Congratulating the Interim Government of Iraq on its forthcoming assumption of sovereign authority in Iraq.

Mr. Chairman, I certainly have no objection to the gentleman's withdrawing the amendment.

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

As I was just informing the House, Mr. Chairman, I have, obviously, no objection to what the gentleman wishes to do. I understand all of his sentiments. This process needs to be fixed.

If the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) will remember, we had a conference in 1997 when we did the balanced budget agreement of 1997. Most of the budget principles, when they were affected, the subcommittee chairmen of the Committee on Appropriations came. It would be good if we could get together again, something like that, where you do have interest from all of the House, and we could sit down and I would hope in a nonpartisan way try to come up with a better process than we have right now, because the process we have now is in the ditch.

I would still have problems with the gentleman's amendment because it does not provide for the full double-edged PAYGO. It has now a provision in it that changes the fiscal year to November 1. I do not quite understand why the gentleman would want to do that.

But, nevertheless, it is a moot point now. We appreciate the gentleman's removing it from consideration. There are some ideas in there I do agree with. For example, the gentleman would tell CBO not to assume that expiring tax provisions are not going to be renewed. They are most likely going to be renewed, and that is the way the projection ought to be carried out, I think. And so I agree with a number of those provisions like that in the gentleman's proposal.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control that time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition. I should claim it before the gentleman completely commits me to the support of his amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have no great objection to it, it is true, simply because I think CBO already does this. You get every year the economic forecast and budget outlook. You get one in January. You get the President's budget again. There will be one coming up in August. The levels of entitlement spending are there. It may not be in quite the format you anticipate here, but if you want to go back to the previous year's volume and lay out what spending was that year, you can find projected levels in the baseline. It can be done.

Mr. Chairman, I will not object to this. I will accept it. But I honestly think it is redundant to what CBO is already doing and already providing.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, that is an excellent idea. The three of us can sit down with CBO and our staff and come up with the information the gentleman wants, and we will not be bound by statutory language, but by a good-faith commitment to get it done.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, we have heard some eloquent statements from members of the Committee on Appropriations, largely Republican members of the Committee on Appropriations, to the effect that the President already has, as they put it, three bites at the apple. This gives the President a fourth bite, and, believe me, a big bite.

This clearly is a shift of leverage from the House and the Senate, the Congress, to the Presidency. The President would emerge from this kind of deal with much, much greater authority in dictating what the budget is going to be. You have heard it more eloquently from members of the Committee on Appropriations, what the results would be in determining priorities. This definitely would be a big shift.

Now, would it make the budget process any stronger, any more effective? My concern is, contrary to the belief that it might streamline the process by elevating the status of the budget resolution, I think it would probably prolong the process, protract the process. As a result, we would find ourselves with less time to do appropriation bills because it would take a much longer time to get the budget resolution done, because not only would we have to agree among ourselves, from party to party, we would have to agree with the White House.

There is some advantage to that, trying to bring us together; but I think there is a lot of disadvantage, and there is a lot of room for chicanery. There is a lot of room for manipulating the process if we do it, and it could result in a protracted budget process, such that every year we will be, as we are now, in the heart of the summer, trying to pass appropriation bills before the fiscal year ends.

This has been around the track a number of times. It has a certain appeal to it, until you begin considering all the ramifications and the transfer of power that it would effect, a very subtle transfer, but a real one.

I would suggest this is an idea that we should not adopt.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to respond to that.

Mr. Chairman, I do not know what bill the gentleman is referring to, but the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) proposed this idea some time ago. I never did support this idea. I never have.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

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

Mr. Chairman, I honestly fail to see what we will accomplish, except protracting the process; what we will accomplish positively by making this concurrent resolution a joint resolution that has the effect of law. I really do not know what will be different from what we have right now, except we would have to come to some agreement with the White House much, much sooner in the year than we otherwise have to.

What is going to be different? The statutory? What would be different about it?

But that is done already under existing law.

Sure. We would waive them again, put it in a bill, send it to the White House, the President would sign it.

Well, I am convinced it will prolong the process, complicate the process, and lead to less results rather than better results. It is something we can long argue about.

I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, like many of the amendments that were offered to this base bill, I have only had the chance to peruse quickly this one. This is an idea that has been around the track before. In the late 1980s, early 1990s, we were searching for ways to get our hands around the problem. This is one of the things that was proposed by several different people in several different variations.

Anyone who tried to implement this and have legislative counsel draw it in a form that would be truly enforceable ran into multiple complications. It is maddeningly complicated, as the gentleman can tell from reading the bill. The bill takes it a step further than any version of this idea I have ever read before, and it taxed all my concentration here on the House Floor to make it from the first page to the last page, and I am in a maze. I do not really know how it works.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, keep in mind that other body called the Senate moves in a separate orbit from this body, and somebody over there is going to have a different idea, and there is going to be an entry under a different program. When we go to conference, the conferees are going to have a different idea, and the bookkeepers around here are going to be switching credits from account to account, taking back credits as the money that was saved is now spent. The project that was going to be killed or cut is now restored, and it becomes a nightmare.

That is why this idea has had all of the longevity of a lead balloon. It has never gotten off the ground.

Mr. Chairman, if one could keep the trail of it, and that is the problem.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the core idea is basically an appealing idea and lots of Members around here have had the experience where they have found something that they thought could be a legitimate saving, they have offered the amendment and prevailed, only to see the money is spent somewhere else. I disagree with the gentleman when he said a little while ago, and I think it was in a moment of zealousness, that if the savings were taken out of, say, the Cleveland Rock and Roll Museum, it would have to be spent somewhere else. It does not have to be spent somewhere else; it can be saved, and this mechanism was a way on to sort of lock box money, so that it could not be used again.

But there are so many moving pieces. We have an authorization bill, an appropriation bill; a House and a Senate conference committee, and any time anybody makes any kind of change or different entry, there has to be an adjustment. This is a $2.2 trillion budget, and I think the bookkeepers, their minds would be boggled trying to keep account of this, as mine was when I was trying to read the gentleman's bill.

So I do not discredit the idea, it is just the mechanism for enforcing it and truly making it work is so complicated, I think it collapses upon itself.

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

Mr. Chairman, to close I yield the remaining time to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, but I may not oppose the bill. I simply claim the time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I have actually sponsored legislation like this in the past. I have voted for it and argued for it on the House floor. When we had the vote on the line item veto, I came over here and tried to offer an alternate amendment to it and argued to the House, the other side principally, that if they would adopt this, and the Supreme Court did what I predicted they would do and held it unconstitutional, then this would be in place as the alternative. We would have it by now if that had been attempted, the bill passed. And that was not put in it.

There was a strong suspicion on my colleagues' side that if we put that in, the Senate would take out the line item veto and pass the rescission provisions. In truth, there are certain Senators who are probably laying in wait for this rescission provision already.

