Tom Price

Mr. PRICE of Georgia

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the comments of my good friend and colleague from Georgia about the previous amendment. I wasn't interested in revisiting it, but I was compelled to do so because of the obfuscation that I believe occurred. The amendment, my amendment, states on line 9, page 1, that the personal identification shall be one of the following forms. ``One of the following forms.'' The first item is Social Security card. The second item is in fact a driver's license with a State complying with REAL ID. And then there is an ``or'' between the two. An ``or'' means one of them. Not all of them. Not always in compliance with REAL ID. Then it goes on to have the two small ii's on page 2, line 9, where it says a passport. Then there is even a third way that you can do it. Line 12, page 2, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Documentation. Lo and behold, it is just one of those, Mr. Chairman. It is not all of them. So I would suggest that my good friend from Georgia be complete in his characterization of my amendment. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield to my good friend from Texas (Mr. Sessions).

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for his amendment and appreciate his leadership on this issue, and I appreciate his leadership in defending the hardworking American taxpayer.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I'm pleased to yield to my good friend from Texas.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Reclaiming my time, I'd be glad to yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Be pleased to.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Reclaiming my time, I'd be glad to yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I commend the gentleman for his amendment and urge my colleagues to adopt it.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment which I believe enhances the oversight of the Director over the payments into the Affordable Housing Fund. The underlying legislation takes the responsible step of providing criteria that the Director of the new regulatory agency should use to suspend contributions to the Affordable Housing Fund created by this bill, and that is a responsible step. However, I and others are concerned that this language doesn't go far enough to ensure the GSE safety and soundness, which indeed is the intent of this important legislation that we are dealing with today. In the underlying legislation, if the Director finds that contributing to the Affordable Housing Fund would contribute to the instability of the GSE, would cause the GSE to become undercapitalized, or would prevent the GSE from successfully completing a capital restoration plan, then payments to the Housing Fund would be suspending. I have three specific concerns. First, nowhere in this language does this legislation provide an explicit requirement for the Director to actively seek out this information and to report on his or her findings. Second, the language in this section doesn't explicitly list the safe and sound operation of the GSE as one of the factors that the Director should consider. And, third, the Director does not consider the extent to which these payments into the Housing Trust Fund will result in an increase in costs to the borrowers under residential mortgages. This amendment very simply would require the Director to study the additional factors that I just mentioned, safety and soundness, and increased costs to the borrowers. Along with those factors already in the text of the underlying bill, and to certify to Congress that they won't be adversely affected before the GSE makes a payment into the Housing Fund, it is imperative that we make certain that all of the hard work that went into creating this new world-class regulator in the underlying legislation isn't undone because of the mandatory payments the GSE will have to make into the Affordable Housing Fund. And we can do that by requiring the Director to look at all of these safety and soundness issues that might be affected, and to provide a responsible signoff requirement before payments are made into the Housing Fund. I think this greatly improves the accountability and the success and the appropriateness of this bill, and I urge my colleagues to adopt the amendment.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for his commitment and for his wisdom and for his leadership on America's security. Motion to Rise Offered by Mr. Price of Georgia

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and I appreciate his leadership on this. I would rise, Mr. Speaker, to say that all of us obviously support police officers on the street. But there are some legitimate concerns about this bill and others that are brought to the floor. One that I would point out on this bill is that we attempt to find some objective information about the programs that we put in place here at the Federal level. The Office of Management and Budget has a program called Program Assessment Rating Tool which attempts to determine the effectiveness of what we do here on the floor, and their grade for this COPS Program is ``Not performing, results not demonstrated'' in the latest review. That is not to say that we don't support cops on the street, police on the street, but it is important to appreciate that there are some legitimate concerns about the program. Another concern I have is that one of our House rules, XIII section 3(d)(1) says that all committee reports must contain a statement citing the specific powers granted to the Congress in the Constitution to enact the law proposed by the bill or joint resolution. In fact, in this bill being brought to the floor, there is no such statement available from the committee. So I think there are legitimate concerns, Mr. Speaker, and I ask my colleagues to review those.