Year In Review

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I am happy to yield to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis).

Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman from Iowa. I think it is a tribute to you that over these many months of the last year, you have been stalwart in your support of the liberties of this country and the first principles of this country. The gentleman from New York (Mr. King) was so committed to the American people and the vote on health care that he missed his own son's wedding because the vote was taken on a Saturday, and we needed every single vote, not knowing if it would go our way or the vote of socialized medicine. And this gentleman sacrificed seeing his middle child's wedding in order to cast his vote for the American people that day. I applaud you for going up and participating in Massachusetts' election observing.

I would like to ask the gentleman before I begin to discuss budget issues. Did you talk to people in Massachusetts today and yesterday? What was on their mind? What was guiding their decisions in deciding to make a change in party after that seat had been held by Democrats since 1953. What was on their mind in casting their ballots today?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Some would say it is all about health care and socialized medicine. In fact, quite a few did say that.

But if you listened a little more closely, they are also telling people on our side of the aisle, Don't you spend too much money, either. We are tired of you being irresponsible with our tax dollars and with our children and grandchildren's future. That is definitely a core in the center of this. And underneath it is that list of things that I gave at the beginning: The TARP funding, the stimulus plan, the nationalization of eight formerly private entities. They see all of that spending, and they see government trying to manage everything. And as liberal as Massachusetts is, they said, Enough.

The first version of it is, and some have said it is all about health care. And for them it was. For others it was health care and too much spending. For others, it was health care, too much spending, and the government injecting themselves in and taking over private businesses. They don't want to have a social democracy here in the United States. They understand we are not Europe. I mean when the first people arrived here in the United States it was down at Jamestown in 1607. And then 1620, the Pilgrims landed up at Plymouth Rock. They came for freedom and liberty, for religious freedom and economic freedom. I think it is the sweetest of symmetry in history to think that the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, and 390 years later in 2010, their descendants in Massachusetts said, We are going to send you somebody to defend our freedom for America.

I was asking for reinforcements. We are outmanned and we are outgunned. We are fighting a scrappy fight. We need reinforcements, and we get some reinforcements tonight.

Mrs. LUMMIS. The father of the Massachusetts Constitution, John Adams, died 50 years to the day that the Declaration of Independence was signed. And as he died, he said ``Jefferson lives.'' And ironically, Thomas Jefferson died that very same day, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was signed. These are people whose founding principles and founding beliefs carried them until the day they died. Although during the years they were political rivals, they respected and admired each other so much because of the work they had both done to help found this country, that they wanted to nurture it and guide it and see that it survived.

I believe tonight we are seeing that same nurturing and guidance and seeing the founding principles verified in Massachusetts. So it is indeed an exciting day for our country.

Among the things that you mentioned that the people of Massachusetts chose to be concerned about in casting their ballots today is the deficit. I would like to take a minute to show you a chart that explains how this deficit has grown over the last year and that the debt that our majority party here in Congress today says they inherited actually has grown to unprecedented levels while they were in control. When they espouse the fact that during the Clinton years, the deficit was rejected and that there were budget surpluses, it actually happened when there was a Republican Congress.

But the gentleman from Iowa has given me the opportunity to bring this chart and show it to you. The Federal deficit tripled in one fiscal year as tax revenues fell and Congress pumped out large sums to stabilize financial institutions and stimulate the economy. This top line shows you where the Federal budget deficit was. Well, that is neutral. That is neutral ground. That is a balanced budget. Down here on this dotted line is the debt that the majority party inherited 1 year ago, a $459 billion budget deficit. That is the difference in money collected from the taxpayers of this country and the money spent during that year.

Now look at 2009. Below this dotted line is the amount of deficit spending that has occurred during the last year. And as the gentleman from Iowa just went through, these are the elements that have stepped that deficit to unprecedented levels: $950 billion increase from 2008, and our deficit is $1.4 trillion, almost a trillion dollars more than the Democrats inherited 1 year ago, and here is how it goes. First of all, lower tax receipts due to the recession, something that they didn't factor in. Then the stimulus money, which at $787 billion was about twice what the Republicans proposed to spend on stimulus, and our bill would have created twice as many jobs. And in fact the Democrats' bill that they said would keep unemployment below 8 percent ended up blossoming into double digit unemployment.

That is what people are worried about. They are worried about whether they will have a job tomorrow, and whether their children will have a job and whether they will be able to pay their bills and whether they will default on their mortgage. And on top of that, whether their health care benefits will be taxed or whether they will be penalized because the government hasn't approved of the health care plan they have now. But I digress.

