Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, the bill we have before us, H.R. 4663, the Spending Control Act of 2004, causes me to say to my friends across the aisle, and I cannot help but take a little jab at them, our Republican friends control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House. Why can they not control spending? And will this bill make a difference?

I ask that question because there is a particular irony about this bill. This is a budget enforcement bill, but there is no budget to enforce. For the first time since 1974 when the Budget Act was first adopted, the party that controls both branches of the government, the Congress and the White House, is unable to get its act together and pass a budget. And now they propose new rules to the budget process if they cannot comply with the rules we have got.

This bill before us is hardly a consensus bill. There is a lot of dissension about it even as it comes to the floor. When it was filed, 28 amendments were filed with the Committee on Rules to change it. All but one of those amendments, which is my amendment, focused solely on spending as the source, the cause of the deficit that we are incurring today. We are supposed to have a deficit this year of over $521 billion. The prognosis has gotten a bit better, but it looks like it will be at least 430 to $450 billion, 1 year, a half trillion dollars. Only my substitute deals with the other side of the problem, and that is revenues.

Two rules of all the rules we will see today, two rules that stood the test of time, they have worked. They have helped us wipe out deficits. They did in the 1990s. One rule caps discretionary spending at fixed levels over the next 5 years. That was the rule that we put in effect in 1990, extended in 1993, and again in 1997; and it helped us balance the budget for the first time in 40 years. The other rule is what we call the pay-as-you-go rule, which requires us to pay as we go, that is, to offset new tax cuts and new entitlement increases by new revenues or by equal spending cuts so that they do not add to the deficit, pay-as-you-go, discretionary spending caps.

As I said, the base bill and all the amendments except mine focus entirely on spending and not at all on tax cuts as the source of the problem. Yet if we look at the period 2002 through 2011, the 10-year period that covers the first 4 years of the Bush administration, $2.3 trillion of our total fiscal reversal during that period has been caused by substantial tax cuts and related debt service; and that revenue deficit grows as tax cuts that expire are renewed and new tax cuts are adopted, as the Bush administration proposes and pushes for more.

This bill promises deficit reduction; but it ignores the elephant in the room, one of the chief causes now and well into the future, and that is the deficit in revenues.

Do we have a problem? You bet we have a problem. In the last 3 years of the Clinton administration, I remind everybody, we ran surpluses for the first time in 30 to 40 years. We paid off $400 billion in debt. In the first 4 years of the Bush administration, Congress has had to raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt three times, three times in 4 years, to accommodate President Bush's budget. Congress raised the ceiling by $450 billion in 2002; by $984 billion in 2003; and shortly, the process is already under way here, by $650 billion this year. In all of the last 4 years by $2.1 trillion in order to accommodate Mr. Bush's fiscal policy.

And these increases in the statutory debt ceiling are by no means over. They are part of a series. The Congressional Budget Office told us last March, when they examined the President's budget, that if we implemented, if we enacted that budget, the President's budget, we would have to raise the debt ceiling to $13.5 trillion in the year 2014. Not my number. It is the number of the Congressional Budget Office, which is a neutral, nonpartisan arm of the Congress.

So we have a problem; but this bill, unfortunately, does not deal with it. It takes off in pursuit of red herrings and Draconian solutions that will not work, if they were ever enacted; and I doubt they will be enacted. It trots out almost every budget process idea that has ever been thought of, but the two that have worked, the two rules that have worked so well that, as I said, we moved the budget from a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in 1998.

One is a double-edge PAYGO rule that requires both tax cuts and entitlement increases to be deficit neutral; and the other is discretionary spending caps over 5 years. They do not work unless you extend them out for some period of time. The caps in the base bill only go out for 2 years and are set to boot at unrealistically low levels. They are lower than the President's request, yet they provide more for transportation. I think the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) will tell you if he talks about the appropriations bind he is in right now, he cannot take much more reduction in the allocation of discretionary spending than we have already given him.

So we have got here a set of proposals that simply do not address the problem at hand, which is a substantial problem, except for one particular provision. All I am calling for and all I would recommend the House would do, but it would be a good day's work if we did it, is go back and reinstate the PAYGO rule, which worked so well in the 1990s; reinstate the 5-year spending caps, which worked so well in the 1990s; and then we can get to work on balancing the budget.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 seconds it the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 seconds to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) to respond.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 seconds to remind the gentleman that we have 1.3 million fewer jobs today than we had on March 1, 2001 at the beginning of the Bush administration. First amendment, first recession since the end of the Second World War with that result.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf).

