Condemning personal attacks on the honor, integrity and patriotism of those with distinguished military service to our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by, now since I have the first opportunity to formally see my California colleague here on the floor, to congratulate her and all of the members of the new majority. I have congratulated Ms. Slaughter and of course Ms. Pelosi, and now I join in extending congratulations to Ms. Matsui for her move into the majority, and to say as I did yesterday that I anxiously look forward to working in a bipartisan way as was said by Speaker Pelosi and Leader Boehner here yesterday.

I believe it is absolutely imperative that we meet the demand that was put forth by the American people in the November election. The message that I received from that election was that they want us to work together, they want us to solve their problems. Clearly, there needs to be a clash of ideas which was envisaged by James Madison, and I believe that that is something that we can't forget, because we are not supposed to pursue what I like to call the Rodney King view of the world: can't we all just get along. The fact of the matter is we do need to recognize that there are disparate views and they need to be voiced on this House floor.

Now, the question is, can we in fact do that and at the same time maintain civility? And I think that is what title III is all about here. It is titled ``civility'' and it is something that I have always prided myself on, and I will say that I am saddened that it is something that has been often lacking in this House.

Frankly, as I have seen the debate take place even yesterday, I was concerned that some of the statements made would indicate a lack of civility, and that is all I am going to say about it. I hope very much that the title ``civility'' used for this title III is one that is recognized by Members on both sides of the aisle.

Let me get into some of the specifics now, Mr. Speaker, if I might. In February of last year, almost a year ago, Ms. Slaughter, the then- ranking minority member of the Rules Committee, and all of the members of the Rules Committee joined in introducing House Resolution 686. It is a resolution which called for virtually all of the things that my colleague, Ms. Matsui,

outlined are very important for us to pursue: openness, transparency, disclosure, making sure that we meet our obligation to vote here on the House floor, that we have it done in the light of day.

The concern that I have is that what has happened here is we have unfortunately gotten a package which does not have the kind of enforcement mechanisms that were envisaged by H. Res. 686 as introduced by the members of the Rules Committee in the last Congress, and I believe unfortunately it really is not reflective of anything other than sort of the spirit of what it was they were talking about. And the spirit is of things that we all can agree on. I am supportive of those.

The fact is when they were in the minority, Resolution 686 calls for consultation and agreement with the minority. Now that they are in the majority, unfortunately, this measure does not in any way reflect the need to have consultation with the minority.

For example, on this notion of keeping votes open beyond the 15- minute period of time, when they were in the minority they called for it to only take place if they had consultation with the minority. Well, unfortunately, this measure does not call for that. And what I am reminded of as I look at these items which touch on the issues that were raised in Resolution 686, I am reminded of again the experience that I had in the past on this when I moved from minority status to majority status 12 years ago. We had something known as the Contract With America. Some may remember that. What we said was that there would be 10 items that we would bring to the floor and we would have up or down votes on those items because, frankly, we were denied the chance for many, many years to consider them. They were items that were supported by broad-based backing of the American people.

Frankly, at the end of the day, President Clinton, who was President at that time, signed over 60 percent of the measures that were incorporated in the Contract With America. What we did is we outlined in detail what that would consist of. We said it would be considered under an open amendment process, and that is exactly what we did. It is exactly what we did with those measures that came forward.

So, Mr. Speaker, we unfortunately with this measure have not seen the same kind of reflection of the goals that were outlined by the then- minority in this measure, and I thought I would take a moment just to go through a few of those items specifically and say that, unfortunately, this package is not what they called for.

Now, in the package that we had introduced in 686, it called for a requirement that conference reports contain an itemized list of any provisions in violation of the Scope rule. That is not included in this measure. It said that a rule prohibiting the Rules Committee from reporting martial law rules could not be in order. That is not included here.

A rule prohibiting the Rules Committee from waiving points of order against the conference report were a serious violation of the Scope Rule, or additions or deletions made after final agreement. That is not included here.

Another provision in Ms. Slaughter's resolution as introduced in February of last year: a rule prohibiting the Rules Committee from waiving points of order against a conference report where the minority party managers of the House were not allowed to fully participate in the conference. Well, they of course said they want to have this happen, but the kind of specificity and enforcement mechanisms that were outlined in the Slaughter Resolution, H. Res. 686, introduced in February of last year, not included in this measure.

A rule permitting consideration of a conference report only if a roll call vote in open meeting was held on its final version and the results included the accompanying joint explanatory statement of managers. Well, sounds great, we are all for that, but that wasn't included in this resolution that we are now considering.

A rule prohibiting the Rules Committee from calling up a rule within 24 hours of reporting it. Well, everybody talked about that. We know that on the opening-day rules package that we considered, we received it maybe 19 hours before we brought it up or something like that, but it clearly was in the violation of the 24 hours that was insisted upon by the then-minority.