We did add some features to it that I would recommend for your consideration. One is when it came through the Committee on Government Reform we added a provision that would not only allow spending to be treated this way, but also targeted tax cuts. Because these targeted tax cuts are often tax expenditures and they were defined as tax cuts which had a beneficiary class, a few of them. I thought it was a good idea and a good improvement on the bill.

We bring these tax bills over here to the floor, they are not amendable. We vote on them up or down. At least on the appropriations bill, if one wants to, they have an opportunity to go after individual items. Instead, the tax bills have all kinds of provisions.

We also had some provisions in it about how you could break out for separate treatment all or certain parts of the package if one could get a petition with so many Members. This is an idea that has been around and around the track, and it is actually an idea that has been embellished and improved as it went around the track. I am not quite sure how many of those ideas there are in this particular version of it, but I recommend those for my colleagues' consideration.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

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

Mr. Chairman, this substitute would extend the so-called PAYGO rule

through September 30, 2009, to require that both the cost of all net direct, mandatory or entitlement spending increases and all tax cuts both, this is two-edged, double-edged PAYGO, enacted during a session be fully offset. In other words, this amendment would reinstate the rules that expired two years ago, the rule that is applicable to entitlement increases, the rule that is applicable to tax cuts known as the PAYGO rule.

In addition, this amendment would set total discretionary spending limits for 2005 and 2006 equal to the levels in the Democratic budget resolution which we offered on the House floor a few months ago. There are no total funding caps for other years.

Like H.R. 4663, it specifies that annual mass transit and highway funding for each year through 2009 will be set at the levels also included in the House-passed transportation reauthorization bill, known as TEA-LU.

Mr. Chairman, in the 1980s and 1990s, as we have struggled with deficits and as the effects of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings fizzled out, various rules, some of which have been surfaced on the House floor tonight, were proposed and tried. Two, however, emerged as meritorious and were included in what became the Budget Enforcement Act of 1991. It was a spin-off from the Bush Budget Summit in the year 1990. These were the disciplinary tools to implement the Bush Budget Summit Agreement, which really has not gotten the credit it is due for laying the foundation for what we accomplished in the 1990s. Neither have these rules gotten the full credit of their due, but they got a nice accolade from a source who admitted that he was a cynic, if not a skeptic, at that time, Chairman Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve.

He told our committee, the Committee on the Budget, just a few weeks ago when we asked him about the renewal of these rules, if he thought from his observation as an outside observer of the budget that these were worthwhile tools. He said, you know, I was a skeptic. I did not think they would work. I thought they were diversionary tactic, but I have been proven wrong. They were remarkably effective.

And when we questioned him and asked him, he said, I would reinstate both rules, both the discretionary spending caps, and I would reinstate the pay-as-you-go rule, which provides that if you want to have a tax cut when you have got a deficit, then you have to make it deficit neutral; you have to have an offset. You either cut entitlement spending one place in the budget, or you increase revenues as an offset in another place.

And by the same token, if you want to enhance an entitlement, you have got to identify a revenue stream to pay for it, or you have to have a commensurate cut and another entitlement program elsewhere in the budget so that in all respects, they are deficit neutral at the end of the session.

These two rules, the PAYGO rule, the double-edged PAYGO rule and the statutory spending caps on discretionary spending, are the heart and soul of this particular substitute that I am offering here. This cuts to the very core.

Rather than go through all of these convoluted rules, let us go back to two rules that work. Let us be pragmatic. Let us pick from the past experience that we have had those rules that contributed the most to our success in the 1990s, and after all, we moved the budget from a $290 deficit to a $236 surplus in six fiscal years, and these two rules helped us do it.

They have both expired now. We could do a world of good for the budget process, for the budget, for the deficit, by reinstating these two rules, and really, it is all we need to do that and fixing realistically discretionary spending caps.

Let me say, we proposed 5 years of spending caps. The chairman has reduced his effort to just 2 years. In an effort to get something that he could possibly pass over there, he went with two years. I really do not think we have effective discretionary spending limits unless we have longer terms than that. So we have a 5-year spending limitation on discretionary spending, and I should acknowledge that we have set this a bit above current service, a bit above the CBO baseline. Why did we do that? Because we fully accommodated the President's defense request, nondefense discretionary, and our cap is pretty close to baseline, pretty close to current services, just a bit over.

Total discretionary is somewhat more in excess of the CBO baseline because we followed the President's defense members. We put in the $50 billion this year for the Iraq and Afghanistan and supplemental expenses. That is realistic, and there is one rule that we learned in the 1990s we should apply here, too. It applies to the 1997 budget which was uniquely successful when we set the statutory caps on discretionary spending at a very, very tight and unrealistic level.

When we got to the ideas, we fudged on them substantially and that is primarily because partly because we set them too tight to start with. Here, we have set them realistically. We have got two rules that work. They have proved their worth.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve says I do not see why you would not reinstate them and make the PAYGO rule in particular applicable to tax cuts as well as entitlement increases. I submit to the House, if we want to do something tonight, if we want some concrete, valuable outcome for all of our efforts, these two things would do a world of good, and we could leave here feeling that we had done something good for the budget and something successful tonight.

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

Could the Chair please advise me how much time I have?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, once again what we are trying to do here is to cut through all the rhetoric, go through all of these complicated rules, sometimes convoluted rules, and come up with two basic rules, two pragmatic rules that have proven themselves over a period of 10 years to work and work well. Indeed, they were part of the success we enjoyed in the 1990s when we moved the budget from a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in the year 2000.

First of all, we would impose a statutory cap on discretionary spending at a level that we think is realistic. And what do we mean by that? We take current services, basically treading water, with inflationary adjustment, and we add to it the Bush defense budget. But we want to make a point here, and that is this is the totality of domestic nonhomeland discretionary spending in the budget. This is one- sixth of the budget. Wipe it all out, you do not have an FBI, you do not have a court system, you do not have a Park Service, you do not have highways; but you still have a deficit, notwithstanding the fact you have wiped the whole thing out.

If you look back over the last 4 years, what is the source of this spending that everybody is decrying tonight? What you find is it certainly is not domestic nonhomeland security; 383, 382, 383. Now, Mr. Bush said he would like to cut it down to $376 billion. Well and good. This is one of the reasons the appropriators are out here tonight. They are struggling with the attainment of that goal. That saves $7 billion on a deficit that is estimated at over $400 billion next year. That is how much blood you can squeeze out of this turnip.

Where then have the cost increases come from? This chart tells it all. These bar charts show 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and they show that 90 to 95 percent of the increase in spending in those four fiscal years occurred in defense, homeland security, and the response to 9/11, not in what we call domestic nondefense discretionary spending. Therefore, the cap will have an effect, but not a great effect.