(Mr. WOLF asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

(Mr. PRICE of North Carolina asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

(Mrs. CAPPS asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

(Mr. KIND asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of our time, 1\1/2\ minutes, to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, like a lot of Members, many of the provisions offered here are matters of first impression. I have not seen this bill before, so I would like to ask either of the cosponsors a question about a critical provision of the bill for their clarification.

It is my understanding that this amendment would require that after each commission completes its review of an agency every 12 years, that agency would be abolished automatically, would be extinguished unless, within a year, Congress reauthorized the agency. Is that correct? Am I reading it correctly?

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

You would have automatic abolition of an agency? It would simply sunset?

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I see the merit in having some sort of conscious, affirmative periodic review of the huge morass of agencies we have in the Federal Government; but I have some concern here that if a President disagreed with the Congress, you could have 289 Members of the House and 66 Members of the Senate who thought this agency should be reestablished, but the President could veto the bill that would reauthorize it; and, therefore, it would not come back into existence.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment, if adopted, would reduce the budget process to one page. And while the budget process has its flaws and has not worked well, it has certain advantages to it. First of all, it gives the House one of the few opportunities we have to make a judgment among competing priorities: how much money we will spend for education, versus how much money we will spend for housing, versus how much we will spend for defense.

Secondly, it gives us some kind of central mechanism where everybody can make a decision about whether or not we want to increase taxes and decrease taxes, and expedite the process for doing so by way of reconciliation. Or we may feel it is necessary that we reduce entitlement spending.

The committees of jurisdiction of those particular programs do not normally cotton to the idea of taking a cut out of the entitlement which falls under their jurisdiction. Once again, the reconciliation process in the budget helps us accomplish those ends.

And then, finally, one of the problems that I have, and I have served here 20 years, and I think many other Members would confess they have it too, is that everything we do is so broken up into so many different parcels and pieces that it is hard to get a picture of the whole. The budget resolution at least gives us a picture of the whole. It helps us keep a tab on spending, and it also allows us to know whether or not aggregate spending estimates and aggregate revenue estimates are accurate.

If you reduce spending to one total for discretionary spending, for example, you can claim that spending can be shrunk. But unless you have 20 different functions to show how that shrinkage will take place, how those reductions would be achieved and affected, then nobody can judge whether or not, or will not be able to judge as well whether or not, that spending reduction, which you are claiming is reasonable and pragmatic and achievable, is indeed that.

If you have to break it up into 20 different functions, it is one way the House gets together early in a session, expresses its priorities about those different functions; but it is also a way that we can tell whether or not that is realistic. On the other hand, if individual functions, whether it is defense or housing or health care or whatever, are understated well before this year's level, we may say that is not politically realistic, or that is not something I would like to see us do. And the budget resolution gives us an opportunity to vote on that as a House, one of the rare opportunities we get to express ourselves collectively.

That is why I would strenuously oppose the notion of reducing the budget process to this summary kind of process.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to simply say again, how do we know if the spending amounts that are provided for in the budget resolution in the aggregate are reasonable or attainable unless you break it down into their component parts and can see what is provided for defense and nondefense programs from entitlements and for discretionary programs alike?

This is not a good idea. It is a bad idea. It decimates the budget process, and I hope the House will reject it.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I would simply say if the object of what we are doing tonight is to try to put some starch into the budget process, put some structure into it so we can get our hands around spending, get our hands around revenues, this is the opposite direction we should go.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, once again, if we want to make the budget process opaque, more opaque, less transparent, then this will be the way to do it, but if you think we need more visibility, the House should assert more control, then we should have the kind of numbers we need to make honest judgments about the budget. We should stick at least with the process we have got. It is flawed, but this would be a travesty. This would destroy the budget process as it has existed since 1974.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I wish there were some procedure in the House where we could give a hand signal or maybe use a code word and incorporate by reference all of our comments previously made on the same subject. I have to repeat myself because this amendment is, to some extent, the same as the amendment previously offered. This amendment would eliminate the requirement that the annual budget resolution include 20 budget functions. Once again, this is one of the opportunities we have as a House collectively, all of us, to have a debate in-depth about our priorities, whether we want to spend more for education or whether we need to spend more for defense or highways, priorities that are big functions of our budget. It takes away that opportunity. It also takes away our perception into the budget to see whether or not it is adequate to provide for the many things we want to do.

Secondly, as I have said, there are a lot of centrifugal forces in this House. There is a lot of fragmentation of what we do. It is very hard in this House and in the Congress to keep a picture of the whole, of what is happening altogether. The budget resolution gives us the ability to keep the puzzle kind of together, so we can get a perception into what is happening altogether. This particular budget resolution would not even require that discretionary spending allocations be split between defense and nondefense.

