Providing for consideration of Senate Amendment to H.R. 5297, Small Business Jobs Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge my colleagues to support my proposal to halt the unchecked growth of the Federal Government.

In selling the $1.1 trillion stimulus package to the American people, the President promised that it would keep unemployment under 8 percent. The results of this expensive experiment are in. It failed. We have lost millions of private-sector jobs, and unemployment is hovering just under 10 percent. But the Federal workforce, fueled by the stimulus and other massive spending bills, has grown by 188,000 employees--or 15 percent--and it's only going to get worse. The Obama administration is on track to hire 230,000 new employees by next year.

As we approach the full implementation of ObamaCare in 2014, our government will have to staff a vast new health care bureaucracy. This could include thousands of new IRS employees to enforce the health care mandate on individuals and businesses.

My bill, the Federal Workforce Reduction Act, would halt the sprawl of government and get us back to pre-Obama government employment levels. My bill would not force any civil servant out of their job, and it would exempt the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs. But all other agencies could only hire one new civilian employee for every two that retire or otherwise end their service.

Our President and his agency heads would have to control their appetite for government expansion. They would make due with fewer resources--just like the individuals, families, and small business owners who have had to make sacrifices and cut back to deal with the recession.

By attrition the government would shrink back to pre-Obama levels and save taxpayers $35 billion over 10 years. But most importantly, my bill would help reverse a dangerous trend in which the private sector shrinks and the government sector expands. Growing the government does nothing to help our small businesses--the engines of job creation.

Taxing to give people less money and the government more money to expand does not help the economy. Yet the Big Government chameleon--debt-financed stimulus, cap and tax, ObamaCare, tax increases coming this January--continues to roam the halls of Congress, threatening to choke off the entrepreneurial spirit that built this country.

Important decisions that should be made by individuals, families, their doctors, or our small businesses are being relocated to Washington to be made by unresponsive bureaucrats. The policies of the Democratic leadership are fostering a culture of dependency on Big Government. They are marching us towards European-style social democracy.

But there is another way. Vote for this provision, cut spending and government employment back to pre-stimulus levels. Stop the big march of government.

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