Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 631 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), 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.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this rule, House Resolution 631. The rule provides for consideration of multiple pieces of legislation meant to provide solutions to some of today's most pressing threats and concerns. House Resolution 631 ensures that we'll be able to have a robust debate on important issues facing our Nation's cybersecurity infrastructure while also providing the path forward for student loan legislation that reflects quick action we need to take on this pressing issue.

First, House Resolution 631 gives this House the opportunity to be a leader when it comes to our Nation's cybersecurity needs. The rule also sets up the opportunity for us to vote tomorrow on a measure that addresses our Nation's student loan programs. Without this legislation, Americans with Federal student loans will see their rate double starting in July.

These are issues that cannot wait. Our Nation's security cannot wait. At a time when our workforce is so bleak and President Obama's policies keep digging us deeper and deeper into a financial hole, we cannot wait on finding a solution for those young people with student loan debt who are still trying to find a place in our workforce.

We all know that the Internet has fundamentally changed the way we live our lives day-to-day. I think it's safe to say that even 20 years ago, many of us in this room couldn't have imagined that one day we would live in a world where we could do almost anything we wanted, be it buy groceries, run a business, or talk to a loved one serving our country overseas, through a computer. The Internet has made all this possible.

But for all the ways the Internet has made life, business, and even government, to some extent, faster, more responsive, and more transparent, it has also opened us up to new threats. U.S. companies report an onslaught of cyberintrusions that steal sensitive information. Even our own government has suffered from cyberattacks. This type of rampant Internet theft not only costs American companies valuable information, intellectual property, and research and development work, it also costs American workers their jobs. It's hard to say exactly how much cyberattacks cost our Nation's economy, but they could cost as much as $400 billion a year, according to one report from the Computer Security Institute and the FBI.

Today, the House will begin consideration of a bill that will help protect our Nation from these kinds of threats. H.R. 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, would allow private companies to voluntarily share information with each other and with the government in a sort of public-private Internet security partnership. The bill includes significant safeguards to protect personal and private information. It significantly limits the Federal Government's use of that information that the private companies voluntarily provide, including the government's ability to search data.

It requires that the independent inspector general for the intelligence community audit information shared with the government and report the results to Congress to ensure regular oversight. It also encourages the private sector to make the information it shares with others, including the government, as anonymous as possible.

This is a strongly bipartisan piece of legislation, Mr. Speaker, that was passed out of the Intelligence Committee with an overwhelming vote of 17 1. In the Rules Committee yesterday, we heard testimony from both sides, speaking to the cooperative, bipartisan work that was done in this piece of legislation. I commend the work that the Intelligence Committee did with members on both sides of the aisle, as well as with private sector companies, trade groups, privacy and

civil liberty advocates, and the executive branch. It's because of these efforts that virtually every sector of the economy supports this legislation. It's also why there are more than 100 cosponsors of this legislation, including 11 committee chairmen.

But recognizing that we don't always face one problem at a time, this rule also provides for consideration of a measure to address student loans. Our legislation, the Interest Rate Reduction Act, would prevent federally subsidized student loan interest rates on new loan disbursements from doubling to 6.8 percent from the current 3.4 percent on July 1 of this year. This 1-year measure would cost the government $5.9 billion.

Now, you all probably heard me talk again and again about bringing our Nation back to its core mission. You've also heard me talk about how we need to cut back on the ``nice-to-haves'' and make hard choices of what we will and won't pay for. Back when the previous majority passed their health care takeover in 2010, they paid for it, in part, by taking $9 billion from college financial aid trust funds. Now that they've robbed Peter to pay Paul, they're realizing Peter still needs that money, too. To resolve the problem, the Interest Rate Reduction Act pays for this stopgap measure by taking some of that stolen money back from the ObamaCare slush fund and redirecting it to student financial aid.

Sometimes this House has to multitask, Mr. Speaker. As we face an economy that can't afford to lose any more jobs to cyberattacks and college loan recipients who can't find a job thanks to President Obama's failed policies, that is one of those times. House Resolution 631 provides the House with a way forward on both of these critical measures.

