Directing the Clerk of the House of Representatives to make corrections in the enrollment of H.R. 3672.

Mr. President, I will take the opportunity while the floor is relatively quiet to come and explain one of the votes we are going to be asked to cast tomorrow. In fact, it is very timely that I am here on the Senate floor at 2 o'clock in the afternoon because the House, I understand, just passed H. Con. Res. 94, and I am going to ask the Senate to reject that resolution when it comes here tomorrow for our vote. I am asking Democrats and Republicans to join with me in voting no on that resolution. I would like to take a few minutes to explain why. I think pictures are worth a thousand words, so let me just use four to save time.

This is about disasters in 2011. This whole issue is about how we should budget for disasters. It is an important debate that has been one of the many debates Congress has had over this last year, and we are wrapping up that debate in the next 48 hours. So this is a part of that debate.

I think pictures speak louder than words. This is a picture of Joplin, MO, a town that was virtually wrecked by a massive and monster tornado and tornadoes.

This is a picture of the Mississippi River flooding in Cairo, IL. This year, the Mississippi River was at one of its highest levels in some places in over a century. We received our own share of that flooding in Louisiana, which sits at the base of this great Mississippi River basin. So our people, as well as people along the entire Mississippi River Valley, experienced unprecedented flooding.

The lonely and distraught couple sitting in what looks like the middle of an ocean is actually in Nags Head, NC. This is what happened to their beach home as water virtually surrounded them and destroyed that community. Again, this happened this year with Hurricane Irene.

Down here on the far right is a picture of the fires that raged and devastated parts of Texas, which experienced one of the worst droughts in the recorded history of Texas.

What is sad about this debate is I could show picture after picture after picture of communities in our country devastated by tornadoes, fires, hurricanes--disasters that strike without warning and whose impact is virtually impossible to measure until months afterward because of the extraordinary damage. In fact, the Weather Service just this month did a recalculation of 2011 and declared it to be one of the worst disaster years since records have been kept, saying they have now concluded, as enough evidence has come in, that we had over 12 disasters in 1 year--in this year of 2011--over $1 billion each.

So this year was a real outlier, but sadly--and the Presiding Officer has heard it in his State, and we have heard it in my State of Louisiana, and we have heard it around the world--these pictures may not be an aberration. These pictures may show what is to come. And while 2011 was a very bad year, people are starting to think that as a result of the changes in temperature and climate change--and whatever people think the reasons are for that, no one should disagree with the consequences of changing temperature, which are violent weather episodes. The question is, What are we going to do about it and what is the right way to move forward? Let me show my colleagues what the wrong way is before I explain the right way.

This picture depicts the wrong way to respond. This has been suggested by some of my Republican colleagues. They suggest that when the water rises on your home or when the tornado rips you out of your bed and the roof falls on you and your family or when the river water rises and you look out of your second-floor window over your 100- or 200-acre farm and you can't see anything and your cows are swimming and your horses are swimming as well, that what you should do is climb on your roof, call Washington, call the hotline, and identify the offset in the

Federal budget to provide the cost of your rescue. It is laughable. It is supposed to be funny. It is a funny cartoon. But when we think about it, it is really not funny to tell the American people that in order to be rescued, you need to call the budget office of the Federal Government, identify an offset, and then we will send a rescue unit to respond to your emergency. It is not funny. The American people aren't laughing.

So I am going to ask my colleagues to vote no on H. Con. Res. 94 tomorrow because that is exactly what H. Con. Res. 94 does. I should get a big pen and write, ``If you think that grandma here with a cat and the phone is what you want your constituents to look like, then you just go right on and vote for H. Con. Res. 94.''

But I am not going to vote for that concurrent resolution because our leaders wisely--both Republican and Democratic leaders, wisely--in August, in anticipation of this issue, already provided for disaster funding in the Budget Control Act. They already provided for it. We don't have to tell our constituents that before we can send money to help them in Joplin or in Nags Head, NC, or Cairo, IL, or San Antonio or Dallas, TX, they have to identify an offset, because we wisely said within the Budget Control Act, within our efforts to close the budget gap, that we are providing for disaster funding, and that is what we have done. But some Members of the House will continue to want to adhere to trying to identify an offset before disasters can be responded to. They say things such as, we should pay for disasters in the year we respond to them.

I am going to present a chart in just a minute, but first I want to try to explain the second reason this is a faulty way forward.

In 2005, which wasn't that many years ago, the Federal Government allocated $45 billion--actually, I think this number is about $68 billion, and I will show the chart in a minute--in 1 year, and that year was the year of Katrina and Rita, which were the No. 1 and No. 3 most violent and disastrous and costly hurricanes in the history of our country. They happened in the same year to the same State--or to the same area, which was Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. We got the brunt of two of the worst storms that literally flooded a metropolitan area or flooded an area greater than the size of Great Britain. And that amount was $68 billion.

If we followed the poor logic of some on the Republican side that we had to pay for this disaster in that year in the budget, I think we would have probably had to eliminate half of the discretionary budget of the United States of America. I am going to get that exact number. But it is ludicrous to think we would be able to find $68 billion in the budget in that one year. In fact, the whole homeland security budget--it wouldn't be half--the whole homeland security budget is $42 billion. So let me repeat: Instead of half, we would have had to completely eliminate the entire homeland security budget of the United States of America, plus another couple of smaller budgets, to meet the $68 billion requirement. It doesn't make any sense, and it is not right. It is not the right way to budget. It violates the Budget Control Act, and it is so hypocritical that some on the other side are requiring this for domestic expenses when they don't require the same thing for foreign expenses or international expenses.

