Tom McClintock

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I believe Professor Einstein said it was not the definition of stupidity, but insanity.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Well, I thank the gentlelady for yielding, and I particularly thank her for organizing this discussion tonight over the future of our Nation. The discussion going on right here in these hallowed halls of Congress is exactly the same discussion that's going on around dinner tables, over backyard fences, over coffee at Starbucks. Everybody understands that our Nation is in great trouble. It's getting in deeper. And I think every citizen realizes that each of us has an important responsibility to play in being part of that discussion. The gentlelady is quite correct. California is in a world of hurt. It's followed exactly the same policies that this administration appears to be embarked upon. It's probably a couple of years further down the road than the rest of the Nation, which offers us a very important warning of what happens when reckless spending, reckless deficits and reckless tax increases all combine into a perfect storm. California's unemployment rate is now in double digits. This, a State that was once a golden land of opportunity, a State that used to have a recession-proof economy. It was always the last to see its unemployment rate rise. Now it's the first, and the reason is public policy. Mr. Speaker, I would like to add to that discussion tonight by broadening the discussion to a number of points that have been made by my friends on the majority side blaming the Bush administration for the Nation's economic woes. And I hope that I don't shock my friend from North Carolina to actually rise to join that chorus in some respect. We are all painfully aware that the Bush administration increased spending twice as fast as we saw it increase under the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton. The Bush administration's first stimulus bill added $160 billion to the national deficit through tax transfers despite warnings that it would do nothing to stimulate the economy, and it didn't. The Bush administration's bailout bill last fall added another $700 billion to the Nation's deficit despite many warnings that it would not stabilize the economy, and it didn't. That administration ended with record spending, record borrowing, record deficits and an economy in shambles. But my question to many of my friends in the majority, Mr. Speaker, is this: If record spending, record borrowing and record deficits is the path to economic recovery, why aren't we already enjoying a period of unprecedented economic expansion? In fact, all of the bailouts and handouts and loan guarantees that have already been enacted add up to over $9.7 trillion, as we pointed out on this floor in the past. That is more than the modern-day cost--inflation adjusted--of the space race, the Vietnamese War, the Louisiana Purchase, the Marshall Plan and the New Deal combined. The fact is, these policies don't stimulate an economy; they stifle it. And it doesn't matter whether these policies are enacted under a Democrat or a Republican. They don't work. They didn't work in the recession of 1929, when Republican President Herbert Hoover increased the marginal income tax rate in this country from 25 percent to 65 percent and piled up taxes on imports. They didn't work in the resulting depression of the 1930s, when nearly a decade of Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal spending failed to stimulate the economy. And we forget that the unemployment rate in 1939 was actually slightly higher than it was in 1931. And we know from a year of failed bailouts and handouts and loan guarantees that these policies aren't working any better today. Today we learned that General Motors, despite billions of dollars of taxpayer bailouts, is still going under. Monday we learned that AIG, despite billions of dollars of taxpayer bailouts, is still going under. Mr. Speaker, don't they understand that the sooner that we stop bailing out failed companies the sooner we can begin a genuine economic recovery?

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Would the gentlelady yield? Just a question. You brought up a great point a minute ago where the massive borrowing takes money away from private business. Do you think that what we've done here in the last 7 weeks has been a job creator or a job killer when that much capital goes out of the market?

