Joseph Pitts

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. They know, in response to the gentleman, they know that if the bill is silent on the issue of abortion, they will control who's appointed to the Benefits Advisory Committee. And they have expressed their intent, from the President on down to all the organizations who have lobbied for this health care bill, that they intend that abortion will be a basic essential service. And so they're relying on that advisory committee, on the Secretary of Health and Human Services, on the courts, on the administrators to guarantee that this will be provided. Friends, this is the big battle for our time. This is the greatest civil rights issue of our generation. And if we lose this battle, it's over. Now is the time for all citizens to weigh in if they don't want their tax dollars used to set up this massive abortion scheme that's coming through this bill.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, when Congress passed the $787 billion so- called stimulus bill, the White House promised to set up a Web site where people could go to learn how the money was being spent. Recovery.gov has since been criticized for how long it took to get going and how forthcoming it has been with the information people need; yet it seems doubtful that what critics had in mind was an $18 million overhaul. That's exactly what this administration is planning. The General Services Administration, the agency that manages Federal Government property, announced Wednesday that $18 million in additional stimulus funds is being spent to redesign the recovery.gov Web site. A cost estimate from www.designquote.net makes the $18 million figure even more outrageous. According to the site, the top-end estimate for a premium Web design from a professional firm flush with all of the bells and whistles comes out at $192,740. One has to wonder what the other $17,807,260 in taxpayer money will be used for.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to see a so-called ``public option'' as a part of any health care reform plan. The key question for any public health option is, would this plan be subsidized with taxpayer money? If not, then the public option would simply be a nonprofit insurance business which anyone could create now. But if taxpayer money will subsidize this option, and I believe it will, the public option will only serve to crowd out other choices. A public option will not save any money; it will compete and undermine private plans. And I'm afraid many companies will end up dumping employees under the public plan. A public option is nothing more than a back door to government-owned health care which will ultimately result in rationed care and bureaucrats in charge of your health care choices.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, like all of us, I believe we should work to decrease the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere, and we should be good stewards of this Earth and its resources. However, I don't believe this bill will accomplish a dramatic decrease in greenhouse gas emissions; yet I do believe it will have a crippling effect on our economy for years. No matter how you doctor or tailor it, it is a tax, a national energy tax that will hurt each and every household. It will destroy sectors of our economy and cause job losses at an unprecedented rate. Here is a chart that shows the jobs losses in thousands of jobs here, nearly 2 million jobs, 2012; 2035, over 2 million jobs a year. We should be protecting our environment through innovation, through entrepreneurship and cooperation, but this bill tries to cut carbon emissions through punishment taxation, heavy hand of government, and litigation. The bill as originally introduced, analyzed by the PUC, a bipartisan group in Pennsylvania, said it would cost Pennsylvanians 66,000 jobs by the year 2020. I urge my colleagues to consider just how irresponsible it is to move legislation that is going to cost so many jobs, so much damage to our economy, and yet it is anticipated to slow temperature increases by only two-tenths of 1 degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century. There is a better way.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, at a time when policy makers are doing everything they can to reduce smoking in our society, one area of smoking prevention remains unchallenged: Smoking in the movies. Studies have shown that viewing smoking in the movies normalizes smoking among youth. It glamorizes smoking through the attractiveness of the actors and characters who smoke. These attitude changes lead to smoking experimentation, which in turn leads to harmful and addictive habits. Tobacco is still depicted in three-quarters of youth-rated movies and 90 percent of R-rated movies. Movies targeting impressionable youth should be the last place for gratuitous smoking images. Dartmouth Medical School found that up to one-half of the youth smoking initiation is explained by exposure to smoking in the movies in their studies. Parents should know they are exposing their kids to glamorized depictions of smoking when they allow them to see youth-related movies by the rating system.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, in a couple of weeks the House is going to consider the cap-and-trade legislation that has enormous implications for our economy. This 926-page bill, as introduced and considered by the committee, has 50 pages on lightbulbs and two sentences on nuclear power. Recently, I saw a Rasmussen poll of likely voters that indicates 30 percent of likely voters have no idea what cap-and-trade means. Twenty- nine percent of them also thought it was some sort of Wall Street regulation, and 17 percent thought it had to something to do with health care. Only 24 percent had any idea of what it was. Cap-and-trade puts a cap or a limit on greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2, carbon dioxide. When you breath in, that is oxygen. When you breathe out, that is carbon dioxide, CO2. According to this legislation, CO2 is pollution. According to the bill, if foreign countries don't cap emissions, their goods can be hit with tariffs which they call ``border adjustments.'' The loss of jobs that will go overseas as a result of this bill is being called ``leakage.'' Breathing as pollution, border adjustments, leakage--this bill is a massive, bureaucratic, regulatory taxation scheme on energy, linguistic obfuscation to cover up the harmful impacts it will have on our economy.