I would like to put up the next chart. To pour salt on the wound--and I don't quite understand the politics. I don't understand the math. I don't understand the budgetary consequences, and I don't understand the politics. They are wrong on all three counts because this is what those who voted for H. Con. Res. 94 have to go home and explain to their constituents. They are going to have to go home and say: When I was in Congress, I allocated $823 billion for the war in Iraq and required no pay-for. Then I went back to Congress and spent $557 billion in Afghanistan and didn't say a word about that. Then I went back and added a Medicare drug benefit for $180 billion, and we didn't pay for that. Then I went back and sent checks to everyone when George Bush was the President, and those checks cost $124 billion, and we didn't require any offset or budget implication for that. But when Americans had their homes destroyed, their farms flooded, their businesses ruined by disasters, I can't send a dime unless we take it out of health, transportation, or education.

So they said no to this little $8.1 billion--after spending a grand total of $1.68 trillion on all these items. So I do not understand the math. I do not understand their position as to the budget. I most certainly do not understand the politics, and I do not agree with it because I think the American people should come first. Their needs from disasters should come first. We cannot possibly, because of the erratic nature of disasters themselves--we might think we are powerful in the Senate, but we are not more powerful than God, and we are not more powerful than nature; and I am not saying that God causes these storms, but nature has a way--we are not that powerful and we do not know and cannot predict when these will happen. All we can do is respond.

We have responded appropriately in the Senate version of this bill. Our bill will provide funding for FEMA, for the Corps of Engineers, within the budgetary control structure. It will allow us to pay for this over time in future negotiations, which is the wise way to do it. But it will not force us to use disasters that occur in this country as an excuse to continue to ring out costs from health, transportation, and education.

As my colleagues know, I feel very strongly about this issue, and I am proud to say I think many Democrats and, hopefully, some Republicans feel strongly that their constituents at home should come first, that the budget should provide for an immediate response when people are victims of floods or tornadoes or hurricanes or other disasters.

I think most people in the Senate understand 2011 was a tough year. It was a historic year. But the sad thing is, I think we also understand it could repeat itself. Using these disasters, when it was not the case for the war in Iraq, was not the case for the war in Afghanistan, was not the case for Medicare, was not the case for the rebate checks--but when it comes to disasters we cannot seem to find $8.1 billion within the budget control structure. I do not, as I said, understand it.

We have seen this cartoon I have in the Chamber before. I will not go into it. But I think it says beautifully why this is the wrong approach. Again, these pictures speak a thousand words. This other chart shows what a disaster looks like. I wish I had something to show what it feels like to lose everything, and then, when you have lost everything, trying to provide confidence to your own family, to your own children, and to your neighbors, to then listen to the debate in Congress that says: We write a blank check to Iraq, a blank check to Afghanistan, a blank check here, and yet, when it comes to funding for disasters, we have to have this argument.

I am going to ask my colleagues to vote no on H. Con. Res. 94 tomorrow. In voting no, we will reject to the find-the-offset-now requirement. We will honor the agreement made between Republican and Democratic leaders back in August to include this in the Budget Control Act. We will send a powerful signal to our constituents that they come first; that disaster victims should come first in the budget, not last; that we understand how difficult it is for them to rebuild their communities, and the Federal Government wants to be and will be a reliable partner they can depend on in their time of need.

With this ill-advised resolution, we return to an issue that consumed this Chamber for weeks this past fall.

That issue is how we pay for disaster funding--money used by communities destroyed by disasters that are struggling to clean up, rebuild, and move on with their lives after a tragic act of Mother Nature.

We have seen many such events over the past few years--from historic floods in the Midwest, to deadly tornadoes in the South, to the wreckage inflicted on a huge swath of the country earlier this year by Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.

Back in September, Republicans in the House stood in the way of this critical recovery money, arguing that no funds should be sent to disaster victims until Congress had figured out how to pay for it through other cuts.

That is bad enough on its face. But what made it even more ridiculous is

that this Congress had already agreed on a method for funding disasters. That agreement came over the summer when we passed the Budget Control Act--a measure that received significant support from Democrats and Republicans in both Chambers of Congress.

That act included two contingency funds--funds that could be spent above and beyond the established cap on Federal spending. One of those funds was for overseas contingencies like the wars and rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan that allows for $126 billion in spending above the cap. The other was for disaster relief and included an $11.3 billion cap adjustment for additional spending beyond the regular level.

We made this agreement because we recognized that there is a real cost associated with disaster recovery--a cost that can't always be anticipated because natural disasters, by their very nature, are highly unpredictable.

The stand-alone disaster funding bill we consider today, when combined with the minibus passed last month, will account for $10.4 billion of that $11.3 billion disaster funding cap--an amount completely within the requirements laid out in the bipartisan Budget Control Act.

But now, House Republicans are once again trying to go back on that agreement by requiring that agreed-upon funding be offset with additional across-the-board cuts to discretionary spending.

There are two reasons this is wrong-headed.

Reason No. 1: The House Republicans are creating a double standard regarding offsets--one for defense spending and another for domestic disaster relief.

That is because, in this proposal, they only require an additional offset for domestic disaster spending. They have sent over no such language for the additional funding provided in the bill we just voted on for overseas contingencies.