Basically, what we have done is we have capped nondefense discretionary spending at a current services level. We provided, as I said, realistically for the Bush defense budget for the other half of discretionary spending in the cap we have set.

Complicated chart. It says one thing in particular. When Bush came to office, when the President came to office several years ago, the Bush defense budget, the defense budget for the next 10 years was $3.6 trillion. Today, by our calculation, it is more like $5 trillion. We have seen defense spending go up over that time frame by $1.4 trillion.

And what about revenues? This is where the Bush administration told us revenues would go if we had tax cuts as we did in 2001, 2002 and 2003; that they would follow this blue dotted line. They have not followed the blue dotted line. They have taken a precipitous decline downward over this period of time from over $1 trillion to less than $800 billion in a period of about 3 or 4 fiscal years.

So if you want to solve the problem, you have to get to the source of the problem. You have to go to the budget and look at where the problem exists, and you cannot rule out revenues and expect to resolve a $521 billion estimate. That was the last official estimate we got from OMB of a deficit for this year.

That is why we have, number one, spending caps on discretionary spending at realistic levels that accommodate for defense. Get real. We are not going to be reining in those accounts by any substantial amount in the near future, given our obligations that are still being worked out.

And, secondly, we have acknowledged that revenues are a significant part of the problem. Indeed, when we resolved the problem of the deficit in the 1990s, and CBO looked back on it, they said 48 percent of your success was due to the fact that you were able to enhance revenues, 52 percent was due to the fact you curbed spending. Those two together produced the phenomenal results we enjoyed in the 1950s.

Here it is right here. It can be done. The Clinton administration came to office and outlays were 22 percent of GDP. When he left office, outlays had been reduced to about 18 percent of GDP. Revenues were about 17 to 18 percent of GDP. They were taken up over 20 percent of GDP. And there is the measure of the success in the Clinton administration right there, the $200 billion surplus we have been talking about.

And here is what happened with the Bush administration. Revenues have plummeted and spending outlays have gone up. But outlays are still below historic norms. Revenues, however, are pretty close to historic levels. Income taxes, as a percent of GDP, are about where they were in 1950.

So you have to do all these things to have a successful budget process package, and that is why we suggest to you we have got before you now in this substitute a package of two simple and basic rules which we say to you pragmatically worked, worked phenomenally well, and ought to be reinstated so we can tackle this difficult problem and approach it and try to begin working down the deficit.

I would suggest to the House that this would be the simplest way and the best way to resolve this whole debate. Adopt this substitute and wrap it up by reinstating the PAYGO rule with a double edge applicable to tax cuts and spending increases alike.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the minority leader.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

For those who have voted against the previous amendments dealing with automatic extension of continuing resolutions, dealing with expedited rescission, for various other reasons they should be aware that this budget reincorporates all of those other provisions which they found onerous and objectionable in the past and would instate them in a bigger bill.

The chief feature of this bill which is objectionable is the effort it makes to put a cap on entitlement spending. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, if enacted, this particular provision would trigger the most severe budget cuts in modern history, calculation by which it would require entitlement cuts of $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years.

There are a couple of things to be aware of. When they say they are capping entitlement, they are capping not only entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid; they are also capping interest on the national debt. So one can have a result that certain Members would seek to have a large tax cut and succeed, which would increase the deficit and, therefore, increase the national debt and result in higher interest payments. And those interest payments would then have to be accommodated within the cap that will be imposed on entitlement spending.

Take also the level at which the cap is set and how it treats the Medicare program. The cost of the new Medicare drug benefit enacted last year to real spending occurs until the year 2006. The cap will be set at 2005 spending levels. So there will be a substantial amount of additional spending for Medicare which will have to be recouped from cuts in entitlements like Medicare.

This bill is full of anomalies that could have disastrous effect upon the programs in this country upon which people depend.

I will come back and explain further why this bill should be defeated soundly.

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to correct the record. Earlier I said that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities had done an analysis of this proposal and found that it would cut entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicare and TRICARE for Life by $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. They have done a revised study. It was correct. They have revised that study and their revised study shows that the cut will only be $1.551 trillion. That is in entitlement programs. It comes out of child nutrition, its comes out of TRICARE for Life, it comes out of veterans benefits. Across the board people will be hurt.

I did not mention earlier the discretionary spending. Discretionary spending in the Hensarling proposal would increase each year at 2.1 percent a year. At the end of the 10-year period of time, because they take it out of the full 10-year time frame, this substitute would limit discretionary spending to $220 billion below what the President has recommended. And one of the reasons we do not have a budget right now is we are still struggling with the numbers the President has prepared, trying to bring it within the framework of what he has recommended.

So this would have severe consequences; and it would have severe consequences upon, in the words of the AARP, the health and economic security of millions of vulnerable Americans.

Finally, to remind everyone, if you voted against the automatic continuing resolution, if you voted against the joint budget resolution making the budget resolution a law signed by the President, if you are opposed to biennial budgeting, if you voted against expedited rescission, this bill reinstates all of those, and is an additional reason to oppose it.

Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman wishes to debate, I would be happy to yield half the time in opposition to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt).

Mr. Chairman, I only have one speaker, and that is to close.

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

First of all, let me say this has been a fascinating thing to listen to. Let me start by saying ``methinks thou doth protest'' just a little bit too much.

It is fascinating to me that in the middle of the appropriations process, all of these very good friends of mine, who are every one from the Committee on Appropriations chairman himself to the, what are often time around here called cardinals, subcommittee Chairs, who have the job of managing these appropriation bills, seem to find the time to come to the floor for this somewhat innocuous debate today. It is kind of interesting they spent their entire afternoon on the floor concerned about this process.

And I would suggest that it is not because the Committee on the Budget is where everyone is pointing the fingers. The Committee on the Budget did not cause the deficits that we are faced with here today any more than the Committee on Appropriations did, any more than the Committee on Ways and Means did, any more than the Republicans or the Democrats or the President or the Congress did. We spend so much time blaming other people and pointing fingers around here that we forget sometimes to look in the mirror as to how this all happened. And everyone is going to have their own version. I am not going to bore everyone with mine. But if they do not remember a couple of things that are important over the last few years, they are really missing the point.

We created a budget in 2001, and we had a surplus on September 10 of 2001. And then we all know what happened the next day. And thank goodness we had a budget, and thank goodness we had the flexibility in the budget to go into a room and say guess what, guys, the jig is up. We had to create a new Department of Homeland Security. I was in the room when the bidding began on how much money to send to New York. Do my colleagues know what the opening bid was? I will never forget it. I will never forget the way the meeting went. It started by someone mentioning that we might have to send $6 billion up to New York. Does the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) remember that? And by the end of a half hour meeting, the number was $40 billion. We went from 6 to 40 in one half hour.

