National Park Centennial Fund Act

Mr. Speaker, Mr. McHenry's input into this dialogue that we have here is essential. I look forward to the pugnacious Mr. McHenry's deliveries on this floor and in committee and before the media over the next 2 years of the new 110th Congress.

As always, Mr. Speaker, it is a profound honor and privilege to address you on the floor in the United States House of Representatives, the people's House. As I bring up this subject matter that is here before us, I have a series of things, random thoughts on the passing scene, focused on current events will be my message here today.

There are mistakes that are made and there are things said and done in political campaigns that don't always reflect the wishes or the policy, but things are said sometimes to win elections and then you have to follow through on that.

We have had some standards to look back on. The first 100 days of the presidency, many Presidents have made their pledge that in the first 100 days they are going to move pieces of policy, and they have endeavored to keep those pledges.

When the Republicans took over the majority in 1994, they also made a pledge in the first 100 days that they would bring, at least bring to a vote a series of reform changes called ``Contract With America.'' Looking back on that, and it depends on your analysis and definition, but something like two-thirds of that agenda was passed into law. I believe all of it was voted on in this Congress. But yet it was done under a regular order. It was done under an open process, and it was done by bringing the legislation of the Contract With America, which I am comparing now to this first 100 hours of the new majority's agenda, comparing those two initiatives that were brought up in the campaign and the pledges that were made. But they were brought through in regular order in the Contract With America in 1994.

Regular order meaning that the bills were introduced and they were brought to subcommittee where they had a full subcommittee hearing and there was open debate and there was an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to offer their amendments into the subcommittee on each of those pieces of legislation. As it came out of subcommittee, it went to full committee where there was an opportunity for the full committee members to weigh in. As we know, the committees are where we have established and developed expertise. If you look at the chairs and also the seasoned veterans on committees, both Republicans and Democrats, and I look at the Judiciary Committee where there is a tremendous amount of seniority, and I have the honor to serve on the House Judiciary Committee, there is a replete, not necessarily complete but a very replete body of knowledge within the minds of the members of the committee and the staff. And of course the history and the resources that are there.

That is why we put legislation through the subcommittee and committee processes so we can weigh in with our judgment and bring our individual expertise to bear, and we have an opportunity to hear from our constituents because they will read the language and they will parse the words and let us know where the flaws are.

Mr. Speaker, my first step into public life was going from the private sector, being a construction company founder, owner and manager into the legislative arena as an Iowa senator. And the first thing I learned was the law of unintended consequences.

In other words, you can have a good idea and it sounds perfect to you from your limited perspective. You can put that down into the form of a law, and if I were king for a day as a younger man, I might have offered some of those ideas I had earlier in my political career as an edict that I believed should have been the law of the land and lay that out there and give a bob of my scepter and declare that to be law. But my mistakes would have been as a younger, less experienced man, and sometimes still today those mistakes, I didn't understand the law of unintended consequences. I didn't understand that my ideas needed to be vetted across the spectrum of the other people that I served in the State legislature with, and I carry that experience with me into this Congress. I didn't understanding that I needed to float those ideas out to the various constituency groups that are there to be voices of individuals, and I didn't understand that I needed to float those out to individuals and get those ideas out in the press and publish my bills so that people that are interested can look in and weigh in and make phone calls, send e-mails and write letters, come and visit and lobby as individuals or join up with their various constituency groups that are out there to be able to analyze and be a louder voice as members of a group so that all of the expertise that America has to offer can come to bear on the judgments and decisions that we make here in this Congress.

But that whole process that I have described, the process utilized in 1994 with the Contract With America, that entire open, bipartisan process has been usurped by this rules package that has been brought here to the floor of this Congress. We learned essentially a new term. I don't know if anybody in this Congress understood it at the time. Some did, I imagine, because they came up with the effort on the rules.

I came down here to put up my first vote on a motion to commit. Now I have voted many times on motions to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, if I may describe that. A motion to recommit is a motion that says if you bring a bill to the floor and then it gets debated here on the floor, the motion to recommit says we want to recommit it back to committee and sometimes recommit it with instructions back to committee because there are Members here in the full House that didn't have an opportunity to weigh in on that bill as it came through committee. They didn't sit on the appropriate committee, for example. So they had a viewpoint that needed to be considered. And if a motion to recommit is successful here on the floor, that says a majority of the Members of the full House of Representatives have concluded that there are other ideas that needed to be considered, send it back to committee with instructions so those other ideas can be considered. That is a motion to recommit.

But we voted on a motion to commit, not recommit, a motion to commit. A motion to commit is send it to committee. And the reason it is a motion to commit rather than a motion to recommit is this legislation has not gone through committee. It has not gone through the subcommittee process or the committee process. It simply then is legislation that was held very tight. I don't know if it was in a locked briefcase, but it was something that the public and press didn't have access to. Members of Congress didn't have access to it. In fact, I believe many of the lower ranking Members of the majority party didn't have access to this legislation. It was secret legislation that was thrust upon us and the only opportunity that we have is a nondebatable motion to commit to committee for the first time because it didn't go through the committee process.

I submit, Mr. Speaker, that is inconsistent with the pledge that was made throughout the election process and throughout the campaign process.

There are a number of quotes that were identified, and I have some of them. I don't have all of them. One of them by now-Speaker Pelosi was this, and this was on CNN on November 9, so 2 days after the election. That would have been Thursday. She said, ``Democrats are ready to lead, prepared to govern.'' I don't quibble with that part of the statement. But the completion of the sentence is, ``ready to lead, prepared to govern, and absolutely willing to work in a bipartisan way.''

Mr. Speaker, there is no definition of bipartisanship that I can apply to this process unless many of the Members of the majority party were as shut out of this process as the entire minority party was. I suspect that is the case. I don't want to parse the language in there, I just want to say that the spirit and intent of that statement, ``willing to work in a bipartisan way'' has been violated here, but maybe not the technical definition of that. We can expect these things because we have a house full of lawyers that are good with language and they will find a way to convolute this language to be able to defend themselves.

So I point out this process. Motion to commit, nondebatable motion. All you can do is plead for a recorded vote, and that is the only opportunity to voice objection, but there is not an opportunity to improve the legislation. And that is really what we need to do, always, all of us in a bipartisan way, at least provide an opportunity for amendments in the process. That means in the subcommittee process and in the full committee process, and then here on the floor of the House of Representatives in open debate so the public can evaluate this process, not a secret or closed process, but an open process to the public. We owe you that, America. We owe you an open and clean process and we owe you an open dialogue and an open debate.

If we don't do that, you will be drawing conclusions such as they don't believe in what they are doing enough to be able to have an open debate. What kind of work is being done here that we are not able to have it withstand the scrutiny and the criticism that might come from the public if it were an open process.

So I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that promises get made during campaigns. There were many promises made during the last campaign that will not be kept by the new majority party. But the promise that seems to be the one that is sacrosanct is the promise that in the first 100 hours we will do these things. In order to accomplish these promises of achievement within the first 100 hours, which is comparable to the first 100 days in presidential promises or the promise of the 1994 new majority, in order to achieve those goals and keep those promises, the promise we will do it within the first 100 hours, the only way to meet that was to take this bipartisanship and set it aside and suspend it at least temporarily, if not permanently, for the 110th Congress, and to set aside the subcommittee process and set aside the committee process.

We have one more avenue here that there can be an open forum, and that is the rules process. At least a member can bring an amendment to the Rules Committee, explain their amendment in open forum and ask for a vote on their amendment as to whether that amendment can be allowed to be considered here on the floor of the House of Representatives.

I was astonished there were this many amendments when I came here as a freshman a couple of Congresses ago. I was astonished that there were so many amendments that were turned down, that did not see the light of day. But there was an opportunity to present them to the Rules Committee, and I did that many times and I got turned down many times as a member of the majority party. But we don't even have a rules process that is open enough that you can present your amendments to the Rules Committee.

In fact, I believe the Rules Committee, as an example already, will not be meeting, it will simply be a decision that is made by the leadership of the majority party, and the recorded votes of the Rules Committee will be secret. That is part of this package, as I understand it, too, Mr. Speaker.

So of all of the promises that will be broken, the one that should be broken is the one that is sacrosanct, the promise of accomplishment in the first 100 hours. If we could just look at that and say we understand your motive, but this is not conducive to bipartisanship or open process; in fact, it is not conducive to good legislation because the good ideas of Democrats and Republicans are shut out of this process.

I will just ask this of now-Speaker Pelosi: Why don't you just break one promise instead of a series that will ultimately be broken, and break that promise about 100 hours so that you can keep your promise about bipartisanship, and keep your promises about an open process and ethical process. That is far more important to the American people than a promise to accomplish certain legislative endeavors within the first 100 hours.

This 100 hours is meaningless to the American people. All of this has to go over to the Senate. The Senate has to be willing to take it up. The Senate has to be able to vote cloture on some of this, and I think it will be filibustered, and it has to get to the President for signature. Timing is not as essential, it is the policy that is important. It is important to have an open process, it is important that we weigh in and that amendments be allowed to be offered and that they be considered and that they be voted on so the American people can have confidence in this process.

And sometimes, sometimes, this body, this great deliberative body of the people's House, will reach the right decisions. In fact, I believe often we will. When we do so with public debate and an open process, we reach the right decision for the right policy for America and we also reach it by using the right reasons, the reasons of open dialogue that allow people's positions and their knowledge to come to that debate.

Sometimes we will make the wrong decision, and when we do that, if we have open dialogue and open debate, then at least it is arguable that we have arrived at the wrong decision, but at least we followed the right process, and we can't fault the reasoning on how we get there.

