Mick Mulvaney

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I have serious concerns about the policies of H.R. 2887, Transportation Extension, and the procedures the House used to pass it. First, I applaud the House Leadership's numerous statements and actions on working towards fiscally responsible policies that begin to close our deficit and balance our budget. Achieving those two goals will certainly help create an environment for the private sector to create jobs. H. Con. Res. 34, the House Budget for Fiscal Year 2012, laid a solid blueprint for leaders in this Congress to follow towards that end. Unfortunately, the actions taken yesterday fail to follow the spending plan that 235 members of the House agreed upon earlier this year. The House Budget calls for a transportation policy that puts the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund and the insolvent Airport Improvement Program back operating within their means. Unfortunately, the bill we passed today sacrifices fiscal sanity for continued chaos. Unlike the House Budget, the policies of this Transportation Extension would continue current spending levels that, without the aid of previous bailouts, would leave the Highway Trust Fund and the Airport Improvement Program completely bankrupt. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the current policy embraced by this ``clean'' Transportation Extension would require future billion dollar bailouts in 2013 and every year thereafter over the next decade. Unlike the FY2012 plan called for in the House Budget, the action we took yesterday simply avoids the necessary dirty work associated with making sound fiscal decisions. Second, I was appalled by the procedure the House used in passing this bill. While I recognize the need to quickly move this bill by the start of Fiscal Year 2012, October 1, 2011, I do not believe that justifies suspending the House rules to move a bill that will cost tens of billions of dollars over six months without any opportunity to offer amendments either in the Rules committee or on the House floor. While such action does not technically violate our House or Conference rules, it certainly flies in the face of the higher standards those rules and protocols promote. Most notably, this multi-billion dollar Transportation Extension was only available for no more than a 24-hour review period, as opposed to the three-day review standard. Also, the bill failed to include a Congressional Budget Office cost estimate. Finally, it was unexpectedly voice voted without the opportunity for Representatives to record the collective voice of their constituents. As a result, we are left to less desirable means to record their vote. Ultimately, yesterday's action is a missed opportunity to ``advance policies that promote greater liberty, wider opportunity, . . , and national economic prosperity,'' as well as, ``to make government more transparent in its actions, careful in its stewardship, and honest in its dealings.'' Had I the chance yesterday to vote, I would have voted against this Transportation Extension.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 692, I missed rollcall 692 on September 7, 2011, had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I missed rollcall 463 on June 22, 2011. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I missed rollcall No. 598 on July 15, 2011. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I missed rollcall 602 on July 18, 2011. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I missed rollcall No. 612 on July 21, 2011. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I missed rollcall No. 601 on July 18, 2011. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. I can't tell you how much I long for a discussion of ideas, an honest and open discussion of real ideas in this Chamber as opposed to talking points. Clearly, we're not going to be getting that here this evening. What we've heard so far is this bill is going to dismantle Medicare. I encourage my colleagues across the aisle to actually read the bill before they come in and talk about it. And page 4 specifically says we don't cut Medicare in this bill. We've heard the President say that Social Security checks might not go out on August 3. That's just false. The President has every legal authority and the money available to him to send those checks out. If he wants to, those checks will go out on August 3. We've heard the country will default on our debt if we don't raise the debt ceiling. Not true. The authority is there. The money is there. We have plenty of money with which to pay the interest on our debt. There will be no default on our debt. We heard the President say he's going to cut $4 trillion from spending. But when pressed on it, he admitted that the spending cuts this year were actually $2 billion. Let's put that in perspective. Four trillion is $4,000 billion, and the President admits that only $2 billion of that is this year. We've heard today from my colleagues on the other side, Mr. Speaker, ``duck, dodge, and dismantle,'' which I think is somewhat ironic in that it was The Washington Post who actually accused the President in those exact same words of ``ducking'' his obligations with his 2012 budget. Talk about ``dodging'' responsibilities, it's now been 811 days since our colleagues in the Senate, controlled by the Democrats, have introduced any budget whatsoever. And if we want to talk about ``dismantling,'' we can talk about replacing Medicare as we know it, which is exactly what has happened. The Medicare, as we have known it for generations, is gone and has been displaced and dismantled and replaced with an independent payment advisory board. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to real debates on real issues. I look forward to having conversations in this Chamber that are similar to the conversations that take place at every household, every business, every county, town, and State in this country about what our priorities are and how to spend money responsibly. We are not going to have that conversation in this Chamber until we pass Cut, Cap, and Balance.