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I thank the Speaker so very much for the opportunity for presenting once again before the House of Representatives. I want to thank my leadership for allowing me to head up and chair this hour that is a Special Order hour. It is an opportunity for us in the minority party to come and try to shed some light on some issues that frankly don't get a whole lot of attention here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and so I appreciate that opportunity once again. Madam Speaker, most of us go home every weekend and visit our district, talk to constituents. It is a wonderful time to be able to go back and get grounded, go back to that touchstone and those people that supported us as we came to Washington, to try to assist in moving our country in the right direction. And I have been struck over the last couple of months as I go home every weekend and talk to my friends and neighbors and fellow church- goers in my Sixth District of Georgia on the north side of Atlanta, I have been struck by their concern about what appears to be from their standpoint a continuing decrease in the level of civility here in Washington. I am in my second term, initially elected in 2004, and one of the things that I thought I would hopefully be able to have some effect on would be to affect positively the level of rhetoric and the level of discourse here in Washington, and the level of frustration that my constituents tell me they have regarding what's going on here in Washington continues to increase. So one of the things that I and some other Members of our conference have tried to do is to come to the floor, try to do it at least once a week, sometimes we're not able to do that, but talk about issues in a light that is hopefully more positive, hopefully respects the history of our Nation in a way that allows us to kind of glean the role that we ought to play as the House of Representatives and as Congress and to hopefully chart out or to define a path that will continue to allow our children and our grandchildren to live in the finest Nation on the face of the Earth. In so doing, what we have tried to do is to talk about truth, to talk about facts. So often in the world of politics, in fact we have heard it just within the last few moments, Madam Speaker, the issue of politics over policy. So often when folks come to the floor of the House they talk more about politics than they do about policy, and I understand that. People have to get elected and I appreciate that, but when you're talking about things that are so incredibly important to the future of this Nation, it would behoove us as a House of Representatives to endeavor as much as we can to work together and to try to come up with the best solution for our Nation. All of us come from different backgrounds. I happen to come from a profession of medicine. I practiced medicine for over 20 years, and medicine is a little different endeavor than politics and legislating. In taking care of patients what we try to do is try to work together, all for a common goal, which is to get the patient well obviously. So it is a collegial activity. It tends to be an activity where we share information and support one another. Would that were the case on the floor of this House of Representatives, Madam Speaker, because I share my constituents' frustration with much of the partisanship that goes on here and much of the sniping and the politics over policy that makes it so very difficult, very difficult to move our Nation forward. So we have developed a group that we call The Official Truth Squad, and its desire, as I mentioned, is to try to shed some light on issues here before our Nation. We have a number of individuals that we like to point to as heroes over the history of our Nation. Many of our former Presidents were certainly individuals who sought the truth and sought to guide this Nation in a positive and an uplifting direction. One of the individuals that I like to quote is Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Mr. Moynihan was a Senator from the State of New York, and he had marvelous quips and marvelous phrases that he would use. One of them was this one right here. It says, ``Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but they are not entitled to their own facts.'' Everyone's entitled to their own opinion but they are not entitled to their own facts. So I was struck by that, Madam Speaker, just last week as I was working here late in the Capitol one evening, happened to run into a couple who was in the hallway, obviously tourists, and they were stopping at some of the statues here in the Capitol. They were interested in finding where the gallery to the House of Representatives was, and so I pointed them in the right direction and happened to see them up in the gallery. I had some friends from home who were visiting as well, and I got a chance to talk to them in the hallway. This young man was a physician. Come to find out he was a doctor who was serving in our military, and in 2 days or 3 days from last week when I met him, he was on his way to Iraq. He was on his way to try to help our men and women who are standing in harm's way and trying to protect our liberty and our freedom to make certain that they were given the finest care they possibly could be given in a difficult situation. He shared with me his frustration about the lack of not just civility but about the lack of attention to urgent problems. One