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Total results: 66

Cut Government Spending and Taxes

Posted by Dan Burton on March 10, 2009

Madam Speaker, the Washington Post the other day commented about the President's support of the $410 billion omnibus spending bill that's crawling through the Senate, and they said that it borders on the irresponsible for the administration to try to blame this on last year's administration because they are the ones that are going to sign the bill into law and spend the money.

In another newspaper here in Washington D.C., the Washington Examiner, they wrote "In quick succession, (President) Obama rolled out a $2 trillion financial services bailout, $2 trillion, a $788 billion stimulus package, the $13.4 billion preliminary bailout for automakers, a $410 billion spending plan to cover the rest of the current fiscal year, a proposed $275 billion foreclosure rescue plan, and a $3.5 trillion budget that includes a $634 billion fund for health care."

People in America, their eyes glaze over when they hear this. Trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that we don't have are going to be spent for all of these programs.

And so people say, well, how are you going to solve the economic problems facing this country if you don't spend that money? If we spend the money, we are not going to solve the problems. The economic conditions will continue to go in the wrong direction, but we will be loading on the backs of our kids and grandkids and future generations, higher inflation and higher taxes and a quality of life that won't be anything like what we have today.

The key to solving these problems is to cut government spending, and to cut taxes for every American so they have more disposable income, and to cut taxes on capital gains so people will take stocks, bonds and property they have and sell it and reinvest it someplace else, thus creating money for investment in business and industry so they can create jobs and cut business taxes across the board.

If we did those three things, we would have an immediate movement toward improvement in our economy, and we wouldn't be doing it by loading trillions and trillions of dollars on the backs of our kids and grandkids.

This chart here shows what's happened in the last several years as far as the growth in the money supply. It was pretty consistent up until the year 2000, and now it's going straight up. That means to every single American that the cost of living is going to go up because there's more money in circulation, fewer goods and services, and the cost of everything is going to rise because of the inflation that's created by printing all this money.

John F. Kennedy said that the way to solve these problems--back in the early sixties, a Democrat--that it was to cut taxes. Here's exactly what he said. "Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restricted tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget, just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today, and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest ways to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut taxes now."

The best way to raise revenues for the Treasury is to cut taxes. The best way to stimulate economic growth is to cut taxes. Yet, this administration is going to be raising taxes in one way or another on every single family in this country, either through the tax that is going to be on energy or the taxes they are going to levy on the upper income people. But there's going to be taxes levied on every single American, and that is the wrong way to stimulate economic growth.

What they are doing is they are throwing money at this problem, saying that that will solve the problem. It has never worked in the past. It will not work now.

Back in the 1970s, under Jimmy Carter, this was tried. And we ended up with double-digit inflation--14 percent inflation, 12 percent unemployment--and they ended up raising interest rates to 21.5 percent to stop the runaway inflation that was killing the economy of the United States, and they put us into another real bad recession. It wasn't until Reagan came in in 1980 and cut taxes across the board that we ended up with the longest period of economic recovery in the United States history.

History shows that cutting taxes in times of economic stress is the way to work our way out of this situation. And throwing money, trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, and move us toward a socialistic economy, is not the solution.

I hope my colleagues will look into history. Look at what John F. Kennedy, what Ronald Reagan, and others said about this, because it's extremely important that we profit from history.

Charitable Deductions and Government Spending

Posted by Dan Burton on March 9, 2009

Madam Speaker, we have an organization in this country called the Independent Sector. It's a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of charities, foundations, and corporate philanthropic programs collectively representing tens of thousands of charitable groups in every State across the Nation. The mission of this organization is to advance the common good by leading, strengthening, and mobilizing the nonprofit community.

The reason that I bring this up tonight is that the way that the administration, through the budget, wants to help fund health care reform is they want to reduce the amount that people can deduct when they make charitable contributions. And this organization that represents the Volunteers of America, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, all these organizations, says that if the legislation passes in the budget in its present form, they will lose $4 billion a year in charitable contributions because people won't be able to deduct the same amount that they've been deducting before when they make a contribution to these charities. And I think that's tragic because people who need help from the Salvation Army or the Red Cross or these other philanthropic organizations really need help, and if they can't get it from those organizations, the place they are going to go to try to get it is where?

