Further Continuing Appropriations Amendments, 2011

Madam Speaker, the gentleman from Iowa is pleased to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House, and I want to express my disappointment in the gentlemen who spoke before me. I usually come here to pick up my material for rebuttal. And as I listened to you talk about your affection for the Peace Corps, I didn't come up with a single thing that I seek to rebut here tonight.

So I'll go off on the subject matter that I came to address, Madam Speaker, and that is the situation where we are in this country today with debt and deficit and the growth in government and the things that we must do to turn this country back around and put it on the right track.

This House here this afternoon voted to pass a continuing resolution that has within it an aggregate of about $4.1 billion in cuts over a 2- week period of time that if you multiply or extrapolate that out to the end of the fiscal year, it comes in that neighborhood of about $61 billion in cuts which arguably holds the reductions in place. But it did specifically go in and make the cuts in areas where the President had recommended those cuts. It dialed down the contention and tried to find a way to find a solution and a resolution. A list of the President's recommendations I have, but I don't think I'm going to take the time or the trouble, Madam Speaker, to read them into the Record. I'll just say that it suffices to show that a number in the neighborhood of $2.7 billion would be to earmarks savings, and the termination of programs saving is about $1.25 billion, so we get to that number that's just slightly more than $4 billion.

It's perhaps a victory. It's perhaps a success. It's perhaps a temporary one. I think most likely that it is. These cuts that were offered here today will, most likely, be met with an agreement down on the other end of the Capitol Hill building in the Senate that is run by Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. I think I saw some language in this appropriations bill that might directly affect him. That might be what helps convince him as well.

Madam Speaker, this is a short-term piece that was designed to be a period of time that would allow the Senate to mull over the House position, which is H.R. 1. H.R. 1 is the bill that has the highest priority for the Speaker of the House. It's been traditionally the case. And 2 weeks ago, this Congress negotiated, debated, and offered amendments. Some 500 to 600 amendments were filed. Nearly 200 of them were debated and voted upon. And many of them that went in were cuts in spending or prohibitions from using that spending to implement certain policies that have been since rejected by this Congress.

And, Madam Speaker, we need to remember that there was an election last November 2 of 2010. And to quote the President of the United States, he famously said after the election of November, 2008: We had an election, and we won, which means that he dictates the policy. Well, Madam Speaker, to the President of the United States, I would say, we had an election November 2. You didn't win that one, Mr. President. In fact, you declared it to be a ``shellacking.'' It was a shellacking.

And the Republicans won the majority in this House by huge numbers. We're looking today at 87 new freshman Republicans and nine freshman Democrats, to give you a sense of the poor proportionality, or the disproportionality. The seats that were picked up have dramatically changed. The gavels all changed hands in the House of Representatives. The agenda changed. It has gone from an agenda that has been driven under the speakership of Nancy Pelosi for 4 years, of an agenda of accelerating spending, increasing government and pushing socialized medicine--which is what I have long declared ObamaCare to be. That doesn't shock anybody, Madam Speaker. It is common vernacular out in the central part of the United States at a minimum.

And so we saw this push to grow government. We saw the President participate in, as a United States Senator, and accelerate his efforts as the President of the United States in the government take-over, first promoting a $700 billion TARP bailout program that was designed to pick up toxic assets that could have been far better picked up by the private sector if he would have just identified them and we would have exempted capital gains taxes on the profits that would be have been made. We would have seen private money go in and pick up these toxic mortgages in a large way and be managed--managed for a better result that would have kept more people in their homes. The list of good things goes on that might have happened had we had more free market solutions and less government intervention.

But that $700 billion TARP plan was a mistake, in my view, Madam Speaker. And behind that came the call for the economic stimulus plan which was $787.5 billion that rolled up to around $816 billion for the economic stimulus plan. Not all of it was spent, but it was to keep unemployment below 8 percent. We know that it sailed up into the upper 9 percentile, 9.7 and above. It has dialed down now to around 9. But we have a lot of people who have given up and stopped trying.

It is clear that the stimulus plan didn't stimulate the economy at all in the way that it was described or the way it was promised to us, but it surely added to the debt. We have seen about $3 trillion in unnecessary spending driven by this President. We have watched as proud companies went into hock to the Federal Government and found the Federal Government engaged in managing some of those companies.

Three large investment banks were taken over by the Federal Government, at least by the power of management or influence--AIG, the insurance company, over $180 billion that flowed into AIG to protect other investors that had an interest in AIG, the insurance company, or in policies that they had offered that were guaranteeing the return on mortgage-backed securities, Madam Speaker. So there is $180 billion there. Three large investment banks and AIG, the insurance company.

We saw Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac transition from quasi-government to government, to taxpayer guaranteed, stepping in to play a role in the majority of the mortgage loans in the United States, guaranteed by the taxpayers.

I recall standing on this floor, the floor of the House of Representatives, October 26, 2005, listening to the most immediate past chairman of the Financial Services Committee arguing that he was never going to participate in bailing out Fannie and Freddie. And if anyone was considering buying stock in either one, they should not do so under the consideration that Barney Frank from Massachusetts would be engaged in bailing them out. And so he later became chairman of the committee, and that's what happened.

We saw Dodd-Frank become law, which gives the Federal Government massive regulatory control over the financial institutions in America. We saw the government, the White House, takeover of General Motors and Chrysler. And we saw ObamaCare pass, which I have declared to be the nationalization of our skin and everything inside it. And by the way, it includes a 10 percent tax on the outside if you go to the tanning salon. That is over 51 percent of our economy swallowed up by the Obama administration and supported by the Pelosi House and the Reid Senate.

And we come to this point where America can't take it anymore, Madam Speaker. We can't take it anymore. And all over the world they know that too much spending has put America in debt. It has put our currency in question. It has put our economy in an unstable position, and it guarantees that we will be in a long, drawn-out recovery because we have the overspending. We have the debt to service, which is pay the interest. And then we also have to eventually pay off the principal. And we are borrowing from the Chinese and begging them. And we are borrowing money from the Saudis and begging them. Yes, it affects our foreign policy. We are watching a foreign policy that is a conflagration in the Middle East. Country after country is blowing up and seeking to throw off the yoke of its long-term dictatorship ruler and replace it with--we are not sure what

their ideals are, but they have hit the end of their patience line.

So here we are. Here we are with a continuing resolution that the government is operating on today that was negotiated and passed here in the House and in the Senate in December. It extended the funding for the government over until March 4 of this year; midnight, March 4, which is somewhere around Friday night, I think. Maybe Thursday night.

So there has been an action here on the floor to pass a continuing resolution to do temporary stopgap funding to keep the government running for another 2 weeks, up until March 18. And that CR has now been messaged to the Senate. And the Senate can decide if they want to take it up tomorrow or the next day, get it to the President's desk. If the President signs the CR, the government keeps running; if the President doesn't, the government shuts down.

I am watching as my colleagues seem to think that there is one data point of message for them to learn from, that because there was a government shutdown in 1995, it was one that was pushed for by Republicans, it was driven by Republicans. They wanted to face President Clinton down and insisted that they pass a balanced budget and to get to a balanced budget. In spite of all of the things that happened in 1995 and in early 1996, that was the result, Madam Speaker. They shortly had a balanced budget, and that balanced budget came a lot sooner than it would have otherwise and it lasted at least until such time we were hit by September 11 and the calamity that sent this America into an overspending binge.

I think we could have faced the calamity of September 11 without having to blow our budget in the way we did, but that is not what happened. But what did happen in 1995, if that is the only data point, I want to make this point, Madam Speaker. First of all, there are thousands and thousands of students all over America who are studying political science. Some of them are watching tonight. Some of them are reading in the paper the things that we say and we do, and they are analyzing it. They are listening to their professors analyze what goes on here in Congress, and they are listening to the instruction of the rules, the standards, the axioms that come from certain data points along the line of continuum of political history. And that one data point on that line of continuum of political history is the government shutdown of 1995, and some of it drug over into very early 1996, and the argument is that House Republicans lost that because they had to concede their position to the President and to the Senate.

Well, it is a fact that the House had to concede. They did concede. It is also a fact that the Republicans that controlled the Senate at the time passed a unanimous consent agreement to go ahead and spend the money that was demanded by Bill Clinton and send it over here to the House. The House was in a position where they couldn't push that chain back uphill and President Clinton and the Senate got their way and imposed it over the House.

But I will still say that there is not a dime that can be spent by the Federal Government if the House of Representatives insists that it not be spent. We have to concede and go along with it at some point, or it won't be spent. And the negotiating position that was there for the House Republicans in 1995 was one that was marginally stronger because they had at least a majority in the Senate. That is the difference in the dynamics. But it was also about $300 billion, as I recall, on Medicare spending.

