Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 1722) to improve teleworking in executive agencies by developing a telework program that allows employees to telework at least 20 percent of the hours worked in every 2 administrative workweeks, and for other purposes.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1509 and ask for its immediate consideration.

For the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina, Dr. Foxx. All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

General Leave

I ask unanimous consent that all Members may be given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 1509.

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

Madam Speaker, H. Res. 1509 provides for consideration of H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvements Act. The rule provides 1 hour of debate controlled by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill except those arising under clauses 9 and 10 of rule XXI. The rule makes in order the substitute reported by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as modified by an amendment printed in the Rules Committee report. The rule also provides one motion to recommit the bill with or without instructions.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this rule and in strong support of the underlying bill. Even in this July heat, it is hard to forget the historic snowfall that blanketed the Washington region this past winter. OMB estimated that for each day the Federal Government was shut down during the storms, the government lost $71 million worth of productivity. Had some agencies not allowed their employees to telecommute, the cost of lost productivity would have been $100 million.

With today's mobile technology, we can do better to ensure that Federal employees can effectively telecommute regardless of weather conditions. The Telework Improvements Act will provide a framework to expand the current telecommuting program so that all Federal employees can enjoy the benefits. Telecommuting also helps to reduce traffic congestion. I don't think you will find too many Federal employees complaining about missing out on rush-hour traffic in metro D.C.

Now, some may argue that telecommuting will just allow lazy employees to sit at home and pretend to work. That's simply not the case. This bill requires agencies to establish a telecommuting policy that authorizes employees to telecommute to the maximum amount possible only to the extent that it doesn't diminish employee performance or agency operations.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Defense Information Systems Agency, and the General Services Administration have already established efficient and effective telework policies.

For those concerned about the deficit, the bill is deficit neutral and, therefore, PAYGO compliant. CBO's estimated cost of $30 million over 5 years pales in comparison to the $71 million per day the government lost due to snow last winter.

Madam Speaker, I want to remind all of my colleagues that a bipartisan majority of them supported this bill when it came to the floor under suspension in May of this year. I urge them to once again support this rule and the underlying bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, the gentlelady mentioned the deficit and how concerned she is about the deficit. It's somewhat puzzling to me then that she hasn't been out front wanting to pay for the Bush tax cuts that cost hundreds of billions of dollars, that there's been no effort on the other side to want to pay for the George Bush prescription drug bill which cost hundreds of billions of dollars all on to our credit card, that there is no effort on the other side to want to pay for these wars which have now cost $1 trillion--$1 trillion in borrowed money.

I should say, with one exception. The minority leader, Mr. Boehner, suggested that we could pay for the wars with the Social Security Trust Fund, that we should raise the retirement age and whatever savings we have should not go into the Social Security Trust Fund, should go to pay for our wars so our senior citizens who have paid into the system year after year after year should be robbed of a solid program and, instead, that money should go to pay for the wars.

When they talk about deficits and debt, it is laughable, because they inherited from Bill Clinton one of the biggest surpluses in history and they squandered it on tax cuts that weren't paid for--mostly for the rich, mostly for their big contributors--and on wars that were not paid for.

And what this President and this Congress is trying to do is clean up their mess. And I'm sorry that that bothers some of my friends on the other side, but we're going to clean up their mess, and we're going to move this economy forward.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

My friends on the other side of the aisle can pull out all their charts and artwork that their Republican National Committee wants to put together for them; but some facts are undeniable, and that is, that when this President came to office, he inherited from George W. Bush the worst economy since the Great Depression. That is undeniable. This economy was in a tail spin, and if it wasn't for the stimulus package, this economy would have continued to go further down the tubes. There was no question about that.

When they talk about deficits, they conveniently leave out the fact that hundreds of billions of dollars in deficit spending went to pay for their tax cuts for their rich friends. That's what they did when they were in power, tax breaks, tax loopholes, all kinds of special interest breaks, for oil companies, for the wealthiest people in this country, and we went deeper and deeper into debt and they didn't care.

Two wars, none of it paid for. None of it paid for, and it should be paid for. The only people sacrificing in these wars are our soldiers and their families. The rest of us are asked to do nothing, and the only possible solution to that that we heard from the other side of the aisle came from the minority leader who said that we should raise the retirement age for those receiving Social Security and take that money and pay for the war. Our senior citizens should pay for these wars? Shouldn't we want to protect Social Security, and shouldn't we find other ways to pay for these wars?

In today's Washington Post, the editorial entitled, ``GOP has no problem extending tax cuts for the rich,'' let me quote from a couple of lines in this editorial: ``Senate Republicans, committed as they are to preventing the debt from mounting further, can't approve an extension of unemployment benefits because it would cost $35 billion. But they are untroubled by the notion of digging the hole $678 billion deeper by extending President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.''

And this is how the editorial ends: ``The issue is whether the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans should be extended, adding another $678 billion to the deficit over the next decade. The tax cuts, it's worth remembering, passed originally in 2001 with the argument that the surplus was so large that rates could be cut with budgetary room to spare. Now that the fiscal picture has deteriorated so badly, the questions remains: How are you going to pay the $678 billion? And if you don't, how are you going to justify the added damage to an already grim fiscal outlook?''

I insert this article in the Record at this point.

[From the Washington Post, July 14, 2010]

GOP Has No Problem Extending Tax Cuts for the Rich

Senate Republicans, committed as they are to preventing the

debt from mounting further, can't approve an extension of

unemployment benefits because it would cost $35 billion. But

they are untroubled by the notion of digging the hole $678

billion deeper by extending President Bush's tax cuts for the

wealthiest Americans. On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked

Republican Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) about this contradiction.

Mr. Kyl's response is worth examining because of what it says

about the GOP's refusal to practice the fiscal responsibility

it preaches.

Mr. Kyl's first line of defense was to dismiss Mr.

Wallace's query as ``a loaded question'' because ``the Bush

tax cuts applied to every single American.'' Mr. Wallace

pointed out that he was only referring to the top tax

brackets, but Mr. Kyl persisted in his refusal to answer.

``So let's, first of all, start with those that don't apply

to the wealthy. Shouldn't those be extended?'' Never mind

that no one in a policymaking position--not President Obama,

not Democrats in Congress--is arguing against extending those

tax cuts, at least temporarily. So when Mr. Kyl contends that

``all of that goes away,'' he is just blowing smoke.

Eventually, Mr. Kyl trotted out the tired and

unsubstantiated argument that the tax cuts for the wealthy

must be extended because otherwise ``you're going to clobber

small business.'' Mr. Wallace persisted: ``But,

sir, . . . how are you going to pay the $678 billion?''--at

which point Mr. Kyl descended into nonsense. ``You should

never raise taxes in order to cut taxes,'' he declared.

``Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right

to, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy,

not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs.

You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and

that's what Republicans object to. But you should never have

to offset [the] cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax

rates on Americans.''