With that, I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the rule, ``yes'' on the underlying pieces of legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry).

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute, if he needs it.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton).

(Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

I do not.

Mr. Speaker, I've been here now 1 year and 4 months, and I'm always amazed at what we hear from the other side. I hear about how this is supposed to be an attack on women's health. You know, it's interesting because that's the position that President Obama's taken. I understand that that's the position that my friends on the other side of the aisle have taken, but it's not true.

You know, yesterday in markup in Energy and Commerce in regards to this pay-for, they talked about a number of issues in regards to this slush fund that HHS has. Now, it's interesting, part of that slush fund comes out to a partly paid for by the U.S. Department Health and Human Services, the Department's Communities Putting Prevention to Work campaign.

It's $100 million. Part of it was in spaying and neutering pets, which I agree with, but I don't see how that is taking money away from women's health. If you go on to HHS' Web site, where they actually chronicle the spending from this slush fund, not one place does it talk about cervical cancer or breast cancer in regards to the dollars spent. So to stand here on this floor and accuse Republicans of being against women and women's health when the facts don't back it up--if you go to HHS' Web site, you will see specifically where the money has been spent. Like I said, in one area it is $100 million. The other area that they've gone after is media campaigns as they relate to soda, fast- foods, and others. That's not women's health.

Mr. Speaker, the Democrats would like you to forget that in 2010, they took over $9 billion away from student financial aid. The same argument that they're making today, they took it away. I wasn't here in 2010, so it's kind of hard to have your cake and eat it, too. When we say robbing from Peter to pay Paul, and now Peter needs the money, those are students that need the money. Those are students that can't afford to pay additional interest on loans that they're already having a hard time paying off because they are trying to find a job.

Mr. Speaker, we've heard so much about cybersecurity today, but remember that the committee started their work on cybersecurity over a year ago in regards to hearings and working in a bipartisan way that produced a bill that was overwhelmingly bipartisan, 17 1. In this Congress, that's pretty difficult to do. But they saw the need based upon their experience within where we stand today as it relates to threats against our infrastructure, those people that actually create jobs, and against our government.

Not only have they worked tirelessly amongst themselves, but they reached out to other stakeholders in a way that I believe has been unprecedented in regards to trying to craft a bill that, while not perfect, is a step in the right direction.

This isn't about government coming in--you heard one gentleman up here talking about how government should tell businesses what to do. Folks, this is America. This is about freedom for businesses. If they don't act upon information, shame on them. It's not about

government takeover of private businesses that tells them how to operate. It is about, though, the ability of government to help formulate the aspect of protecting our cybersecurity. It's all about that. It's about sharing of information. It's about right now the Federal Government is precluded from sharing information to help alert those businesses out there to protect themselves. We know about it, and we can't even tell them.

That was one of the inherent problems we had back in 9/11, the fact that we couldn't talk to each other, that agencies didn't talk and share information. Now we want to set ourselves up for a greater catastrophe, one that could bring this Nation down to its knees or worse.

You heard about regular order or not regular order. We had regular order on the cybersecurity bill, and it's not enough. Sixteen amendments were made in order. The gentleman from Colorado's amendment was made in order. Five privacy-related amendments were made in order, two Republican and three of those bipartisan. Of the total of those 16 amendments made in order, eight were Republican, four were Democrats, and four were bipartisan. Mr. Speaker, I believe in regular order, and I think that was a perfect example of how this House is supposed to work. That was regular order at its best.

We talk about a fair and open process. I want to make sure that we protect the American people; that when you go to bed tonight, your financial information is still going to be secure tomorrow, that you're going to have the ability to protect yourself financially. One of those is to allow businesses to share cyberthreats that are made against them and others, and also for the Federal Government to share when they see a cyberthreat coming that could affect a business today in America.