A rule requiring the Speaker of the House to publish in the Congressional Record a log of all voting activity occurring after the first 30 minutes of any recorded vote whose maximum time for voting exceeds 30 minutes. That is not included in here at all.

A rule prohibiting suspensions costing more than $100 million. I don't see that in here at all.

A rule requiring the Speaker of the House to allow an equal number of bills and resolutions sponsored by majority and minority parties under suspension.

A repeal of the Gephardt rule. A rule requiring a 24-hour layover of unanimous consent requests.

A rule prohibiting the Rules Committee from reporting a rule unless at least one minority party member of the committee is allowed to offer an amendment to it.

Now, again, I know that we are hearing words from the new majority that they want to do all these things, but when they introduced House Resolution 686, they made it very clear that they had to have enforcement mechanisms and that they were going to provide guarantees of minority rights. Unfortunately, while the word ``civility'' sounds great, this measure falls way, way short of that.

So I again go back to when we went from minority to majority and I looked at the fact that we were able to maintain our promise, we were able to keep our word. And I am very proud of that fact. The thing that troubles me, while I am supportive of what we are trying to do here, is that it does not comply with the promises and the commitments and the vision and the goals that were set forth in February in House Resolution 686 as was introduced by the then-minority.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by reminding my California colleague that yesterday we passed the ethics package about which she spoke, indicating that we would be voting on it later today. We voted on that yesterday. It has already gone into effect, I am very happy to say. And we did it with very strong bipartisan support.

I am proud that the ethics reform legislation, of course, was based on and incorporated most of the items that were already passed in the House last year. Again, a year ago this month, Speaker Hastert and I stood in the well and we outlined our call for ethics and lobbying reform, bringing about the kind of accountability and transparency and disclosure, calling for the ban on gifts and dealing with the travel and all of these problems that were out there. We recognize that they are there in a bipartisan way, and yesterday we voted that out in a strong bipartisanship way.

I am very pleased to see the distinguished Chair of the Rules Committee here, and I will again, as I did yesterday, extend congratulations. And, Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of civility that we are pursuing, I think it is very important for us to debate these issues, and I would like to engage my distinguished new Chair in a colloquy, if I might.

Mr. Speaker, as I look at the resolution that is before us, the thing that I find most troubling as we focus on the issue of civility is the fact that those items that I outlined that were included in H. Res. 686 that was introduced on February 16, 2005, which called for the litany of items, and I can go through them again quickly: A requirement that conference reports contain an itemized list of any provisions in violation of the scope rule; a rule prohibiting the Rules Committee from reporting martial law rules; a rule prohibiting the Rules Committee from waiving points of order against a conference report with a serious violation; and it goes on for basically two pages.

What I would like to ask my distinguished Chair is why it is that those items that were incorporated in the base of H. Res. 686, the commitment that was made by the then-minority as to what would be done if they were to move to majority, are not included in this title that we are considering here, and not, in any way, included in the opening day rules package.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter).

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, let me just say I have been supportive of stem cell research, and I have supported the minimum wage increase. That is not what I am talking about here.

Mr. Speaker, in terms of our civil debate, which I think is very important, we are talking about the opening day rules package which is going to set forth, Mr. Speaker, the guidelines around which we will consider all of these items.

Now I would ask my friend, am I correct from inferring from the statement she just made that there is a commitment, a commitment that as we proceed forward to modify the rules of the House to include those items in H. Res. 686, which were really the cornerstone of the package that was introduced by Mrs. Slaughter and the other then-minority members of the Rules Committee, which guarantee these rights to the minority that they believed were so critically important when they were in the minority; and, unfortunately, are not included in the package.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, in the spirit of civil debate, let me say that I believe these measures that were authored by Members of the new majority as being critical rights that the minority should have, that those Members in the majority who believed them to be so important should obviously stand by them.

All I am asking is that the promise that was made in the 109th Congress by the then-Members of the minority about what they believed minority rights should be should be, in fact, implemented. Because, unfortunately, while we can talk about these great things, when you go down the line seriatim, looking at each individual item, making sure that we do have Members of the minority guaranteed to have a right in conference committees to be there, bringing an end to considering measures without a 24-hour waiting period, these kinds of rights that the

then-minority believed were imperative for the minority to have are, unfortunately, not included in this package. This is what I find to be very troubling.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my distinguished Chair.

Reclaiming my time so I might respond, these were not my proposals, Mr. Speaker. These were not my proposals. These were proposals put forward by Members of the new majority, and they were the commitments, the promises, and the obligations that they made as far as enforcement of minority rights that they believed to be so important. That was the platform on which they ran in November, Mr. Speaker.

I believe that what we should do is do all that we can to simply point to the fact that this title III on civility, which is supposed to be reflective of these notions, is in no way emblematic of H. Res. 686 that was introduced by the Members.

