they reach a certain point, and they realize how big a chunk Uncle Sam is taking out of them, and they decide, I'm just not going to produce any more than that. I can live comfortably enough down here without having to work twice as hard to get half again more out of that labor because the tax rate swallows up that much. Now that is just an individual working sometimes on commission or on overtime. But think about the calculus when it's an investment for a small business, maybe a small business that employs six or eight or ten people, and a business that gets to the point where it's kind of comfortable. They can see some new market opportunities. But the owner of the business understands that the tax burden is such that it's not worth the risk. And so they don't invest the capital. They don't create that extra three or four or five or 10 new jobs. And the business sits there and stagnates. And the real estate that is there that perhaps is paid for gets tied up because there is a capital tax gains tax that will be paid if he sells his real estate and he hands that over so that maybe a new entrepreneur can take that location and take it up to the next level. We have all kinds of property in America that is tied up because of tax reasons, not business reasons. Every single business calculation that you make in the United States of America is impacted by Federal taxes. And every calculation has to take into account the tax ramifications. When that happens, then our smart people are using their brains to figure out how to minimize or avoid their income taxes rather than figure out how to maximize their productions and their profits to create more wealth in this country. Mr. Speaker, believe me, if we had more wealth in this country and that wealth doesn't fear the government, that wealth will create more jobs and there will be more wealthy people. You cannot help the poor by punishing the rich. Moving to a national sales tax just totally revolutionizes this economy. It opens up our production and makes unlimited production. Unlimited wealth can be created, and then the taxes are paid voluntarily by the people when they decide that they're going to consume. So we have voluntary taxpayers. We have voluntary producers. We have an economy that is virtually unleashed. And here is one of the ways to draw a comparison. We have to rebuild U.S. manufacturing in the United States. We have watched a lot of our manufacturing go overseas because the price of labor has gotten low enough in comparison to U.S. labor that those factories would shut down and relocate overseas. The difference is also the taxes that are embedded. Now we tax corporations. We tax payroll taxes. When you add up the embedded taxes in a retail product in the United States, say on this ink pen, on average it is 22 percent. Let's say it's a $1 ink pen. Twenty-two percent of that would be built into the price, embedded taxes, so that the company that is producing them can pay their business income tax, likely their corporate income tax and their payroll tax. That puts us at a competitive disadvantage, Mr. Speaker. And so here is an example. If we pass the Fair Tax, then the embedded Federal income tax comes right out of that price. Competition will drive it out of the price. So here would be an example. If there is a Mazda that is made 100 percent in Japan, and there are at least $800 million dollars worth of those Mazdas coming into the United States every year, and it's sitting on the dealers' lot at $30 thousand sticker price, that price is set by competition, what you can market at. And across the street on the other dealers' lot is a Chevy, or a Ford, but let's say a Chevy. That would happen to be built 100 percent of it in the United States. It has also a $30,000 price tag on it. And that's because competition now, two comparatively valued vehicles, selling for identical price, competing directly against each other, $30,000 each. Now, we pass the FAIR tax and over time, and not a very long period of time, perhaps some would be immediate, some would be longer, but about 18 months we'd see most of these adjustments. You pass the FAIR tax and your $30,000 Chevy price will go down to $24,600. That's the 22 percent embedded Federal tax. It's part of that price that General Motors has to have in order to recover the taxes that they're paying. Your $30,000 Mazda stays at $30,000 because the embedded Federal tax isn't part of their price. That machine, that car is made in Japan. So now you pull into the dealer's lot and here's a Chevy for $24,600 and a Mazda for $30,000 and they're of comparable value. What do you buy, Mr. Speaker? Does this lower the price of the Mazda too? Maybe. But the consumer is going to look and say I'm going to go for the $24,600 Chevy. I like that that much better. I like it 28 percent better than the $30,000 Mazda. And then we have to add back in the sales tax on these cars and that's an embedded tax of 23 percent that covers your corporate income tax, a rebate, so that we untax everybody to the poverty level, and the payroll tax that's associated with the labor that goes in. So your $24,600 Chevy goes up to $30,400. That's with the sales tax added on. You would write the check to drive the Chevy off the lot for $30,400. But to drive the Mazda off the lot you'd have to write the check for $39,000. That's the difference. It is a 28 percent marketing advantage, $8,600 advantage, American car over Japanese-made car or Korean or any other car. What's that tell us, Mr. Speaker? I'll submit that it tells us that there would be many more American automobiles built and sold here in the United States because they would be competitive again. Imagine being able to take 28 percent off the price of every American-made vehicle today, at least for the components of them that are made in the United States. That's what the FAIR tax would do. Our auto manufacturers in Detroit can't seem to get to this conclusion, and neither can they carry a cogent argument against it. But they're stuck in their ways. They're negotiating with the unions who haven't made any concessions that I can see at this point. And we have a simple solution to a complex problem, that, like a Rubik's cube, and I've turned this over and looked at it every way I can for 29 years, Mr. Speaker, and every time I turn the Rubik's cube of a national sales tax again and look at it another way it looks better and better and better, not worse, not weaker, not something that has a flaw, better and better and better. And it always wins the debate, it always wins the argument if given an opportunity to match up against any other idea out there on tax reform. In fact, the FAIR tax, the national sales tax does everything good that anybody's tax proposal does, it does all of them and it does them better. And I'd put it up against anybody else's tax proposal. If you take the tax off of production and you put on it consumption, you also provide an incentive for savings and an incentive for investment. But you have more production. You will have a slight diminishment in consumption because there's a tax there, but over time there's more money in a person's pocket, a worker will get 56 percent more take home pay, and then they decide when they pay those taxes. This is where America needs to go, and in a short period of time, if we suspend the capital gains taxes and do that on a 2-year period and pass the FAIR tax, even just suspending the capital gains tax, we will see the Dow Jones industrial average jump up 30 percent or more, and it will be in a matter of weeks or months, not a long term, a short-term, you see immediate reaction and this thing would start to come around. If we pass the FAIR tax and on the night that the ball drops in Times Square, I'd set it up for December 31, 2009, midnight, and end the IRS as we know it. Abolish them and the Federal income Tax Code, set it over up as a national sales tax and we will see a dynamic economy role again, Mr. Speaker. We have the solutions here. Republicans have the solutions here. Spending trillions of dollars for a leg of a stool that we have no idea what it looks like or what kind of results we're going to get is folly. And it's the kind of folly that Einstein was talking about when he said you can't solve a problem with the same mindset that created it. So, I'll be opposed, Mr. Speaker, to this stimulus package because I think it has an oxymoronic name. I don't think it's a stimulus at all. I think it's a burden, an albatross that's hung around the neck. I think it is, as Michelle Malkin says, intergenerational theft, to put the burden up against our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. We can't balance the budget today. We couldn't balance the budget 5 years ago, and if we can't do that in the environment that we were in, how in the world do we think that we're going to pay off a debt that's multiple trillions of dollars and a national debt that maybe ends up doubling during the Obama term? No, that's folly, Mr. Speaker. And let me just cap off one more thing here, before I close, and that is that there has been a significant achievement that's been reached in the nation of Iraq. I've made six trips over there. I know our leader just arrived back from there over the weekend. The reports I get from that delegation that visited Iraq and Afghanistan is that things look pretty good in Iraq. I had a long conversation with Ambassador Crocker last week on Wednesday morning, and we talked about many of the accomplishments that have been reached there; and how though, it is still delicate and there are political solutions that need to be provided, and there still are some military tactical things that have to happen, specially up in the Mosul region. But here are some things that we know. The Iraqi people have had three successful elections. They have ratified a constitution. They are distributing their oil wealth from Baghdad out into the provinces and into the cities. They are producing more sewer, water and lights than they have ever have. The hours of electricity across the country are significantly greater than there's ever been. There are girls that have gone to school in the last 6 years for the first time. More Iraqi kids in school as well. The stability and the safety in the streets is significant. I've gone shopping in Ramadi, it's a place that a year earlier I couldn't even set foot because it was too dangerous. And I met with the mayor of Fallujah who said Fallujah is a city of peace and we're going to rebuild this city to where there's not a sign of war in this entire city. And I believe him and they're working on it and they're working on it hard. This Congress imposed a series of benchmarks on Iraq and the President of the United States, 18 different benchmarks, Mr. Speaker. I've gone back and reviewed those benchmarks. And of those benchmarks, 17 of the 18 benchmarks have been wholly or substantially completed. I thought it was inappropriate for this Congress to set those standards because that was definition of victory in Iraq, and those who voted for those standards believed that they were unachievable. They believed that the war was lost. They argued that it was a civil war that couldn't be won, that it was sectarian violence that could never be controlled, that al Qaeda was uncontrollable in Iraq. And sometimes they argued that al Qaeda didn't exist in Iraq until we attracted them there. I think that was the bug light theory. But what's been accomplished in Iraq today is phenomenal. Three successful elections, the ratification of a constitution, Iraqi military forces that have been stood up and trained and deployed, 613,000 strong, Mr. Speaker, and a security and a stability to the point where they pulled off an election a weekend ago in Iraq without a single significant security incident, with the Iraqi people taking their children to the polls so they could experience with them what it's like to go and vote and be a free people. It's been phenomenal progress. 