I would compare Gerald R. Ford, and may he rest in peace, Gerald R. Ford, whom we said good-bye to within this past week, the man who came to the Presidency after having served 25 years here, Mr. Speaker, in the House of Representatives, a man who was almost without guile as President. A President who made decisions at a time when we

needed someone who had absolute integrity. The person who had confidence, the confidence and the endorsement of Democrats and Republicans at the time, Mr. Speaker. And with Gerald R. Ford as President, when he made a decision, when I agreed with him and he laid out his reasoning and his rationale, when he made the right decision, he made it for the right reason.

He thoughtfully deliberated on the components of the information, the interactivity of them and what the result would be and what the constitutional foundation was on that decision. And he made his decision, and he told us why. And that established confidence in the integrity and the judgment, in the intellect, and the character and in the faith of Gerald R. Ford.

When he made the wrong decision, and I will just say when I disagreed with him would be my definition of the wrong decision, he still laid out his argument. And when he laid out his argument, I could not fault him for using the wrong criteria. It was well thought out. He made his arguments well. When we disagreed, I would have a different argument.

But those kinds of debates that he had within himself, he earned that respect of us for President Ford. That kind of deliberation, that kind of integrity so far in the 110th Congress is nonexistent because there hasn't been an opportunity to have that debate on any of this that has come to this at this point and the rules deny there be that kind of debate and deliberation in the future.

So I talked about the new motion, still it was in the rules, but a motion to commit. New to use. You will hear a discussion, Mr. Speaker, about PAYGO. PAYGO means pay as you go. It means something different to Democrats than it does to Republicans. And I will say that when Republicans talk about PAYGO, we mean we want to pay as we go, as do Democrats, but we believe we should constrain spending and slow the growth in government and we should find ways for reconciliation and maybe do a rescissions package so that we can rachet this spending down to keep it within the revenue stream.

We believe that the Bush tax cuts have absolutely flat out been proven to stimulate this economy. Revenue is up. Revenue has increased significantly since the Bush tax cuts were put in place. That is why our deficit has been reduced. It is because revenue has gone beyond our expectations. But the PAYGO argument for me is I want to slow this growth in spending so that we can get the size of our Federal Government back in line with the size of our revenue stream.

For example, last year there were mistakes made by the majority party in the last couple, three Congresses. I believe that there was too much money that was spent, Mr. Speaker, and I think that we should have shut that down earlier. I was surprised when I came to this Congress as a freshman in January of 2003 that there wasn't a balanced budget that I could simply endorse, jump on, and go to work with. It was a condition where we were dealing with the reality of the politics rather than the necessity of balancing the budget.

And in order to produce a balanced budget, I would have had to create my own with my new staff, who didn't really have that time and understanding of this overall 2.7 or $2.8 trillion national budget. But things crept away from a balanced budget, and we know why. We know there was the bursting of the dot-com bubble that took place and it was necessary, and I could go into that perhaps on another date, Mr. Speaker.

And we also know that we faced an attack on September 11 that shut down our financial industry and that the effort was to turn our United States economy into a tailspin. It needed to be brought out of that nosedive, and the tax cuts that we passed brought it back up out of that nosedive. We knew that we had to engage in a global war on terror and it was going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars to be able to defend Americans that had been killed in greater numbers on our soil than ever at any time in history, and we set about to do that.

So three big things sent us into a deficit: the bursting of the dot- com bubble, the attack on September 11, and the necessity to fund the effort in a global war on terror. Those three things. And as the stimulants took place on the tax cuts, it has taken a little while to get them to take hold, but there is no argument that this economy is the strongest and most powerful economy that I have experienced in my lifetime, and it is measurable by a lot of different ways. Anything that goes up and is good for the economy is up. Anything that goes down that is good for the economy is down, and the opposite is also true.

This has been a powerfully strong economy with growth in something like 18 of 19 previous quarters, and all of that growth has been up around the 3 percent level. So this economy has been powerful, and this growth has been really a great position to be in to be able to say let us let the economy grow us out of this. Let us slow this growth of balance. Let us balance this budget.

But let us not balance it, Mr. Speaker, with tax increases. That is what PAYGO means to Democrats. The tax cuts have provided the growth in our revenue stream. Tax increases will diminish the growth in our revenue stream. But their idea of pay-as-you-go is to increase taxes and increase spending, as we heard Mr. McHenry say, to the tune of $800 million in this package. That $800 million won't be paid for by cuts in other line items in any significant way. That, in their mind, is paid for by tax increases.

As has been stipulated by the new incoming chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel of New York, none of the Bush tax cuts he would say he would support or endorse. And as you listened to him respond across the media airwaves, it always came back to the only way that you could characterize his position was we are going to increase taxes.

When you increase taxes, you slow this economy. Ronald Reagan once said what you tax you get less of. What you tax you get less of, and what you subsidize you get more of. But I want to talk about the what- you-tax-you-get-less-of component of that, a very wise statement of President Reagan's, and that is in our infinite lack of wisdom here in the United States of America, Mr. Speaker, we tax all productivity in America.

In fact, the Federal Government has the first lien on all productivity in America. And you can measure that by personal income tax, corporate income tax, capital gains, taxes on interest income, taxes on dividend income, taxes on your pension, taxes on your Social Security. I am forgetting some of those taxes. How about your savings and investment? Any way you can describe productivity, the Federal Government is there to tax it; so we get less productivity because we tax our productivity in America, and Democrats are poised to increase the taxes on our productivity. What you tax you get less of.

If you are paying a 10 percent income tax and you are making $50,000 a year and they want to raise that tax up to let's just say 50 percent, why in the world would you try to increase your revenue stream by 50 percent if your taxes are going to go up by the average of 50 percent and 10 percent, say, roughly 30 percent on average? That will not happen in the minds of the American people. That is why organized economies never work. That is why Marxism has failed. That is why socialized economies, managed economies, have always failed. Free enterprise has been the thing that has provided incentives so that people could produce all they could produce and they had an incentive to be able to keep the max amount possible and still be able to provide the services that are necessary to hold our sovereign state together.

Democrats want to raise taxes to balance the budget. Republicans want to cut spending to balance the budget.

So last year I put together the formula that would get us to a balanced budget. And if we just wanted to do it all at once, we need to be looking at what that balanced budget was to do that all at once. And we say, first of all, there is nondiscretionary spending. This is the kind of spending that is already in the formula, that is, what it is going to cost for Social Security, what it is going to cost for Medicaid, what it is going to cost for Medicare. That is most of them, those formulas that are automatic transfer payments that are

already set up in the equation. That is nondiscretionary spending. Many people think you can't affect that. That we shouldn't change it, maybe adjust the rules in such a way that there would be fewer recipients or fewer dollars of Medicaid, for example.

That needs to be addressed, and we have tried to address entitlement spending. That is that nondiscretionary spending and the other phrase for it: you are entitled to Social Security. You are entitled to Medicare. You are entitled to Medicaid. But the rules of those entitlements are in the code today, and those rules are something that can be changed and adjusted. And I am not here to talk about how to do that specifically, although I do have some ideas on how to approach that, but we need to address entitlement spending.

That was the President's effort when he came out right after his second inaugural address and traveled the countryside and spoke about reforming Social Security. That operation will collapse at some point unless we have the political courage to touch that third rail and fix it. That is an entitlement.

Another one is Medicare. Being from the State that is last in the Nation in Medicare receipts on a per capita basis, there is much that must be done to help our people out who are on the short end of that stick. But entitlement spending is a component of this. They want to increase taxes rather than adjust entitlement spending. And the more they can grow entitlement spending, the more they can take us into socialism. And I don't want to have a managed economy. I want to have a free enterprise market economy. That is what I came here to promote and defend.

PAYGO for Democrats is raise taxes; PAYGO for Republicans is cut spending. And last year for the 2007 fiscal year, which much of that is still ahead of us, we could have left entitlements in place. We could have left defense spending in place at the appropriated levels that we have now and done nondefense discretionary spending. That is the rest of the budget that I haven't mentioned.

Mr. Speaker, nondefense discretionary spending could have been appropriated at the term of 95 percent of what it was for the 2006 fiscal year and we would have had a balanced budget.

Some of the Democrats have pledged to support a balanced budget that does not include increasing taxes, that does include reduction of spending in nondefense discretionary, that discretionary spending that doesn't put our Nation at risk. Ninety-five percent of the 2006 fiscal year, that doesn't mean an increase. That actually means a decrease of 5 percent in funding.

Well, if I have a family budget and all of a sudden I look around and I think I am going into debt here and I guess I am not going to be in a position to pass that debt along to my children, and we should not be, then we need to be willing to live within our means. And whatever your means are, most of us, if we had to look back and think we can have a balanced family budget if we would just reduce our overall spending down to 95 percent of what it was last year, we would willingly make that adjustment, recognizing that we haven't been as responsible as we should have been, and made the budget adjustment.

That is the kind of PAYGO we need to do in this Congress. We need a balanced budget here, yes, Mr. Speaker, but not PAYGO with tax increases. Pay as you go without tax increases. That is the Steve King position, and I believe that will be a core position on the part of many of the Republicans.

Another way that we can adjust, address spending, is the earmark reform. I have been in strong support of earmark reform. I have stepped in and voted for 16 of the 17 that Congressman Flake brought to the floor of this Congress in the 109th Congress, but I don't think that really does the job. They are pieces that I agree with.

But I want to do some real reform here, Mr. Speaker, and I am prepared to introduce a bill. It is a bill that I introduced last year.