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

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

Once again, I am very enthusiastic about this return to civility, and I am very proud of engaging in civil debate on a regular basis. And I thank the distinguished Chair of the Rules Committee, Ms. Slaughter, for engaging in debate with me on this issue once again.

And I would say that as I listened to her prepared statement, I was struck with, once again, how the notion of not keeping votes open for a long period of time is an admirable one. It is a great one. But guess what, Mr. Speaker. There is not one single item in this package that guarantees enforcement. In fact, Speaker Pelosi introduced her legislation, H.R. 4682. I remember very well looking at that legislation. Mr. Speaker, I will tell you exactly what it said. It said that if a vote is kept open beyond a 20-minute period of time, there had to be consultation with the minority. Now, that is not something I proposed. That was the proposal of Speaker Pelosi. Now, the sad thing is

that in this measure there is no enforcement mechanism.

Now, of course, people are busy. They come over here for a 15-minute vote. They would like to have it take place within 20 minutes. We are hearing that votes won't go beyond that period of time for the sole purpose of changing a Member's vote. But, again, there is no enforcement mechanism. And, again, the enforcement mechanism was not my proposal. It is a proposal that the then-minority offered. But now that they are in the majority, they just decide to say, well, we want to keep this process going and we want to keep doing it, but we are not going to consult with the minority. So, again, those aren't my proposals. Those are their proposals.

Mr. Speaker, at this juncture I am very happy to yield 4 minutes to my very good friend from Marietta, Georgia, a former member of the Rules Committee, who is very thoughtful on these issues, Dr. Gingrey.

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

I would like to engage in colloquy with my friend. I wonder if the gentleman has had an opportunity to look at what we consider to be the opening-day rules package that we are considering.

He has talked about, Mr. Speaker, some very important provisions. I believe that the 24-hour layover idea which was propounded by the then- Members of the minority is an important one. It is not guaranteed here; so it is not provided.

Number two, if you look at title V of the measure that is before us, title V provides 5 minutes of debate on five closed rules. The Rules Committee will not even be giving the minority the opportunity to have its amendments defeated in the Rules Committee, and we are not going through the committee process at all.

Now, I will acknowledge that the items that we are going to be addressing, a majority of which I support, are very important for us to proceed with, and an argument has been made that this was debated and discussed in the last Congress. Well, look at the tremendous number of new Members of the House that have come in, especially on the majority side. They are denied any opportunity to participate in this process at all. So as I hear my friend talk about, yes, we need to proceed in a civil manner, and I am all for that, I believe we need to proceed with fairness. I believe these things are all very important. It is just unfortunate that the facts are not reflected in the rhetoric that we are getting on the need for civility and openness and debate.

If my friend would like to respond, I would be happy to yield to him.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate that.

What I would say is that based on the fact that we have never before, in the 230-year history of this republic, we have never had the greatest body known to man come forward with five closed rules in an opening day package denying Members an opportunity to participate in any way.

So that is why I would argue this notion that we are beginning with a new tone, we are going to have an openness and all, is, in fact, not reflected in what we are facing in the next few days.

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

Let me just respond. I know his time has expired.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds to respond.

We haven't seen any of the items. Maybe you all have those items, but we have not seen those items that we will be voting on. They haven't been submitted to us at all.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to my very good friend from Iowa (Mr. King).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the chair how much time is remaining on each side?

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

Mr. Speaker, I had no idea that we had used so much of our time, so I am going to continue to reserve our time.

I would ask my colleague from California how many speakers she has remaining.

At this time I am happy to yield 2 minutes to a very hard-working Member, who will continue on the Rules Committee, my good friend from the Big D, Mr. Sessions.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time. I do so to say that I am supportive of this title called civility. We will be having a vote on that. Mr. Sessions was very appropriately raising concern over title V. We only had 5 minutes of debate on that. So he raised concern about the closed rules and shutting down operations of the Rules Committee that would record votes and make them public.

My concern about this measure we are going to have, which as I am going to support, because I am not going to oppose civility, is that when we look at the promises that were made by the then minority to do things like have a 24-hour waiting period before measures are brought up, it is denied in this rules package itself, because we got it about 19 hours before, so the spirit of that was denied there.

The whole notion of ensuring that we have consultation with the minority when it comes to keeping votes open, when it comes to the issue of ensuring that we will have minority participation conference in committees. As we go down the line and look at these items, Mr. Speaker, it does trouble me.

But there is a little bit of hope, and that hope was offered by the distinguished Chair of the Rules Committee, when she told me there has been such a short period of time between the election and opening day and consideration of this package, that we in the Rules Committee will have an opportunity to do more.

So I always hold out, where there is light, there is hope, you know. I will tell you, I would do everything I can to help her maintain that commitment, and we will continue to do that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 minutes of our time to the distinguished ranking minority member of the Committee on the Budget, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to discuss this title IV part of the package. And I learned, when we were in the majority, watching the minority speak and criticize virtually every move we made, I thought it would be wrong if you thought there were good elements of a package to criticize it. There are good elements in this package, and I want to start off by talking about those good elements that are contained in this package before I start my criticism.