HHS has discretion on how they spend that slush fund. Remember, that money was stolen from students back in 2010 to provide for their education. It was stolen. Call it what you want, but now it's just righting a wrong. It's about making sure that our students have the ability to get an education and hopefully get a great job.

I also heard my good friend from Colorado mention about how we're going to make a decision as to who's a national security threat. He mentioned the Tea Party in the same word with Communists. I think it's pretty clear that the Tea Party is not a national security threat and communism is. I don't think that takes a whole lot of rocket science.

I yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, I get what you're saying. But at the end of the day when you're trying to say, I guess, a description in regards to that, and you say Communists and then you say Tea Party, I think it's pretty clear. The Tea Party is not a threat to national security. Communism is and has been.

Mr. Speaker, I support this rule and encourage my colleagues to support it as well.

We're talking about two issues here today that have a lot of bipartisan agreement. Our Nation's cybersecurity is just an integral part of our national security as a whole. It's part--not all--but part of our national security as a whole. And we agree something must be done with our Nation's students as it relates to the loan debt that they have. These are issues that I think we all agree on, Democrats and Republicans alike.

I know from some of our previous conversations that my friend, Mr. Polis, is a fan of NPR. So I wanted to let him know this, just in case he didn't. This morning NPR did a story about the fact that China and Russia aren't the only threats to our Nation's cybersecurity anymore. In fact, according to the story today, the newest cybersecurity threat we face today is going to continue and grow, and it's from Iran. Even though Iran may not have as strong a cyberpresence now as Russia and China do, it's continuing to grow. It's growing at the same time as their nuclear program is growing, too. Iran has learned how to manipulate the Internet to shut down protesters in their own country, to hack Web sites that have antigovernment messages, and carry out sophisticated cyberattacks in their own country to identify those dissidents who may disagree with the government. With threats like that growing every day, we need to make sure our networks here at home in America are safe and secure.

This bipartisan--I can't stress this enough--this bipartisan Rogers cybersecurity bill is critical. It's a critical step in ensuring America and our private industry are safe from cyberattacks. We talk about bipartisan a lot in this Chamber. We don't always practice it. This committee not only practiced it, but they reached outside of the committee itself to those that may be supportive and may be opposed, and they tried to work and put forth amendments that would make this a better bill.

That's what it's all about, the amendment process, is to make something better, nor tear it down. So I encourage colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this strongly bipartisan legislation both on cybersecurity and protecting our students and student loans.

As the President begins his taxpayer-funded college tour, which is really more like a reelection tour, he's going to be talking a lot about student loan debt. Well, he can talk all he wants because in this House we're going to act--and we're going to do it in a way that fixes a problem that was a temporary fix for 5 years.

Well, guess what. We're going to fix it again. We're going to make sure that our students have the ability to get a college education and be able to pay it back in a way that they can be successful in the future. We're going to make sure that the ratio of the student loan rates don't double come this July 1.

In Washington-speak, to a lot of people, that's a ways off. But up here, this House, this Congress has kicked cans down the road before to the tune of 20 years when they're looking out and saying, oh, we've got plenty of time, and all of sudden we have other issues facing this country--and now we have one here.

This House is taking action to correct a wrong or a problem that exists today in America, both in cybersecurity and in student loans, and we're going to do it without costing the taxpayers anything by taking money out of the ObamaCare slush fund, which was funded by cuts to student loan programs to begin with, and sending it back to our student loans.

Now remember, this slush fund can be used for anything. As we saw, they used it for a whole bunch of things. As they tried to link us to women's health issues, not one of those were related to that. Not one nickle or dime was spent on those, even though they would like to say it was.

So, Mr. Speaker, I support the rule and the underlying legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 3523.

Madam Chair, I yield myself 4 minutes.

Never a problem have I seen when it comes to our national security, Madam Chair, that we are just not prepared to handle.

In just the last few years, nation-states, like China, have stolen enough intellectual property from just the Fed's contractors that it would be equivalent to 50 times the print collection of the Library of Congress. We have nation-states that are literally stealing jobs and our future. We also have countries that are engaged in activities and have capabilities that have the ability to break networks, computer networks, which means you can't just reboot. It means your system is literally broken. Those kinds of disruptions can be catastrophic when you think about the financial sector or the energy sector or our command and control elements for all of our national security apparatus.

