Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 4663) to amend part C of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 to extend the discretionary spending limits and pay-as-you-go through fiscal year 2009.

Mr. Speaker, as the designee of the minority leader, I rise in support of the resolution.

Mr. Speaker I yield myself 9 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution is bringing to the House floor a debate on how best to make this country stronger and more just. The distinguished gentleman from Texas has just said that this is about raising taxes. One of the worst problems that can happen to you in Washington D.C. is when you begin to believe your own baloney. That is not what this resolution is about.

The situation is very simple: we have a war. That war by next year will have cost us $250 billion. And the question is, how are we going to pay for it? We have two choices. One is to charge the bill mostly to our kids by raising the deficit, which is what is happening, and along with that making every American pay through the nose with less security for our homeland on our borders, in our ports, in our air ports, less security for veterans who are not receiving adequate health care, less educational opportunity for middle-class families because of budget squeezes, less health coverage for hundreds of thousands of children all over this country, less help for workers who are

out of work; or will we choose the other way, as this resolution seeks to do.

Will we choose to ask the most well-off 200,000 people in this country, less than 1 percent of all taxpayers, will we ask them to make the supreme sacrifice? Those who make more than $1 million a year, will you ask them to make the sacrifice of limiting their tax cut to $24,000 on average rather than the $120,000 average that they will otherwise get under the existing budget of this House? I think the answer is quite clear.

I plead fully guilty to wanting to see the most privileged and blessed people in this society accept a somewhat smaller tax cut in order to provide greater opportunity for others in society to get the basic requirements on education, health care, veterans health care, and the rest.

Now, this resolution is very simple. It raises over $18 billion by limiting the average size tax cut for persons who make more than $1 million a year to about $24,000 a year. That is what the average tax cuts will be for someone who makes between $500,000 a year and $1 million. We are asking those that make $1 million to live by that same amount. That is hardly an outrageous sacrifice.

We then use 25 percent of that money for deficit reduction. We use the remaining $14 billion to eliminate the real reductions in domestic appropriations that are contained in the President's budget. If this amendment is adopted, we will simply be adjusting education, health, veterans programs and all the rest by the amount that is equivalent to inflation plus population growth. That is all. We would get back to a standstill level on that score.

We put $3 billion into homeland security. Why? Because the Hart- Rudman Commission told us we have a need of $190 billion at the local level, and we have only met 15 percent of that need so far. We do it because only 13 percent of fire departments in this country are equipped to handle a full-blown hazardous material attack. We do it because only a tiny fraction of cargo in passenger planes is presently inspected for explosives. We do it because we have some 2,000 fewer people on the northern border protecting our border than the PATRIOT Act told us that we would have. We do it because only 20 of the most important 45 ports in America which ship goods into the United States have adequate inspection systems to make certain that there is not nuclear material or explosive material in ships that come to our shores.

We then put $1.3 billion into veterans health care so that we can cut the claims backlog of 327,000 veterans so that we can shorten the waiting time of veterans at VA hospitals, so that we can strengthen critical mental health services for returning veterans. We add $1 billion to military housing because more than 120,000 of military families in this country serve in lousy housing, and they deserve better.

We put $5.7 billion into education to close the gap between what this Congress promised it would provide local schools and what it is actually giving them. We put a billion and a half dollars into Title I so that 500,000 more poor kids and disadvantaged kids can get better instruction in reading and math.

We put $1.2 billion into special education so that local school districts will receive more help from the Federal Government to meet Federal mandates to educate every disabled child. We put $300 million in in order to help 400,000 more children receive adequate child care and after school care.

We put $2 billion in so that we can increase Pell grants to help those who otherwise could not afford to go to college. We want to increase the maximum grant by $450. Pell grants today pay only for 35 percent of the cost of instruction at a 4-year university. Twenty years ago they paid for 75 percent. Can we not do better than that?

Then we use $200 million to provide additional employment and training opportunities for people who have lost their jobs. We also address a number of other matters. We fund a number of other programs that are high priority programs, as demonstrated by the letters from the minority side as well as the majority side of this House to our own committee, asking that our committee provide funding for these programs.

