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[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 124 (Friday, September 14, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H6047-H6051]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                        112TH CONGRESS IN REVIEW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, next week, following Senate action on a 6-
month continuing resolution to keep the Federal government funded until 
March 27 of 2013, Congress is likely to adjourn until after the fall 
elections.
  Really? Seriously. In other words, over the next 53 days before the 
election, this House will be in session about 1\3/4\ days. It's a sad 
state of affairs, and the best that this House can do is to punt all 
spending decisions on this year's budget to the next Congress.
  But that's what we just did this week. Before we adjourn, there will 
be no resolution on the budget, there will be no resolution on the 
sequester, $1.2 trillion, that is causing disruption throughout the 
country and particularly among the entire Federal Government, 
especially the defense industry, which will have to absorb half of that 
sequester. It could affect directly about a million jobs, about 2 
million jobs indirectly, but we're not going to do anything about it.

[[Page H6048]]

  There will be no resolution on tens of billions of dollars of 
expiring measures before the election. We'll do nothing on the farm 
bill. We'll do nothing on postal reform. We'll do nothing on dozens of 
other important issues on which the public is counting on us to do 
something. The most basic and fundamental responsibilities our 
constituents sent us to Washington to address are being left 
unresolved.
  I proudly served in this institution for more than 20 years. Never 
have I seen this House so unproductive and so dysfunctional. I served 
during the so-called Gingrich revolution. I served during Mr. Clinton's 
administration and during Mr. Bush's administration, but this House has 
never been less functional.
  Our Nation is suffering from high unemployment and the residual 
effects of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Of 
course, our current situation is the result of two deep tax cuts in 
2001 and 2003, which primarily benefited those who needed tax cuts the 
least; two wars, neither of which were ever paid for; and an expansion 
of Medicare which was not paid for. That's what's put us in this deep 
hole, plus the fact that we deregulated the financial industry.
  The American people, the working class Americans, their median income 
didn't go up. In fact, it edged downward so they had less disposable 
money. They borrowed from the one asset they had, which had been 
appreciating real estate, their home, and they borrowed on their credit 
cards.
  Now, after the economy imploded, their home values declined. In fact, 
almost 70 percent of African American families lost almost 70 percent 
of their household wealth, Hispanic Americans over 60 percent, white 
Americans lost more than 16 percent of their household wealth. They 
obviously don't have the money to be spending again.
  They have learned their lesson: they are not going to keep borrowing. 
Their home values are down, so they can't borrow as much off their real 
estate. Then you don't get those cold calls from people suggesting that 
you can borrow more money off your home and consolidate your credit 
cards. They're not coming. People aren't borrowing, and it's 
understandable. That's why our economy is in such a deep recession, why 
it's so difficult to pull out of it.
  Now, Mr. Hoyer pointed out that we tried something different in the 
1990s from what we tried in the first decade of the 21st century. When 
President Clinton balanced the Federal budget, those who were in the 
House majority now all voted against it. In fact, every Republican 
voted against it. It was a pure party-line vote. The deciding vote was 
cast by a freshman Member from Pennsylvania who lost her seat as a 
result, but it passed.
  We have some empirical evidence as to what happened. I remember 
during the debate it was suggested that if this passed that, in fact, 
we would see deep unemployment, we would go into a recession, millions 
of people would be out of their jobs, and it was the wrong thing to do. 
I remember the words of Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Armey and others.
  Well, we have empirical evidence, as I say. We know exactly what did 
happen. We did raise taxes on the people at the top, raised up to 39.6 
percent. Those folks in the top tax bracket actually brought home more 
after-tax income than at any time in American history.
  Everyone was better off. About 22 million new jobs were created. That 
number seems as though it's in a different world today, when we 
struggled so hard to create jobs but, just think of all the job 
creation we experienced, one of the lowest levels of poverty. The 
rising tide lifted all boats. It worked.
  But beyond a strong economy and to some extent because of that strong 
economy, we were able to get control over the Federal deficit and in 
fact, for the last 3 years of the Clinton administration we had a 
surplus.
  Mr. Gore was derisively scorned for talking about the lockbox, but 
the lockbox was all about putting some of that surplus aside to pay for 
the retirement and health costs of the baby boom generation.