Huh? No one's talking about cutting taxes on the wealthy to

stimulate the economy. The issue is whether the tax cuts for

the wealthiest Americans should be extended, adding another

$678 billion to the deficit over the next decade. The tax

cuts, it's worth remembering, passed originally in 2001 with

the argument that the surplus was so large that rates could

be cut with budgetary room to spare. Now that the fiscal

picture has deteriorated so badly, the questions remains: How

are you going to pay the $678 billion? And if you don't, how

are you going to justify the added damage to an already grim

fiscal outlook?

Madam Speaker, my friends on the other side of the aisle have been fighting with all their might to deny Americans who have lost their jobs, mostly through no fault of their own, they have been fighting with all their energy to deny them unemployment benefits during this very difficult time where people who can't get these benefits and whose savings are drying up are not going to be able to afford to pay their bills, be able to keep their home; and my friends on the other side of the aisle say we can't afford that, we can't afford that, notwithstanding the fact it's a one-time expenditure.

But you know, when it comes to the wars, let's vote to add another $33 billion in borrowed money on to our children's credit card and no questions asked.

I'd like to do a little nation building, Madam Speaker, here in the United States. I think we have an obligation to take care of the people here in this country, and so I'm all for working on trying to reduce our deficit and our debt. That's what the Democratic Party is dedicated to. The President is dedicated to that. He's formed a bipartisan commission, but to come on the floor and to say that somehow the policies of the previous President, the tax cuts for the rich, billions and billions and billions of dollars in added deficit spending, the war, the prescription drug benefit bill, not even paid for, to suggest that that didn't occur is ludicrous.

The bottom line is that you delivered to this President, my friends on the other side of the aisle delivered to this President, the worst economy since the Great Depression and he has been working overtime to try to dig this country out of the ditch that the Republicans dug, and we need to continue to move forward.

I will add one other thing, Madam Speaker, and that is, during the first year of President Obama's administration more jobs were created than during the 8 years of George W. Bush, and that's a fact.

I reserve the balance of my time, Madam Speaker.

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

Let me remind my colleagues, Madam Speaker, that when President Obama came to office, he inherited an economy that was losing on average 750,000 jobs a month. That is what President Obama was left with.

My friends talk about the fact that the economy is still struggling. It is still struggling. But the June numbers, as much as we wish they were better, we were told that 83,000 private sector jobs were created and 9,000 manufacturing jobs. I would rather be creating jobs, again, I would like to create 100 times more jobs than we were able to do in June, but I would rather be creating jobs than going back to where we were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month.

My friend mentioned job fairs, all my colleagues are doing job fairs. What I find particularly ironic is that my colleagues are hosting job fairs touting stimulus money. The distinguished minority whip on the Republican side from Virginia has been one of the Recovery Act's most vocal critics, uniformly whipping the Republican Caucus into opposing the stimulus. But despite his withering attacks and despite the withering attacks of others on the other side, they continue to host job fairs filled with employers hiring directly because of stimulus grants and programs.

We are told that over half the GOP Caucus, 114 lawmakers who voted to kill the stimulus, then took credit for its success, hosting job fairs, touting the stimulus, doing press releases every time a stimulus award was announced.

So, I guess they want to have it both ways. They want to be out here criticizing the Recovery Act, but when they go home, they are standing and posing for pictures, handing checks to their constituents and small businesses with stimulus money.

So I would again urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to at least be consistent. If you are going to oppose the Stimulus Act, the American Recovery Act, don't go home and take credit for it. Don't go home and say ``I did this for you'' when you were here in Washington and you voted to deny your communities the very money that is helping to create some jobs.

I reserve the balance of my time, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker, I think the gentlelady from North Carolina kind of just summed it all up. The Republican message to workers all across the country is, We don't want you to have good wages; we don't want you to have good benefits; we don't want you to have good retirement. We want to go back to the days when you get paid less; when one job doesn't earn enough for you to be able to support your family. I've never heard anybody get up before and talk about and advocate lower wages for people. They're all upset that a researcher at NIH trying to find a cure for cancer or a cure to Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease is somehow being overpaid. I've heard a lot of things on this floor, but I've never had anyone come out and

decry the fact that workers in this country should be paid less.

My friend from North Carolina always likes to talk about the fact that government should act more like a business. Well, I want to remind her that the bill that we are talking about here today, the telework bill--telework practices have been adopted by the private sector all throughout the country. I will give you an example. Teleworking allows IBM to reduce office space and save $56 million per year every year. Well, it works in the private sector. Why don't we take that example of where the private sector is able to save some money and bring it to the government sector where we may be able to save some money. If we can save tens of millions of dollars each year, that is a good thing. Maybe we can take that money and put it toward deficit reduction. But the idea to come out here and to be against this bill because of unions and all this other stuff, I think, is ridiculous.

This is a commonsense measure that's going to save the American taxpayer a lot of money. I urge all my colleagues, Democratic and Republican alike, to support this commonsense measure.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, this is laughable. If we're talking about trying to reduce the deficit and get the debt under control, this is the best that we can get, you know, not putting up signs? I mean, how about paying for the tax cuts for the rich that my friends on the other side of the aisle passed? Hundreds of billions of dollars in debt that you put on the backs of my kids and my grandkids so that the wealthiest of the wealthy in this country can get a tax break? Why don't you pay for that, if you want to get this deficit or this debt under control? Signs, that's the best we can do?

Again, with respect to the distinguished minority whip, who I heard again beat up on the stimulus package, it's funny that he beats up on the stimulus package here, but when he goes home, he holds a job fair that so everybody can take advantage of the of the stimulus package. Employer after employer after employer in the gentleman from Virginia's district has received money from the stimulus package so they can create more jobs, and the gentleman takes credit for it, and so do a great many people on the other side of the aisle.

I find it somewhat hypocritical that on one hand we're here saying, ``We don't like it,'' but when you go back home, you tell everybody, ``Oh, this is what I'm doing for you.''

But if you want to get serious about reducing our deficit, we have a bipartisan commission set up to try to make recommendations to this Congress. We need to do it holistically. It's going to be tough. We all want to do it. But to come up and say, ``Oh, you know, our suggestion is to eliminate the signs on projects that benefit from money from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act,'' I think that's just silly.

I would urge my colleagues again to remember the underlying bill that we're talking about, this telework bill, will save tens of millions of dollars for the taxpayers. Those tens of millions of dollars I would bet is a lot more than the signs and could be put toward deficit reduction or could be put toward what I think needs to happen right now, which is that we need to extend unemployment benefits to those who are struggling in this difficult economy. Unfortunately, my Republican friends don't agree to that, and they are blocking it in the Senate.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, again, I am always interested in what my colleagues have to say today. But where were they when President Bush and the administration sent out a press release on the prescription drug bill that they didn't pay for that cost millions and millions of dollars to all the senior citizens of this country? There was silence. And if we want to have a serious discussion about deficit reduction, which I think we should, this is where we begin? Why don't we talk about paying for the Bush tax cuts for the rich? Why not offset those tax cuts? Why not pay for them? Why not have that discussion? My friends talk about the deficit, but they didn't have any problem adding hundreds of billions of dollars onto the credit card for the prescription drug bill. They didn't think it was important to pay for it.