Now let's go on to the bailouts for financial institutions and auto industries, taking it to even lower levels. Bailouts for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an area where the government in its wisdom decided that people who may not financially qualify for loans to own a home should have them, and this is the resultant deficit. And finally, unemployment benefits due to the recession. Plus you add other spending and here we are, $1.4 trillion in deficit spending in addition to the debt that has accumulated over the years.

Now if the gentleman from Iowa would indulge one more chart. When you hear the term structural deficit, this is the structural deficit, the difference between spending and taxes. This chart runs from the 1970s through 2019. And if you look, this dotted line is today. Look at how the gap between spending and taxes grows and separates going forward, and here is where we are today at a massive point in terms of the difference between spending and taxes.

But over the years, regardless of who was President, regardless of who was in Congress, we didn't have those abrupt and wild and dramatic swings. In fact, when the Republicans controlled Congress under a Democrat President, you actually had tax receipts higher than spending. These are the years that the gentleman from Iowa talked about, about which he is most proud and about which I am most proud as a person who was observing as a non-Member of Congress during those years.

This chart here shows you where spending went over the last period of time, 1969 to 2008. This very high number for defense, when over 40 percent of the Federal budget was going to defense, was at the height of the Vietnam War. Look at its abrupt decline after the Vietnam War into the 1970s, then back up for a little bounce during the period of the 1980s while we were ending the Cold War, and then you see it declined after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and this is the area of the so-called peace dividend, and then back up only slightly during the war after 9/11.

But the real kicker on this chart is the bottom line, the red line, Medicare and Medicaid, because before we were a welfare state, the amount of the Federal budget and in terms of the use of the Federal budget, only about 5 percent went to entitlement programs, Medicare and Medicaid. That number has been dramatically increasing with no end in sight because people of your and my age are going to move into retirement, meaning that Medicare will be more expensive. There will be more of us on it, and Medicaid benefits have increased over time.

Consequently, this is going to be eating more and more of our budget. Nondefense discretionary spending is actually down, and Social Security, more level than you would think at about 20 percent of the Federal budget. But there again, that number is going to go up unless we get a handle on entitlements. So these are the areas with which we need to grapple. These are the areas which I believe were on the minds of Americans in Massachusetts as they went to the polls today.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Wyoming for the interesting charts. I think it's important for us to refresh ourselves with these trends consistently. They have changed dramatically under this administration.

I think the American people now realize that Republicans in the majority disappeared here in November of 2006, and Democrats have been in control of this Congress ever since then. In the previous years, they all said that if you would just let them have control of this Congress, things would be better. Give us the majority, they said over and over again. The 30-something Group, which now I think is in the 40-somethings, just consistently, night after night, made the same case: the economy would be a lot better off if you had Democrats in charge.

Well, they came into control in November of 2006 and immediately what we saw was a significant decline in industrial investment. That was the first indicator of what was happening with our economy, and it happened this way: CHARLIE RANGEL became the likely, and not yet formally named, but he did become the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. And he went on the talk show circuit all over America; he was a very busy guy. And the pundits were asking Chairman Rangel, Which one of these Bush tax cuts don't you like, or do you like them all? And CHARLIE would never be able to say that he liked any of them, but he never really answered back on which ones he didn't like.

But because of his answers and the process of elimination, from November through February it became clear to the investors in America that there wasn't any Bush tax cut that CHARLIE RANGEL liked and that he liked spending better, and he was going to do what he could do to let them expire so that the government could collect more money so they could start more programs and grow government spending.

Investment knew that; business figured it out. And as they did, the capital investment went down; the industrial investment went down almost in direct proportion to the appearances of CHARLIE RANGEL on national TV. Because capital is always smart money--it wouldn't be capital if it weren't smart--and so if the cost of investing in a business goes higher because there's a tax increase, what do you do? You invest less in business because the return isn't as likely or the margin isn't as good.

So when America and the world were promised that the Bush tax cuts were going to be, let me just say that they would say it this way, ``allowed to expire,'' which is willfully kill them and raise taxes, industrial investment dropped off. When industrial investment dropped off, of course when you invest in capital investment, you get a return in productivity. If you stop investing in industrial investment, then you start losing efficiencies.

