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Madame Speaker, as co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Serbian Caucus, I rise tonight to honor an outstanding Serbian-American, Captain (Ret.) George M. Vujnovich, who was recently awarded the Bronze Star Medal, for his heroic actions during World War II.

The Bronze Star is awarded to military service personnel for bravery, acts of merit or meritorious service.  When awarded for bravery, it is the fourth-highest combat award of the United States Armed Forces.  Captain Vujnovich’s participation in the planning and execution of Operation Halyard – one of the most successful air force rescue missions in history; and an operation so secret that the records were only declassified in 1997 – certainly exemplifies the heroism required to receive this prestigious military honor.

Captain Vujnovich served with the Office of Strategic Services; the predecessor of the modern Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the wartime organization charged with coordinating activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States military.   Operation Halyard evolved in wake of the Allied bombing campaign to destroy Nazi Germany's vast network of petroleum resources in occupied Eastern Europe.   The most vital target of bombing was the facilities located in Ploesti, Romania, which supplied 35 percent of Germany's wartime petroleum.  Beginning in April 1944, bombers of the Fifteenth Allied Air Force began a relentless campaign to blast the heavily guarded facilities in Ploesti in an attempt to halt petroleum production altogether. By August, Ploesti was virtually destroyed — but at the cost of 350 bombers lost, with their crews either killed, captured, or missing in action.

The assault on Ploesti forced hundreds of Allied airmen to bail out over Nazi-occupied eastern Serbia, an area patrolled by the Allied-friendly Chetnik guerrilla army. When the Chetnik commander, General Draza Mihailovich, realized that Allied airmen were parachuting into his territory, he ordered his troops, as well as the local peasantry, to aid the aviators by taking them to Chetnik headquarters in Pranjani, Serbia for evacuation.

General Mihailovich's first attempts to alert American authorities to the situation regrettably failed to produce action. Fortunately, fate would have it that when Mirjana Vujnovich, a Serb employee of the Yugoslav embassy in Washington, D.C., heard of the trapped airmen.  She immediately wrote to her husband, Captain Vujnovich, stationed in Bari, Italy.  As an American, descending from Serb parents, Vujnovich knew the region intimately and also knew how to escape from Nazi-occupied territory: he had been a medical student in Belgrade when Yugoslavia fell to the Axis powers in 1941, and he and his wife spent months sneaking through minefields and begging for visas before they finally escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe.

Captain Vujnovich made it his personally crusade to get the airmen home.  From the outset though, Operation Halyard encountered opposition from Allied leaders — from the U.S. State Department, from communist sympathizers in the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), even from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself.   It was an operation that seemed condemned from the start, but Captain Vujanovich’s persevered rather than let the mission die. His persistence not to be in vain; he eventually won out.

Even though the operation endured from August 9, 1944 through December 27, 1944, within only the first two days, Operation Halyard successfully retrieved 241 American and Allied airmen.  By the time the Operation was officially ended, Vujnovich's team had airlifted 512 downed Allied airmen to safety without the loss of a single life or aircraft — a truly impressive accomplishment.

Captain George Vujnovich’s recognition as a hero and valued asset to this country and the United States Air Force is long over due. Frankly, had the records of the operation not remained sealed until 1997, I feel certain Captain Vujanovich would have received this honor years ago. Nevertheless, the decades do not and cannot diminish the valor and patriotism of this extraordinary man.  I ask all my colleagues to join me now to honor this Serbian-American hero, to thank him for his dedicated service to our country and to congratulate him for winning the Bronze Star. Captain Vujanovich, I salute you.

Madam Speaker,

Today I rise to celebrate and honor the service of Army Master Sergeant Jeffrey Mittman for receiving the Osborne A. “Oz” Day AbilityOne Awareness Award.  The prestigious “Oz” Award is presented by the Committee for Purchase from People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled to an employee at a federal agency who demonstrates exceptional service promoting the AbilityOne Program throughout the federal, state and local communities.