Mr. MULVANEY. ``The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Leadership means that the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today on to the backs of our children and grandchildren. American has a debt problem and a failure of leadership, and Americans deserve better.'' I wish I could take credit for that one, Mr. Speaker, but I can't because that was President Obama in 2006. I also wish I could take credit for: ``I'm willing to take down domestic spending to the lowest percentage of our overall economy since Dwight Eisenhower.'' I wish I could take credit for that. That was the President last week. Finally, I wish I could take credit for the claim that the President is offering a comprehensive program to force us to live within our means. This is supposedly a $4 trillion reduction in spending, four thousand billion dollars that in all actuality only cuts spending $2 billion next year. Talk is cheap in this town, Mr. Speaker; it is time to match actions and words. It is time to act on the spending difficulty that we have and to pass Cut, Cap, and Balance tonight.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. By way of brief summary, this amendment would freeze the base Department of Defense funding at 2011 levels. It is roughly a $17 billion reduction, or a 3 percent reduction over the bill that's currently before us. Again, it takes it back to the 2011 levels that we passed just recently in H.R. 1 during the continuing resolution debate. This is not, Mr. Chairman, a new idea. It's not even my idea. The Domenici-Rivlin bipartisan deficit reduction plan also proposed exactly this--freezing base defense spending at 2011 levels. During the budget debate, the one substantive bipartisan amendment that passed was an amendment that was a sense of the Committee that said that defense spending needed to be on the table as we look at spending reductions for 2012. And most importantly, the President's fiscal commission, the Simpson-Bowles Commission, also recommended exactly what this amendment does today, keeping defense spending at 2011 levels. I happen to believe that at least, especially in this area, the Simpson-Bowles Commission is correct. And I want to read from the commission's report: ``Every aspect of the discretionary budget must be scrutinized. No agency can be off limits, and no program that spends too much or achieves too little can be spared. Any serious attempt,'' and I will say that again, ``any serious attempt to reduce the deficit will require deliberate, planned reductions in both domestic and defense spending.'' Personally, I like to think that I am serious about cutting our deficits. I hope that I am not alone. Many of us have gone around back home and told people how serious we are. But how can we look them in the eye and tell them that we are serious about cutting this deficit and about cutting spending and then come in and plus-up the base defense budget? Admiral Mullen himself said that with the increasing defense budget, which is almost double over the last 10 years, it has not forced us, that's the Defense Department, to make the hard trades. It hasn't forced us to prioritize. It hasn't forced us to do the analysis. We just received a Budget Committee memo today that said of the 92 major defense acquisition programs, 69 percent of them are over-budget. One in every five of them is over-budget by at least 50 percent. That is simply not right. It's not what our families are having to do. It's not what our States are having to do. It's not even what we have chosen to do in other areas of the budget. We have made hard decisions. We have made hard choices. The Defense Department needs to do exactly the same. This amendment will not in any way limit our national defense capabilities. It will not put a single soldier at more risk. It simply holds defense spending exactly where we were 3 months ago when we approved the CR. Having been here about 6 months, there is one thing that I have learned being a freshman. And for the folks who are here for the first time, the message is this: talk is cheap. Talk is especially cheap. It's very easy for us to go home and tell folks how important it is to cut spending, how serious we are about cutting spending. But nothing sends the message that we are really serious about it like cutting spending on something that is important to us. It's easy to cut things that we don't like. It is hard to cut things that are important to us. And defense spending is critically important to me and to the folks of this Nation and to the folks of South Carolina. But if we're going to send a message that we are really serious about cutting spending, then everything needs to be on the table. And holding defense spending simply at 2011 levels and passing this amendment would help show everybody that we are really serious about fixing this difficulty. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MULVANEY. I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. MULVANEY. Just for clarification, the amendment only makes the change to the base spending. It does not change anything in title 9. It does not change overseas contingencies in any way. It is simply the base portion of the DOD budget. Thank you for yielding.