The problem is this, we talk about giving the President a line item veto, so that when there is spending that comes out, and maybe you want to talk about the Bridge to Nowhere, that is one of those issues that has been raised up as a earmark. Well, if the Bridge to Nowhere comes up, or the Cowgirl Hall of Fame comes up or some of these other earmarks that have been rather notorious in the media, we would ask the President, under a presidential line item veto to veto that, take it out of the budget, save that $273 million or whatever the number might be for any of those items, or $1 million line item veto to maybe study the nocturnal habits of the salamander, or whatever it might be. You know some of those, Mr. Speaker, they have been out in the news.

These are earmarks that get slipped in, generally at the committee level, as the bill is being drafted. It comes out here. No Member of Congress has an opportunity to evaluate those earmarks, nor an opportunity to bring an amendment that could strike those earmarks from the bill. They arrive in a compromised fashion often as a conference committee report that comes back in the negotiations between the House and the Senate.

It comes to the floor. We have got to vote on it to move to keep the government operating, and what happens is, there are line items in there that have been earmarked by people who are inside that conference committee, and these Members of Congress here, Democrats and Republicans, are held accountable for voting ``yes'' or ``no'' on pork projects that they didn't know was in the bill.

I would illustrate it this way, when I first came to this Congress, there was a 3,600 page omnibus spending bill. I was only here about 3 days, or maybe even two, and that bill came to the floor of this Congress, and 20 minutes after it was made available to my staff to evaluate, the final vote went up here on the floor of the House of Representatives.

That process meant that I was accountable for all of those earmarks that were in that omnibus spending bill, those 3,600 pages. It is one thing to try to evaluate a bill and read what's in it, it is not possible within the time we had, but it is at least possible to evaluate something that is in the bill.

Try and find, Mr. Speaker, something that is not in the bill. Try and look through 3,600 pages to determine that there are omissions as well as the issues, the earmarks that are in the bill.

This process does need to be more open, so I have drafted the CUT Act, and it is cut unnecessary tab, and the tab references, if you have a tab in an eating or drinking establishment, we want to cut this tab.

I believe this, that Members of Congress need to have a legitimate opportunity to have their own line item veto. I think every Member of this Congress should be able to offer an amendment to a bill that strikes out the line items of their choice under an open rule.

So the CUT Act does this, Mr. Speaker, it allows once a quarter, four times a year, for a bill to come to the floor under an open rule, and it may just be a shell bill, it may not have a single line item strike in it, but it allows under an open rule any and every Member to bring forth their list of objectionable spending, objectionable earmarks, and have them offer those earmark strikes.

All it would do is be a rescissions bill that reduces spending, and the reduction in that spending goes to address the deficit. When the deficit is addressed, then it goes back into the general fund, which ultimately reduces our national debt, gives every Member of this Congress an opportunity to have a line item veto of their own offered to all Members of Congress.

So let us say there is a crazy appropriation out here that got slipped into a bill. It will surely happen, Mr. Speaker, it will happen hundreds and perhaps thousands of times. Let us just say that the blogosphere out there is lit up, that people go to their Web pages, and they scrutinize the work that we do. We need to give them a lot of access to do that because they are the next watch dogs on this Congress.

It used to be that the watch dogs sat in this gallery, and many do, and I am glad they are here, but then as those watch dogs were also up here in the press corps, and then the press wrote, and it got into the newspapers, and sometimes, weeks later, had got out into the press in the corners of the United States of America

Well, now we are real-time. We are real-time, and it has been press real-time for a long time, but it is even better now because we have an Internet, we have a blogosphere. Let us just say that there is a completely objectionable earmark that has been slipped in by a committee chairman, or maybe an agreement with a ranking member, that comes out of a conference committee, and it comes down to the floor of this Congress.

Let us just pick the nocturnal habits of salamanders for $10 million, to have a subject here that we can talk about and understand. Well, we don't really need to understand the nocturnal habits of salamanders, at least at that kind of experience to the taxpayers. But whatever the motivation was that put it in there, we will not see it. We will not have time to read the bill. But that bill then, once it passes a conference report, goes to the President, and he will sign that bill, because there are many things in there that we must have to keep the government operating, and now we have got $10 million wasted on the nocturnal habits of salamanders.

There is nothing Congress can do about it, we have done it. We have been complicit, our rules have been complicit in allowing these things to happen, not just with this earmark, Mr. Speaker, but hundreds and even thousands of them. My CUT Act allows this, it allows a Member to stand up on the first day of the quarter, hopefully it will be the leader and the leaders, and they will say, I have a bill at the desk made in order under the rule, and this bill is the CUT Act bill, then that allows the shell bill to come up like an appropriations bill, only this is a deappropriations bill, a rescissions bill, that every amendment that strikes spending by line item is in order, and the Members can flock over here to the Capitol, and being responsive to their constituents, being responsive to their constituency groups, being responsive to the bloggers out there, that have gone down through this legislation, have read every single line item, have read the details and the nuances of it, read every details and the nuances of it; and then, these Members of Congress can come here, offer their amendments to strike the $10 million that would be spent for the nocturnal habits of salamanders, and you can add line after item after line item, strike after strike to that.

When that happens, we will have an open process, a process that will allow for the people of the United States of America to weigh in on our appropriations that we are doing here.

That, Mr. Speaker, is a description of how the CUT Act works. A lot of us would like to see the President with a legitimate and effective line item veto. But I believe this Congress deserves a legitimate and an effective line item veto. It is why I put a lot of research into this, I have examined it, I have floated it out to the various constituency groups. I have asked them for their input because I don't want to have unintended consequences. I want to be able to provide a process here that is good for the future of America, an open process, a process that gives everybody in this Congress a line item veto, at least to offer the amendment.

When that bill passes off this floor, and I don't envision just eliminating $10 million on the nocturnal habits of salamanders, I envision there to be 25 or 50 or 100 or 300 or more line items that are accumulated into that bill that are struck. Because individually, they will not be able to withstand the scrutiny of the majority of the Members of Congress, because you, the people of America, and the American people, I should say, actually, Mr. Speaker, will insist that we be fiscally responsible and that we not waste money.

So let us just say that there are now 100 line items strikes, each one of them representing an amendment to the CUT Act bill that is in order, and that $10 million to the nocturnal habits of salamanders is the first one, and that saves the taxpayers $10 million. We go right down the list of those things that you know about, Mr. Speaker, those things that are in the media, strike after strike after strike, and we have now accumulated 100 different strikes, line item vetoes, and out of those 100, there is in there, perhaps, let us pick a round number, $1 billion. Now this bill, then, passes off this House of Representatives, and it goes over to the Senate, where we ask them to take it up.

We cannot write their rules, Mr. Speaker, but we can ask them to take up a bill that we pass here, a rescissions package that has the full support of the American people that cuts $1 billion out of our spending that reduces our deficit and when, successfully, we are at the balanced budget level, pays down the national debt.

That is the CUT Act, Mr. Speaker. That is a line item veto for Members of Congress. That is Congressional accountability. That is the kinds of things that we need to have an opportunity to debate here on the floor of this Congress when we kick off this 110th. That is the kind of amendment that has been shut out of this process, not just out of the process of subcommittee and committee, but shut out of even being presented at the Rules Committee so that there can be access to the media for the debate, the deliberation, and so that there will be people that can be held accountable for their vote when they decide they don't want this kind of an open process.

I submit that there is no desire for this open process on the part of the majority. I believe that I need to continue to beat this drum, and I will.

To package the PAYGO argument up and move on to the next component of this, PAYGO, for Republicans is, control and constrain spending to achieve a balanced you budget, no new taxes, less spending, balanced budget, fiscally responsible, PAYGO for Democrats is buy what you need to, spend what you need to pass by your Members, raise taxes, so that you can say that you balanced the budget.

That will work until you kill the goose that lays the golden egg, what you tax you will get less of. We will get less tax gas production in America as taxes increase. That means then that there will be less revenue coming in, coming off of the production in America, and eventually this economy will be constrained It will shrink, and we will have, we will finally kill the goose that lays the golden egg. We will have to come back around, reduce tax again, stimulate again, do what we did in the aftermath of September 11 to reduce tax, do it in the Reagan way, do it in the John F. Kennedy way, the Reagan way, the George W. Bush way, those things, those tax reductions have always increased and stimulated our economy. That doesn't seem to be something that is within the scope of understanding on the other side, because there is a different agenda. It is a socialization agenda.

So, that is the description of PAYGO, Mr. Speaker. Now, the next component that I want to talk about within this rules package is the idea of ethics reform. Ethics reform, I agree, we needed to reform some ethics. We didn't do enough in the 109th Congress to reform ethics. We did things that were, I thought, window dressing.

My view on ethics is that, I mentioned the bloggers a little bit earlier. We need to give the American people sunlight. They have got to have sunlight on this process. That means that we should not have rules that are written and reports that are written in such a way that the information is difficult to access, or difficult to understand, or impossible to legitimately analyze and draw real black and white conclusions.

But in truth, that is the system that we have today, and it is the system that has been improved some over the years, but it has got a ways to go. The system that I would submit is under a package that I have offered called the Sunlight bill. That means that I want a light on the things that we do.

I think that we live in a fishbowl anyway, all 435 of us, we are scrutinized by the press whenever we show up in public, we are recognized, and that is great, it is flattering. It is a tremendous honor to be able to represent the people here in the United States House of Representatives. The trade-off for that is you don't get a lot of privacy. The requirement for that is that you report your finances, for example, and that we report our campaign finances, as well as our personal finances, and we report our financial dealings. That includes real estate transactions, purchases.