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Jean. I really want to commend the lady from Ohio for her leadership and for the Pro-Life Women's Caucus for having this Special Order. You know, there are really no more eloquent voices for women and children than pro-life women. You're not only eloquent; you're elegant. I want to thank you for your wonderful statements on the issue of life and of women and of the unborn child. Abortion is an exploitation of women and children. I remember hearing a few years ago the President of Feminists for Life, Frederica Mathewes-Green, when she spoke to the Congressional Life Forum. She said abortion breaks a woman's heart. She said there are always two victims with an abortion. One is the baby. The other is the mother. One is dead. One is wounded. We should keep that in mind as we talk about this issue. I am very sad to see this administration act so quickly in going towards promoting abortion policies. Three days after the President was inaugurated, on Friday evening at about 5:30, he issued an order overturning the Mexico City Policy. Mexico City was started by President Reagan, and it has been in our policy for many years. He overturned Mexico City. By eliminating the Mexico City Policy, what that does is permits all of the family planning funds that go to international organizations to go to organizations that promote and provide abortions. He has given them that money. Not only did he overturn Mexico City, but in the omnibus bill, he raised the amount of money this year to $545 million to go to these international organizations that promote and provide abortions. It's a tragedy. He is becoming known by many in the pro-life community as the ``abortion President.'' It's very unfortunate. It's very sad. The next thing he did shortly after that was to issue an executive order overturning the Federal ban that President Bush had put on the stem cell policies, expanding the use of taxpayer funds for the use of destroying embryos so that they could harvest the stem cells and use them for experimentation. Not only did he do that, but he issued an order to discourage adult stem cell research. Now, we all know, having followed this for many years, that for the last 25 years, they've done research on mice and, for the last 12 or 13 years, on humans. The only thing that has worked as far as treating humans are adult stem cells. There are something like 73 successful treatments and several protocols using adult stem cells, but there is nothing using embryonic stem cells, which kills the tiniest of human beings, the human embryo. Then he proposed a rule shortly after that to remove the critical regulations that were put in place to protect the right of conscience of health care workers so that now health care workers--doctors, nurses, those in health care--can be compelled against their consciences to provide abortion services, which are referrals and providing abortion services. This is another promotion, if you will, of abortion. Then, in the omnibus bill, they removed the provisions that would have prevented funds from going to the UNFPA--the groups in China that promote abortion and that force abortion and sterilization. They now are eligible to get those funds for that practice. I remember a few weeks ago that Harry Wu, the great human rights activist from China, who spent 19 years in their laogai, in the gulag there, presented testimony before the Human Rights Caucus. He said, in China, having a baby is not a human right. He said, if you have a second pregnancy, they will forcibly abort that woman. They will forcibly sterilize her. They will find her and tear down her house and sometimes imprison her. We are putting taxpayer funds into organizations that promote and provide that kind of service in China? It is really a terrible thing that American taxpayers, who have consciences against their funds being used for these things, are now seeing this administration open the floodgates for these kinds of provisions in our country and around the world. Now, in this budget, in the Obama budget, he has included a loophole that will allow taxpayer funds for abortions in the District of Columbia. The best way to reduce abortion is to limit taxpayer funding for abortion. There has been a lot of talk about abortion reduction, and the one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that public funding for abortion increases the number of unborn babies lost to abortion. Even the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the arm of Planned Parenthood, routinely issues reports showing that, when public funding is not available, 30 percent fewer women in the covered population have abortions. That means 30 percent of babies whose mothers receive government-subsidized health care survive because of an abortion funding restriction. So undermining commonsense policies like the restriction on taxpayer funding for abortion flies in the face of the President's claims that he is working to reduce abortion in America. It is very unfortunate. I just want to commend the pro-life women for this Special Order tonight. They have an understanding like no one else on this issue, and it is so heartening to hear their eloquent testimony and their voices on behalf of women and children here in our country and around the world. So thank you. Thanks to the gentlelady for inviting me down. I really commend you for your Special Order tonight.