It would simply call for a total of all new budget authority and outlays. So the House would forgo the opportunity to say we want to do more for defense while we are going to do less for nondefense in order to pay for the additional commitment to defense. It calls for an aggregate statement of revenues, but nothing with respect to the House's expression to the Committee on Ways and Means as to what those revenues might be, no reconciliation instructions, so a key function of the Committee on the Budget, a key means of exerting discipline and control in the institution, would be lost, and then a simple statement of the surplus or deficit.

To me this is letting the reins go, giving up what little control and structure we have got, what little ability we have got to keep a picture of the whole composed at all times. I think it is a bad idea.

If we want to do away with the budget resolution, let us just repeal it altogether because what this leaves in place is practically useless.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am just suggesting to my good friend and someone for whom I have great respect that he gives so much flexibility to it that it is limp when we get through with it. There is nothing left. It is a process without any teeth, without any structure, without any starch to it. It is almost meaningless. It is the last rites for the budget process. If we are going to do this we may as well just not do it at all.

A couple of speakers have noted that the functions that we designate in the budget resolution do not correspond to the 302(b) allocation made by the members of the Committee on Appropriations. That is true. That is an old, old compromise. If we dared back away from that compromise, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) would be on his feet, I am sure, protesting vigorously that usurpation of their authority on the Committee on Appropriations. But it is an opportunity.

When the Committee on the Budget and one party or the other party wants to propose new initiatives in certain areas, it might be education, it might be NIH in health care, it might be defense, it gives us an opportunity to make that proposal, to show what the consequences are for the bottom line and for trade-offs against other programmatic areas and then allows us to have a debate on that subject on the House floor.

These aggregate numbers do not signify anything. They do not really tell you what is going to be cut and what is going to be increased, and that is the problem I have. We do not get the process started with that sort of message and direction that the budget resolution now gives to the process and the opportunity it gives to the House as a whole to make a statement of priorities and have something of a debate on programmatic priorities for the next 1 to 5 fiscal years.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This would be making a distinction between defense and nondefense spending. This gives you one big aggregate for all discretionary spending. That is how far back it takes us and how little definition it leaves to what we end up doing. We come up with three or four big numbers and that is the end of the budget. The gentleman is suggesting we could do something much more elaborate, but this would be the only

statutory prerogative we would have which would mean that pretty soon we would probably not be doing any function allocations at all. It would not have any statutory basis. I am not saying they get great deference from the Committee on Appropriations today, but once we reduce the budget process to this, I doubt the Committee on the Budget would get any deference from the appropriators.

I yield to the gentleman from Delaware.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this bill would set an arbitrary cap on some of the most important spending in the Federal budget, the spending that supports Medicare, on which millions depend for their health care; the spending that supports Medicaid. All kinds of spending falls under the rubric of category of direct spending or mandatory spending, including debt service, the interest we pay on our national debt. So we fix a level that corresponds to the existing level of expenditure, and then every year it increases.

The gentleman does allow for the spending level to increase with the rate of inflation measured by the CPI. As everyone in this room knows, the cost of health care every year, for as long as I have known it, goes up substantially more than the consumer price index so that over time in holding Medicare to no more than the rate of growth of the CPI, while the rest of health care spending is going up at a substantially higher rate, this is going to erode away spending authority for Medicare. It is going to result in automatic cuts in Medicare and other programs, affected programs. If the cuts are not taken out of Medicare, they will have to come all the more out of other programs.

Secondly, since debt service, the interest we pay on the national debt, is included, we could have this anomaly: we could have a huge tax cut that would result in a substantial deficit, requiring us to borrow large sums of money. Interest on the principal for the additional debt would go up, and that increment over and above the entitlement cap would have to be taken out of other spending programs like the Medicaid or children's health insurance or TRICARE for Life, trade adjustment assistance. All of these programs fall under that category and would be subject to automatic cuts if we had any anomalous action like that.

So this is not a good idea. Certainly these are not programs we want to put in that kind of jeopardy. We would like to exercise some control over their growth, and we have from time to time in the past voted to reduce rates of expenditure to curb the growth in Medicare and Medicaid and these other programs. But to do it automatically, to do it mindlessly, to do it with a meat cleaver is not the way to go on these programs on which so many people depend.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In response to the gentleman's statement, it is still my understanding that child care, direct student loans, farm price supports, TRICARE for Life, military health care benefits, and trade adjustment assistance, among other things, would be subject to these automatic cuts. If there was some sort of growth over and above the cap that he has imposed, all of these things would get whacked unless Congress somehow intervened and saved them from being cut by administering cuts elsewhere in the budget.

