Make Federal Government Live Within its Means

Floor Speech

Mr. WALBERG. Mr. Speaker, when the 112th Congress was sworn in on January 5, 2011, I, along with many of my fellow Republicans, voted to change the status quo.

Instead of escalating spending, we have made and pushed for significant spending cuts. Instead of forcing a trillion dollar government takeover of health care on the American people, we voted to repeal it in the House. Instead of imposing costly and burdensome regulations on an already struggling business economy, we passed legislation to reverse overly burdensome regulations so businesses can get back to hiring again.

These are the vows we made to our constituents when we took office a year ago. And despite hitting numerous snags in the do-nothing Senate and with leadership lacking in the White House, we delivered on the promises.

In the past year, the House has passed 27 job-creating measures as part of our plan for American job creators. We have remained committed to removing the onerous taxes and regulations that are crippling small business and our families and are the cause for so much distrust of Washington. We have begun an honest conversation about which programs are in alignment with our constitutional principles and which programs are wasteful and inefficient.

We have the responsibility to make the Federal Government live within its means, just like hardworking families across the country. This means we have to cut spending, stop raising taxes, and eliminate wasteful spending from our outdated, overreaching government programs.

When we took office last January, we vowed to reduce discretionary spending to 2008 levels, and we delivered. The House passed a bill to reduce spending by $5.8 trillion over the next 10 years. We also voted to cut over 100 programs across government and save billions of dollars in the process. In May, the House also overwhelmingly voted against giving President Obama a blank check to increase the debt limit without spending reductions or reforms.

We have relentlessly fought for policies that will encourage job creation and free our families from the burdensome economic problems of government regulation. We acted to undo duplicative permitting requirements for farmers by passing the Reduced Regulatory Burdens Act. We pushed back against the President's attempts to implement a cap-and-trade policy--an energy reduction policy, really--through the regulatory process by passing the Energy Tax Prevention Act. And we confronted the EPA's costly and burdensome agenda by passing three regulatory reform bills that safeguard our environment while keeping Americans at work.

On November 16, we defeated the 3 percent withholding rule by passing H.R. 674. This misguided tax rule would have required government agencies at all levels to withhold 3 percent of their payments to businesses for goods and services. Any small business that contracts with the government would have their profit margins wiped out if such a rule were allowed to take effect.

We passed the REINS Act, to bring accountability to the executive branch by requiring that government bureaucrats receive permission from Congress, the elected representatives of the people, before the implementation of any major regulation.

Just 2 weeks after beginning our work in Congress, the House voted to repeal the overreaching, costly, and harmful government takeover of health care that President Obama forced upon the American people. H.R. 2 was one of my first votes after being sworn in. The bill cut new spending by $1.4 trillion over 10 years and repealed the President's health care takeover, and I was proud to vote to repeal this job-killing law which will do nothing to bring stability and certainty to American families.

Throughout the first session of the 112th Congress, House Republicans have remained committed to changing the way the government does business. We've delivered on our promises to pass legislation that reins in spending and encourages job creation. Going forward, I'm hopeful that our friends in the Senate and the leadership in the White House will finally be ready to join us in passing legislation that the American people want and not let dozens of job-producing bills sit idle in the Senate.

This year, I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House as we look beyond the next election and focus on improving people's lives and creating a brighter economic future with the freedom God really intended for all of us.

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