Let's get to the heart of what that means. It means that House Republicans are saying: No, we don't have to pay for wars in places like Afghanistan or Iraq. But we do have to offset spending for domestic disaster recovery.

Why is that? Why is it that the House Republicans say we are able to rebuild Iraq or Afghanistan without a single word of protest, but we won't rebuild Vermont or New Jersey or Missouri or Louisiana in a similar way?

The omnibus bill has $126 billion in it for the costs of the wars. If we followed the same pay-for standard that the House Republicans are insisting on for disaster relief on the costs of the war, we would have to impose a 24-percent across-the-board cut on the Defense budget or a 12-percent cut on the entire discretionary budget.

This double standard makes no sense. I remind my colleagues that when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the gulf coast, it required appropriations of more than $62 billion in fiscal year 2005 alone. If we applied the House Republican requirement to pay for a disaster of a similar size, we would have to cut domestic spending by 12 percent.

During the 112th Congress, we have not cut defense. We have not increased taxes on individuals who make more than $1 million a year. But the House Republicans want to keep going back to this one small part of the budget to find savings.

So, let's be clear. Here is what the Republicans do not require payment for: Iraq war, $823 billion; Afghanistan war, $557 billion; Medicare drug benefit, $180 billion; and Bush rebate checks, $124 billion.

Now, you ask, what do they require payment for? Community disaster relief, $8.1 billion.

Reason No. 2 of why the House Republicans' plan should be firmly rejected: The House Republicans' plan wouldn't require true across-the- board cuts to pay for disaster spending. It would only require cuts to domestic discretionary spending--a portion of the government that makes up only 14 percent of total expenditures.

In April, we cut domestic discretionary spending for fiscal year 2011 by 7 percent. And the omnibus legislation before the Senate, consistent with the Budget Control Act, cuts it by an additional 1 percent.

This proposal--the one we are currently considering--would pile on to that by cutting another 1.8 percent to domestic programs.

I think we need to be clear about exactly what this would mean. There are consequences to these cuts--real consequences that the American people would feel immediately.

Among them, it means that Title I education funding would be cut by $265 million. That means that almost 1,000 schools serving more than 350,000 disadvantaged students could lose funding, and about 3,700 teachers and aides could lose their jobs.

It means that special education funding would be cut by $199 million. That could lead to the loss of 2,600 education staff serving special needs students.

It means a $146 million cut to Head Start funding, which would eliminate 11,000 low-income students and their families from this critical program.

It would mean a reduction of 400 Border Patrol agents--nearly half the number that we hired and trained since Congress enacted the border security supplemental 16 months ago.

It would mean that 161,000 fewer women, infants, and children would receive food assistance under the WIC program.

It would hurt our efforts to combat terrorism and crime, with more than 5,500 Department of Justice positions becoming vacant through a hiring freeze and furloughs.

It would mean a cut to the IRS enforcement mission, resulting in lost revenues of approximately $4 billion annually. That would increase the deficit by at least six times the magnitude of the proposed reduction.

It would mean a $15 million cut to the senior nutrition program, which means 2 million fewer meals to needy seniors.

The House Republicans would like you to think that these cuts are nothing more than reducing bureaucracy. I beg to differ. These cuts have consequences in the everyday lives of Americans across our Nation.

Here is the bottom line: Instead of being really serious about closing the budget gap and putting new revenues on the table or saying across-the-board cuts for everything, House Republicans continue to use everything, even disasters that strike home, as an excuse to cut health, education, and transportation.

Well, I stand here today and say to them: Enough is enough.

I urge my colleagues to vote against this resolution. This Congress made an agreement months ago on how to fund unanticipated disasters. We should stick with that agreement.

There are times and there are places for politics. Aid for disaster victims is not one of them. Victims of natural disasters should not be victimized twice--first by Mother Nature and then by politics in Washington.

There may be another expression of a different side of this argument. I have not heard a good one yet. But I look forward--if any of my colleagues want to come down and take the opposite side of this argument, I am around. I am not going anywhere. I will be here today. I will be here tomorrow. I will be happy to debate them on the floor on this subject. But as the chair of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, I have to take a strong stand on this issue because our budget is the one that basically gets called on to fund these disasters.

Again, if I have to follow the requirement to fund them in the year the money is spent--1 year--I am going to have to come to this floor and tell everyone: We are not going to have a homeland security bill this year because we just had a category 5 strike Miami, and the bill-- as they said last night on the Weather Channel--will exceed $40 billion. So I am going to have to give up our whole bill, and we will have no security for the United States to pay for the disaster in 1 year.

This is the chart I wanted to show. This is how erratic funding can be, as shown on this chart. This shows funding from 2003 to 2012. In 2003, we spent basically a little over $1.7 billion. Then it jumped up to a little over $6 billion. Then, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma--which was in Florida--moved us all the way up to $45 billion in 2005, and then we fell back again to about $7.8 billion. We can see the erratic nature of these storms. It is impossible for us to even get a good average. So the only thing we can do is put a baseline in our bill, and then if disaster strikes, to respond and put it in the Budget Control Act over our 302(b) allocations.

If we do not do it that way, we are going to end up having to scramble

every year to quickly calculate what the disasters were last year and jam it against some budget. It is either going to be education that gets gutted or health that gets gutted or agriculture that gets gutted or homeland security. I do not want to have to be the one to call the thousands of Border Patrol agents whom I have helped to fund in my budget or have to call Senator John McCain or Senator Kyl and say: I am sorry. We have to lay off all the Border Patrol agents along the border in Arizona for a year or two because we had a big storm in Miami, and I have to send the money to Miami.