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. I thank my colleague, Mr. Gowdy. His words are well considered and well made and I think bear out the decision of the people of his district to send him to Washington. This is perhaps the first real challenge we have faced together as a team here in Washington, and I'm proud to be a member of this team as we take on perhaps the critical issue of our day and our State when it comes to economic development and job growth. I want to do something that we are not very good at in South Carolina when it comes to these types of issues. I want to speak bluntly. Ordinarily, we don't talk about uncomfortable things in our State very bluntly. We are more southerly and gentlemanly about it than I'm going to be for the next few minutes. But I feel compelled to do that by the circumstances that face us. I want to talk very briefly about what this says about the current administration's attitude towards business. And then I want to talk very briefly about why people, not only in South Carolina, but people all over this country, should be concerned with this lawsuit against Boeing by the NLRB. Regarding the administration's attitude towards business, I talked several times when I was running for this office with folks in my district about another issue at that time. It was cap-and-trade. And I remember coming across an employer in my district who I never thought would be in favor of that particular piece of legislation but who had signed on and actually contributed financially toward advancing that particular initiative. I remember talking to them and asking them why this was, why were they doing something that was so clearly against their self-interest. And they told me that it had been made very plain to them that if they did not get on board that they would have a visit from the EPA, and wasn't it much better for them to participate in the cap-and-trade legislation than it was to get run over and visited by the EPA, to have someone come down and bring down the full regulatory authority of the government on you without any recourse whatsoever. Wouldn't you rather be sitting at the table to design part of your own demise rather than having it dealt fully in your face by the regulatory arm of the administration? It frightened me to death. It frightened me to death that that is what we had come to in this Nation. I call, and I still do, I call it to this day, and I know this frustrates people and bothers people when I call it this, it is government by Mafia. It really is. It is like walking into an office going: Wow, it would be a real shame if this place burned down tomorrow. Why don't you give us a little money to help us in our cause, and we will make sure nothing happens to you. It frightens me and it disgusts me that this is the way the government treats its own people. I can't help but think of that example as I sit here and look at what the NRLB is doing these days. To come to the Boeing company and admit, and you can go and read what the NRLB says, admit that they have done nothing wrong, admit that Boeing has done nothing wrong in any of its statements, but still taking the position that they have the basis for bringing a lawsuit against this company in order to do nothing else but to shake it down. My colleague, Mr. Speaker, mentioned the other shoe to drop when the NLRB came forward through its spokesman and said: Listen, you know, this whole thing could just go away if Boeing would agree to build three more airplanes every single month in Washington State. That is what this is about. It is about using leverage. It is about using muscle. It is about pushing around a private business simply because you can, and it is absolutely and positively wrong for our government to be doing this to its own citizens. That is exactly what is happening. They are walking into Boeing and saying: Boy, it would be a real shame if we shut you down in South Carolina; wouldn't it? You can make that not happen. You have it in your ability to make sure that this terrible thing doesn't happen to you. All you have to do is agree to produce an additional three planes in Washington State. What a travesty. What a complete insult to what this Nation stands for. That brings me to my second point, which is why should ordinary people care about this. Is this just an issue that the State of South Carolina cares about? Is it just an issue that the Boeing Corporation should care about? Is it just an issue that businesses should care about? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. This is an issue that every single working person in this country should be scared to death of because the day that the government can tell business where it can operate, which is what the NLRB is trying to do in this lawsuit, the day that the government can tell businesses where they can operate is the day before it can tell you where you can go to work. And if Boeing is not free to leave Seattle, Washington, and move to North Charleston in South Carolina, then the next day, you might not be free to do the same thing. It violates everything that we stand for. It violates everything that makes this country exceptional. It brings up frightening thoughts of what has happened in other countries in the past. It is wrong, Mr. Speaker. It must stop now. We will do everything that we can in this delegation to prevent it from happening. And, more importantly, we will be ever diligent to make sure that after this one is put to bed, and after this NLRB lawsuit is exposed for the fraud that it is, we will be ever diligent to make sure that it never happens again in this country.