Was it the right thing to do? Yes. Did the budget allow it to happen? Yes. Did the Committee on Appropriations cause it to happen? Yes. Did the American people support it? Yes. Did it add to the deficit? Yes. And thank goodness we have got the full faith and credit and the great economy that can bounce back from something like that so that we can do it.

So do not come here today, please, I beg of my colleagues, and blame the Committee on Appropriations for the deficit, or as I heard a gentleman actually suggest not too long ago that maybe it was because of the Budget Committee that we had a deficit. I mean, my goodness, let us be real about this.

The next thing I would like to say is that there was a gentleman who mentioned a moment ago about a perceived spending problem. Okay. If that is how he would like to refer to it as a perceived spending problem, that is fine. But would he please go home and talk to his constituents, because if they are like the constituents I represent in Iowa, there is no perception about it. They are telling me there is a spending problem in Washington that we have got to get a handle on. And, yes, Mr. Chairman, it is on the appropriations side, and 60 percent of it is also on the mandatory side. And I have said that until I am blue in the face. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who spoke have now left, and they never get the benefit of hearing me say that I do not blame the Committee on Appropriations for everything.

Last but not least, let me just mention the offer that the very distinguished gentleman from Florida, who is an excellent friend of mine, and I am honored to have the opportunity to even stand next to him on the floor and debate, the gentleman from Florida does an amazing job under extremely difficult circumstances, and he is right; I only have it to do this once. I have only got to pass one budget. He has to do it 13 times. Yes, that is heavy lifting. No question about that, and I respect that.

But having said that, to suggest we can come together and come to an agreement on a new process and leave out the Committee on Appropriations and to suggest this does not have at least one small part to do with how the Committee on Appropriations operates or how Committee on Appropriations' bills come to the floor, that is where we break down. It is when the Committee on Ways and Means says, You can do that, but just do not include me; or the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure says, as the gentleman said, Do for everything but what we firewall off; or the Committee on Appropriations says, Blame it on the Budget Committee, our appropriations process should not be part of this discussion.

If we are going to have this discussion, we all have to have the discussion, and we have got to put all our rules on the table. We cannot say, just say separation of powers say that we have the right to do this. And let me end with that.

There was a gentleman who came to the floor who said that this Committee on the Budget and the budget process was created to provide advice. No, it was not. It was created because back in the 1960s, there was absolutely no coordination during the 5 months Congress was in session. That is it. During the 5 months Congress was in session, the Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on Ways and Means, who managed revenues and appropriations, never talked to each other. And at the end of the year, maybe miraculously in a good year, there might be a surplus, but most of the time there were deficits. There was never a coordination.

And so the main reason why this was established was to reconcile those two processes, and that is why we have something now called the reconciliation process. And I overheard the gentleman and he is right. When was the last time we did that? We do not do it anymore. And that is why the process is broken. Because Members have been taken out of the process. The political part of this, small ``p,'' has been taken

out, and we are trusting that a process can get us to a result. And at the end of the day, I have got to tell the Members we can monkey with this process all day long until we are blue in the face. It still comes back to how I opened the debate. It is still about how we as individual Members want to operate in here.

If the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) and I want to argue for the next 10 years and have differences of opinion, we will never come together. If for some miraculous reason we could sit down one day and come up with a joint list of priorities, it would work. That is what it comes down to, Members working together. The process cannot supplant that. It still has to be Members making political, small ``p,'' decisions about how to represent their districts in this Congress.

So I respect everything that my friends from the Committee on Appropriations have said, but I would just remind them that ``methinks thou doth protest'' just a little bit too much. This is not about them. This is about us.

Mr. Chairman, my only purpose for asking for the time, like the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), I have no objection to this at all. It sounds not only like a good idea, but something I think we do already, but maybe not in the detail the gentleman from Illinois is looking for.

What I would certainly offer to do with the gentleman is to approach CBO in a bipartisan way and see if we cannot work out some way to achieve what the gentleman is asking for, possibly even without the necessity of having an amendment to the budget to do that. But the gentleman can proceed how he would like. If the gentleman wants more detail so that we can have more information about the accuracy, I am all for that. That may be something that the gentleman from South Carolina and I can do.

I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield further, since it is possible this bill may not become law, if that is possible, and I have heard that, why do we not work on this anyway as a project. I think it would be important to get that information.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I am not going to change the gentleman's mind, I understand that. But we have heard a lot today about bringing everybody together. There is nothing like bringing everybody together by the need to pass a law as opposed to just passing a resolution. By doing it by resolution, the House can have a version, the other body can have a version, the President has a version. You can go through the entire year with three versions.

I understand we are not going to change the gentleman's mind or probably a lot of people's minds, but what the gentleman is suggesting is by doing it this way, everyone has to come together at least once. That is the reason.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, and I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).

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

Let me just make a couple of comments, and then we have no other speakers, and I would be ready to yield back the balance of our time.

Let me just say, first of all, the gentleman from Pennsylvania said it very well. Let me just underscore a couple of things.

We have had number of votes on the floor, and I understand we may have

yet another one tonight as a motion to recommit with regard to PAYGO for taxes, as it has been called here on the floor, and every time this year we rejected that, and we basically said, look, the only people who pay for taxes are taxpayers. The government does not have to pay for taxes because the government is not the one that pays taxes. It is taxpayers that pay for taxes.

So we have made it very clear that tonight we want to discuss spending, mandatory spending, discretionary spending. That is the reason we apply the PAYGO provisions to mandatory spending, and it is the reason why we set discretionary caps.

What the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) has done follows that exact rubric. He has a PAYGO provision, but he extends it to revenue; therefore, I would oppose that.

On the discretionary side, he increases spending above the caps where we are now or above the budget resolution by $12.5 billion. In my estimation, that is unnecessary spending at this time. Certainly, as we all know, during the appropriation process many people will come to the floor and suggest that we could spend money on this or we could spend more money on that or we could increase over here or we could increase over there, but again, so many of our colleagues on both sides have talked about restraining spending. I do not believe an increase in the cap is what we need to do.

So I would oppose the amendment. The discretionary cap does not need to be lifted an additional $12.5 billion, number one; and number two, we do not believe that anyone in this country pays for taxes except taxpayers. Therefore, I would oppose the amendment as a substitute.

As I said to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), we have no other speakers.

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

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time, and I am prepared to yield back.

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

First of all I would say to the very distinguished minority leader that the gentleman from South Carolina is a lot of things. He is a professional. She has hit the nail on the head. I would just quarrel with one comment she made and that is that he is nonpartisan. He is a very effective partisan, I would just say. We get along very well. He does it in a spirit that may appear to be nonpartisan at times, but he is a very effective Democrat and I would never take that away from him. He is a very effective spokesman for their philosophy, for their priorities and while we sometimes disagree, it is okay that he can do it in a partisan way and not a mean way at all, or a disagreeable way.