17 of 18 benchmarks reached. The 18th benchmark, by the way, that is not wholly or substantially reached is the one that requires the Iraqi security forces to be completely independent of American forces, and that would mean logistics, intelligence, communication, supply, training, all of those things would have to be Iraqi. They're not going to be that independent, not this year or next year or the year after. You don't stand up a military like that in no time. It takes years to do that. But 17 of 18 benchmarks have been reached. The casualties in Iraq, and we had a tough time in Iraq here a little over a day ago. We lost four soldiers up by Mosul in a bombing. Regardless, as precious as those lives are and all of them that have been lost, since the first day of July, we've lost more Americans to accidents than we have to the enemy. Another measure of a definable victory in Iraq, achieved, Mr. Speaker, by our noble military under the leadership of Commander in Chief, President Bush, who had the clarity of vision and the courage and the leadership skills to order a surge when his advisors told him don't go there, Mr. President, this war can't be won. It's a definable victory today, by all of the metrics that I can identify, including a more than 90 percent reduction in civilian violence and sectarian deaths, so that they're almost immeasurable. The list goes on and on and on of the accomplishments in Iraq. And I charge and I challenge our current President of the United States to sustain the achievements of his predecessor or be judged by history as to have failed. That, Mr. Speaker, is an important message for the American people to understand tonight, that level of success in Iraq. We need to also understand what made this a great country; that's the free enterprise system and the accountability that's in. There has to be successes and failures for our system to adjust itself. That will not happen with trillions of dollars of borrowed money and this huge debt to resolve itself. And I would point out, as a matter of an example, that when Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, he came to this Congress in 1993 and he said, I want a $30 billion economic stimulus plan because we have this recession that was brought about by Bush 41. I notice these new Democrat presidents always have a Bush recession to blame their economy on. But in any case, he asked for $30 billion. And that $30 billion was negotiated down to $17 billion. I think that ended up over in the Senate, and finally they decided well that's not enough money to make any difference so we're just not going to do a $17 billion economic stimulus plan. But $30 billion was a lot of money to this Congress then. And that's why they debated it. And $17 billion wasn't enough to make a difference. But today $17 billion isn't even loose change in a $2 trillion bailout/stimulus plan. That's how far we have come in a matter of two presidential terms, two different presidents, Mr. Speaker, to the point where $17 billion, $30 billion is loose change in the maw of it all. And it will swallow us up. And then, reverting back, Mr. Speaker, to the subject matter of Iraq, I'm a little disturbed that there's such a standard that has been raised that we should honor our troops and we should honor their families for the price that they paid, and a moment of silence on this floor is appropriate, an hour of silence would be appropriate, a long and enduring prayer every day for what they have done for our freedom and all of us would also be appropriate, Mr. Speaker. But that, brought out today by the same person that brought 45 different votes to the floor of the House of Representatives, those votes designed to underfund, unfund or undermine our troops is disturbing to me. In the 110th Congress, we had brought by the Speaker of the House, these 45 votes to the floor that I said, underfunded, undermined or unfunded our troops. Some of those that I have in mind, supplemental appropriations H.R. 2642 that would prohibit establishing a permanent base in Iraq, among other things and reduce some funding. We have another one, which is H.R. 5658, require the President to submit a report within 90 days of the bill's enactment for the long- term costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the cost of operations, reconstruction and health care benefits for how long, Mr. Speaker? Through at least fiscal year 2068 is what this report says. That can't be constructive to tie the Commander in Chief up to produce a report that predicts costs until 2068. That undermines our troops, Mr. Speaker. Here is another one. It followed along H.R. 5658, and it said that the United States Defender Act would have to be authorized by Congress in order to enter into any kind of an agreement with Iraq from a military perspective. Congress would have to authorize it. I don't think the Speaker of the House was going to allow the congressional authorization of those kinds of agreements. That undermined our troops again, Mr. Speaker. Here I have H.R. 2082, which is to authorize funds for the intelligence portion of fiscal year 2008. It defines how we can interrogate prisoners. It's another way to handcuff the President of the United States and our military, whose lives have been in harm's way and remain in harm's way. Here is another one on the same subject--on interrogation techniques and micromanagement. This Congress should not be trying to operate a war by micromanagement. The Continental Congress tried to do that. It's one of the reasons we have a stronger central government today. The list of these kinds of transgressions goes on, Mr. Speaker. Here is another one. The State-Foreign Operations Appropriations--Iraq Study Group establishes that. We know what came out of that. There is another one that reduces the spending, and it identifies the 18 benchmarks which I mentioned. On and on and on. There were 45 different votes, Mr. Speaker, on the floor of this House of Representatives, 45 of those votes aside from the seven that were brought by Republicans, to recommit, defend or seek to overturn those. They all underfunded, unfunded or undermined our troops. So a moment of silence is appropriate, but I cannot break from the thought that American lives have been put at risk and that we have lost some lives because of the actions on the floor of this Congress. These actions, Mr. Speaker, encouraged our enemy. In spite of all of this, we have a definable victory in Iraq today, and it is a definable victory that needs to be maintained by the current President of the United States and enhanced with a prudent utilization of the forces that are there and with a prudent transfer as the direction it is going over to the Iraqi security forces with a political, economic and military solution in Iraq so that they can sustain and defend themselves and can remain our ally in the Middle East to inspire the other moderate Muslim nations that are there. With that, Mr. Speaker, I would yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, yes, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. And I point out that according to the law, we're innocent until proven guilty. That is according to the law. We have a different set of standards here in the House. It's an ethical standard here in the House. And the House makes its own rules, and the House determines those standards that we must all be upheld to as Members. And I would point out that even though there was $90,000 discovered in the gentleman from Louisiana's freezer, the Ethics Committee couldn't quite get to that issue. Apparently it was a little vague for the Ethics Committee. That is a committee that should be able to act quickly, and they should see to it that these kind of things are headed off at the pass, so to speak, and dealt with in an early fashion. But we went through two elections before the voters of Louisiana came around and sent a new individual here to this Congress to represent them. They finally had enough. And I applaud them for that, for making that decision. Sometimes you will find constituents that will conclude that maybe they don't have that much confidence in their Member of Congress, but it's their district, and they see that there are resources coming back to the district, and sometimes they don't want to vote someone out of office. This must have been just enough down there, because it took two elections to end the issue. The Ethics Committee still hadn't acted. The Ethics Committee hasn't acted on Mr. Rangel. The Ethics Committee is immobilized at this point, Mr. Speaker. And as the weight of these issues come up, one after another after another, I will submit that it sounds to me as I listen to the echoes through the national media and through the media in this town that we haven't heard the end of this. There are more posters there I know. And I'm of the understanding that there are a number of other individuals who have their own concerns that might have to do with warrants and perhaps subpoenas. And, again, we've got to clean up this House. If we're going to have the confidence of the American people, then we have to stand on high ethical standards. And justice has to be swift and sure. It doesn't need to be played out until the end, till it becomes such a political liability that your own colleagues on your own side of the aisle will finally say, I'm tired of being associated. It's making me vulnerable. Why don't you please give up the gavel and sit down. That is one way that it does happen. But it becomes a political question instead of an ethical question. It becomes a political question instead of a legal question. Again, we are held to the highest standards here. And I'll agree with the statement made by the Speaker, and I ask her to hold to this standard, that this be and becomes as honest, as open and as ethical as any Congress in history. That's the standard that we should have. It's not working out quite that way. It was good language when it was used for political purposes in order to win elections. But it's not such good language today when you have this many Members on one side of the aisle with this many national questions hanging out there and so many issues that are challenging us to hold a high standard here in this House of Representatives. I appreciate the Rangel rule. I'm a cosponsor of Judge Carter's bill, the Rangel rule, where if you don't get around to paying your taxes and you decide that your conscience kicks in or you find some money and you want to sign on the return, then the penalty or the interest can be waived, according to the same standards that were there and made available to the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. I looked at the Tim Geithner case, spoke to a few moments earlier, about how he was reimbursed for taxes that he was advised that he owed, and that advice came four times a year. I don't know how often the check came. But he cashed the checks but didn't pay the taxes. And now we have him heading up the Internal Revenue Service. Now I would think that most of us, Mr. Speaker, have a constituent or two or three that might find themselves in a Federal penitentiary because of failure to pay Federal taxes. That would probably be willful failure to pay Federal taxes. And of those constituents, American people that are in prison, I'm wondering if there's a pass for the Secretary of the Treasury, and if there's a pass for the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, then why wouldn't President Obama pardon everybody that's in the Federal penitentiaries for tax violations? It seems to me that would be an open, honest, ethical thing to do. If there's going to be only one standard, and if the standard is that if you cheat on your taxes you can hold a government job, why would it not be that same kind of standard that would require, out of the sense of conformity, only one standard, a pardon for all those folks who have violated the same laws that some of the top officials of the administration have essentially admitted to in the public arena? So let's have one standard. I think the standard should be, enforce the law, as Tom Daschle said about 15 years ago from the floor of the United States Senate. He didn't comply so well with it, but he did say enforce it. So let's follow that. Let's enforce the law. Let's enforce the ethical standards here in the Congress. And if we do that, however painful, however bitter the pills might be, we put it behind us and we can move on and we can do the right thing for the American people. But this anchor is clattering as it is drug across the floor of this House of Representatives, it's an anchor being drug by the Speaker of the House. It's an anchor that's being drug by the majority leader in the House of Representatives, and it certainly is an albatross around the neck. We need to get to