It is not a good idea. It is not a workable idea. And I continue to oppose the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, the caps that are being proposed here could create shortfalls of billions of dollars over the next 10 years, triggering huge cuts. And let me tell the Members the programs that would be cut: veterans compensation, veterans pensions, food stamps, Medicaid, children's health insurance, childcare, direct student loans, farm

price supports, TRICARE for Life, military benefits, and trade adjustment assistance among others.

This is not a good plan. We do not need to put those in jeopardy of automatic cuts, and I oppose the amendment and urge others to do so also.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this particular amendment could have a perverse and unintended result, and that is it could lower, lessen the incentive for Congress to get its work done, knowing that if we could not come together and pass appropriation bills, all 13 of them, if we could not get them on the President's desk in time, why, it would be automatic. This continuing resolution would just automatically kick into effect.

Anyone bent upon sort of disrupting the process and preventing an appropriations bill that he thought was maybe too much or maybe too little could manipulate this result, manipulate the situation if this rule were in place. So I do not think it helps the process at all.

I think when we have to pass a continuing resolution, it is a bit embarrassing that we have to get up and say to the country and the public, as well as the President, we have not gotten our work done yet, so keep on spending money at the existing level. It gives us a strong incentive to go ahead and finally come to those final compromises that help us close the appropriations process.

So this would probably complicate, prolong the process, and lead to situations where we did not even pass appropriation bills because there would be an automatic reversion to the prior year's spending level.

It is not a good idea. It has been debated before, debated more thoroughly than it has been debated tonight, and there is a good reason it has never become law, it is not a workable or viable idea.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, the most important job of the House Committee on the Budget which I have the honor of being the Chair is really twofold. First is to put together and pass in the House a responsible, realistic blueprint to guide the spending and revenue decisions for the Federal Government. We did that. We completed a budget over a month ago when this Chamber adopted the conference report for the budget for fiscal year 2005. Getting a budget is difficult enough. Now comes the second part of the job and that is to ensure that you stick to it. Getting the budget means that you have been able to get a majority of Members to agree on the levels for spending, on the levels for revenues and to bring together those very different ideas because, trust me, there is no such thing as a perfect budget by any stretch of the imagination. My good friend from Florida reminds me of that every once in a while.

But we do get a document that tries to mold and shape the hopes and

dreams and the budget priorities for the Nation in a document, and then we work to stick to it.

Since the gentleman from Florida came on the floor, the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, let me say something about the House and our ability to stick to that plan. We have passed budgets in years past that have been difficult. We have dealt with terrorist attacks. We have dealt with a downturn in the economy. We have dealt with the need to borrow resources to deal with emergencies we never managed. We had to deal with new priorities no one had ever heard of, new Departments like Homeland Security; and new initiatives such as a global war on terrorism, a war in Iraq, and a war in Afghanistan. And I have to tell the Members that in each one of those turns, committees have worked together in order to accomplish that. There is no doubt that once in a while committees will have difficulty coming to agreement on certain priorities and ideas; but once we do it, there is general agreement and effort to stick to it. And when we talk about sticking to it, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, and his committee have done an excellent job of sticking to it.

We have increased spending over the last number of years at a rate that has been unprecedented, in many respects because we have had unprecedented need, particularly in homeland security, national defense, intelligence, and emergencies that we have had to deal with. But even the nondefense or nonsecurity accounts have increased at an alarming rate, twice the rate of inflation. And so it is no wonder that Members will come to the floor from time to time, we saw that debate earlier today, and say, look, spending is out of control.

Unfortunately, we often focus far too much attention and energy on just what we call the discretionary appropriation accounts, the 13 bills that the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations has to shepherd not only through the House floor but also through the Senate and to final passage. That process has been difficult. We are behind in that process, and I have no doubt the chairman will remind me that having this discussion probably puts us even further behind.

But we are having this debate, nonetheless, because once we have a budget, we also want to make sure we stick to it. And that is why an enforcement bill has come to the floor.

I will definitely report to my colleagues that I would much rather have this debate after the other body had passed the conference report, but they are tied in knots over there across the rotunda on the other side of the Capitol. Politics, Presidential elections, all sorts of things are tying up all sorts of items in the other body, going to make it very difficult for us to pass budgets, appropriations, get judges confirmed, all sorts of a myriad of issues that make that difficult.

As a result of having some difficulty in spending and having difficulty in getting a budget through the other body, the third item which I want to bring up is huge increases in what we call mandatory spending through our Federal Government. Mandatory spending, as most of my colleagues know, are those spending initiatives which are on auto pilot, meaning we have passed a law to fund a program, and unless we change the law, the funding continues. Medicare is probably one of the best examples of that. We just had a huge change in Medicare to provide a first-ever prescription drug benefit for seniors. It costs a lot of money, though, and that has grown much faster as a result than even many of the discretionary accounts.