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, during a speech last week at Beijing University in China, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was laughed at when he attempted to assure students that the Chinese government could continue to safely invest in American debt. The largest holder of our national debt is now openly laughing at our financial situation. At the same time, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was here on Capitol Hill calling for fiscal restraint. Every dollar spent by the government is taken from the people in taxes or borrowed against future generations. Our Nation's fiscal responsibility is so lacking that a developing nation snickers at the mention of sound investment in our debt. Traveling the world, begging creditor nations to allow us to continue our spending binge is not the kind of international engagement we need. Our economy will turn around because of the ingenuity of the American people, not because of out-of-control, irresponsible government spending and borrowing.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, a recent news story highlights political appointees at the Justice Department running roughshod over both their civil counterparts and the law itself. In November, members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense stood in paramilitary uniforms, one of them wielding a nightstick, and intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling place. The facts are not in question. You can see the video on YouTube. Career lawyers at the Justice Department rightly pursued the case in order to bring charges. They even obtained an affidavit from a prominent civil rights activist who was present and described it as ``the most blatant form of voter intimidation'' that he had seen, including the voting rights crisis he was a part of in Mississippi in the 1960s. The civil suit filed claimed the individuals engaged in ``coercion, threats and intimidation, racial threats and insults, and menacing and intimidating gestures.'' Yet now political appointees have stepped in to order the suit dropped. Apparently this Justice Department has no problem with voter intimidation or politicization of justice.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, 20 years ago today the brutal massacre of peaceful student demonstrators occurred in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, by the People's Liberation Army. Hundreds, perhaps thousands were shot, killed or wounded, including being run over by tanks. The extraordinary image of a man standing unarmed in front of a row of Chinese tanks has become one of the most famous photos of the 21st century and will forever be ingrained in our memories. That man represents thousands of others thirsting for freedom, thousands who were arrested and detained. Some of those are still in labor camps today. This week we pause to remember the lives of those who were tragically lost in the massacre and imprisoned in the gulag. We honor their courage and their stand for freedom. China has made significant progress towards economic reform, but political reform is still needed to ensure the fundamental rights of the people, such as freedom of religion, expression and assembly. The Chinese Government continues to intimidate reporters, block Web sites, jam broadcasts and censor the Internet. We look forward to a day when the people of China are truly free. That day will surely come.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, the Associated Press issued an analysis this week that describes what many have known all along: The $787 billion economic stimulus plan isn't getting to the people who need it most. For those who knew the Federal Government would not be able to effectively and efficiently distribute the money, this comes as no surprise. The May 11 story says: ``Counties suffering the most from job losses stand to receive the least help from President Barack Obama's plan to spend billions of stimulus dollars on roads and bridges, an Associated Press analysis has found.'' The story continues: ``The very promise that Obama made, to spend money quickly and create jobs, is locking out many struggling communities needing those jobs. Many struggling communities don't have projects waiting on a shelf. They couldn't afford the millions of dollars for preparation and plans that often is required.'' The Democrat spokesman for the House Transportation Committee said, ``I think the Administration oversold the transportation aspect of this. It was sold as the heart and soul of the package, and it really just isn't.'' That's the understatement of the year.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, the President's nominee to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel is truly from the radical fringe, which is why her confirmation is running into so much trouble in the Senate. That person is Dawn Johnsen, a former attorney for one of the Nation's largest and most radical abortion groups. Ms. Johnsen's own quotes speak for her radical views. She equated pregnancy to slavery. She said that laws restricting a woman's ``abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude.'' She's likened pregnant mothers to ``no more than fetal containers.'' And she claims that abortion is ``a relief'' rather than the traumatic experience it truly is for women. Her appointment is a slap in the face to fair-minded Americans. And now Senator Reid has indicated he does not have the votes to bring her nomination to the Senate floor. The President should take a cue from the Senate and withdraw this mistaken nomination, a nomination that runs counter to the values of the American people.