The Secretary of the Treasury, Geithner, appeared before the Senate this past week, and he was asked about this, and he said, well, he thinks there might be other ways that they could fund the health care changes in this country without dipping into the charitable contribution deductions. Well, the head of OMB indicated, I think, yesterday on Face the Nation that Mr. Geithner probably wasn't right, that once the American people see how this money is going to be used, they'll understand it.

I don't believe that, Madam Speaker. I believe the American people, when they give money to a charity, want to make sure that that money is going to that charity and that they get their charitable deduction for that. If they don't get that charitable deduction, they're going to start cutting back on the money they give to charities, and the minute they start doing that, Madam Speaker, then you're going to see these charities start wanting for money because they won't be getting the money they have been getting in the past.

These organizations have said collectively they are going to lose $4 billion a year if the budget proposed by the administration and proposed by the House leadership and the Senate leadership, if that goes through. And it may go through tomorrow. Then these charities are not going to get that money, $4 billion in losses, and it's going to be borne by other institutions. And I submit to you it will be the local governments, the State governments, and probably the Federal Government. I think that's just dead wrong.

I want to end up tonight by saying one more thing, Madam Speaker, to my colleagues back in their offices. We have been increasing the money supply, printing more money very rapidly, and we are indebting the people of this country to the tune of trillions of dollars. The Secretary of the Treasury is going to have another $3 trillion that he's going to have to print to give to financial institutions to keep them above water. The budget that we're talking about, the bailout bill that we're talking about, the stimulus package, all of those add up to trillions of dollars more in spending.

If you look at this chart, you will see that the money supply in this country has been pretty level up through the year 2000, and then it starts going up like a rocket, and now it's going straight up. And what that means to the American people, and I hope the American people, if they happen to be paying attention, and I can't talk to them, I know, but if they happen to be paying attention, I hope they realize that the increase in the money supply is going to come directly to them eventually. It's going to affect them in higher taxes and higher costs of goods and services when they go to buy them. If you have more money in circulation, and we're looking at trillions of dollars more that's going to be printed, that money is going to be chasing

So I would just like to say to my colleagues, we really need to do something about spending. We have got to say to the administration and our colleagues in the House and the Senate it's time to cut spending. We don't need to spend more. We don't need to spend these trillions of dollars. We ought to be cutting taxes instead of doing that to stimulate economic growth, and we need to make sure that the American people and the future generations of this country are not saddled with more debt and hyperinflation.

There are so many things going on right now, Madam Speaker, that troubles me, it's not even funny. And it all comes down to spending more money and imposing more burden on the American taxpayers and the future of this country.

Government Spending and Hyperinflation

Posted by Dan Burton on March 6, 2009

Madam Speaker, some people say, why are you guys down here every night taking Special Orders, talking about what's going on?

I'll tell you why. I know we can't talk to the American people, but we need to make sure our colleagues, and if anybody is paying attention out there in the hinterlands, know what is going on in this place because it affects every person's life in America, every man, woman, and child.

I have got a chart here, and this chart shows the money supply. It's hard for people to see back in their offices, but this is the money supply, and it's been pretty consistent all the way up through maybe 1995, and since then it started to rise. That's the amount of money we print and is in circulation. Just after the 2007 time period, it shot straight up. It's going up like a rocket.

Now, what does that mean? It means right now we have created currency in this country that's almost 300 percent of what it was just a year or two ago. So people say what difference does that make? If you print that much money, it won't hurt anything.

But it does. Because the amount of goods and services, the cars, the refrigerators, and everything else that we produce in this country, that's remaining flat right now because of the economy and the auto industry is going down. So we have got 300 percent, three times the amount of currency in circulation, but we don't have the goods and services going up at the same rate. So what happens? That means the cost of everything is going up, and that's called inflation.

Back in the 1970s we had inflation. It was double digit. It got up to 14 percent, and that led to 12 percent unemployment, which is worse than what we have today. And we ended up raising interest rates 20 to 21 percent because the spending had been out of control and we had to do something to slow down the inflation.

So here we have. We have the money being printed so fast that they can't keep up with it. In fact, I don't know how they buy enough ink and paper down there at the Treasury Department to do this. But every man, woman, and child ought to be concerned about this because the cost of government is going up so rapidly and the printing of money is going up so rapidly that they are going to have hyperinflation in this country.

My colleague Mr. Wolf from Virginia, I think he was here a couple weeks ago and he had a piece of currency from Zimbabwe and it was a multi-million piece of currency. They put so many zeroes on it, they had to reprint the currency just to take zeroes off. They just couldn't keep up with it.