So whenever you put down a dollar figure and you try to stand on that as a principle, it is a different stance than if you put something that is principle down and stand on it. For example, whether we are going to spend $300 billion on Medicare in 1995, or 250 or 200 or 150 or 100 or no more, you will lose or gain people along that line of that continuum. If you want to cut Medicare by $350 billion, you would lose some people that might be with you at 300. And if you move the line up $400 billion, 450, you lose some people who might have been with you at 350 or 400.

Money is something that there is a sliding scale. You cannot find a principle there that you can stand on. It is like going to an auction and seeing something that you want. And maybe you go to the auction and you decide I want to buy a bicycle and I am willing to pay $100 for that bicycle. If you go to the auction and the auctioneer is crying out he has a bid for $100, now he wants $101, do you pay that extra $1 and go home with the bicycle, something to show for it? Or do you say, no, that was my principle. My principle was I am not going to spend more than $100.

Well, some people live by that principle. I do, occasionally. But it is not a principle that is tied to anything that is definable from a sense of right and wrong. It is a percentage scale. If $100 was the right number, it is only 1 percent wrong to pay $101. If you get it for $99, do you have any more virtue? No, you just got a bargain from what you anticipated.

But when you stand on a principle, it is a different story. The principle here that is better for the House to stand on than the principle of the $300 billion in 1995 is the principle that we must not be funding ObamaCare willfully with appropriations bills here in the House. We must not do so because every Republican and a handful of Democrats, and there will be more, voted to repeal ObamaCare.

We passed the repeal and sent it over to Harry Reid. Furthermore, now that that has happened, every Republican, with H.R. 1, has voted to shut off any funding that can be used to implement or enforce ObamaCare. That is also a fact. They are principled votes. They are not votes that are measured on the dollar figure. In fact, most people who voted in that fashion didn't know how much money it actually saved us for voting to repeal ObamaCare.

And it is hard for me to take a position on that. I'll just say that the chairman of the Budget Committee, Paul Ryan, has used the words about $2.6 trillion is the spending that is saved by repealing ObamaCare.

That is the best number we have, and I don't disagree with that. I accept that number, but it is hard to come down to something and then argue are we doing it because of the money savings. Did we vote to repeal ObamaCare because it would stop the spending of $2.6 trillion? I think not, Madam Speaker.

I think it's part of it. It's part of the equation--and we can't afford it--but there are many other principles. The most important one is: ObamaCare takes American liberty, and puts it into the hands of government to manage our, I'll say, the second most sovereign thing we have, which is our bodies and our health.

That's what's wrong with ObamaCare; it's a matter of principle. It's the takings of American liberty that must be stopped. No, we can't afford it, and it's money that's better spent by doctor-patient relationships and by individuals making decisions on their health insurance and moving on down the line with those conservative principles. We need to stand on principle.

We have this opportunity here in this 112th Congress to stand on principle. The stance needs to be that we will not vote to fund ObamaCare. I'm going to add to this that neither shall we vote to fund Planned Parenthood, and I shall be looking for ways to unfund every other entity like them that promotes abortion or provides abortion as a matter of practice in their facilities. Planned Parenthood has invested in promiscuity, but that's a longer discussion than I will engage in tonight, Madam Speaker.

I do think these two issues are tied very closely together going forward in that ObamaCare funding must be shut off, and we cannot be asking our Members to vote again to appropriate funds that can be used to fund ObamaCare. Some will be saying we didn't have ObamaCare funding in this short-term CR, just as they said there wasn't ObamaCare funding in the CR that passed at the end of December that takes us to the 4th of March, but here is the answer to this:

There are at least 21 different components to ObamaCare that are beneficiaries of funding that go into the various departments. There is no prohibition for that money going into or for being used to implement or to force ObamaCare. There are at least 21 different areas. Then when you look at

the money that's in there, we discover altogether the automatic appropriations. There was something like $4.9 billion for the balance of this year that was automatically appropriated. That's not prohibited in this CR. We didn't get it into H.R. 1, actually, either. But the 21 programs are there, and the money is there for them. I can roll those into the Record, Madam Speaker, but there is another component to this that is a blanket component:

It is language in ObamaCare that gives the authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, to do intradepartmental transfers so that she can use that money to implement and force ObamaCare at her discretion. We failed to shut that language off, too.

So this appropriations bill that passed today, H.J. Res. 44, the 2- week CR, has 21 places in it that could fund ObamaCare, and it still allows for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to take intradepartmental transfers to use at her discretion, at will, which funds ObamaCare.

Then the Pence language, the Pence amendment that he has worked on so valiantly and for so long to shut off all funding to Planned Parenthood, was passed by this House in H.R. 1. It became a component of the position of the House that was delivered here at about 4:30 on a Saturday morning, a week ago last Saturday morning.

Those components, I believe, need to be part of everything we do going forward. I will stand and promote those, and I will stand with those who will stand for life. I simplify it when I say the Pence language shuts off funding to Planned Parenthood, but there are other components that also were left out.

One is the Dornan amendment, which prohibits funding for abortions in D.C. There is the Mexico City policy that shuts off funding to abortions in foreign lands, which we've always done, which is not part of it. The international population control and planning fund gets money still, along with Planned Parenthood.

This is what has taken place, Madam Speaker, in this short-term CR. Boy, it's hard for many Members to vote for it. They want to be team players, and I appreciate that sentiment. From my standpoint, I have an obligation to my constituents and to God and country to do the best job I can to serve, and it goes in the opposite order: God, country. Constituents are right up there with country. Sometimes the best interests of my district are not always going to be the best interests of America. I haven't had that conflict that I can articulate yet, but if that comes, I'm pretty confident my constituents will understand the priority.

We have to do the right thing for the long term for our country, and the right thing is for us to stand on principle and to shut off this funding to ObamaCare, to shut off this funding to Planned Parenthood, to make sure that we are standing on solid, moral, principled ground so that we have a firm place from which we can then negotiate those things that are negotiable with the Senate, which, by the way, is a proxy for the President of the United States. So, if it can be negotiated with the Senate, it's also negotiated, in my view, with the President.

In a moment, I'm going to look forward to yielding to my friend from Texas, who has just arrived on the floor, but I want to also add this:

For weeks now, the Democrats in the House and the Democrats in the Senate have been clamoring for a government shutdown. They seem to be determined to shut the government down. They seem to think that, if there's a government shutdown, they're going to win that debate, and they're going to maybe pick up seats in the House and pick up seats in the Senate, and they'll be able to impose their government growth/ government spending/expansion of debt proposals that they've been pushing for the last 4 years, which have failed and which the American people have rejected.

We should not be deluded into believing that Democrats somehow want to go through this period of fiscal austerity. They want to drive this spending up, and they want to have more excuses for increasing taxes. If government grows and taxes grow, at some point the taxes grow to the point where they consume everything, and then those business entities that I talked about being taken over by this White House become the small part of a long list of business entities that are taken over.

I've spoken of this before. On the Web site, the Socialist Web site, they say: We don't want to nationalize everything like the Communists. We're just Socialists. We only want to nationalize the Fortune 500 companies. Thanks a lot. Give the barber, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker some relief. Thanks a lot for that. They want to manage the Fortune 500 companies ``for the benefit of the people affected by them.''

That's the unions.

The President handed shares in General Motors and Chrysler over to the unions, who had no skin in the game, no equity invested, but he handed the shares over to them anyway. It's right off the Socialist Web site, and the Progressives that are left in this Congress adhere to the agenda of the Socialists, which is on the Web site.

But Democrats who are clamoring for a shutdown fail to understand that the American people are more sophisticated today than they were in 1995. They've seen this movie before, and they fear it ends with Republicans giving in to the demands of tax consumers. I have that same fear, but I'm encouraging all of us on this side of the aisle and those discerning Democrats who remain--and there are some--to join with us in putting an end to ObamaCare, in putting an end to funding for Planned Parenthood, in putting an end to overspending.

Let's get serious about real cuts. Let's get serious about holding the line. When every Republican in the House voted to repeal ObamaCare and when every Republican voted to unfund ObamaCare, then, by golly, that's our obligation. That's what we must do. That's what we shall do.

Madam Speaker, I'd be happy to yield to the gentleman from Texas, my friend Judge Gohmert.

Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Texas. He sparked some things in my mind that in about the 6 minutes we may have, a little bit of dialogue with regard to that.

One point that I wanted to make about what's going on with the strategy on ObamaCare is that I've spoken significantly about how this House has voted to repeal it, this House has voted to shut off the funding to it at every single opportunity.

And if there's a strategy out there that says we're going to do death to ObamaCare by a thousand cuts, I'd ask those folks that are concerned about a real showdown with the President on ObamaCare to think about what really happened not so much in the 1995 shutdown, which I said earlier I don't think is applicable under these circumstances. There's a better issue to understand.

And that is in 1998 when the impeachment of President Clinton was brought up, when America found out about what was going on in the Oval Office and in the room next to the Oval Office in too stark of detail for the children of America to be so rushed in to the birds and the bees discussion in the way that they were, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker, I apologize. I didn't hear your gavel earlier.