So as a result, there are Members who come to the floor frustrated by the increases in spending, frustrated because there are times when the budget is not followed, and thinking that if we change the process on how we achieve the budget or if we change the process on how we discuss appropriation bills, that will solve everything. And I am part of that camp from time to time.

But I must remind all of us before we start this debate that when everything is said and done here today, it still comes down to how we vote. One can blame the process. One can blame the budget. One can blame the Committee on Appropriations. One can blame individual Members. One can blame past administrations. One can blame current administrations. But no matter what one blames, they had better look in the mirror today before they come down here to vote on anything and realize that spending increases when Members vote to increase spending.

And already the appropriation bills that we have seen cross this floor have had huge majorities, huge majorities, for very valid increases, in defense and intelligence, other issues that have come before our body. Why? Because the need is there. So those Members who come to the floor today and say let us blame the process or let us blame the procedure or let us blame another committee also need to take their fair share of the responsibility for how the process runs.

I believe that we need discipline, and we need enforcement of a budget once we get it. That requires what we used to have in this body, and that is caps in PAYGO. Caps in PAYGO, statutory caps in PAYGO, I believe, are necessary because it gives the force of law to what we have done. It makes sure that all three entities, the President; the Senate, the other body; and the House, are all together when the discussion occurs on spending, when the discussion occurs on taxes, when the discussion occurs on mandatory or entitlement increases. It ensures that everybody is there because we are all in this together. We cannot do one without the other. We cannot say it is only the Congress's prerogative because the President has to sign the check, he has got to sign the bill if, in fact, that is what he agrees to.

But it starts here in a process called the budget, called the appropriations process, and called the authorization process. So in order for us to deal with this, we are asking that the body today consider capping spending at the rate we just passed in the budget resolution, and just for 2 years, do not bind another Congress, just for these 2 years, and to also for really the first time address mandatory spending and its out-of-control nature by applying what we used to apply and that is pay-as-you-go to entitlements or mandatory spending. We believe this will help us. It will not be the be all and end all because there are still emergencies; there are still other ways that Congress spends money outside of that process. But this is one of the ways that we found in the 1990s to help ensure that spending control could occur.

Members are going to come to the floor with different opinions, and I respect those opinions. There is no question that people have a variety of ideas on how we should do this. But I would ask each and every one of them to remember that this is about each and every one of us, as Members, what our priorities are and how we vote. We cannot give that to another process. Nothing we do here today given to another process will, in and of itself, stop the madness of increases in spending that have been what many Members believe are out of control. The only way, when everything is said and done, is to cast our vote to control spending, and that is done in the individual processes of the bills that we consider here on the floor.

So we believe this is a work product worth consideration. There will be amendments to consider changes in the budget process and the appropriations process in order to help get a handle on spending concerns and on mandatory spending. But as I say, when everything is said and done, we have got to have a budget, we have got to enforce it, and we have got to vote that way on each and every bill in order for spending to be controlled.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Chairman Pro Tempore

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentleman from Ohio 10 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Putnam), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

(Mr. PUTNAM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Feeney).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

(Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), the chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, for the purpose of a colloquy.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, the chairman is correct. This will, in no way, limit the decision of the conferees for H.R. 3550, the level of highway and transit firewalls. It will be determined consistent with the fiscal year 2005 budget resolution and the contingency procedure contained therein in the conference report on H.R. 3550.

In either case, this is consistent with the fiscal year 2005 budget resolution, and it allows not as a ceiling but a floor to that conference report.

Mr. Chairman, I support the gentleman's amendment.

More than anything else, I just want to make an observation: There has been a lot of coming to the floor and saying the budget process is broken. Part of the reason that this amendment is being offered is because it is the appropriations process that cannot get done on time.

We have had so many years when appropriations do not get done on time, and, because of that, the threat hangs over for government shutdown. It is the reason why we are looking, grappling for a way to make sure that does not happen. But it is because of the appropriations process that with the budget process and other processes around here have some challenges.

So do not come down and just talk about the budget. It is also the appropriations process that has challenges.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot think of a good reason, other than nostalgia, to explain why we are still trying to complete our work from 2002. The rest of America has already celebrated the new year. They have already started to write 2003 on their checks. But for the House of Representatives, the calendar year has not turned.

Every year this House has the responsibility to pass the 13 appropriation bills that keep this government running.

Funding for education, health care, environmental protection, homeland security, national defense all must originate here. The scorecard from the last Congress shows that the majority could only pass 2 of these 13 bills. So we are here today to consider a sixth continuing resolution to keep the government open and running. We are here for one simple reason: The majority party in this House has failed. They did not do their job, and the American people deserve to know that.