the bottom of this. The American people need sunlight on all that we do. And let me further submit, Mr. Speaker, that we don't have sunlight on our own finances, not in the fashion that the public can track it. We need to have sunlight on what we do. We report our income and we report our assets and our liabilities. But there's a gap there. We report in a range. And the ranges, Mr. Speaker, are narrow if it's a little bit of money, but if it's a lot of money then the ranges are wide. Now, I'm going from memory a little bit, but it seems to me there's zero to $150,000. That might be one category of real estate assets. And then it goes on up, maybe $150,000 to 350 or $400,000. Those I am not so clear on. But I am clear on this; once you get over the $5 million category, then you report your assets or liabilities within a range of between 5 and $25 million, so there's a $20 million range. And then you have several categories, so you can stack those categories together. If you're on the low side you might be $5,000,001 and you might have five different categories of assets like that. So you'd have maybe a minimum of $25 million in assets in five different categories, or it could be $25 million in five different categories, $125 million. We have seen a Member's net worth go, in a matter of 3 years, from the low six figures to about $6.5 million dollars. But no one can really track that because we are not required to report the direct dollar amount, and that gives a place for everybody to hide that wants to hide. And I think out of this needs to come a real requirement that we report real assets and real liabilities to the best dollar as we know it and to the best dates that we can produce, and then post it, as we did on the motion to instruct conferees today for the stimulus bill. All of our records, if they're going to be public records, need to be posted in a searchable, sortable, downloadable database so that the public can look in and have sunlight on these kind of finances that raise these kind of questions and maybe, just maybe there would be some good advice coming from somebody across America that would say, hey, Mr. Geithner, pay your taxes, Mr. Rangel, pay your taxes. That's the message that I think the public would deliver here if we gave them an opportunity to look over our shoulder. We can't even look over our own shoulder because there's protection built into the financial reporting requirements; and it was wrong from the beginning; it's wrong today. And I'd just say, one standard for all people. I agree with the President, whether you're powerful or whether you aren't powerful, everybody should live by the same standard, and that is enforce the law to the letter, as Tom Daschle said from the floor of the United States Senate. I yield back to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I very much thank Judge Carter for bringing up the issue of ethics in this Congress, Mr. Speaker. And it is not an easy thing to raise these issues on the floor of this House. There are pressures in this place that push a person who serves here to conform, to not make waves and to not expose themselves to legislative retaliation. So, there are many Members of this Congress who would think about those things instead of thinking about the standards that we need to uphold in this great deliberative body. And we are going into the 220th year since the ratification of our Constitution. And it has been a long history in this Chamber with high standards. Of course, there have been disagreements and squabbles along the way. And there have been times back in those days of old when Members came to blows. We have a different way of approaching things today. And if we look back upon previous Congresses, there have been standards that have been brought forth. I remember a Speaker of the House who saw 74 sets of ethical charges brought against him, and all in an effort to bring down the Speaker. Finally, to get away from that all, he accepted one of them that could have crossed the line, which melded the whole thing down. And here we sit today with a dysfunctional Ethics Committee, an Ethics Committee that doesn't take up the issues that come before them. They are there deadlocked. And so, since we have a dysfunctional Ethics Committee, we have a place, Mr. Speaker, to appeal to. And that becomes you, Mr. Speaker, and the echo that comes from here to the American people. And Judge Carter has brought this privileged resolution today. It has laid out a whole line of facts as we know them with regard to the activities of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel). And he has spoken, I think well, to the standards that have been put up by the New York Times, which I previously haven't looked to for a standard, but by the President of the United States, who has said there will be only one set of standards, whether you're powerful or whether you're unpowerful, you have to live to the same ethical standard. And when you see the quote that comes from Speaker Pelosi, November 8, 2006, where she says ``the American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history,'' it's not bearing up very well considering that the Ethics Committee is not taking up issues, and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee still presides in a time of economic crisis, we all agree, when important bills like the stimulus bill have to be written, and they have to be written in cooperation, and they should be written in a bipartisan fashion, which we missed that train entirely over here, Mr. Speaker. There was no bipartisanship that applied to the bill that came to the floor. And we shall see if there is a conference committee that shows that bipartisanship. But if there is a question, if there is a question of whether it sheds light in an ill way upon this Congress, then it is incumbent upon those who wield some of the most power in this Chamber to step down and allow their name to be cleared or allow the charges to stick, whichever the case may be. This privileged resolution raises this issue. One might note that there was no debate on the floor of this privileged resolution. There was a motion to table the privileged resolution, and so the only voice to it was the Clerk reading the resolution and the motion to table, which is an undebatable motion. And it was voted down on party lines, Mr. Speaker. I think the public will recognize that when you see ethical questions that are decided upon party lines, especially ethical questions that are difficult to raise because of the relationships, the collegial relationships that we have between Members here across the aisle, I think they will understand that politics is part of this. And the Ethics Committee is supposed to be above it. And when it comes time to pay your taxes and report your income, no one should be above that. I agree with Tom Daschle on that point, and I agree with President Obama on that point. I would like to think that the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee agrees as well. But when the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee doesn't understand the convoluted taxes that he has helped to contrive over the years and so therefore can presumably take a pass for failure to pay those taxes, if there is an excuse for the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, then, Mr. Speaker, I would submit who in America is it not an excuse for? If the Ways and Means Chair doesn't understand the taxes and responsibilities well enough, if it was inadvertent, then say so. Bring this out. If it is not inadvertent, I think that also needs to be brought out. I suspect it was inadvertent. But it is still a responsibility. It is a responsibility of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, a responsibility of the Secretary of the Treasury, the boss of the IRS, to use TurboTax. And he couldn't get his taxes right, even though he cashed the checks that were reimbursement for the taxes he was to pay. And we are to overlook this because there is only one man in America big enough or smart enough to get us out of this economic crisis that we are in. That would be the Secretary of the Treasury. Apparently there is only one person in America that can wield the gavel over the Ways and Means Committee while we muddle through this economic crisis without having the confidence that all the best interests of the American people are in mind. These are some of the things that flow into my mind as I watch this, Mr. Speaker. And I yield back to the gentleman from Texas. I thank you for the bringing this to the floor, and I thank you for the privileged resolution.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate the privilege to address you this evening on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. And I also appreciate the dialogue that takes place here on the floor. This is the most deliberative body anywhere in the world. And we have a privilege to be part of it. And as we engage in this debate, it is the circumstance that across this country, Madam Speaker, people listen in. And they're reading the newspapers and following the blogs and watching their cable news networks and also some regular TV. And as this conversation goes on here, Madam Speaker, it echoes out across the entire land. And as this conversation echoes across the entire land, it also becomes part of the national dialogue, this national dialogue that takes place in our schools, in our churches, at the workplace, in the coffee shop, in the break room, across the backyard fence, on the snowmobile and outside doing chores. Over and over again, Americans interact with each other. And while that is going on, they talk about a lot of things that matter to them such as the aftermath of the Super Bowl, but also current events. And America is, at this point, transfixed on the current event of the--I think not aptly named--``stimulus plan'' that is being debated over in the Rotunda of the United States Senate, Madam Speaker. And so as this American conversation takes place, they are moving towards a consensus. And sometimes we don't achieve that consensus, Madam Speaker. But the more dialogue we have, the more facts that are brought to play, and in fact many Members in this body know that if they can bring the emotional anecdote to play, it also moves people's opinions. The things that move people's opinions bring us towards a consensus. When we arrive at a consensus, that consensus, if America's consensus doesn't match up with the Congressional census you will see many Members, Madam Speaker, in this Chamber will shift their position to realign themselves with their constituents. Now, there are two ways to do this job. One way is to stand up and lay out the framework of the principles that we believe in as individual Members, and then hang on to that framework, attach to it the components of public policy that are compatible with the fundamental belief framework. That's what I believe I've done. And I very much like the input that I received from my constituents the people from my State and across the country, that adds to my knowledge base so that I can make a reasoned, informed decision. That's the approach I think the founders had in mind when they wrote this Constitution and established this constitutional republic, was that there would be representatives in this constitutional republic that would come here. We owe our constituents, all of them, our best effort. And more importantly, Madam Speaker, we owe them our best judgment. That's one way of doing this job here in the United States Congress. The other is, Madam Speaker, to take a position that you're going to get in front of your constituents, see where they are going, check the wind speed, the barometer, so to speak, and then put up a vote and take a position that reflects the position of your constituents. That goes on in this Congress too often, Madam Speaker, and it troubles me. It troubles me because we are elected for our effort and our judgment, and we owe our constituents our best judgment. But if our judgment is just simply to check the wind, put our finger in the air, then we're not offering to the system we have here the things that we should have to contribute. And I would bring a little anecdote of Robespierre to mind. He was pretty well established within the French revolution. He was an advocate for the effective and ruthless utilization of the guillotine