Mr. MULVANEY. My question to you, Mr. Gowdy, and to you, Mr. Speaker, would be this: Why would there even be a strategy? What is this talk of strategy that the NLRB is charged with enforcing the law? There should be no strategy involved with that. Either it violates the law or it does not. The NLRB, itself, has already said on more than one occasion that the statements that Boeing made do not rise to the level that's required for this litigation to proceed. They've already admitted that this is an expansion of a new business, that this is a new business line. It is not the moving of a business from one place to the other, and the NLRB has already admitted that that is protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act. So you wonder: What is the strategy? It raises a really good point: Why are we here? Why is the NLRB doing this? Mr. Gowdy, perhaps this is a rhetorical question; but what does it say, for example, about the lawsuit that Mr. Duncan mentioned before regarding the right to a secret ballot? What does it say about an administration in this day and age that specifically attacks not only one State but several States for granting additional freedoms to its citizens? Think about that. That's what we've done. That's what Arizona has done. That's what several other States have done. We have simply memorialized in our constitution the right that we have to a secret ballot. This is the granting of a right. Ordinarily, this would be cause for great celebration; but for some reason, with this administration, it is not cause for celebration; it is cause for the bringing of lawsuits and litigation, and I cannot help but wonder what that says about where we stand as a Nation.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I think it's important to realize in this discussion that this is not just an attack on one company, nor is just an attack more broadly at some of the principles that we hold to be so dear. This is a specific attack on the people of South Carolina. It is. It's a specific attack on the people that we represent. We live in a State that has chosen to be a right-to-work State. By the way, it's important to know, that doesn't mean that unions are against the law in South Carolina. It doesn't mean that they are banned. It doesn't mean it's any more difficult to form. It simply means you don't have to work in a union in order to work in South Carolina. We have chosen to do that. We have come together as a State and said, This is the kind of State that we want to be. We want to be a State that balances the needs of business and the needs of workers. We want to be fair to both sides. We don't want to make you do something that you don't want to do just to get a job. That's what we stand for, and this administration in this lawsuit is attacking that. We also chose as a State to give Boeing incentives to come to South Carolina. It was a difficult decision for us to make. I was in the State legislature when we did that. But we said to ourselves as a State, this is such an opportunity, and it is one of those true rare times when it's an investment. This was such a rare opportunity for us as a State, not only for this generation but for several generations. The Boeing company has been making airplanes since there have been airplanes, and they're going to be making them for another hundred years after this and we wanted them in our State, so we gave them the incentives. This administration is attacking that. Nowhere does the NLRB say what might happen, if they were to succeed, to the money that the State of South Carolina has given to Boeing. It's a slap in the face to the people of South Carolina. Finally, you can't have a discussion up here, or you shouldn't have a discussion up here without talking about jobs. Our people want to work. Our people need to work. It's one of the most hardworking, well- educated, honest and ethical group of working people that you're going to find in this country. The Boeing Corporation was going to give them the chance to do that, in areas that provide tremendous opportunities for us to grow as a State, to grow our wage base, to grow our skill base. Think about what this meant to the technical college system in our State. Think about what this means to the other opportunities in the aerospace industry alone, never mind the other industries that feed it. We want to work, and this administration is going out of its way to prevent that from happening. Unforgivable. Unforgivable. Unemployment in my district is over 15 percent, and I have to fight with my own administration as to whether or not these people can go to work? This is absolutely wrong. It is unforgivable that this is what it's come to in our Nation. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity. I commend the rest of my delegation. It is a true honor to be amongst these gentlemen tonight as we sit here and try and come to our State's defense against what is clearly an unjustified attack.