Now, the National Account Manager for the National Industries for the Blind’s Midwest Region, Master Sergeant Mittman supports a mission of employment for others with disabilities by promoting the AbilityOne Program through the federal procurement process in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District. This patriot’s story is a remarkable one, for his story does not start nor finish here with this award.

Master Sergeant Mittman’s indefatigable commitment to serve his fellow Americans began as a soldier in the United States Army in 1989. Having fought in Operation Desert Storm, Operation Desert Shield, Operation Enduring Freedom, and in 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Master Sergeant Mittman was the All-American hero who never turned down defending his country. It wasn’t till his return to Iraq in 2005 as a special advisor to the Iraqi Department of the Interior, that he came face-to-face with death; changing his life forever.

Tragically, an improvised explosive device that exploded near his vehicle in Iraq, leaving Master Sergeant Mittman without a nose, lips, most of his teeth, and the majority of his vision. Since that time, he has endured more than 40 operations and spent over four years recovering physically and emotionally. To his great credit, he has traveled the country sharing the lessons he learned from these experiences with the world.

He is noted for saying it is the veteran who has to take that very first step to recovering and that he realized this after attending the Blinded Veterans Association Conference in 2006, where he met people who were blinded years ago who are now attorneys, teachers and business executives. After realizing life can be good in spite of having a disability, he decided to help others who also have disabilities find jobs and lead meaningful lives.

Master Sergeant Mittman, a 40-year old decorated warrior, husband of 17 years, father of two and outspoken military veteran was and forever will be an All-American hero whose determination and selflessness continue to serve our country and inspire our hearts. Today, we salute you.

Madam Speaker, the Washington Post the other day commented about the President's support of the $410 billion omnibus spending bill that's crawling through the Senate, and they said that it borders on the irresponsible for the administration to try to blame this on last year's administration because they are the ones that are going to sign the bill into law and spend the money.

In another newspaper here in Washington D.C., the Washington Examiner, they wrote "In quick succession, (President) Obama rolled out a $2 trillion financial services bailout, $2 trillion, a $788 billion stimulus package, the $13.4 billion preliminary bailout for automakers, a $410 billion spending plan to cover the rest of the current fiscal year, a proposed $275 billion foreclosure rescue plan, and a $3.5 trillion budget that includes a $634 billion fund for health care."

People in America, their eyes glaze over when they hear this. Trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that we don't have are going to be spent for all of these programs.

And so people say, well, how are you going to solve the economic problems facing this country if you don't spend that money? If we spend the money, we are not going to solve the problems. The economic conditions will continue to go in the wrong direction, but we will be loading on the backs of our kids and grandkids and future generations, higher inflation and higher taxes and a quality of life that won't be anything like what we have today.

The key to solving these problems is to cut government spending, and to cut taxes for every American so they have more disposable income, and to cut taxes on capital gains so people will take stocks, bonds and property they have and sell it and reinvest it someplace else, thus creating money for investment in business and industry so they can create jobs and cut business taxes across the board.

If we did those three things, we would have an immediate movement toward improvement in our economy, and we wouldn't be doing it by loading trillions and trillions of dollars on the backs of our kids and grandkids.

This chart here shows what's happened in the last several years as far as the growth in the money supply. It was pretty consistent up until the year 2000, and now it's going straight up. That means to every single American that the cost of living is going to go up because there's more money in circulation, fewer goods and services, and the cost of everything is going to rise because of the inflation that's created by printing all this money.

John F. Kennedy said that the way to solve these problems--back in the early sixties, a Democrat--that it was to cut taxes. Here's exactly what he said. "Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restricted tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget, just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today, and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest ways to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut taxes now."

The best way to raise revenues for the Treasury is to cut taxes. The best way to stimulate economic growth is to cut taxes. Yet, this administration is going to be raising taxes in one way or another on every single family in this country, either through the tax that is going to be on energy or the taxes they are going to levy on the upper income people. But there's going to be taxes levied on every single American, and that is the wrong way to stimulate economic growth.

What they are doing is they are throwing money at this problem, saying that that will solve the problem. It has never worked in the past. It will not work now.

