Providing for Consideration of H.R. 7201, Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 and H.R. 7202, Temporary Tax Relief Act of 2008

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we hear these debates and they sound so simple on both sides. The public must be very confused. They want low taxes. And the gentleman from Texas talks about putting taxes down. The problem the gentleman from Texas has is he is a member of a party that has controlled this country's government at the Federal level for almost a decade. The President has a veto pen, and he has not allowed any spending that he didn't like.

The problem, of course, is for a decade their premise has been that they can spend money, and they spent money at twice the rate that was spent under the Clinton administration for 8 years. Spending. But they didn't pay for what they bought, because they call that taxes. And they are correct. If you buy things and you pay for them at the Federal level, you pay for them with tax revenues. Now we have a very simple solution, you can stop buying things. But they didn't stop buying things, they doubled the rate of growth of spending from about 3 1/2 to 7 percent. And they cut revenues.

Now you don't have to be much of a mathematician or an accountant to know what happens: Budgets, deficits, spiraled.

Now, of course, they didn't worry about that because the Vice President of the United States, the Republican Vice President, said debt doesn't matter. That's what he said. And you could see that they really meant it because they have added $1.6 trillion, and that is with a ``T,'' to the debt, deficit, spending.

And by the end of this year, they will have doubled the national debt, and they have been in control of everything and could stop spending in its track with a Bush veto.

And they said if we did that, the economy would blossom and of course their candidate for President says the underpinnings of our economy are sound.

I will tell you, my neighbors don't think that is the case. They are paying more for groceries and they are paying more for gasoline. They are losing jobs. They are having a tough time.

My constituents are better off than most. But this country is having a tough time. And all of the things that they said their tax cuts would produce and their economic program would produce, just like Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge, proved to be dead flat wrong.

Employment, we were going to spur employment, spur growth. Under Bill Clinton, the average monthly addition of jobs was 216,000 per month. Under this President, under your economic program, I don't know whether any of you know how many jobs you have produced over the last 90 months, but I will tell you, 38,000 per month. What is the problem with that? The problem with that is you need 100,000 jobs per month to stay even.

Bill Clinton in the first 8 months of his last year, which is analogous to this year, added 1.4 million jobs in the job market. Under your economic program, President Bush has lost 600,000. That's a net turnaround of 2 million jobs lost in this economy; not producing 1.4 and losing 6.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're here on Sunday, at a quarter of 10 at night. Why? For the worst financial disaster that we've seen in this country since the Depression, or the Coolidge and Hoover years. Debt didn't matter then either under Mr. Coolidge or Mr. Hoover. Debt doesn't matter, said the Vice President of the United States.

We're here on this rule because we believe debt does matter. And I understand what the gentleman from California said. We have a philosophical disagreement. That philosophical difference of agreement is we want mental health parity, but we know it's got to be paid for. We want energy independence and alternative energy research and wind and solar, but we know somebody's got to pay for it. The average American family knows that. They want solar heating in their home they know somebody's got to pay for it.

Now we're here, because right now, as a result of failure of this economic program, they can't get a loan because we've incurred so much debt that people have locked up because they're not sure loaning money is a safe thing for them to do. That's why we're here tonight, because of the failure of an economic program that was fiscally irresponsible and was, from a regulatory perspective, neglectful. No oversight. No fiscal responsibility.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOYER. I will yield for a brief minute.

Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding. And I would just like to say that Thomas Jefferson, as we all know, said two thinking individuals can be given the exact same set of facts and draw different conclusions.

Mr. HOYER. If I could reclaim my time, are you disputing any of the facts that I have recited?

Mr. DREIER. If the gentleman would continue to yield.

Mr. HOYER. I yield to my friend.

Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I would say the answer is yes.

Mr. HOYER. What facts are you disputing that I have articulated?

Mr. DREIER. The last point that my friend just made had to do the with issue of regulation. And if one looks at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the fact that there have been calls from this side for adequate oversight, which raised consistently by our friends on the other side were arguments against that.

Mr. HOYER. I understand. Reclaiming my time, I will tell the gentleman, I'm sure he knows this, April 20, 2007, 4 months, actually 3 1/2 months after, as a result of the election of 2006, the American public gave us the responsibility of leading, we passed regulatory legislation through this House 4 months into our term, after 6 years.

Very frankly, as you recall, Mike Oxley, the chairman of the Banking Committee under the Republican leadership, we passed regulatory legislation then. It was opposed by the administration. And Mike Oxley said, and I won't say what he said, but essentially he said, in a different way, that the administration gave them the back of his hand.