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Gladly.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I'd like to offer a word of caution about the law of unintended consequences. Last week, this House passed the administration's proposal to allow homeowners to force banks to reduce the size of their mortgages and their interest payments. Well, there are millions of families, including my own I might add, who now owe more on our mortgages than our homes are worth, and yet more than 90 percent of homeowners continue to make our mortgage payments in hopes of better days to come. Question: How many of these people who have been faithfully making their mortgage payments will now take advantage of this new law to reduce their mortgage debt by tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars? And while we're at it, here's another question. As these borrowers decide to cash in on this windfall, how many additional banks will fold as the value of these otherwise perfectly sound mortgages is crammed down by this new law? And a final question: How high will the surviving banks raise their interest rates and down payment requirements to protect themselves against future governmental interventions? I'm afraid that all we will have done is to create a society where fewer banks will be able to make loans and fewer home buyers will be able to access loans and produce an additional downward spiral in home values. Madam Speaker, the law of unintended consequences is beyond Congress' jurisdiction, and we would do well to heed it.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, the Laffer Curve is a simple but eloquent method of demonstrating how increasing taxes reduces economic productivity until a point of equilibrium is reached when further tax hikes actually reduce revenue. If the tax rate is zero, tax revenues are zero. But if the tax rate is 100 percent, tax revenues also reach zero, because there is no point in working. Thus, every increase in a tax rate produces a progressively smaller return of tax revenues as people adjust their behavior to reflect the reduced value of their work. When taxes exceed an economic tipping point, revenues begin to fall. California vividly demonstrated this effect in 1991 when Governor Pete Wilson imposed the biggest State tax increase in American history. That $7 billion tax hike, a staggering combination of increases in sales and income and car taxes, broke the back of California's economy. While the rest of the Nation's economy expanded, the tax hike put California into a nosedive, including the biggest plunge in retail sales in 30 years. Those taxes brought in barely half of the new revenue that had been predicted and then produced two consecutive years of billion dollar a year declines in State revenues. Well, Madam Speaker, California is about to get another very expensive lesson in the Laffer Curve, courtesy of a $13 billion tax increase just approved by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. That hike will sock an average family with more than $1,200 of new taxes. We should watch California's experience very carefully in the days ahead, because it is going to be a harbinger of the impact that we can expect under President Obama's proposed tax increases. Although California already has the highest sales tax in the Nation, it is about to go up by 13 percent, or a penny on the dollar. Although California has the highest income tax in the Nation, it is about to go up another quarter percent. Although California's sales tax is the second biggest generator of revenue for the State and automobile sales comprise a fifth of all sales taxes, the State has also doubled the car tax and is lobbying for new regulations which will increase the price of a new car by as much as $5,000. Benjamin Franklin said that ``experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.'' Appropriately, the California tax increases will take effect on April Fool's Day, illustrating that some people don't even learn from experience. But perhaps some good will come of it for the Nation. If California's experience with the Wilson tax increases is any indication, the impact of the Schwarzenegger tax hike is likely to be immediate and devastating. I believe it could serve as an invaluable lesson for the Obama administration, which last week announced a whopping tax increase of $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years, averaging about $1,800 per family per year. Now, I know, the President promises these taxes will only fall on the ``very wealthy,'' those folks who earn $125,000 as individuals or $250,000 as couples. But the fact is that 65 percent of those folks aren't really folks at all. They are small businesses that are the very foundation of our economy, many of which are barely holding on as it is. The other tax will directly hammer families with higher energy and consumer prices through a $656 billion carbon tax. Now, it is not that another example should be necessary. Herbert Hoover's response to the recession of 1929 was to increase the marginal tax rate from 25 percent to 65 percent and to burden international trade with steep tariffs. The Obama taxes have yet to be enacted, and if passed this year they won't take effect until 2010. By then, California will have become a poster child for ``governments gone wild,'' a vivid warning of life on the downside of the Laffer Curve, and a lesson that the rest of the Nation should pay rapt attention to as we consider the impact of the administration's proposal for higher taxes nationally.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, Sierra Pacific Industries just announced the closure of its sawmill in the little town of Quincy, California, in my district, throwing another 150 families out of work. They made it very clear that the recession was not the cause; it was merely the catalyst. The real cause is that the regulatory costs and litigation, because of regulation, now exceed their profit margin. In fact, two- thirds of their timber harvest this year is tied up as a result of government actions. Sierra Pacific constructed this small log mill when Congress passed legislation promoting tree thinning in the surrounding forests to prevent forest fires, but that law has not been implemented because of endless litigation by environmental groups who are using an impenetrable web of environmental laws. In their press release, Sierra Pacific notes, ``Nearly two-thirds of the current year's timber sale program is enjoined or withheld from sale pending the outcome of litigation.'' So, Mr. Speaker, today, another 150 families in the little town of Quincy are out of work, direct casualties of this retrograde, Luddite ideology.