Whoever heard of such a thing. That is what the Republicans in the House have sent to us. It should be rejected on its face. There is a better way to move forward, and the way is in the Budget Control Act that our leaders wisely have already agreed to.

So we will have this vote tomorrow. Again, I think I have raised three excellent points about why the House approach is wrong and why our approach is correct. If someone wants to come and debate it, I will be happy to maybe try to explain it a little bit more.

I can understand some on the other side who say: We have to find a way to pay for it, even if we have already negotiated, et cetera, but when the other side refuses to put even a new penny on the table to help with some of these things, it makes it even harder to achieve what we are trying to achieve.

I thank the Presiding Officer. I hope my colleagues will hear these arguments and let me know if there is anything further we can explain on it. But I think the picture says a thousand words.

I will close with this again: No American should have to sit on their roof, while the water rises, and identify an offset to finance their own rescue. We are a stronger nation than that. We are a bigger nation than that. We most certainly can provide the funding for FEMA, for the Corps of Engineers, and other funding in the way our Budget Control Act stipulates in this budget.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 500 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my very good friend from Rochester, New York (Ms. Slaughter), the distinguished ranking minority member of the Committee on Rules, pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume.

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

Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 500 provides for the consideration of three measures that will ensure that the government is funded through the end of the fiscal year; and this rule, as was outlined by the reading Clerk, provides very important tools to deal with important issues that have yet to be resolved.

Now, Mr. Speaker, we all know that, as we sit here at 3 minutes of 10 o'clock this morning, we are faced at midnight tonight with the prospect of a government shutdown. There is a bipartisan consensus on the need to ensure that we don't face a government shutdown; and it's very important that we take action to prevent that from taking place, and that's exactly what our opportunity is here today.

At the same time, it's important for us to realize that it is absolutely imperative, if we are going to get our economy growing and create jobs, for us to reduce the size and scope and reach of the Federal Government. That's the message the American people have sent to us overwhelmingly, and that's why I have to say that I believe this bipartisan compromise, which has been worked out with Members of the House and the Senate and the White House, moves us in the direction of doing just that.

Why? Because we are actually bringing about in this conference report a $95 billion reduction in discretionary spending, merely a drop in the bucket. We all recognize that it's not enough. We all recognize that much, much more remains to be done, but, Mr. Speaker, this is an important first step. And the fact that it's been done in a bipartisan, bicameral way, working not only with the first but the second branch of government as well, is, I believe, a positive indicator for us.

As I think about the challenges that we have--and I said this during the management of our jobs bill that we had, the so-called extenders measure that deals with the question of extending unemployment insurance, doing everything we possibly can to keep taxes low by extending for a year the payroll tax holiday, ensuring that people have access to Medicare dollars, and, of course, focusing on job creation by proceeding with the Keystone XL pipeline. As I pointed out during that debate, right now, our job is jobs. The American people want us to focus on job creation and economic growth, and I believe that this bipartisan, bicameral compromise will help us in that quest.

It hasn't been pretty getting here. We all know the famous Otto von Bismarck line, that you don't want to watch sausage or laws being made. This has been ugly.

And, actually, I was not going to say what I'm about to say right now, Mr. Speaker, but I am going to proceed and I will explain to you why.

It's been a painful and difficult and ugly and messy process which, frankly, is exactly what James Madison wanted. He is looking down at us saying, The process is working just as I envisaged it, because he wanted there to be this clash of ideas and a struggle. But, at the end of the day, he wanted there to be a compromise; and he wanted there to be an agreement at the end of the day, recognizing that that needed to be done.

We know that the chairs of the Committee on Appropriations, Messrs. Rogers and Inouye, shook hands on Monday and had an agreement. Again, I was not going to say this; but the Rules Committee completed its work early this morning, and I got a few hours of sleep, and I woke up to National Public Radio, which I do. That's what wakes me up in the morning, Mr. Speaker. And I know that there are some of my Republican friends who are not fans of National Public Radio. I like to watch MSNBC TV and listen to National Public Radio. It keeps my blood circulating very well, Mr. Speaker.

But I woke up this morning to listen to a report on this conference agreement. I am very happy to see my good friend from Seattle, the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, arrive on the floor. And I wasn't going to say this, but because of this report on NPR, I'm going to share it.

Tamara Keith, who is the congressional correspondent for NPR on Morning Edition, characterized why it is that we are here on Friday rather than having met the 3-day layover requirement and all these things that we wanted to do when the agreement was struck on Monday, and what she said was that Senate Democrats held this bill hostage. Those are not my words, again, Mr. Speaker. Those are the words of Tamara Keith who reported on National Public Radio this morning that this measure was held hostage by Senate Democrats. And she went on a second time, using the word ``hostage.'' She said, Well, finally the hostages have been released. Again, those are not my words. Those are the words of National Public Radio.