of the things that we briefly talked about was the responsibility that this Congress has to make certain that our men and women who are defending liberty, defending us, making certain that our children and our grandchildren can live in this great Nation for generations to come, and the frustration that he had with the inability of this Congress to make certain that the resources, the money that's needed to be able to allow our military men and women to protect themselves and to protect us has not been forthcoming, and I shared my frustration with him about that same event. Madam Speaker, tomorrow I believe will be 100 days, 100 days since the President of the United States has sent to Congress his request for money, resources, for our fighting men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq, and if there was anything that demonstrated politics over policy, it has been this last 100 days. Very frustrating, Madam Speaker, frustrating for me, and I know that it is concerning and frustrating for our constituents all across this Nation, because what has happened has been a length of time that was played out to just apparently get headlines, it appeared to be. And then there was a supplemental bill that was brought to the floor of the House, and it had in addition to the money that had been requested to allow our troops to defend themselves, it had in addition to that a peculiar set of directions, benchmarks, timelines, for our men and women and our generals on the ground, so much so that they said, look, there isn't any way that we can accomplish what we need to accomplish if you, Congress, adopt this bill, adopts this piece of legislation. Many individuals on both sides of the aisle said, well, you're absolutely right, that sounds ridiculous. And so then what happened was that in order for the majority party apparently to pass this piece of legislation, they kept adding money on to it. So money in Washington does not start with an M. It starts with a B. So they kept adding billions and billions and billions, over $20 billion, to the bill in order to allow for folks on either side of the aisle who had concerns, enough of them to be able to say, okay, well, I can justify my vote for that bill if I am going to get those kinds of resources. And so that bill passed the House with a very slim margin and passed the Senate, was sent to the President, the President promptly vetoed it. It came back to the House of Representatives and was delayed for another 4 or 5 days by this majority, Madam Speaker. The only reason that anybody can determine was for, again, politics over policy. And just last week, another bill was then adopted which had a peculiar arrangement that would allow for some money to go for a while, and then if the Congress still agreed, within a month or two then there would be more money forthcoming. It was what many of us have called war on the installment plan, which is actually a worse plan than the majority party came up with initially. Now, those are the facts. So that bill is passed, and we are waiting to see what happens from the Senate. But I get back to the point of that young man who shared his frustration and his concern with me about why Congress can't act on things that are so pressing for the security of our Nation and for those men and women who are serving in harm's way. It just, it is very, very concerning to men and women across this Nation, that we, as a legislative body, the United States House of Representatives, can't put politics aside and work for the good of the Nation and work for the benefit and the security of our men and women who are defending our liberty and defending our freedom. So I just offer that as what I am hearing from home. I suspect it's what many of my colleagues are hearing from home as well. I am hopeful that we will be able to move forward with a clean bill, a bill that provides money for our men and women who are defending liberty and defending themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have got a number of folks who will be joining us today, I hope. We will talk about a number of issues, the war supplemental, the budget and some other items, I hope. But I am pleased to be joined by my good friend and colleague from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) and look forward to your comments. I yield to you.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I appreciate the gentleman's perspective on the issue of energy, because it's extremely important, because I hear that at home as well. Folks are frustrated by the level of inactivity by this Congress as it relates to many things, and certainly in the area of gas prices. As you recall, Congressman Westmoreland, and I know you appreciate that what we heard out of this new majority was that their bill, earlier this year, their part of their 6 for '06 plan was going to solve a lot of the problems as it related to energy, and what was that plan? As you will remember, that plan was to increase taxes on American oil companies. Increased taxes on American oil companies was somehow going to be this grand plan that would make it so that those mean and awful oil companies wouldn't be making so much money.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Well, I appreciate that observation as well, because that appears to be what they believe. But we are getting a little ahead of ourselves, because it's important to close the loop on this energy issue. Because what the majority party offered was this remarkable smoke and mirrors that said, as part of their 6 for '06, that if we just passed this bill, if we just increased taxes on the oil company, then what will happen is that they will, by some miraculous determination, lower the price of oil for folks at the pump. Well, as you well know, what increases taxes on American oil companies does is make it so that they are less likely to be able to compete in the world so that our reliance on foreign oil gets greater.