to get rid of his political enemies and get rid of the aristocracy that he believed had drug the French down and brought about this revolution. But as the people marched in the streets Robespierre went to the window and looked out and saw the mobs marching through the streets in France. This would be about 1789. And he said, I'd better get in front of them and see where they are going for I am their leader. Now, that's no kind of leader that just simply tries to lead the mob wherever it is that they happen to be going. And some months later Robespierre was one of about 16,000 Frenchmen and women that found themselves a head shorter. But that kind of leadership didn't work very well for Robespierre, and it doesn't work very well for the United States of America. It's our task to have a vision for the future. We need to articulate that vision. We need to articulate the principles that we believe in and build policies around those tried and true principles that have created this great American Nation. It isn't going to be a giant mosaic of 435 Members that stick their finger in the wind and decide what position they're going to take that will extend their tenure here in the United States Congress, Madam Speaker. It's going to be the people who look into the future with a vision that they can sell to the American people and say, maybe you're not here yet. Maybe you're not ready to move where we need to go. But this Nation is too important to be a reactionary Member of Congress. We've got to be leadership Members of Congress. We're each elected for our leadership as well. So let me submit, Madam Speaker, that I look back on last year's vote, that vote before the election. There was a $700 billion bailout, without a prediction on the prospects of it's success, it simply was an emphatic request from then Secretary of the Treasury Paulson that he needed to have a checking account with $700 billion in it, all borrowed money, I might add, so that he could spend it at his discretion to pick up the toxic debt, as he described it. And that's how we ended up with the TARP fund. And so we let the first half of that out, the $350 billion. And the second half was contingent upon the successful deployment of the first half. And I've seen not the signs of success of that first half. In fact, our stock market has continued to tank. Our economic indicators are going in the wrong direction. There's $350 billion that went into his hand that much of it did get expended, with the other $350 billion, and now this Congress has approved that it go there. It only took the approval of one body to do that. And the Senate did that. That's a start on this economic stimulus component. But I did not hear a clearly articulated argument back then, back that started here on September 19 when Secretary Paulson came to this Congress and culminated in a vote that was in early October. I didn't hear clearly articulated principles that they would adhere to on how America was going to get back on track. And so I look on this continuum of mistakes that have been made, and I take us back to a year, and it's my recollection, it's not confirmed date, but about 1978 when the Community Reinvestment Act was passed and became law. That's a component of the flaws that we have. It was legislation that I think was inspired for the right reasons. I think it was well-intentioned, but it turned out to be a large mistake. And it was because there were lenders that would redline certain inner city neighborhoods that they decided that the value of the real estate wasn't going to be sustained in those neighborhoods and sometimes the residents didn't have a very good credit rating. So, with the combination of those two things they just said these whole neighborhoods we're not going to loan money in. People there couldn't buy a house. They can't buy a house. That sent the real estate value spiraling downward. And a blanket decision like that, by drawing a red line around the map was the wrong thing to do, Madam Speaker. But the roots of problem were created out of the good intentions of trying to provide for loans for residences within those neighborhoods that had been redlined, and the Community Reinvestment Act was born. And it was refreshed again in the early '90s, I believe it was 1993, brought up to a little more modern language. But in it all, it held lenders accountable if they wanted to expand their lending operations, set up a branch operation somewhere, they had to meet the scrutiny of the regulators who would look at the Community Reinvestment Act and say, what are you doing to expand your loans into these neighborhoods? And if the answer was nothing, they were denied an opportunity to expand their operations, set up a branch or consolidate. They were essentially stuck in place unless they could comply with this regulation of really making bad loans in neighborhoods that the real estate value couldn't be sustained. Once you lay down a foundation and a parameter like that, then you encourage the lenders to give bad loans. And when the lenders were giving bad loans in order to be positioned so that their portfolios were a certain percentage of those bad loans, doing so so they had the ability to expand, and we had an economy that was expanding, although, going to the '80s it was not. We had our farm crisis, our real estate crisis and our energy crisis all together in the '80s and we lost 3,000 banks in the United States. And I remember clearly the load and the difficulties that we had. My neighborhood and myself included, aged very quickly during those years of the '80s. So the Community Reinvestment Act from 1978 didn't turn out to manifest itself in its negative composition because we had an economic crisis in the '80s that was taking banks down and requiring the FDIC to come in and take over the banks and make some moves to prop back up our financial world. And they did some moves then in the '80s that we haven't done here in this particular era. But in any case, by the time we got into the early '90s, the Community Reinvestment Act was re-established and refreshed; and at that point, things started to move. When we got into the late 1990s and the early 2000s, then we saw unnatural interest rates. We saw the money supply such that the interest rate was driven down. Part of the reason for that was to create an economy that would create a housing boom. So if you have a housing boom that's driven by low interest rates, people would look at that and conclude that they could build a new home or they could buy a high quality used home that allowed someone in that used home to build a new home. And the housing boom began. And it set up a market that exceeded the demand. And we reached the point where we had the highest home ownership of any time in our Nation's history. I remember President Bush announcing that we'd reached 68 percent of the people in America lived in their own homes. And I think that number got marginally higher after he had made that statement. But in any case, as this came together we had a lot of those were bad loans. We had bad loans that were made into these neighborhoods under the incentive of the Community Reinvestment Act and facilitated in a very large way, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who had been set up as a quasi-government entities, later privatized, and then moved towards the quasi-government agencies again, and here on the floor of this Congress, when the problems began to arise and we saw that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac weren't capitalized consistent with the other lending institutions, their competitors, and they weren't regulated in the same fashion as their competitor lending institutions, that gave an unfair advantage to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac institutions who were the secondary loan market. And they nearly cornered the secondary loan market, the mortgage market in the United States. And we came to the floor in this Congress once in 2001, plus or minus a year on that one if you might, Madam Speaker. But again, and made the debate that we should regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac more like other lending institutions because it was too high a risk for the taxpayers to take. Well, that amendment and that effort failed in those earlier years in this millennium, Madam Speaker. And then, I remember the date, it was here on this floor and it took place from that microphone there and that microphone over there. It was an amendment that was brought to the floor October 26, 2005, by Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa, who was and remains very well respected among the banking community and the lending institutions. He brought an amendment that would have brought Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the similar capital requirements of the banks, and the similar regulatory requirements of the banks. I think he stopped one step short with that amendment. I think he should have moved them towards the clear free market side of this. But in any case, as that amendment was debated, twice in this millennia, twice in this last decade at least we've had an opportunity to get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac right. They were, again, Madam Speaker, playing off and capitalizing on the language in the Community Reinvestment Act that said make bad loans in these neighborhoods that don't have a very good value of their real estate. But twice we turned away from shoring up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, tightening them up, putting them back into the competitive marketplace. And so we found ourselves in a situation, when AIG was ready to go under and the $85 billion got poured in there about in that era, that's a little bit before that, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became very unstable and we had to step in as the Federal Government and nationalize the balance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now the taxpayers own Fannie and Freddie. And now Fannie and Freddie don't have any new regulation that requires them to meet those capital and regulatory requirements. But we missed an opportunity to privatize them and regulate them according to the other lending institutions. The compound effect of the Community Reinvestment Act, mark-to-market accounting, the credit default swaps that were taking place, the lack of regulation on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the defense that came from the now chairman of the Financial Services Committee, from Massachusetts, who stood at that microphone and debated Mr. Leach, who was at this microphone, and at a certain point the political center of gravity on that debate went towards the gentleman from Massachusetts, and I think the lobbying effect had an effect on the result as well, Madam Speaker. But in any case, the Leach amendment went down. That was our last opportunity that I know on this floor to get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac right. So we had large financial indicators that were going in the wrong direction. And as this started to tumble it started to snowball down hill it took us to this point on September 19, when Secretary Paulson came to the Capitol and insisted that he have the $700 billion checking account to spend as he saw fit, and within those narrow parameters. Well, not so very narrow parameters, within a broad definition, a huge authorization/appropriation, and maybe the largest that had ever passed out of this Congress. And I'm not certain about that. But it was huge. So it brought us to this point where there was a $700 billion bill on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, and that bill passed off the floor with, I think, too many Republican votes, and I would have been pleased if it had had none, but there were an awful lot of Democratic votes as well, Madam Speaker. That was the time that this Congress passed the Rubicon. It was the time we had a chance to draw back. If cooler heads had prevailed and if we had gone back and had actually gotten a do-over on that, I do not believe the $700 billion bailout bill would have passed, because the American people have now seen what has unfolded. They expected to see the markets increase and stability come into our marketplace and to see capital that had been chased to the sidelines come back into the marketplace again. It has not done