Back in the 1970s, under Jimmy Carter, this was tried. And we ended up with double-digit inflation--14 percent inflation, 12 percent unemployment--and they ended up raising interest rates to 21.5 percent to stop the runaway inflation that was killing the economy of the United States, and they put us into another real bad recession. It wasn't until Reagan came in in 1980 and cut taxes across the board that we ended up with the longest period of economic recovery in the United States history.

History shows that cutting taxes in times of economic stress is the way to work our way out of this situation. And throwing money, trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, and move us toward a socialistic economy, is not the solution.

I hope my colleagues will look into history. Look at what John F. Kennedy, what Ronald Reagan, and others said about this, because it's extremely important that we profit from history.

Madam Speaker, we have an organization in this country called the Independent Sector. It's a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of charities, foundations, and corporate philanthropic programs collectively representing tens of thousands of charitable groups in every State across the Nation. The mission of this organization is to advance the common good by leading, strengthening, and mobilizing the nonprofit community.

The reason that I bring this up tonight is that the way that the administration, through the budget, wants to help fund health care reform is they want to reduce the amount that people can deduct when they make charitable contributions. And this organization that represents the Volunteers of America, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, all these organizations, says that if the legislation passes in the budget in its present form, they will lose $4 billion a year in charitable contributions because people won't be able to deduct the same amount that they've been deducting before when they make a contribution to these charities. And I think that's tragic because people who need help from the Salvation Army or the Red Cross or these other philanthropic organizations really need help, and if they can't get it from those organizations, the place they are going to go to try to get it is where?

The Secretary of the Treasury, Geithner, appeared before the Senate this past week, and he was asked about this, and he said, well, he thinks there might be other ways that they could fund the health care changes in this country without dipping into the charitable contribution deductions. Well, the head of OMB indicated, I think, yesterday on Face the Nation that Mr. Geithner probably wasn't right, that once the American people see how this money is going to be used, they'll understand it.

I don't believe that, Madam Speaker. I believe the American people, when they give money to a charity, want to make sure that that money is going to that charity and that they get their charitable deduction for that. If they don't get that charitable deduction, they're going to start cutting back on the money they give to charities, and the minute they start doing that, Madam Speaker, then you're going to see these charities start wanting for money because they won't be getting the money they have been getting in the past.

These organizations have said collectively they are going to lose $4 billion a year if the budget proposed by the administration and proposed by the House leadership and the Senate leadership, if that goes through. And it may go through tomorrow. Then these charities are not going to get that money, $4 billion in losses, and it's going to be borne by other institutions. And I submit to you it will be the local governments, the State governments, and probably the Federal Government. I think that's just dead wrong.

I want to end up tonight by saying one more thing, Madam Speaker, to my colleagues back in their offices. We have been increasing the money supply, printing more money very rapidly, and we are indebting the people of this country to the tune of trillions of dollars. The Secretary of the Treasury is going to have another $3 trillion that he's going to have to print to give to financial institutions to keep them above water. The budget that we're talking about, the bailout bill that we're talking about, the stimulus package, all of those add up to trillions of dollars more in spending.

If you look at this chart, you will see that the money supply in this country has been pretty level up through the year 2000, and then it starts going up like a rocket, and now it's going straight up. And what that means to the American people, and I hope the American people, if they happen to be paying attention, and I can't talk to them, I know, but if they happen to be paying attention, I hope they realize that the increase in the money supply is going to come directly to them eventually. It's going to affect them in higher taxes and higher costs of goods and services when they go to buy them. If you have more money in circulation, and we're looking at trillions of dollars more that's going to be printed, that money is going to be chasing

So I would just like to say to my colleagues, we really need to do something about spending. We have got to say to the administration and our colleagues in the House and the Senate it's time to cut spending. We don't need to spend more. We don't need to spend these trillions of dollars. We ought to be cutting taxes instead of doing that to stimulate economic growth, and we need to make sure that the American people and the future generations of this country are not saddled with more debt and hyperinflation.

There are so many things going on right now, Madam Speaker, that troubles me, it's not even funny. And it all comes down to spending more money and imposing more burden on the American taxpayers and the future of this country.