So some people wanted me to say it, but I decided not to say it myself. But when I heard it early this morning, I couldn't help but say it. So that's the reason I'm looking across the Chamber right now at 3,000 pages stacked this high right next to the distinguished ranking minority member of the Committee on Rules, right across the aisle from the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

Mr. Speaker, we've had to waive the 3-day layover requirement because, again, according to NPR, we had this conference report held hostage, but we've finally gotten here. Now that we're here, I'm happy to say that, while I'm not ecstatic with every measure in it--just as I know that Mr. Dicks is not ecstatic with every measure in it; I know that Ms. Slaughter is not ecstatic with every measure in it; I'm not ecstatic with the process that has gotten us here because of the challenges and ugliness and messiness we've gone through this week. We are here because it is absolutely essential that we not see the government shut down in several hours at midnight tonight.

So I believe that we need to realize--and I know Mr. Dicks and I have had this conversation repeatedly, along with our friend Mr. Rogers of Kentucky, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations--that we want a clean slate as we head into next year so that Mr. Dicks and Mr. Rogers will be able to go through regular order, bring the appropriations bills to the floor and, we hope and pray, get each bill done ad seriatim, the way they're supposed to be done, rather than dealing with what has been characterized as an

omnibus, a mini-bus, a megabus. But the term that I like that was given by the distinguished chair of the Committee on Appropriations last night is this is ``the rest of the bus.'' And that's really where we are.

But it's essential for the American people, for those who are representing us so diligently around the world in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other spots, for people who rely and need to have support from government programs that do exist, it's essential that we get this measure passed, and pass it with what I hope will be strong bipartisan support.

So, Mr. Speaker, I'm not going to say that I am happy that we are doing the things that will be outlined, I know, very thoughtfully by the distinguished former chair and current ranking member of the Committee on Rules. I will say that we have got 3,000 pages.

By the way, I should say, before my friend begins this, that on Monday, virtually all of that was available, and it was put online at 12:30 Wednesday night. Right after midnight Wednesday, it was made available online. And so while we have not actually met the exact 3-day layover requirement, I should point to the fact that we always said-- and I'm so proud of the fact that we have been able to do it. But when we faced what is really a very, very important deadline, that being the closure of the government that would take place 14 hours from now, I think it is very important that we take this action and do it as quickly and as well as we possibly can.

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

Mr. Speaker, as my good friends from the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Rogers and Mr. Dicks, congratulate each other in the well, I will ask them to move out of the well so that I am able to yield 3 minutes to my good friend from Grandfather Community, who left the Rules Committee at 1 o'clock this morning and went down to her office to work before going down to the White House at 7:30 for a tour for her constituents.

So I underscore the fact that Virginia Foxx is extraordinarily dedicated, and for that reason and many others, I am happy to yield her 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield my colleague an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to simply make a couple of very important points, and that is we are here faced with this situation because of the inability of our colleagues in the other body, the United States Senate, to act.

I am just looking at the list of the conferees, and I listened to my friends criticize the bill--and I actually don't know whether my friend from Rochester is going to end up supporting the conference report or not. I didn't get a conclusion on that--but I will say that every single House Member, Democrat and Republican, every subcommittee chairman, every ranking member of a subcommittee, the so-called cardinals, the chairs of the subcommittees, signed this conference report. It is bipartisan.

Unfortunately, in the Senate, we have a number of Members of the Senate who didn't sign the conference report. But I believe that we need to realize that we went for 963 days--nearly 1,000 days, Mr. Speaker--without a budget having passed from the United States Senate. We know, Mr. Speaker, that we didn't have any appropriations bills done last year. We're trying to clean this process up.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes to a very thoughtful, diligent new member of the Committee on Rules, the gentleman from Lawrenceville, Georgia (Mr. Woodall).

Will the gentleman yield?

I look forward to it.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I say to my friend from Rochester, would you yield time to the gentleman so I can engage in a discussion with him?

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time remains on each side.

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

I'd like to yield to my friend from Worcester to engage in a discussion. I'm sorry, would the gentlewoman like me to yield? I'm happy to yield to my friend from Rochester if she would like me to yield. Would the gentlewoman like me to yield to her? I've just been recognized.

Would the gentlewoman from New York like me to yield to her, Mr. Speaker?

Then I will reclaim my time, Mr. Speaker.

I am happy to yield to my friend from Rochester if she would like to ask me a question or ask the Chair a question. I am more than happy to yield to her, I would say, Mr. Speaker.

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

In the spirit of bipartisanship, in the spirit of recognizing that we need to ensure that the government doesn't shut down at midnight, I'd like to engage in a discussion with my friend from Worcester, as I was trying to when he was in the well, to say a few things.

First of all, as we all know, last year no appropriations bills were passed. Nothing was completed in the last Congress--nothing at all. And we have spent, with Mr. Rogers and Mr. Dicks, virtually this entire year cleaning up the work of the last Congress. And the gentleman will recognize that, I'm sure. I mean, the gentleman acknowledges that, Mr. Speaker, that we have spent this year working to clean up the fact that no appropriations work was done last year.

I am happy to yield to my friend.

Yes, absolutely. If I could reclaim my time, Mr. Speaker, I would say absolutely, we're talking about this year. And the responsibility that was thrust on us this year was so overwhelming because last year nothing was done, nothing was accomplished. And so what's happened, Mr. Speaker, is we are in a position where the appropriators have been shouldering this responsibility. And, unfortunately, our colleagues in the other body, the majority leadership there, Senator Reid and others, according to the National Public Radio report, as I discussed this morning, as others have acknowledged, it was pointed out in the publications out this morning, this was held hostage, and that's why we are where we are.