that. In fact, it looks like more capital has gone to the sidelines because money is smart, and smart money finds its way into the best investment at the time. Right now, that money has been scared out of the marketplace. I listened to the gentleman from Minnesota, who left the floor a moment ago, Madam Speaker, and he talked about the surplus that we had in the year 2000. That happens to be the last year of the Clinton administration. It is true that we had a surplus during several of those years, and the gentleman from Minnesota, I will say, recognized that he was in the process of misspeaking and backed up to say that the budget surplus was an accomplishment of the administration at the time. At least that was the implication of his words. It was not a quote. I don't want it to be characterized as that, Madam Speaker. Then they go on and argue that this deficit is a deficit that comes out of the Bush administration, and so here we are. We have a Member of Congress here who will argue and who has argued that the Clinton administration deserves the credit for the surplus that was in our budget in the year 2000 and that the Bush administration deserves the blame for the deficit that we have today. Well, all right. On the surface, maybe you can make that connection, and I would be happy to have this dialogue with the gentleman from Minnesota. Should he arrive on this floor, I would be happy to yield and have that dialogue. The first point I would make is that all of this spending starts here in the House of Representatives. There is no President who can initiate spending. There is no Senator who can initiate spending. According to the Constitution, all appropriations bills start here in the House of Representatives. We start them here, and they cannot be authorized and they cannot be spent until the majority of the House of Representatives approves them. Sure, we start them here. We send them to the Senate. The Senate passes them. They come back to a conference. We conference, both vote and pass them. If they pass, then they go to the President for his signature. Yet the House, if determined and organized and unwilling to cave in to the Senate or in to the White House, controls every penny of spending that comes through this United States Government--every penny of appropriations. We do it here. It is ordered by the Constitution. So it does not do for any Member of Congress or for the rest of the world to say, Madam Speaker, that the responsibility was in the hands of the President. Although, we recognize that the Presidents do exert significant influence on the judgment of Members of Congress and that they do present a budget to this floor and that they do negotiate those budgets, because they sit back with the veto power that gives an appropriate tension that helps bring out a negotiated solution most of the time. Madam Speaker, Congress has the responsibility, and the President cannot initiate spending, and so I will submit this: this $700 billion bailout plan that passed last year was on our watch. It was on my watch, and it was on the watch of the gentleman from Minnesota. I voted ``no.'' He can speak to how he voted. I believe I recall that was a ``yes.'' The $700 billion, as big a mistake as I believe it was, was also a mistake that was made not just by the gentleman from Minnesota but by the current President of the United States, who voted for the $700 billion plan as a Senator of the United States, and that is attached to him as his responsibility. He needs to answer for the $700 billion bailout plan that gets attached to this huge stimulus package that he is partly the author of and the advocate of. So, even though the stimulus plan passed out of the House with not a single Republican vote, when it came time to vote for this stimulus plan, so to speak, the ``yes'' votes by the Republicans were a big goose egg up on the scoreboard. Not one Republican thought it was a good idea to roll out this $819 billion in spending in the stimulus plan from the House, which was accompanied by $347 billion in interest liability that goes with it. You have to pay interest on your debt. We are probably going to end up borrowing money to pay interest on the debt, and I can tell you that spirals downward pretty fast. When added to the roughly $100 billion in the Senate, the $819 billion takes it up to about $900 billion. The interest rate that is out of the House side, $347 billion, is the low number. The lowest estimated number I can come up with, with the interest and with the Senate dollars in there, is $1.25 trillion in stimulus money. That number is $1.247 trillion. That gets coupled to the $700 billion that was the bailout plan from last year, the $700 billion that President Obama and the gentleman from Minnesota voted for. Now the $1.25 trillion that is being debated in the United States Senate is all his. The President owns that. When you add that together, it rounds pretty handily to $2 trillion. Now we have a $2 trillion bailout/stimulus plan and a stock market that continues to tank and a financial world out there that lacks confidence that government has been doing the right thing since the election and, in fact, since before the election. We have watched our economy spiral downward. We have watched our market indicators spiral downward. We have watched our unemployment rates go up. Those indicators do not indicate confidence in the leadership that we have in the financial world. So the financial world, the investment world, the people who are putting capital in that is used to expand the productivity and the distribution and the market share of our companies, are pulling their capital out. They are increasingly holding it. They are buying bonds. I am sure that some of it is sewn up in the mattress by now, that some of it is invested in gold, that some of it is invested in foreign currency as well. Although, I am a bit surprised that our dollar has held up as strongly as it has, and that is more an indicator of the weakness of foreign currency rather than a reason to consider there to be strength in this U.S. dollar today. In any case, the supply of U.S. dollars has gone up, and as it has, the instability goes with it. So we have a $2 trillion stimulus plan that is 100 percent lock, stock and barrel owned by President Obama, who said to us that it is one leg of a multi-legged stool that has to be built in order to get this economy back on track again. Now let me submit that there are two ways to look at this economic situation. One of them is the Keynesian approach, which is, if government can pour enough money into the economy and get enough money into the hands of enough people who will take that money and spend enough of it, that it will stimulate the economy. So, if more people go out and buy a loaf of bread or buy a car or maybe go to the theater or to the ball game or maybe buy a ball glove themselves, that increased spending will stimulate a demand that will cause more manufacturing and more goods to be brought into our economy. That is the Keynesian approach. The problem with it is that, looking back in history and at the times when we have done such things, the actual economic numbers do not support the idea that pouring money willy-nilly into the economy in an indiscriminate fashion results in the stimulation of our economy. I will not argue, Madam Speaker, that there aren't some places where government can invest money that does stimulate the economy. One of those places would be investing in transportation links that open up development in new areas and that help goods and services move back and forth in a more efficient fashion. That does create economic development. Transportation has been the number one best tool to use to grow economic development throughout the history of all of humanity. So I do not take it all off the table, but there is much that is on the table that I would take off. I would not put a dollar into the National Endowment for the Arts and call it economic development or stimulus. Here is another piece that I was just looking at. Of the infrastructure funding within the stimulus package, there is language in there that bans that money from going into facilities that allow religious worship in them. To me, it looks like that is a first amendment violation in that we would discriminate against facilities that allow people to pray and to have religious worship. Maybe they've got a different definition of ``religious worship'' than I have, but I don't know of a single school where there isn't prayer that takes place, not just by students who are sitting there, taking a test, but by faculty/administration where prayer is also a part of their daily lives. I can think of the public school where my kids graduated. On the Friday after September 11, the superintendent invited in all of the pastors in the community and brought together all of the students in the school, K through 12. They had a prayer service there for the victims of September 11 and for this Nation, which was in great peril at the time. It was an open, full-blown prayer session in the gymnasium of the public school. That is worship, Madam Speaker. If none of those dollars could go to a public school like that because people prayed inside that building, I have to tell you I think there are folks writing this legislation who are praying on the constitutional rights of the American people. I would reject that thought process. I would find the person who put that language in there--I suspect it was a staff person more than a Member, but the Member must have facilitated it--and I would pull them out root and branch. We don't need those kinds of people in this Congress who are going to put America's religious faith as a target and write it into legislation and exclude facilities from public finance that allow worship in them. It is an outrageous thing. It is the most outrageous. Among the other outrageous things that are in this bill or where there have been precedents set and parameters set: $400 million for education and for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Economic stimulus plan. I wonder what economic guru and I wonder what department of economics would be sitting around to come up with an idea like that. I know that President Obama has said that he is familiar with the College of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he taught constitutional law. I don't know that that would be the kind of a policy that would emerge from a think tank at the University of Chicago. I suspect not. As for the places I have been and as for the people whom I have met, if I took them seriously, it would not come out of their economics departments either. I can't imagine the mindset of people, who have the public trust, drafting into legislation legislation that now is in the $900 billion zone, plus the more than $347 million in interest. I can't imagine what kind of a think tank would produce an idea that got past the first sentence where we would stimulate the economy by investing $400 million in sexually transmitted diseases. It may be a good program, but I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that the return on that investment with regard to a stimulus plan would no way in the world be measured in our economy by investing $400 million in sexually transmitted disease prevention. So that is one of those bizarre ideas. If that is a stimulus plan, that is not it, not for me, not for the taxpayers of America, and it ought to be out of there. I will just read from this: ``In order to control and prevent sexually transmitted diseases, the Centers for Disease Control used its budget for the following purposes:'' This is within the existing budget of the Centers for Disease Control. ``A transgender beauty pageant in San Francisco that advertised available HIV testing.'' There would be an economic stimulus plan within the budget of the CDC, I presume. I would reject that as well. The Centers for Disease Control funded an event also put on by the Stop AIDS Project called ``Got Love: Flirt, Date, Score'' that taught participants how to flirt with greater finesse. This our Federal tax dollars. It embarrasses me to read that for two reasons. One is this dialogue in this public sphere makes me a little uneasy. The other is that we have people who are entrusted, Madam Speaker, with the American people's tax dollars who would, with a straight face and maybe even under