Members of this House get up all of the time and give great speeches about how much they value education, about how no child should be left behind. But when it comes to actually funding education, the majority says maybe we will get to it later.

I just met with leaders from hospitals and home health care agencies and nursing homes in Massachusetts that are struggling just to hold on. They need relief and they need it now; but when it comes to actually funding our health care system, the majority says maybe we will get to it later.

Where is our commitment to our police, our firefighters and other first responders? Where is our commitment to environmental protection, and funding for our transportation and infrastructure needs? Certainly not in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, later is not good enough. We need to act now on the issues that matter to the American people. Indeed, we should have acted yesterday. As even senior Republican appropriators have pointed out, we are leaving ourself extremely underfunded in the area of homeland security. Take a look at port security, for example. Right now 21,000 shipping containers arrive in U.S. ports every day, each one big enough to carry a weapon of mass destruction, but less than 2 percent are actually screened.

As the Washington Post has reported, Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner has said there is virtually no security for what is the primary system to transport global trade.

Worse yet, the rule before us prevents Democrats from even offering amendments to correct that mistake and provide that critical funding. Somehow, the majority found time last year to pass huge tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, but not much else. We hear a lot of talk about homeland security, but we are not funding our homeland security needs.

This is a time for New Year's resolutions. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will resolve to bring our appropriation bills to the floor in a timely manner and let the House work its will, vote and move on. The American people deserve a House of Representatives that functions, that does the job given to it by the Constitution, and I hope that we can at least achieve that much during this new year.

Mr. Speaker, there will be a vote on the previous question, and I urge my colleagues to vote no on that previous question. A no vote will allow Democrats to offer important amendments to fund some of our vital interests.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I just want to say to the gentleman from California that I am sorry that my comments made him mad, but I will restate my position, that I believe that the majority party failed to do its job in the last Congress. You are in charge. You have the majority. You are supposed to pass these 13 appropriations bills and you failed to do so. As a result, here we are talking about our sixth continuing resolution; and we are underfunding education, we are underfunding health care, we are underfunding environmental protection, we are underfunding homeland security; and I think the American people are furious over the inability of the leadership of this Congress to lead. That is your job.

I would also simply point out to the gentleman that rather than adjourning early to get an early jump on Christmas shopping, we should have remained in session and worked out the differences with the other body; and we should have stayed here, remained here until we did our work.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 9 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the ranking member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

(Mr. OBERSTAR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the gentleman if there are any requests for time on his side?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me close for our side by again expressing our frustration on this side of the aisle that we are still dealing with last year's work. The fact that we are dealing with the six continuing resolutions before us today I do believe is a failure of the majority party's leadership in the last Congress, and it continues in this Congress. As we bring this bill to the floor, we continue to undercut and underfund education and health care and transportation needs as speaker after speaker has already said.

We are going to call for a vote on the previous question, and I am going to urge people to vote no on the previous question. This rule is unfair, it is undemocratic, it is arrogant, and this is an issue of fairness. The majority has waived the budget rules for themselves, but they have not waived those rules for the minority. This is another abuse of power, and maybe in his closing statement the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder), my friend, can explain why one set of rules applies to the majority and a different set applies to the minority in dealing with an issue of this importance. By defeating the previous question, we will restore some fairness to this debate, to this process, by applying the waiver of budget rules to the motion to recommit so that we can offer a meaningful motion to recommit and we can provide the funding, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) said earlier, to the SEC so that it gets the proper funding as authorized by the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. It also can provide much needed moneys for homeland security which, for all of our talk about homeland security, we continue to underfund important needs. It provides important moneys for veterans medical care. Everybody talks about how we are committed to veterans, and yet here we are again moving forward on a bill that underfunds veterans medical care and we are not even being allowed an opportunity to correct this. So I would urge all of my colleagues to vote no on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment into the Record just prior to the vote.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, let me just point out, the name of our party is not the Democrat Party. It is the Democratic Party. We would appreciate it if we would at least be called by our proper name, okay?

I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, what is happening here today is that the democratic processes in the institution that is supposed to represent the finest of democratic traditions in the world are being mutilated, and I want to explain what I mean by that.

The majority party for the last year has been able to prevent this House from making any significant decisions whatsoever on 90 percent of the domestic budget. They have succeeded in preventing the education, health and labor bill from coming to the floor for a vote. They succeeded in preventing the science budget, the housing budget, the veterans budget and others from coming to the floor.