So that is what we do, and I would ask support for this resolution, and I repeat the same thing that I said when I began. We have one choice. We can either pay for this war by shoving the bill to our kids and by cutting back on educational opportunities, cutting back on veterans health care, cutting back on decent housing for the military, squeezing dangerously our homeland security expenditures, or we can ask the most well-off, the most prosperous people in this country to share a little bit more of the load by limiting the size of their tax cut to $24,000 rather than the average $120,000 tax cut they would ordinarily get.

I believe the majority of those people are patriotic enough to say, ``Do it, we do not need that extra supersized tax cut as much as this country needs to have its fiber strengthened by providing the investments that I have just talked about.'' I would urge a ``yes'' vote for the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), the ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Let me simply say, Mr. Speaker, that this is no less binding than is the budget resolution passed by the Republican majority.

Let me also say that we have heard a lot of concern about small business. I would like to see how many small businesses in each of our districts have profits of $1 million per owner to qualify under this bill.

Thirdly, we are not raising taxes; we are asking people who make $1 million a year or more to limit themselves to a $24,000, on average, tax cut, which is still 25 times as much as the average person in this country making $50,000 a year will get.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), ranking member of the Committee on the Budget.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

(Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, could I inquire how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, despite the fiction we have just heard, you have to make $1 million a year profit in order to be covered by this. To suggest small businessmen are hurt by that is laughable.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, again, despite all of the misinformation that we have just heard, the IRS has told us that fewer than six-tenths of 1 percent of all returns with small business income have incomes of more than $1 million. To suggest that this is even laying a glove on small business is a colossal red herring fiction.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

The gentleman refers to one-third of the top bracket. This does not touch everybody in the top bracket. The top bracket is $319,000 or more. We do not touch anybody with an income of less than one million bucks, less than one million bucks. That is not $300,000. Do not try to bamboozle people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Line 22 and line 23 of page 6: The only taxpayers that are affected are ``taxpayers with adjusted gross income above $1 million.'' Period.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

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

Mr. Speaker, this amendment is pure and simple about shared sacrifice, as the gentleman from Illinois has just indicated. What we are asking is that those lucky people in this country who make more than $1 million a year, that includes the one-half of 1 percent of small businessmen who make profits of over $1 million a year, we are asking them to accept a scaled-back tax cut so that they only get, on average, $24,000 in tax cuts. That is 24 times as large as someone will get if they make $50,000 a year.

And, instead, we are saying please, for the sake of the country, take a little bit smaller tax cut so that we have some room in the budget to strengthen protection on our borders, to strengthen protection in our ports, to strengthen protection at our airports, to provide stronger opportunities for education, to provide more civilized health care for our veterans, to provide better housing for our military personnel, to provide a little better shot at protecting the environment, to help local communities so that they do not have to lay off hundreds of thousands of kids from health care programs like SCHIP and Badger Care in my own State. This is an effort to see to it that we can enrich the many and enrich the few at the same time.

Trickle-down economics is what we have heard from our friends on the

other side of the aisle today. They say if you just give enough to the people at the top, eventually some will trickle down to people at the bottom.

My old friend Harvey Dueholm in the legislature used to describe it this way. He said trickle-down economics is the theory that if you just feed the horses enough oats, eventually some of it will filter down to the sparrows. Think about it. And vote ``yes.'' It is the fair, it is the right, it is the just thing to do.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

This is an important debate, Mr. Speaker, so I hope that Members are paying attention. The real power of the purse rests with us here, in the people's House. I am proud of what we did through most of the 1990s. When we came here, when I was elected in 1994 and came here in the spring of 1995, I remember we had some meetings with some of the economists and people from the Congressional Budget Office. And we have to go back and remember what was happening in America. We were running deficits every year of $250 billion and more, and we can all point fingers and blame this and blame that; but at the end of the day, we were spending more than the taxpayers were sending in, and America wanted us to do something about this.

At one of the meetings we were at, we had some economists saying, if Congress does not get serious about balancing the Federal budget, that by the time my children got to be my age they would be paying an effective tax rate to the Federal Government of over 80 percent, just to pay the interest on the national debt.

Now, I come from a rural district, and I think most folks from rural communities understand this, because it really has been part of the rural ethic, particularly those who are farm families, to pay off the mortgage and leave the kids the farm. What we have been doing is we were literally selling the farm and leaving our kids the mortgage. We knew that it was not just bad public policy; it was fundamentally immoral.