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, when it was announced that Randolph Churchill had been hospitalized to remove a benign growth, a rival commented, ``What a pity it is to remove the only part of Randolph that isn't malignant.'' When I look at this bill, I can only remark what a pity it is to remove the only part of the Federal education system that actually works. Hidden in this mess is a provision that effectively destroys the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. For the last 5 years, these vouchers have provided thousands of low-income children with the means for their parents to make the very same choice that our First Family has made for its children. The Washington Post, which is hardly a paragon of conservatism, summed it up this way in its editorial today: ``Many of the Democrats have never liked vouchers, and it seems they won't let fairness or the interests of low-income minority children stand in the way of their politics. But it also seems they're too ashamed--and with good reason--to admit to what they're doing.'' Mr. Speaker, this bill represents the biggest expansion of discretionary spending since the Carter administration, but it can't even continue the one successful education program in the entire Federal Government.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman from Iowa for yielding. Being from California, I do have to note how frustrating it is to see the same folly that has brought California to the brink of insolvency now being practiced here in the seat of our national government. After all, there are still 49 other States that Californians can move to if the left succeeds in bankrupting California. If they succeed in bankrupting America, I wonder where we will all move. We've had a lot of fun tonight with the salt marsh mouse. He is about to be a very wealthy mouse. I think it is also important for us to note that this Congress is on the eve of a momentous decision, a decision that is going to follow us and follow our children many, many years into the future. I particularly want to compliment the gentleman from Iowa for taking to the floor tonight on the eve of this vote to try again to sound the alarm to our fellow Americans of what is at stake. And I again want to urge the majority to consider very carefully the damage that they are doing to our Nation's economy by passing this unprecedented spending bill. There is still time, fleeting time, to heed the warnings from economists across the Nation that this bill will do long-term damage to the growth of our Nation's economy for many years to come. This is not mere economic theory, Madam Speaker. It is the consistent effect every time and everywhere that a government has tried to spend its way to prosperity. Tonight history is shouting its warnings at us. Never has a nation spent its way to prosperity, and many nations have spent their way to ruin and to collapse. If government bailouts and handouts and loan guarantees actually worked, we should today be enjoying a period of unprecedented economic expansion. After all, we began down this road more than a year ago with the failed Bush stimulus plan, and now we have squandered or placed at risk some $9.7 trillion; as the gentleman said earlier, enough to buy up 90 percent of all the mortgages in America, not 90 percent of the bad mortgages, 90 percent of all the mortgages. Another way to look at that, as an economist pointed out recently, is that that figure vastly exceeds the modern-day inflation adjusted cost of the Space Race, the Vietnam War, the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, and the New Deal combined. The problem is, this policy doesn't work. Now, we've been told from a residence about a mile from here, not to, ``come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis.'' And yet, Madam Speaker, that is exactly what this administration and this Congress are now doing. This is exactly the same policy that the Bush administration pursued for more than a year, to no avail, and we're hearing the same tired rhetoric to justify it. Different singer, same tired old song. At best, the proponents of this policy are trading a fleeting economic surge for a sustained, chronic and long-term reduction in economic growth. And there's a simple reason for that. The $800 billion that they have to borrow just to finance this single bill, let alone all of the other trillions of dollars that they have either spent or placed at risk, that $800 billion they have to borrow for this plan comes from exactly the same capital pool that would otherwise have been available to loan to employers seeking to add jobs, or home buyers seeking to buy homes, or to consumers seeking to buy consumer goods. They're literally taking $800 billion from loans that could have been made to expand the economy, and shifting them to loans that are going merely to expand government. And that $800 billion, plus interest, will have to be repaid from the future earnings of American families, directly sapping the future economic growth of our Nation. On average, this single measure will reduce the disposable income of every taxpaying family by more than $7,000. Now, instead of reducing their disposable income by $7,000, maybe we ought to consider increasing their disposable income by reducing their tax burdens now. That's what the Republican alternative proposes, a plan that economists tell us will produce twice the jobs as the President's plan, at half the cost. And to those who doubt that, listen to the President's own numbers. He's repeatedly promised that the $800 billion in this bill will create or save as many as 4 million jobs. That comes to $200,000 per job. We could literally save half of what he has proposed spending if we were to send $100,000 checks to each of those 4 million lucky families. That's by the President's own numbers. Now, nobody here suggests the government should do nothing in the face of this terrible recession. But this plan is actually worse than doing nothing, because it robs us of our economic future. Madam Speaker, perhaps we need to add the Hippocratic Oath to the oaths of office for the President and the Congress. First do no harm.