And now that we are past the election, they are now doing two things. By this resolution before us today, they are making it possible for the House to consider two resolutions, both of which will be sent to the Senate. The first resolution will continue the authority to keep the government open for 1 month, and the second resolution will be used as a vehicle to which the Senate will then attach all of the remaining appropriation bills as they have been worked out in the Senate. It will be attached to that vehicle and then sent back here for an up-or-down vote, and no Member will have any opportunity to affect that package in any way whatsoever. That will mean that we will have gone an entire year without any degree of accountability for the actions of either the majority party or the minority party. Our last opportunity to affect the content of that budget comes today on these resolutions. We are being denied again an opportunity to provide any meaningful alternative to the proposition that is being put together by the majority party.

The House rules say that if the Committee on Appropriations has not passed what is called a 302(b) allocation under which it takes its spending authority and allocates that authority to the 13 different subcommittees, if the committee has not done that, then the rules of the House say that the House cannot consider an appropriation bill. The Committee on Rules agreed to waive that provision for the majority, so they are allowing the majority to bring a bill to the floor allowing for a huge amount of spending, but they did not afford the same privilege to the minority. That means that we cannot offer any meaningful amendment to the funding level being provided by the majority.

There are reasons for rules. Whether you are talking about a New York Giants-San Francisco 49ers game or whether you are talking about the House floor, the purpose of rules is to see to it that everybody is treated the same. What this rule in essence says is that there is only one team that can even touch the ball; that is, the Republican majority team. And it says the Democratic team can have no opportunity whatsoever to have any impact on the outcome. That destroys the ability of this place to be a legitimate representative body.

After the election, I was watching McNeil-Lehrer, and I noticed in the panel that they had, the moderator asked the panel, what were the roles going to be for the Republican and Democratic Party after the election. When they discussed the Democratic Party, Tom Oliphant, the distinguished columnist, said, ``Well, they are now the minority party and so it is their responsibility to offer alternatives to the majority party's propositions.'' That is correct. But we are being denied by this rule by the majority party the opportunity to offer meaningful alternatives. That is bad for us, but it is also bad for the majority party because it means that there is no way to hold the majority party accountable for its decisions and there is no way to judge whether their decisions or ours are better, or more in tune with the country's needs. That is a disastrous result in what is supposed to be the most representative body on the face of the Earth.

If we had not been boxed out by the illegitimate action of the Committee on Rules, what we wanted to do is to offer a simple amendment which would put the House on record supporting expenditures which the majority party has already voted for on the supplemental. We wanted to make certain that the $2.5 billion in homeland security items, for port security, for border security, for FBI computers, et cetera, we wanted to make certain that those contingent appropriations which were frozen by the President, we wanted to give the House an opportunity to say that those items should be provided in this continuing resolution. The President has stonewalled on those $2.5 billion worth of items.

And we also wanted the House to reaffirm its support for $275 million of additional veterans medical care, for $200 million additional funding to fight terrorism in the Middle East, which we would have provided to Israel. The election reform money which both parties posed for political holy pictures about early on, we wanted to provide that. And we are being denied the opportunity to provide all of it. None of that adds to the spending level of the Republican-approved budget resolution. It does add to the level in this bill, but this bill is substantially below that resolution. Yet we are being denied the opportunity to strengthen the homeland security of this country because of the partisan needs of the majority party. I think that is illegitimate.

The other thing we wanted to do is to see to it that the Securities and Exchange Commission is funded at the level promised in the Sarbanes-Oxley bill so that we could in fact put our money where our mouth is and afford investors decent protection from corporate fraud in their balance statements and in their accounting. We are being denied by the Republican majority the opportunity to do that as well.

That is why we are going to be asking this body to vote against the previous question on the rule so that we

can in fact offer this legitimate amendment, to offer these items which all of you, at least 90 percent of you on the majority party side of the aisle have already voted for. The items I am asking people to allow have already been supported by 90 percent of the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House. I do not think that would be too much to ask if this House were a legitimate democratic body, which apparently the House is not. Democracy in this House is being shredded. The Republican Party is simply afraid to vote on these issues because they know that they would either lose the vote or else have a substantial segment of the American people saying to them, ``What in God's name were you thinking when you turned those items down?'' This is an illegitimate action, an illegitimate, arrogant and antidemocratic, small ``d,'' operation, and the majority party ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Mr. Chairman, let me just suggest to the gentleman from Maryland who raised the question about 1997, there is a big difference between imposing PAYGO on the revenue side in 1997 versus doing so today, and the big difference is doing it in 1997 did not result necessarily in a big tax increase. Doing it today, as the minority party would like to do, would absolutely result in a huge tax increase because of the provisions in the Senate. That is a big difference. A huge tax increase versus not having a huge tax increase is a big difference.