So even though it's abrupt, I am happy to yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 115 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend from Colorado (Mr. Polis), pending which time I yield myself such time as I may consume.

During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 115 provides a closed rule for consideration of H.J. Res. 44. This bill would fund the government through March 18 and reduce federal spending by $4 billion over the remainder of the fiscal year. The measure cuts $2.7 billion in earmarks from Energy and Water, Labor-HHS, Transportation-HUD, Homeland Security, and Legislative Branch appropriations, but most importantly, this measure averts a government shutdown and allows the Senate time to continue to consider H.R. 1, the bill that we successfully passed in this Chamber just 1 week ago.

Mr. Speaker, on that bill, we had roughly 50 hours of debate from both sides of the aisle, debate that ran late into the night that allowed the House to work its will for the first time in a long time. And the end result was that continuing resolution, H.R. 1, that now sits idly in the Senate.

This resolution today, this rule today, which I urge Members to strongly support, will allow for the 2-week extension of Federal funding to allow the

Senate time to seriously consider this bill, again, H.R. 1, the first bill in a long time on which the House has had a chance to work its will.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

say to my friend, I could not agree with him more. We must ask ourselves: How did we get here? How did we get here? I have been on the job for 60 days, but the fiscal year began back on October 1 of 2010. How did we get here?

We got here because the work of the people's House didn't get done last year, and I regret that. Candidly, I'm not sure how. I hear so many folks talk about the partisanship in the Congress and the partisanship in Washington, DC, and people can't get things done because of the partisanship. But, of course, last year Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. And yet we still sit here today without a budget, without the appropriations that the speaker knows we need for the government to continue its operations.

How did we get here? I don't know. But I know this: Nobody elected me in November to come up here and point the finger of blame. They elected me to work with my friend to clean up this mess. Irrespective of how we got here, we have to move forward.

I have to say, because I was at home for the past week with my constituents working through these very same issues we are talking about today, the question I got over and over and over again is: Rob, that is a great start, but let's do more. That's a great start, but let's do more.

You know, getting started is what is hard. It is hard to get started. Over and over again we have heard our friends on both sides of the aisle say: You know, this program, it can be fixed. It can be fixed.

I wonder if we will have a day here where we can start from a blank sheet, just a blank sheet, and say: What is it that is worth borrowing from our children for? What is it that is worth increasing our children's credit card balance for? What is it that is worth mortgaging our children's future for?

Let me just say to my friend, because I know he has a great passion for education, and it is a passion I very much respect, I have the great fortune of coming from the part of the world called Gwinnett County, Georgia. And Gwinnett County was the recipient of the Broad Prize for the single best urban education school district in America. We made it as a finalist 2 years ago, but last year we won. And we won in spite of Federal Government intervention--not because of it, in spite of it. We won because, as a community, we got together back in 1996 and said there is a better way. What can we do to enable our children to succeed better?

We were doing standardized testing in Gwinnett County before standardized testing was in vogue because we knew we had to have a way to measure. We knew we had to have a way to sort out what works and what doesn't. Well, folks, we need some of that standardized testing here on Capitol Hill: What works and what doesn't?

And there are a lot of things that aren't working. Not only do we need to get the bad out of the budget, we've got to decide that we're going to choose between good and good, between good and good because every school group I spoke to over our district workweek is a school group from whose future we are borrowing, whose future we are mortgaging over and over and over again.

It has to be said that the House worked its will in an unprecedented fashion, an unprecedented fashion. Mr. Speaker, I don't say that lightly. I mean never, never before in modern times has the House worked its will on a continuing appropriations bill the way it did last week. Again, I don't care whose fault it is. I don't care why we couldn't get it done last October. I don't care why we couldn't get it done in November. I don't care why we couldn't get it done in December. What I care about is we have an opportunity to get it done, and we did that last week.

The House worked its will, and we had some winners and we had some losers. I voted for a number of amendments that failed. I didn't get everything that I wanted in that bill. I know my friend from Colorado didn't get everything he wanted in that bill, but the House worked its will, Mr. Speaker, with unprecedented openness, and H.R. 1 was the result.

Well, I asked my staff to call over to the Senate before I came down here. I wanted to find out exactly how much debate the Senate had been putting in on H.R. 1. Of course, we debated it for almost 50 hours. We went through the night on a couple of nights. We wanted to make sure that the entire House had an opportunity to be involved. My staff tells me, Mr. Speaker, not a moment. Not a moment.

I hear the sense of urgency from my friend from Colorado that we have to take action; this is no way to run a government. I think he is right. I think cleaning up this mess means passing a single continuing resolution that gets us through to the end of the fiscal year. For Pete's sake, the Appropriations Committee is already taking testimony to try to get us into the 2012 budget cycle. This is leftover work that simply didn't get done last Congress. Not one second has been spent on the Senate side, Mr. Speaker, from what my staff tells me. Not one second has been spent considering a bill on which the entire United States House of Representatives worked its will; a bill that was the only open process that this House has seen on a continuing resolution; a bill that allowed Members from both sides of the aisle to come down here to the House floor and represent their constituents back home by doing exactly what my friend from Colorado is suggesting--trying to make good cuts, trying to make those things, present those things on the House floor that make the most sense to folks back home.

Well, Mr. Speaker, we are where we are. No one wants the Senate to act expeditiously on the work of the people's House more than I do. But given that not one moment has been dedicated to that, we have to come down here and fund the government one more time. It is the responsible thing to do. It is the responsible thing to do.

The better thing to do would be to act on H.R. 1, which the House passed last week with the support of Members in this body. But now, we have to come down here and extend for 2 weeks to give us time to finish those negotiations with the Senate side. And if that is not enough time, I suspect we will be back down here again. My friend from Colorado and I will be back down here in this well doing this same thing.

But it is no way to run the government, Mr. Speaker. It is no way to run the government. This is just what we have to do while we wait on the Senate to take up that bill on which the House worked its will last week.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, to put these cuts in perspective, because, again, we have to get started somewhere, there is not going to be a speaker who stands up here today who doesn't speak out in favor of fiscal restraint. The questions are: When do we start? How much do we do?

Compare the bill that's before us today, which is the continuing resolution to fund the government for 2 weeks and is adding about $4 billion in cuts, to the bill we passed last week, which had $100 billion of cuts in it. Now put that $100 billion of cuts in perspective.

Let's take the average American family who has to go out and buy groceries. That family has a 31-day grocery bill. Knowing that you've got to go out and buy 31 days' worth of groceries, what we're asking of the American people is to cut 1 day out. We're going to tell you now that we're going to cut 1 day out, and we need you to stretch your 30- days' worth of groceries into 31.

Mr. Speaker, that doesn't seem that draconian. In fact, it doesn't seem draconian at all. It seems like what American families are doing over and over and over again in the recession that we've been battling.

When we talk about these jobs numbers, these are the same jobs numbers about which folks said, If only you'll put your children in debt to the tune of another $1.5 trillion, we'll get unemployment down under 8 percent. It's the same economist who said, Well, it didn't work the first year, but what if we do it the second year? If we put you in debt to the tune of $1.6 trillion, in addition to the 1.5, in addition to the 1.3 the year before, then we're going to get unemployment back down under 8 percent.

Those jobs didn't materialize because the Federal Government can't create jobs. We can destroy jobs--we can and we do--but we can't create jobs. Our young entrepreneurs create those jobs. The business owners in our communities create those jobs. We destroy jobs, but we cannot create jobs. That is what this continuing resolution is a recognition of, Mr. Speaker: that the government can absolutely get out of the way. We're not going to hear today about the numbers of jobs that will be lost if the EPA continues to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant and hamstrings the American economy in a way that no other economy on this planet is hamstrung. We're not going to hear those jobs numbers. H.R. 1 would solve that, and we have to get started somewhere.

Mr. Speaker, I take no pride of authorship. I'm just a participant in H.R. 1 as it passed the House, as the House worked its will, as Democratic amendments passed and as Republican amendments passed. I wish we'd been governing the right way and that this had been done back on October 1. We passed that continuing resolution, and it's unclear to me why there was no open process there. We passed the second one in December and then the third one in December.

Again, the openness that this House has seen in this 112th Congress is absolutely unprecedented.

Now, I know my friend from Colorado is a strong supporter of CBO and of the work that CBO does. I couldn't agree with him more. Then when Mr. Dicks came before the committee last night with an amendment that would cut even more, as someone who believes we need to cut more, I was incredibly enthusiastic about that. My understanding was that CBO hadn't had a chance to score that amendment, that there was no scoring to be had, and so we couldn't tell whether or not this was going to cut or whether or not this was going to add or how the spend rates were going to sort themselves out, because it came at the very last minute.

Yet what didn't come at the last minute was the opportunity for the minority to offer a substitute. The Speaker reached out to the minority to say if you were interested in offering the same continuing resolution that you had offered before, which was going to freeze funding--and we've heard that a lot. Let's just freeze things. We don't want to cut anything, and we don't want to be draconian--the majority would have absolutely made that in order.