the light of day, take that money and divert it to these kinds of projects. I have a list here. I cannot bring myself to read the rest of it because I think that it goes downhill from there. In fact, clearly, it does. So a $700 billion bailout plan, coupled with a $1.25 trillion stimulus package. It is a $2 trillion approach here that is designed to supposedly stimulate and fix this economy. The President has said that he inherited a $1 trillion deficit. I do not know that it is $1 trillion--it may be--but he also owns a $2 trillion bailout/stimulus plan. It is his plan. He voted for the $700 billion. He's advocated the 1\1/4\ trillion, even though I think that the President's approach to this is slightly more reasonable than that of the Speaker of the House, Madam Speaker, in that there's at least been lip service paid to the idea that there should be a little more stimulus in it, a little more for small business, and there should be less in this wish list. But when I look at the wish list, it comes to me this way. It appears to be the huge wish list that's been produced by the activist liberals in this Congress, Madam Speaker, and they can't seem to restrain themselves from jumping on this and putting in everything under the sun that they couldn't get passed when they were held more accountable. One of the former Members of the Congress who has been an effective leader on the other side of the aisle, from where I stand, said never let a crisis go to waste. Well, I have to tip my hat to that philosophy, however much I disagree with it. The Speaker, the leadership, the Chairs of the committees, both Appropriations, Financial Services and a number of others, have not allowed this crisis to go to waste. They've jumped on it with every opportunity to expand government, to grow government, to raise the baseline, to pour hundreds of billions of dollars and, in fact, cumulatively $2 trillion into this President Obama-owned $2 trillion bailout/stimulus plan that has no record of working. And there's a belief over on this side of the aisle--and I'd love to do this debate on the floor of Congress one day, maybe even today, maybe even tonight. There's a belief that Franklin Delano Roosevelt somehow saved America from the Great Depression. Well, I looked at that. I was taught that. I sat in the classrooms from probably eighth grade on where it was the mantra that FDR saved us from the Great Depression and won World War II. In fact, I didn't hear my parents rebut that either. It didn't come from the home when I began to look at it differently. I will say FDR was very, very useful in fighting and winning World War II. He was great for the spirit of America. He held our will together, and it was a hard thing to do, and he provided a high level of confidence in American military and our Commander in Chief that was, I will say, essential in winning World War II in the way that we did, but that doesn't equate into giving him a pass into what went on in the 1930s. And I'm not here either, Madam Speaker, to advocate that my Iowa President, Herbert Hoover, got everything right. He got almost everything right up to and until the time--in his entire life, he was a magnificent individual, an utterly brilliant man that sometimes the things he touched literally turned to gold, speaking of the gold mining industry in Australia. His life and his history was just a never-ending string of success, which gave him a sense, I think, of false confidence that he could manage an economy, support Smoot-Hawley, and use the government to get us out of an economic problem. That set the stage for FDR to be elected in 1932, who came into this and began to kick off the New Deal, the New Deal that had within it a multitude of projects. Ones that come to mind are WPA, the CCC. There were a number of others. And as I watched that unfold, I went through the history of the New Deal, having been taught continually that the New Deal was what bailed us out of the Great Depression. And so when I was a junior in high school, I was assigned the task of writing a term paper, and I don't recall clearly, but I believe I had to select from a list of possible topics, and I think we might have been able to offer our own. But in any case, I chose the New Deal and the Great Depression and FDR because I had been convinced by the educators that FDR got us through the depression, and it was his creativity and innovativeness that saved us from that economic crisis. And so I began to do the homework to write that term paper, and I took it very seriously. It was a project for me and it was personal. It was personalized and it was internalized. And the big part of it for me was to go into the public library, the public library, the Carnegie library in Denison, Iowa, where I went to high school. I sat down in there and I began to pull the newspapers. The newspaper was a county seat newspaper, remains today, same newspaper, county seat of about 6,500 people today, and they published twice a week. I began getting those old newspapers out, and I started when the stock market crashed in October of 1929, and I read that newspaper thoroughly, took my notes. There were no copy machines in those days, so I was preparing the footnotes for the term paper that I was writing. And then I went through newspaper by newspaper, turning the pages, reading the relevant articles that had to do with the financial situations, any layoffs that we had, any notices, advertisement by banks, interest rates, things of that nature. I actually remember the cigarette commercials stood out to me as being far different than they were even at that time, and as I read through those newspapers and tracked the beginning, the discussion, the dialogue, the acts of Congress and the implementation of the components of the New Deal, I read it all the way through twice a week, newspapers from October 1929 all the way up until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. At that point, all the news became war, and it was impossible to track the economics in any kind of a relevant fashion. But it was a good study period to look at. October 29 to December 1941, every newspaper, took notes, wrote footnotes, wrote a term paper which I wish I had it today, and I actually looked for it and can't find it. But in any case, when I completed that study and was ready to put the term paper together, I remember sitting in the room, the newspaper room in the library, looking up at the ceiling and thinking, this is far different than I thought it would be. I really didn't see evidence there that the New Deal had stimulated the economy. I didn't see evidence it had saved us from the depths of the Great Depression. I couldn't follow that huge vast government programs, government taking over entity after entity and managing an economy, I couldn't see the evidence that it had significantly reduced unemployment. I couldn't see the evidence that capital had come into the investment markets, and if you tracked the Dow Jones Industrial Average, that Dow stayed down and way down throughout the 1930s, and unemployment that was about 25 percent going into FDR's first term hung in there pretty tough all the way through. And I believe the lowest unemployment we had throughout that entire decade was 14 percent. Now, those things that I saw, that I read, when I come into something with a conclusion that I'm seeking to ratify with evidence and walk away from that having turned 180 degrees, realizing that FDR's New Deal plan wasn't a plan that bailed us out of the Great Depression but at best, at best, it can only be critiqued and analyzed to have perhaps diminished the depths to which we fell in the Great Depression, at the great cost of delaying the recovery, all of that borrowed money and the tax money that came away from the private sector and was poured into growing government, that money that went in was money that scared other capital out of the investment business and kept private industry from growing. And so government investment made private capital hesitant, that that was left that wasn't taxed away, and Madam Speaker, it delayed the recovery from the Great Depression. So even if FDR's New Deal diminished the depths to which we might have fallen if he would have done a hands-off, if he would have been a cool Ike, not a Hoover, if he had done that, I think we would have recovered quickly. I think we would have bounced back quickly, but that wasn't what happened. Government spending brought about indecision and scared capital way from the marketplace, and it hired government workers, many, many government workers. The CCC camps would be among them, and I know what it's like to try to hire labor when government competes against you for that labor. Government will always pay when you're talking about blue collar jobs. Government will pay the highest wages. They'll pay the highest benefits. They'll give the most job security. So if you're out there and you have a family to raise and you're unemployed, you're looking for a job, and you go out into the job market and you put out your applications and you stand in line and you begin to market yourself and you have a choice between going to work for Uncle Sam and going to work for the new entrepreneur down the road that just put together enough capital on a wing and a prayer to start up an entrepreneurial business that might grow into something magnificent, when government outbids the private sector for labor, they also, Madam Speaker, delay the recovery of a depression, of recession, or they diminish the growth during our bull markets in our good times as well. And that is what happened during the Great Depression. The Federal Government competed with the private sector for capital, by nationalizing, by competing for labor. When that happened, it diminished the inspirations of the entrepreneurs. They hired workers away that might have been entrepreneurs themselves but took them out of the labor force and the private sector. Government grew, the private sector shrunk, the stock market sunk and stayed flat. In fact, from that time in October of 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average did not recover to that level, not at all through the 1930s, not at all through the 1940s. Not until 1954 did the Dow Jones Industrial Average get back to the place where it was in October of 1929. So one might even argue--in fact, Madam Speaker, I will argue--that not only did not the New Deal get us out of the depression, it might have helped bridge us marginally to get to the Second World War, but I'll argue the Second World War didn't take us out of it either because we didn't get recovered. But what did happen was the Second World War destroyed the rest of the world's industry, and it left the U.S., having been on a huge growth boom in our manufacturing and industry here to meet the war effort for the world and for our 16,000, mostly men but also women, that served in uniform during that period of time. So we found ourselves in a world that needed to be rebuilt, that was hungry for the products of industry, and with the only major industrial country in the world that hadn't been destroyed in the Second World War, and as our industry cranked out product after product, and as we exported overseas and as the greenback became the currency of the world, when all that happened, we were recovering economically. And that's why it took until 1954. So the Second World War was a big stimulus plan. We spent a lot of big government money, but the private sector, as we emerged from the Second World War, is what put the real meat on the bones and brought us out of that and took us through the recovery that reached that level in 1954. And then that's the part of the economy that now that I remember in my life's experience, Madam Speaker. But we should not fool ourselves into believing that the New Deal was a good deal. We should instead go back and replay history, reset that clock and play it out. What if Coolidge had remained President? What if we would have set a policy from this very floor of this Congress that we were going to have fiscal discipline and tax relief and get as much money into the hands of the productive sector of the economy as we possibly could? That would be a very interesting exercise to reset that clock and game-play that out. I believe that we may have dropped deeper, but I also believe that we would have recovered much more quickly, and I