Now, my friends are enjoying holding up the 2,300-page conference report and the additional 700 pages of the joint managers' report that is included in there. But guess what, Mr. Speaker, all of that was available on Monday, 5 days ago. And the only exception in this measure is one item has been pulled out. That one item pulled out happens to be the Cuba language that was there, and there was obviously a lot of concern about that. That was pulled out. Then one item was added, and that has to do with the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation. And so, as our colleagues hold up these thousands of pages, we need to realize it's been available since Monday. This is Friday, Mr. Speaker. That's more than the 3-day layover requirement. And we've pointed to these minor modifications.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished chair of the Committee on Appropriations, my very good friend from Somerset, Kentucky (Mr. Rogers).

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield my friend an additional 30 seconds. And I would ask my friend to yield to me, if he would.

I thank my friend for yielding.

I would like to just say that I misspoke. The agreement was reached between Mr. Rogers and Mr. Inouye on Monday, and the pages were not made available until it was filed at 12:27, at just after midnight on Wednesday.

I am happy to yield my friend an additional 30 seconds.

So I just want to say that I did misspeak when I said the agreement was struck on Monday. It was made available after midnight on Wednesday.

I would like to yield an additional 30 seconds to my friend from Somerset.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds.

I say to my friend, first of all, happy birthday.

And the great birthday present is that we will not shut the government down, and we obviously will see this measure passed today.

I also want to say to my friend that I believe we've made history here. To have any Member of the House stand up, especially on his birthday, Mr. Speaker, and speak in complimentary ways of the other body is, in fact, historic in and of itself.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 2 minutes to my good friend from Bainbridge Township, Ohio (Mr. LaTourette).

Mr. Speaker, I would inquire of my friend how many speakers she has remaining on her side.

I plan to close and then move the previous question so we can move ahead to ensure we don't shut down the government.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

We all know that the American people are hurting. We have a protracted unemployment problem that has gone on for an extended period of time, the longest period of time since the Great Depression, and it's important for us to realize the reasons for this.

One of the very important reasons for this is that we have seen a dramatic expansion of the size and scope and reach of government. During the 4 years that my friends on the other side of the aisle were in the majority, we witnessed an 82 percent increase in non-defense discretionary spending.

We now have a $15 trillion national debt, and I think Democrats and Republicans alike acknowledge that that cannot be sustained.

As I've been saying throughout this week, our job is jobs. Right now our job is jobs. We need to have a laser-like focus on creating job opportunities for our fellow Americans, people who are so frustrated they've given up the effort to look for work.

So that's why the things that we're dealing with today are so critically important to address those needs.

Now, since there has been bipartisan recognition that we can't continue down the road with an 82 percent increase in non-defense discretionary spending which we witnessed over the past several years, it's important for us to come together, and that's exactly what's happened.

This is Norm Dicks' birthday, and we're very happy about that. We're happy that on his birthday we're going to see a bipartisan agreement that will bring about a $95 billion reduction in non-defense discretionary spending. And that's what this work product does, Mr. Speaker.

And again, bipartisan recognition and even bicameral recognition, and even recognition from down Pennsylvania Avenue with the second branch

of government, that we are right now altering the course that we had been on of dramatically increasing spending. And we're doing it, Mr. Speaker, in a very fair and balanced and open way.

I don't like the process that got us to where we are right now. I said earlier that I believe that this multi-thousand-page package was available on Monday; it was agreed to on Monday; but it wasn't made available until early Thursday morning. Yet we are where we are, and there was an agreement. Mr. Inouye and Mr. Rogers came to this agreement on Monday.

We could have done this earlier, but we know that our friends in the other body chose--and as I said, I wasn't going to say it earlier, but it has been characterized in the media as having held hostage this very important appropriations bill. We also dealt with the threat of a government shutdown that would take place 13 hours from now. We are not going to see that happen. We are not going to see that happen because Mr. Dicks and Mr. Rogers and other members of the Appropriations Committees in both bodies--and the leadership--came together to ensure that that doesn't happen.

We still have a long way to go. We still have much work that needs to be done. But by the passage of this measure today, Mr. Speaker, we are going to do exactly what is necessary. We are going to finally have a clean slate. We've all commiserated over the fact that we've had this mess to clean up of the past. It's been ugly and it's been difficult; but we have, in fact, by virtue of this agreement cleaned it up so that we can continue to work down this path towards balancing the budget, getting our fiscal house in order, and doing what we need to do--our jobs, which is to create jobs.

I think we have a chance to do that.

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this rule, and I urge support of the previous question so that we can move ahead and make sure that we have what's necessary to meet this very important deadline by midnight.

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

Good morning, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, my distinguished colleague is absolutely right. This is ``the rest of the bus.'' But it's going to be a little while before we realize whether we are on that bus or whether we've been thrown under it. Obviously, as Mr. Dreier called attention to it, this is the bill that we have today. None of us will make any pretense at all of having read it.

Now, I have been around long enough to know that things happen this way. The country is about to shut down tonight; the agencies are all prepared to close, and we can't have that. So we find ourselves confronted here today with this completed and going through this conference.

A lot of people are breathing a sigh of relief this morning, frankly, particularly the Federal workers and the rest of the country, that they are not going to be faced with a shutdown of Federal agencies.