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. I thank Mr. Rokita for the time. I want to applaud my colleagues in the Progressive Caucus for doing something which I think is intellectually honest. In fact, I think if you look at a couple of budgets that we're going to be looking at over the next 2 days, the budget that the Budget Committee has offered, I think is a fair and honest representation of where the Republican Party is. The Republican Study Committee budget that we'll see in just a few minutes is a fair and honest representation of where the Republican Study Committee stands. And this budget, I think, is offered as a true and honest position, a policy statement, of where the progressives in this body and in this country stand. And for that I thank them. That being said, it's hard to imagine a document that is more different from our document. There are $16 trillion worth of tax increases in this document. To the extent that the progressives do stand and are honest in their belief that taxing and spending is the way to fix the Nation, this document certainly does contain that. All of the 2001, 2003 tax cuts, which we affectionately refer to around here as the Bush tax cuts, are gone, not just the ones on the highest income earners, everybody. This is a tax increase on almost everybody. In fact, it is a tax increase on everybody in the entire Nation. The top marginal rates under this proposal go from 45 percent up to 49 percent. The capital gains rate goes up to as high as 49 percent. We introduced a new concept in this budget, apparently, the progressives do, that takes the estate tax to a progressive model, where you get estate tax rates that range from 45 percent up to 65 percent. We heard a few minutes ago, my colleague, Mr. Lankford, talk about the fact that there's a 25-cent gas tax increase in this particular document. This is an avalanche of new taxes. At every single turn, the motivation behind the progressives seems to be that the government needs more money, that the government needs more money and it is our obligation to give it to the government. And we simply, wholeheartedly, dismiss that idea. But, again, I think it is nice for a change to have honest and open debate on an intellectual basis in this Chamber. I thank the progressives for at least laying out where they stand. And I think it's a good process to go through. I think we'll have a chance later on today in just a few minutes to see where we stand as a Nation, at least as a body, here on these types of changes. I very much hope that this amendment is defeated. I think that the Republican Budget Committee alternative is a better course of action. And I would like to see this amendment defeated.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. To the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Chairman, I would say that it's not easy to do. Why are we here? We're here for a single purpose: we take what the Republican Committee has done and simply lay out for the American people how hard it is to balance the budget within 10 years. It is not easy to do. But to sit and hear these onslaughts about how we're giving tax breaks--from a group of people that promised they would not raise taxes on folks who make less than $250,000 and then repeatedly violated that promise over the course of the last 2 years--is simply hard to take. This is the only budget that we will get a chance to vote on this week that both balances the budget within 10 years and does not raise taxes. We take what the Republican Committee has done, we build on it to show exactly how deep the hole is that we have dug for ourselves and how hard it is to get out. But to suggest that we do it on the backs of the poor is simply disingenuous.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to start by thanking my own chairman, Mr. Ryan, and also the ranking member, Mr. Van Hollen, for the entire process. It has been my first year. I have enjoyed it. We've had some spirited debates. I know that we have disagreed more than we agree, but I have appreciated the opportunity to do this. I'll close with this. This will be the last opportunity I'll have to speak on this year's budget. We've heard a lot about the benefits that accrued to this Nation during the Clinton administration. I for one am willing to give partial credit to the President at that time. It was a Democrat President. Yes, it was. It was a House of Representatives controlled by my party. And I think it was a formula that worked for the Nation. We've heard a lot of things, though, about the importance of raising the tax rates back to the Clinton era in order to solve our problems. I would suggest to you it was not the tax rates during the Clinton era that drove our prosperity at the time. Let me show you what President Clinton did to the size of the government workforce. President Clinton was elected right about here. There was a dramatic reduction in the size of the Federal workforce, a dramatic reduction in the size of Federal spending on people who work for the Federal Government. In fact, unprecedented in the last 30 years, done again under a Democrat President and a Republican House. What happened as a result? As spending as a percentage of our economy went down, the unemployment rate went down. As the government spent less, more people went back to work. As we sit here, we all agree that the discussion is really about jobs. There's nothing more telling than what happened during the Clinton administration as a formula for how to create jobs--the government needs to spend less. My question to my esteemed colleagues on this side of the aisle is, where is this type of leadership out of the White House these days? Where is this generation's Bill Clinton saying let's spend less on government spending so that people go back to work? If we put President Obama's proposals, his current budget, up here, it would be almost the exact opposite of what your party proposed only 20 years ago. Where is that type of leadership out of the White House?

