Growing The Government

Floor Speech

Growing The Government

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Ms. FOXX. No, I can't. And I want to thank the gentleman from Missouri for taking on this Special Order tonight and for bringing up issues that are very, very important to the American people and doing it on such a consistent basis. You've done a terrific job.

I think, as I heard today in a meeting--I'm not sure if you were in that meeting when somebody pointed out--when the Communist Chinese start lecturing us on having too large a deficit, something is out of kilter in the world. And we know that in the last few days the President's been in China, and they have been lecturing us about this issue.

Mr. AKIN. Just reclaiming my time, there is something that's almost funny about that. It shouldn't be funny. It should be sad, I suppose, that the Communist Chinese are lecturing us about the government spending too much money and taking too many things over. It's, of course, because they own a whole lot of American treasuries, and they don't want to see us mess the whole system up. So here we have the Communist Chinese talking to us about excessive big government. I mean, this has been a year of amazing things, hasn't it?

We saw the government fire the president of General Motors. Just on the face of it, that's kind of a weird thing to see. We've got czars now in charge of all kinds of areas of government, people that have never been approved by the Senate. They're unconstitutional, and they're setting the prices of American executives, how much they're paid. So we've got the government doing that. Now they want to take over a sixth of the economy in this health care situation, and they're not thinking of this as any kind of problem at all.

But Congresswoman Foxx, you know, when the government does too much, we see these kinds of typical symptoms: bureaucratic rationing, inferior quality, inefficient allocation, excessive expense. We've seen that in department after department of Federal Government when they grow and try to do too much. It has led to the quip, ``If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free.''

Ms. FOXX. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. AKIN. I do yield.

Ms. FOXX. You mentioned a minute ago about the fact that this has been a year of very unusual things to have happen. I learned just recently that there is a poll that was done, and we know people are polling in this country all the time. But a poll was done that said that two-thirds of Americans believe it is more likely that we'll discover life in outer space than that the Democrats' health plan will be deficit-neutral.

Now, I think that's a good sign for our country. It's a good sign that people are paying attention to what is happening in this country and what is happening in this House and in the Senate, the fact that two-thirds of our citizens don't believe the line that's being fed to them that this health care bill is deficit-neutral.

That deficit, as you say, is causing tremendous harm, not just because the Chinese are nervous about it, but from the money it's taking out of the private sector and the problems it's causing small businesses. I know you want to talk a little bit about that tonight, and I hope that you will. I'm not going to be able to stay with you for the whole hour because I have the great pleasure of going over to be with Senator Jesse Helms' family who are in town for the unveiling of his portrait tonight, but I want to stay with you for a few minutes. I can just imagine Senator Helms watching us from heaven thinking, ``Oh, I wish I were there to be in this fight.'' The Senate right now is behind closed doors, behind closed doors despite all the promises of transparency, working on a bill that's going to create havoc. But the American public has awakened, and it knows this is not right.

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Ms. FOXX. I have quoted Morgenthau many, many times saying we've spent, we've spent, we've spent, and we can't do anything about the unemployment rate. And I think we need to keep repeating that quote. And I know you have it, and it's a little more eloquent than what I have summarized here.

But I wanted to go back for a moment when you started out talking about our colleagues who were here earlier on the floor talking small businesses and about small government. You know, we hear that talk from our colleagues across the aisle all the time; and it reminds me of the North Carolina motto, which I've occasionally used on the floor when I have heard those kinds of speeches being made. The North Carolina motto is ``To be, rather than to seem.''

Unfortunately, our colleagues talk a good line, but when it comes down to doing what needs to be done, they want to seem rather than to be. So they try to tell their folks at home--they act like they're conservatives. They act like they're going to be good people with the purse, that they're protecting people. Then they come up here and they vote to spend money. Day after day after day we see all of these bills coming up authorizing expenditures, spending money. And as you said, we have the largest deficit right now that we have had, than we had with our first 43 Presidents. And it is really dragging down our economy.

You know, my daughter runs our nursery and landscaping business, a business my husband and I started a long time ago; and I can remember going to my husband at times and saying, You know, I'd like to do this in the garden shop and spiff it up a little bit. And he would say to me, Well, how much is that going to help our bottom line? Is it going to bring in more money? And I would sometimes say, No, it will just make things look better. He would say, If it isn't going to bring in more money, then we shouldn't be doing it.

That is the decision small business people have to make every day of their lives. Some of them lay awake at night worrying how am I going to pay my bills, how am I going to make my payroll. They personally sacrifice to take care of their employees. I know. We've been there. And yet we have people up here who've never worked a day in their life, a real job. They have been in Congress for 50, 40, 30 years, and they have no concept of how hard it is to run a business and how dedicated small business people are.

Mr. AKIN. They seem to understand one thing, which is what Ronald Reagan always said: taxing and spending.

Let's take a look at what we've got here. We're talking about just this year. Here's $350 billion for the Wall Street bailout. Here's another $787 billion. That's the one that's supposed to make sure we don't have unemployment, right?

Ms. FOXX. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. AKIN. I yield.

Ms. FOXX. If I remember right, the promise was if that passes, unemployment will not go above 8 percent; is that correct?

Mr. AKIN. Yeah.

Ms. FOXX. What is our unemployment right now?

Mr. AKIN. Last time I checked it was 10.2, and you know those were conservative numbers because it doesn't include somebody being unemployed more than a year. They take their name off the list. It doesn't mean they got the job.

Ms. FOXX. I have heard from many economists that the actual unemployment rate is probably 17 to 20 percent because of the folks you mentioned, those who've given up looking for jobs, those who have gone to work part time. So it was not supposed to go above 8 percent.

This really has damaged the credibility, I think, of both this Congress and this administration because all these promises have been made and none of them have been kept.

Mr. AKIN. The implication is that the unemployment that we're having trouble with was really Bush's fault. Everything that doesn't work right, well, it was Bush's fault. Bush, when he came in--I was here; I came in the same year he did--and we had a problem with a sagging economy. We were going into a recession, and he dealt with it the same way that JFK had done it and Ronald Reagan had done it, and that is he got off the back of the small businessman because he knew he had to let that guy have some breathing room to get those jobs going. We're doing the exact opposite, which is what Henry Morgenthau did, and we're going to turn a recession into a depression if we're not careful.

And when this thing passed, this stimulus bill, we stood here on the floor--and I think you were with me, young lady--and we said it's not going to work. I don't mean to be an ``I told you so.'' You don't have to be an ``I told you so.'' All of history is screaming that this is not the way to solve this problem.

And now we hear, well, because we have unemployment, it must be the Republicans' fault somehow when we're 40 seats in the minority.

Ms. FOXX. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. AKIN. Yeah.

Ms. FOXX. My recollection is every single Republican voted against the stimulus package in the House.

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