Date: 2008-04-22
Speaker: DAVID DAVIS (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Tennessee

Thank you. Mr. WALBERG. Thank you for your friendship. thank you for leadership. Youre doing a great job. Thank you for your foresight and understanding that you cant tax and regulate yourself into prosperity. Never could. cant now. and never will. Its that simple. I do come from the Volunteer State of Tennessee. and thankfully our Tax Freedom Dayis not tomorrow. It was actually about 3 weeks ago. The reason it was 3 weeks ago in the Volunteer State is because we keep our taxes low. and people in Tennessee are actually spending their money on their families now and not sending it to the government. I am happy for that. Id like to see that move even back up in the year a little more. There are mothers and fathers all across east Tennessee. I have the opportunity to represent the beautiful mountains of northeast Tennessee and there are mothers and fathers sitting back home in east Tennessee and all across America. They sit around their kitchen table and they have to work out a budget. Its that simple. I can remember my wife and I when we first started our family. having to do that. knowing how much money came in and how much money went out. We had to make some decisions. You cant spend more than you bring in. If you do. you get in a credit crunch. Its amazing that we have a Congress that sometimes dont sit around that kitchen table. That is exactly what we need to be doing. Those families back in east Tennessee. they are having to choose between buying gasoline. and it costs over $50 to fill up their pickup truck. and buying their food. Theyre seeing the price of milk and bread go up. They are having to worry about paying their house payments or making sure they provide health care for their children. Those are the things that moms and dads across America are having to deal with and .we have got people right here in Washington that think if we can just tax them a little bit more and spend a little bit more. we can take care of them. Now where I grew up. I never came to the conclusion if government .could just take care of us. things will be okay. Actually. the way we believe back in the mountains in east Tennessee. if government will just get out of our way and keep taxes and regulations low. we have actually been able to take care of ourselves pretty well. We have done it well- in America for over 200 years. and why we think we need to change now. I just dont understand it. Especially when you look at gas prices. My goodness. we passed an energy bill. socalled energy bill back in December on this House floor. It had new taxes. new regulations. You know what it didnt have? New energy. Now how you can call a bill an energy bill with no energy. I dont get it. Sometimes we just need some common sense. The American people get it. They understand that common sense. And then you look at the budget. The two things that are facing Americans today are their family budget. their small business budget. and then that cost of energy.. Those are the two things that are on peoples minds across America. And you look at the Democrats budget resolution. it fails the test of fiscal responsibility miserably. Instead of exercising fiscal restraint in lowering our taxes. the Democrat budget raises taxes by $683 billion over the course of the next 5 years. You heard me correctly: $683 billion. Now I go home to my district every weekend. talk to a lot of people about a lot of issues. and I can tell you not once do I hear somebody say. If you could just raise the budget by $683 billion and take a little bit more of my tax dollars. my family is going to be better off. I dont hear. If. you can just pass an energy. bill with no energy and just put a little more tax on top of the energy and regulate them just a little bit more. then my family is going to be better off. That is not what the American people are looking for. If you look at $683 billion. that is the largest tax increase in American history. It blows away the previous largest tax increase in history. which was passed in 1993. and that was over $443 billion. These are real tax hikes on real people. Here are some staggering statistics for families living in northeast Tennessee. According to the Heritage Foundation. because of the Democrat budget. the average taxpayer in my district will be forced to pay an increase in $1.596. This will result in almost 2.000 jobs lost and a loss of $188 million in the First Districts economy. When I go home every weekend. I dont hear people say. Please raise my taxes so we can lose 2.000 jobs. We are actually seeing jobs move to Tennessee because we keep taxes low and keep regulations low. We are a good work State. We have a good work ethic. We certainly dont need the Federal Government to come in and help us to move us in he wrong direction. By reimposing the marriage penalty tax. roughly 23 million taxpayers will see their taxes increase by $466 a year simply because they are married. Now in east Tennessee I dont go home every weekend and hear people say. I want you to raise my taxes just because I did what is biblically correct and I did the right thing. We have choices. We have choices between a bigger economy or a bigger government. Taxing spending is not the road we need to head down. Ronald Reagan once said we dont have a trilliondollar debt because we havent taxed enough. we have a trilliondollar debt because we spend too much. That is common sense. That is the type of logic I hear when I go home to east Tennessee every weekend. I think we as Members of Congress need to be more concerned about the budgets of mothers and fathers that they- have to put together sitting around kitchen tables every month rather than growing the Federal budget and taking money from those very mothers and fathers that have to sit around the kitchen table every month.