Date: 2008-06-05
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. when you try a lawsuit. one of the things they say to you is to. pick out just a few salient facts. talk about that during the argument through the questioning of the various witnesses. and. hopefully. those few facts or statements will appear in the instructions to the jury. and then in your final argument you refer to those. So the hope is that. as the jury deliberates. the jury will have a chance to think about the most important facts. So in attempting to distill this argument about the budget down. I have tried to figure out a couple salient facts. And it seems to me the one needs repeating and repeating and repeating is the most obvious one: the largest single tax increase in the history of this Congress. which means in the history of this Nation. which means in the history of the world. $683 billion over the next 5 years. Now. one of the reasons I think its a salient fact is that we oftentimes just gloss over that. Yesterday we had a bill on the floor in which we were starting an entirely new program where we are now on the Federal level going to be responsible for paying for heating and air conditioning of local schools. Now. heating and air conditioning of local schools is important. but when did that become a Federal responsibility? But the -argument we heard on the floor was. well. they cant afford it at the local level. so. therefore. we magically can support it on the Federal level. What does that translate into? The largest single tax increase in the history of the American people. in the history of this Congress. in the history of the world. We passed a farm bill. which we found. as it was going through. got largerand larger and larger and larger and larger. and we set up price supports for certain commodities at historically high levels so that if corn. which is now at the alltime high level. which is causing ripples through the international system and pne of the reasons causing some lack of food to be available to people. if somehow we come to our senses and say maybe we want too far on corn ethanol production and the price drops. what happens? The American people magically pay for it because weve set price supports up so high that theyre above the historically high levels. billions of dollars. . Two weeks ago we voted on this floor for foreign aid for cats and dogs. Now. we bring up suspension bills all the time when we dont have other important things to do. and .sometimes at the end of the session. we say now well bring out the cats and dogs. and I have been here for 14 years and Ive seen that happen. This is the first time in my 14 years that .we -actually voted on cats and dogs. We voted for foreign aid for cats and dogs. How can we do that? All you have to do is pass the budget with the largest single tax hike in the history of the Nation. It seems to me. with. all due respect to my friend the gentleman from South Carolina. the distinguished chairman of this committee. who has done yeomens work to try to bring this forward. he is being pushed and pulled. and. unfortunately. we brought forth this. not a mouse but the largest single tax increase in the history of the world.