believe we would be a stronger, more robust economy today if we had made those decisions then. So this brings us now fast forward into 2009, this day today. We're here watching a stock market that has tanked, that hasn't quite lost half of its value, but it's juggling underneath and falling below the 8,000 floor. We have indicators that show that there are 10.5, 11 million people, maybe more, that are unemployed and looking for work; although, the real unemployment numbers are marginally a little more than half of that number. We have economic indicators that mean capital is scarce and unemployment numbers going up. Investment capital is diminishing. Smart money is going to the sidelines. Demand for loans has shrunk substantially. It hasn't disappeared entirely. The marketing of these homes that were the toxic debt that Secretary Paulson talked about, actually there was a little bump in the transfer of those, but until we work our way through this, this economy is not going to be back on a solid foundation. We have to get it on a solid foundation by having solid economic theory here on the floor of this Congress, not the idea that a new New Deal is going to somehow be better than the old New Deal. And I would challenge, Mr. Speaker, our President to lay out some data, show me where the New Deal actually worked. And I understand his position that FDR didn't spend enough money, that if he had just spent more money, if he hadn't lost his nerve, if he hadn't been worried about fiscal responsibility, there would have been a lot bigger old New Deal that would have brought us out of the depression before the Second World War. I understand the President believes that because FDR lost his nerve on spending that it brought about a recession within a depression. That's something I had never heard before. I understand that's a belief. And I understand that the President of the United States believes that we have to construct a multilegged stool of New Deal-like programs in order to, in a Keynesian way, stimulate this economy, that we have a real political problem on our hands that is an economic problem on our hands that lays down a parameter here that will set a precedent if we go forward with this stimulus plan for the United States of America that we can never go back and fix again. Once you cross that line, once you write that mammoth check, once you obligate our children and our grandchildren to pay the interest on this debt-- and Lord knows if they could ever pay the principal--once you buy into this huge, humongous, Keynesian, multitrillion-dollar bailout/stimulus plan which says that government is the solution and the only answer and that, yes, private sector can tag along but they aren't big enough to make a difference. Even though some of these companies are, quote, too big to fail, or, more accurately, too big to be allowed to fail. If the private sector can be too big to be allowed to fail, how can they not be big enough to work us out of this calamity? How can we draw a conclusion that we can create jobs out there from the government side of this argument when the very fact that those jobs haven't been created in the private sector says there wasn't a demand for them, they weren't economically sound or smart capital would have found a way to create those jobs in the first place. But what we have is a self- confident, overconfident, in fact, arrogant government that believes that they are the solution and that they can lead the private sector. And when I hear the statement come out that the CEOs of these corporations that receive bailout money will be limited to no more than $500,000 a year in compensation, it sounds like enough money to me, also, Mr. Speaker. But I will tell you that it's wrongheaded policy and it's what happens when you have the Federal Government engaging in providing capital into the private sector, they also begin to micromanage the private sector. When they micromanage the private sector, you get things like wage reductions for CEOs and boards of directors. And you get things like perhaps one day you'll see, well, a wage increase for the workers. Now when I hear that and I think the President of the United States wants to tell a company how much they can pay their CEOs and their board of directors, is there any principle there that remains that would keep, Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States or this Congress from telling these companies what they will pay their workers? If the President has enough influence in this Congress and holds the checkbook through the Secretary of the Treasury, and I'm pretty uneasy about him having our checkbook actually with his tax problems, but in any case, if he holds the checkbook and the directive of the President is that the blue collar workers on the line aren't making enough money per hour, if you're going to see a stream of capital come into the company, the lending institution, for example, then you're going to comply with the demands of the President. They don't have to be the law of the land. They don't have to be something that is legislation that is debated and voted up or down on the floor of this Congress. They only have to be the intimidation effect of we will make your life miserable, Mr. CEO and Board of Directors, if you don't comply with this verbal comment that was made by the President of the United States, or the chairman of a committee. That's how government gets in the business of managing corporations. That's how European socialism emerges in our private sector, a little piece at a time, sometimes in a veiled way and it seems to all be justified as it comes along and it sounds good to us because we don't want to be bailing out companies whose CEOs and boards of directors are taking out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses. I agree with that, that sentiment. I think I saw that the Wall Street executives only bonused themselves, in the aggregate, $20 billion last year. $20 billion? While we saw our stock market tank, while we saw all of our indicators go down and meanwhile while they're taking checks from the Federal Government. But it's very dangerous to be in the business, the Federal Government, of managing the private sector. So the alternative is we have to let some of them fail. There has to be a deterrent there to allow some of them to fail. And if we're not willing to do that, then European-style socialism at best here we come, faster than you can believe, fast enough that an historian will get whiplash watching what happens in this Congress. And as I looked at the poster that was put up on the floor, Mr. Speaker, the poster that says Congressional Progressives, I was about ready to go to that Web site, cpc.grijalva.house.gov, and I will go there within the next few hours, Mr. Speaker, because I have taken a look at these Web sites and it helps me understand what's going on in the minds of the folks that are voting on that side of the aisle of the United States Congress. So my little visit over last weekend to the Democratic Socialists of America Web site, and I would point out that is the Socialist Party of America, that little visit to that Web site tells me a few things. First, they make the argument that they're not Communists. You can get into the nuances of that, Mr. Speaker, and I would encourage you to look at that definitional difference. I think it's a nuance, the difference between their definition of socialism and communism, but it comes to this. They don't believe everything should be owned by the government. They think that there are small businesses that need to be run by entrepreneurs, supply and demand, barber shops and convenience stores, presumably, not the chains, just the individuals, maybe the doughnut shop down the road, some of those things need to be run by individuals, but by and large their statement very clearly is, large companies need to be run by the people affected by them. That is a dramatic departure from one of the huge foundations of what's made this country great, our free market economy. So we would actually see a position taken on a Web site of the Democratic Socialists of America that the government should make sure that we run these corporations for the benefits of, well, let's just say the people affected by them. That would mean, then, that the telephone customers would be the ones who would call the shots. They would say, here's how it benefits me, and you would make those decisions according to my wishes, not according to me paying by bills willingly. Let's just say that you had a sports bar chain. Well, then you'd run that for the benefit of the people that are using it. So I guess the drinkers would make the call there, Mr. Speaker. That's the philosophy that they define as different than communism, and I think it's a nuance. But when I look at that philosophy and I see within that page that they call for the nationalization of the oil industry, the nationalization of the refineries and I'm watching out of this Congress come a call for the nationalization of our auto manufacturers and imposing regulations on them so that they do not have the latitude to clearly and freely make a profit without the government telling them what to do, then I read through the Democratic Socialists of America and they say we are an active political party but we do not advance candidates on our ticket because our legislative wing is the Progressive Caucus in the United States Congress. I'll say it again. Our legislative wing is the Progressive Caucus in the United States Congress. That's right off the Democratic Socialists of America Web site. So go there. I think that's the Congressional Progressives that was the poster that was here and that's what I want to check. But I know that on that list there are 72 Members of Congress, one Member of the United States Senate, a self-professed socialist, 72 Members in this Congress who constantly are advocating for the policies that I read on the socialist Web site. The link is there. They claim the link. The Progressive Caucus has the Web site and it names the people and the Members, and today they hold gavels and they're Chairs of committees, full committees, Chairs of subcommittees. These are the people that are advocating the policies that scared the living daylights out of the American people in the aftermath of World War II. And we quit saying words that are considered to be pejorative about folks who want to collectivize our American economy and assets. And so, Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that you, all Members of this Congress and the American people go visit those Web sites, do a little research, dig into it themselves and then listen to the debate. Because once you understand the source of the ideas, then it's easier to understand where this is going. And we can see piece by piece, component by component, how this is being linked together, how Americans are losing their freedom piece by piece, how we're trading our freedom off for dependency one government policy at a time. A perfect example would be the SCHIP legislation that passed off the floor of this house today on its way to the President's desk. It may have been signed by now. I saw the giddy glee with which some people were applauding when that passed. I will tell you, it makes me sick at heart, Mr. Speaker. The SCHIP program, I describe it as Socialized Clinton-style Healthcare for Illegals and their Parents. And it is. It lays a foundation stone for socialized medicine in America. It was passed out of this Congress first in 1997. And I supported it as a State Senator. We took it up to 200 percent of poverty. I didn't have the understanding of how the machinery of politics churns us through year by year, decade by decade and generation by generation and brings us inevitably to a point where SCHIP at 200 percent of poverty, designed to help needy children and needy families that couldn't pay for the health insurance and made enough money that they didn't qualify for Medicaid, all under the right kind of motives, both sides, Republicans and Democrats, was brought first out of the floor of this Congress a little over a year ago, not at 200 percent of poverty but a family of four, all families that is a standard, at 400 percent of poverty, brought to this floor, passed off this floor with a straight face over to the Senate. 