House Chamber, Washington, D.C.  October 26, 2011.  M. Speaker:  The government’s continuing failure to address our nation’s gut-wrenching unemployment stems from a fundamental disagreement over how jobs are created in the first place.  

 We are now in the third year of policies predicated on the assumption that government spending creates jobs. 

 We have squandered three years and trillions of dollars of the nation’s wealth on such policies, and they have not worked because they cannot work.

 Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy until it has first taken that same dollar OUT of the economy.

 True, we can SEE the job that is saved or created when the government puts that dollar back into the economy.  What we can’t see as clearly are the jobs that are destroyed or prevented from forming because government has first taken that dollar OUT of the economy.  We see those millions of lost jobs in a chronic unemployment rate and a stagnating economy.

 Government can transfer jobs from the productive sector to the government sector by taking money from one and giving it to the other.  That’s at the heart of the President’s plan to spend billions of dollars to hire more teachers and firefighters and police officers.  But these temporary government jobs come at a steep price: every dollar spent sustaining one of these jobs is a dollar taken from the same capital pool that would otherwise have been available to productive businesses to invest in creating permanent jobs.

Government can also transfer jobs from one business to another by taking capital from one and giving it the other.

 That’s how we got Solyndra.  We put a half-billion dollars at risk to create 1,100 jobs (that’s $450,000 per job).  Now that half-billion dollars are gone and so are the jobs.  And who pays for these losses?  Other businesses and their employees – meaning fewer jobs created. 

 What government can do very effectively, is to create the conditions in which jobs either flourish and expand, or whither and disappear.

 When we place additional taxes on productivity, jobs disappear.  The President says he only wants to tax millionaires and billionaires, but the tax increases in his so-called jobs plan actually hammer more than 75 percent of net small business income – at a time when we’re counting on those small businesses to create 2/3 of the new jobs that our people desperately need.  That is insane.

 When we place additional regulations on productivity, jobs disappear.  That’s what we’re watching in real time: thousands of pages of new regulations from Obamacare, from Dodd-Frank, from the EPA stifling American job creation.

It’s no secret why business isn’t expanding – just ask a businessman.
 
 They’re scared to death of the additional taxes and regulations they may be facing in the next few years and are pulling back to see what happens.  Ask bankers why they’re not lending and you’ll hear the same answer.

 House Republicans have laid out a comprehensive plan to revive the economy through the same policies that worked under Ronald Reagan in the early 1980’s; under John F. Kennedy in the early ‘60’s; under Harry Truman in the mid-‘40’s and under Warren Harding in the early ‘20’s.

 Reduce the tax and regulatory burdens on the economy and jobs flourish and multiply.

 For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare by itself will cost the economy a net loss of 800,000 jobs.  A few weeks ago, the Natural Resources Committee received testimony that just by getting government out of the way and opening up American energy resources to development, the economy could generate 700,000 jobs and $660 billion of direct revenues to the national and state treasuries. 

Repeal Obamacare and open up American energy resources – there’s 1.5 million jobs right there – at NO cost to taxpayers.

Imagine doing that across all sectors of the economy.  That’s what Republicans are proposing to do.  The fact that the President doesn’t recognize this as a jobs plan leads me to conclude that he simply doesn’t understand how jobs are actually created in the first place.
 
 When Ronald Reagan inherited an even worse economy from Jimmy Carter, he reduced the tax and regulatory burdens that were crushing the economy – just as Republicans propose to do today.

Indeed, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, if the economy under Obama had tracked the same as it did under Reagan, 15.7 million more Americans would be working today and per capita income would be $4,000 higher than it is today.

M. Speaker, Freedom works.  It is time that we put it back to work. 

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"Mr. Speaker, Freedom works.  It is time that we put it back to work."   House floor remarks, October 26, 2011.  Text of remarks here.

Remarks in memory of Army Specialist Garrett Fant.  House Chamber, Washington, D.C., October 13, 2011.  Text of Remarks.

House Chamber, Washington, D.C.  October 13, 2011.  Mr. Speaker:  Forty years from now, a beloved high school history teacher at Tahoe High School named Garrett Fant should be celebrating his retirement surrounded by generations of his students and by his children and grandchildren.  They would have all told affectionate stories of how Mr. Fant inspired them or helped them and wished him a happy and well-deserved retirement. 