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Madam Chair, when I travel my district, I have tried to figure out a way to explain to people, and to myself, how to make sense out of these trillions of dollars. And I do it this way. I put it in numbers that I can understand. I tell folks to assume that you're a family who brings home $46,000 a year, and you sit down at the beginning of the year to do your budget, and when you add up all of the things that you spend money on, you're spending $78,000. And then I say to them, When you're doing that and you're making $46,000 and you're spending $78,000, I want you to realize the Visa bill in the drawer is $281,000. And that's where we are as a Nation. And I tell them, as we try to figure out a way to save money, I remind them that the first thing that we did in this Congress was we cut $35 million from our own budgets. To lead by example, we cut our own budgets in this House by $35 million. And in that world where you're making $46,000 and you're spending $78,000, and you're trying to find $32,000 of savings in your household, that $35 million represents 70 cents. That's how big the numbers are. And I think the folks back home have started to grasp it. I certainly have started to grasp it. But I do get some good questions when I give that presentation on the road. Some folks will ask me and say, If I was in that position at my household, not only would I try to cut expenditures, but I'd also try to get another job. I'd try to make a little bit more money. And I said, That's a really good point and that's what most families would do. With government it's different. With government the only chance they have to get that additional job, to get more money to come in, is to raise taxes. And when they ask me why don't we just raise taxes, I say because it simply doesn't work. It simply does not work. It has never worked. This graph shows the top marginal tax rates going back to the 1950s. For those of you who were around or studied the era, the top marginal rates in the 1950s were actually above 90 percent. The top marginal income tax rate in the 1950s was above 90 percent. And the government was still only able to take from the economy about 20 percent of the economy; 18\1/2\ percent is the average over the course of the last 50 years. So even when tax rates were as high as 90 percent, the government took only about 18, 19 percent of the economy out in taxes. That number has stayed bizarrely stable over the course of the last 50 years. We've lowered marginal tax rates; we've raised marginal tax rates. Yet the government only takes out 18, 19, at the most 20 percent. Raising taxes does not bring in more money to the government over the long haul. It may for a short period of time. It may for a year or two. But the world doesn't work on a static model. The world works on a dynamic model. And when you raise taxes, the economy grows slower, and eventually we get back to this 18, 19 percent average. By the way, I made this presentation in a debate to a former member of the Clinton administration. And the moderator, after I had mentioned that we've never been able to get more than 18, 19 percent out of the economy, turned to that member of the administration and said, Is that true? How do you respond to that? And the member of the Clinton administration said, You know, he's absolutely right. We have not been able to figure out a way to do it in the United States of America, even with high top marginal tax rates. But they do it in Europe. They do it in Europe. In Europe the governments can get 30, 40, even 50 percent of the economy away from the private sector, away from people, and put it in the pockets of the government.

Mr. MULVANEY. Madam Chairwoman, I wanted to speak very briefly to a topic that was raised earlier tonight by my colleague, Mr. Ellison from Minnesota. It is a comment, a message that has been repeated several times tonight and was, in fact, repeated several times during the committee process, which dealt with the subsidies that we give to Big Oil, to oil and gas. I will tell my folks, especially my colleague from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), that I share the frustrations that you have with those types of subsidies. I also share the frustrations that I have with other members of my conference that alternative energies receive seven times as many subsidies in the Tax Code as oil and gas. In fact, if you take the subsidy, the excise tax credit for ethanol, that number rises to 10 times. So I do share your frustrations with the amount of tax credits that the code currently gives to oil and gas. But I am 10 times as frustrated, Madam Chairwoman, with the subsidies that we give to alternative energies. I would invite, Madam Chairwoman, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have that same frustration to join us and vote for the budget. It's the best chance they are going to get this year to get rid of these subsidies as part of this process of closing the loopholes, lowering the tax rates and broadening the base.