Under the Democratic leadership, we're abiding by PAYGO. We're paying for things as we go forward. My friends on the other side of the aisle, when they were in charge, they didn't do that. That's one of the reasons why we're in such trouble right now. But if you really want to reduce the deficit in this country, if you really want to get at the debt, if you really want to do this right, then we need a serious discussion; and the President, I think, has taken the first step toward that discussion by putting together a bipartisan commission to figure out how we do this.

And you know what? The recommendations are going to be such that none of us are going to like them, and we are going to have to make some tough decisions, and hopefully we'll do it together. If not, we'll do it alone. But I think the fact of the matter is getting the deficit under control is a priority. But I'll tell you this: You're not going to get the deficit under control unless you get the economy back on track, unless you put people back to work.

And I really regret that my friends on the other side of the aisle, every chance they get, try to undercut this President's economic agenda to try to create and incentivize more jobs. Every chance, every single chance, they object or they try to obstruct. Again, I will go back to what I said earlier. They come on the floor and they decry the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but then they go back to their districts and they do press conferences and they do press releases and they take all kinds of bows for all the money that they voted against. A lot of that money, Madam Speaker, is creating jobs in their districts. And the reason why, I guess, they're taking bows is because they see that some of the help to some of the small businesses and to some of their manufacturers and to some of the States and cities and towns for building their infrastructure is important to job creation.

So, again, let's get back to what we're here to talk about, which is this telework bill, which I think will save the Federal Government a great deal of money. I'm not the only one who thinks that. There are others in the private sector and in the public sector that have made the argument that if we do this right, we could save not just tens of millions of dollars but maybe hundreds of millions of dollars, and I think that's a good step for us to take. If my friends on the other side of the aisle don't want to take that step, fine. They can do what they usually do and obstruct everything. But this is good for the taxpayers of this country, and I hope that it passes with an overwhelming margin.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I'm a little bit confused. I don't know whether the gentleman supports the stimulus package or opposes the stimulus package.

On one hand, you know, Pennsylvania was one of the top recipients of aid from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. A lot of bridges are

being repaired; a lot of highways are being fixed. Does the gentleman want to take that money back? Does he think that the people who worked on constructing those bridges and building those roads are somehow, those jobs aren't worth it?

The fact of the matter is, you know, it's another example of where, on one hand, my colleagues are saying we want more money for bridges and roads and infrastructure. And the very bill that delivered a lot more money for bridges and roads, they all voted against.

So I would again urge my colleagues to be consistent. And I would also urge them to support the underlying bill, this telework bill, which I think will save the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars.

I'm happy to yield to the gentleman.

I reclaim my time. But the fact of the matter is a lot of infrastructure projects are going on in Pennsylvania right now. And the people who are working on those jobs are happy to have a job. And the people who run the State are happy that they are able to make some improvements because States have been suffering greatly as a result of this economy.

So, you know, I would also point out again that, for all the talk of jobs, when they were in charge, we were losing on average 750,000 jobs a month; 750,000 jobs a month we were losing when they were in charge.

We're now gaining jobs, not as many as we would like, but we're moving in a different direction. I don't want to go backwards. I don't want to go backwards to 22 consecutive months of job loss.

Barack Obama has created more jobs in 1 year than George Bush created in 8 years, and that is a fact. And so to all my colleagues who are talking about jobs, here's your choice: you can go backwards and experience once again historic job losses, or you can stick with this economic agenda, get through this difficult time, put people back to work, get this economy moving again and start paying down our debt.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlelady an additional 20 seconds to finish her statement.

Madam Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Madam Speaker, I won't take the full 8 minutes, but I again want to point out a couple of facts to my colleagues here. We are faced with a very difficult economy, and this is an economy that President Obama inherited. He is trying to dig this economy out of the ditch that my friends on the other side of the aisle dug us into. It is not easy, and it's not going to happen overnight.

But it is a fact that Barack Obama has created more jobs in 1 year than George Bush created in 8 years. We were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs on average each month when President Bush was in office. We are now gaining jobs; not as many as we would like, not as fast as we would like, but we are moving in a very different direction. We're moving in the direction where we are creating more jobs, and we're moving toward a healthier economy. That is just the fact.

And the question is, Do we try to work with this administration to get this economy back on a strong footing, or are we going to try to obstruct everything and root for failure?

I mean, my friends on the other side of the aisle, their whole kind of, their whole platform is based on this President failing, on this economy failing. How cynical can you get?

The fact is, we have a lot of work to do, and we need to focus on jobs. Jobs is the issue. We need to extend unemployment benefits to those who have lost their jobs, mostly through no fault of their own.

We need to help them get through this difficult time. I regret that my Republican friends in the Senate continue to obstruct the extension of unemployment benefits. I hope nobody goes home for an August recess until unemployment benefits are extended.

My friends say we can't afford to pay for it. Can't afford to pay to help people in our own country. Yet last week $33 billion in borrowed money for nation building that supports a corrupt government in Afghanistan. They all support it. No questions asked. All borrowed money. And I get it. You know, if you think it's important, fine. But if nation building in Afghanistan is important, a little bit more nation building here in the United States of America is important.

We have to take care of our people here who are experiencing very difficult times because of the troubled economy. We just can't sit here and bicker and bicker and bicker and let people lose their homes and let people not be able to pay their bills or put food on their table.

The fact of the matter is, Madam Speaker, this President has accomplished a great deal in a very short time. And my expectation is that if we continue to follow his economic agenda, that we will see this economy get on stronger footing. The bill that's before us, the telework bill, I think is a good bill. It will save the taxpayers lots of money. IBM, a private-sector company, says it saved them tens of millions of dollars each year. If it can save IBM tens of millions of dollars each year, it ought to save the Federal Government hundreds of millions. Let us take that money, put it toward deficit reduction or put it toward helping our people who are in deep trouble as this economy tries to recover.

Madam Speaker, I would close by urging my colleagues to support the rule. I would urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question on the rule.

I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

I thank my colleague from Massachusetts for yielding time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, as has become routine in this Congress, it's my sad duty to come before you yet again today to speak in opposition to spending this House's valuable time to consider a bill that would do absolutely nothing to respond to the very real concerns facing Americans every day.

Here we are with a 9.5 percent unemployment rate, the largest deficit in our history, and the national debt at almost $14 trillion. The response of the

liberal Democratic leadership? A bill making it easier for Federal employees to stay at home to work and creating more government union jobs.

Here we are with a financial crisis of global proportions resulting from an unprecedented expansion of government. The response of liberal Democratic leadership? A resolution recognizing National Train Day.

Here we are with a torrent of oil gushing into the gulf day after day, depriving untold numbers of people of their livelihoods. The liberal Democratic response? A resolution supporting the goals and ideals of RV Centennial Celebration Month to recognize and honor a hundred years of the enjoyment of recreational vehicles in the United States.

In fact, this Congress so far has considered no fewer than 73 bills naming post offices, 36 measures recognizing sporting events and achievements, and 145 designations or recognitions for various days, weeks, months, or years.