But we have a system that is not open. We have a system that is not accessible. We have a system that is not really sortable, and it is vague enough

that you can't draw clear conclusions from that reporting system that we have. I have offered the Sunlight Act to fix all of that and to make it more, and I am going to say far more, accessible to the American people.

First and the easiest one to deal with is the Federal Election Commission reporting. Now, all of us have to go out and raise money in order to get elected to this Congress. Money is a necessity for the people to express their freedom of speech. If we don't raise the money, eventually someone will spend a lot of money. No matter what our level of integrity is, you cannot sustain a seat in the House of Representatives if you are not willing to go out and raise some money and be able to advertise on a political campaign.

It is unfortunate. I don't know that it was envisioned by our Founding Fathers, but it is necessary. Mr. Speaker, if we concede the point that money has to be raised by Members of Congress, and it does, then we also need to discuss, and I believe, concede the point that we should have full reporting of our campaign finances, and we do have a law that requires full reporting, and I don't want to imply that that doesn't exist, it is just that the reporting isn't necessarily in real- time.

It isn't necessarily in a format that is accessible. So if it is not accessible, easily accessible, then it is not as full as the reporting should be. The Sunlight Act asks this, that the Federal Election Commission reporting, our campaign finances, be reported in real-time. And it sets up some parameters on how much time you have if you receive some revenue from an individual or from a PAC, the timing of that is a little looser until you get down to the last 30 days of a campaign. In the last 30 days the Sunlight Act requires that you file those campaign contributions every 24 hours, every single day, the last 30 days, you file those campaign revenues. Somebody hands you a check, that gets deposited, but it gets reported the same business day. That is not too much to ask when you have that kind of flurry going on. We have to do a lot of things on a real-time basis, and that is one of them.

But that is only, but to report that, to report it to the FEC and have the FEC bring that report out in their own good time, in a time that it is not possible for the public to understand where the monies come from, and we agree, I believe, that utilization of funds to advance a candidacy or to advance a cause are political speech, but free speech.

So if funds are speech, and the reporting of those funds is an open process, it needs to be in a timely fashion. So say if there were, what if there happened to be an entity out there that was one who was rejected by Democrats and Republicans but put a lot of money in a campaign and that didn't show up until after the election, Madam Speaker. But the public, had they known that, might have voted for the candidate who didn't receive those funds. That is my argument as to why we need to have real-time reporting.

But I want to take this back to the blogosphere. We have people out there that have their blogs and they are watching the mainstream news media. They are interacting with other blogs. They have their information conduits that come from whatever their access points are. Maybe they happen to be in politics, or maybe they are just a pundit that is well wired and well connected. And they might see information that the rest of the country doesn't see. That is how news is gathered. So the bloggers are gathering the news and they are writing their opinions and sometimes they are taking information and then sorting it in a fashion that people can use it and they can understand it.

I submit that we should submit ourselves, Madam Speaker, to the scrutiny of the blogosphere; that we should have FEC reporting, campaign finance reporting in real-time in a searchable, sortable, downloadable format that will allow anyone out there in America that has access to a computer or to the Internet to go click on that information, if they want to know where Steve King's revenue stream came from, download that into a database that you can sort.

If you want to sort it alphabetically, sort it alphabetically. If you want to sort it by dollars, biggest contribution down to smallest, do that. If you want to sort it by date, do that. If you want to sort it by name, do that. But we should put that information out to the public so that you can scrutinize, in the public, where our campaign funds come from, so that you can evaluate sometimes the positions that we take. Because if they can be indexed to the influence of money, you need to hold us accountable. We owe you our best judgment.

We don't owe the public a vote that is a bought vote. And the public needs to have an opportunity to identify if there is someone who is influenced too much by money, and it needs to happen in real-time. It needs to happen every single day 30 days prior to an election. That is part of the Sunlight Act, to shed light on our Federal Election Commission reporting, real-time, Internet accessible, downloadable, searchable, sortable database so that the American public has access.

Now, Madam Speaker, that would take care of the reporting on our FEC documents. Essential open process, put me in the fish bowl, make it real-time. I am already in the fish bowl. Let's be honest and open about it and we will get these adjustments made, and they will be made by the people out there in the country, and that is where it should be.

The next part of this that needs reform even more, Madam Speaker, is our personal financial reporting from an ethics perspective. And I will reiterate that when a Member of Congress files a financial disclosure form and files it under the ethics rules that are there, they sign that document and pledge that it is true and accurate and done so within the rules and the guidelines of ethics. And to violate that, to willfully violate that and falsely report is a felony. It is a felony. It is worse to report wrong data on your ethics than it is to come into the United States illegally. It is a felony to report inaccurate information willfully on our financial disclosure forms.

But we have ranges of financial reporting, ranges that, not all of them committed to memory, and I didn't come down here prepared to go through them component by component. But I can just give some examples off the top of my head, Madam Speaker. And it works kind of this way. If you have liabilities, I am speaking again in general terms, not to the specific numbers within their financial reporting. If you have liabilities, perhaps between zero and $100,000, you put a little X in that column on this little kind of little spread sheet but it is a paper spread sheet. So you put an X in there and say, well, I owe somewhere between zero and $100,000. Or maybe you say I have no liabilities. And if you have assets that might be within $250,000 and $750,000, you put a little X in that box.

Well, then if you want to analyze what somebody is worth, you might have $100,000 worth of debt and they might have no more than $250,000 worth of assets, but you can't determine if they have no liability or $100,000 worth of liability and you can't determine whether they have $250,000 worth of assets or $750,000 worth of assets. And so as people go up the line in their reporting, the difference, the dollars in disparity get greater and greater and greater to the extent that, Madam Speaker, we have a Member seated in this Congress who reported low six digits in net worth assets 5 years earlier, and then 5 years later, showed up with somewhere between $6.4 million and $25 million in net worth. How does a person make $6 million in assets or, excuse me, in net worth value over a period of 5 years on the salary of a Member of Congress? How could a person expand that from $6.4 million on up to $25 million. Those questions cannot be legitimately answered without the Department of Justice and search warrants and Ryder trucks and filing cabinets loaded up to take into the investigation and computers being picked up and brought in and a massive financial analysis to figure out what really was going on. Were there taxpayer dollars that were pouring into this? Was there a Member of Congress that was enriching himself at the expense of the taxpayers? That is why we have the reporting of our finances.

But the ranges that are in there don't allow for the public to see that early enough to be able to call that question, get it into the media and bring that

Member into bay so that it doesn't get completely out of hand. This one, from my viewpoint, looks like it is completely out of hand, and I think it is going to take more tha months yet for Justice to be able to do complete scrutiny of this and find out what really happened.

But if that Member that I am referencing, and if every Member, and I am speaking about every Member in this Congress, were required to put down exactly the dollar amount of their liabilities and exactly the dollar amounts of their assets so that you could look at their net worth, and understand that there is an amount of appreciation that might come with real estate investment. There might be an amount of appreciation that comes with stock options and investments. That needs to be reported. That should be traceable and trackable, and we should be required to put down exact dollar amounts, not ranges. Not a range of $5 to $25 million. If I were in that range, it is a lot of difference between being worth $5 million and $25 million. Where did the money come from is the reason that we have to report our finances.

The American people, Madam Speaker, do not have access to that information. That allows unethical Members of Congress to hide the worth that they may have been gathering in a fashion that is less than ethical. I believe we need to have sunlight on all of the financial proceedings, not just our Federal Election Commission reporting, not just our campaign side, but on our personal side as we are required today, but not in a range, not in a range of $5 to $25 million, not in a range of zero to $100 now, or $250,000 to $750,000, but in a range that is to the nearest dollar.

Exact reporting, and, Madam Speaker, do so in real-time. Do so in a downloadable, searchable, sortable database format, so that the bloggers out there, or anyone who has access to the Internet, be it a public library or their laptop on the bus or whether it is their hard- wired computer that sits in their basement, can sit down and say, I think I have been watching somebody here that is my Member of Congress. I don't know how they are doing so well. I am hearing rumors out here. Let's see what's really happened and go look and see, if we are going to be an open process, let's be an open process. Let's put sunlight on everything that we do in this Congress, Madam Speaker.

Let's put real-time reporting, downloadable, searchable, sortable formats on our FEC reporting for our campaign funds. Let's do that same thing for our personal finances. Let's open this up to the American people. Let them scrutinize our finances and the movement of our finances so that if some Member can be in here in the year 2000 with a net worth of perhaps $100,000, and in the year 2005 have a net worth of $6.4 million, or more, the American public can ask the question, why. Why did that take that kind of jump? It is not something that can be analyzed or justified unless there are special conditions. Those conditions, those circumstances have not been addressed at this point. I believe we need sunlight on everything that we do, sunlight on our campaign stream, sunlight on our personal finances.

And while we are shedding light on what is going on here in the Chamber, Madam Speaker, it is a bit of a surprise to many of us who come into this Congress to walk down here on the floor of Congress and hear a debate going on and it doesn't seem to be fitting with the debate we were watching on C-SPAN on the television in our office in the 5-minute walk over here. Things have changed. And you can walk on the floor of this Congress and thinking you are coming to weigh in on the debate of H. Res. 5 and find out you are debating H.R. 3495.

Now, neither one of those bills has a name in my mind. But we have names for these bills too that help describe what it is we are debating. And we are sitting in this technological era, where I have just called for real-time access for financial reporting of the Members of Congress, but the people that are sitting in the gallery here in this House of Representatives, Madam Speaker, unless they have got some kind of ear piece in them or some kind of a BlackBerry that they are allowed to have and I don't know that they are, that can tell them what is going on here on the floor of Congress they will not know when they walk in this Chamber what this debate is all about.