 Sadly, history has willed a different story.  Army Specialist Garrett Fant instead returned to South Lake Tahoe last week as a fallen hero at the age of 21.  This young man sacrificed all those years, all those memories, all those pleasures – all that life – in the service of his country. 

 He loved the Army and had a plan for his life – he’d serve his country as a soldier for twenty years, and then he’d come home and serve his community as a high school history teacher.

 From everything I’ve learned about Garrett Fant, he would have made a great history teacher.  His mother told a reporter that "His thought was that high school was the last stop for kids, and he wanted to influence people." 

He would have been a great family man.  His older brother remembers looking up to Garrett as if Garrett were the older brother.  Knowing full well the dangers that surrounded him in Afghanistan, his foremost attention went to reassuring his family that he was safe and secure.  His mother said "He always tried to protect me from the dangers of being over there…He was just someone that if you were his family or his friends - or his country - he gave you his all and loved you with everything."

Above all, Garrett Fant wanted to be a soldier.  His brother tried to get him to enlist with him in the Navy, but Garrett would have none of that.  He was all Army and had known from the time he was a little boy that’s what he most wanted to do. 

On Facebook, he listed his occupation as “grunt,” telling friends, “You can’t spell ‘Infantry’ without ‘Fant.’”  He was the top marksman in his class of 1,000.   

I wish I’d have known him.  I wish my grandchildren might one day have been in his high school history class.    

Instead, Army Specialist Garrett Fant takes his place in history, among nine generations of American heroes who sacrificed all those precious years to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves, to stand up to the bullies of the world, “to proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

In his farewell address at West Point, General Douglas MacArthur turned his attention to fallen heroes like Army Specialist Garrett Fant and with searing insight observed,

“Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world's noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

“His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man…

“But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words.  He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism.  He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom.”

And so Garrett Fant became a teacher after all.  As Shakespeare said, “this story shall the good man teach his son.” 

Succeeding generations of students at South Lake Tahoe High School, and also at Valley Oak High School in American Canyon, which Garrett also attended, will know his story.  Every Memorial Day in his home town, his name will be read with a special pride that his friends and neighbors will share.  For centuries to come, strangers will pass by his honored grave, adorned with flags and flowers and note the few years he had and the sacrifice he made, and be humbled by it and perhaps inspired by it to become better citizens.  No history teacher can do more than that.

To his grieving family, on behalf of a grateful nation, I can only say that you do not mourn alone.  Your pride in Garrett is shared by your community, your country, and by many history teachers who will tell his story to the latest American generation.

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House Floor remarks delivered by Congressman Tom McClintock in memory of Army Specialist Garrett Fant. House Chamber, Washington, D.C., October 13, 2011.

Congressman McClintock will hold a town hall meeting on Thursday, October 20th at 6:00 PM in Roseville.  The meeting will be held at Oakmont High School, in the auditorium.  The high school is located at 1710 Cirby Way, Roseville. 

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The House Natural Resources Committee today passed Congressman Tom McClintock’s legislation, H.R. 2915, the American Taxpayer and Western Area Power Administration Customer Protection Act of 2011.  The legislation repeals the 2009 Stimulus Act’s new $3.25 billion Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) loan authority, including the taxpayer bailout provision for failed renewable energy transmission projects.

“Recent events make it clear that billions of dollars of taxpayer funds have been placed in jeopardy to support companies that obviously lack the merit to attract private investments,” said Congressman McClintock. “These dubious interests rely instead on political connections with government officials to access taxpayer funds. As they collapse, the taxpayers end up holding the bag. It is time to require every sector of the energy industry to raise its own capital through its own merit rather than to perpetuate the crony capitalism that is now running rampant through this government.”

The legislation would specifically repeal Section 301 of the Hoover Power Plant Act of 1984, which was amended by the Stimulus Act to suddenly create the new borrowing authority. It would not apply to any projects already approved before September 15, 2011.

The legislation next will be voted on by the full House of Representatives.

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