This is as serious a problem as I have seen. So, last year, I and my partner--Dutch Ruppersberger, the vice chairman and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee--agreed that this was a significant enough problem to the future prosperity of America that we'd better do something about it.

We needed to stop the Chinese Government from stealing our stuff. We needed to stop the Russians from what they're doing to our networks and to people's personal information, data, and resources. We needed to prepare for countries like Iran and North Korea so that they don't do something catastrophic to our networks here in America and cause real harm to real people.

So, in a bipartisan way, we set out to do something very, very, very narrow. When the government spies overseas, it collects malware-- viruses, software that is dangerous to our computers. That means they can either steal our stuff--the personal information off of your computer--or they can steal the secrets that make your business viable, the kinds of secrets that give people jobs.

So wouldn't it be great if we could take that source code, that software and share it with the private sector so that they could put it on their private systems, like they do every single day to try to protect networks, and have that added advantage of that extra coverage from that malicious source code? The good news is this happens every day. If you have Norton or McAfee or Symantec or any other antivirus protection on your computer, it has patches of information that they know is really bad stuff, and every time you turn your computer on, it updates and tries to protect your computer, your personal information.

That's all this is. It is adding to that patchwork some zeroes and some ones that we know is malicious code that is either going to steal your information or break your computer or something worse. That's all this bill is. It draws a very fine line between the government and the private sector. It is all voluntary. There are no new mandates. There is no government surveillance--none, not any--in this bill. It just says, if we know we have this source code, shouldn't we be obligated to give it so it doesn't do something bad to the companies and individuals in America. That's all this bill does.

We have worked collaboratively with hundreds of companies, with privacy groups, with civil libertarians. We have worked with government folks. We have had hundreds and hundreds of meetings for over a year. We have kept this bill open in an unprecedented transparent way to try to meet the needs of privacy concerns, civil libertarian concerns, civil liberties concerns. We wanted to make sure that, with this bill, people understood exactly what we were trying to do, how simple it is, and how crucial it is to the future defense of this great Nation.

Without our ideas, without our innovation that countries like China are stealing every single day, we will cease to be a great Nation. They are slowly and silently and quickly stealing the value and prosperity of America.

I yield myself an additional 1 minute.

One credit card company said that they get attacked for your personal information 300,000 times a day--one company. We have a company that can directly show you stolen intellectual property. This one particular company estimated 20,000 manufacturing jobs that they lost for Americans, which were good-paying jobs, because countries like China stole their intellectual property and illegally competed against them in the marketplace.

This is as bad a problem, Madam Chair, as I have seen. I think you'll hear throughout the day this has been a responsible debate and that it has been a responsible negotiation to get to privacy concerns and our ability to protect your information on your computer through this series of zeroes and ones, the binary code on our computers.

Again, I want to thank my ranking member for his partnership and his work. He has been exceptional to work with on something on which we both agree and on which we agreed, in a bipartisan fashion, was a danger to the future prosperity of America.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from North Carolina (Mrs. Myrick) who is on the Intelligence Committee and has a tremendous expertise on counterterrorism issues.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kinzinger).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stivers).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Heck).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Bono Mack).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Nunes).

I yield the gentleman from California an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry).

I do.

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of Oregon (Mr. Walden).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Lots of misinformation about this bill today. I respect the gentleman from Georgia greatly for his efforts. I heard the gentleman from Texas talk about searches and seizures. And this is the good news: there are none of those things in this bill. None.

You know, if I knew that your house was to be robbed, I would expect that if the police knew, that they'd pick up the phone and call you and say, you are going to be robbed. Take precaution. We'll be their shortly.

This bill just says, if we have this nasty source code, these zeroes and ones, I want to give it to you so you can protect your systems. That's it. No monitoring, no content, no surveillance, nothing. That's not what this bill is about.