But although we were able to avert that crisis today, this 2,000-page legislative package is not a cause for celebration--and I don't believe Mr. Dreier thinks it is either--but it is a demonstration of failure. As I have said, I have known cases and have been a participant in cases where things like this have happened before. But for a Congress that had promised at the beginning part of the campaign and what we were promised at the beginning of this term was that this would not happen anymore. Instead, it has happened over and over again. Over the past 12 months, we have witnessed the utter failure to responsibly legislate--a failure that has led to this massive bill that we are considering today.

You've heard all of this before, but in the fall of 2010 when the majority took over, Speaker Boehner said: We'll do away with the concept of comprehensive spending bills.

He's been around awhile too, and he knows that there are times when things happen that really don't fall in line with what we want. But nonetheless, he made that promise. Despite this call for a deliberate appropriations process, the House was recently asked to consider a $180 billion minibus, totaling 354 pages of legislation.

And today, less than 24 hours--we're about halfway, I think--we are offered a $1 trillion megabus appropriations bill. It was given to the Members of the House today, and we're asked to vote on that. We will, of course, do that because, as I've said, the looming layoff and shutdown of the Federal Government is something that we cannot stand at this juncture, or any other time.

So despite the earlier promises by the GOP to separate the controversial legislation from the must-pass bill, the megabus was delayed by a battle over controversial riders. We know this could have been done much sooner, but there were five riders that had to be resolved--everything from the reproductive rights of the citizens of the District of Columbia to energy-saving lightbulbs.

Mr. Speaker, this House has spent more time debating lightbulbs than we have putting American people to work. It has really been an outrage--we have talked about this so many times before. But nonetheless, in all the contemplations, all the conference work, lightbulbs have survived. I know that's a sigh of relief to everybody in America who had no idea we were spending so much time micromanaging their lightbulbs.

But this is a sign, I think, of a larger failure, a failure of their vision of governing. It is a vision that we've gone through all this year that was based on brinksmanship and threats--an all-or-nothing game of chicken with their colleagues and the American people. And everybody is exhausted from, will we do it? Won't we do it? Can we do it? Must we do it? Part of that has resulted in a lessening of the credit rating of the United States of America for the very first time.

So instead of spending the year finding common ground with their Democrat colleagues, the majority spent the year advancing legislation to dismantle the EPA and to talk about lightbulbs and to open federally protected lands to foreign mining companies. I find in my constituency the idea that we were going to give land to Russia around the Grand Canyon to mine for uranium mind-boggling to people. We really ought to be worried about that. This is a very serious problem.

Instead of spending the year finding common ground, we have done nothing about that. So throwing bipartisanship to the side, the majority pushed forward with its ideological battles at the expense of the Nation's welfare. And what we see this morning is the result of their divisive efforts.

What we know is that a process that began with brinksmanship and threats, and ends with this 2,000-page, $1 trillion megabus crammed through the House as the clock hits zero is all we have. This is our chance to keep the government from shutting down.

With proper priorities and a serious effort to engage legislators from both sides of the aisle, we could truly have a process and a product that would make the American people proud. But that's not what we have here today, and it is not what has been done this year.

I hope sincerely, and I know that many people on both sides of the aisle hope sincerely, that as the calendar turns to 2012, we can put an end to the zero-sum leadership that has been provided and finally give the American people the responsible, bipartisan leadership that they want and deserve.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I yield the gentlelady an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts, a member of the Committee on Rules, Mr. McGovern.

I yield the gentleman from Massachusetts 1 additional minute.

I would like to address the Speaker.

I do not. If I could be allowed to say something here.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Let me say all I was trying to do after last month was to say that if Mr. Dreier's 16 minutes were not adequate for him, I would be pleased to yield him one of my 13. That was my aim there.

I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington, the ranking member of Appropriations, Mr. Dicks, who has worked so hard.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi, the ranking member on Homeland Security, Mr. Thompson.

We have no further speakers.

May I inquire if my colleague has any.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and the martial law rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I thank the gentlelady for yielding to me.

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by thanking Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Dicks for their tireless work on this bill, and I'm pleased that we're finally going to finish the appropriations process for this year.

I especially want to thank the White House, Senator Reid, and other key Senate and House negotiators for removing the House Cuba provision from the final conference report. Not only was it a direct attack on the prerogatives of the Executive, but it was cruel and inhumane. It would have ripped apart Cuban American families from their relatives on the island.

Family communication, connection, and reunification have always been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. It has promoted great good in the case of Cuba, and it deserves the support of this Congress. And hopefully, some day soon, we can scrap our whole Cuba policy and lift the travel restrictions so every American can go visit that country.

But, Mr. Speaker, I cannot let this opportunity go without commenting a little bit on the process. My friend from Georgia talked about regular order. Regular order my foot. I mean, all points of order were waived against this bill. Half of the bills that are in this--this is pretty heavy--no one had an opportunity to offer a single amendment on. ``Read the bill.'' That's what my Republican friends shouted last year, ``Read the bill.'' They used this rallying cry to promote their Pledge to America where they promised to read the bill. No one read that bill at all. Where are the Tea Party people when you want them?

When I'm finished, I'll yield.

Let me read a quote:

``We will ensure that bills are debated and discussed in the public square by publishing the text online for at least 3 days before coming up for a vote in the House of Representatives.''

That's directly from their pledge. Yet here we are today considering a 2,300-page bill that was introduced at 11:45 p.m.--last night. That's not 3 days. That's not even 12 hours. Twenty-three hundred pages were presented to this House in the dead of night. The Rules Committee didn't finish until close to 1 a.m. this morning, and here we are.