There was a professor--actually, he was a professor that served underneath Lenin in Russia, his name was Professor Khodnev. He did a study, it's called the Khodnev study. Nobody really knew about this study until MIT University did a computer study some 25-or-so years ago analyzing what happened with capital investment and returns and how the cycles of the economy went. Somebody remembered that they read this old study from Professor Khodnev, a Russian who was commissioned by Lenin to prove that capitalism would be self-defeating and expire.

So he went through their data and he showed that there was a decline, that unemployment would go up and gross receipts would go down, profits would go down and capital investment would go down. He showed a cycle that showed that when the capitalism of the economy peaked out, it would then drop back down over the course of about 26 years. That showed capitalism's decline. Then it would go back up again to peak out again in another 26 years. It's a 52-year cycle, Professor Khodnev's 52-year cycle.

And so he was commissioned to prove capitalism was self-defeating, but he found out that, well, it defeats itself for a while, but then when you get down to the bottom, entrepreneurs start to come up with good ideas. They all figure out what they're going to do, and they invest in research and development. They implement new ideas, new ideas improve technology, technology improves productivity, improved productivity improves profitability. And when you're down at the bottom of this trough where you're making these investments, your productivity then goes up because of the capital investment at the trough. And as it goes up, your profits go up.

Then you get up there 26 years later to the peak and you realize, this is pretty good, I'm making money, I think I'll coast awhile. They stop making capital investments like they stopped under the beginning of the Rangel term and then your productivity drops off. And you don't realize it for a while. You're not quite in a free fall, but you're coasting. I remember seeing a poster on a fellow's wall years ago of a little kid sitting on a tricycle. He's got his hands on the handlebar and his hair is flying a little bit, he's got his feet off the pedal and a great big grin on his face. He's having fun, but the bottom of the poster says, If you're coasting, you're going downhill.

And we went downhill, Mr. Speaker. We went downhill because taxes were too high and because the wrong message got sent to capital investment, apparently because of Khodnev's theory that was matched by the computer study at MIT, by the way, and you can pick your cycles within the cycles too.

But it's the nature of capitalism to invest money, improve your productivity, and then have that equipment get old. Then you can't compete so much anymore and your productivity then diminishes in the face of this competition. You still get profits because you've got the return back on your capital investment and you own your equipment, but if the profits get narrower and narrower and the harder it is to get that competitive production out of the older equipment, then you peak out and you start to slide. And then you think, what are we going to do now? Well, let's go invent some things. Let's get our productivity back, and let's compete with the rest of the world.

That's what needs to happen, but it has to happen in a competitive environment, Mr. Speaker. It needs to happen with low regulations and low taxation. And you can't be punishing business. And we can't have a President that is demagoging the capital investment in America and telling the bankers that they're greedy. Bankers will pull back.

I think this is a lesson out of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: he went around and punished capital throughout the thirties. And then he had his New Deal that he said was a good deal; I said it was a horrible deal. The President said it would have been a better deal only FDR didn't spend enough money. Well, now we're finding out what America thinks of the FDR-New Deal-President-on-steroids Obama who went to Copenhagen twice and went 0 for 2. He wanted to get the World's Fair in Chicago; that was a goose egg. Then he went to Copenhagen to get a deal for cap-and-trade. He got a fig leaf, but not a deal. So that's 0 for 2 in Copenhagen.

Then he went to Virginia to try to win the governorship down there, about three stops across the river. Well, we've got Governor McDonnell. Then he went to New Jersey to save that for the very rich and, as of yesterday, former-Governor Corzine. We have Governor Chris Christie. Then he went to Massachusetts, a place where you would never have to call the President of the United States to Massachusetts for reinforcements, never. No one could imagine a scenario like that and have the President's political capital on the line. He has a situation where he couldn't win because the race was already too close.

But this is worse than taking a black eye, this is a thumping. This is a real thumping. It is a movement along the east coast. And if it can move like this on the east coast, it can really move across the rest of the country as a dynamic sea change.

The American people reject some other things, as I said earlier. The most personal thing you have is your body. And the government comes in and nationalizes General Motors; that's like nationalizing the Dallas Cowboys. But your body? The most private thing you have, to have the government decide they're going to manage it and tell you what you're going to pay for insurance and set up a health choices administration czar to write the rules after the fact? To pass legislation that would appoint someone to have power over life and death, someone to be appointed later--maybe by, let me see, and confirmed by some Senators to be elected later. Well, they have gone way too far. And the wisdom of the Founding Fathers has been, I think, ratified and established.