Again, the House could work its will, but my understanding is that that offer was turned down and that folks were not interested in offering that substitute. I would have been a proud ``no'' vote on that substitute, but I still believe, as the gentleman from Colorado said, openness in the process yields a better result.

This brings me full circle, Mr. Speaker, to H.R. 1, which is the single continuing resolution that has had more openness in the process than any other continuing resolution this House has ever considered. It led to the best process, and it led to the best outcome. This is the bill that sits in the United States Senate today, that could be acted on today, that would fund the government and provide the certainty that we need today through the end of the fiscal year, which is on September 30.

So when we're talking about certainty, and I absolutely believe that our economy needs certainty, it is the government that's creating the uncertainty. We are creating the uncertainty. We have historically created the uncertainty. We have an opportunity with H.R. 1 to eliminate that uncertainty for the rest of the fiscal year and to get back to doing what this House always should have been doing, which is considering appropriations bills under regular order.

Candidly, I hope my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle are throwing down that gauntlet today. I hope they're saying, You know, Rob, it's not easy to lead. It's not easy to move bills through regular order.

I want that opportunity to try. I want an opportunity to do it the right way. If we can move H.R. 1 through the Senate and onto the President's desk, we can then come together with the same kind of open process that we began 2 weeks ago to consider all of the appropriations bills and to make the priorities that this House chooses to make priorities, not the last Congress, not two Congresses ago, not President Obama in his first year, not President Bush in his last term--but this House today, together. What are our priorities?

As soon as we move this continuing resolution behind us, Mr. Speaker, we can begin to focus on those priorities, which is where the true work of the House is intended to be.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I associate myself with the gentleman from New Jersey's comments. We absolutely have to work together. It's a great source of pride for me that I've only been on the job 60 days and we've already seen more working together than this House has allowed in the past 4 years combined. Understand that. Understand that as we're working on this appropriations bill, as we're working through this appropriations process, that 2 weeks ago you saw more openness and working together in this Chamber--right here, right here in the people's House--more working together than you had seen in the previous 4 years combined.

Can we do more? I say to the gentleman from New Jersey, I think we can, and I look forward to being a partner and making that happen. But to say that what is sitting on the desk in the Senate is the product of take-it-or-leave-it legislating could not be further from the truth. It's the furthest from take-it-or-leave-it legislating that the House has seen in 4 years. Arguably, it's the furthest thing from take-it-or- leave-it legislating that the House has seen on continuing appropriations bills in modern time.

So when we talk about where we are and where we're going, we have to ask that question of, why are we characterizing this as a process that's broken? Why are we characterizing H.R. 1 as something that doesn't work? Why isn't H.R. 1 the very best, the very best, given the makeup of this House, given our collective intellect and wisdom? Why isn't H.R. 1 the very best that we can do? Because when the process is open and everyone gets to participate, it ought to bring out our very best.

And I'll say to the gentleman from New Jersey, he has some of the lowest gas prices in the country. I enjoy traveling through his great State. Every time I go through, not only do I get full-service gasoline, I get it for the best prices in the country.

Gas prices are up 25 cents a gallon in Gwinnett County, where I come from; 25 cents a gallon in the past 10 days. We have economic crises in this country; we have economic challenges in this country; but spending more government resources is not the answer. We have about a $15 trillion economy. Even with a $3.5 trillion Federal budget, the Federal player is small, small--8.5 cents of every dollar in education in Georgia comes from the Federal Government. The rest comes from exactly where you expect it to come from, local communities and State governments. We have to get the government out of the way.

And if you're worried about uncertainty, as I am, if you share our concern about uncertainty, then let's pass H.R. 1. Let's be done. Let's be done with this 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 12 weeks. Let's get us through the end of the year. Let's finish the job that we should have gotten done last year. Let's put it behind us, and let's start that new open process again. And it's one that I look forward to joining my colleagues in.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds only to say that's why we're here today, as the gentleman knows, so that there is no government shutdown. And I could not be more proud that we're here taking that responsibility exactly as seriously as it is.

It's very difficult to have a conversation about jobs when we have carbon regs coming down the pipe that will destroy jobs and we have financial regulations coming down the pipe that will destroy jobs and we have health care regs coming down the pipe that will destroy jobs over and over again. My folks are saying ``enough.''

With that, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), the chairman of the Rules Committee, the gentleman that I give credit to for giving us the most open process on a continuing resolution that we've seen in modern times.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

And we could not have done it without your support.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds just to invite my friend from New Jersey to join me on H.R. 25, the Fair Tax Act. Not only will it create jobs in this country, it's the only bill in Congress that will eliminate every single corporate piece of welfare, loophole, tax exception, credit, so on and so on, because none of them need a nickel of it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Given that it eliminates the payroll tax, which is the largest tax 80 percent of American families pay----

Twenty-three percent.

Less than what you're paying now.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I am the final speaker.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today for one reason and one reason only, and that's to provide ample time for the Senate to consider H.R. 1, to keep the doors of the Federal Government open, to keep important services being dispensed, to keep the government of America on track for 2 more weeks while the Senate takes time.

I will associate myself with the gentleman from Colorado when he says we can't always get what we want. I sadly haven't gotten what I wanted so far, and I am prepared to get even less of what I want going forward. But I don't mind telling you I don't know how we are going to get to what any of us want if folks don't even start considering the bill.

This was our very best shot. It was our very best work product. Whether you love it or whether you hate it, it was the most openly produced work product in continuing resolution history. And there it sits, and there it sits, almost 10 days now with no advancement whatsoever.

Mr. Speaker, I hope these 2 weeks are enough. I recognize the caution that my friend from Colorado suggests that we may be back here one more time doing this again. I hope this is the last time that we will be here.

But I know this: I know we can't continue to mortgage our children's future while we wait. I know we can't fiddle while Rome burns. So we have passed, we have presented this continuing resolution with cuts there to prevent our children's future from continuing to be mortgaged.

As I spoke with school groups across the district last week--and I share my friend from Colorado's passion for education--I asked them to turn on C-SPAN this week, because I said it doesn't matter who stands up, whether they stand up on the left or the right, or whether they speak from the well or from the leadership table, they will tell you that the reason they are there

today is for you, is for you, the children. It's for your future that they are there on the floor of that House.

I believe that. I believe that in everyone's heart they are here to make sure that tomorrow's generation does better than today's generation. I would just say, Mr. Speaker, that if there are schoolchildren out there watching today, perhaps they will pick up the phone and they will give us a call and let us know exactly which one of us is on the right track, because I know it's all about them that we do what we do.

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

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

I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina, my friend, Dr. Foxx, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this closed rule and to the misguided underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, enough is enough. Enough political posturing. Enough governing by press conference. Enough finger-pointing press releases, Facebook updates, and Tweets.

Democrats have already agreed, reluctantly, to tens of billions of dollars in cuts. Many of these cuts are from programs that are very near and dear to us. We have come more than halfway.

I am pleased that Speaker Boehner agreed to attend a negotiating session with President Obama and Senator Reid last night. The truth, Mr. Speaker, is that it shouldn't be this hard to come up with a budget to finish this year. President Obama and Senator Reid are trying to work with Speaker Boehner to come up with a bipartisan agreement that moves this country forward.

But that's what we see coming from the Republican Party in the House. Unfortunately, as of right now, the Republican leadership is continuing with their ``my way or the highway'' obstructionism.

Let's be clear about what's really going on here. Let's at least be straight with the American people. This impasse is not because of disputes between Democrats and Republicans; it's because of an intraparty feud between sensible, pragmatic Republican legislators and angry, take-no-prisoner Republican activists.

Now, I know that many of my friends on the other side of the aisle would like to accept the billions and billions of dollars in cuts that the Democrats have offered and declare a victory.

Unfortunately, their Republican Party has been hijacked by people who relish a shutdown of the Federal Government, people who refuse to take ``yes'' for an answer. They are more interested in making a point than in making law. And unless and until the Republican leadership in this House is willing to stand up to that radical element and stop moving the goalposts, we will not be able to move forward.

My friends on the other side of the aisle talk a good game about wanting to come up with a compromise. Unfortunately, this bill before us today does nothing to achieve that goal. In fact, it is a step backwards. This bill, like H.R. 1 before it, isn't going anywhere. The Senate leadership and the White House have already made it very clear that yet another short-term continuing resolution is not acceptable.

Further, this bill continues the misguided priorities that we have seen from the Republican leadership of the House for the last several months. It cuts vital domestic programs that families, communities, and States rely on during these difficult economic times.

Let me just give you a few examples of the cuts to programs that will directly affect the people in Massachusetts that I am honored to represent.

H.R. 1363 would cut the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which helps preserve open space, by another $71.5 million. It cuts $700 million from the Clean Water and Drinking Water Revolving Funds. I don't know of a community in this country that doesn't have infrastructure needs, and the State revolving fund is one of the few areas where they can get money to help repair sewers and deal with storm water and a bunch of other issues, but they cut it by $700 million more.