Mr. MULVANEY. And I put it to you, Madam Chairwoman, that that's what this debate is really about. That's what this debate is really about. Are we going to maintain the American system, or are we trying to move towards a European system? And I will tell you that that's really what this fight is all about. And the budget that we're here defending tonight, as members of the Joint Economic Committee, is the budget that defends the American system, that defends the system that says the government really should only take 18 or 19 percent away from the private sector, that that's enough, that we don't want to be Europe, where people pay VAT taxes and people pay much higher rates of taxation. The government takes 30, 40, or 50 percent. And what the opposition is offering is a European-style model. So I simply ask my friends on both sides to consider what kind of country we want to be. Do we want to continue on as the America that we've known for years, or do we want to become Europe? And I suggest, Madam Chair, that the former is the better course of action.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. I thank my colleague for the opportunity to speak. Mr. Speaker, it's been roughly a hundred days since I've been here. I'm one of the new folks in Congress. I began with my very first presentation several months ago congratulating my opponents across the aisle for saying all of the right things about where we're going to go this year, about how concerned they were about cutting spending, how concerned they were about balancing the budget. And I was actually excited at that time to hear folks across the aisle using a lot of the same language that we were using. Apparently, by now, I guess I have to expose myself for being somewhat naive. Here we are again today hearing the exact same language, that the other side is deathly serious about cutting spending, the other side is deathly serious about balancing the budget, and I've come to realize, as I think most of America has, that the words simply don't match up to the language. I guess, to a certain extent, I should be happy that we are here at least having this debate. We are here today discussing the 2012 budget for the first time. This will be the first time in 2 years this debate has taken place on this floor since there was no budget last year offered by my colleagues across the way. I can simply ask them: If you are indeed serious today about balancing the budget, serious today about getting spending under control, where have you been for the last 4 years? Where were you last year when this debate was not even allowed to take place on the floor of the House of Representatives? But let's put that behind us now. Let's move on to the 2012 budget. What are we seeing? We're seeing some wonderful language out of our colleagues on the other side. We saw the President in his State of the Union say a lot of the things that folks like me wanted to hear. And then we saw a budget that did absolutely nothing out of the White House--nothing. A budget that was decried by The Washington Post as actually being void of ideas and failing to lead. So what did our side do? We led. And in our budget, we actually introduced specific proposals on how to solve the problem. Did you like them? No. Did I like all of them? No. Are we all going to like all of the proposals? No chance. But at least we offered ideas, specific ideas. Then yesterday we heard the President was going to do the same thing, that he was going to meet us, that he wasn't going to attack us. He was actually going to put specific ideas on the table and invited my colleagues to sit in the front row while he called them un-American and again refused to give any specifics. Mr. Speaker, you will not see the President's budget offered today or tomorrow as an amendment. You will not see the budget that the President discussed yesterday offered as an amendment because it simply does not meet the specific requirements of being a budget amendment. It doesn't even come close. What the President talked about last night was more empty ideas and political rhetoric. The speech was introduced by his campaign manager, not by his Director of the Office of Management and Budget, not by the Secretary of the Treasury. It was a political speech. I'm extraordinarily frustrated with that. I have an economics background. I'd love to sit and talk about the economic realities that face our Nation. It is so difficult to do when the other side, led by the President, simply wants to engage in politics. Here again today we've seen it. We've seen talking points that somehow our proposal is going to require seniors to pay $6,000 out of pocket. We've looked for the last 12 hours to try and find that, Mr. Speaker, and we can't find it. What we did find, however, was the CBO report that says that the payment under our proposed system for 65- year-olds in 2020, 10 years on, would be the exact same as it would be under Medicare, that the spending per capita on seniors under our proposal 10 years on would be the same as it is under the current law. I'm not sure where the $6,300 is coming from. My guess is it's coming from somebody's political office and not from some economic think tank. You heard my esteemed colleague from Maryland, whom I've enjoyed working with on the Budget Committee, talk about the fiscal commission. I think lost in a lot of the discussion yesterday about the President's speech were the comments that one of the cochairs of that committee made as he walked out of the room after the President gave his speech, and they said, ``Mr. Simpson, what do you think the course of action should be from here on out?'' And his answer was, ``Pray.'' Is that what we've come to as a Nation, that the best chance we have to balance our budget is prayer? I'm a big believer in prayer, don't get me wrong, but we need to be met on the real issues. We cannot have the other side continuing to meet our specific proposals with rhetoric. To the extent that we will see specific proposals, I think we saw a brief introduction to it during the amendment process in the committee. Every single Democrat amendment--that's not fair. There were three or four, including one or two that I think I voted for. We did have a couple of bipartisan amendments pass. But the large majority of the Democrat proposals of amendments to this budget during the budget process were fairly simply described as increased taxes and increased spending. It was a series of increased taxes and increased spending. My fear, Mr. Speaker, is that's what we're going to see for the next few days, and it's a tremendous loss that here we are able to discuss the budget for the first time in 2 years that the debate will be purely political.