Speeches

House Chamber, Washington, D.C., March 9, 2009. M. Speaker: I rise to honor the memory of Dr. Gregory Freydman of California.

Dr. Freydman spent most of his life seeking freedom for his family, and finally fulfilled that dream at the age of 72 when he legally immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union. He had been a renowned oncologist there and had risked his livelihood and his liberty to speak out against Soviet abuses.

House Chamber, Washington, D.C. March 6, 2009. M. Speaker:

I rise today in tribute to Rev. Wadahawa Singh Gill, who passed away last week at the age of 87.

For many years, Rev. Gill was the spiritual leader of the Sikh community in Northern California. He was an amazing man who not only ministered to the more than 100,000 Sikh faithful in the Sacramento region, he made himself a bridge between the Sikh community and the general public.

House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
March 5, 2009

Mr. Speaker:

We have all heard a great deal of rhetoric blaming the Bush administration for the nation’s economic woes, and I actually rise to join that chorus.

We all are painfully aware that the Bush administration increased spending twice as fast as it did under Bill Clinton. The Bush administration added $160 billion to the deficit through tax transfers with its first stimulus bill a year ago – despite warnings that it would do nothing to stimulate the economy. It didn’t.

House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
March 3, 2009

M. Speaker:

The Laffer Curve is a simple but elegant method of demonstrating how increasing taxes reduces economic productivity until a point of equilibrium is reached when further tax hikes actually reduce revenue.

If the tax rate is zero, tax revenues are zero. But if the tax rate is 100 percent, tax revenues also reach zero, because there’s no point in working.

House Chamber, Washington D.C.
March 3, 2009

M. Speaker:

I’d like to offer a word of caution about the law of unintended consequences.

Last week, this house passed the Administration’s proposal to allow homeowners to force banks to reduce the size of their mortgages and interest rates.

Millions of families – including my own – now owe more on our mortgages than our homes are worth – yet more than 90 percent of homeowners continue to make our mortgage payments in hopes of better days to come.

House Chamber, Washington, D.C., March 3, 2009. M. Speaker: Sierra Pacific Industries just announced the closure of its sawmill in Quincy, California, throwing another 150 families out of work.

They made it clear that the recession wasn’t the cause but merely the catalyst. The real cause is that their regulatory costs – and litigation because of regulation – now exceeds their profit margin. Two thirds of their harvest is tied up as a result.

House Chambers, Washington D.C.
February 25, 2009

M. Speaker:

When it was announced that Randolph Churchill had been hospitalized to remove a benign tumor, a parliamentary wag commented, “What a pity it is to remove the only part of Randolph that isn’t malignant.”

As I look at this bill, I can only remark what a pity it is to remove the only part of the nation’s education system that actually works.

House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
February 12, 2009

M. Speaker:

I rise again to urge the majority to consider very carefully the damage they are doing to our nation’s economy by passing this unprecedented spending measure.

There is still time to heed the warnings from economists across the nation that this bill will do long-term damage to the growth of our nation’s economy for many years to come.

This is not mere economic theory: it is the consistent effect every time and everywhere that governments have tried to spend their way to prosperity.