They will not know the bill that is before us. They will not know the amendment we are discussing. They will not know why some of the rhetoric doesn't match the language of the bill and the intent of the subject we are talking about. They can't know, Madam Speaker, because there isn't a single sign around this Chamber that tells the people that come into the gallery to witness the people's House what it is we are actually talking about. And if a Member of Congress walks in and they have been 1 minute or 5 minutes or 10 minutes out of the loop in their walk from their office and their watching their C-SPAN camera to come over here, the bill may have changed or a bill may have been temporarily deferred. It might be a different one that is taken up. And in that transfer of that subject matter, they can't know unless they walk over here and interrupt the person or the staff and ask what are we discussing, what are we debating. What is happening. I thought I came over here to talk on H.R. 6, and instead I am over here on H.R. 3094.

The reason that we don't know that is because we don't use the simplest of technology, a technology that at least when we vote puts the number of the bill up here on either end of the Chamber, illuminates it on the wooden panels so that you can see the vote that comes up. There is no technological reason, there is no procedural reason why we can't just ask for the sunlight bill on finances, why we can't just shine the light up on the wall, a subject matter that is being debated, the number of the bill that is being debated and the name and perhaps the number of the amendment that is also under discussion at the moment. That would allow anyone who comes in off the street to witness the debate and deliberation of the people's House to immediately sit down and understand what the debate is all about and understand what the amendment is and who has got the amendment up, and they will figure out then instantly who is the proponent, who is the opponent, and the process becomes more open.

The simplest thing that should be nonpartisan, this very simple idea is not just my idea but an idea that is supported and endorsed by many. I would ask if we could submit this idea to the freshmen that have come in. Those who have come out of State legislatures understand that the technology is there and has been there for years in State legislatures. When you walk into the chamber of a State House or a State Senate almost anywhere in the country, the subject of the bill is illuminated on the wall, the bill number is illuminated on the wall, the name of the person offering the amendment and the number of the amendment is offered on the wall with a short description of the bill, the amendment, so that the public can easily see what is going on, so that the members who are elected can walk in the room and instantaneously understand the process that they have walked into and be able to pick up immediately and engage in the process.

That is part of the light that needs to be shined on this process, Madam Speaker. And I raise this issue up with this particular discussion because it happens to be something that is almost without cost. It should be absolutely bipartisan. In fact, it should be nonpartisan in its nature. Everyone who serves here should be interested in being able to have easy access to the process and the procedure we happen to be under. And it is something that allows the people in the gallery to understand what is happening.

Right now, it could have ``Special Order by King'' on there. They could have a little clock on there to tell me how much time I have left before the gavel drops and my time has run and expired.

But at this point I would ask the Speaker how much time I have remaining.

Oh, boy. The gentleman will then immediately conclude my discussion, and I really appreciate that I have been able to bring it to that conclusion in exactly the 60 minutes that have been allowed. I appreciate

also the privilege in speaking to you, Madam Speaker.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to remind my colleagues of some important facts as we deliberate on these earmarks. I think it is very important to understand that we have reduced the dollar value of earmarks in this bill by 50 percent from the levels that the Republicans had when they were running this House of Representatives. A 50 percent reduction. We have cut 41 wasteful programs from the budget in this appropriations bill. We have saved over $1 billion over last year.

So instead of getting involved in the intricacies of one earmark after another, let's keep focused on the facts that count. And the fact that counts is that we reduced this budget and slashed those earmarks in half.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall).

Mr. Chairman, I ask how much time both sides have left?

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

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

I appreciate the gentleman's argument. At least his argument is consistent. I appreciate the gentleman's integrity, and I appreciate the principles of his argument. But I must say, sitting here listening to some of the other Members on the other side of the aisle consistently raises issues of inconsistency.

The gentleman who's offered this amendment has said we should go back to last year. That's all we're doing is going back to last year so we can hold the line on spending. Why we would want to go back to last year? When last year was there ever an attempt to hold the line on spending?

Mr. Chairman, the other side spent and spent and spent and borrowed and borrowed and borrowed. The difference between us is we want to invest in America's families. The other side, Mr. Chairman, decided to spend to give special interest giveaways. We want to spend to make sure that kids can get Pell Grants and go to college and compete in the global economy. They wanted to spend on no-bid contracts to Halliburton. We want to spend to make sure that seniors can heat their homes in the winter because of high oil prices. They wanted to spend on $13 billion in tax cuts for oil company executives who I don't think are eligible for LIHEAP. That's the difference between us.

We just had a debate earlier about the propriety of Members of Congress putting their names on projects that are funded by the Federal Government. I would suggest to my good friends that if there were an earmark for a facility called the Congressional Hypocrisy Treatment Foundation, there wouldn't be a plaque large enough for all of their names.

Mr. Chairman, with that, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Chairman, can I ask how much time is left?

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

The gentleman just said the things that they are investing in and implying that the Democrats are making these investments. Yes, we are making these investments. They are investments in strengthening American families, making sure kids can go to college, making sure people can afford to heat their homes.

I will tell you something else, it's not just us, this bill came out of appropriations with a strong bipartisan majority. The most conservative Members of the other side voted for this bill. It's not that we are making these investments as Democrats, it's that most mainstream Members of Congress, with responsibilities to our districts, are making these investments.

Now, maybe there are some who are so far on the other side, so far on the fringe, that they would argue with their own conservative Members that an investment in college education is a bad idea. But the fact of the matter is, they are in a very, very small minority.

This bill has strong bipartisan support in the Appropriations Committee. Republicans and Democrats work together despite the opposition from such a fringe minority.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Mr. Chairman, how much time is left?

Mr. Chairman, may I ask how many speakers the other side has?

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

Mr. Chairman, the differences we have heard in this debate are entirely clear. We want to, with Republicans on the Appropriations Committee, who by a widespread margin supported this bill. We want to continue to invest in America's families and in their future. A very small group of Members on the other side want to continue going to the past where they were spending taxpayer dollars on special interest giveaways.

There are people, in all of our districts, who are scratching their heads trying to figure out how they are going to send their kids to college so they can compete in a global economy. The President wants to slash or eliminate college affordability programs for 1.5 million students.

Now, that's why Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee supported investments that will make additional Pell Grants available so that people who are working hard, playing by the rules, and want their kids to advance can send their kids to college. This isn't a radical idea.

This was a bipartisan consensus on the Appropriations Committee. But those who are offering these cutbacks don't agree with Republicans and Democrats who believe in making investments so that people who play by the rules and work hard can send their kids to college.

There are people in our districts who are trying to figure out how they are going to pay for their skyrocketing home heating oil costs. The President wants to cut home heating oil programs by $379 million and take away assistance to 1.5 million people.

That's why Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee agreed that we should invest a fraction of that, $880 million to make sure that an additional 1 million people can pay their heating oil bills. Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee, bipartisan, there are a few who say, no, no, we should continue giving tax cuts to big oil company executives rather than giving people the ability, helping people with the ability to pay their home heating oil costs.

There are people in our districts who can't figure out what to do if they get cancer, how they are going to have access to health care programs. The President wants to cut medical research at the NIH by $480 million and cut preventive health care services by $220 million. That's why Democrats and Republicans join together on the Appropriations Committee to invest $1.3 billion to improve health care access and help 1 million Americans receive treatment and increase investments in NIH.

This is about priorities, bipartisan common-sense priorities. This is about those of us on both sides of the aisle who believe that we should invest in strengthening America's families and a very small group who believe that we should continue to borrow to give away money to the special interests.

I want to conclude by reminding my colleagues how we go about making these investments, not by raising taxes. They are going to keep saying it and saying it and saying it. That's not how we do it. We cut 41 programs. We slashed earmarks in half. We saved $1 billion.

Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's plea. I will again remind my colleagues that Republicans and Democrats on a bipartisan basis came together in support of these investments in America's families. I do not recall the gentleman coming to the floor arguing for a 1 percent cutback when it was time to give rich oil company executives a $14 billion tax cut.

I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time is available on both sides?

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

Madam Chairman, I would just say to the gentlewoman that in fact she may not be getting calls from people saying that it's harder for their kids to afford college, or that gas prices are getting higher, or that they're worried about their health care. But many Republicans and Democrats are getting those calls, which is why there wasn't a single Republican in the Appropriations Committee who voted against this bill.

The gentlewoman also said that we've got to be fiscally responsible. Well, that's why so many Republicans joined us in supporting this bill, because in fact this bill cuts 41 programs that didn't make sense any more, and reduces by half the number the dollar value of earmarks that we had in the past.

Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey), a member of the committee.

Madam Chairman, we reserve the balance of our time.

Madam Chairman, it's time for a fact check for the American people. The gentleman said, well, we may have spent a lot of money; but now you're spending more.

Fact: This bill saves $1.1 billion over last year.

Fact: This bill slashes earmark dollar value 50 percent from last time.

Fact: This bill eliminates 41 programs that don't make sense any more. Facts count.

Madam Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

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

Well, Madam Chairman, it is refreshing to hear some candor on the other side in their admission that there is a fringe. And that is, in fact, a matter of fact because there wasn't a single Republican vote against this appropriations bill in committee.

Now, those who define themselves on the fringe would suggest that the answer to America's problems is a 1 percent solution. We can rein in our deficit that they built up with a 1 percent cutback.

