Not Doing Away With "Politics As Usual"

Floor Speech

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Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate you, Mr. Speaker; you and I are freshmen colleagues, and it's wonderful to see you in the chair this afternoon.

You and I came to this Congress as freshmen with a desire to do away with ``politics as usual'' and start anew. And what I saw yesterday on this floor was not exemplary of that particular goal of mine, and I suspect yours and some of our other freshmen colleagues as well.

What I saw was a rule that was brought to the floor that would prevent us from discussing amendments to the big omnibus $410 billion spending bill. If you voted for that amendment to stop amendments to the bill, that was your way of being able to voice support for keeping congressional salaries capped. So those of us who are fiscal conservatives had to vote for that amendment in order to be consistent and true to our fiscal conservative roots; but at the same time, we had to disallow ourselves the opportunity to debate and discuss a $410 billion spending package. So I want to discuss it a little bit today. That bill has already passed, but there are some concerns I have about it, especially when coupled with the stimulus package we passed, especially when coupled with the President's budget that we just received today.

Some of my concerns are these: the President's proposal would provide that those who are making $250,000 a year and above will be those who are subject to a tax increase. That applies to many of our small businesses in the United States. And my State of Wyoming has no large businesses; it is entirely made up of small businesses. And those businesses create jobs for 70 percent of the jobs in this Nation. So we are, in essence, going to tax those who are creating jobs. And to me, when we're in a budget crisis and a fiscal crisis and a mortgage crisis, those are the wrong people to whom to turn and ask for more revenue. In addition, the previous speaker pointed out that the President's message, although very comforting to me coming from a coal-producing State like Wyoming, that he does acknowledge that we need clean coal technology, in the very same sentence said we also need cap and trade. And cap and trade is a tax, it will fall primarily on coal, that will send us to other nations to derive our energy. And that, I think, is a step in the wrong direction as well.

Furthermore, the debt that we're taking on will have to be absorbed in large part by other nations. We're already the largest debtor nation in the world. China already owns over $1 trillion worth of our Treasury notes, our debt. And it must be of great concern to them that we would approach them to buy more of our debt knowing that the consequence of all of this spending will mean we will be paying them back in dollars that are worth less than the dollars that they needed to purchase our U.S. treasuries now. Inflation will be the consequence of all the spending we are doing.

Consequently, I was so hopeful that the President's budget would provide a modicum of discipline and would be flat spending so that the American people will have a chance to see if the stimulus package works before we undertake more government spending to see if the budget that was passed yesterday, the $410 billion, is responsive to stimulus so we can flatten budgets in the future. But what we saw yesterday is that we're going to increase spending over last year's budget, followed the very next day, today, by even more spending. The levels of spending just get higher and higher, government intervention into the private sector gets higher and higher. The people of this country need us to go shoulder to shoulder with them and exercise the fiscal discipline that they are having to exercise themselves.

Mr. Speaker, again, it's wonderful to see you in the Chair. I thank you for your time.

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