First, the earmark reforms. I am an earmark reformer. I was one of the parts of the team that reformed earmarks, that negotiated the earmark reforms we passed last fall. I think these earmark reforms in this package that the majority created are very good. They are very commendable. They work. So I want to compliment the majority for their serious earmark reform package that they have in here.

I think it is high time that when a Member of Congress requests an earmark, that that Member's name be associated with that earmark, that that Member's justification be associated with the earmark, and that we, as Members of this body, have the opportunity to vote on whether or not that earmark should be funded or not. We need more transparency and more accountability in the way we spend taxpayer dollars.

I am very pleased that in the last Congress, in the 109th Congress, we in the House passed those rules, and I am very excited that the majority has decided to continue those rules and build on that success by improving the package of earmark reforms we passed in the last Congress. So that part of this package, I want to compliment the gentleman from South Carolina and the others who put this together.

I want to direct my comments on the PAYGO part of this. I had high hopes for this part of the package. I had high hopes that the PAYGO rules that we are about to vote on would provide much needed fiscal discipline to Washington and to the way we spend taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately, this package just doesn't cut the mustard. I see this as a timid, weak, watered down, paper tiger PAYGO. What I mean when I say that, Mr. Speaker, is I believe this will have the practical effect of simply raising taxes.

Let me be very clear, Mr. Speaker. We don't have a tax revenue problem in Washington. We have a spending problem in Washington. Tax revenues have been coming into the Federal Treasury at double digit rates over the last 2 years. That is not the problem. We are getting plenty of money from workers' paychecks, from families in their taxes. It is leaving the Treasury too fast. That is our problem, and that is where the budget discipline ought to be placed, on spending.

The problem with this PAYGO is it will have the practical effect of simply having higher taxes to chase higher spending. It does absolutely nothing to address the deficit we have today. It does absolutely nothing to address today's level of spending. It does not address the uncontrollable and unsustainable rates of spending that we have with our entitlement programs today.

Now, I realize that the last majority wasn't perfect on spending. I will be the first to note that because many people saw me coming to the floor saying that in the last Congress. But when we enact spending discipline, and when we are telling the American people that we are now going to get tough on spending, we are going to be fiscally conservative, that is what we should do; and this does not do that.

More importantly, Mr. Speaker, I believe that this PAYGO regime, if it does actually work, will make it clear that the tax relief of 2001 and 2003, which got us out of a recession, which brought new revenues into the Federal Government, which created seven million new jobs, will go away. This is putting the American taxpayer on a collision course with higher taxes. And why is it doing that? Because this system, this PAYGO system, will make the pressure toward raising taxes to pay for new entitlement spending. And so for that reason, I am opposed to this PAYGO regime, Mr. Speaker. There are many others I would like to speak about.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. McHenry).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time remains between the two parties?

And the gentleman from Florida?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

First of all, I want to start off by saying I appreciate the gentleman from South Carolina. He is a good man, knows his stuff, and I very much look forward to working with him. I just want to respond to a couple of points.

In fact, we attempted to put PAYGO in place, PAYGO on spending. So if you try to increase spending somewhere else, you should cut spending elsewhere and not raise taxes. That went down in 2004, largely because of the minority opposing it.

Second point. The reason PAYGO worked well in the 1990s is because it was statutory. If you did not comply, an across-the-board sequestration would take place, and the threat of that was one of the reasons why PAYGO was successful.

The third point I simply want to make is, you are going to hear a lot of talk about we had a surplus, we handed it to the Republicans and they squandered it. What was the surplus? The surplus was projected. It was projected. And in those economic projections they did not foresee the Enron scandals, they did not foresee the dot-com bubble bursting, and they did not foresee 9/11. Of course, they did not foresee that. They did not see the perfect storm of economic calamity, and that is what evaporated the surplus.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Reichert).

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 1 minute to a new Member, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, Mr. Hensarling of Texas.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Bilbray).

At this time, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert).

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

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

First off, I want to start off by congratulating the majority on the very commendable earmark reform legislation that is contained in this title. I just want to emphasize that. But this PAYGO package is woefully inadequate. It is a paper tiger.

Three quick points. Number one, this protects all current spending, even the programs that are scheduled to expire. However, it assumes that expiring tax relief will lapse; and, thus, require offsets to continue. This is a double standard that reflects their preference, protect higher spending but not lower taxes. It is a recipe for tax increases.

Number two, it contains a huge loophole. Spend now, save later. You can enact new spending now and come up with savings down the road, which we know never really happens. Big loophole.

Number three, this is a weaker version of PAYGO than what the majority was proposing just last year. They were not allowing points of order to be waived when you violated a PAYGO rule in their earlier version. But now when they are in the majority, you can simply waive it with a majority vote upstairs in the Rules Committee.