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, Benjamin Franklin warned us that ``Passion governs, but she never governs wisely.'' As the Congress and the President rush to enact the latest in a long line of mega-spending bills, I think we would be well advised to spend a little more time on the dispassionate math of the matter. The Congressional Budget Office issued a report last week that warns us, as reported by the Washington Times, that the spending bills may ``help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower gross domestic product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.'' We are already running a $1.2 trillion national deficit this year with a spending bill racing back toward this House to add another $800 billion on top of that. Let's put that in perspective: a $2 trillion deficit, that is 150 times the size of the annual deficit that has brought the State of California to the brink of bankruptcy. That is $6,500 of new debt for every man, woman and child in the United States, $26,000 for an average family of four. And that is not a theoretical number. That family will have to repay that $26,000 plus interest from their future taxes just as surely as if it appeared at the bottom of their credit card statement this month. This is all being done in the name of stimulating the economy, but the supporters of this policy have not have been able to cite a single example in all of recorded history where massive government spending has actually stimulated an economy. There are plenty of examples where it ruined economies and brought down great nations. The supporters of this policy have not been able to explain how the government can inject a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of that same economy. They have not been able to explain how we strengthen our economic future by leaving the next generation with an unprecedented debt that will take them decades to pay off. What the President told us last night, and my friend from Texas said just a few moments ago, is that by spending another $800 billion, they can create or save up to 4 million jobs. That sounds good until you realize that comes to more than $200,000 a job by their own numbers. By their own numbers, we could literally send those 4 million lucky families a check for $100,000 and save half of what they plan to spend. If this policy worked, we would already be enjoying a period of unprecedented economic expansion. The bailouts and spending and loan guarantees already issued now total $9.7 trillion. As Bloomberg pointed out this week, that is enough to pay off 90 percent of all of the home mortgages in America. Not 90 percent of the bad mortgages, 90 percent of all of the mortgages. We have not seen prosperity from these policies because these policies don't work. They didn't work in Japan in the 1990s, as my friend from California just mentioned, they didn't work in America in the 1930s. The unemployment rate in 1939, after nearly a decade of New Deal spending, was the same as it was in 1931. Madam Speaker, history tells us that bankrupt nations don't last very long. Before we can secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, the Nation's finances must first be solid. So I beg the majority to pause and consider carefully what they are doing. I beg the President to pause and consider what kind of legacy he wants to leave the Nation. And, I beg the American people, while there is still time, to rise up and to demand a return to fiscal sanity.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise today in support of House Resolution 128, honoring Miami University of Ohio on its bicentennial. This is a very agreeable discovery for me. I am a confirmed Orthodox Bruin, myself, but to discover the enormous contributions that Miami University has made to the Nation. Its founding on February 17, 1809, marks its contributions to our Nation, developing into an institution with three campuses, over 20,000 students, and a rich history. The school is not only the 10th oldest public institution; it has the oldest school newspaper in America. Miami offers over 100 different areas of undergraduate study and over 50 areas of study for graduate work. This is the birthplace of the McGuffey's Readers. It produced a level of literacy unsurpassed in this Nation before or since. BusinessWeek magazine ranked Miami's Farmer School of Business as eighth among business schools found at public universities. Miami University was also named one of the best values in public colleges by Kiplinger's magazine this year. And of particular interest, I suspect, to this institution is the fact that Miami University has produced one President of the United States, seven United States Senators, 26 United States Congressmen, two of whom we have heard from today, a Speaker of the House, and six Governors. I think we can learn a great deal from Miami University, which is annually cited as being one of the Nation's best values among public universities, ``offering an education comparable to that of Ivy League universities at a fraction of the price.'' So says The Ivy Leaguers. We need to deliver, I believe, the same value to American families, who are going to be paying for a lot of the spending bills we are currently considering, as Miami University has given to its alumni. I would encourage my colleagues to vote for this resolution.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers) for such time as he may consume.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I yield such time as he may consume to my colleague, a distinguished alumnus of Miami University of Ohio, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I yield such time as he may consume to my distinguished minority leader, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner).