There are a couple of things I would just like to point out. First of all, the reason we came to balance in 1999 was, as the minority leader said, because we had a plan. That was a plan that was passed by this Congress, this Republican Congress. Second, she said that there were some jobs being created. Well, yes, some 1.4 million jobs since last August alone. If you want to create more of them or if you want to make sure that they get paid better salaries or if you want to make sure that they have more job security, I would just suggest to you that appropriating more money than we have in these huge increases for education, that is not going to increase their salaries.

For our kids, it may help them out and that is why we are increasing education, but that does not create more jobs. It does not increase their salaries. Taxing small business like the proposal that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) brought to the floor earlier today that we had the wisdom to defeat does not create jobs. In fact, most of those people that were being taxed under his proposal were those small businesses that are creating those jobs. Last but not least, you do not create jobs by driving businesses overseas with our tax policy in this country and many of the challenges that we have with our economy continuing to drive those businesses overseas to look for opportunities as opposed to allowing them to stay here and be competitive.

Reforming our trade laws and by voting to give the President the ability to go in and negotiate those agreements is something that we need to do.

We do have a plan. We have a budget. It has worked in the past. You do not need a pay-as-you-go rule for taxes for the government to worry about because the people who pay taxes in this country and pay for taxes, who pay as they go with regard to taxes, are taxpayers. Every time you increase taxes, they are the ones that pay. They pay as you go. As you go for more taxes, they pay. That is what we do not need. That is why we oppose the Spratt substitute, even though I can agree with the gentlewoman that he is, by far, someone who is not only very professional, but someone I am very pleased to work with.

I do it as gently as possible, but with obviously a note of partisanship that we often have to have in order to support our different sides of these issues.

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

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, and I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) be yielded half of that time.

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

Let me just take a minute to respond briefly to one of the comments from the gentleman, and we can have an honest disagreement about substitute amendments and all sorts of things on

the floor today, but we do have a conference report on the budget. That conference report on the budget was passed by the House of Representatives. That conference report on the budget was deemed to be the budget for the House of Representatives. The chairman of the Committee on Appropriations is operating under that budget that was passed by the House of Representatives. We have a budget.

What we are not sure we have is the other body. They have not acted. They have not even brought it to a vote. I do not know what they are doing. I can understand the gentleman's frustration. I share that frustration. We hear that a certain party may be in the majority over there, but from time to time that does not always manifest itself.

But we have a budget. We will operate under that budget. It is a budget that ensures that we can strengthen our economy and keep it growing; that we can protect our country; and that we can make sure that our important priorities are funded. We have a budget. Those who continue to say we do not have a budget, it is simply not correct.

The fact that the other body has not yet voted on a budget is for them to answer, not for us to answer here tonight, and be that as it may, let me just make one other point.

They are not arguing over the spending levels. The arguments are over technical amendments that the other body put on to control their own process because they were having a difficult time managing it, not anything that binds the House. We are not bound by that particular challenge that the other body is wrestling with.

We have a budget. It has been deemed the budget. We will operate under that budget, and so I just wanted to correct the record and remind all of us that we will continue to operate under the rules of that budget.

Announcement by the Chairman Pro Tempore

Mr. Chairman, I need a refresher. I keep referring to it as the other body. What am I saying wrong? I want to know. When they do not pass the budget, I guess I have been trying to be as polite as possible.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg), even though I claimed the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to close, and I first want to commend the gentleman from Texas for his work, and all of the Members who have helped him and labored through so many of these provisions. They have done a good job. They have done an excellent job.

I heard someone refer to it as the gold standard of budget process reform. It may very well be. It is not perfect, there is no question. There is no such thing as perfect. My job tonight is to defend the committee product, which is the underlying bill; so I gently oppose the gentleman's amendment because so many of these things look very familiar to me. I voted for a few of them earlier tonight. And I think a couple of them I might even have had an opportunity to write at an earlier time. But I gently oppose them.

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

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, and I ask unanimous consent that half of that time be yielded to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt).

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, let me just briefly explain what this amendment does. What this does is this elevates the budget resolution to a level of a law.

Specifically, this would change the current nonbinding concurrent budget resolution into a joint resolution, which would give the force of law when signed by the President. This would encourage the President to get involved early in the process, instead of having this typical annual brinksmanship that we have in the budget process at the end of the year, so that we can settle on the numbers between the other body, this body, and the White House and move on to good legislation.

A joint resolution would be binding and have the force of law so that both the Congress and the White House would work these issues out in the beginning of the annual year.

The simplicity of this budget resolution makes agreements easier to reach because negotiations will be forced early on in the process.

I would like to go through how this would work. I have a chart that makes it easier for me to explain this.

First, like we have anytime, the President submits his budget. Then Congress would pass a joint budget resolution. Then the question is whether the President would sign it or not. If with those negotiations the President then signs that joint budget resolution, then Congress passes its appropriations, its reconciliation, its tax and entitlement bills and its conference reports, and the President signs those bills into law. Very easy, very clear process.

If, for example, the President does not sign that joint budget resolution, there is a fallback provision similar to what we have today, where it would go back to Congress and Congress would adopt a concurrent resolution, much like we have right now.

For example, this year, where we actually do not have a concurrent resolution in place because we could not get one through the other body, we would end up deeming it.

The point is this, Mr. Chairman: we have to front-load this system so we can get these agreements reached at the beginning of the year so we can move forward on the same page. Most importantly, we need to make this budget have the force of law so that it can be enforced. That is the problem. Our budget resolutions ends up becoming mere guidelines and do not actually have the force of law. Therefore, they are not enforceable. We always break our budgets.

If we make this have the force of law, it becomes enforceable. Therefore, we can actually stick to the budgets we have.

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

Mr. Chairman, before yielding to my cosponsor of this amendment, I yield myself 10 seconds.

Number one, the President already has the power to sign these bills into law. He signs appropriation bills, he signs tax bills, he signs entitlement bills. So this does not give him new power he does not already have.

Number two, the gentleman from South Carolina, who is a leader in this area, has been a leader in this area for a long time, sponsored a bill in 1991 that did just this. So I think this is a good idea.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding the gentleman supported this in the past. Either way, good people can disagree on these things.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht).

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

The current system we have is dysfunctional. It has games built into the system so that the House can do one thing; the other body, the Senate, but I am not supposed to say that word, can do another; and the President can do a third thing. What happens in the current budget system is we go into a stalemate and to get out of that stalemate at the end of the year, we end up spending more money than the budget ever planned on spending.

What we simply want to do is to bring this budget up to the level of the law so that we are all on the same page at the beginning of the budget process so that we can enforce that budget because it is in law.

The budgets we pass here are not really binding, they are guidelines. They are not legally protected. We cannot protect and enforce our budget if it does not rise to the level of the law. We cannot be on the same page at the beginning of the year, if we are not on the same page at the beginning of the year. That is why we are trying to pass this very common sense idea, so that we are all on the same page and so that this can be law and, therefore, our budgets can be enforced.