I understand the passion about it. That's why we've taken a year to forge this bipartisan effort to get where we believe privacy is protected. It is paramount that we do that, that our civil liberties are protected. It is paramount that we do that.

But we at least take down the hurdle to share nasty source code or software that's flying through the Internet, that's developed, and it's very sophisticated, by the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians and other groups and non-nation-state actors that are going to steal your personal information.

That's all this is. It's sharing bad source code so you can put it on your system so you don't get infected. End of story.

I wish people would read the bill, all of it, every word of it. I think you'll find the carefully crafted language to make sure that our rights are protected, that the Fourth Amendment is protected.

And by the way, just like the Army, the Navy, the Marines, your FBI is protecting you. That's what this bill allows it to do, simply that.

So, as I said, I respect greatly the gentleman from Georgia. There's a lot of atrocities I think he lived through in his life that no one should have to live through. We took those things into consideration when we wrote this bill, and that's why we've got so much support and so much technical company support, companies like Facebook and Microsoft and all of those groups.

So I hope people read the bill and support the bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

I do want to thank the ranking member and both staffs from both committees who have been tireless in this effort to get it right and to find that right place where we could all feel comfortable.

The amendments that are following here are months of negotiation and work with many organizations--privacy groups. We have worked language

with the Center for Democracy and Technology, and they just the other day said they applauded our progress on where we're going with privacy and civil liberties. So we have included a lot of folks.

It has been a long road. It has been the most open and transparent bill that, I think, I've ever worked on here. We kept it open to the very end to make sure that we could find the language that clarified our intent to protect privacy, to protect civil liberties, and to just be able to share dangerous information with victims. That's all this bill is. The whopping 13 pages it is does only that. So I appreciate the comments today. I look forward to the amendment debate.

Again, Mr. Ruppersberger, it has been a joy to work with you on this particular issue.

As an old Army officer once told me, once you find a problem, you are morally obligated to do something about it. We set about it a year ago to make America safe and to protect your network at home from people stealing it, breaking it, and doing something worse.

So, Madam Chair, I look forward to the debate on the amendments, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I want to first compliment Mr. Langevin for working with us on the cybersecurity bill. He has been an instrumental force in pushing this cybersecurity issue to the front and in getting the language that we have that finds that right balance.

My concern with this, which is why I thought, at least, the President's advisers who were recommending to him that he veto the bill were misguided, is that now we have done something in this bill that is fairly unique. It is all voluntary, and we have separated the government and the private sector. The government is not going to be involved in private sector networks, and they're not going to be involved in the government networks. Perfect. That's exactly the balance we found.

With this, it crosses both of those, and it gets us to a place that I think we need to have a lot more discussion on, and you can see by the level of debate just on this issue how people are really nervous about the Federal Government getting into their business.

This, I'm afraid, opens it up to that. Here's the good news. We believe this is already covered in the bill as far as the sharing component, and you replace the word ``utility'' with something that isn't defined, ``critical infrastructure, owners and operators.'' We're not sure what that is, and in some cases you could extrapolate that to be even the local police, who argue they're part of the national security infrastructure. Does that mean local police are going to get very sensitive foreign cyberintelligence information? And why would they have it? We don't know the answers to those questions, and that's why we're having such a hard time with this amendment.

I would argue that there does need to be a Homeland Security bill, and it really shouldn't be done in the Intelligence Committee. It should be done in the Homeland Security Committee.

So I would love to work with Mr. Langevin as the process works its way through the Homeland Security Committee and believe that that should be fully debated.

Remember, when you start getting regulation into the private sector, including private networks, that, I argue, is troublesome and very worrisome to me, and something I would have a hard time supporting.

So, I look forward to working with the gentleman. I would have to oppose this amendment, but I want to thank you for all your work on the cyberissue and, clearly, this cyber information-sharing bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

How much time do I have remaining?