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, before we continue with a stimulus policy that has consistently failed to stimulate anything other than the government, I think the supporters of this program need to answer some very simple questions. For example, the President, himself, told us yesterday that this $800 billion of new spending is going to produce 4 million new jobs. Well, that's great until you pull out a pocket calculator and realize that that comes to $200,000 per job. Question: Why don't we just send those 4 million lucky families a check for $100,000 and save half of what the President wants to spend according to his own numbers? The President, himself, told audiences this weekend that the spending bill would produce a renaissance of highway, road and bridge construction. Question: If that is the object of this bill, why is only 3 percent of the funding going for that purpose? The Congressional Budget Office last week noted that the current spending bill, although producing temporary relief, will incur so much long-term debt as to reduce overall GDP growth over the next decade. Question: How do we strengthen our economic future by leaving the next generation with an unprecedented debt that will take decades to pay off? We know of many cases where massive government spending and borrowing has destroyed economies and has brought down great nations. One need look no further than to the old Soviet Union. Question: When in the recorded history of civilization has massive public spending ever stimulated an economy? It did not work in Japan in the 1990s. The Japanese call that their lost decade. It did not work in America in the 1930s. The unemployment rate in 1939, after nearly a decade of New Deal spending, was the same as it was in 1931. Madam Speaker, history warns us that bankrupt nations do not last very long. Before we continue with yet another round of massive spending and borrowing, I suggest we get some answers to these inconvenient questions.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I think it's a prime example of unintended consequences. Since its inception, we've watched as SCHIP has been slowly replacing employer health plans with government-paid plans--with spiraling costs to taxpayers. Employers discovered that they could avoid their own plans, knowing that their employees would be covered by SCHIP. This was supposed to provide health insurance for poor and working- class families but, like all things bureaucratic, it's now morphed into one in which families earning as much as six-figure incomes and who would have good employer-paid health insurance are being pushed into the government program. And that is the fine point of it. This is no longer a program for the children of poor people. It's being used to insinuate government into the medical care of every American. Frankly, we don't need the same people who run the TSA to run our health insurance.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, the mantra that we keep hearing from the left, that we just heard from the gentleman from New Jersey, that government rather than the productive sector needs to create more jobs. Well, according to our new President and Members of this House, the $825 billion spending bill is going to create 3 million new jobs. I thought that sounded pretty good in an economy that is hurting like ours until I pulled out a pocket calculator and did the math: 3 million new jobs for $825 billion, that comes to $275,000 per job. That's by the President's own numbers, $275,000 that will have to be paid back, with interest, by average Americans for every job that he himself says will be created. Madam Speaker, we do not need to stimulate government. Government continues to grow just fine. We need to stimulate the productive sector, and the best way to do that is to get off its back.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, when we speak of running up $2 trillion of debt to pay for this year of unprecedented spending, where does that money come from? We don't have it, so we borrow it. Where do we borrow it from? We'll borrow that $2 trillion from the same pool of funds that would otherwise have been available for employers seeking to add jobs, or homebuyers seeking to buy homes or consumers seeking to buy new cars and appliances. But now that money won't be there for consumers or homebuyers or employers to borrow to expand the economy because government has borrowed it instead to increase government programs like the National Endowment for the Arts. Madam Speaker, when are we going to stop hurting the economy and start helping it?