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, in 1994, the EPA enacted a regulation requiring additives derived from renewable sources for our Nation's fuel supplies. This policy caused problems as corn ethanol pushed up food prices and turned out to be far less beneficial for the environment than originally thought, with some studies even concluding ethanol may be worse for the environment than gasoline. Now, over a decade later, the EPA has ruled that Congress tasked it with regulating greenhouse gases when it passed the Clean Air Act. Without action by Congress, regulations are soon to follow. This fact is being held over our heads by some who claim it is better to let Congress regulate emissions than unelected bureaucrats. This is a false choice. The act was never intended to regulate carbon, and we can pass legislation to make that clear. Congress should stop unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats from hurting our economy further through draconian emissions regulations without doing harm itself. There is a better way.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, last week, the Congressional Human Rights Commission met with defectors from North Korea and we heard firsthand how the people of North Korea continue to suffer terribly at the hands of the cruel dictatorship there. It is vital that the international community and the United States take more specific, deliberate action aimed at helping the suffering people of North Korea. There are numerous reports of the suffering going on inside North Korea; prison camps, severe torture, slave labor, forced abortions, and almost certain death for those who have tried to escape and have been forced to return. The U.S. Congress passed the North Korea Human Rights Act to provide a stronger foundation for the U.S. to help the North Korean people. Unfortunately, that act has not been implemented to the fullest extent possible. The North Korean people need to hear the message that they are not alone, that they are not forgotten, and that there are many in the United States and around the world who deeply care about their plight and are working to help them. We look forward to the day when we can visit a free North Korea and see the people living with human rights and dignity.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, in the past, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle railed against the Bush administration for an energy policy they say was written by energy lobbyists and rewarded oil and gas industry companies. Now that they control both the Congress and the White House, that type of behavior which they railed against now seems to be acceptable. The cap-and-trade legislation being considered in the Energy and Commerce Committee is based on a blueprint of a plan put forward by a coalition of outside groups called USCAP. USCAP claims to favor government regulation of greenhouse gasses; yet, one of the leading members of the group will receive a generous exemption in the legislation to build new coal power plants without the onerous restrictions that will prevent others from building. The majority are allowing industry members to write legislation that benefits them in exchange for supporting their cap-and-tax plan that will raise energy prices for all Americans. That is hypocritical and it's unethical.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, yesterday marked President Obama's 100th day in office. In that short time, the Obama administration has managed to launch a war on critical pro-life and pro-family policies. As a result, foreign organizations that promote and perform abortions are eligible for U.S. taxpayer family planning money that has been increased to $545 million a year this year. Life-destroying research will be eligible for more taxpayer dollars. Medical professionals' rights to practice according to their consciences will be under threat. Foreign organizations will be allowed to receive Federal tax dollars despite support for coercive abortion policies like forced abortion, forced sterilization, and the UNFPA in China. Contentious organizations like Planned Parenthood will be granted massive amounts of hardworking American tax dollars. Such actions certainly contradict the President's pledge to find common ground with pro-life Americans. As the old adage goes, ``Actions speak louder than words.'' Yesterday was a sad day for America's unborn and for those who would like to protect them.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, Debt Day is the day on which the government runs out of money in a given year and all of the government spending for the rest of the year is borrowed money. For 2009, Debt Day fell on April 26, this past Sunday. This is an astonishingly early day in the year to run out of money. Last year, it was August 5. So in 4 months, this Congress and this administration has shattered all previous records for debt levels, moving Debt Day up in the calendar over 3 months from last year. President Obama and this Congress make the Bush deficit look trivial. Friends, this is the most valuable and expensive credit card in history, a Member of Congress voting card. This Congress has taken out their credit cards and saddled our children and grandchildren with debt, mortgaging their future. Since the first of the year we've spent $350 billion in TARP, billions in auto bailouts, $787 billion in stimulus, $410 billion in omnibus, $3.5 trillion in the budget--mostly borrowed money--all of this debt dumped on future generations.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. I thank the chairman. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 1913, the hate crimes legislation. This bill would be more appropriately termed the ``thought crimes act,'' as it seeks to criminalize certain types of thoughts. Our legal structure was established to punish actions, not thoughts or beliefs, and this bill would set a dangerous precedent. It will threaten our most basic right to free speech established under the First Amendment. Religious groups who hold certain convictions based on their faith could, in fact, be targeted by this law. In Sweden, a pastor was convicted by a trial court and sentenced to jail time for a hate crime after preaching a sermon that discussed biblical views of homosexuality. And in New York, the State hate crimes laws were used to justify taking down billboards on sexual immorality that a local pastor had paid to post. This legislation seeks to create categories of citizens who are either more or less protected under the law depending on what category they fall into. This framework flies in the face of one of the most fundamental principles of our justice system. Chiseled in stone across the front of the Supreme Court building are the words ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' This means that all citizens, regardless of sexual identity or anything else, are to receive equal protection from the law. I support this basic principle that has long guided our Nation's system of justice. But this bill undermines that principle. It seeks to establish different groups of citizens with different levels of protection under the law. And the bottom line is that this legislation simply isn't necessary. If someone commits a violent crime, they should be punished to the full extent of the law regardless of who the victim is. I urge you to preserve equal justice under the law and oppose H.R. 1913.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to the Members' attention a report from the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Napolitano, entitled ``Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.'' On page 2, under Key Findings, the footnote states, ``Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups) and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting Federal authority in favor of State or local authority or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.'' On Page 7, under Disgruntled Military Veterans, they're listed as having the potential to boost the capabilities of the extremists. Mr. Speaker, this is the same Cabinet member who will no longer use the words ``terrorist'' or ``war on terror'' and who now wants to call some of our veterans and pro-life activists ``terrorists.'' This is outrageous. President Obama, your Cabinet Secretary is the real threat to our security.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, all in one week we've had April Fool's Day, the Democrats' budget, and the largest increase in cigarette taxes ever. But the American people aren't foolish and they aren't in the mood for gimmicks. Yesterday, the Federal tax on a pack of cigarettes went up--way up. Was this tax raised to get people to stop smoking? Or was it raised to pay for a massive expansion in SCHIP? Well, both, actually. And that's a crazy way to run a railroad. SCHIP needs more money under the Democrats' plan. So we're going to need more people to start smoking, not fewer. In fact, we're going to need about 22 million new people to start smoking. But this tax increase is going to convince people to stop smoking, which means the SCHIP will be short of funds and the folks in charge in Congress are going to want to raise taxes again soon. I'm all for health care for kids, and I'm all for getting people to quit smoking, but I'm against health care run by bureaucrats and health care programs funded by cigarette taxes. The American people must wonder what Democrat leaders are smoking in Washington these days. And that is no laughing matter.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, the President has disparaged budget gimmicks and declared ``a return to honest budgeting.'' Yet his plan then goes on to claim $1.5 billion in war ``savings'' that are nothing more than an illusion, just the kind of gimmick he has disparaged. The President's budget claims $1.6 trillion in ``savings'' and $1.5 trillion in ``deficit reduction'' by claiming the already determined drawdown in troops as a reduction in spending. Put another way, the administration budget assumes an elevated path of war spending that was never going to be followed, and then claims savings through a reduction that was going to occur anyway. This war games budget gimmick ends up representing three-quarter of their so-called savings. The President isn't making any attempt to reduce spending. He has constructed an unrealistically high future spending projection, and then claimed as savings the difference between this fictional budget world and reality. We need to get spending under control, not budget gimmicks.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, President Obama's appointment to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel is truly from the far left radical fringe. Dawn Johnsen, a former attorney for one of the radical abortion groups, is a step back for a President who has claimed he would like to find common ground on the abortion issue. Ms. Johnsen's own quotes speak for her radical views. She has equated pregnancy to slavery when she said that laws restricting a woman's abortion choice ``are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude.'' She has likened pregnant mothers to ``no more than fetal containers.'' She has likened pro-life advocates to ``terrorists,'' calling them ``remarkably similar to the Ku Klux Klan.'' Her appointment is a slap in the face to all fair-minded persons, not just pro-life Americans. The President should withdraw her nomination or else the Senate should reject it.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, as you can see here in this graph, what the President called gyrations of the stock market, in February of 2008, a year ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat at just 13,000 points. Just before Congress passed the so-called rebate check package worth $168 billion of borrowed money, Speaker Pelosi said, ``This package gets money into the hands of Americans struggling to make ends meet . . . and stimulates our slowing economy.'' Yet since then, the market has lost nearly half its value. That's trillions of dollars in wealth wiped out in 1 year from retirement accounts and the savings of hardworking families across America. The rebate package a year ago was just the first in many attempts to borrow and spend our way out of this situation. Here we have the $300 billion housing bailout, $200 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, $700 billion in TARP funds. Look at the drop after that: $14 billion, auto bailout; $787 billion, stimulus, before the market dropped. Our actions have economic consequences.