Most egregiously of all, it cuts $390 million from the LIHEAP contingency fund. That's fuel assistance for poor people, mostly elderly, who need it as fuel prices continue to rise.

So there it is, Mr. Speaker. There is the clear difference of priorities between the two parties. The Republicans would rather shut down the government than provide heating assistance to some of the most vulnerable people in this country. I should also note that this bill would provide funding for the Department of Defense for the rest of the year, but nothing else.

Every Member of this House believes that making sure our troops get their paychecks is a top priority. The men and women who serve this country in uniform deserve our support.

But, Mr. Speaker, so do the seniors of this country. So do the children of this country. So do the poor and the hungry of this country. So do the people who can't afford hot-shot lobbyists and multimillion dollar ad campaigns. We are supposed to represent them too.

A couple of days ago we saw where the Republican priorities are. They made them crystal clear in their budget proposal. Eliminate Medicare as we know it. Eviscerate Medicaid. Cut funding for education. Cut funding for medical research, health care, environmental protection, and infrastructure in order to make sure that the wealthiest individuals and companies can keep their special interest tax breaks.

Oil companies continue to get their taxpayer subsidies. Why they need them, I don't know, but they continue to get them. And they are protected. Donald Trump continues to get his tax cut under their proposal, but they go after programs that impact working people and people who are the most vulnerable. That may fly on Wall Street, but it sure isn't going to fly on Main Street.

So, again, Mr. Speaker, I say that enough is enough. It is time for serious people to do some serious legislating. The bill before us is a million miles away from that.

I would urge my colleagues to reject this closed rule and to reject the underlying legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I have no disagreement with the gentlelady from North Carolina in terms of trying to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in government. I think we're all for a leaner government. But what we're not for is a meaner government. And that is what the Republican policies are all about--a meaner government.

There's a story that I will submit to the Record here. It's talking about the Republican budget. It says the Budget Office claims the GOP Medicare plan could lead to rationing, making it more difficult for our senior citizens to get health care.

By basically obliterating Medicare, you may save a few bucks in the short term, but you're going to deny them care in the long term. I don't see how that is right.

Secondly, I didn't talk about the past in my opening statement; the gentlelady did. I just want the record to be clear about the past and how we got into this mess.

When Bill Clinton left office, we eliminated the deficit and we were paying down the debt. We had all-time high job growth. George Bush comes to office. His reckless tax cuts are not paid for and hundreds of billions of dollars are added to our debt. A Medicare prescription drug bill was not paid for--wasn't paid for--and was more expensive than the Republicans advertised. Add that on to our debt, plus two wars that weren't paid for.

When the first President George Bush went to war against Saddam Hussein when Iraq invaded Kuwait, he went around and he got member nations in the area to actually pitch in to help pay for the war so that the burden wasn't only on the United States. George Bush II comes into office--two wars, we don't pay for them. There's no tax on anybody. It gets onto our credit card. That is just not right.

Men and women in uniform are sacrificing, their families are sacrificing, and the rest of us have been asked to do nothing. They just put it on the credit card. That is not right.

So, Mr. Speaker, I have a disagreement with the gentlelady not over the issue of whether we need to reduce waste and abuse in government. I have an issue with her over the way they're doing it. They protect tax breaks for big oil companies, tax breaks for Donald Trump and subsidies for corn ethanol, a big waste of money. All that's protected. And the way they balance the budget is not by going after that. They go after programs that help poor people, LIHEAP, WIC--the Women, Infant and Children's program of all things--and Pell Grants. We all know that in order to have a strong economy in the 21st century, we need a well- educated workforce, and they cut Pell Grants. They just slash them. That's where they're cutting, cutting programs that help average people, regular people and people who are vulnerable.

What government should be about is making sure that those people are taken care of and not forgotten. Instead, their budget and their priorities are protecting those who have a lot of wealth who don't need government. And I think what they're doing is misguided.

Let me just read one final thing here. This is a story that just appeared on Politico, breaking news. President Obama is calling House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid back to the White House to negotiate on the budget at 1 p.m. Just before the announcement from the White House, Senator Reid said on the Senate floor that the numbers are basically there, but that the only thing holding up an agreement is ideology. He said he was not nearly as optimistic about reaching a deal as he was last night.

So, in other words, Mr. Speaker, this is no longer about numbers. And I regret that so much has had to be cut in order to satisfy my friends on the other side of the aisle.

But now this is about ideology. They have all these riders on these bills, riders that deal with abortion, National Public Radio, and riders that undercut EPA's ability to ensure there is safe drinking water and clean air. They are insisting on all of these ideological riders to be attached to whatever budget deal before they sign it. It is not about the numbers anymore; it is about a rigid, right-wing ideology.

So enough is enough, Mr. Speaker. I urge my Republican colleagues to go back to the negotiating table and negotiate in good faith, let's get a deal, and let's move on to next year's business.

[From NPR, Apr. 5, 2011]

Budget Office: GOP Medicare Plan Could Lead to Rationing

(By Julie Rovner)

Excerpts:

Buried deep in the analysis of the proposal offered Tuesday

by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the CBO

suggested that moving Medicare beneficiaries from

public to private insurance could actually end up slowing the

introduction of new and potentially life-saving medical

technology . . .

The key problem, according to CBO, is that private

insurance is, well, likely to be more expensive than

insurance that's run by the government, competition

notwithstanding. ``Under the proposal, most elderly people

would pay more for their health care than they would pay

under the current Medicare system,'' the CBO said.

And because those seniors would be paying more, those

private plans would be looking for ways to bring health

spending down . . .

The CBO acknowledges that private health insurance plans

would have cost-reduction tools available that government-run

Medicare does not--things like limiting benefits, changing

co-payment amounts, managing how patients use services, and

controlling which doctors and hospitals are in their

networks.

``(S)uch steps could serve as alternatives to limiting

payments to providers in restraining health care costs and

insurance premiums,'' the report says.

But at the same time, it warns, the higher payments could

affect care. Beneficiaries might be less likely to use ``new,

costly, but possibly beneficial, technologies and

techniques'' than they do under current law.

In other words, exactly the sort of rationing that so

frightened Republicans when they were fighting the health

law--the health law that Ryan's proposal would repeal, by the

way.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Will the gentlelady yield?

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, just two points. One, on the issue of abortion. The law of the land under the Hyde language is that no Federal funds can be used to finance abortion. Introducing abortion into this budget debate is divisive and doesn't belong there. But it is all about ideology, and I get it. So don't say it is about numbers anymore. It is about this kind of right-wing ideology, going after National Public Radio, trying to undercut the EPA. You know, I get it. There is a time and place to do that; this is not it.

The other thing I would say, when I listen to my colleague from North Carolina, the question I was going to ask, if Republicans are responsible for deficit reduction under Bill Clinton, then who is responsible for the increase in deficit when they were in charge of the Presidency, the House and the Senate, when they had all three branches of government? At some point you have to take some responsibility, and at some point you have to live up to the fact that some of the policies that my colleagues pursued when they were in charge here drove this economy into a ditch and added significantly to our deficit.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

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

I want to thank the gentleman from California, the chairman of the Rules Committee, for giving us his itinerary for the day. I'm glad he's meeting with the leaders of Mongolia, because this is a budget only the people of Mongolia would love because it is a tough budget on the people of the United States of America.

He talks about their commitment to helping the poor in this country. I don't know how you do that when you cut WIC, when you go after Pell Grants, when you go after LIHEAP.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Reclaiming my time, I will just remind my friend, as I did last night, right now there are 30,000 people in this country that are fasting in protest of the cuts that adversely impact the poor. A former colleague, Tony Hall from Ohio, Jim Wallis from Sojourners, David Beckmann from Bread for the World are highlighting the fact that the cuts in this budget are going to be devastating to the most vulnerable people in this country.

What I said in the Rules Committee last night is that sometimes we forget to understand that there are real people behind these cuts, and people are going to be hurt. And, unfortunately, the people who are sacrificing are the people who can least afford to sacrifice. You're not asking Donald Trump to sacrifice. You're not asking big oil companies to sacrifice or those big agri-businesses that receive corn ethanol subsidies. No. It's all focused on working people and poor people.

I don't know when, in the minds of the Republicans, that average working people and people who are vulnerable became the bad guys. It was reckless Wall Street behavior that created this financial crisis, and they get everything, and everyday people get nothing except the bill. That's wrong.

At this point, Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words of the Speaker of the House, but I would remind my colleagues that when we talk about national security, it needs to include, as well, the health and well- being of our senior citizens here in the United States. It needs to include the health and well-being of our children here in the United States.

It needs to include our infrastructure, our education, the quality of our environment. All those things are part of our national security. We all support funding our troops. What we don't support are reckless policies that are aimed at undercutting programs like Medicare and putting our senior citizens at a disadvantage where they will pay more and get less.