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, for the last several weeks--and my guess is for the next couple of days--we will be hearing a lot of things from our colleagues across the aisle about the relationship between cutting spending and jobs. They have taken the position from the very beginning that if we cut government spending, we are going to lose jobs. We heard earlier this evening my esteemed colleague from Maryland talk about the Zandi report that suggested that maybe if we cut $60 billion from the budget--as we did in the CR, H.R. 1, a few weeks ago-- that that would cost us somehow 500,000 jobs. I've seen a similar report suggesting that that same $60 billion cut would shave 2 percentage points off of GPD. Mr. Chairman, those numbers sort of expose the absurdity of the Democrat argument. If you took those same numbers and applied it to the $800 billion stimulus program, that $800 billion stimulus program should have created or would have created over 6.5 million jobs and added 26 percent to the GPD. It's just wrong. It's misleading. I think for the first time maybe in this generation the American people are starting to accept the fact that government spending does not create jobs. We've seen it. It was an expensive lesson for us to learn as a Nation, but we are learning it. If government spending created jobs, then I wouldn't have 15 percent unemployment in my district. People back home are starting to accept, they are starting to learn, starting to agree that what creates jobs in this Nation is private investment. It's private businesses investing in their business, and it's private individuals putting people to work. We've got a graph going back another 20 years here--and I've got another one that goes back another 40 years, and another one that goes back to World War II--that shows that the only thing that creates jobs in this Nation is private investment. You are not going to find a graph more directly correlated than this. When private investment goes up, the unemployment rate goes down. When private investment goes down, the unemployment rate goes up. That is what we are facing as a Nation. And until we recognize the fact that government spending does not create jobs, we will continue to muddle through, but with too many of our folks out of work. This budget allows private industry to get back in the job of investing in this country and putting people back to work.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. I want to briefly begin by thanking the Appropriations Committee. I understand the nature of what has been happening here, the size of the taxpayer savings that we have seen over the last 3 days. But I rise because the debt and the deficit problem facing our Nation are greater than I think most people in this room understand, and certainly most people back home understand. The circumstances demand that we go just a little bit further than we have and that's what this amendment does. It goes just a little bit further. It takes non-defense discretionary spending back to 2006 levels instead of 2008. That represents an additional 3 percent savings, which on the one hand doesn't sound like that much, but on the other hand actually saves $134 billion of the $900 billion worth of deficits that we will incur between tomorrow and the rest of this year. Folks have asked me why I have done this, why I have waited 3 years to do it, why we are here at 1 o'clock in the morning to hear this amendment. I am doing it because I feel that most of the folks don't grasp the size of the difficulty. I know that most of the folks in my district don't grasp it yet. And I have been struggling with how to explain to people exactly what a $1,600 billion deficit means and a $14,000 billion debt. This chart, I think, does it better than anything else. This chart is something that we put together using Congressional Budget Office numbers from the base line. This number, very simply, ladies and gentlemen, shows when we will use 100 percent of our revenues, 100 percent of our revenues, to pay our debt. And that number, using the CBO estimates, is in 2055. This is the equivalent of going back to your family and saying everything that we make will go to pay down the minimum payment on our credit card. And this number is probably too late. The CBO estimates on interest are much lower than we are actually experiencing in the market these days. The scary part is that if we don't do anything, if we continue business as usual, this will happen. This will happen unless we make dramatic changes to the way that we do business around here. I heard the gentleman from Virginia earlier today, Mr. Moran, mention that he thought that H.R. 1 represented an economic death spiral. This, ladies and gentlemen, is an economic death spiral. There is no coming back from a situation where you use all of your money just to pay your debt. We can and will begin work on this this year in the budget. We can and will continue work on this as we go through the debt ceiling debate. And we can and should keep this in mind with everything that we do. But in my humble opinion, we can start tonight by approving this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.