                              {time}  1330

  I'm a member of that baby boom generation. We haven't all retired. 
But there's more than 70 million of us. Many of us feel we should pay 
for our own expenses. That would have enabled us to do so, but that 
wasn't what happened.
  Mr. Gore lost the election. Or at least I should say rather than Mr. 
Bush being elected, the Supreme Court selected him. But it's done. We 
took a very different course of action. The $5.6 trillion surplus that 
was projected at the end of the Clinton administration was almost 
immediately lost with two very deep tax cuts that, as I say, did not 
benefit the middle class. They benefited people who needed them the 
least. Then we declared two wars. You certainly can't pay for two wars 
with two deep tax cuts.
  We expanded Medicare. It cost a lot more than it should have, I 
think, because we put a provision in that forbid the Federal Government 
from negotiating with the drug providers in order to get the lowest 
rate for Medicare beneficiaries, using the leverage of the Federal 
Government. We couldn't do that. We had to pay retail prices. And so 
the Veterans Administration, which can negotiate, can use the leverage 
of such a large pool of buyers. They pay a fraction of the price that 
we pay under the part D program of Medicare.
  But all that was done. It made people happy, temporarily. The term 
``sugar high'' was used. Well, this was kind of a ``fiscal sugar 
high.'' And now we're paying the price. Now we're paying the price for 
the fiscal policy that didn't work. As I say, we have empirical 
evidence that it did not work. The question is: Where do we go from 
here?
  Now we hear from the other side what sounds a lot like the campaign 
of about 12 years ago: more tax cuts is the answer. We're hearing a lot 
of bellicose rhetoric about getting reengaged militarily in the Middle 
East. After finally concluding the Iraq war, we're talking about 
military involvement with Iran. We're talking about deregulation, of 
repealing Dodd-Frank regulations on the financial industry; repealing 
the Affordable Care Act, even though this country spends twice as much 
per person on health care. And yet we don't live as long and we're not 
as healthy as other countries that spend half what we spend. The reason 
is that we pay for the quantity of services provided, almost regardless 
of the quality of the care that we're paying for.
  The Affordable Care Act is all about reversing that. It's about using 
best practices; about reimbursing hospitals and doctors and other 
health care providers based upon how effective their treatments, their 
analyses, their procedures are in making the patient well. We reward 
best practices, and in fact we're going to reduce reimbursement for 
hospitals that keep seeing the same patient over and over again for the 
same illness. People get infections actually in the hospital. And for 
any number of other reasons that drive up the cost of health care in 
this country, other countries have resolved more efficiently, 
effectively, and in the better interest of the patient.
  So we're going to try to turn that around while we include everyone 
and while we make everyone pay in the same way that we do with Social 
Security and Medicare. You pay in advance when you're young and healthy 
so that you'll have insurance when you're older and sicker. That's the 
whole idea. That's what the individual mandate is all about. It simply 
makes sense. It made sense in Massachusetts when Mr. Romney was 
Governor there. It's working there. People are happy with it. We ought 
to apply it here and certainly not repeal it. But that's what we're 
hearing: repeal regulations, repeal the Affordable Care Act, more tax 
cuts, and more bellicose rhetoric. I think that's what got us in much 
of this situation in the first place.
  On the other side, the President understands that while we're 
certainly not losing 800,000 jobs a month, as we were at the end of the 
Bush administration, the glass is at least half full. We ought not 
drain it so that it's empty again, but we ought to build on our 
successes. Now if we're going to build on those successes, regardless 
of who's elected President, the legislative branch needs to do its job. 
That's why it's so troubling that with all the things that need to be 
done, now, today, over the next 53 days, Members of Congress are going 
to be nowhere in sight, at least certainly not up on Capitol Hill doing 
the public's business. We'll be out in our districts politicking, 
seeking votes. It's going to be a tough record to run on.

[[Page H6049]]

  Now, we can go back in history and compare what we're doing now with 
the past. I do think it's informative to suggest that this is not just 
unfounded political rhetoric suggesting this is a dysfunctional, do-
nothing Congress. We have empirical evidence. We have facts. We have 
statistics. In fact, in Roll Call--I want to give them credit for 
this--page B-9 yesterday, September 13, the headline is: ``Congress 
on Pace to Be Least Productive.'' They have a chart. We have the very 
good people who support our work, who I hope will get a break over the 
next 53 days. At least that's something positive.