While I'm here talking about how things have to change, Mr. Speaker, I, not by accident, have an acorn here in my pocket. We know what ACORN has been doing to try to redirect America's destiny. They have admitted to over 400,000 fraudulent voter registration forms. They have said that they've gone to swing States and turned up their organization. They said they're a 501(3)(C), not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization.

I went down to their headquarters at 2609 Canal Street in New Orleans. And there, where they run most of their operations out of, there was a huge ``Obama for President'' sign right smack dab in the front window of the national headquarters of not-for-profit, tax exempt, 501(C)(3) ACORN campaigning for the President of the United States. He was elected about 8 months earlier, 9 months earlier; they still had a sign in the window. The President wrote the book ``The Audacity of Hope.'' This is a lot of audacity to see what ACORN is doing. They've got to be pulled out by the roots, Mr. Speaker.

That is the next piece that comes along. The American people have to step up and make sure that our elections are legitimate, that they're not stolen, that every American citizen registered to vote that counts a ballot has their vote counted. But the rest of those people don't have any business voting, and once is enough. And the threats that came and the stories that we've heard--we will pick up more about Massachusetts; but I suspect that they're not going to look very far because on a victory you don't go examine very deeply.

Yet, in the close races, those that can scramble things and those that can produce fraudulent voter registration forms, those corrupt criminal enterprises will take and steal our liberty and our freedom, and I think we've seen it happen in several States. Thank God it didn't happen in Massachusetts tonight.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Wyoming.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I have a couple more questions for you.

We look at the fact that, in the health care bill, the Senator from Nebraska sought an exemption from the impacts of Medicaid expenditures in his State and at the fact that the Amish sought an exemption because their religious freedom requires them not to be mandated to have a certain health insurance program placed upon them. There were other exemptions. The unions went to the White House recently because they wanted to be exempted from the Cadillac insurance plan tax that was going to help pay for the Senate bill to create socialized medicine.

Then there was the citizen who asked: If this is such a great bill, why do so many people need exemptions? Could that be part of the reason, the very simple question: If this is such a great bill, why does everybody want to be exempted from it? Could that have anything to do with tonight's election results in Massachusetts?

I yield back.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady.

I think there are lots of things that had to do with the election in Massachusetts tonight. I think a lot of it was that the American people are fed up and that they've had enough. You know, people will rise to their responsibility. I don't know how many times I've seen a town that needs a mayor, a small town, but nobody wants to bother. Somebody else can do that. If the wrong person steps forward and says, Well, I'll be mayor, well, we've got a little syndrome--and I won't say the person's name--but it's a syndrome that says, if somebody who's going to do a lousy job steps up, somebody who'll do a good job will step up to protect them from the damage that will be caused. I think that's part of what happened in Massachusetts. I think, when this announcement was made that the Coakley candidate would support the bill, whatever it was that came out behind closed doors, that that really mobilized a lot of people.

We need to be thinking about what actually has happened here. In this House, a bill was passed, and there were amendments that were offered in committee, but there wasn't much of a process here. I offered something like 13 amendments in the Rules Committee at 1:30 in the morning, and there was nobody there to hear that. It's like if a tree falls in the forest. The Rules Committee sat there and chastised me for wasting their time for asking them if they'd give me permission to come down here to the floor and argue for the liberty of the American people. They had the audacity to chastise me for using up paper. It was a waste of paper to print these amendments because, surely, I should have known that Speaker Pelosi wasn't going to let these amendments come to the floor. So what was the point of putting them on record?

My advice to them was take that 2,000-page bill and put the paper back in the tree. The world would have been a lot better off if we'd had a few more trees and a few less 2,000- or now 4,000-page bills.

I think something else we need to talk about, Mr. Speaker, is they're not going to break the filibuster in the United States Senate on this bill anymore. So what kind of shenanigans do we have to guard against?

Are they going to delay the certification of the votes in Massachusetts to try to delay the swear-in of Senator-elect Scott Brown? I like the sound of that. I haven't said that before. Senator-elect Scott Brown. Are they going to delay that? Are they going to try to keep him off the floor?

Are they going to try to push a bill through with the 60 votes they have and defy the will of the American people?

Is Speaker Pelosi going to try to take the Senate version of the bill now, which is something that the House has lined up to reject, and bring it to the floor of the House before people figure out what's going on and send it to the President even though the American people have not just at every opportunity--and the election today was an opportunity today for the voices of the people in Massachusetts and America to be heard. Thank you, Massachusetts. Not only that, the people have stepped up to do everything they can, and they have created opportunities that their voices be heard, and I say still their hearts are hardened.