This is a much weaker version of PAYGO. But I want to address a few other things.

Number one, you are going to hear this all year: They gave us a surplus. We inherited a surplus; we squandered the surplus.

Madam Speaker, what was the surplus? The surplus was a projection. It was a projection by economists at OMB and CBO that said we are going to have all of this money coming in.

You know what they didn't project, they didn't project 9/11. They didn't project war. They didn't project the dot-com bubble bursting or the recession or the Enron scandals. What did that do? It was a fiscal train wreck for America, and our numbers went down and we had to spend more money when we went to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Where are we today? The budget deficit went down 40 percent. In 1 year, the budget deficit went down 40 percent off projections. Why, Madam Speaker? It went down that much because revenues increased. Why did revenues increase, because we let the American people keep more of their own hard-earned dollars. They were able to keep more of their tax dollars.

There is a very deep difference between our two parties on principle and on philosophy. We believe that the money in America in the Federal Government is the people's money. That the money we spend is not our money, it is the money of our constituents. It is their money.

When you see rules like this, which I want to quote from the Wall Street Journal: PAYGO, by contrast, gives the appearance of spending discipline while making it all but impossible to let taxpayers keep more of their own money. It should really be called spend and tax as you go.

This bill does nothing to control current spending. It does nothing to reduce the current deficit, and it puts us on a path to raise taxes.

We believe the priorities ought to be different: That we ought to control spending and reduce spending to balance the budget, not raise taxes because after all, the money that comes to the Federal Government is not our money. It is the people's money. It comes from the paychecks of working Americans, men and women, small businesses, farmers and businesses. By letting people keep more of their own hard-earned dollar, our economy grows, revenues grow. We have to watch spending. That is where the priorities ought to be placed. This does not deliver that.

Hopefully we can work together in the future to have a real spending

mechanism that actually controls spending rather than puts us on a pathway to higher taxes.

Madam Speaker, I reluctantly oppose this legislation because of the honorable earmark reforms.

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

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to commit.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of Title III of H.R. 6, the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 110th Congress. With the adoption of this title, we begin to make good on our pledge to restore civility, open government, and honest leadership to the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, it is critically important that we adopt the civility rules contained in Title III because Americans are paying for the cost of corruption in Washington with skyrocketing prices at the pump, spiraling drug costs, and the waste, fraud and no-bid contracts in the Gulf Coast and Iraq for Administration cronies.

But that is not all. Under the previous Republican leadership of the House, lobbyists were permitted to write legislation, 15-minute votes were held open for hours, and entirely new legislation was sneaked into signed conference reports in the dead of night.

The American people registered their disgust at this terrible way of considering and voting on legislation last November and voted for reform. House Democrats picked up 30 seats held by Republicans and won the majority. Restoring open government and honest leadership is one of the top priorities of the new majority of House Democrats. That is why we have included Title III in the Rules of the House of Representative for the 110th Congress. We seek to end the excesses we witnessed under the Republican leadership and to restore the public's trust in the Congress of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I commend Chairman Slaughter and the members of the Rules Committee for their excellent work in preparing the rules package. The reforms contained in the package are necessary to ensure that all Members of Congress, each of whom is elected to represent the interests of nearly 600,000 constituents, have sufficient time to consider important legislation before casting an informed vote. The reforms we are considering also will discourage manipulation of the voting rules to alter the outcome of roll call votes.

Mr. Speaker, I support the elements of the civility package, which (1) prohibits holding votes open for the sole purpose of affecting the outcome; and (2) reforms the conference committee process by requiring adequate notice of meetings, ensuring information is available to all conferees, and prohibiting changes to the text of signed conference reports.

Mr. Speaker, under the previous House Republican leadership, several votes were held open for hours in order to change the outcome. The most notable example was the November 2003 vote on the conference report on Medicare legislation (PL 108-173) that was held open for two hours and 53 minutes, the longest recorded vote since electronic voting began in 1973. After the expiration of the 15 minute time limit, the measure lost 216 to 218. But the vote was held open hours to afford House Republican leaders, the president, and the Health and Human Services Department, enough time to lobby enough Republican members to change their votes, or cast votes, in favor of the measure, eventually achieving a majority of 220 to 215. This kind of unfair manipulation of the rules would not take place under the voting rules package we are considering today.

With respect to Conference Reports, the rules package we consider today includes provisions intended to ensure that conferees have notice of conference meetings and the opportunity to participate, as well as to prevent the insertion of material into a conference agreement after the conferees have completed their work but before the House votes on the measure. These new rules also require House managers to ensure that conference meetings occur under circumstances that allow every House conferee to have notice of the meetings and reasonable opportunities to attend. Under the prior Republican leadership, Democratic conferees frequently were not invited to meetings of conferees, which prevented U.S. from having a meaningful role in crafting an agreement.