I mean this is an ideological battle that we are, unfortunately, engaged in where my Republican friends believe that Medicare should be ended as we know it. Medicare as we know it they want to end. It is clear. If anyone doubts that, I will tell my colleagues to read the bill, to read the stuff that is coming out of the Budget Committee. Read the bill. For anybody who doubts that Republicans are targeting Medicare, look at what the Budget Committee is doing. It will be there in black and white when it's published, and it will state unequivocally that Medicare, as we know it, will be ended. Senior citizens, according to the CBO, will pay more and get less. That is not what, I think, the American people want. I will just remind my colleagues of a new poll that came out: 66 percent of seniors reject the plan to end Medicare as we know it.

So, if you interpreted the results of the last election as going after Medicare and seniors' health care, I think you misread the results of the last election. The last election was about jobs. We all need to come together and talk about how we protect jobs and help encourage the creation of more jobs in this country. If you want to end the deficit, put people back to work. Here we are in April, and you have yet to bring one single bill to this floor that deals with jobs, that helps create jobs and that helps protect jobs.

My friends on the other side of the aisle need to kind of reevaluate their priorities here. Let's get back to what the American people want--a strong economy and good jobs.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I am not. I have a couple of more speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

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

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

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

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

I am the final speaker on our side.

Well, here we go again--another closed rule, but this rule is different from others. It also includes martial law authority. This means that the Republican leadership can bring any spending bill to the floor at any time they want.

So much for ``read the bill.''

This is not how the House Republicans said they were going to run the House. Open rules? Read the bill? Markups? Hearings? Their record, Mr. Speaker, is abysmal, and this bill is a perfect example of how they are doing things they said they wouldn't do--a closed rule with Martial law authority. I can't say I'm surprised. It's their way or the highway.

Yesterday, a group of tea partiers was protesting on the steps of the Capitol. It's a wonderful thing to be able to protest in the open without any threat of government violence or censorship. It's a very American thing to do. Yet, while they're entitled to their opinion, it's important to point out that they were protesting against keeping the government open.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, they want to shut the government down. Just look at the front page of CQ today. It's of a tea party member on the steps of the Capitol with a sign that says, ``Shut 'er down''; and Republicans in the House are doing their bidding.

Enough is enough. It is time to act like adults and negotiate in good faith. It is time to come to a deal that keeps the government open--a deal without partisan, ideological riders that prevent health groups from providing important women's health information and health screenings, riders that prevent the EPA from keeping our air and water safe, riders that prevent independent, nonpartisan news agencies from reporting in places like Afghanistan, Egypt and Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, it's time that the Republican Party does the right thing for its country and not just for the extremist wing of its party.

At the end of this debate, I will oppose the previous question. If the previous question is defeated, I will offer an amendment to provide a clean CR for 1 week. No harmful cuts or ideological riders like those that are included in the Republican bill. The government stays open while President Obama, Speaker Boehner and Senator Reid continue to negotiate. Now that they're at the table, it's time to let them do their jobs and come to a deal without a continual moving of the legislative goalposts that's going on under the Republican bill.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record along with extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question and to defeat this closed rule.

My friends on the other side of the aisle need to get serious about negotiating an end to this impasse, and need to stop the ideological riders that are attached to this bill. Let's get serious, and let's get this passed so we can begin to deal with next year's budget.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 206 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

House Resolution 206 provides for a closed rule providing for consideration of H.R. 1363, which is a bill providing 1 week of continuing appropriations, a full year of funding for the Department of Defense, and cuts $12 billion in wasteful Federal spending.

Mr. Speaker, it's unfortunate that we are at this juncture nearly 7 months into fiscal year 2011, considering the bill that this House will soon consider. We are seeing a stunning lack of leadership on behalf of Washington Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Reid and President Obama, who have refused to do the work that Americans sent them here to do. They have exhibited willful disregard for our troops and their families, who are uncertain about their paychecks with a government shutdown looming.

The bill we will debate and pass funds the Department of Defense for the remainder of the year, while cutting another $12 billion in wasteful Washington spending. Lest we forget, the reason this problem exists at all is because the liberal Democrat elites were so incapable of governing in the last Congress that they couldn't even pass a budget for the first time since modern congressional budgets were first created over 30 years ago.

They didn't do that because of their lack of leadership then and their apparent realization that the American people had tired of big spending, big government policies streaming out of Washington, which is why the Republicans now control the House of Representatives.

Today with real leadership in the House we have real solutions to these real problems. House Republicans have passed H.R. 1, which is a continuing resolution that takes us to the end of the fiscal year.

The Democrat response? In another display of their lack of leadership, Senator Reid sits on his hands while Senator Schumer tinkers in his game of manipulating the liberal political message in a phone call with reporters.

House Republicans then took the lead in crafting two short-term continuing resolutions, H.J. Res. 44 and H.J. Res. 48, providing for an additional 5 weeks of funding authority while cutting $10 billion in wasteful Federal spending along the way.

Realizing that the stubborn liberal elites in the Senate and White House are using the threat of a government shutdown to continue their failed wasteful spending policies, House Republicans last week passed H.R. 1255, the Government Shutdown Prevention Act, which provided for enactment of H.R. 1 in the event that the liberal malaise continues to stymie progress on fiscal 2011 appropriations.

After all of these gestures of good faith made by House Republicans, the time has now come for the hapless liberal Democrat elites in the Senate and the White House to make a decision. It's time to decide between acting responsibly, abandoning favored political alliances, or continuing their failed Big Government policies as a solution to all earthly problems.

These points aside, there is one truth upon which everyone could probably agree: that the new Republican House leadership has changed the discussion in Washington, D.C., and across the country.

Whereas the previous discussion in Washington revolved solely around how much more money we should spend, today the discussion is how much more money we should cut.

Americans can now rest easy knowing that their message was received by responsible adults here in the House, and we will work to reflect their support for a leaner Federal Government focused on finding solutions to problems, rather than political gamesmanship and perpetual misguided adventures in social engineering.

Speaker Boehner has told the President that the House will not be put in a box and forced to choose between two options that are bad for the country, like accepting a bad deal that fails to make real spending cuts or accepting a government shutdown due to Senate inaction, and that is why House Republicans, in lieu of an agreement in which the White House and Senate agree to real spending cuts, are offering this third option: another good-faith gesture that funds our troops through the

end of the fiscal year while cutting an additional $12 billion in wasteful government spending and keeps the government running for another week.

Real leadership is long overdue in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and it's refreshing to see the new House Republican majority step in and fill the void left by such a devastating lack of leadership that has resulted from liberal Democrat domination of this city for far too long.

Let's start by voting for this rule and the underlying bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Massachusetts and I are actually, I think, getting fairly fond of each other, spending so much time in the Rules Committee as we do. However, I really have to call into question a couple of comments that he has made.

Is this bill really a step backwards when we're funding our troops for the rest of the year, taking away the uncertainty that they have just in case the government votes to shut down or the Senate doesn't act as it should and allows the government to shut down?

Do we really need to continue all the appropriations for LIHEAP, the funding for helping people pay their heating bills, when we are in April this year? This is money that goes until the end of September. I hardly think that we're going to have people freezing to death in this country between now and September 30.

Do we need to be looking after seniors and children? Obviously, we do. Republicans are not heartless people. But we have to look after them in a responsible way. Cutting spending is the way to be responsible to them.

And, Mr. Speaker, I have to remind my colleague again that we are here to fix a problem that they left for us last year: funding the Federal Government for the rest of this year.

Yesterday in the Rules Committee, one of our colleagues said, Let's stop talking about the past and talk about the future, when we brought this up. Well, Mr. Speaker, Republicans would like nothing more than to do that, but we're doing all that we can to avoid a government shutdown, and that is what this rule and bill are all about this morning.

Republicans understand that unless we change course, higher taxes, inflation, interest rates and unemployment will cripple our economy and rob our children of the opportunity to pursue the American Dream. Let's be clear. We don't have deficits because Americans are taxed too little. We have deficits because Washington spends too much. We've got to stop spending money we don't have. Right now, we're borrowing 43 cents for every dollar that we spend.

I want to talk a little bit about the long-term effects of what we're planning to do in this Congress this spring under Republican majority. The budget

resolution introduced by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and passed out of the Budget Committee last evening will spur job creation, stops spending money we don't have, and lifts the crushing burden of debt. It's a plan that puts the budget on a path to fiscal stability and our country on a path to prosperity by cutting $6 trillion in Federal spending over 10 years and takes government spending below 20 percent of GDP.

Mr. Speaker, historically, our government spending has been between 18 and 20 percent of GDP. Once we go over that, we are endangering our country, and that's where our colleagues across the aisle have been for a long time. The White House predicts that their proposal will reduce the deficit by only $1.1 trillion over the same period of time.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, President Obama's budget would generate more than $9.5 trillion in additional deficits between fiscal years 2012 and 2021. I actually have a visual here, Mr. Speaker, that shows exactly what is going to happen under President Obama's budget.