If they circumvent the will of the American people, if there's a bill from the Senate that gets brought to the floor and sent to the President because everybody over here just sucks it up and decides they're going to

go ahead and lose those seats, there will be holy thunder to pay in the ballot box in November. I pray the streets will be peaceful until then, and I'm not sure they will be, Mr. Speaker.

This is a rejection. This is a referendum on socialized medicine in Massachusetts today. This is President Obama's socialized medicine agenda rejected in Massachusetts. This is heavy-handed legislation and backroom dealing rejected in Massachusetts. This is special deals for different States, exemptions, carve-outs for Florida, Louisiana and Nebraska and others rejected by the people in Massachusetts. No secret deals. That's all rejected by people in Massachusetts.

A situation that we have now is--and I said this going into the election a year ago November--excuse me. Well, it was last November actually. Going into the election, I said, If you elect Barack Obama as President of the United States and if you return majorities to the House of Representatives for Democrats and to the United States Senate--and I didn't anticipate it was going to be 60. I think, if you went back and did a recount in Minnesota, it wouldn't have been 60, but that's what it turned out to be--I predicted then that those majorities and a President Obama, the three of them--President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Harry Reid--could go in a phone booth and dictate to America what they wanted to do to this country. I put that in an op-ed here a couple of days ago, or at least in a press release, because I wanted to make sure it was down in print.

There is no formal function that has taken place in the House of Representatives all year long or in the United States Senate all year long that controls the negotiations on the part of the ruling troika in America--Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. They plan to and strategize to draft a whole new bill, one that's not guided by anything except their judgment on whether they can get the votes to pass it and bring it directly to the floor of the House of Representatives--bypass the committee process, not allow any amendments, just write a draconian bill like King George would write. You know, he vetoed the will of the colonists, and now the colonists have vetoed the will of the President today.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Will the gentleman yield on that point?

Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield.

Mrs. LUMMIS. Interestingly, over the August recess, when we were all at home having town hall meetings and the people had their opportunities to step forward and express their opinions about this bill, one of the leaders of the majority party in the Senate was quoted as saying, It's getting harder and harder to pass legislation that the American people don't want.

So they even acknowledge that the American people don't want this. They even acknowledge that it is the judgment of the leadership of the Democratic Party that this is good for the American people whether the American people know it or not.

That's what King George was doing. King George was deciding that he knew what was best for the American colonies whether they knew it or not, but they rose up, and they told King George otherwise--that they knew what was best for them, and they formed a more perfect union.

That's what, in part, tonight's election was about. That's what the elections and the discussions may be about throughout this calendar year unless there is some recognition by the majority party and by our President that ``change'' means moving more towards the center.

You and I want what's best for our country. We don't want to stand up here and bash the other party. We want to work with them to come up with solutions for our country. I come from a State where we have frequently a boom-and-bust economy. I served in the Wyoming Legislature when we were in boom years and when we were in bust years. We know how to ramp up an economy, and we know how to ramp a government down in response to a declined economy. We could work with a President and with a majority party now if they were willing to do so; but as you and I know, we've seen no indication that they're willing to do so, and you expressed an example of it.

It was the night that you were there at 1:30 a.m. in the Rules Committee to try and get an amendment. I had three amendments to that bill. I was there an hour before you were, and I was told that there were going to be two amendments allowed on the floor tomorrow to that 2,000-page bill. One would be Minority Leader John Boehner's substitute bill, which they already knew was going to go down and that it would get the votes of all of the members of the Republican Party and none of the members of the Democrat Party. That was one of the amendments.

The other one was the Stupak amendment, because that was demanded by of course every Republican and enough Democrats that they had to allow it to go to the floor in order to get that bill passed. But every other bill that was sponsored in good faith by Democrats and Republicans alike, rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans, were rejected, was not allowed to go to the floor and in fact was essentially blown off in the Rules Committee.

That is not government of the people. That is government the way that King George ran it. That is government that the people tonight rejected in Massachusetts.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady. This is an exhilarating day for a lot of reasons, and many of us have poured our hearts and souls into this. I have argued that even when you are surrounded and there isn't hope, it is no time to give up because you never know when the cavalry is going to come over the hill. Well, they came over the hill in Massachusetts today.

There was a fellow that gave up, though, and I think it is important to put this into the Congressional Record.
[From the Washington Times]

Bookie Pays Off Early, Predicts Brown Win
(By Joseph Curl)

Boston On Monday, an Irish bookie paid off bettors who had wagered that state Sen. Scott Brown, a conservative Republican, would win the special election for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat held for nearly 50 years by liberal Democratic icon Edward M. Kennedy.