I don't know where they were, and I have a very high regard for their position, but I do feel an obligation to ask where were they in offering amendments to cut $13 billion in giveaways to the richest oil company executives making the largest profits in the history of humankind? Where was the 1 percent cut amendment then? Suddenly we could afford that, but we can't afford additional Pell Grants for the steelworker that the gentleman refers to.

Where were they with an amendment for a 1 percent cut in excessive payments to Halliburton, $1.47 billion in payments to Halliburton that have been found by the Federal Government to be fraudulent? Where was the amendment to cut those payments by 1 percent? We could afford excessive and fraudulent payments to Halliburton, but we can't afford additional investments in cancer research and access to health care for the American people.

I would respect my colleagues if they showed more consistency. But there has not been that consistency. It is not about spending. It is about spending on the wrong things and the wrong priorities.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

I thank the gentleman.

I will conclude, Madam Chairman, by suggesting that the mainstream view, the view that has been endorsed on a bipartisan basis by mainstream Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee and the American people is that we should make investments in education. The fringe view: more oil money for oil companies.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Well, another fringe offering. Now we're down to .5 percent. The solution to America's problems is now down to .5 percent. The solution to America's problems is now down to .5 percent, less Pell Grant money so the kids can go to college, higher fuel bills in the winter for people who can't pay their fuel bills. I never saw a .5 percent reduction in funds to Halliburton. I never saw a .5 percent reduction in the $13 billion in giveaways to Big Oil company executives, who are making the world's greatest profits. But now suddenly, when it comes to reducing people's heating bills or reducing their college costs, we want them to have another .5 percent burden because the burden they have just isn't enough.

This is deja vu all over again. It was a bad idea on the amendment before this. It was a bad idea on the amendment before that. It's still a bad idea, it's just down to a .5 percent bad idea.

Madam Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Madam Chair, I would just pose a question to the gentlewoman from Colorado and would yield to her for a response.

I am just curious as to how public education is funded in the State of Colorado.

I will yield to the gentlewoman.

Thank you. Reclaiming my time, the gentlewoman's proposal

would impose an across-the-board cut in No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind is a Federal program that local school districts must honor. It is a huge unfunded Federal mandate. And I don't know about the gentlewoman's school districts, but I know that my school districts come to me all the time saying, Washington is forcing us to do these programs, but they're not giving us the money that they promised, which means that we have to raise taxes.

And so I would respectfully suggest to the gentlewoman that a .5 percent cut in this bill is a .5 percent property increase in her congressional district, because those poor school districts don't have the ability to say yes or no to those programs. They've just got to provide the services and find the money for it.

We don't think that local property taxpayers should have to bear that burden. We believe, along with every single Republican in the Appropriations Committee, that the Federal Government should assist in those programs.

Madam Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff).

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

Madam Chairman, I would yield to the gentlewoman if she cares to answer this: The committee report states that the committee recommends $15,027,000 for prevention grants to reduce the abuse of runaway youth. Does the gentlewoman advocate a .5 percent reduction in a $15 million budget to prevent the abuse of runaway youth, which was supported unanimously in the committee?

Madam Chairman, I will yield to the gentlewoman.

If the gentlewoman can't answer, I will ask her to give us an answer to this: the committee report, unanimously approved in committee, recommends $42,430,000 for community-based child abuse prevention.

Announcement by the Chairman

Madam Chairman, I ask the gentlewoman whether she is advocating a .5 percent reduction in a $42 million line item for community-based child abuse prevention. I would be happy to yield to the gentlewoman for an answer.

I will yield to the gentlewoman for an answer, since it is her amendment. I will not, at this time, yield to the gentleman.

I would like to yield to the gentlewoman, since it is her amendment.

Madam Chairman, I reclaim my time.

Madam Chairman, I am using the terms the gentlewoman insists on. I am reading directly from the committee report. The committee report states that there is $26,848,000 for adoption opportunities. Because we all want to reduce the number of abortions in the United States, so there is $26,848,000 for adoption opportunities. The gentlewoman's amendment would, as I understand it, reduce by .5 percent the amounts that are in this bill.

So, Madam Chairman, I ask the gentlewoman again, and I will yield to her, is she advocating a .5 percent reduction in the committee recommendation of $26,848,000 for adoption opportunities?

I will yield to the gentlewoman, since it is her amendment.

If she cares not to take the time, I will ask the gentleman. I will yield to the gentleman if he can answer this, Madam Chairman. I would yield to the gentleman, if he would choose to answer this question.

The committee report recommends $9.5 million, out of a $2.5 trillion Federal budget, $9.5 million for the adoption incentives programs. I would ask, Madam Chairman, whether the gentleman supports a .5 percent reduction in adoption incentives.

I would also ask, Madam Chairman, this: the committee recommends a total level of funding of $141 million for the Community Based Abstinence Education program. That is the level of funding that the committee, on a unanimous basis, Republicans in the mainstream and Democrats in the mainstream, agree on.

I will yield to the gentleman, Madam Chairman, if he can say is it the position of the fringe that we should actually cut by .5 percent $141 million for Community Based Abstinence programs.

I will yield to the gentleman, Madam Chairman.

Madam Chairman, I reclaim my time.

Announcement by the Chairman

Madam Chairman, may I ask how much time I have left?

Mr. Chairman, on this side of the aisle we'd be happy to accept the amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

I wonder if I could ask the gentleman a question. In the interest of saving time helping Members get to their planes, would the gentleman be willing to forgo extended comment if we accept the comment?

Mr. Chairman, because we are trying to get Members out of here for their planes, I would be happy to accept the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment. We are not sure which amendment this is.

Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my point of order. And I would simply ask the gentleman, in the interest of time, would the gentleman be willing to shorten his remarks and we would be happy to accept the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Again, the same deal, if we accept the amendment. We are trying to help get Members out of here.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, with regard to the Garrett amendment pertaining to the Department of Labor and the National Institutes of Health, which was previously adopted by a voice vote and accepted by the committee, I would like to clarify that the amendment does not specify which Department of Labor programs would be impacted.

Adoption of that amendment does not create any legislative intent that

would require the Department of Labor to reduce funding for the migrant and seasonal farm worker program.

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

Amendment No. 16 Offered by Mr. Flake

Mr. Chairman, I just want to get a few things off my chest with regard to this earmarking issue.

I know that policy questions are complicated, and I know that budget questions are complicated. I recognize, therefore, that substantial members of the press and some Members of the Congress as well in both bodies seek to find other more simple issues which are small enough to get their mind around. And so we have spent a good amount of time the last 3 weeks talking about earmarks. I want to put some things in perspective about earmarks.

In the Financial Services bill, out of all of the money provided in that bill, 1.5 percent was devoted to earmarks.

In Interior, 0.43 percent of all the money appropriated was provided for earmarks.

In Transportation, 1.4 percent of the entire bill was allocated through earmarks.

And in this bill, it is slightly less than 0.20. That is a very tiny portion of the overall bill.

The executive branch allocates or directs spending at least 10 times as great as does the Congress and I don't see or hear much squawking about that.

I just want to suggest this: I don't happen to be comfortable with the earmarking system because it is a pain in the neck to me, it takes an incredible amount of time, and I would much rather spend that time on policy. But the fact is that it is a constitutional prerogative of the Congress to do so. And I would submit it creates a much more fair system. An example, when Speaker Hastert ran this place last year, here he is the Speaker of the House, and yet if the Congress earmarked no money, all the dollars would go back to Illinois and they would be directed by a Democratic Governor. So Speaker Hastert would be part of the body that raised the money at the Federal level and sent the money back to States and local governments; and yet without the earmarking process, the most powerful and influential man in Congress would have nothing to say about how that money was allocated in his own State. I submit that is not right.

Or take myself. I chair the Appropriations Committee. I think I spend more time and, frankly, I think I know at least as much about the Federal budget as anybody in this institution, not because I am so plugged in but because of my job and the fact that I have been here a long time, and even an idiot ought to be able to pick up a fair amount of information as long as I have been here.

So I would simply ask the question why should I serve in this body, try to help my district, and then discover that for 16 straight years we had a Republican Governor, I had absolutely nothing to say about funds that were distributed in my State without the earmarking process.

The earmarking process, if it is used correctly, allows individual Members to target things in their own district that they think will contribute the most to improving the living conditions or the educational conditions or the cultural conditions in that district. I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

But I find it incredibly amazing and amusing that we are talking about 0.19 percent of all of the funds in this bill. How much time have we spent talking about basic education philosophy? How much time have we spent talking about which of these education programs really work? How much time have we spent in this debate talking about the programs? The answer is zip because some people prefer to deal with small things.

Mr. Chairman, I just would like to make a couple of short observations. We are told by this gentleman, and we have been told, and we have been told, and we have been told and we have been told for 3 days that somehow it is this bill which is responsible for the outrageous fiscal mess facing the country. I just want to say one thing: Yes, this bill spends $10 billion more on our kids, on our workers, on our obligation to provide access to health care to people who don't have it, than the President does. I plead fully double guilty. I would do twice as much if I could. I would do three times as much if I could because the country needs it.

This is the bill that makes the investments that will make our country stronger economically, educationally and socially not just today but for the next 10 years. That's what this bill is about.

We have got a 2 percent difference between us and the President in terms of what we are trying to spend in this bill versus what he thinks we ought to spend. I have just told you where we have put it in the right places. Where does the President want to put money? The President wants to spend five times as much as the difference that we have with him on this bill, he wants to spend five times as much giving tax cuts to people who make more than a million bucks a year. He is going to give 57 billion bucks to people in this country who make over a million bucks a year. We think that money, a portion of it, is better spent on kids who need it and on sick people who need it. And we make no apology for it.