Despite these very real problems, the liberal Democrats ruling Congress are running around the country trying to convince the American people that everything is just fine and they don't need to worry because the Democrats are solving their problems. While government employees and their union handlers might be satisfied with the liberal Democrat jobs agenda, try asking the small business men forced to close their doors or the 7 million private business employees who've lost their jobs since the liberal Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 and want to get back to work. This is the wrong bill at the wrong time.

And with that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

As I have said before on the floor here to my colleagues who want to rewrite history, they can't blame everything on President Bush. They can't continue to do that. And they want to give President Clinton all the credit.

But, of course, the Congress was controlled by the Republicans for 6 of the 8 years that President Clinton was in office. It's the Congress that controls the spending. Our Democratic colleagues know that. They simply choose to ignore it when it suits their arguments.

Let me quote from the Wall Street Journal article of the 13th of July. It's very recent, so my colleagues may not have seen it.

The Bush Tax Cuts and the Deficit Myth--and I won't read the entire article; but, Madam Speaker, I insert the entire article into the Record.

I would be happy to yield to my friend from California.

Reclaiming my time, I thank my colleague for pointing out the very important issue of the percentage of debt to the GDP because it is an important issue and our friends across the aisle have created much of that problem along with our President. They have been in charge since January 2007, and that's where the problem comes from.

[From the Wall Street Journal, July 13, 2010]

The Bush Tax Cuts and the Deficit Myth

(By Brian Riedl)

President Obama and congressional Democrats are blaming

their trillion-dollar budget deficits on the Bush tax cuts of

2001 and 2003. Letting these tax cuts expire is their answer.

Yet the data flatly contradict this ``tax cuts caused the

deficits'' narrative. Consider the three most persistent

myths:

The Bush tax cuts wiped out last decade's budget surpluses.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), for example, has long blamed the

tax cuts for having ``taken a $5.6 trillion surplus and

turned it into deficits as far as the eye can see.'' That

$5.6 trillion surplus never existed. It was a projection by

the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in January 2001 to

cover the next decade. It assumed that late-1990s economic

growth and the stockmarket bubble (which had already peaked)

would continue forever and generate record-high tax revenues.

It assumed no recessions, no terrorist attacks, no wars, no

natural disasters, and that all discretionary spending would

fall to 1930s levels.

The projected $5.6 trillion surplus between 2002 and 2011

will more likely be a $6.1 trillion deficit through September

2011. So what was the cause of this dizzying, $11.7 trillion

swing? I've analyzed CBO's 28 subsequent budget baseline

updates since January 2001. These updates reveal that the

much-maligned Bush tax cuts, at $1.7 trillion, caused just

14% of the swing from projected surpluses to actual deficits

(and that is according to a ``static'' analysis, excluding

any revenues recovered from faster economic growth induced by

the cuts).

The bulk of the swing resulted from economic and technical

revisions (33%), other new spending (32%), net interest on

the debt (12%), the 2009 stimulus (6%) and other tax cuts

(3%). Specifically, the tax cuts for those earning more than

$250,000 are responsible for just 4% of the swing. If there

were no Bush tax cuts, runaway spending and economic factors

would have guaranteed more than $4 trillion in deficits over

the decade and kept the budget in deficit every year except

2007.

The next decade's deficits are the result of the previous

administration's profligacy. Mr. Obama asserted in his

January State of the Union Address that by the time he took

office, ``we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and

projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most

of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax

cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.''

In short, it's all President Bush's fault. But Mr. Obama's

assertion fails on three grounds.

First, the wars, tax cuts and the prescription drug program

were implemented in the early 2000s, yet by 2007 the deficit

stood at only $161 billion. How could these stable policies

have suddenly caused trillion-dollar deficits beginning in

2009? (Obviously what happened was collapsing revenues from

the recession along with stimulus spending.)

Second, the president's $8 trillion figure minimizes the

problem. Recent CBO data indicate a 10-year baseline deficit

closer to $13 trillion if Washington maintains today's tax-

and-spend policies--whereby discretionary spending grows with

the economy, war spending winds down, ObamaCare is

implemented, and Congress extends all the Bush tax cuts, the

Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch, and the Medicare ``doc

fix'' (i.e., no reimbursement cuts).

Under this realistic baseline, the 10-year cost of

extending the Bush tax cuts ($3.2 trillion), the Medicare

drug entitlement ($1 trillion), and Iraq and Afghanistan

spending ($515 billion) add up to $4.7 trillion. That's

approximately one-third of the $13 trillion in baseline

deficits--far from the majority the president claims.

Third and most importantly, the White House methodology is

arbitrary. With Washington set to tax $33 trillion and spend

$46 trillion over the next decade, how does one determine

which policies ``caused'' the $13 trillion deficit? Mr. Obama

could have just as easily singled out Social Security ($9.2

trillion over 10 years), antipoverty programs ($7 trillion),

other Medicare spending ($5.4 trillion), net interest on the

debt ($6.1 trillion), or nondefense discretionary spending

($7.5 trillion).

There's no legitimate reason to single out the $4.7

trillion in tax cuts, war funding and the Medicare drug

entitlement. A better methodology would focus on which

programs are expanding and pushing the next decade's deficit

up.

Declining revenues are driving future deficits. The fact is

that rapidly increasing spending will cause 100% of rising

long-term deficits. Over the past 50 years, tax revenues have

deviated little from their 18% of gross domestic product

(GDP) average. Despite a temporary recession-induced dip, CBO

projects that even if all Bush tax cuts are extended and the

AMT is patched, tax revenues will rebound to 18.2% of GDP by

2020--slightly above the historical average. They will

continue growing afterwards.

Spending--which has averaged 20.3% of GDP over the past 50

years--won't remain as stable. Using the budget baseline

deficit of $13 trillion for the next decade as described

above, CBO figures show spending surging to a peacetime

record 26.5% of GDP by 2020 and also rising steeply

thereafter.

Putting this together, the budget deficit, historically

2.3% of GDP, is projected to leap to 8.3% of GDP by 2020

under current policies. This will result from Washington

taxing at 0.2% of GDP above the historical average but

spending 6.2% above its historical average.

Entitlements and other obligations are driving the

deficits. Specifically, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

and net interest costs are projected to rise by 5.4% of GDP

between 2008 and 2020. The Bush tax cuts are a convenient

scapegoat for past and future budget woes. But it is the

dramatic upward arc of federal spending that is the root of

the problem.

With that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I just want to quickly respond to two things that my colleague from Massachusetts said.

He talks about the fact that the Federal Government is paying for wars. Well, let me say that the Constitution of the United States says, ``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare,'' et cetera. It is the role of the Federal Government to protect us in this country. It is the only entity in our country who can do that. It is our role.

The other comment he makes is ``tax cuts for the rich.'' My colleague, just like almost all my colleagues across the aisle, have an assumption that all the money that is generated in this country belongs to the government and that if there is a tax cut provided, that that is a gift from the government to the people getting the tax cut.

No, Madam Speaker, that is not right. The government is not in control in this country. The people are in control. And for them to have that assumption is the biggest part of the problem that we have here right now.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished ranking member of the Rules Committee (Mr. Dreier).