I would just remind the gentleman that the definition does not go back anywhere in this bill to that. It leaves it open, and when you start, again, crossing that valley between the government and the private sector, it causes serious issues--as you can see, the people who are very concerned that the government is going to get into regulating anything on the Internet.

I would say this is no pride of authorship. I don't know if Mr. Ruppersberger and I could have any more authors participate in our bill than we have.

The problem here is very real and very substantive. And that's why I think both the gentlemen, who have as much passion and care and commitment to this issue as I've seen, need to work that issue on the Homeland Security Committee so you can do it in a way that won't rise to the level of the objections that we have seen when just the suggestion of regulating outside of the purview of national security comes into discussion.

That's why I would hope the gentleman would exercise extreme caution when taking that walk. It is perilous for the government to get into regulating the Internet, and I oppose that completely. That's why we have these problems, I think, arise from it. I think, if these are issues that they can get over, that this should have substantive debate. Remember, this very narrow bill took 1 year--1 year--of work and negotiation and discussions to get it to where we are today.

So, I would encourage that maybe more thought ought to be put in it, and I would look forward to working with both gentleman as they introduce and work their bills through the Homeland Security Committee, as I think would be appropriate.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I want to thank Mr. Pompeo for working with us. This was an amendment negotiated with Mr. Ruppersberger and myself and Mr. Pompeo to clearly define the intention of the bill, and I think it offers protections. I think we should all strongly support Mr. Pompeo's amendment.

I have an amendment at the desk, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, I strongly encourage the support of this amendment. It's a simple amendment we negotiated. It is clarifying language again on FOIA.

With that, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa).

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

Thank you, Mr. Quayle.

Again, this is an amendment worked out with Mr. Ruppersberger, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Quayle, and myself. Ms. Eshoo is also on the amendment.

This is in consultation with all of the privacy groups and the civil liberty groups. We wanted to make sure that the intent matched the language. And we think this is a limiting amendment on what it can be used for, which is very narrow, is very specific; and we think this enhances already good privacy protections in the bill, and I strongly support it and would encourage the House to strongly support the bipartisan amendment.

Madam Chair, I just want to rise in strong support of this amendment. I appreciate Mr. Mulvaney's working with the committee.

This is a limiting amendment, and I think it, again, is in response to making sure that the intent of the bill meets the language of the bill, and this is well done to continue to protect privacy and civil liberties of all Americans and still allow for the government to share malicious source code with the private sector.

I want to thank the gentleman from Arizona for working with us. This, again, was a negotiated amendment. The gentleman approached us with concerns to make sure that the IG report adequately reflected and allowed us to perform the adequate oversight. This amendment does that. I appreciate his work and effort, and I think this strengthens the bill and continues to provide the oversight and protection of civil liberties and privacy for all Americans.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the rule and the underlying bills: H.R. 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, and H.R. 4628, the Interest Rate Reduction Act.

Both bills are being brought to the House under a hyperpartisan, closed process that limits debate and discussion that can improve the legislation and allow the House to work its will. Many of the meaningful amendments that would have protected privacy under CISPA were not allowed under this rule, and under the Interest Rate Reduction Act, no amendments were allowed.

I want to address both of the bills that are contained in this underlying rule. First, the Interest Rate Reduction Act. This is a bill of rather mysterious origin that appeared in the Rules Committee yesterday mere hours after having been introduced by its lead sponsor, Mrs. Biggert of Illinois. No regular order was followed for this bill. This bill received no hearings and no markups by the committee of jurisdiction, and within hours of its being introduced, it was brought immediately to the Rules Committee with direction to go to the floor of the House of Representatives without a single member of either party having any opportunity to amend the bill and with only 1 hour of debate.

What is new about this cliff with regard to student loan rates? This was a well-known fact with regard to the expiration date that, in fact, the Stafford student loan interest rate would increase from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. I've joined my colleague, Mr. Courtney, who will later address these issues as a sponsor of his bill that would address extending the lower student loan rate, and yet, there had been no interest from the committee chair or Republicans with regard to this issue until yesterday afternoon, when a new bill, without the benefit of a markup, was presented in committee and to the Rules Committee, going completely around the committee of jurisdiction.