Hyperinflation is what they had in Germany post-World War I. That is where people had to take bushels of money to the store to buy a loaf of bread, and every day the cost of everything went up this fast so that the people couldn't keep up with it.

So what we are facing today is a government where spending is out of control. We spent $700 billion on the TARP program; $14 billion on the auto bailout; $787 billion on the stimulus, over $1 trillion if you add interest; $410 billion on the bill that is over in the Senate. We have a budget coming up with $3.9 trillion and a $635 billion down payment on health insurance, a national health insurance program, socialized medicine.

Where is that money coming from? Well, we are borrowing it from China, we are borrowing it from Japan, we are borrowing it from other places in the world. We are borrowing it from the Social Security trust fund. But even though we are borrowing all that money, you can't keep up with the spending. And so what are they doing? They are printing more currency on a daily basis.

So you see this rocket ship taking off in the currency area, and it is not going to slow down, and what it is going to do is just lead to very high inflation, the cost of living going up. And it is going to affect every family in this country. It is going to affect the cost of education, the cost of gasoline, the cost of electricity, everything else.

So I hope my colleagues are aware of this. I hope they are aware that there are going to be a lot of tax increases as well. They are talking about putting a carbon dioxide tax in place that is $646 billion in new taxes. What that means is every time you switch on a light or buy a gallon of gas or do anything that is energy related, you are going to be paying a higher price for it because we are loading on the back of the taxpayers $646 billion in new taxes.

We are spending more money than you can imagine. We are adding to the national debt $12.3 trillion. People can't understand what that is. A trillion is a million million, so $12 trillion is 12 million million dollars. We are adding $12.3 trillion to the national debt, and that is more than we have added to the national debt from 1789 when we became a free country and had our Constitution to today. We are blowing money like it is going out of style.

When I tell people these things, their eyes just glaze over because it is too hard to comprehend. But what they do comprehend is higher taxes, more government spending, more pork-barrel projects and the kind of inflation that is going to lead this country down the road to socialism.

What we need to do, Madam Speaker, as I end up, what we need to do is we need to cut spending, cut out the pork and cut taxes and let the free enterprise system work.

Spending Is Out of Control

Posted by Dan Burton on March 5, 2009

Madam Speaker, things are happening so fast in this body and the other body and down on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House, I don't see how Members of Congress--let alone the American people--can keep up with it.

Let us just take a quick look at what happened in the last 7, 8, 9 weeks. We got the second tranche of the TARP bill. That TARP spending was $700 billion. People can't get their arms around what $700 billion is, but $700 billion to save our economy.

And then the automobile industry had problems. And so we had an auto bailout, first tranche, of $14 billion. And then we had to have an economic stimulus package because the economy wasn't responding as we wanted it to. So we passed an economic stimulus that was $787 billion more; and with interest, that was well over a trillion dollars.

And we have an omnibus spending bill that's pending in the Senate right now tonight for $410 billion. And the President has a budget he's proposing to the Congress for $3.9 trillion, and $635 billion of that is the first down payment on a national health care of a socialized medicine approach for helping us with our health care problems in this country.

Now, yesterday, Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby were talking to the Fed and said, "We want to know where this money's been going." And the Fed said, "We're not going to tell you."

Now, can you imagine the Senate Banking Committee or the House Banking Committee being stonewalled by the Fed saying, "We're not going to tell you where we're spending these trillions of dollars"? And Geithner over at Treasury said he may have to put another $2 or $3 trillion into the financial institutions to keep the economy moving.

Now, you go past that and you say, What about taxes on the American people: $1.6 trillion increase in the budget, and the 2001-2003 tax cuts that we've put in place are going to expire. When those tax cuts expire, that, in essence, is a tax increase. And this is no time for a tax increase.

And the death tax, which we were trying to do away with so we could pass businesses onto the next generation without a huge tax liability that would run them out of business, they're going to do away with the death tax cut.

Now, in addition to that, we have what's called a carbon tax or an energy tax. That's going to be $646 billion in new taxes that's going to be passed on to the consumer every time they turn on their lights or buy a gallon of gas or use a lump of coal.