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

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

I can assure my colleague across the aisle that I wasn't one of those people who went home to take credit for the Stimulus Act. So he needs to take that issue up with those who have done it and not paint us all with the same brush.

Madam Speaker, the underlying bill proposes spending $30 million creating a variety of initiatives promoting telework opportunities to allow Federal employees to work at home. This bill would require each Federal agency to create a teleworking managing officer. But there are many people who wonder if creating this kind of a situation is going to improve efficiency among Federal employees, and it may even reduce the productivity of the Federal Government.

While the 3 million Americans who have lost their jobs since President Obama took office are asking, Where are the jobs we were promised, the Congress is pushing this initiative to make it easier for Federal employees who already have it much better than the rest of the country to avoid coming to work. So why is this bill so popular with the ruling liberal Democrats? Perhaps it has something to do with their longstanding subservience to labor unions.

New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that a majority of American union members now work for the government. That's 52 percent of all union members now work for the Federal, State, or local government, representing a sharp increase from the 49 percent in 2008. A full 37.4 percent of government employees belonged to the unions in 2009, up six-tenths of a percent from 2008. This shift toward representing government employees has changed the union movement's priorities, as unions now campaign for higher taxes on Americans to fund more government spending.

These changes in union membership are certainly not surprising, as unionized companies do poorly in the marketplace and lose jobs relative to their nonunion competitors. Government employees, however, face no competition, as the government never goes out of business. The recession has left union bosses looking for new membership targets--and where better to look than in the government, which they see as having the deepest of all pockets and a host of sympathetic liberal Democratic politicians eager to please their political base. In fact, as reported by USA Today, overall, Federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,000. These salary figures don't include the value of health, pension, and other benefits, which average $40,785 per Federal employee in 2008 versus $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. So the average Federal employee's benefits are worth four times what the average benefits are worth in the private sector.

A March 26, 2010, Wall Street Journal editorial entitled ``The Government Pay Boom'' reveals that ``the real windfall for government workers is in benefits.'' And it goes on to talk about how these benefits are growing, growing, growing. We know that the number of Federal employees making over $100,000 has increased by almost 5 percent since 2007, since the Democrats took over in Congress. Currently, there are more people in the Federal Government making in excess of $100,000 than those making $40,000.

Since the recession began in 2007, public worker pay has risen 7.8 percent, while private-sector wages remain stagnant. The 2010 pay increase for Federal civilian employees was 2 percent. In 2009, the average Federal employee received a pay raise of 3.9 percent, and an average pay increase of 3.5 percent in 2008. In 2007, the Department of Transportation had only one employee making over $170,000. At the end of last year, it had 1,690 employees making that amount.

Madam Speaker, we are growing the Federal Government while we have a 9.7 percent unemployment rate in the private sector. This is unacceptable to the American people. That's why we should vote ``no'' on this rule and ``no'' on this bill, because we are not heeding what the American people want us to do.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I now yield 4 minutes to the distinguished Republican whip, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor).

Madam Speaker, I will invite my colleague from Massachusetts, when he speaks again, to give us the citation for the study that he's talking about that shows that this bill will save tens of millions of dollars. I have done a little research on it myself, and I will be talking about that study. But I would invite him to prove to the American people that this will save money.

And I want to point out to him that he's poking fun at Republicans on recommending that we save money on signs, but what he was really doing is poking fun at the American people. It wasn't the Republicans on this side of the aisle who came up with this. It's the American people who voted on this, and the American people understand the biblical admonition, If you are a good steward of small things, you will be a good steward of big things. We should start where we can save money. And I agree with the people. This is a good place to start.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Illinois (Mr. Schock).

Madam Speaker, I just want to point out to my colleague from Massachusetts that the Republicans can't obstruct the President's effort because we are in the minority. And we don't have to obstruct him anyway because they've all failed. Nothing has worked that the President and our friends across the aisle have tried, and so they're going to fail of their own weight.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster).

Madam Speaker, my colleague again is very selectively using statistics. He knows that he cannot back up the data that says that in the first year of President Obama's administration he has created more jobs than in all the Bush administration.

I have this chart which shows the unemployment rate under President Obama, under President Bush; and, again, we had many more jobs created under President Bush than have been created under President Obama, because all we've done is lose jobs under President Obama and create government jobs.

That's the whole issue here, Madam Speaker. We've lost four million jobs since President Obama took office. That's it.

And, you know, my colleague across the aisle says we need to be consistent. Well, he should be consistent. This will bring savings immediately, what we're proposing. What he's talking about might bring savings 30 years down the road. In fact, the study that I asked him to talk about, there's no study, Madam Speaker. I asked for a copy of the study. You know what it is? An article that was in the newspaper last February when we shut the government down, or the Democrats shut the government down for a week. They were losing $100 million a day. But they found out 30 percent of the people were logging into their computers, so they call that a savings of $30 million per day.

Listen, the American people are tired of that kind of thing being passed off as a study. There is no study.

Madam Speaker, this bill does not need to be passed. This rule does not need to be passed.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the amendment and extraneous material be placed in the Record prior to the vote on the previous question.

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

Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise with serious concerns with H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvement Act. This began as a bipartisan bill, and if our one opportunity, a motion to recommit, is passed, it will have an opportunity to end as a bipartisan bill. There is no

question in my mind that telework is the future. It, in fact, is the present. Virtually every Member of Congress has remote access. Virtually every Member of Congress and many of their staff carry BlackBerrys and use other tools so that we can work here and around the world. It would be just about impossible for a Member of Congress and their key staff to bounce back and forth between their far-away districts, here on the Hill, and various meetings if we didn't have the ability to be portable in our information access. So we are not here to talk about telework as though it is a bad thing, because it can be an extremely effective tool.

We do have concerns. One of our specific concerns in the underlying legislation is, at a time in which we're borrowing nearly 40 percent of the operating cash of our government--put in another way, once you get past entitlements, everything we spend is borrowed--it would seem ridiculous that something that can save money, that is argued to save money, in fact, is not required to be at least neutral in its expenditure. This bill is expected to cost millions of dollars per year and, like most government estimates, is likely to cost far more than that if it's expanded to its logical conclusion.

So, Madam Speaker, it is my hope that as we begin offering what we were not allowed to offer under the rule, which would be any amendments that would curtail the millions of dollars in costs over 5 years or to deal with the reality that if you're going to claim that you can save the construction of office buildings, you should be required to show that you are saving it. If you claim that you are going to be more efficient by not having a commute time, you should at least be required to show it. Additionally, we are very concerned that recent discoveries have shown that there are vulnerabilities which have not been properly cared for in this bill. The bill authorizes it but does not require it.

I am, however, pleased that in a number of areas, the majority has made improvements and has taken many suggestions. The committee did work, as you would expect us to, in favor of the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal workforce in getting this bill as far as we could go. It is my sincere hope that one and only one opportunity to further amend would be accepted and that this will be a broadly bipartisan bill at the end.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), one of the cosponsors of the bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wittman).