  But they have blown up this chart. I'll read it, because the title 
is: ``A Dubious Historical Distinction.'' From high-water marks in the 
1950s. Remember the 1950s? That was when we passed the GI Bill that put 
our returning veterans to work, got them higher education, enabled them 
to buy a home. It really created the middle class, thanks to Franklin 
Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower. And then Dwight 
Eisenhower followed up by building the interstate highway system, 
laying down physical infrastructure in this country, employing hundreds 
of thousands of people in the process.
  Imagine what we would be without an interstate highway system, the 
numbers of towns and communities that would have been marginalized in 
our economy without an opportunity to be on a road that led from one 
place to another and that you could stop and you could buy something 
and you could stay overnight and you could decide, well, this is a nice 
town; maybe I want to put roots down here.
  But you only do that if it's accessible. The interstate highway 
system made the whole country accessible. But from the 1950s, Congress 
has passed fewer bills, enacted fewer laws over time. But even compared 
with recent years, this Congress, the 112th Congress, has shown a 
remarkable lack of lawmaking activity.
  Now, this is not some kind of partisan rag. This is Roll Call, which 
is clearly bipartisan, nonpartisan. The 112th Congress, this Congress, 
during its first year passed the fewest bills, really, in our 
lifetimes, the middle of the last century. This is public laws enacted. 
We had a high point up here way back in the 84th Congress. And now look 
at it; it looks like a ski slope.

                              {time}  1340

  We've gone from 1,028 laws to 151.
  In terms of bills passed, in the House, here you go, in the 84th 
Congress, 4,628 bills. Now, maybe not all of those were of consequence, 
but at least it shows they were doing something.
  Here you go. All the way down to this. Now look at this. You get down 
here to the 100th and then, boom, you drop off a cliff. Less than 600 
bills; 4,628 bills back in the 84th Congress to 598, less than 600 
bills here today in this Congress. Yet for the next 53 days, we'll be 
in session for about 1\3/4\ days.
  I don't think that I'm talking about something that ought not be of 
concern to everyone. And I'm not exaggerating. This is unbelievable.
  You know, through the course of the history of this Congress, of this 
institution, really, that's what I mean to say because this Congress is 
not typical. The approaches have oftentimes been different between the 
two political parties. But Republicans and Democrats in past Congresses 
have worked across the aisle. We have found common ground. We have 
enacted legislation when it was needed to stimulate the economy. We 
have helped the unemployed. We have helped families struggling. We have 
reached out to the poor, not with handouts but with a helping hand to 
create greater opportunity. The outcome is never going to be the same. 
But people ought to have some sense of equal opportunity, of getting a 
fair break in this economy.
  We've maintained this Nation's infrastructure. Today, there's more 
than $2 trillion of unmaintained infrastructure needs in this country. 
Roads and bridges and transit and rail and ports and airports. Seaports 
and airports are going neglected--$2 trillion. Millions of jobs.
  There are jobs in this country. There are skilled jobs. There are 
jobs that should get paid a good wage. And there are jobs that will pay 
an investment, a dividend, for years to come. They're investments, not 
expenditures. They're investments. We'll see the benefit of them for 
generations to come, and yet we can't even get the American Jobs Act 
enacted, which is primarily to invest in the physical infrastructure of 
this country, as well as the human infrastructure, putting money into 
education and research and innovation and to the things that are going 
to give us a stronger economy, a more stable society, a more inclusive 
society, a fairer society. That's what the American Jobs Act does.
  But we can't get it through this body.
  You know, when Ronald Reagan faced down a recession in the early 
1980s, he proudly signed a transportation authorization bill that 
raised the tax on gasoline in order to maintain our Nation's highways 
and transit systems, and he called it a jobs bill, and Democrats 
supported it, and it was enacted. It helped get us out of that 
recession. It strengthened our economy, and it's still paying dividends 
for generations to come.
  Same thing with President Eisenhower with the interstate highway 
system.
  When President Obama urged Congress more than a year ago to consider 
the American Jobs Act, because it was a plan to get Americans back to 
work by investing in our Nation's infrastructure, nonpartisan, 
apolitical economists estimated that it would create 2.6 million jobs 
and protect an additional 1.6 million existing jobs.
  So 4 million jobs were at stake. Yet he was given a cold shoulder, 
primarily driven by a fairly substantial bloc of what some people refer 
to as Tea Party Republicans, whatever the proper designation is, an 
anti-government attitude.
  I think that the government has a role, particularly in a recession, 
to get us back on our feet so that the private economy can take over.
  It's not relying on the Federal Government, but is looking to the 
Federal Government to be there when we need it to give some, yes, and 
I'll say the world ``stimulus'' to the private sector. That's what the 
American Jobs Act was all about.
  Today, the House leadership and too many of its rank-and-file members 
think economic stimulus is a dirty word. In fact, you'd think that the 
Federal Government is some kind of alien enterprise. The Federal 
Government is us. We should be proud of the Federal Government. People 
who work for the Federal Government are the least corruptible large 
civil service in the entire world. The fact is that they consistently 
have been the most effective in dealing with our problems and making 
us, enabling us, to have a more inclusive society and a more prosperous 
economy.
  We just had a debate today over the issue that has become the 
rallying cry for anti-government politicians, Solyndra. Solyndra 
failed. It's half a billion dollars. The private sector put a billion 
dollars in. That loan represented some of the less than 2 percent of 
failures of that guaranteed loan program. The estimate when it was 
established was it would be about a 10 percent failure rate. It's been 
about 2 percent.