I urge adoption of this amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, this is part of our larger effort, which is in our substitute. But what this will do is allow to have a sequester to kick in if Congress exceeds its spending items. Just like the sequesters we have talked about before in the old Committee on the Budget days, if Congress overspends, because we have this in law, a sequester kicks in and brings spending back into conformity with the budget.

But we waive our budget caps all of the time under the current system.

This way the President could veto breaking the

budget caps early in the process and we could keep to these numbers.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Chairman pro tempore. The Clerk will designate the amendment.

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

I bring this amendment to the desk with my cosponsor, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer). Let me briefly explain it.

This is what we call budget protection accounts. Here is how the current appropriations process works. If we have a piece of spending in the budget that we think is wasteful, let me take two examples here; the $200,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, or the $500,000 for the Anaheim Resort Transit to fund buses at Disneyland, or the $50 million to fund the Coralville Rain Forest Museum in Coralville, Iowa.

Let us take, for example, if we want to get rid of that spending, we can bring an amendment to the floor, pass it, make sure that spending does not go to those projects, but by the rules of this institution, that money has to be spent somewhere else in the Federal government. That is ridiculous, Mr. Chairman.

All we are proposing is this: if Members can come to the floor with amendments to eliminate or reduce wasteful spending, they ought to be able to save that money. That is all we are proposing.

So what we do here is when a cutting amendment comes to the floor to reduce spending, the entire 302(a) allocation, the entire discretionary allocation goes down by the amount of that amendment. So that at the end of the year, that money either goes to reducing the deficit or that money goes to reduce taxes. We have a mechanism that makes sure that this reconciles with the other body appropriately.

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

Mr. Chairman, I can explain it. Basically, it works like this. A Member brings an amendment to the House Floor to cut spending. The 302(a) allocation goes down by that amount. At the end of the day, the conference report for the appropriation bills goes down by the lower of the two different amounts between the House amendments and the Senate amendments. At the end of the year, because the 302(a) will have gone down by that amount, the Committee on Ways and Means can use the savings for tax relief. If it does not do that by the end of the fiscal year, the savings, the lower of the amendments between the House or the Senate, is going toward deficit reduction.

That is essentially how it works. I know it is complicated.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman briefly yield again?

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's indulgence. First of all, it is true that you could eliminate a piece of pork here on the House Floor and it could get placed back in on the Senate floor. But by these rules, at least that amount of money would have to be saved, because the 302(a) allocation will go down by that amount. It would be up to the Committee on Appropriations to decide where that money comes from. But the point is, that money would have to be saved.

Mr. Chairman, that is up to the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the cosponsor of this amendment, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer).

Mr. Chairman, I yield the remaining time to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I will explain this. We are going to go after wasteful spending in another direction with this amendment. This is a bipartisan amendment with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), also with the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), who is not here with us on the floor this moment, supporting this amendment. This is what we call enhanced rescissions.

The way this amendment works is that the President, after signing a bill into law, an appropriations bill into law, has the ability to pull out a wasteful spending measure or a number of wasteful spending measures that he or she deems wasteful.

Now, this makes sure that we retain the power of the purse so that that bill comes back to the House and the Senate among expedited procedures where we vote up or down on that rescission package.

Now, if my colleagues will recall, during the line item veto debate of a number of years ago, the Supreme Court ended up striking down the line item veto. The reason the Supreme Court struck down the line item veto is a reason I agree with, which was it is unconstitutional for the legislative branch to delegate its lawmaking power to the executive branch the power of the purse.

So what we are doing in place of that is this. As a consequence to those who oppose the line item veto at the same time, they were the folks who were actually proposing this legislation, what happens is the President pulls out spending from a spending bill, sends it back to Congress on an expedited procedural basis, Congress votes up or down on those spending cuts. And we have the final say as to whether or not that spending occurs.

Now, the great point of all of this is we end up having to vote on these huge appropriation bills. Last year's omnibus appropriation bill had seven different appropriation bills bundled into one. So we had one vote on the conference report up or down. So we had to vote on veterans health care, on Labor Department spending, on Health and Human Services; but we also had to vote for the $50 million rain forest museum in Coralville, Iowa.

This gives the President the ability to say we probably should not be spending money on that rain forest museum in Coralville, Iowa, and a few other things. I am pulling those out of this bill and sending it back to Congress for a revote, and then Congress has the final decision as to whether or not that spending takes place.

We retain the power of the purse, but we have a tool to go after wasteful spending.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remainder of the time.

Mr. Chairman, I want to answer the points the gentleman from South Carolina made. We did look at the issue of whether there are tax expenditures included in the enhanced rescission power, and some raised the constitutional question. Because in article I, section 7, the U.S. Constitution clearly states that bills for raising revenue shall originate only in the House of Representatives.

There are some who have a constitutional concern, and this is a debated point, that it would be unconstitutional for the President to alter tax legislation because this would be an originating bill even after this other bill would be passed into law.

So there is a constitutional question about the tax expenditure side. But, more importantly, we want to focus on spending. We wanted to focus this tool to go after wasteful spending.

Let me just conclude with showing a few things that we have done around here. Both parties are to blame for this; 13.4 million for community resilience project in Virginia.

Mr. Chairman, $916,000 for a study about what makes a meaningful day, $500,000 for the Anaheim Resort Transit to fund buses for Disneyland, $270,000 for wool research in Montana and Wyoming, $72,000 for the study by the National Institute of Health on dorm room wall decorations and Web pages.

These are ridiculous expenditures that I believe are an embarrassment to this body, and it is a good thing, and I think we all agree, to have the President have the ability to bring those things out and send it back and have us vote on those things in the light of day instead of tucking them in big appropriations bill.

Mr. Chairman, a couple of us were not in Congress back then when you guys decided that, so we have been consistent.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to address a few of the things that the gentleman from South Carolina said. As far as the estimate on the $1.8 trillion cut, that is not accurate for this bill. Number one, this bill addresses those issues that were raised in that estimate. Number two, entitlement spending will go up. It will go up by the number of beneficiaries coming to these programs, it will go up by inflation, and medical inflation in Medicare's instance. And we do take care of putting into the baseline the new prescription drug benefit.

I would like to just quickly go through the summary of what this legislation actually accomplishes in a very, very quick order. Number one, what this budget does is it raises the budget to the point of law by making a joint budget resolution so we do not have these stalemates at the end of Congress every year like we do.

It also has a one-page budget so it is easier for the Congress, the House, the Senate, and the President to agree on a budget at the beginning of the session. It also abolishes the practice of designating everything as emergencies. One of the problems we have is we can designate just about anything an emergency. The census was designated an emergency. We knew that one was coming.