The rules also require conferees to ensure that all provisions on which the House and Senate have disagreed be considered open to discussion at any meeting of the conference committee. Additionally, House conferees will be required to ensure that papers reflecting a conference agreement are held ``inviolate to change,'' unless there is a renewal of the opportunity of all House managers to reconsider their decision to sign or not to sign the agreement. This change is designed to prevent material from being inserted into a conference agreement after conferees have ``closed'' the measure. In this connection, the new reforms requires that House managers be provided with a single time and place, with access to at least one complete copy of the final conference agreement, for the purpose of recording their approval, or lack of approval, on the signature sheets that accompany the conference report and the joint statement of managers.

Last, the new reforms bar the House from considering a conference report if the text differs materially, except clerical changes, from the text that reflects the action of the conferees when they signed the conference agreement.

Mr. Speaker, to restore public confidence in this institution we must commit ourselves to being the most honest, most ethical, most responsive Congress in history. We can end the nightmare of the last six years by putting the needs of the American people ahead of partisan political advantage. To do that, we must start by adopting by Title III of H.R. 6, the civility reforms to the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 110th Congress.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of Title IV of H.R. 6, the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 110th Congress. With the adoption of this title, we begin to make good on our pledge to restore fiscal responsibility, open government, and honest leadership to the House of Representatives.

Madam Speaker, it is critically important that we adopt the ``pay as you go'' or ``paygo'' rules contained in Title IV. We must restore budget discipline with no new deficit spending as the first step to reversing record budget deficits that are passing trillions in debt on to our children and grandchildren. We must also amend House rules to require full transparency in order to begin to end the abuse of special interest earmarks.

Madam Speaker, the Bush Administration has turned a projected 10-year $5.6 billion surplus into a nearly $3 trillion deficit. Under this Administration, America's debt has climbed 50 percent to more than $28,000 per person, and the United States has borrowed more from foreign nations than the previous 42 U.S. presidents combined. Rising interest rates caused by Bush deficits cost middle-class families as much as $1,700 a year on credit card and mortgage payments, with interest payments on the debt becoming one of the fastest growing categories of spending in the federal budget.

Madam Speaker, pay-as-you-go was the law of the land from 1990 until 2002, paving the way for a balanced budget in the late 1990s, four years of budget surpluses, and bringing down the national debt by $453 billion.

Forty-two percent of the American public says reducing the deficit should be a top priority. On November 5, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed a deficit reduction bill imposing pay-as you-go discipline in a bipartisan deal supported by 47 House Republicans and 19 Senate Republicans. Republicans such as former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Senator John McCain support pay-as-you-go budgeting. It is supported by the Concord Coalition, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and the Committee for Economic Development.

Madam Speaker, earmark reform is needed to bring transparency and accountability for special projects. The status quo has permitted some Members of Congress, with no transparency and accountability, to provide favors to special friends through earmarked special projects-- putting special interests ahead of the public interest. The American people deserve to know who is sponsoring earmarks to begin to stop the cases of flagrant abuse of earmarks.

The number of earmarks has exploded under the Republicans, climbing from 3,023 in FY 1996 to 13,012 in FY 2006, and the lack of transparency and accountability has led to problems--of which Rep. Cunningham is an example. Former Representative Duke Cunningham pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from defense contractors in return for his help in securing defense contracts.

The Democratic reform package will amend House rules to clearly define what constitutes an earmark, along with its proper use. Specifically, the package will prohibit earmarks that personally benefit Members and their spouses.

Earmark reform under Democrats will ban earmarks that benefit lobbyists who chair a Member's Political Action Committee.

Madam Speaker, to restore public confidence in this institution, we must commit ourselves to being the most honest, most ethical, most responsive, most fiscally responsible Congress in history. We can end the nightmare of the last six years by putting the needs of the American people ahead of partisan political advantage. To do that, we must start by adopting Title III of H.R. 6, the fiscal responsibility reforms to the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 110th Congress.

I think, Mr. Dreier, my good friend, that we have done a remarkable job considering we have been sworn in less than 24 hours.

We are, by no means, through when we finish the 100 hours, and we will be moving toward, again, a more just democracy in this House in the future. We have never said this is all of it.

Frankly, everybody has known what is in this package since we first unveiled it at the Library of Congress last January.

In addition, many of our colleagues in the House on both sides of the aisle are already on record through votes on many of the things that we want to bring up. Certainly minimum wage, absolutely stem cell research, and what we want to do on ending the war. And the war itself is not addressed.

You really liked those, did you, my colleague? You thought those were good reforms, the ones you are talking about?

I am sure you recall the time in the Rules Committee when we took this package and broke it down vote by vote, and the majority, led by you, voted down every single one of them. This seems somewhat hypocritical to me.

Let me say, just watch us, Mr. Dreier. I want to reiterate what I said last night: We have no intention of keeping our foot on your necks the way you did us. And you are just going to have to watch us and see. But you have voted against every one of these, along with many other things.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlelady for yielding, and thank her for her wonderful job.