The other thing I would simply say is that the other place that the President wants to spend it, he wants to spend 60 times as much as that $10 billion on that stupid war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the Republic.

So we plead fully guilty to having a meaningful 2 percent difference between the President and us. We plead fully guilty, and I wish it were more.

Mr. Chairman, some simple facts. The President's budget would have us spend as a share of our total national income 48 percent less on education, health care, science, job training, et cetera, than this country spent in 1980, and by 2012 he would have us spend 57 percent less than we spent in 1980.

That creates a problem because we're going to have 27 million more Americans in the next 10 years. We're going to have 12 million more seniors needing health care. We're going to have 2.7 million more kids in elementary and secondary school. We're going to have 2.2 million more students in college. And, unless we change our ways, we're going to have 11 million more Americans without health insurance.

That's why we don't want to go back to last year. We want to move ahead to try to deal with the problems coming at us. We see them; they're there. We ought not to stick our head in the ground like an ostrich. We ought to deal with them, and that's what this bill does.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I would rather not talk about what one party did one year and what one party did another year, because I think there is substantial support in both parties for the bill that we have before us today. I want to walk through what the impact of this cut would be on this bill.

If we pass this amendment, we will be cutting $1.2 billion from No Child Left Behind, the President's signature education set of programs. We will be cutting $684 million from Title I grants. We will be cutting $519 million from IDEA. That's a program which both parties have fought for the last 3 days to try to increase.

We would be cutting $717 million from Pell Grants, reducing scholarship awards for millions of students, despite the fact that the cost of higher education has gone up by 40 percent the last 5 years. We would be cutting $1.4 billion from the National Institutes of Health, money that we use to combat cancer, heart disease, Parkinson's and the like. We would be cutting $100 million from community health centers, denying needed health care and dental services to almost half a million people.

We would be cutting $53 million out of the President's request to prepare the country for a potential pandemic flu. We would be cutting $320 million from Head Start, $98 million from Child Care Development Block Grant. We would be cutting $446 million from the Social Security Administration, denying the resources that agency needs to maintain and keep open its local offices and reduce backlogs of disability and SSI claims.

So people have a choice. What's more important, their own accounting sheets or these investments in the country?

The fact is, with the exception of the gang of four, virtually every Republican who has offered an amendment

has done the same thing that Democrats have tried to do. They have tried to find ways to increase programs that they think are important to the country's future.

I would submit I don't think those Republicans are out of step, and I don't think those Democrats are out of step. I think the folks who are out of step are the gang of four offering the amendments.

I believe that most Americans, and I think most Republicans, would rather invest the funds now to prepare our workforce to be better trained, our kids to be better educated, and our health care system to be more efficient and more and more humane. That is what this bill is all about, and I think that there is a bipartisan consensus in this House to stick with this bill. So I would urge respectfully rejection of the amendment, as I make one other point.

We have the $1.4 billion initiative of add-ons to try to discourage women from having abortions. Instead of lectures, we provide resources to make their lives better if they decide to have those kids. This bill would cut about 40 percent of that initiative out of the bill. I happen to think that initiative is too important to sandbag, and this amendment sandbags that effort. So I would urge rejection of the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I would like to again simply walk us through what this cut means in specific terms. This amendment would cut $257 million from the President's No Child Left Behind education flagship program. It would cut $144 million from title I, denying more than 40,000 students those title I services. It would cut $113 million from Special Education. It would wipe out every single amendment but one that was passed on this floor in the last 2 days to enhance Special Education, most of those amendments coming from the Republican side of the aisle.

It would cut $156 million from Pell Grants. It would cut $300 million from the National Institutes of Health for medical research in cancer, heart disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and the like. It would cut $22 million from community health centers. Over 100,000 of the uninsured would not have access to those services. It would cut $70 million from Head Start, $21 million from the Child Care Development Block Grant. It would cut $27 million from LIHEAP.

I want to remind you, in LIHEAP, the bill itself only restores half of the cut that was made last year by the President and the Congress.

It would cut $97 million from the Social Security Administration. Members are climbing all over me saying, ``What are we going to do to keep my local Social Security offices open? What are we going to do to eliminate the multi-month backlog in people applying for Social Security disability?'' I will tell you what they are going to do. This will add to it. It will add to the problem.

So with all due respect to the sanctimony that we hear from those who belatedly cry about the Federal deficit, I didn't hear them crying about the Federal deficit when they voted to spend $600 billion on an ill-advised war in Iraq. I don't hear them crying about the fact that $57 billion in tax cuts for millionaires adds $57 billion to the Federal deficit.

So I just think we need to recognize that I believe the vast majority of Americans and I believe substantial portions of both parties in this House believe that this bill is responsible in real dollar terms. All of the domestic appropriation bills that we will produce and have produced this year amount to a 1 percent increase in real terms.

One of the gentlemen over there claimed that these were not cuts. Well, let me tell you something. If you appropriate the same amount of money this year that you appropriated last year but inflation eats away at that and so does population growth, if you don't adjust for inflation and population growth, then to each recipient of the services under this legislation there is indeed a cut to them. And that is what counts. It is the impact on their pocketbook. It is the impact on their ability to get help to send their kids to school.

It is an impact on the couple in my District who called 31 dentists to try to get some help with their kid who had to have the braces taken off his teeth. They couldn't get any of them to take them because the dentists wouldn't take Medicaid patients. They didn't have a local clinic. So the mother held the kid down while the father took the braces off with a pair of pliers.

That wouldn't happen to any child of a Member of Congress. The gentleman is smiling about that. I don't think that is anything to smile about. I met that woman.

Yes, sir.

I understand.

But let me simply say, Madam Chairman, these cuts, these will be cuts in terms of the services that we are trying to provide to these people. It is immoral. It is unconscionable that we allow 44 million Americans to go without health insurance.

This bill will deliver health care coverage to 2 million more Americans than got it last year. It will make up in a tiny way for the indifference, the massive indifference, which has characterized this country the past few years on the issue of health coverage.

I would urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment and support for the underlying bill.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment but I thank the gentleman for offering it, because it reminds us of what this debate is really about. We are debating about whether we will invest in America's future. We are debating what kind of a Nation we expect to be.

My chairman, fellow committee members of both parties, and the vast majority of people around the country believe in America's future. We believe that America's best days are ahead of us. We believe that the American people can compete and succeed in the global economy, and that the most talented, industrious, and ingenious people on Earth are the American people. And we believe that, to ensure our bright future, we must invest in the American people today.

The America we see ahead of us is one where every child has the opportunity to go to college regardless of whether their parents did and regardless of whether they are rich or poor. They receive the best job training, develop the strongest skills, are empowered to create by laws that reward innovation, and have a government that is working for them, not against them, in foreign markets.

In the America we see, every child and their parents has access to decent health care, and no one working full time, playing by the rules and contributing to the prosperity of the country, has to become impoverished because of the catastrophic illness in the family. No parent should have to mourn the loss of a child it could not provide health care for, and no child should grow up in a home without one of its parents for lack of the same access to care.

For our parents' generation, this vision of America's future resembles their own fondest hopes. Our parents and their parents struggled so that we could enjoy a higher quality of living, better schools, better hospitals, and a safer world than what they knew. And, by and large, this greatest generation was successful. America is a better, more prosperous Nation because of their struggle.

But the generations that went before us did more than struggle; they also invested. They built schools, they built hospitals, they built our Armed Forces, and they invested in America's future. If America is to enjoy the same bright future we have in mind, that investment must go on.

Fortunately, this vision of an America where our best days are still ahead of us is a bipartisan vision. It crosses every economic, political, and generational line. We all want and believe that we can bring about a more secure and more prosperous future for our children and grandchildren. And we believe we can do so, must do so, in a fiscally responsible way by paying as we go.

Sure, there are some who do not share these values or who believe that we can achieve this bright tomorrow without any investment, without any contribution or sacrifice on our part. They are the ``get something for nothing'' crowd, the ``I got mine, you get yours'' crowd. They do not believe America needs our investment. And the future? Well, the future can take care of itself.

Some of these naysayers you will hear from today, some you have heard from already. Masquerading under a banner of fiscal prudence they will say, ``We cannot afford the investment.'' It is a masquerade. These are the same people, of course, who drove our national debt to the highest in history through a half decade of borrowing. And theirs was the worst form of borrowing; borrowing that led to no investment and, therefore, to no improvement in the Nation's foundation.

Our parents' generation had them, too, these masqueraders, the ``something for nothing'' crowd. But just kind of imagine what kind of an America we would live in today if our predecessors had followed their irresponsible siren song. We would still be traveling along dirt roads instead of highways, with crops rotting in the fields, long-term economic stagnation, a bleak presence, and an even bleaker future. We would, in sum, have become that Nation that Franklin Roosevelt so presciently warned against, a Nation with a substantial portion of its people ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

It is indeed fortuitous that these voices are few now and were few then, that the overwhelming bipartisan majority of committee members and Americans recognize that we have a responsibility to our Nation's future, and that responsibility requires sound investment.

In 10 years, 2.7 million more kids will be in K-12 schools, and America will be ready for them because we insist on it. In 10 years, 2.2 million more students will be in college, and our universities will be ready for them with a state-of-the-art education because we insist on it. In 10 years, the global economy will be even more extensive and American workers will be competing and winning because we will have invested in them. And, yes, it is because we are insisting on it now.