Look, there is a legitimate issue here. Middle class families are having a tougher and tougher time affording college for their kids at the same time that a college education is more necessary than ever for young people to have the skills they need to compete in the global economy. It's a serious issue that deserves serious treatment. There's a lot of cost drivers with regard to education. Some have commented about a higher education bubble that has led to higher and higher tuition rates. Certainly, how the State and Federal share of higher education funding is targeted and the manner in which it's spent absolutely affect tuition rates and whether there's a bubble.

But instead of a thoughtful approach, an approach that looked at drivers of cost, an approach that looked at outcomes from higher education, and an approach that looked at employment levels pre- and post-higher education, a bill was immediately created and brought to the floor within a day. Again, there is technically a 3-day rule that the majority has said that they would follow. They would give Members of this body on both sides 3 days to consider legislation, but they calculate 3 days in a very funny way. There were, as far as I know, no Members of this body who saw that particular student loan bill before yesterday afternoon. Here we are today on the rule, with final passage vote--without any opportunity to amend--expected to occur midday tomorrow.

By most calculations, it sounds like, well, less than 3 days. They had maybe 6 hours, 7 hours yesterday, 24 today, and maybe 10 tomorrow. It seems like, in fact, less than 48 hours, less than 2 days. But, nevertheless, it's yet another example of only governing out of a sense of crisis, and with regard to this issue one in which we do have time, fundamentally, to follow regular order, and even more importantly, we did have time. This is not an issue that appeared from nowhere. Why has the chair of the committee of jurisdiction not been working on this issue for weeks or months? While many of us on our side, including myself, appreciate the sudden interest in helping middle class families afford college, it would be good to do so in a more thoughtful manner that truly addresses the cost drivers of education.

I also take issue with the other underlying bill, the initial bill that we thought would be debated under this rule before this other mysterious bill appeared out of nowhere and came to the Rules Committee. This was a bill that did follow regular order in the Intelligence Committee, and while a number of amendments that are meaningful are included in this rule, several of the most meaningful amendments that truly would have addressed the privacy concerns with regard to CISPA are not allowed under this rule.

CISPA asks Americans, once again, to make a false choice between security and liberty. Now, we all agree, on both sides of the aisle, Americans in general, that cybersecurity is an important issue that needs to be addressed. That's why it's critical that we get information-sharing correct. This bill in its current form before us is an unprecedented, sweeping piece of legislation that would waive every single privacy law ever enacted in the name of cybersecurity. It would even waive the terms of service and would supersede the terms of service that most American consumers, American people, believe they are entering into in a contract with a provider of a Web site or service of their choice. That information, without any safeguards, would be shared with the government.

As a former tech entrepreneur myself, I know very well how important cybersecurity is. Frankly, it's something that I've never thought we could rely on the government to do for us, and I think a lot of tech companies feel the same way. But that doesn't mean that in the effort for expediency we should give up our privacy rights and liabilities to protect online networks.

While I appreciate the efforts the sponsors of the bill have made to improve the bill slightly in the direction that people can have more comfort with, they haven't gone nearly far enough to ensure that customers' private information remains just that, private. There's nothing in this bill to stop companies from sharing their private information with every branch of the government, including secret, unaccountable branches, including the military. And allowing the military and the NSA to spy on American citizens on American soil goes against

every principle that this Nation stands for.

A lot has been made of saying, oh, it's optional. Well, it may be optional for the corporations to share information, but is it optional for their users, whose information they have, who entered a specific terms of service agreement, to have their information shared without their consent? In many cases, under a terms of service agreement, the users, in fact, may be the owners of the information. The company that it's hosted on may, in fact, merely be a host or provider. But, again, outside of any legal process, this gives that company, whether it's hosting or providing, the ability to share wholesale information that can include health records, that can include firearm registration information, that can include credit card information, that can include account information, and that can include political information, with secret government authorities.