So what we did is we began to limit the growth in Federal spending, and I am proud to report that from 1995 until the year 2000, the Federal budget was growing at a slower rate than the average family budget. That, combined with a fairly strong economy, we literally went from a $250 billion shortfall every year to a $250 billion surplus.

In fact, just 3 years ago, the Congressional Budget Office told us that we could look forward to surpluses in the Federal Treasury over the next 10 years of $5.4 trillion. Now, that same Congressional Budget Office today is telling us that we can look forward to deficits of $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. The only thing we can really say about the Congressional Budget Office's forecasts is that they are both wrong.

What we do know that is right is that over the last several years we have allowed Federal spending to grow at a rate double what it grew through most of the 1990s. And part of the reason that happened is we allowed some of the budgetary rules to expire, the things that control the growth in Federal spending.

There was a farmer who told me several years ago, we were talking about the deficit, and he said, you know, the problem with you guys in Washington

is you do not quite get it. The problem is not that we are not sending enough money to Washington. The problem is you spend it faster than we send it in. He probably expressed it more accurately and more simply than any of us would like to admit.

What we want to do today, and this is an important event and these are important votes, we want to bring back some of the rules that controlled Congress with regard to spending. One of them is PAYGO. That means if you want to have a new program, you have to figure out a way to pay for it. And I do not think that is too much to ask. The other is setting up some spending caps.

Let me give some ideas why I think that is important. Over the last several years, we have passed some pretty good budgets, some very tough budgets here in the House of Representatives. Back in fiscal year 2002, for example, our budget resolution which we passed here in the House called for spending $661 billion in what we call discretionary spending. But by the time we were done negotiating with the Senate, we ended up spending $734.6 billion. Well, in the next year we said in the House budget resolution that we would agree to spend $759 billion in discretionary spending. But before the year was over, we actually spent $849 billion. Last year, our budget resolution called for spending $784.5 billion. But when all the numbers were in and the spending was done and the conference committees at last had concluded, the number actually was $873 billion.

Pogo was right. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

I think there was a certain amount of hubris that, well, we have done a pretty good job of balancing the budget over the 5- or 6-year period. We had actually paid down over a half trillion dollars of publicly held debt, and I think we began to think we did not need these budget rules any more. I am here to say that I think we were wrong, and we have to get back to some of those rules.

This is a very important debate. I support this rule. I know there will be people who will say, well, we did not get to offer our amendment, or this amendment was not made in order. But I think we are going to have a very vigorous debate over the next several hours on the rule and the bill. Mr. Speaker, I hope later I will have a chance to visit more about the rule and the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to some of the things that our colleague the gentleman from South Carolina has just said. Much of what he said, I do not disagree with. But there is something I think we need to clarify for all of the Members. Even if we had a balanced budget last year and this year, we would have to raise the debt ceiling. That is something I think it is hard for many Members and frankly I think most Americans. They wonder how in the world can that be. It is kind of a complicated thing to explain but even in a very strong economy with surpluses, we would probably have to raise the debt ceiling. The reason is this. When money comes into the Social Security trust fund, there are only two things they can do. They can either pay benefits or they can buy government bonds. When they buy government bonds they in effect drive up the debt. I know that is hard for people to understand, so yes, we are going to have to raise the debt ceiling, but even if we were balancing the budget we would have to do that.

I would also like to at least remind Members that things did change a lot in this country on September 11, 2001. I think we all know that. We all have to be cognizant of that and it has changed the priorities of how we spend money. Is that an excuse to allow other Federal spending to be going up? No. And have we been a little too profligate with the Defense Department and homeland security? My opinion would be yes. We have allowed our emotions to get the better of us and we have just said, we will spend more money and maybe we will be safer. I am not sure that is the answer. I am not sure that having 50 guards at every airport entrance makes us all that much safer and that is an argument and a debate we should have.

The debate today is how much are we going to allow Federal spending to go up, and is there really a good reason to allow the Federal budget to grow at a rate twice the rate of the average family budget?

The numbers we were talking about, from 1995 until 2000, the Federal budget went up at an average rate of about 3.2 percent. Since that time, we have allowed the Federal budget to grow at a rate of 6.4 percent. That assumes that we will enforce the numbers that we passed in this year's House budget resolution and that is really what we are debating today; that is, it is one thing to pass a budget, it is another thing to make certain that we enforce the budget.