We believe in America's future. We believe our best days are ahead of us. And we share the belief that our parents had before us that we are responsible for that bright future, and that future requires investment.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I think I may have the gentleman's answer to where was the fringe when the giveaways to the oil

companies and the Halliburtons were taking place; why wasn't there an effort to cut those giveaways by 1 percent.

Those who wanted to cut those profits and those giveaways were not part of the fringe. The fringe we are talking about here today is the fringe that says we want those obscene oil company profits. We want those obscene profits for Halliburton. But we want to cut over $1 billion out of education, out of health care. That is the fringe we are talking about.

The overwhelming bipartisan majority of us want to balance the budget. We are working hard to do that. But we don't want to balance the budget on the backs of our kids and on the backs of those who need health care and on the backs of our workers who need training. And that, I think, is the fringe that we are talking about here today.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I wanted to take a moment to address the nature of the proposed amendment, and the amendment before it, and perhaps the amendment after it, the whole nature of the across-the-board amendments. Because I think the beauty of across-the-board amendments, in the eyes of the authors of those amendments, is that they're anonymous in their cuts; they're anonymous in the pain they distribute. They can go home to their district and say, oh, I'm not in favor of cutting education, I'm in favor of across-the-board cuts. Or I'm not in favor of cutting home heating oil for people, no, that would lack compassion, but I am for across-the-board cuts. What's a 1 percent cut? What's a half of 1 percent cut? Well, what it is is hundreds of millions of dollars taken out of education or out of home heating oil or out of health care or out of cancer research or out of special education.

So let's not take ourselves off the hook here. And I would be willing to yield to my colleague from Colorado.

Do you support cuts in home heating oil assistance? Are you ready to stand up here and say to your constituents, yes, I am for cutting home heating assistance? Do you support cuts in special education? Are you willing to say here today to your constituents that I support cuts in special education? I support cuts in abstinence programs. I support cuts in cancer research. Would you tell us if you support cuts in home heating assistance?

Reclaiming my time, I will be happy to yield if you will answer the question. The question is, do you support cutting home heating oil assistance? It's a yes or no question, it's not complicated. Do you support cutting heating home assistance for poor people? Yes, I support it?

Reclaiming my time. I'm not surprised that I can't get a yes or no answer. I'm not surprised that the gentlewoman is not willing to stand up and say, yes, I support cutting this because I have other priorities. Home heating oil, that's not one of them. Large oil industry profits, that's one of my priorities. Halliburton, that's one of my priorities. But cutting heating oil, that's not a priority, or cutting special ed.

Let me ask you another question; do you think that cuts in college education funding, higher education funding, can be done without cutting the number of kids who have access to college? Do you think we can cut funding from this bill for higher education funding without reducing the number of kids that can go to college?

And you say, it's just half a percent we're cutting from higher ed, or the increase in higher ed, or however you want to phrase it. But the cut is real that you're proposing. So what does that mean? 25,000 more kids can't go to college?

Is that a fair number? Well, maybe that is too much. Should we say 10,000 more American kids can't go to college because of your cut? Is that a fair number? Would you support that? Would you support your amendment if you knew that?

Announcement by the Chairman

Through the Chair, in my remaining time, I would ask the gentlewoman from Colorado whether she is willing to support her cuts if she knows that it will mean fewer children in Colorado can go to college.

I would be happy to yield for an answer to this question. Through the Chair, to my colleague from Colorado, if her cuts mean that fewer of her constituents in Colorado can go to college, is she still willing to propose those cuts?

I thank the gentleman. Would the gentleman from Georgia yield for a question?

I was wondering, I will ask it as you are walking, do you believe that the Federal Government has responsibility for any K-12 education programs?

You do believe in Federal spending on education at the local level?

I thank the gentleman.

I wanted to make sure, because as we had the conversation, I have heard many gentleman who were up here earlier say they didn't believe in any Federal spending for education, local education, at all.

I just want to clarify that you, at least, do believe that we do have an obligation to spend money. I appreciate you saying that.

I know. I have been here.

I don't think I am.

Mr. Chairman, that's twice in the past 2 days that our friend from Georgia has admitted being on the fringe. In response to the claim that I am on the fringe voting for this bill, I would just like to say I joined his colleagues, every Republican on the Labor-H subcommittee from all over, conservative Republicans, in support of this bill.

The gentleman from New York; Mr. Regula, the gentleman from Ohio, these are balanced, fair investments.

As the gentleman from New York stated, we are not raising taxes. Check, keep your forms from last year, your tax forms, and compare them to next year. There will not be an increase in your taxes.

What we are doing is we are not spending the money on the banks, we are spending it on the kids. We are not giving it to the oil companies, we are giving it to the kids for education and health care.

It's a difference in priorities. There is not a tax increase in here, and the bottom line is we make investments into the future of our country.

I find it offensive and staggering that the minority leader can come here, along with our friends, and talk about leaving the country in better shape than they found it, or that we have that obligation. Three trillion dollars in debt under your watch, Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican White House, $3 trillion.

The gentleman from Ohio wasn't here, but this Congress asked the Secretary of the Treasury to raise the debt limit five or six times so they could go out and borrow more money from China, more money from Japan, more money from OPEC countries. So we don't need lectures on how to leave the country better off than we found it.

Would the gentleman yield so I could ask you a question?

You will probably remember, because we were in the State Senate together in Ohio, there was a study done by the University of Akron. It said every dollar that the State of Ohio invested in higher education, they got $2 back in tax money. This is an investment we are going to make, and we are going to yield returns.

That's been the philosophy, and it hasn't worked.

We raised the debt limit six times. How can you say it worked?

Two seconds, I would just say if your philosophy has worked, you would be in the majority right now.

Madam Chairman, we believe we do have a fringe four or five here in the Congress. And it's not, when the gentleman refers to me or the gentleman from New York or the chairman, you're talking about a

bill that passed out of the committee with unanimous support from Democrats and Republicans. You will see on the floor it will pass with Democrat and Republican votes. This is a bipartisan bill.

But we have a fringe group in the House that consistently wants to try to find out and try to figure out how to make things work. And what this bill does is it invests in our future. And the bottom line is this. We're now competing with 1.3 billion people in China, 1.2 billion people in India, competitive global economy.

And over the last few years, we've seen for the average American people, and the gentleman from Georgia said, well, we want people to keep more of their own money. So do we. But they haven't been over the past few years.

There's been a $3,200 increase in their energy costs, a $1,200 increase in their health insurance, a 40 percent increase in college tuition. Wages for college grads in the last 4 or 5 years is down 5.2 percent.

Gas prices, the fastest growing part of the budget has been the interest payments on the debt. But our bill addresses middle class family wages, down $1,669 over the past 2 years. So the American people have not been able to keep more of their own money. And so our agenda, through this bill and other bills that we have passed addressed that issue.

How do you reduce the cost of energy? You make investments in research and development, and that will yield us benefits down the line.

How do you help families send their kids to schools? You invest money into the Pell Grant. You cut student loan interest rates in half. And the difference really has been with the student loan interest rates, we're not spending any more money. What we're saying is that money is not going to go to the banks. That money is going to go to the kids and the students, and we're going to cut the student loan interest rates in half and increase the Pell Grant.

We have money in here for our community health centers, so kids can get preventative care, so they end up they can get treated for a cold, instead of ending up in the emergency room for a much higher price to the taxpayer. So we're making significant investments. And this bill will help secure a strong future for the United States of America.

We need to get more kids in college. We need to invest in foreign languages. That's what this bill does. And I'm proud of this bill, on a bipartisan basis.

And I think it's important for the people, Madam Chairman, who are listening as this goes into the Congressional Record. What do they want? They want an investment in their future, and that's what this bill does. It makes that investment to secure our future and make us strong and move us in a new direction.

I thank the gentleman.

And since my friends on the other side of the aisle have embraced their fringeness, I would like to just point out to you from the Roll Call today, around the Hill there is a festival, 11-day play, this weekend. I know many of you go home, so many of your staff may want to attend this, it's the Capitol Fringe Festival. So you may be able to attend and completely embrace the fringeness.

But again, as the gentleman has said, Madam Chair, when we first got in the majority in January, we tried to pass out of this House, in our Six in '06, provisions that we passed, campaigned on and then passed. One of the provisions was to strip $14 billion from the oil companies. And our friends, who are now wanting to take this money from Pell Grants and investments in education, investments in health care, voted against stripping the oil companies of $14 billion. And this is what we're talking about.

This bipartisan committee passed out of the committee unanimously, on support of the Republicans on that committee, with the support of the Democrats on this committee, well thought-out pieces of legislation, well thought-out amendments in the committee, supported unanimously by both sides. And what we're saying is, we have to make these investments.

And there is no tax increase in this year's budget, none, zero, that's it. You can't point it out. In 2007, keep your forms, 2006, or last year's forms, and compare them to next year's, and there will be not one dime of an increase. All we did was we took that money that our friends were giving to the banks and we invested that money in the kids. The $14 billion that was going to the oil companies at their times of highest profits is going into health care and education now and alternative energy.

As I said earlier, this is very simple. We're in a globally competitive market, and we need to make investments into our kids and into our future. That's what this bill does.

Now what you're saying is, with tuition costs going up 40 percent, health insurance going up $100 a year, and energy costs going up $3,200 a year, that the solution to that problem and every other problem we have in the country right now is a .5 percent cut that would put additional burdens on families who are trying to send their kids to school, would reduce the money that we're making into making our citizens healthier and community health clinics so that at the end of the day would allow us to prevent people from ending up in the emergency room and costing us billions and billions of dollars more.

These are good investments, voted on in a bipartisan way, and will secure the strength of our country in the future.