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, much has been said about the chilling effect this legislation will have on our economy because of the endless lawsuits it makes possible, including for grievances that may stretch back 30 years or more, and I certainly share those concerns. But I want to express a deeper concern with this legislation. I believe it hurts the cause of equality and opportunity in the workplace by making it more difficult for the people who need jobs and who most want those jobs to actually get them. Any person's labor is worth exactly what that person's willing to receive and what another is willing to pay. The decisions that are made by both the employee and the employer are unique to those people and to those circumstances. Someone passionately wanting to break into a field, for example, or to stay in a region or to shorten a commute or an infinite variety of other considerations may be willing to accept less in order to gain those noneconomic advantages than someone who is equally qualified but indifferent to those advantages. Imposing rigid one-size-fits-all requirements into the relationship between an employee and an employer reduces the employee's freedom to negotiate for the best set of overall conditions for his or her own unique circumstances. And lest we forget, when all else fails, there is a fail-safe and absolute protection: It's the word ``no.'' No, the pay is not acceptable; no, the conditions are not satisfactory; no, I can get a better job elsewhere. Mr. Speaker, freedom works, and it's time that we put it back to work.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, with this measure the new administration seems bound and determined to continue the failed policy of the past administration. It proves what I like to call McClintock's Second Law of Political Physics, which is, the more we spend on our mistakes, the less willing we are to admit them. This policy has failed every time and every place it has been tried for a simple reason: Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of the same economy. If I take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul, it is true that Paul now has an extra dollar to spend; and, when he spends it, that dollar is going to ripple through the economy. The gentleman is correct. But the gentleman forgets that Peter now has one less dollar to spend in that same economy. In short, it nets to zero. In fact, it nets to less than zero, because we are shifting enormous resources away from investments that would be based on economic calculations in favor of investments that are being made on political ones.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge the President not to waive the Federal law on emission standards that is currently protecting Californians from Governor Schwarzenegger's crusade to save our planet by destroying our economy. Putting aside the highly questionable junk science behind the Governor's proposal, the net effect would add up to $5,000 to the price of a new car. Automobile sales normally account for one-fifth of California's sales taxes, which have already fallen by $1\1/2\ billion over the past 12 months. Ironically, the Governor's also asking the President to bail out California's growing budget deficit at the same time. So I would respectfully suggest to the President that California's economic folly is not something that he should be copying.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentlelady for yielding. Mr. Speaker, this resolution presents this House with its last chance to admit that the Bush bailout has not worked, and it will not work, because of a simple and self-evident truth: government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of the economy. It is true that if I take a dollar from Peter and give it to bail out Paul, Paul has got one more dollar to spend; that dollar will ripple through the economy. But we forget the other half of that equation: Peter now has one less dollar to spend, meaning one less dollar to ripple through the economy. In short, it nets to zero. In fact, it nets to less than zero, because you are shifting enormous amounts of capital from investments that would have been made strictly by economic calculations to investments that are being made entirely by political calculations. We are not helping the economy with these bailouts; we are hurting it. If they actually worked, we would be now enjoying a period of unprecedented prosperity and economic expansion. I have heard it said today, well, it is just the way that the Bush administration administered it. Well, let me pose to them this simple question: When in the entire history of civilization have such bailouts actually worked? They didn't work in Japan in the 1990s, they didn't work in America in the 1930s, and they aren't working today. Fortunately, we know what does work. Reductions in marginal tax rates and reductions in taxes on investment consistently do stimulate the economy. They worked when John F. Kennedy used them in the early 1960s, they worked when Ronald Reagan used them in the early 1980s. When taxes are reduced on productivity, productivity increases. But how typical of government to resist what we know works and embrace what we know doesn't work. This resolution offers the House one last fleeting chance to admit its mistakes, to step away from rigid adherence to failed policy, and to offer the change that the people of this Nation deserve.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my hope that the President will not leave office before using his pardon to correct one of the great injustices of our time, the imprisonment of Border Patrol officers Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. They are the officers who wounded a drug smuggler as he tried to escape. The drug smuggler got immunity; Ramos and Compean got lengthy prison sentences. This injustice sends a chilling message to Border Patrol officers who are heroically trying to defend the integrity of our borders against enormous odds and with inadequate resources. It is an injustice that cannot be allowed to stand. Thank you.