In contrast, the Republican budget resolution provides us with a path to prosperity by limiting the Federal Government to its core constitutional roles, keeping America's promises to seniors, and unleashing the genius of America's workers, investors and entrepreneurs. The Republican budget has a projected real GDP growth of $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

With this budget resolution, we're taking direct aim at wasteful Washington spending as opposed to the Obama budget that spends more than $46 trillion over the next decade.

Since January of 2009, there has been a 24 percent increase in non- discretionary spending, a number that jumps to 84 percent when stimulus funds are included, Mr. Speaker. Democrats promised if we paid for their stimulus, unemployment would stay below 8 percent. Then it soared to 10 percent. One trillion dollars in debt later, Americans know they didn't get what they paid for.

The 2009 stimulus law has gotten the most attention with considerable focus on the billions of dollars it wasted on dubious government projects as well as the many promises it broke with respect to job creation and economic growth. The Republican budget resolution projects an unemployment rate of 4 percent by 2015, Mr. Speaker.

If we continue on the wrong path that we're on now, Americans will not be able to rely on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in order to plan for retirement if we don't take action. Republicans want to serve as good stewards of the investment of millions of Americans paying into Social Security. Republicans will save $750 billion through Medicaid reform in the form of block grants to States, giving Governors greater and much needed flexibility in their budgets.

As it stands, the share of the budget that goes to these entitlement programs is growing rapidly, and demographics, economics and skewed political incentives are driving Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare into bankruptcy. Alice Rivlin, the former Clinton OMB Director, has called Medicare's current policy ``not sustainable.''

Cutting spending is about ending wasteful spending, making the government leaner and more efficient, showing respect to hardworking taxpayers, and making the tough choices today that save our children and grandchildren from even tougher choices tomorrow. For hardworking Americans, this isn't about politics. It's about their life and putting our economy and our Nation first.

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

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

My colleague from Massachusetts knows that every time he brags about what happened when Bill Clinton left office and we had a surplus, that he is going to get an answer to that because he knows full well that Republicans were in control of the Congress. Republicans came in control of the Congress in 1995, and they controlled the Congress the last 6 years of Bill Clinton's Presidency, and it is Republicans who created the surplus, not Bill Clinton. We have to remind them every time that they are trying to rewrite history.

And then they blame George Bush. It is so convenient to do that. In January of 2007, the month Democrats took control of the Congress again, the CBO projected the Federal Government would run a surplus of $800 billion over 10 years, covering the period 2008-2017. But they took the Congress that January and, guess what, the most recent CBO projections available project the Federal Government to run a deficit of $7.4 trillion over the same period. This is an $8.2 trillion deterioration of the budget outlook during Democrat control of Congress.

You can speak on your time, Mr. McGovern. I will let you do that.

My colleague on the other side of the aisle talks a lot about creating a nanny state, taking care of people from birth until death. That's not what the American people want. We see that over in Europe, and it has failed. What the Federal Government does and what school children should learn, if they learn the Preamble to the Constitution and if they read the Declaration of Independence, is that we are here to secure the blessings of liberty for the people. Creating a nanny state does not secure the blessings of liberty for the people.

He talks about how we are not now talking about numbers, but we are talking about ideology. I am happy to debate ideology with my colleague from Massachusetts any day. The American people do not want taxpayer- funded abortions. That's part of what we are talking about. That's part of our ideology. No, we should not be taking money from hardworking Americans and using that money to fund the killing of unborn babies. That is our ideology. Again, the majority of the American people agree with us, and we are going to stand on that ideology every day.

The American people have, Mr. Speaker, the right to a fact-based conversation on the budget. We demand an end to budget gimmicks and accounting tricks used every year to make budgets look responsible when in fact they add to the debt. That is part of our problem with what President Obama is recommending. He wants us to take mythical numbers that he projects instead of real numbers that we have been using.

Passing a short-term measure is a step in the right direction to cut spending while keeping the government open, but it is far from being enough. Excessive government spending has economic consequences for all Americans: higher cost-of-living, higher interest rates, higher taxes. But, Mr. Speaker, we didn't get into this overnight and we will not get out of it overnight. Investors in small businesses need confidence that Congress will use commonsense American principles to cut spending and ensure a secure economic future.

The Republican budget resolution can create 1 million private sector jobs over the next year. We are not going to create these high-paid government jobs that our colleagues have created. America's solution for job creation won't come by raising taxes to pay for even more wasteful Washington bureaucracy. Democrats tried that approach with the stimulus, and it failed.

Republicans, on the other hand, estimate that with the Path to Prosperity budget resolution introduced this week and passed out of the Budget Committee, wages will go up by $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years, yielding an average increase in income of $1,000 per year for each American family.

Mr. Speaker, we need to do in this House what the American people expect us to do: be reasonable stewards, responsible stewards of their money and adhere to the ideology which has made this the greatest country in the world.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), the chair of the Rules Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to Speaker Boehner, the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the gentleman from Massachusetts if he is ready to close.

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

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

As our colleague across the aisle said, ``Here we go again.'' Here we go again with the Democrats misleading the American people about what this rule is about, what this bill is about, the underlying bill. Mr. Dicks said he wanted the rule as it is. Our colleagues across the aisle don't want us to be able to take up another bill in case there is an agreement with the President on a long-term CR.

There is only one rider on this bill, Mr. Speaker, and that is to not allow taxpayer funding for abortions in Washington, DC. My colleague across the aisle says national security should include paying for all of these government programs. The Federal Government is the only branch of government that can handle national security, and that means funding our troops. That's exactly what this underlying bill does.

Mr. Speaker, also our colleague says, ``It's time for people to read the bill.'' How interesting that when they were in control, they didn't want anybody to read the bills, and they said you wouldn't be able to know what was going to be in the bill until after it was passed.

I'm sorry, Mr. Speaker. There are words for that. I'm afraid I should not use those on the floor today for fear it might slow down our debate here.

But I want to say that I am particularly concerned that our colleagues have brought up the issue of values. I'm pleased they brought up the issue of values.

Our colleague from New Jersey says what this is, it's about the value of Medicare. Well, Mr. Speaker, it shows what they value are government programs. What we value are life and freedom. There is a distinct difference, Mr. Speaker, in the values of the two parties in this country--one wants more government funding, one wants government control of our lives; the other wants freedom for the American people and life for unborn children.

Mr. Speaker, they are misleading the American people. There's nothing about Medicare in this rule or in this underlying bill.

We've discussed at great length why America needs this rule and this bill. In the face of a government shutdown, our economy is struggling, people are looking for jobs, they demand accountability and belt- tightening in Washington, DC. They need the Federal Government to stop draining job-creating resources from the private sector to fund misguided adventures in social engineering. They demand action. They deserve answers.

It's for these reasons I urge my colleagues to vote for the rule and the underlying bill so we can begin to restore the trust Americans have in their Federal Government and restore this economy.

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

Mr. Speaker, the CR disproportionately cuts education, especially literacy efforts. David Brooks, not known as a left-wing journalist, writes in the New York Times column today: ``If you look across the country, you see education financing getting sliced often in the most thoughtless and destructive ways. In Washington, the Republicans who designed the cuts for this fiscal year seem to have done no serious policy evaluation.''

Last night, I asked the Rules Committee to make in order an amendment restoring education cuts. The amendment cut $1 billion from the Census in money that wasn't needed, applying most of that to offset education spending, and the remainder went to further reducing the deficit below the levels in the CR before us. The Rules Committee chose not to make that amendment in order, and therefore I oppose the rule.

But to talk to the gentleman, I spent 8 years on the staff of the other body, and this is my 35th year in the House of Representatives. Nobody ever gets everything they want: This is a process where the House passes a bill, it goes to the Senate, and then we have a conference committee or the Senate sends the bill back to us. Both sides meet and work out their differences. There is give and take, there is compromise, and that is the way this process works.

And I also want to say to the gentleman, and to your side, remember it was the Democratic Congress and the House Senate and Mr. Obama signing the $41 billion cut from the Obama FY11 budget. It was the Democrats that did it. We had one Republican vote. And I just want to remind you, that was done in December in a lame duck session, which turned out to be a very effective lame duck session; and in that bill we made cuts across the board in all these areas.

So I want to make it clear we are also for deficit reduction, but what I am concerned about--and I know the gentleman is very sincere, I can tell that, I know you believe in every word that you are saying-- but the biggest problem with that is what the effect will be on our economy. Mark Zandi of Moody's says, it will cost us 400,000 jobs in 2011, 700,000 jobs in 2012. Goldman Sachs, who I don't normally quote, they say that this could cut 1.5 to 2 percent of gross domestic product. That could mean the loss of 2.4 million jobs over the next 2 years. That's not what you want to do.