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

The chairman and the majority leader both make good points, and I would like to address them for just a moment. The chairman, who I have had a good working relationship with, made the point that this passed out of committee without anything left unresolved. And to a certain extent I would agree with him. Except of course we didn't have a score on this. We never do. We didn't know what this bill was going to cost. And when we discovered that this was going to cost millions of dollars every year, we made it clear before the last round of a request for a vote that we would have to find an offset or we would have to modify the bill to ensure that it would not cause the taxpayers to look at this as simply a perk for government.

Because ultimately we can talk about morale, but the Federal workforce makes on the average $60,000 more than their private-sector counterparts. So morale should already be good in an organization the size of the government that has added a quarter of a million new workers since we went into a recession.

There is no question that telework can justify this if it's done properly. Our amendment is going to seek, our one motion to recommit-- we weren't allowed any amendments--to try to at least trim around the edges to have our Members be able to go home and say of course we supported telework, but we made sure there were some safeguards of the American people's money.

The amendments that we tried to offer to what was known in advance to be a closed rule, a please do not suggest, create a process problem that I hope, Mr. Speaker, that you will be sensitive, along with the American people, to. Our committee has 40 or so members. That's roughly one-tenth of the Congress. So 9 out of 10 Members of the House never get an opportunity to be there. As a matter of fact, including the Delegates, it works out just exactly as 10 percent. So 400 people didn't have input when we were working this through committee.

Some may have noticed the bill, but as the majority leader said, he has been working on this for 20 years. Who would have thought it would come to the floor now? So can we as a body deny the process of 400 people, 400 voters, if you will, or representatives of voters, including yourself, Mr. Speaker? How can we deny you the ability to look at something when it's going to become a bill on the floor and offer constructive amendments?

The process of the Rules Committee is supposed to deal with germaneness. It's supposed to deal with whether or not your amendment is properly written, whether it seeks to amend a portion of the bill allowed to be amended. That's not the way it is here in the House right now. We had amendments perfectly allowable, and they simply were ruled out because you could. So we will use our one opportunity, our motion to recommit. We trust that we have written it properly, and that it will be found to be in order. And we trust that both sides will see that it is modest, it's moderate, it's intended simply to deal with cost and other concerns in the bill.

There is no killer in this bill. There's nothing the American people would not be happy with in this bill the way it is. And there is nothing they will be unhappy with if the motion to recommit passes. We structured it that way. We would like to have something that started off as bipartisan end as bipartisan.

Mr. Speaker, I truly believe we are going to have that opportunity. I would hope that everyone in this body will view it that way, look at it carefully, come to the same conclusion, and we will leave here today on a bipartisan basis.

I reserve the balance of my time.

If the gentleman would yield, that's correct.

I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. It's pay and benefits.

At $175,000, one Congressman to another, yes. The typical American making $35,000 or $40,000 understands we make a lot more.

In pay and benefits.

Even though it's not germane to today, I'll be glad to make that available to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I note the gentlelady acts as though already everybody teleworks. It's very clear that the people who were able to telework, that, quote, saved us $30 million during that snowstorm, were the people who have redundant activities, for the most part, people who had a duplicate computer, duplicate capacity. That costs money. That is an item that we simply want to make sure is cost justified.

You know, many people on the other side of the aisle, including the next speaker, have talked about the private sector. Well, I, for one, came from the private sector, and I very much understand that we do a cost benefit.

The previous speaker talked about insurance salesmen. You don't care where they are. That's right. An insurance salesman is usually a commission person. It's somebody who's very accountable for their pay because it's earned and justified against revenue. More importantly, even their package of perks is figured into that.

So, in the private sector, if somebody costs, if you will, $190,000 dollars--or as the average Federal worker costs, nonuniformed, $119,000 per worker versus $59,000 in the private sector--in the private sector they know what their sales or revenues or profits are relative to that cost. In the public sector, we don't.

All we're seeking to do, all we're talking about here today is we want telework to be used and rolled out extensively where it can be at least revenue or cost-neutral relative to alternatives of bringing people in. That's all we're asking for. We believe it's reasonable.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself just 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, my good friend from Virginia was accurate in almost everything he said, but the one part that I'd like to correct is we don't need more time. We had sufficient time, once the scoring was in, to figure out what needed to be changed among the various hundred or so Republicans who were not on the committee, and we offered them. And the gentleman from Virginia is not on the Rules Committee so he's not part of that hidden hand that simply doesn't allow any dissent or any amendments or any corrections once a decision has been made by the majority. So, you know, I appreciate the fact he has been good to work with and that he is not somebody who would have limited that, and we would be happy to share all of our amendments if we had a chance of having them ruled in.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

As I begin, my staff is bringing over to the chairman a copy of something I am going to include in the Record from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Department of Commerce. The chairman may recognize the Department of Commerce is part of the administration and part of government.

Their assessment in 2008--and it has only become greater--is that we have as Federal workers against average--this is not against average of job per job but just against the working stiff, whatever they do in the outside world versus the working stiff in government, $29,169.63 of additional wages. What makes the huge difference the American people don't always see is that in the private sector, a typical benefit package is about $9,881. Well, a civilian Federal Government employee has a benefit package on the average worth about $40,784 or $30,900 more.

So, Mr. Speaker, we do have the Department of Commerce currently, during the Obama administration, telling us very clearly--not that engineer versus engineer. I appreciate the way

you can match up various jobs, but the Federal workforce is a highly skilled and highly paid workforce, and we should understand that if we are going to have telework go greater and greater--and I approve of it doing it--we have two reasons to do it.

One is continuity of government, and sometimes continuity of government can cost more. It can be for redundant computers, redundant centers and so on, no question at all. But often it is, and as it is justified in this bill by many of the people speaking on it on both sides of the aisle, it is also about avoiding traffic, avoiding building new buildings, avoiding heating and air conditioning, avoiding costs. All the minority would like to make sure is that this expansion meets one of those requirements or the other. If it is necessity and it costs more, fine. Of course you can have redundant facilities; but if it is intended to be cost savings, let's make sure it's cost savings.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, although we have 12 minutes left on our side in debate, I don't intend to use it. I also don't intend to continue to have the American people hear haggling on the House floor about how much one side gets paid or another. For that reason, I will today post at republicans.oversight.house.gov the Department of Commerce report in sufficient detail for people to realize that $60,072.97 is roughly the additional amount in pay and benefits that Federal employees receive than the average private sector.

But the interesting thing about the Federal workforce versus the gentleman who was talking about commuting from Bridgeport and other parts in his State, is they are not laid off. They are not suffering. As a matter of fact, they have been net-hired. The growth that has occurred over the last 2 years has been in government. The pay increases have been in government. The benefit increases have been in government.

Now, we are not talking about telework as a benefit, although some speakers have talked about family time because you can telework and so on. We are talking about telework for one of two reasons that are justified, and Republicans will today, I hope, vote for the motion to recommit and then vote for final passage, because it either is part of the job of government, the sustainability, the continuity of government, and we want to make sure we use telework in order to advance that, or remote access, if you will, or it saves the taxpayers dollars.