So what we are trying to do is tighten up that definition so true emergencies are designated emergencies. We go to biennial budget so that we do our budgeting in the first year of our cycle, and then in the second year we conduct oversight. We think that Congress does not do nearly enough government oversight into how our taxpayers' dollars are being spent.

We also have government shut-down protection so that, if for some reason we have this brinksmanship which has been common around here, we do not hold hostage government workers and shut down the government. We keep things going with an automatic continuing resolution.

We also have very important spending caps which we have been talking about on discretionary and entitlement spending. It will take two- thirds of a vote in Congress to break those spending caps. This is the real heart of this bill so that we do not violate our spending caps. Because all too often, we will pass a budget, we will set spending caps, lo and behold, a couple months go by, we break the spending caps.

In this bill, it takes two-thirds of the vote in the House and Senate to break those spending caps. We also protect ourselves from the point of order so we here in this body, unlike those in the other body who can have this power, we can raise points of order if they try to waive points of the Budget Act so that House Members can also play a role in enforcing the budget act. We also make sure we amend the Byrd Rule so we do not have temporary tax cuts. That was an arcane rule that occurred that is now giving us the largest tax increase we will ever see if we fail to make these tax cuts permanent.

We also try and clean up this omnibus appropriation problem so we do not bundle all these big bills that we have at the end of the cycle. For instance, last year 7 appropriations bills bundled into one bill. Each of us on the floor had one vote up or down on half of the discretionary spending in the Federal Government.

We also have very important spending control provisions. We talked about some of these. Discretionary caps, having the ability to save money when you

bring amendments to the floor to stop wasteful spending. Having the ability to make sure that we can give the President the power to take bad, wasteful spending out of the budget.

We also have an amendment that did pass already which is a commission to look at all of our Federal programs with respect to our earned entitlements, but also have a sunset in law of our programs on a rotating basis so that Congress actually does its oversight to see if the programs we have in our Federal Government are really meeting the spirit of the original intent of the law or whether they are really serving our constituents and serving our taxpayers so that we can make sure that no wasteful spending continues in this government.

The problem we have basically is that our budget process is not a clean process. It is not a functional process. It is not honest. It is not transparent, and we want to make it so.

We want to pass a budget and stick to a budget. We want to make sure that the American people really see how their money is being spent, and we want to make sure that those of us who want to see wasteless spending go away have the tools in which we can do that. That is what we are trying to accomplish with this bill.

What we simply want is the ability to treat our constituents' money like it ought to be treated. It is their money. That is what we are trying to do. It is a very big bill and project. We have 102 cosponsors. I urge passage of this substitute amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I rise in strong support of H. Res. 691.

On June 30, a momentous date in the history of Iraq, after 45 years of dictatorship and one year of occupation, a sovereign government representative of the Iraqi people is about to assume power in Baghdad. We take justifiable pride in the U.S. role in achieving that milestone, and we pay tribute to our soldiers who have achieved this incredible feat.

But there is no fooling ourselves, Mr. Speaker. The Iraq that Prime Minister Iyad al-Alawi and his colleagues will inherit is far from stable and it is far from prosperous, nor is it ready to assume full responsibility for its Nation's security. For the United States, the challenges of ensuring security, promoting reconstruction, and fostering liberal and decent governance will continue essentially unchanged for now. Whether we and the Iraqis look back at June 30, 2004 as an historic turning point for the good will be determined by our joint ability to meet those ongoing and gigantic challenges.

Mr. Speaker, developments on our home front encourage the hope that we can meet those challenges, as the positions on Iraq taken by leaders of both of our parties are fundamentally congruent. The administration has shown signs that it is willing to alter the course when necessary in order to get the job done. I am pleased that the President embraced the wisdom of acknowledging a major role for the United Nations. As a result of the United Nations unanimously-adopted resolution, the soon- to-be sovereign Iraqi government will have far greater domestic and international legitimacy than otherwise it would have.

I think it is important to underscore that the likely nominee of the Democratic Party for president, Senator Kerry, shares the basic vision, and I quote: ``While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed. The extremists attacking our forces should know that they will not succeed in dividing America, or in sapping American resolve, or in forcing the premature withdrawal of U.S. troops. Our country is committed to help the Iraqis build a stable, peaceful, and pluralistic society.''

The most important line in my quotation from Senator Kerry is as follows: ``No matter who is elected President in November, we will persevere in that mission.''

Mr. Speaker, success in Iraq is a bipartisan, national interest. Not only is the credibility of the United States at stake in the region and around the globe, but an Iraq collapsing into chaos would be a heart of darkness in the Middle East.

Mr. Speaker, Senator Kerry and President Bush are also on the same page in calling on our NATO allies to show solidarity by reinforcing our efforts in Iraq. Even though NATO nations may not have many deployable troops to spare, there is nevertheless much that they can do to. And the opportunity for NATO to make these important decisions in the highest-profile manner possible will present itself next week at the NATO summit in Istanbul.

As the NATO Secretary General said, we have a Security Council resolution, a fully legitimate interim government in Iraq; NATO has no excuse to slam the door in Iraq's face.

NATO States can and must provide training for the new Iraqi Army, and they should do so in Iraq itself without requiring Iraqi troops to go to a third country as some are suggesting.

One of the most brilliant of our military leaders, General David Petraeus, is leading the U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces, and his presence in that role should give all of us confidence in our ultimate success. But building a fighting force capable of defeating Iraq's fundamentalists and Saddamist thugs is a mammoth undertaking. NATO nations are ideally positioned to support the efforts of General Petraeus.

NATO troops can provide election security to support the all- important Iraqi elections in January. If Iraq is to hold its first free and democratic elections in its history, security is paramount.

Mr. Speaker, let us be clear. The European members of NATO, all of them, should not contribute to Iraq's security as a favor to us, even though the peace and prosperity that reigns in Europe today was won with American blood and American treasure. They should do it as a favor to themselves but, most importantly, to the Iraqi people. Europe's stake in the stability of Iraq and the Middle East is greater than our own. Europe borders the Middle East and is far more dependent on its energy resources than are we here in the United States.

Europe's moral credibility is also at stake in Iraq. For years, the States of the European Union, most of whom belong to NATO, have trumpeted their commitment to democracy. Now it is time for them to prove that this is more than rhetoric. When Iraqi President al-Yawar was in town recently, he told a group of us that the presence of European troops is crucial to Iraq. He emphasized that Iraq needs security forces from law-abiding societies where human rights are valuable to the people.

Mr. Speaker, Iraq is undertaking history's boldest experiment in trying to build a more free and open society. If Europe is not with us, its message to the Iraqi people and to the world is that it just does not care about democratic developments outside its borders.

I call on President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder and other reluctant NATO leaders to stand up at the Istanbul summit and be counted on behalf of the Iraqi people and democratic values.