You're trying to reduce the deficit, and the way you reduce the deficit is put people back to work. You get them back to work, and they pay their taxes in and the deficit comes down, the unemployment rate comes down. If you do the wrong thing and make draconian cuts at the same time that the States are cutting $125 billion from their budgets, the impact of those two things--$61 billion and the $125 billion--could have a very devastating effect on the economy and hurt a lot of

programs needlessly because it's going to be counterproductive. I just hope that you think about that.

There isn't any economic theory that I've ever heard of called ``cut and grow.''

So, again, it was the Democratic Congress that cut the $41 billion. And every reputable economist says what you did in H.R. 1 is going to have a negative effect on the economy. And so I hope you all think carefully about what you're about to do.

Again, it takes compromise. You've got to work with the other body to come up with a reasonable solution here, or we're going to have problems with a government shutdown. And you can say whatever you want, but we don't need the government shutting down when we're in two wars, a war in Afghanistan and a war in Iraq, and a global war on terror. We don't need to shut the government down.

Will the gentleman yield?

That was a good process. I appreciate what you all did in having an open rule. I applaud Chairman Rogers and Chairman Dreier. That is the right thing to do. It was appreciated on both sides of the aisle.

I did my best to help.

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

Let me just make a brief comment.

And I do applaud the gentleman from California as chairman of the Rules Committee for giving, for working out that modified open rule.

Just let me, on the point about Mr. Taylor at Stanford, Stanford's a very good school. My son graduated from it, and I'm quite proud of that.

A letter signed by 300 of America's leading economists makes the argument that cutting investments this quickly will undermine growth. Among the original signers from Stanford alone: Kenneth Arrow, Martin Carnoy, Paul David, Mordecai Kurz, Roger Noll, and Gavin Wright.

I just want to say one brief word.

I applaud these modified open rules. And on the regular bills on appropriations, we hope--Mr. Rogers and I have been in contact, we're going to get these bills done in a timely way. And we want open rules, and we want to be able to have these unanimous consent agreements after the bills have been on the floor for a while in order to narrow the amendments and then to get these things done in a timely fashion. And I think that it's going to take the cooperation of all of the Members to be able to do that.

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

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

Madam Speaker, today we will consider a short-term continuing resolution that will allow the essential functions of our government to continue beyond March 4, the date on which the current continuing resolution will expire.

With no final agreement on the spending levels for the current fiscal year, this measure is necessary in order to avoid a government shutdown, something I believe we should all want to do. I think that 2 weeks is not enough time to reach an agreement on H.R. 1 with the other body, and I'm afraid we're going to be back here doing this again.

Now, when the House approved H.R. 1 earlier this month, despite the overwhelming opposition of the Democratic

Caucus, it was clear to me that gaining agreement on a compromised version of a full-year continuing resolution would be very difficult, at least before the expiration of the current CR. We opposed H.R. 1 because we believe it would have the effect of slamming on the fiscal brakes too abruptly, resulting in higher unemployment and threatening our Nation's economic recovery.

There is no dispute that cutting Federal spending too deeply and too quickly before the economy has fully recovered risks slowing growth and losing jobs. Moody's estimates that H.R. 1 would reduce real growth in 2011 by 0.5 percent, meaning 400,000 fewer jobs in 2011 and 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012. The Economic Policy Institute projected job losses near 800,000. Goldman Sachs predicts that H.R. 1 would slow economic growth by about 1.5 to 2 percentage points, which translates into the American economy losing up to 2.4 million jobs.

So the recovery of our economy and the reduction of unemployment should be our paramount concern at this time.

I said during the debate on H.R. 1 earlier this month, and I will repeat today, that I believe the approach to deficit reduction that has been adopted by the Republican majority here in the House is far too narrow and too focused on the smallest segment of spending in the budget. It is a risky strategy based on the specious concept of cut and grow, which of course has no basis in sound economic theory.

So where does this leave us? We are now 6 months into the current fiscal year, FY11, and hearings with regard to the fiscal year 2012 budget have begun in both the Budget Committee and the Appropriations Committee.

H.R. 1 is clearly not acceptable to the other body, nor would it be acceptable to the President, whose signature is necessary before any funding bill can become law. What the President has already proposed for the coming year--a budget freeze at last year's level--remains, in my judgment, the best and most effective way to reduce the deficit and to support recovery in major sectors of our economy. In fact, we have already adopted a freeze at FY10 levels in the continuing resolution that we are currently operating under.

Democrats approved the CR in December with only one Republican vote, which represents a reduction of $41 billion from the levels sought by the President in his FY 2011 budget request. This is a significant reduction in the deficit, and a significant part of that came from defense. I want to repeat this. The $41 billion cut from the Obama FY11 budget was passed in a CR by the Democratic House and Democratic Senate and signed into law by the Democratic President with only one Republican vote.

We are now on the verge of an expiring CR, and we are considering another version that extends the time to resolve the differences by only 2 weeks.

I take the chairman at his word that neither he nor his leadership is interested in shutting down the operation of the Federal Government by declaring a stalemate in these appropriations deliberations. I will concede that it is disconcerting to me and others on our side to read the Speaker's comments this week that would seem to imply that there is a strategy of passing shorter term appropriation bills, with further and further and further cuts 2 weeks at a time.

We were concerned by his statement that seemed to indicate a plan for a piecemeal approach to future spending cuts. He said, ``If they won't eat the whole loaf at one time, we'll make them eat it one slice at a time.''

I believe we need to set aside these political machinations and get serious about finishing up work on the fiscal year 2011 budget. I will be the first to admit that it is because the Democrats didn't pass our bills last year that we're here working on this. So we have responsibility, too, and that's one of the reasons why we were so eager to engage Chairman Rogers in trying to get this open rule, to work through the amendments, get a unanimous consent agreement--to help move this process forward because I personally feel we have some responsibility here.

And I think it is obvious that we are going to need more than the 2 weeks to get from here to there.

Now, I appreciate the desire of the gentleman from Kentucky to encourage the Members of his caucus to enter into serious negotiations with the other body with the hope of completing work by March 18.

But in a conference--I've been in conferences for 34 years as a Member and 8 years before that as a staffer--nobody gets everything they want. It's a process of compromise. You work out the differences between the two positions.

So I'm proud of the fact that we start with a cut of $41 billion that was enacted by the Democratic Congress in December during a very successful lame duck session.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), who is also the ranking Democratic member on Health and Human Services.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), one of our distinguished Members.

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

I yield myself 1 minute.

You know, as I have said here today, everyone is in favor of doing deficit reduction. We want to do it in a way that won't hurt the economy. What I am concerned about is that if we have this large cut and then the States and local governments cut $125 billion at the same time, we will have about $185 billion of cuts, and that is going to cause a decline in economic growth.

I mean, it is basic economics. The way you get the deficit down is get people back to work, get people jobs, get them back to work. When the economy is as fragile as it is, it's a question of timing.

What the commission members said is don't do it in 2011; do it in 2012 and 2013 and then deal with the entire budget, deal with the entitlements, deal with the taxes, do the whole thing. Do the budget agreement that we all know we have to do, and that's going to take bipartisanship. That's going to take both parties, the President and the Senate and the House.

I yield myself 1 additional minute.

We are going to have to get together and work out an agreement and come out together and support it in order to get this through. This is what we did with Bob Dole and Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan.

So, this can be done, but we have to have everything on the table. Again, I worry about the 2 week Continuing Resolution. I think that's a bit ambitious.

Again, I want to point out to my colleagues that it was the Democratic House and Senate and President who passed the bill, the CR that cut $41 billion from Obama's FY 2011 request, $41 billion.

So I want to make sure you all don't forget that. I am going to try to continue to remind you of that fact.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

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

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished Democratic leader and former Speaker, the gentlelady from California, Nancy Pelosi.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip and former majority leader, who will help correct the record.

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

I yield 2 minutes to the ranking member and former chairman of the Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, the gentleman from Virginia, Jim Moran.

I was just glad to hear the litany of these things that you voted against. Are you still for those Civil War battlefields?

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

I think this has been a very spirited debate in the best traditions of the House. I want to point out a few facts to again correct the Record.

First of all, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act probably brought down the unemployment rate from 12 or 13 percent to 9.5 percent. We would have a 12.5 percent unemployment rate today if it weren't for the American Recovery Act.

The only deficit that has been cut around here was the $41 billion that was done by the Democrats and enacted in December and passed to March 4.

Now, again, we did not get our work done. Mr. Rogers and I are going to get the work done. But again, gentlemen and ladies, it's the economy. You've got to put people back to work. And if the net impact of what you do, the cuts you make are to throw people out of work, to cause the economy to stumble and stop the recovery and increase unemployment, then the deficit will go up.

The only way you get this better is to drive down unemployment, get people working, get businesses producing, get the revenues coming in. That will do it. But what the best economists in this country say is your medicine is not going to cure the patient. It could well harm the patient and cause things to get worse, not better. So that's why some people believe it's a timing issue.

And yet, again, I want you to know, we will work together in these next 2 weeks. We've got to get this thing resolved.

I yield back the balance of my time.