Mr. DREIER. If the gentleman would continue to yield.

Mr. HOYER. Let me just make one continuing point. So we have acted on the regulatory field; but very frankly, what has happened is this administration said they didn't believe regulation was helpful to growing the economy, and Senator McCain, their candidate for President, has said he's the biggest deregulator in town and doesn't believe in regulation.

So I tell my friend that, from a regulatory standpoint, the articulation of policy by the present President and your candidate for President has been that they do not believe in keeping the referee on the field.

Mr. DREIER. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOYER. I will yield one more time, and then I want to conclude.

Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding.

Let me just take on this issue of regulation, if I might, Mr. Speaker

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time for just a minute, because what I asked him, and he said yes, what I asked him was is there a statistic that I have stated today, either on the amount of spending, on the amount of debt incurred under your economic policies, the failure to create employment necessary to stay even with the growth in the employment market, and the loss of jobs for 8 months in a row of 600,000-plus, as opposed to Bill Clinton's, in the same comparable time frame, creating 1.4 million jobs.

I ask the gentleman again, do you believe that any of those statistics are inaccurate?

Mr. DREIER. If the gentleman would yield.

Mr. HOYER. I yield to my friend.

Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding. And let me just say, that if you take, obviously, a static period of time, I'm not going to dispute that. But my friend has also talked, Mr. Speaker, about a decade. And if one looks at the challenges that we have gone through with September 11, the corporate scandals of the past and Hurricane Katrina and a wide range of challenges, the sustained economic growth that the United States of America has enjoyed over the past several years, overcoming these tremendous hurdles, has been something that I believe, very sincerely, has been brought about by responsible economic policies.

Now, my friend raised the issue of stimulation, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, because I want to end and don't want to have a full debate on this. I've given the gentleman some time.

Let me say this: If the American public who is listening to this debate believes the economy is in good shape, so be it. They ought to act on that premise.

In fact, we know the economy is not in good shape. Notwithstanding the fact that when they offered their budgets, after many of the events that the gentleman referred to, which have been, obviously, troubling to the economy, which were challenges to the economy, but they continued to indicate that they were going to balance the budget. The budget deficit, debt, has doubled in 90 months, borrowed more money from foreign governments than all of the other Presidents combined, and we have a $1.6 trillion, which may go as much as $2 trillion operating deficit in the 8 years of this Bush administration, may go that high, as opposed to, I tell my friend this, you're at $1.6 trillion now and growing in the national deficits that you've run up in 8 years. Under Bill Clinton, $62.9 billion surplus and four surplus years in a row.

Mr. DREIER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOYER. No, I want to conclude my debate, Mr. Dreier. But thank you very much for participating in this.

I want to say we're here tonight saying simply that what we want to do is incredibly important. We want to pass mental health parity. We want to pay for it so our grandchildren don't pay for it. We want to pass energy independence legislation, wind, solar, tax credits. We want to pass tax credits for individuals. We want to pass tax credits for businesses to grow, but not by incurring more debt because, notwithstanding Vice President Cheney, debt does matter, and it matters to our children, it matters to our economy. And that's what's happening with our economy; so much debt that it crunched us down. And finally people said we're not going to loan anymore, and we had that credit crisis. And that's what this is all about.

Not only this bill, but this bill, by the way, is very much related to the bill we're going to consider tomorrow, this $700 billion that the administration has asked us to come up with, and I'm going to vote to do it. I'm going to vote to do it because I think the guy on Main Street, the guy on the farm, the guy in the small business, the guy who wants a job, the guy who wants to pay his kid's college expense, help him with it, the guy who wants to buy a new refrigerator because the old one broke down, he needs to have availability of credit, or his life is going to be very much undermined. That's why we're considering this bill tomorrow. That's why I'm going to vote for this bill tomorrow.

But I don't delude myself that it's the result of an economy that was advantaged by the economic program that we have seen over the last 8 years.

So I say to my friends that this rule, we may ask to withdraw this rule. We were going to call for a vote. We've told people there aren't going to be any votes. We may ask to withdraw this rule at this point in time and bring it back tomorrow, conclude the debate at that point in time for however much longer time that might take. But we have to get to, clearly, the bill to rescue our economy from the fiscal irresponsibility and the regulatory neglect that we have been experiencing for the last 8 years in America.

I hope Americans carefully consider the consequences of the economic program that is being pursued, and frankly, that Senator McCain says he wants to continue to pursue. We think that's not prudent policy, it's not good for our people.

I thank my friend for yielding the time.

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