``Enough is enough. It seems that Senator Brown just has to get out of bed tomorrow to win convincingly. As far as we're concerned, this race is well and truly over,'' said Paddy Power, Ireland's largest bookmaker, 24 hours before the actual election.

Before shutting down the betting, Mr. Brown had gone from 5-4 odds to 1-5 (meaning if a bettor put down $5, they only stood to make $1 if Mr. Brown wins). The odds against his opponent--Democrat Martha Coakley, the state's attorney general--soared from 4-7 to win to 3-1 to lose.

``Paddy Power has also cut the odds on the Republicans winning the 2012 presidential election from 11-10 to evens and have installed Senator Scott Brown at odds of 20-1 to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012,'' the bookmaker said.

Mr. Brown, Mrs. Coakley and Joseph Kennedy, a Libertarian who is running as an independent, entered the final day of campaigning before Tuesday's special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat left empty by the death of Edward M. Kennedy.

The Irish bookie also paid off early on the 2008 presidential election. About a week before Election Day, Mr. Power paid out more than $1 million to all bettors who wagered on then-Sen. Barack Obama, saying Sen. John McCain was too far behind in the polls to win.

One fellow gave up, and his name is Paddy Power. He is the lead bookie from Ireland. This is in the Washington Times printed today, so you can guess he capitulated sometime in the night, and it made the Washington Times. Paddy Power started to pay out the bets to the people that bet that Brown would be elected over Coakley today. And he said the polls were far enough apart that he didn't need to wait until the polls closed and they counted the votes. It was over. So Paddy paid out somewhere around--here we go. Mr. Brown had gone from 5-4 odds to 1-5. Meaning that if you bet $5 that he would win, you would pay out $1. And so Coakley went from 4-7 odds to 3-1.

Now, the people from Nevada would understand all that instinctively, but I believe that, if I read this right, Mr. Power paid out more than $1 million to all betters who wagered on the Obama race. So he paid out the bets. He just decided that he didn't need to wait for the polls to be counted. He gave up, but he predicted it right.

From my view, Mr. Speaker, I think when we have a public policy that is completely wrong, that violates the Constitution and it violates the spirit of the American people, in fact diminishes and damages, the American people should never give up, should never give up until it is all over. Then, you figure out how to start it all over again.

I had a poster in my construction company office for years, and I just found it as I cleaned out my office over the Christmas break and I was snowed in. It was of this shore bird, a tall, long-legged bird, and he was swallowing a frog. And the frog is going down the throat of this bird, but the frog has his arms out and he is holding that bird by the throat. He is not going to be let up, or if he does he will be swallowed. The message is, Never give up.

We didn't give up in this House. A lot of us stood and we fought. And we have got a lot of battles ahead of us, but the cavalry has arrived, we have got reinforcements. And now, there are people who will not be sleeping tonight trying to figure out how to pass a bill the American people don't want.

I think that this time in history, this vote and this election and this special election in Massachusetts represents the most significant congressional race in my lifetime and maybe in the history of the United States. Time will tell. Time will tell on that. But I am exhilarated to see the spirit of freedom and liberty that has emerged in a place where we didn't see a lot of that in the past.

I yield to the gentlelady, and then I will come back with any closing comments.

Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman from Iowa. And I look forward to the day when you are in the majority party, next year on this floor, and I am in the majority party, God willing, and that we can work together with President Obama to solve the problems of this country; that we can go back as happened in the 1990s, where you had a member of the Democratic party as President and a Republican Congress, and they worked together to balance the budget.

That is what the American people, I believe, are yearning for. That is what I am yearning for. And I look forward to working with the President in a way that we can balance the budget and bring the American people back to have faith and confidence in its government because we return to founding principles.

You know, there is an old saying: When all else fails, read the directions. The Constitution of the United States is the directions. And at a time like this, when we have record deficits, when we have soaring U.S. interest payments like you see on this chart, when we have Americans concerned about their health care, about their jobs, about the ability to earn an income, when people are concerned about the growth in China and what they see in some cases as the decline in jobs in the United States, that is when you return to founding principles.

Let's look at our Constitution more often. Let's return with our President next year, as a majority party, and I hopefully will be serving with you in the majority party at that time, and get back to those founding principles. Read the directions, what made America great, and restore the confidence of the American people in this institution and in our ability to self-govern.

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