Now, they're going to reduce the mortgage deduction. If you've got a house and you've been deducting the mortgage interest on it, they're going to reduce. The administration and the Democrats in this body are going to reduce or try to reduce the amount of tax deductibility on your mortgage interest. And I'm sure that's going to be a reason to buy new houses when you do away with one of the incentives for people by doing away with part of their mortgage deduction interest on interest.

And then for charitable institutions--and this is happening so fast, you can't keep up with it. Charitable institutions--your church, the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts of America, all of those whom you support and give money to--they want to reduce the tax deductibility for those contributions. Every charitable institution in this country ought to be marching on this Capitol saying, "Hey. Enough. We need those tax deductions so we can encourage people to help us so the burden of helping people in this country doesn't fall completely on the Federal Government."

But sometimes I wonder if this White House and this administration and the Democrats don't want the government to take over everything in a socialistic approach to government.

Now, the 2010 budget would increase the national debt by $12.3 trillion over the next 10 years, $12.3 trillion more. And that is more of the debt that's been accumulated since the beginning of the Republic in 1789 until today. That's how fast we're spending this money.

And in 2007, when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle took control of the Congress, CBO said we would have an $800 billion surplus in 10 years; and after 2 years of their leadership, instead of an $800 billion surplus in the next 10 years, we're going to have a $7.8 trillion deficit. Now, they'll try to blame that all on the White House, but they were in charge of the spending because they had control of both Houses of Congress.

Now, there was an article written just yesterday saying the money supply in this country has been increased by three times almost, 271 percent. What does that mean? That means we have almost three times as much money in circulation. It's being hoarded by a lot of people because they're scared to death. But when that money gets into circulation, we're going to have very high inflation. You're going to see the cost of bread and milk and gas and everything go through the roof.

Well, Mr. Speaker, there is so much more to tell and so little time. I will be back, and I hope the American people are paying attention, Mr. Speaker.

Chair: Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Democrats' Cap-And-Trade Amounts to A Stealth Energy Tax on Every American

Posted by Dan Burton on March 4, 2009

Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States stood here in the well the other night, and one of the things he said that was met with a great deal of applause was that there wasn't going to be one dime, not one dime of new taxes on anybody making under $250,000 a year, any family making under $250,000 a year.

And yet what was omitted from his talk was the cost to every single person because of a tax increase that's kind of hidden. It's called the cap-and-trade tax increase. And it's going to cost about $65 billion a year. And it deals with carbon dioxide emissions.

Every time we use coal or gas or any substance to create energy in this country, it emits carbon dioxide. And so $65 billion in new taxes are going to be levied on business that will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices on their electricity, their gasoline, their oil, their food and almost anything they buy, because anything they buy is made from energy. And the energy in this country is going to be taxed up to $65 billion a year with this cap-and-trade tax that the President's got in his budget. The American people simply don't realize that.

Now, there was an interview that was on Fox the other night. And I want to read to you just a little bit about that. First of all, let me just say that Peter Orzag, the former CBO Director and current OMB Director down at the White House, verified that energy taxes designed to decrease carbon emissions like those in President Obama's budget will be passed on to American families, and this will be passed on in the form of higher prices to every family in the form of higher prices for energy, food, lodging and everything else.

Senator Obama, when he was in the Senate, admitted during the presidential campaign, said, "Under my plan of cap-and-trade, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."

And on Fox the other night, Jim Angle was reporting on the cap-and-trade issue, and he said, "Almost every activity in the U.S. economy emits carbon dioxide, but President Obama wants to impose a cap on total emissions throughout the economy and charge industry a new tax of at least $65 billion a year for their current activities."

Now, when the President said he's not going to tax anybody, any family making under $250,000 a year, that's erroneous, because when you take the tax they're going to have to pay indirectly for the cost of food, lodging, energy of any kind, it's going to result in thousands and thousands of dollars to every family.

When you turn on your lights in your house, when this budget is passed, you will be paying much more money for your electricity. When you buy gasoline at the pump, you're going to pay more for your gasoline. When you get fuel oil or coal or anything else that you use for energy, you're going to be paying because of this tax that's being passed in this budget by this President.

And it's going to be on everybody, not just the people making under $250,000. It's going to be on everybody. Every man, woman and child who lives in this country that uses energy will be taxed. And I think the American people need to know that. That's why I'm down here on the floor, because when they say they're not going to raise your taxes, and that everybody making under $250,000 is not going to pay one dime more in taxes, they're not telling you the whole story. You are going to pay more in taxes and you're going to pay through the nose.