  The private sector saw fit to put a billion dollars of its own money 
in. The Obama administration deferred to the private sector and said, 
yeah, if you put your money in, we will not take back what money is 
left. If in fact they do fail, you get it first. We'll subordinate the 
government loan. That turned out to be a mistake. It's a preference 
towards the private sector. I don't think you should argue with the 
good intent, the reliance upon the private sector; but the public 
sector, the taxpayers suffered a loss.
  Yet substantial advances have been made in solar power and wind 
energy. The reason why Solyndra went under is that the Chinese 
Government figured this out, figured out that we can't be so reliant 
upon fossil fuels, that the future is not with fossil fuels, it's with 
sustainable forms of clean energy from the sun and from the wind.
  So they've already gotten to the point where they can manufacture 
solar devices that capture the sun and heat and energy from the sun.
  In fact, if you go over there, you see that their robots are even 
more sophisticated than ours. They're likely to put us out of business 
in that area, too. Their robots go smoothly like that. Ours go like 
some kind of jerk dance, you know. I can't do it. I can't even

[[Page H6050]]

dance the whatever they call it. But the fact is it's herky-jerky 
motion, many of our robots. Theirs are smooth, very precise because 
they knew to invest in that kind of technology, and they're investing 
in solar panels. So they dumped those solar panels on our economy, and 
that's why Solyndra went under.
  We can't lose out to communist countries, to state-owned enterprises. 
We have to be at the cutting edge.

                              {time}  1350

  We've got the best schools. We've got the most creative people. Yet 
China, they've decided that over the next decade 70 percent of their 
preschool children from 1 to 5 are going to have at least 3 years of 
preschool education because they understand that in the earliest years 
of a child's life, that's when the brain is most absorbent. They're 
going to invest in early childhood. And yet what does our budget, the 
budget that was passed through the House--obviously the Democratic side 
voted against it--what does it do? It eliminates 200,000 Head Start 
slots, cuts money for early childhood education, eliminates the child 
care tax credit.
  Think about this. Not only is the child care tax credit--and I don't 
want to digress too much, but 10 million single mothers with small 
children would go deeper into poverty, but 2 million--that's what I 
want to focus on--2 million mothers with small children would have to 
leave the workforce where they're getting paid roughly minimum wage, 
just enough to support their rent and food on the table, they would be 
faced with the choice of either giving up their job, going on welfare 
again, or locking their small children in an apartment because they 
can't afford child care.
  Is that really who we are as a country? Is that where our priorities 
are? Is that how we're going to compete in the future with countries 
like China and countries in Asia and Brazil and India? No, it's not. I 
trust the American people understand that. But that's all related to 
this Solyndra mess, the way that it's mischaracterized, the reason 
people don't understand what it's really about.
  So, again, the House voted No More Solyndras. They rejected the 
amendment that was made by Mr. Markey that says if we're going to 
continue to give $4 billion of tax subsidies to fossil fuel companies 
that extract oil and gas from publicly owned land--land owned by the 
taxpayers--if we're going to continue to give these tax subsidies to 
the industries who are the wealthiest corporations in the world, many 
of whom pay no taxes because of these subsidies, if we're going to 
continue to do that while at the same time as this bill that was passed 
today would take away subsidies for wind and solar power, we should at 
least reconsider the tax subsidies we give to the industries that need 
it the least. At least let's be fair about it. Let's save those 
billions of dollars every year of subsidies going to the wealthiest 
corporations for extracting natural resources owned by the American 
people and then boosting the price of oil at the gas pump.
  We continue to pay more than we should at the pump. But they're a 
corporation. They're going to maximize their wealth. They're going to 
pay the minimum taxes they can get away with. Yet this body wants to 
eliminate efforts to come up with clean, sustainable sources of energy 
comparable to what our competitors in the global economy are doing.
  I know all that's a digression, but, you know, it's all related.
  The fact is that the one thing that this Congress has proven it can 
do is nothing. For those most dependent upon the Federal Government's 
willingness to reach out a helping hand to help them climb ladders of 
economic opportunity, the attitude of the majority in this Congress has 
been: You're on your own, survival of the fittest, winner take all. 
That's been the tax policy. That's been the spending policy. As far as 
I'm concerned, that's not what made this country great; it's what has 
gotten this country into the economic circumstances that we face today.
  Now, there's a drought brought on by a changing climate--climate 
change. People in the House majority want to deny even the existence of 
climate change even when it's standing right in front of us, facing us 
with all these extreme violent storms, with the fact that this has been 
the warmest year on record. Yet they want to deny climate change 
because it's brought about by human action, human decisions, decisions 
made by groups such as the American Congress to protect the fossil fuel 
industry, which is the primary contributor to global warming. As a 
result, all of this warmer weather, these droughts, these violent 
storms are bringing devastating economic injury to thousands of 
America's farmers.
  And what has been the reaction of the House leadership? The 
Republican majority has chosen to block a farm bill from even being 
considered on the House floor even though it passed the Senate with an 
overwhelming vote, bipartisan vote, and yet we can't bring it up on the 
House floor. Instead, the House leadership has wasted time on the House 
floor with legislation designed to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, 
eliminate the prospect of more secure and affordable health care for 
millions of Americans.
  Three dozen times we've had votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, 
knowing that the Senate understands how important it is to the American 
people and how important it is in the long run to get a grip on this 
economy, understanding that our corporations can't continue to pay the 
kind of money they're having to pay for health care that is less 
effective than the health care provided by every other industrialized 
country. The Senate understands it. The House doesn't get it, and so we 
keep having these votes that are pure political posturing.