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Absolutely, without a doubt. There are some real keys, pivotal keys to the real solution to our energy challenges. One of them is conservation. We can all do more in the area of conservation. We can all probably do more on conservation. Probably the long-term solution is some type of alternative fuel. We have done a lot for that. In fact, most Members of the majority party are on record as opposing rewards for the provision of alternative fuel. But one of the mainstays, especially in the short-term, is to provide American energy for Americans. So, peculiarly, what this majority party did, and it's perplexing, frankly, because it doesn't solve anything, is to pass a bill to increase taxes on American oil companies, again, which makes us less competitive in the world, makes us more reliant on foreign oil, and, frankly, it means that what we do is finance those folks who like us less to a greater degree. That doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I appreciate your comments so much. I think it's important. It's called smoke and mirrors; I think that's an apt title. I talk about politics over policy, which is what frustrates me, frustrates so many of our constituents at home. I am so pleased to be joined by my friend from Tennessee, Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who is a strong leader on the Energy and Commerce Committee. I look forward to your comments on this issue and others.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I appreciate your passion about this and the information that you bring. I suspect you see what I see at home, and you hear what I hear at home, that is, that Americans want us to be working towards solutions. They want us to come up with solutions and make certain that we are working together to put those solutions on the table and move them forward so that we can work to get that American energy. What they are concerned about is the lack of solutions that they see being put on the table by the current majority party.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Will the gentlelady yield?

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I appreciate you bringing up the issue of the largest tax increase in American history that was passed by this majority on this floor. And folks at home say, well that can't be true. That just can't be true. We can't allow that to happen. What are they doing? And what they're doing is displayed in this chart right here, as you well know, because all of these tax rates, all of these tax rates, given the budget that has been adopted by this House, will increase to significant levels in relatively short order. Ordinary income going from the top rate of 35 percent to 39.6, capital gains going from 15 percent to 20 percent, dividends going from 15 percent to 39.6 percent, estate tax goes from 0 percent in 2010 to 55 percent. That's the death tax. It goes to 55 percent in 2011. The child tax credit cut in half. And the lowest tax bracket, amazingly enough, goes from 10 to 15 percent, which is a 50 percent increase.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I appreciate the gentlelady's perspective on that because it is so true. And when folks think about the ordinary income going up from 35 to 39.6 percent they say, well, that, you know, that's just all those folks who are at the top, all those rich folks. Well, as you mentioned and so clearly stated, that includes all the small businesses, and what that means is jobs for America. And so the largest tax increase in the history of our Nation is what has been passed on the floor of this House. Very frustrating. And when you talk with reasonable folks on the other side of the aisle about this, they say, oh, well, we're not going to do all that. We're going to change some of those numbers. We're going to make it so that the lowest rate isn't 15 percent, it comes back down to 10. But the problem is that their budget has spent all of the money that's to come from all of these tax increases. So if they're not going to get that money from one spot, then they've got to get it from another and raise them even more. So, Madam Speaker, I think that it is clear that this is a real problem that the American people are beginning to appreciate, that the leadership that they thought they were electing in November of 2006 is, in fact, not the leadership that they are getting. Again, politics over appropriate policy. This is a pie chart, Madam Speaker, that demonstrates who's going to be paying all those new taxes. And it talks about the billions, billions and billions of dollars that will be supposedly raised by those. In fact, what will happen is that it will so depress the economy that it is not likely that you'll see those kinds of revenues. In fact, what will happen is that we'll see fewer jobs, fewer amount of revenue to the Federal Government, and a significant change in what is a relatively good economic picture at the current time. I am pleased to be joined by my good friend from California (Mr. McCarthy), Kevin McCarthy, who is a member, of, I believe a member of the Budget Committee, and has been involved in certainly budgetary aspects and budgetary planning at the State level. And we're pleased to have you join us here in Washington this term as a new Member of the House of Representatives and look forward to your comments this evening.