Madam Speaker, some people say, why are you guys down here every night taking Special Orders, talking about what's going on?

I'll tell you why. I know we can't talk to the American people, but we need to make sure our colleagues, and if anybody is paying attention out there in the hinterlands, know what is going on in this place because it affects every person's life in America, every man, woman, and child.

I have got a chart here, and this chart shows the money supply. It's hard for people to see back in their offices, but this is the money supply, and it's been pretty consistent all the way up through maybe 1995, and since then it started to rise. That's the amount of money we print and is in circulation. Just after the 2007 time period, it shot straight up. It's going up like a rocket.

Now, what does that mean? It means right now we have created currency in this country that's almost 300 percent of what it was just a year or two ago. So people say what difference does that make? If you print that much money, it won't hurt anything.

But it does. Because the amount of goods and services, the cars, the refrigerators, and everything else that we produce in this country, that's remaining flat right now because of the economy and the auto industry is going down. So we have got 300 percent, three times the amount of currency in circulation, but we don't have the goods and services going up at the same rate. So what happens? That means the cost of everything is going up, and that's called inflation.

Back in the 1970s we had inflation. It was double digit. It got up to 14 percent, and that led to 12 percent unemployment, which is worse than what we have today. And we ended up raising interest rates 20 to 21 percent because the spending had been out of control and we had to do something to slow down the inflation.

So here we have. We have the money being printed so fast that they can't keep up with it. In fact, I don't know how they buy enough ink and paper down there at the Treasury Department to do this. But every man, woman, and child ought to be concerned about this because the cost of government is going up so rapidly and the printing of money is going up so rapidly that they are going to have hyperinflation in this country.

My colleague Mr. Wolf from Virginia, I think he was here a couple weeks ago and he had a piece of currency from Zimbabwe and it was a multi-million piece of currency. They put so many zeroes on it, they had to reprint the currency just to take zeroes off. They just couldn't keep up with it.

Hyperinflation is what they had in Germany post-World War I. That is where people had to take bushels of money to the store to buy a loaf of bread, and every day the cost of everything went up this fast so that the people couldn't keep up with it.

So what we are facing today is a government where spending is out of control. We spent $700 billion on the TARP program; $14 billion on the auto bailout; $787 billion on the stimulus, over $1 trillion if you add interest; $410 billion on the bill that is over in the Senate. We have a budget coming up with $3.9 trillion and a $635 billion down payment on health insurance, a national health insurance program, socialized medicine.

Where is that money coming from? Well, we are borrowing it from China, we are borrowing it from Japan, we are borrowing it from other places in the world. We are borrowing it from the Social Security trust fund. But even though we are borrowing all that money, you can't keep up with the spending. And so what are they doing? They are printing more currency on a daily basis.

So you see this rocket ship taking off in the currency area, and it is not going to slow down, and what it is going to do is just lead to very high inflation, the cost of living going up. And it is going to affect every family in this country. It is going to affect the cost of education, the cost of gasoline, the cost of electricity, everything else.

So I hope my colleagues are aware of this. I hope they are aware that there are going to be a lot of tax increases as well. They are talking about putting a carbon dioxide tax in place that is $646 billion in new taxes. What that means is every time you switch on a light or buy a gallon of gas or do anything that is energy related, you are going to be paying a higher price for it because we are loading on the back of the taxpayers $646 billion in new taxes.

We are spending more money than you can imagine. We are adding to the national debt $12.3 trillion. People can't understand what that is. A trillion is a million million, so $12 trillion is 12 million million dollars. We are adding $12.3 trillion to the national debt, and that is more than we have added to the national debt from 1789 when we became a free country and had our Constitution to today. We are blowing money like it is going out of style.

When I tell people these things, their eyes just glaze over because it is too hard to comprehend. But what they do comprehend is higher taxes, more government spending, more pork-barrel projects and the kind of inflation that is going to lead this country down the road to socialism.

What we need to do, Madam Speaker, as I end up, what we need to do is we need to cut spending, cut out the pork and cut taxes and let the free enterprise system work.