Mr. Speaker, today we are taking up the third title of the new Democrat rules package which will restore civility to this body.

The House was always intended to be a place where civil discourse and the courteous exchange of ideas would be the normal state of affairs.

But referring to this portion of our rules package as the ``civility'' title is actually a civil term for what we are talking about: The restoration of democracy itself in the House of Representatives.

Over the last several years, parliamentary procedure has broken down here, and I don't know anybody who can deny that. The standard practices of this body, carefully designed rules that are fundamental to our democratic process, fell by the wayside. Far too often, they have been shunned and ignored whenever doing so fit the needs of the former majority.

At the end of 2003, the House took up a Medicare prescription drug bill. It is a perfect example of the broken legislation produced by a broken process.

Instead of proceeding in an open and transparent manner, conference discussions were held behind closed doors for months, excluding all Democrats. On one occasion, Democratic conferee Charles Rangel and Marion Berry, men who have spent their lives and careers fighting for the good of the Nation, were not let into the conference room and were physically prevented from coming inside, even though they had been appointed to be there. Why? Because the lobbyists were in the room. The lobbyists were writing the bills, not the Members of Congress, and certainly not the minority who had no fingerprint at all on the Medicare prescription drug bill.

That abuse of secrecy was for a good reason: It was bad for the country and the Republican conferees didn't want anybody to find out about it. But one group that did learn of its dangerous provisions was the Republican conference, and when the bill was brought to the floor on November 21, a significant number of principled Republicans refused to vote for it.

And so once again civil and democratic procedures were denied. The Republican leadership had lost the vote after the standard time allotted; so they simply kept it open. I have never seen anything like that in my years in the House. There were Cabinet Secretaries all over the floor. There were strangers or people we didn't even know on the floor as for over 3 hours they worked on people who were in tears, many of them, to make them vote for that bill. There was also a blanket liability exemption for drug manufacturers inserted into the language without the approval of the conference about 5 hours after the conference had been signed off on, and so absolutely the process was broken. According to reports, the President of the Senate simply walked over to the House side and inserted 40 pages into the bill. It amounted to a multi-billion dollar gift to drug companies.

Mr. Frist's liability exemption had been brought up during the conference process, but it was rejected, just like the Medicare legislation of 2003 had, in truth, been rejected by this House. But in each case, Members of the Republican leadership wanted something they couldn't get through the democratic process, and so they ignored the process. By doing so, they did more than pass flawed legislation. They undermined our democracy itself.

This democracy is a system designed to prevent abuses like these from occurring, a system constructed and improved over two centuries so that bad legislation could be exposed and voted down.

If we profess to care about democracy, the proof will be in the process. And, Mr. Speaker, we must save the democratic process in this House. How hypocritical is it that we try to spread democracy to other parts of the world when we disallow it in the American House of Representatives?

The civility portion of the Democratic rules package before us today will prevent the abuses of recent years from happening again. It will prohibit the Speaker from holding open votes just so the outcome can be changed. Democracy is the art of compromise, not the art of coercion.

We are also going to insist that conference committees operate in an open and fair manner and that House conferees sign final conference papers at one time and in one place. In other words, they have to be present at the conference to do so. Never again will the esteemed Members of this body on either side of the aisle be locked out of this democracy. In fact, Mr. Speaker, it does not go too far to say that about half of the American public was disenfranchised. Because of the closeness of the majority and minority, we left half of America out of the room.

This package prohibits the consideration of any conference report that was altered after it was signed by the conferees. If a conference can't agree on a legislative provision, it should not be in the conference report, period. If the Members of this body believe in the power of their ideas, there will be no need for tactics like those we have seen of late. An open, democratic, and civil process will promote good ideas and good legislation and will eliminate corruption and influence peddling.

In this new Congress and with this new rules package, we are standing up for our system of government and the needs of the people it serves and bringing back the government that they think they had, up until this last November. Democrats are going to return civility and common sense to this body, and I encourage everyone on both sides of the aisle to join us.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Wisconsin, the ranking member on the Budget Committee, on which I have had the pleasure of serving for the past 2 years.

And it is ironic that I follow another colleague from North Carolina who is in favor of the Pelosi PAYGO plan that we have before us here today on the House floor. It is unfortunate that it is being offered in a closed rule, in a setting whereupon Republicans cannot offer any constructive amendments or perfecting amendments to ensure that tax increases don't arise out of this Pelosi PAYGO plan.

According to the Wall Street Journal editorial today: ``Under her,'' Pelosi's, ``PAYGO plan, new entitlement programs and all new tax cuts would have to be offset by either cut-backs in other entitlement programs or tax increases. This version of PAYGO is a budget trapdoor, designed not to control expenditures, but to make it easier to raise taxes while blocking future tax cuts.''