If someone doesn't drive for an hour and they work an hour more remotely, that is a good thing. But if we are simply improving quality of life, having redundant computers at a cost of several thousand dollars plus several more thousand dollars in maintenance and overhead and renewal and software support, Mr. Speaker, we are not doing what the American people expect us to do.

The American people expect us to start being safeguarders of their precious money, which isn't even current but the money we are going to have to take from them in the future to pay back what we are borrowing today.

If we don't start counting the pennies, the nickles and the dollars and make sure they are well spent, then it is very clear we will never get to any kind of an affordable government, a balanced budget, and there will be an inevitably that the United States will look too much like Greece and not enough like the country that we were so proud of this past Fourth of July.

We have a great tradition, a tradition of small government and large private sector. Mr. Speaker, I want to make sure that our government works more efficiently so we can have a smaller government that meets the basic requirements, not that we simply expand government with one after another programs.

With that, I fully expect that we will make this bill better, that we will continue to work on telework being to the advantage of the American taxpayer and not simply an additional item to be spent.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

I am, in its present form.

Mr. Speaker, this is a straightforward motion. It is a motion that, if passed, will cause the Republicans to vote for this, if not unanimously, virtually unanimously. If we take out the $30 million in cost by insisting that there be reasonable offsets, then we will in fact have fixed one of the problems that was unnecessary in the bill. Additionally, as was so well read by our Clerk just a moment ago, it is very, very clear that there are some small areas but meaningful areas. We do not want the American people to believe that telecommuters are downloading pornography full time the way $200,000-plus executives at SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, were doing.

Now, I wanted to include in the motion to recommit that if you're found downloading while telecommuting, you'd be fired, but it turns out, Mr. Speaker, the rules of the House prevent me from offering that. I am not allowed under the rules to insist on behalf of the American people that somebody be terminated if they've downloaded endless pornography while telecommuting. So instead we have simply said in the motion to recommit that if they're found downloading pornography, they can no longer telecommute.

Likewise, on a number of other areas we feel that the American people should know that there is accountability. Accountability as to the Presidential Records Act. Mr. Speaker, as you know, the Presidential Records Act is extremely important. That if somebody is working offsite, we want to ensure that they do not use a Gmail account or in some other way go off system and have that lost for the rest of eternity. It is too important and it is too uniform a law to not make sure it is included in this Act. Additionally, the question of official business.

Now, often motions to recommit include poison pills. This is not one. We wanted to make sure that if there's a union contract in which there's union negotiation or other time allotted--official time--that it not be done clandestinely around telecommuting. The fact is that if a union leader who is also a Federal employee has a right to have so much time spent doing that, this would not stop them, but it would make it very clear that you can't simply be working out of your house and use that as collective bargaining time or other work that would not be manageable.

It's very clear that we were limited in this. This does not fix everything, Mr. Speaker. This does not fix everything I'd like to fix, but it simply makes the bill revenue neutral and in a couple of important areas assures the American people that their taxpayer dollars are not being misused while someone is telecommuting.

With that, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1509, I call up the bill (H.R. 1722) to improve teleworking in executive agencies by developing a telework program that allows employees to telework at least 20 percent of the hours worked in every 2 administrative workweeks, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Madam Speaker, as chairman of the House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Federal workforce, postal service, and the District of Columbia, I'm pleased to offer H.R. 1722 for consideration. This legislation seeks to improve and expand access to telework for Federal employees in the executive branch.

The bipartisan measure before us today was introduced by Congressman John Sarbanes of Maryland, along with myself and Representatives Frank Wolf, Gerry Connolly of Virginia, Jim Moran of Virginia, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, and Danny Davis of Illinois back in March 2009. The bill was then amended and ordered reported favorably by our subcommittee on March 24, and again shortly thereafter by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on April 14, 2010.

Madam Speaker, despite the evolving nature of the way the Federal Government conducts its affairs, telework, which allows an employee to regularly perform work from a remote location other than their usual workplace, continues to be underutilized by Federal agencies. Experience has consistently demonstrated that the private and public sector employers who utilize telework experience increased productivity and retention rates. More specifically, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Defense Information Systems Agency have successfully used telework programs, which shows potentially how telework can transform and enhance agencies' customer service offerings for our citizens and do so with greater efficiency and lower costs.

H.R. 1722 provides for improvements to increase the number of Federal employees that participate in telework programs by requiring agencies to develop comprehensive telework policies within 1 year that allow authorized employees to telework and by directing the Office of Personnel Management to develop regulations on overall telework policies and to annually evaluate agency telework programs.

H.R. 1722 also seeks to elevate the importance of incorporating telework into the continuity of operations planning for our Federal agencies. For example, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry estimated that the use of telework reduced the estimated cost of lost productivity during the recent snowstorms this past winter in the District of Columbia by approximately $30 million per day.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote in favor of moving telework forward by passing H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvement Act. This legislation has long enjoyed bipartisan support in the Oversight Committee and in the House over several Congresses and will help ensure the government operates more efficiently and effectively as a modern-day employer.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for his remarks.

General Leave

For the record, Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks with respect to H.R. 1722.

I would now like to yield 5 minutes to the lead sponsor of this measure, Mr. Sarbanes of Maryland.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Towns), the full committee chairman, energetic and wise chairman of the Oversight Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia for his thoughtful comments.

At this time I yield 1 minute to our distinguished majority leader, Mr. Hoyer.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask for a clarification, did the gentleman say that the Federal employees make an average of $60,000 more than their counterparts?

Sixty thousand dollars more.

The typical Federal employee makes $60,000 more?

If the gentleman would produce some type of--that fact's not

in evidence at all. I'm sure that we have kids that are working for $30,000, $40,000 a year. How are they making $60,000 more than their counterparts?

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, from the District of Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, I do want to note that we do have one study here that I think is probably the most extensive one done on comparing private sector jobs to Federal jobs, and that is by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they compared occupation to occupation. They took an engineer in private sector versus an engineer working for the Federal Government, and they have reported that Federal employees are paid 22 percent less than their private sector counterparts.

At this point, I yield 5 minutes to an energetic and diligent member of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), who has been a long-time advocate on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the sheet, but I do want to note this does not compare job-to-job, nor does it indicate that there is anything close to a $60,000 delta between the private and the public employee.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Sires), who also has been an energetic worker on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes).

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I again would like to express my strong support for the passage of H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvements Act of 2010. I would like to thank Mr. Sarbanes, our lead sponsor on this measure which is before us today, which promotes good and common sense governance policy which will ensure a more efficient, responsive Federal government, especially in times of national security and weather-related emergencies.

Moreover, H.R. 1722 will allow executive branch agencies to act more like other 21st century employers, particularly private sector employers, which for years have utilized and reaped the benefits of telework in terms of increased job productivity as well as employee moral.

I want to paraphrase the words of my Republican colleague, Mr. Wolf of Virginia, who said that the vote for saving money and the vote for cutting costs here is a ``yes'' vote on this measure.

With that, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of H.R. 1722.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I object.