There will be two great issues we are going to discuss today that I think are important. First of all, are we going to enforce the budgets that we pass here in the House of Representatives? We are the keepers of the public purse. I think we ought to enforce that budget. The second thing we are going to debate today is changing the process by which we derive a budget. The process today all leans towards more spending. In fact, I think the Wall Street Journal did a beautiful editorial last week which really underscored that point. Everything we do here, and frankly that is what we do, is we spend the public's money, but all of the rules today tend to make it easier to spend more money. What we want to do is level the rules so that at least we have a counterbalance to all of that pressure to spend more money.

I might just say this. We all have different reasons, and some say it is the tax cuts, but I would remind people that we cut taxes in almost every year during the 1990s, and we did it under PAYGO and spending cap rules. It can be done. We just have to find offsets for those. And we did. In fact, most of the supplemental spending bills that we passed we found offsets for those. It can be done. It means making some tough choices, but I always remind my colleagues, our constituents did not send us here just to make the easy choices. They sent us here to make tough choices. We are going to make some tough choices today in terms of whether we really mean what we say about holding the line on Federal spending and whether or not we are going to level the playing field in terms of the rules by which we make our budgets. This is an important debate.

The debate about raising the debt ceiling is clearly an important debate, but I think we have to be clear. Even if we had a balanced budget, because of the surpluses coming in in the Social Security trust fund, we would still have to raise the debt ceiling.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to some of the things that were just said.

First of all, I happen to believe that PAYGO rules ought to apply to tax cuts, too. But this is all about the politics of the possible, and we cannot get that done this year. So we can take this step this year, this day to begin to constrain Federal spending.

Let me also respond to something else. Our friends on the left cannot have it both ways. They cannot say, well, we need to invest in this program and that program and this program for people, and if we put more money into education, the argument is we will get it back ten- fold, but we do not want to pay any interest on that money. We cannot have it both ways. Fifty-five percent of what we will spend this year will be for what are called entitlement programs, and many of those entitlement programs were sold as investments in people. Now we are being told, but we get no return on that investment. This is just an expenditure, and it is lost forever.

So as we debate this, I know that people are going to come at this from different perspectives, but let us try to at least be honest with ourselves. We have a system right now, and the rules and the way the system works encourages more and more spending.

The debate today simply is about this: are we going to enforce the budgets that we pass here in the House and are we going to change the rules to give the taxpayers an even break? That is what the debate is about today. We can debate all of those other issues some other day. But we need support on both sides of the aisle to make certain that the American people understand that we are going to enforce the budgets we pass in the House.

We are the keepers of the public purse. We are going to enforce those budgets, and we are going to begin to amend the rules to make it more difficult to spend more than we take in.

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. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute before I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, I hear from Members on both sides of the aisle that this is really a waste of time today. It is kind of a silly exercise. We ought to be having appropriation debate on the floor. We have got appropriations bill that are waiting in line with no prospect of getting them done on time this year, and yet we have got to do this.

I hear from some that this is really an exercise as a price to prevent obstructionism on the floor for consideration of appropriation bills, that if we do not debate that, somebody is going to obstruct the floor.

Regardless, let me say a couple of things. There is a budget. The House has deemed the budget. We await consideration in the other body of the budget, and this is a nonbinding resolution that we are about to talk about for the next couple of hours here instead of talking about appropriation bills, but I guess we are going to go through this exercise.

As the majority leader said, we are going to have some fun because we get to point out our differences, but let us just face it. This is a nonbinding, somewhat silly exercise, but we are going to go through the process and talk about the differences.

Mr. Speaker, in order to do that, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), a member of the Committee on Ways and Means and a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart), a member of the Committee on the Budget to continue the debate on the Democrat increase-taxes-and- spending proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to read the last line of the bill. The minority leader may want to read page 5 of the resolution she just defended. It is not a tax increase? My goodness. What does ``changes in tax laws sufficient to increase revenues by $18 billion'' mean? I heard one time if it walks like a duck, it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might be a duck. This is a tax increase.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady), a member of the Committee on Ways and Means, to talk further about this Democrat tax increase resolution.

Mr. Speaker, to continue the debate on this small business job-killing bill, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett), a member of the Committee on the Budget, to continue the debate on this more-money-solves-all-problems proposal.

Mr. Speaker, to continue our debate on this Democrat increased-taxes bill, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Burns).