  Of course the House Republican leadership as well has wasted floor 
time voting to dismantle just about every landmark environmental law, 
blaming laws passed in the 1970s and the 1990s as the cause for today's 
high unemployment rate, laws that were passed, many of them, in the 
Nixon administration and the George H.W. Bush administration. The Nixon 
administration created the Environmental Policy Act, and it saved 
hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of lives, children that have 
not been afflicted with asthma, people who have not gotten the kind of 
illnesses that they were vulnerable to because we have had cleaner air 
and water. But now we can't even update it with the latest technology 
and the latest information. EPA has been the prime target of these 
budget cuts.
  So we now have--I think it's been about 38 individual votes that have 
been taken to destroy environmental laws and regulations. Those votes, 
most of them, have died in the Senate, fortunately, but is that really 
what this institution should be all about?
  When our children look back on the opportunities that this House of 
Representatives had to secure a better future for them, be it a pathway 
toward a balanced budget so they don't have to pay off the debt of 
their parents and grandparents or better, more affordable opportunities 
for their educational advancement, elementary and secondary education 
assistance so we don't have to lay off hundreds of thousands of 
teachers--we've laid off almost a quarter of a million teachers now 
throughout the country as a result of the recession and as a result of 
local and State legislators not being willing to invest in education--
or the Pell Grants, which enable lower income families who have 
students who have worked hard to be able to afford college, those 
opportunities are being lost, as well as the opportunity to have a 
cleaner alternative energy future which would have generated more than 
40,000 jobs. Instead, in the effort to eliminate financial help for 
wind and solar power, we've already cut about 2,000 jobs, and I guess 
it's closer to 3,000 jobs now.

                              {time}  1400

  With the elimination of guaranteed loans, we're looking at nearly 
40,000 jobs in an industry that represents the future for our children 
and grandchildren that other global competitors are investing in.
  They will look at this Congress and rightly blame us for not seizing 
on those opportunities. Disappointment would be an inadequate word to 
describe the public's proper assessment of this Congress.
  But, Madam Speaker, it's not over yet. We'll have a lame duck 
session.

[[Page H6051]]

We'll have an election in November. This country will choose which path 
it wants to go forward. Does it want to revisit the policy, the first 8 
years of the 21st century?
  Does it want to look at what happened in the last decade of the 20th 
century, compare the results, and then assess in which direction we 
need to be going?
  The empirical evidence is there. The opportunity will be present on 
November 6 to choose which path this country will take.
  It's clear, Madam speaker, that the path this Congress has been on, 
this 112th Congress, is not the path that leads to a better, more 
prosperous future for our children and grandchildren.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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