I reserve a point of order.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to claim time in opposition to the motion.

No.

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of points here that I would like to make at the outset, and I appreciate the spirit in which the gentleman has offered these amendments.

Many of the concerns that the gentleman has raised in his motion to recommit have been addressed in the bill.

I would like to begin by saying that right now, with respect to tax delinquency and enforcing the tax laws against Federal employees, we have greater protections right now in place against those Federal employees than exist against any other employee in America today. We have the ability to remove them from their jobs. We have the ability to garnish their wages. We have the ability to demand of them compliance with the tax law that is much more difficult to implement against the average private sector employee. So I do not think that the measures here and the ``seriously delinquent'' category that does not exist under the IRS Tax Code well serves the underlying purpose of this bill.

I do want to say that prohibiting collective bargaining activity while teleworking is also a question of possible violation with other statutes that I believe may be infringed upon by this motion. So I would be very, very concerned about--obviously we were given this motion about a minute ago--well, a couple of minutes ago, so I'm not so sure how that would affect Taft-Hartley collective bargaining rights. But it would appear that they would do a carve-out here for those workers who are teleworking and yet unable to exercise the rights that otherwise might exist in those employees. So I am very, very concerned about that.

I understand the restrictions. Further, the amended version of H.R. 1722 already incorporates language to restrict allowing employees to telework based on previous disciplinary issues that might have been presented.

With respect to the concern raised by my friend and colleague with respect to accessing pornographic sites, I should note that history has shown us that those who rail against weaknesses of the human spirit are usually the very people who succumb to those very weaknesses. But we would certainly agree that that is inappropriate behavior and it should be punished. I tend to think that that is a point of agreement, but I think it's just a matter of how to implement that prohibition.

There is also a difficulty at the heart of this, which is that the gentleman's motion to reconsider requires us to demonstrate a savings now at this level. Here's the problem: We are not in an Appropriations Committee. We have not appropriated any money for this. We don't have the ability to do that. This is authorization. So how are we supposed to know where the break point on savings might be when we don't know, in this forum, how much money might be spent?

Those are structural flaws, I think, in the bill that prevent us from accepting the amendment at this time. However, I understand that some Members may see one or two of these issues as decisive on their behalf, and I would understand and respect the Members' rights to vote as they might on this measure. But because of the issues that I have raised-- one, because it creates a level of impossibility for us to demonstrate savings when we don't know how much money is going to be used in implementing this measure. That will be decided by the appropriators. And, as well, we realize that to set this up, in order to establish the teleworking protocols, there will be an expenditure to begin with, but the savings will result at a later time. So I urge my colleagues to vote against this.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the instructions of the House in the motion to recommit, I report the bill, H.R. 1722, back to the House with an amendment.

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

Madam Speaker, would the gentlewoman yield?

I thank my friend for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I'm really struck having seen that chart with a fascinating juxtaposition that I've pointed out a couple of times here on the House floor.

There is a requirement for membership in the European Union. The requirement for a new country to join the European Union, Madam Speaker, is that they not have a debt that exceeds 60 percent of the gross domestic product of that country. Now, what does that mean? As we look at that chart today, the United States of America, Madam Speaker, interestingly enough, could not qualify for membership in the European Union because of that debt burden which is continuing to be passed on and on and on to our children and future generations.

Madam Speaker, let me at the outset say I twice asked my friend from Worcester to yield, and I will say that at any time during my remarks that he would like to challenge me, I look forward to yielding to him.

Now, Madam Speaker, let me say first and foremost that this issue of who is in fact responsible for the security of the United States of America, my friend from Grandfather Community, North Carolina, is absolutely right. The five most important words in the middle of that preamble to the Constitution that she just read are ``provide for the common defence.'' Virtually everything else that we do can be dealt with by individuals, families, churches or synagogues, cities, counties or States. But the national security of the United States of America can only be dealt with by the Federal Government, and we should never forget that.

Now, as we listen to some of the specious charges that have been coming from the other side of the aisle, like this chart that my colleague on the Rules Committee offered, saying that this was from the Republican National Committee, this is from usgovernmentspending.com, a completely nonpartisan entity and they are facts. We have seen a dramatic increase in spending.

My friend regularly talks about the fact that this administration, this President, inherited a bad economy. We all acknowledge that. But what is it that has happened since then, Madam Speaker? Contrary to what my friend just said, we have seen the economy get worse and worse and worse.

We were promised, and I will be happy to yield to my friend if he would like to, we were promised that the unemployment rate would not exceed 8 percent if we were to pass the $1 trillion stimulus bill. Where is it today? At 9.5 percent.

Across the country, many of us are hosting job fairs. There are people who are hurting. In the area that I represent, Madam Speaker, part of it has an unemployment rate that exceeds 14 percent.

The American people know one thing that they have learned over the past year-and-a-half, and that is you cannot spend your way to prosperity.

Now, Madam Speaker, what is it that we are trying to do? We want to ensure that future generations are not saddled with this tremendous debt burden that has been imposed.

This morning I had the opportunity to meet a young man who is very, very inspiring with what he has done over the past 39 days. He visited me. His name is Joseph Machado, and he is here with his parents and his brother Robert and his sister Mercedes. What this young man did, 13 years of age, having gone through tremendous physical adversity, having suffered over the past few years because of an accident, he has been wheelchair-bound. But what has he done over the past 39 days, Madam Speaker? He rode a bicycle from Southern California to the White House. He came here, I met him this morning here in the Capitol, and he has been doing this to raise money and focus resources on the challenges that young people are dealing with.

Now, I raise the name of Joseph Machado to say that as we look at this 13-year-old boy and the challenges that he has gone through, the idea that we will be thrusting on to his shoulders and his brother Robert and his sister Mercedes the responsibility of paying for such profligate spending that has been going on is just plain wrong.

We feel strongly about the need to ensure that we do not do that, that we do everything we can to decrease that. That is one of the reasons that we are going to urge our colleagues today to vote no on the previous question, and in voting no on the previous question we will allow the House to have a chance to vote on a proposal that our colleague from Peoria, Mr. Shock, has offered that is going to deal with training to rein in spending.

The people of this country have driven around, and I laugh, I mean sadly laugh, when I see the signs along the side of the road that credit the Reinvestment Act with the job creation that is supposedly going on in dealing with infrastructure issues. Millions and

millions of dollars are being expended putting up the signs along the side of the road. The burden of those is going to be passed on to Joseph Machado and other young people in this country, and we believe that that is an example that the American people can get so they don't have to see signs that they are paying for along the side of the road.

Every Member of this House, Madam Speaker, is going to have an opportunity to vote no, to say that we shouldn't be continuing to spend millions of dollars on road signs crediting the stimulus bill for the construction that is taking place on those roads.

So I am going to join in urging my colleagues under this YouCut proposal to vote ``no'' on the previous question, because that vote in and of itself will allow us the opportunity to consider this measure.

Madam Speaker, with that, I urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question and a ``no'' vote on the rule, because this is a completely closed rule, having had this measure considered under suspension of the rules.