Mr. Speaker, we already have many fine allies, NATO and nonNATO alike, in our coalition in Iraq. Tony Blair's United Kingdom has shown extraordinary courage and leadership. South

Korea's determination was tested by tragedy just this week, and it proved itself a model of resolve. These nations are doing work from which all of Europe will benefit, and they too deserve Europe's, and that means NATO's, backing and help.

As the loyal opposition, we Democrats will continue to call this administration to account for its errors in Iraq. We will continue to offer constructive advice, as our duty demands, particularly from our position of oversight authority in the legislative branch. But all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, are united in our commitment to achieving success in giving rise to a durable, pluralistic, more open and free society in Iraq.

It is not merely a simple matter of restoring sovereignty. George Bernard Shaw observed, ``Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.'' The new stewards of the sovereign Iraq will prove that they are up to the task. As they do, we want them to know that we will stand by them.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly support this resolution, and I urge all of my colleagues to do so.

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

Mr. Speaker, before recognizing our next speaker, I want to pay tribute to the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Hyde) for his leadership on this resolution and on this entire issue.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my colleague, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my good friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to our distinguished colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich), my friend and a distinguished colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), our distinguished colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to our distinguished colleague, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey).

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 2\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. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Robust debate is the hallmark of this body and this afternoon we had a sampling of it for which we are all pleased. The difficulty in dealing with the issues that we face in this world is that we do not confront elegant alternatives but exasperating realities. It is in that context that I wish to quote from the person who will be the nominee of the Democratic Party at the upcoming convention on his views of this resolution and of this undertaking. I am quoting from Senator Kerry:

``While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed. The extremists attacking our forces should know that they will not succeed in dividing America, or in sapping American resolve, or in forcing the premature withdrawal of U.S. troops. Our country is committed to help the Iraqis build a stable, peaceful and pluralistic society. No matter who is elected President in November, we will persevere in that mission.''

Mr. Speaker, these are difficult days for our country, but we stand united in our commitment to our troops and in our commitment to our values. I urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution.

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I offer this substitute, which includes many similar amendments to those we have already considered and others we will consider, as a total substitute for the bill. However, the primary reason I offer this substitute is because my friends on the Committee on Rules did not give appropriators any time at all under the rule to have a serious debate on our position relative to this bill. So we are taking this approach.

Now, I want to announce to the Members that I agree that the budget process needs to be changed and needs to be improved. And I am not suggesting that my chairman, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), has done anything wrong. It is just the fact that the current process is not working, especially at the other end of the Capitol. But what I intended to do in one of the amendments I submitted and the Committee on Rules rejected, was to create a commission, a bicameral, bipartisan group of Members of the House and the Senate, to sit down and study this problem from all perspectives not just that of the Committee on the Budget, or the Committee on Appropriations, or the Committee on Ways and Means, or the authorizing committees--but from all perspectives. Everybody has something good to offer if they are given an opportunity.

But my amendment was not made in order, so we are not going to do that here today. So what I intend to do, Mr. Chairman, is to develop a bill on my own. And I intend to seek and solicit the ideas and information from all of those committees that I have mentioned and then I will propose, what I would consider to be, a very realistic budget reform proposal. That is the way I intend to proceed.

Now, although I am going to withdraw this amendment, I think as appropriators who are affected by this bill more than anyone else in the Congress, that we do have a right to have some additional time to state our views. So I will use this amendment to obtain that time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to tell the gentleman that I appreciate his comments. This is a way for me to get time and for Members of my committee to get time, but we are not going to pursue this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations, who successfully passed his bill a couple of days ago with 403 votes, and he reports to me just now that the Senate has now passed it on a vote of 98 to 0.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to inquire of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, if he intends to use any time, and if so, maybe we could alternate.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), the chairman of the Subcommittee on VA, HUD and Independent Agencies.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson), the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, whose bill will be on the floor tomorrow.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), chairman of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen), chairman of the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt), a very important member of the Committee on Appropriations.

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

Mr. Chairman, let me say that this appropriations committee is made up of very good Members of both parties. They work hard. They are here whether the House is in session or whether the House is not in session. This committee passes 13 appropriations bills every year, and two to three supplementals. Then we go to conference with the other body, and despite the suggestion that the appropriations process is broken, since I have had the privilege of chairing this committee, we have gotten all of those

bills done eventually, some sooner and some later. And we have to work with real numbers. We cannot assume numbers. We cannot pick a number out of the air. We have to work with real numbers and with real laws.

The chairman of the Committee on the Budget should understand the problems we have in moving 15 bills through conference because he has one budget resolution to move and he has trouble getting that done, not by any fault of his, but the fault of the other body.

I know I am not supposed to say that, but nevertheless it is the fact. That information is not classified.

The Appropriations Committee is a very good committee. It works hard and it produces good legislation. I would say that just in the last fiscal year, your Appropriations Committee defeated amendments that would have increased spending by $18 billion. Most of those amendments sounded really good. They would have been nice to vote for. But we did not have the money. We were committed to staying within the budget and we did. I would also say that it is the mandatory spending programs that we have no control over. We do not deal with them and it is mandatory spending that is causing this deficit to rise higher and higher and higher.

I would suggest that just one example: we had a colloquy today between the chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the chairman of the Committee on the Budget on firewalls for the transportation bill, TEA-LU. I support that bill. We need to improve our infrastructure and our bridges and our highways in our communities. The problem, and what they never really admit and concede, is that there are guarantees in that bill. If the trust funds do not make up the guarantees, the appropriations committee has to swallow the guarantees. That means we have to take it away from education or health benefits or something else. The 302(a)s should be adjusted if we are saddled with a mandatory spending of this kind.

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

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. We were rather rushed in trying to get some of our speakers to the floor.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston), chairman of the Legislative Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Culberson), who is one of the newer, but one of the dynamic, members of the Committee on Appropriations.

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

Mr. Chairman, again I want to thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for giving me the advantage of the additional time he had allocated to him. We have tried to use it in a constructive way.

I also want to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) for the good debate and for the understanding, that he has exhibited, of our concerns. He said this is not about the appropriators or the Committee on the Budget.

He said it is about us, and he is right. It is about the entire Congress, and that is what we are concerned about today: the prerogatives, the privileges and the constitutional responsibilities of the Congress of the United States.

So I want everybody to know that the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) and I are still very good friends. We were before this started; we will be after the final vote. We just tend to have some honest differences; and that is what this place is all about--to air the differences. If we did not do that, then I would like to be in charge and we would do everything my way.

But that is not the way it happens. That is why we have this great debating society in the United States House of Representatives.

I would say to the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle), while he was walking down the aisle, that I complimented him for the conduct of this debate, which I appreciate very much.

Mr. Chairman, under the previously agreed to unanimous consent request, I withdraw this amendment.