400 percent of poverty. That in my State would have paid a subsidy for health insurance premiums in families of four that made $106,000 a year, while we're charging people alternative minimum tax because that's taxing people that are too rich, and 70,000 families in America would qualify to pay the rich man's tax, the alternative minimum tax, 70,000 families, and at the same time qualify to have the health insurance for their children subsidized by the taxpayer. We've crossed the line, gone across that line over into a huge foundation stone for socialized medicine. Well, it came back to this Congress, we shot it down, the President of the United States, President Bush, vetoed the SCHIP bill. Now it came back to us today, the conference report, that set simply a 300 percent of poverty to avoid the criticism. There are waivers in there that allow States like New Jersey and New York to go to 400 percent of poverty, or more, and the restraints are not there so that they can write more waivers and essentially it is health insurance for children and children of millionaires do qualify for this bill that passed the floor today. Children of millionaires will have their health insurance paid for by middle-income and low-income and upper-income taxpayers when it can't be justified. This bill that passed off of here today takes at least 2.4 million children off of private sector insurance and puts them over onto the public dole. And when you get to that point, you have reached a foundation stone for socialism, Mr. Speaker, and that's the essence of my discussion today. I thank the Speaker for his indulgence, and I would yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 26, 111th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding time, and I appreciate the privilege to address this issue of SCHIP. This has been a significant frustration to me to grow up in a society where we have respect for the rule of law and fiscal responsibility, or we identify the pillars of American exceptionalism and our charter is to go out and refurbish them. And what we have instead is a bill before us that apparently is a bill that is endorsed by the White House, Madam Speaker, that doesn't reflect these values at all. And I start down through the issue that is my charge here more than any other in this Congress, and that is what this SCHIP does to undermine the integrity of the restraint that is shutting off, keeping the magnet shut off that attracts illegals into the United States. And it's clear. It's not a number that comes from my side. And it's not a number that comes from an activist group. These are numbers that come from the Congressional Budget Office. The requirement to verify the citizenship of Medicaid applicants by using a verified Social Security number has been taken out of this bill. And that amounts to a cost, according to the CBO, of $5.1 billion federally. It will bring an extra cost on to the States, according to CBO, of $3.85 billion. So just that component, lowering the standard to open the door for anybody that wants to walk in the door and say, well, here is a Social Security number for you, and they will sit there and say, well, we have a government program for you, even though your residence might well be in another state and you may have come across the border illegally, that number of illegals applying for and qualifying under this open rule comes to $8.95 billion between the State and the Federal portion of this. And then another egregious affront to the standards that we have had since the beginning of immigration law in America was, when you come here, you're to be self-sustained. And Ellis Island, where they processed my grandmother, they sent about 2 percent back because either they weren't physically able to sustain themselves or they didn't have a sponsor. And we had passed a law back in several previous Congresses that sets the 5-year bar where you will have a sponsor and they will be accountable that you will not go on the government dole for 5 years if you are a lawful permanent resident here in the United States. That is gone. That is gone if this bill passes. That is $6.5 billion, Madam Speaker. So those two pieces of this altogether are $15.45 billion in costs that either increase the magnet for legal immigration to come on welfare, open the door and says on the first day you come here, you will qualify for welfare legally. If you come here illegally, you can do the same thing for Medicaid by simply attesting to a Social Security number. It is no longer required to sign a form even that the information is right. That has been waived as well. If you add these costs all up, there is another huge cost to this, and that is this tax increase. Now, I remember, and I will go verbatim through the quote that came from then-candidate and now our President ``No matter what John McCain may claim, here are the facts. If you make under $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime, not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, no taxes, because the last thing we should do in this economy is raise taxes on the middle class. And we have been saying that throughout this campaign.'' Now here is this policy that may well land on the President's desk. That is his quote. This is a tax increase on the middle class. It's a tax increase. Ninety-nine percent of this tax increase of the $72 billion that comes goes on the middle class, those people making, by his definition, under $250,000 a year, Madam Speaker. So this is a huge tax increase on the middle class. And the final piece of this bill, and I think it is actually the biggest one, is that opening up the door beyond 200 percent of poverty and allowing waivers for States to go beyond 400 percent of poverty, in fact, Medicaid for millionaires, sets the stage. This is a foundation stone for socialized medicine in the United States. And I oppose the bill.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and am privileged to address you, Mr. Speaker, and to rise in support of H.R. 549, the National Bombing Prevention Act. This is something that certainly arises out of 9/11, when we watched in horror as the twin towers burned, the Pentagon was attacked, and the plane was crashed in Pennsylvania. It's changed the focus of this Nation. It's changed the priorities that we have. One would think that government would simply look at this and make sure that all the gaps are filled, that we were able to analyze capabilities and maintain a database, identify those gaps. The list of the things in this bill goes on. I'm looking at the risk to America and the energy that brings this bill to the floor, Mr. Speaker, and I think about this country in the broad terms. What do we need to do to take America to the next level of our destiny? How do we nurture the things that protect us? And how do we enhance the components that improve us? And I can't help but reflect, Mr. Speaker, as I stand here that we are unanimous in our support in protecting the American people. We disagree sometimes on the tactics--and I don't think we much disagree on these tactics--but I think that there are greater risks out there to America that cry out for an urgent approach rather than H.R. 549, the National Bombing Prevention Act. Some of those greater risks come from overseas. They come on our American military that are today in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan, the whole backdrop of that. We have poured a significant amount of resources in, and we've seen great success in Iraq in particular. We have a tough battle to fight in Afghanistan. That's the habitat that breeds the people that would like to penetrate through our shield. That's something we cannot always see but it's a tangible enemy because we have seen the results of that tangible enemy. Mr. Speaker, I can't watch this bill move through debate without raising the issue of the intangible enemy that we have, the enemy that we have from within, the enemy that creeps up on us and sneaks up on us, and the one that causes us to revert to security and trying to find a safer future. Whenever we see a bump along in our economy, when we see the stock market take a dip, when we see some unemployment numbers that go up, the first thing that happens is those who have been lying in wait for an economic disaster pounce upon that as an argument that the free markets are not the solution, that a managed economy is the solution. And we're in the middle of a pivotal debate in America today, Mr. Speaker, and that pivotal debate rests not so much on the physical security of the American people, as it does the economic opportunity of the American people. And in the name of economic security, we are watching trillions of dollars being invested in programs that have not shown any pattern of being successful. There was a $150 billion stimulus plan not quite a year ago and then a $700 billion stimulus plan that came out before the election, the bailout plan as it's commonly known, and now we're looking at perhaps a $900 billion stimulus that has with it at least $347 billion in interest attached to it over the next 10 years which takes us to $1.3 trillion. Just add the $700 billion on from the bailout from last fall, and we're at $2 trillion, $2 trillion in debt and burden which is just one leg of a multi-legged stool as we know from President Obama that has to be constructed by that approach. And I will submit that as much as we'd like to provide for the safety and the security of the American people--and I will continue to support and work together hand-in-hand across the aisle on those issues--I do oppose the idea that government can spend money better than people can, and I oppose the idea that creating new government programs and spending trillions of dollars. And this one-leg of a multi-legged stool is a $2 trillion leg, Mr. Speaker. How many more trillion dollars before we get all the legs built on this stool that may look like a centipede and our debt may look like it's insurmountable into the future? We've got to revert to the things that made this Nation great, the foundations of the American exceptionalism. And those foundations have been--and if we're to have a future will be--the free markets, the markets, the free enterprise system, and our faith in those markets. And at some point, we have to look back at history and understand that no matter how deep we can dig into the old ``New Deal'' of the 1930s, that the best that can be said for it was it may have slowed and diminished the depths to which we sunk during the Great Depression, but the tradeoff was that it delayed the recovery. And now we are looking at a new, uber, new, new deal that's coming, that is multitrillions of dollars, that may or may not diminish the depths, but it will certainly delay the recovery. So that is my greatest fear for America, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your attention.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield back.

Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentleman would yield. In the last visit I made to take a look at the economics in Ireland, they informed me that there were 560 American companies that were domiciled to do business in Ireland. Many of them were attracted there by a 10-year suspension of corporate income tax which the EU found to be a little bit too difficult to compete against, and so they used leverage and took it up to--I believe the number is 13.5 percent. But still, many foreign companies took their business and set their operations up in Ireland for the favorable tax scenario.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding, and the phrase that I hear ring true from you is that everyone deserves equal protection under the law. As reflecting upon a State of the Union Address that was delivered to this Congress by Thomas Jefferson in his early years as President, he said, ``The minority possesses their equal rights which equal law must protect and to violate would be oppression.'' That is Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural March 4, 1801. I happened to have run across it because it was included in Speaker Pelosi's document titled ``A New Direction for America.'' I think that is quite instructive for tonight's discussion. The most open, honest, ethical Congress in history, quoting Thomas Jefferson's inaugural address in the case of requiring equal protection under the law and the rights of the minority, feeling a little trampled here in the 111th Congress.