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, what we do here in Washington, the policies that we make, have direct economic consequences on the market, on job creation or loss, on retirement accounts, and on the financial security of the American people. For example, yesterday, Secretary Geithner finally released the administration's plan for dealing with the troubled assets that are dragging down our banks and that are impeding our Nation's economic recovery. The market jumped up 500 points. Now, we still need to do some work to evaluate exactly how this plan will work and whether it is the best plan for the country, but I think this is a perfect example of how our actions here in Washington affect Wall Street. I have a chart here with some data that I have assembled for the last 30 years, from 1977 to 2009, of market activity, and I want to show a broad trend that we see over that time regarding the market's reaction to government policies: Here on the top, this yellow line, is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. You will see the red and blue panels. The colors here indicate which party is in control of Congress. So, where you have red, that is the control of the Congress, both the House and Senate, by Republicans. Where you have blue, that is the control of the Congress by the Democrats, both House and Senate. Where you have these slash/slanted marks, you have a divided Congress. From 1977 to 1995, you see the Dow Jones growing gradually, minimal growth. You see when it hits the red panel that it moves sharply up. When you have, actually, the dot-com collapse and 9/11 and the divided Congress, you see it goes down. When it hits the red, it goes sharply up again. The next chart down below shows budget deficits from 1977 to 2009. The bars above represent deficits. The bars below represent surpluses. Notice under President Obama that this last bar, the yellow line, is $1.752 trillion for fiscal year 2009. Let me just put that into perspective. That single deficit is more than the previous eight deficits under President Bush combined. If I could show you the projected deficits, they are all trillion-dollar deficits out for 10 years as far as we can look. So I think we need to really question some of the rhetoric we are hearing about fiscal responsibility about this present administration. These deficits have both immediate and long-term consequences. The long-term consequences are the debt that we are leaving to our children. In the more immediate term, they represent the eroding of our standing in the world. They are going to feed inflation and undermine the value of the dollar. Last month, I met with a delegation of Chinese officials. The first question they asked me was, ``Congressman, is America abandoning the free market system?'' I mean the world is watching us, and they have expressed some hesitancy about buying more of our debt. I think, when we go in the market this year with $2 trillion or $3 trillion in treasuries to fund our budget, it is going to be harder and harder to find willing buyers. When the rest of the world watches as the U.S. Government takes over private businesses, as government spending grows and as the government crowds out the private sector and stifles innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit on which this Nation was founded, we have serious problems. When we take these kinds of actions and make these kinds of policies, we are jeopardizing our standing in the world and our future. How can we be the leader of the free world with this kind of government intervention and undermining of the free market? I also want to point out here that there is a good lesson here on this bottom chart. You see these 4 years right here in a row. That is when the Republicans were in control of Congress and when President Clinton was in office. For the first time in years, we balanced the budget 4 consecutive years in a row, and we paid down on the public debt 4 years in a row. Now, Clinton deserves some credit, and the Congress deserves some credit, but we balanced the budget 4 years in a row. The lesson here is that real bipartisanship works. The phony bipartisanship of wanting us to come in at the last minute and vote for something that we did not have any opportunity to create or to craft in the first place will not work. Real bipartisanship works and policies matter, and some policies help create an environment in which our economy can thrive. The government cannot create wealth. The American people, entrepreneurs and businesses must do that. Yet the government can and at times has implemented flawed policies like spending too much, taxing too much and borrowing too much like we are seeing right now. Those policies have economic consequences.

Mr. PITTS

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, House Republicans share the outrage of the American people that AIG would use taxpayer dollars to award executive bonuses during this economic crisis. But we believe the American people deserve 100 percent of their money back, not 90 percent. The American people deserve to know that this whole outrage could have been avoided. Senator Wyden authored an amendment banning executive bonuses, and that amendment was stripped from the stimulus bill. Senator Dodd took responsibility, but he told CNN that ``the administration had a problem with the amendment.'' The bill on the floor today to enact a 90 percent tax on AIG employees is just a cynical attempt to divert attention from the truth that Democrats in Congress and this administration made these bonus payments possible in the first place. House Republicans have legislation that would ensure 100 percent of these bonuses are returned to taxpayers, but they blocked the plan from receiving a vote today. The American people have a right to get 100 percent of their money back, and Mr. Geithner should resign.