Mr. Speaker, to continue our debate on this tax-increase, job-killing bill, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

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

Mr. Speaker, to continue the debate on the Democrat tax- increase proposal, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan), a member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) to respond.

Mr. Speaker, we do not want to ``bamboozle,'' so I would yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan).

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, the point of this all is, this is a tax increase. They are admitting it. There were so many Members who came to the floor and said, oh, no, no, no, we are not really increasing taxes. But what the colloquy between the two gentleman from Wisconsin proves is, once and for all, this is a tax increase.

So if one wants to come to the floor today in the middle of an economic recovery and vote to increase taxes on small business, knock yourself out.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith).

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

Respectfully, because I know the Speaker is from New York, let me yield myself 30 seconds and say I think a lot of that money we borrowed was sent up to New York. So when the gentleman is talking about what happened and Alice in Wonderland, let me just remind the gentleman that we sent a lot of that to New York. We had a terrorist attack. I know the gentleman knows that, and he voted for it then, and he did not say a word about it then. He said send the money. We need it. Do whatever it takes. Now he comes to the floor and he says, gee, I guess we borrowed too much money.

Well, maybe we did, but the gentleman should have complained about it then.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), the vice chairman of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.

Mr. Speaker, that is the difference between Republicans and Democrats. It all comes down to who is doing the feeding of the oats. The government does not feed oats. That is not where the economic advantage of this country comes from. We do not pass out money to people here and say here is government money, we printed it, you get to have it. They get it from working. They get it from farming. They get it from taking risk. They get it from unlocking their door in the morning and letting in the public to their flower shop, to their shoe store, to their bank, to whatever it might be, unlocking that door and letting the energy and the economic engine of this country work.

That is what we want to continue: working. We do not want this to kill jobs. Just at the moment when we are increasing jobs, look what we have done. Yes, there was a downturn. In the aftermath of 9/11 and in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble busting and the aftermath of the Clinton recession, there is no question, look right here; that is what that is, that little downturn. But look how it is going back up.

And it is going up because the engine of America is working. It is not going up because of the chart on spending. When we increase spending in Washington, that does not drive the economy. That does not do anything except it spends money in Washington. What drives the economy are people in Wisconsin and Iowa taking a risk, building a business, employing people so that when they balance their checkbook around their kitchen table and they meet their obligations and pay for their kids' college and pay for health care and turn on the lights and pay for groceries, they can do it. It is not because, with all due respect to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), we send them a check. Because that does not do anything.

The check they want to make is a paycheck, not a government check. Every single person in America wants a paycheck. And that is what we have done. We have created paychecks. Look what the spending side of this does. They are saying we are not spending enough in Washington. Look at all of this increase. Look at all of the debt that they are complaining about. And on top of all of that, they say, no, the problem is we are still not spending enough money in Washington. And the thing they misconnect is that that money in Washington came from somebody, a taxpayer.

Money does not start in Washington. Money starts in Iowa, in Wisconsin, across the country, in people's pockets, in small businesses. That is where it starts. And they want to take more of it, they want to kill those jobs, so that they can hand out more money, so that they in Washington can have the power. We do not want that to happen. We want the power to be around the kitchen tables of Iowa and Wisconsin. That is why we have opposed their big tax increases.

As far as the spending, the taxes, that is obvious those increases are ridiculous. But the increases in spending, one can always say we want to hand out more money in order to demonstrate our compassion. And we have told them about the increases in education, the increases in veterans, the increases in health care, the increases for the environment, for all sorts of programs, and to make sure our country was protected. But on top of that, they say, you know what, I think we can even be more compassionate. We are going to hand out money and tell people we care.

Well, quite honestly, I think it is time for to us start looking around for the waste. I believe that, instead of this debate on the floor today, what we should have done is had an appropriation bill come up. That is what we should have done. We should have started going through all the accounts and look for ways where the Federal Government is not spending that money as wisely as the people back home in Iowa and Wisconsin.

We do not want to kill jobs; we do not need to increase spending. We do not need a resolution like the Democrat proposal on the floor today to tax and spend and tax and spend and tax and spend and tax and spend more and more in Washington. This needs to be done around the kitchen tables of Iowa, not the committee tables in Washington.

Mr. Speaker, I hope Members vote against this ill conceived proposal.

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. 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.