Let me just say, I congratulate our chairman and the members of the committee who got this bill to this point on the floor. It is so important that we find a way to control and limit the growth in spending for a number of reasons, as this bill does, but I think that one of the main reasons is it is just so fundamentally important and incumbent upon us to be adopting policies that allow the American people to maximize economic growth and prosperity, opportunity for themselves, for their wages to grow and their standard of living to improve. That is what we ought to be all about.

Well, the empirical evidence is very clear that one of the greatest threats to that kind of prosperity comes from excessive government intervention in the economy. The government intervenes and threatens economic growth in lots of ways, but the two biggest ways that the government does that is through excessive government spending and excessive taxes.

On the spending side, I think we ought to acknowledge that on the margin, excessive growth spending results in less economic growth. That is what happens. It is because the government essentially misallocates capital.

Let us face it. When we are here in Washington spending money, what we are doing is allocating capital based on political needs. Members of Congress tend to vote to spend money on that which they think will help them get reelected. That does not make us bad people. That is the natural tendency of a represented body. That is what governments do. But what it means, this political self-preservation, what it ends up meaning is that the excess spending of other people's money, by the way, might maximize incumbent retention, but it certainly does not maximize economic growth. And I think that is what we ought to be all about here.

In fact, the tendency is forever more government spending. We see that now we are spending over 20 percent of GDP; whereas, just 3 years ago it was only 18 percent. We have got larger deficits now. The government is growing faster than the economy. All the things point in the same direction. We need some limits on spending growth. That is what this is all about.

Let us keep in mind that the caps that we have on discretionary spending in this bill, the PAYGO provision that we have on mandatory spending, there is no spending cuts. Nothing is cut. Frankly, I would like to cut some spending. I wish there were, but there is not.

And we all know that there is no guarantee that the caps will even hold. If we could get them passed and signed into law, you know, Congress usually has a way of busting the caps, but what they do and the important role that they can play is they help on the margin to provide a break on the rate of growth of spending, and that is what is so important.

I mentioned the other big way in which government intervention harms economic growth, and that is excessive taxes. And there is just no question. The evidence is overwhelming. And the good news is that when we have taken the measures of lowering the tax burden as we did, if we can make those tax cuts permanent, we can continue to enjoy the tremendous economic growth that is underway right now.

So I urge my colleagues to reject the Democratic substitute and support this underlying bill.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time, and I commend him for this amendment.

If we are serious about getting spending under control, we simply have to address the mandatory side. It is as simple as that. In 1963 mandatory spending was 25 percent of the Federal budget. Today it is over 60 percent; and it is on its way up in absolute terms, as a percentage term. It is growing faster than any reasonable measure. And to allow, as this amendment does, for it to grow at the sum of the rate of growth of the population and inflation, allows us to maintain the level of benefits. It just puts a break on the out-of-control spending.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Chairman, this is, I think, just a matter of responsible government. This is a very good amendment. It is responsible because the status quo is not. It is not responsible to have the threat of a government shutdown looming over this process. It is not responsible to have the American people wondering whether or not government services are going to be suspended, whether or not important functions are going to be disrupted. That is what is irresponsible.

What is responsible is to say if we are unable to come to a resolution and pass a new appropriation bill, then we will, by an act of Congress, continue under the previously enacted appropriation bill.

Contrary to my good friend and a colleague I respect, the gentleman from Florida, I do not see any constitutional problem with this whatsoever. It still is an exercise in Congressional authority in establishing the level of appropriations, but it happens to do so at the previous year's level. There is nothing in the Constitution that says we have to change the level of spending from one year to the next, so I tend to disagree with that.

The other problem I have with the status quo and the reason that I like this amendment so much is that in the absence of an automatic continuing CR, let us face it, we know what happens. There is a big game of political chicken that happens.

If we do not have an agreement, there is a big tension, a big question about which side is going to get the blame if there is a government shutdown. If one side thinks there is political gain to be had from precipitating a shutdown, it has an incentive to precipitate one, to cause it. That goes back to the issue of responsible government. That is not the way we ought to be running this place. So that is a second thing.

Here is a third reason why I think this makes a lot of sense, and some of my colleagues do not like this reason. But the fact is sometimes we have operated for months on end with a continuing resolution, continuing spending at the previous year's level. And do you know what we discovered? No huge outcry. No great catastrophe. American society did not collapse, it was not the end of the world. We discovered that basically freezing spending at the previous year's level in many areas was no big deal.

Now, if you are interested in more spending, that is a problem. But if you are interested in getting spending under control, this is a very good amendment, and I urge my colleagues to support it.