Who knows for sure what's in this bill? Who in this body has had the time to read this bill as it is currently drafted? This is not the way my friends promised to run this House.

Mr. Speaker, I said to the gentleman I won't yield until I'm finished, and I would appreciate not being interrupted.

This is not the way you promised to run the House. This is not how you said you would do the people's business. You said you would bring up every appropriations bill under an open rule, but you barely manage to bring up half of them. Half of the appropriations bills were never brought up before Members of this House.

What happened to the Labor-HHS bill? What happened to the Transportation bill? The Financial Services bill? The Interior bill? The State and Foreign Ops bill? The CJS bill? That's not the Senate's fault; that's not Barack Obama's fault. You're in control of this House of Representatives; you have the power to bring bills up to the floor. You couldn't be bothered to bring them up.

Sure, you found time to bring up bills to defund Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio. You had time to bring up bills that would allow unsafe people to carry concealed weapons from one State to another. Oh, and my favorite, you found time to reaffirm our national motto. That's what all the American people are worried about, whether we're going to reaffirm our national motto.

But you couldn't find time to debate bills funding our Nation's roads, bridges, national parks, and community health centers. You couldn't find to time to do your job.

Now, I'm glad the appropriators reached an agreement, but it's sad that this Republican Congress has once again broken the promise they made to the American people. A 2,300-page bill--something this important and detailed--can't be read and examined in a few hours. That's why you promised 3 days to read the bill, but you couldn't even keep that promise. I remember when they were in charge at an earlier time when immunity for prescription drug companies was inserted into an appropriations bill without anyone knowing about it.

I have the utmost respect for the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. And I take him at his word when he says there are no earmarks in this bill, that there are no special provisions, that there is nothing snuck in here at the last minute. I'm a trusting guy; but I also believe in verifying things, because in the past, things have been snuck into these bills without us knowing about it.

But look at this bill. Look at this bill. It's 2,300 pages. It was just introduced in the dead of night. It was reported out of the Rules Committee almost at 1 a.m. in the morning. And this is different than what was posted a few days ago. Read the bill, Mr. Speaker. The new Republican Congress promised that we could read the bill. Too bad they're breaking their Pledge to America.

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that next year we will go back to regular order, where all the appropriations bills will come to the floor and they will all be debated individually, under an open process. I hope we get to that point.

But I want to say, finally, that the fact that these bills were not all brought up has nothing to do with the Senate, it has nothing to do with the President. It has everything to do with

the leadership of this House that chose not to do it.

I think we're talking about this year, aren't we?

I thank the gentlelady.

This is the end of the year, and so the Republicans need a few presents for the oil industry, for the coal industry, and that's what this final weekend is all about: How do we get those presents? And so they tried and tried in this bill to roll back many, many environmental laws, but they have been unable to do so. But what they have said is just give us one thing, give us one trinket, perhaps, a symbol of our success in rolling back the laws of energy efficiency in our country.

And so within this bill, the Republicans have now successfully inserted a provision which rolls back the lightbulb efficiency laws, which the companies of our country and the rest of the world must comply with.

Now, what does that mean? Well, for consumers in our country, it will be $6 billion per year that they will have to pay in higher electricity bills every year that they are alive.

What else does it mean? Well, it means that the coal industry is happy because they generate half the electricity in our country, so they'll burn more coal in order to generate that electricity in order for the American people to use less efficient lightbulbs. And that greenhouse gas will go up into the atmosphere, and since the Republicans don't believe the planet is warming, what do they care? Just roll back the lightbulb efficiency standards.

What's the next bill that's up? Oh that one, can we give a payroll tax break to the ordinary Americans? Can we have unemployment insurance for the millions of people who are unemployed? They are saying, well, we'll consider it, but you can't tax billionaires to find the money for that. And, by the way, we want a trinket there as well.

Let's make sure that that final bill, they're saying, has an exemption for environmental law so you can build a huge pipeline, the Keystone XL Pipeline, extra large pipeline right through the middle of America, waiving the environmental laws, and at the same time, ladies and gentlemen, having no guarantee that the oil that comes from Canada through the United States will be sold in the United States. They won't accept that provision, neither TransCanada nor the Republicans, even though they say we would do it for our national security.

So here we are at the end of the year, lightbulb efficiency out the door. They like to do the same thing, by the way, for increased efficiency in the vehicles we drive, the planes which we fly in, the boats which we sail here in the United States, as we see the Middle East in turmoil, as we see Iran and Iraq perhaps growing closer together, they're trying to reduce the efficiency of our country by making it more likely we consume oil.

So here we have, again, misunderstanding on the part of the Republicans on our key national security issue, and that is changing our relationship with the energy sources which we consume, because it comes disproportionately out of the Straits of Hormuz, out of the Middle East into our country. And so this issue goes right to the core, this lightbulb efficiency. It's a small symbol of all the other things that they oppose in terms of increasing the efficiency of our society, and it's stuck right in the middle of this so-called omnibus bill, and they wouldn't be happy unless they got it.

Mind you, this attempt that was defeated earlier this year on the House floor, when Members could vote for it, must be snuck into the omnibus end-of-the year bill. So whether it be the XL pipeline for the oil industry, whether it be the lightbulb bill for the coal industry, whether it be the billionaire tax break staying on the books, rather than helping to make sure ordinary people get tax breaks; billionaires, oil or coal industry, that is what the agenda is all about.

I urge a ``no'' vote.