Mr. Speaker, I ask to include the Wall Street Journal editorial from today, entitled ``Tax As You Go,'' for the Record.

[From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 5, 2007]

Tax As You Go

Congressional Democrats are dashing out of the gates to

establish their fiscal conservative credentials. And as early

as today House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will push through so-

called ``pay-as-you-go'' budget rules for Congress. Keep an

eye on your wallet.

``Paygo,'' as Washington insiders call it, sounds like a

fiscally prudent budget practice: If government spends more

on program A, it has to spend less money on program B, and

thus budget deficits will be restrained. We're all for that.

But when Republicans proposed exactly that budget rule in

recent years, House Democrats voted it down.

Ms. Pelosi has something different in mind. Under her paygo

plan, new entitlement programs and all new tax cuts would

have to be offset by either cutbacks in other entitlement

programs or tax increases. This version of paygo is a budget

trapdoor, designed not to control expenditures but to make it

easier to raise taxes while blocking future tax cuts.

Supporters of paygo claim it will help restrain entitlement

spending. It won't. Paygo doesn't apply to current

entitlements that will grow automatically over the next

several decades. Ms. Pelosi's version of paygo applies only

to new entitlements or changes in law that expand current

programs. And on present trajectory, Medicare, Medicaid,

Social Security, food stamps and the like are scheduled to

increase federal spending to almost 38 percent of GDP by

2050, up from 21 percent today. Paygo won't stop a dime of

that increase. This may explain why one of the leading

supporters of paygo is the Center on Budget and Policy

Priorities, a liberal outfit that favors far more social

spending.

Paygo enthusiasts also claim that when these rules were in

effect in the 1990s the budget deficit disappeared and by

2001 the budget recorded a $121 billion surplus. Sorry. The

budget improvement in the late 1990s was a result of three

events wholly unrelated to paygo: the initial spending

restraint under the Republican Congress in 1995 and 1996 as

part of their pledge to balance the budget; a huge reduction

in military spending, totaling nearly 2 percent of GDP, over

the decade; and rapid economic growth, which always causes a

bounce in revenues. Paygo didn't expire until 2002, but by

the late-1990s politicians in both parties were already re-

stoking the domestic spending fires.

What paygo does restrain are tax cuts, by requiring that

any tax cut be offset dollar-for-dollar with some entitlement

reduction. Congressional budgeteers always overestimate the

revenue losses from tax cuts, which under paygo would require

onerous budget cuts to ``pay for'' the tax cuts. As a

political matter, those spending cuts will never happen.

First on the chopping block, therefore, would be the

investment tax cuts of 2003 that are set to expire in 2010.

Last year Democrat David Obey of Wisconsin, the new

Appropriations Committee chairman and a prodigious spender,

gave this strategy away when he urged paygo rules so he could

enact new social spending and pay for it by canceling the

Bush tax cuts for those who make more than $1 million.

Never mind that, in the wake of those capital gains and

dividend tax-rate cuts, federal revenues climbed by a record

$550 billion over the past two fiscal years. Incidentally,

thanks to the current economic expansion and the surge in tax

revenues, the budget deficit has fallen by $165 billion in

just two years--without paygo.

Given all of this, it's especially puzzling that even some

conservatives seem tempted by paygo's fiscal illusions. Our

friends at the Heritage Foundation have of late become

obsessed with future entitlement forecasts and have advised

Ms. Pelosi to enact paygo rules to stop it. But Heritage

notably did not insist that tax increases be excluded from

any paygo rule. Had such logic prevailed in 1980 or 2003,

it's possible that neither the Reagan nor Bush tax cuts would

ever have become law. As a political matter, paygo is about

returning Republicans to their historical minority role as

tax collectors for the welfare state.

That's not to say that new budget rules aren't highly

desirable. The line-item veto, a new Grace Commission to

identify and eliminate the billions of dollars of waste and

failed programs, and an automatic spending sequester if the

budget rises above agreed baselines would all help to restore

spending discipline. But it is precisely because these rules

would restrain spending that they are not on the Democratic

agenda.

Paygo, by contrast, gives the appearance of spending

discipline while making it all but impossible to let

taxpayers keep more of their money. It should really be

called ``spend and tax as you go.''

The fundamental budget problem here is spending too much, not taxing too little. Federal revenues climbed by $550 billion over the past two fiscal years because of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief packages. Now, this has led to a robust economic growth for our country; and as a result of that economic growth, we have had higher tax revenues to government. In fact, government revenue this year is the largest it has ever been in the history of man. Not just the history of the United States, but we have more revenue flowing into government.

So we have a spending problem, Mr. Speaker. And with this PAYGO trapdoor, the Pelosi PAYGO plan ignores the annual appropriations, and it only applies to new spending. So this is an absolute trapdoor that will lead to tax increases put forward by this new Democrat majority.

I urge us to vote this down and to actually have real constructive budget reform.