Now, we have government authorities that have the responsibility and are charged with keeping America safe on American soil, namely, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. They've worked hard over decades to strike a fine balance between protecting our liberties and security. The military and the NSA are unaccustomed to that balance. That's why even within the military many from DOD have expressed opposition to this bill. Eric Rosenbach, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy within DOD, said that a civilian agency, and not an agency within DOD, should be responsible for securing the domestic civilian Internet.

According to Mr. Rosenbach:

It's almost certainly not the right approach for the United

States of America to have a foreign intelligence focus on

domestic networks, doing something that throughout history

has been a domestic function.

So, not only will the military and the NSA be able to receive private information if CISPA passes, but they'll be able to use it for almost any justification. Now, while ostensibly a cybersecurity bill, CISPA allows information-sharing ``for the protection of national security,'' a broad and undefined category that can include practically everything under the sun. Is a Tea Party activist a threat to national security? Is a Communist activist a threat to national security? The danger that this can be used for political oppression and to stifle political speech is very real under this bill.

In addition, because of the immunity clauses of this bill, there's no incentive at all for companies to withhold their customers' sensitive private information. Companies are exempted from any liability for violating their own terms of service and sharing information with secret government agencies. In fact, given the high compliance cost for this sort of sharing, CISPA actually incentivizes companies to dump all of their information on the government so they can take advantage of this blanket immunity that this bill includes.

This legislation also has glaring omissions when it comes to the Nation's future capacity to be competent in cybersecurity. The bill lacks adequate support and direction for paths that can actually improve the cybersecurity of our Nation: Training in the pipeline for cybersecurity experts, including STEM programs in our K 12 schools in computer science; embedding cybersecurity in computer science; and providing scholarships and ways that students can attain the highest levels and enter public service to support the cybersecurity of the Nation.

Mr. Speaker, there should be an open rule for both of the underlying bills to give Members of this House across the ideological spectrum the opportunity to address the deficiencies in both these bills.

Now, we've heard from supporters of the cybersecurity bill that privacy concerns are overblown. ``Trust us,'' they've said. Republicans say: Trust Big Government bureaucrats. Trust anonymous intelligence officers to use that information responsibly.

Well, under this bill, we have no choice but to trust them, because the bill imposes no serious limitation on what corporations or secret government agencies can do with our private information.

It's outrageous to have a closed rule on the student loan interest bill--a bill that no Member of this body, Democrat or Republican, has had any opportunity to amend. And it is also outrageous to not allow a full discussion of the thoughtful amendments brought forth by Members of both parties that would remedy some of the very severe deficiencies in the cybersecurity bill.

I, therefore, cannot support this rule or these flawed bills, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, it's my honor to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to provide that, immediately after the House adopts this rule, we will bring up H.R. 4816, Mr. Tierney's bill, to prevent the doubling of student loan interest rates, fully paid for and then some, reducing the deficit by $7 billion by repealing tax giveaways for big oil companies.

To discuss our student loan bill, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California, the ranking member of the Education and the Workforce Committee, Mr. Miller.

(Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

It is my honor to yield 1 minute to my colleague, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Peters).

I would like to inquire of the gentleman from Florida if he has or is expecting any additional speakers.

It is my honor to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democratic leader.

I yield myself the remainder of the time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment of Mr. Tierney's bill into the record along with extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Tierney's bill will not only provide the House, as was passionately argued by the leader, Ms. Pelosi, and Mr. Tierney, the opportunity to decide between women's health or special tax breaks for oil and gas companies, but will also reduce the deficit by $7 billion. The time of record deficits when restoring the fiscal integrity of our Nation is critical to our competitiveness in job creation. I hope that this House acts boldly by defeating the previous question and allowing us to vote on reducing the deficit by $7 billion.

With regard to CISPA, it simply strikes the wrong balance between security and liberty. Information-sharing is important. I think a bipartisan consensus can be reached. And while I appreciate the spirit with which CISPA was offered and members of both parties worked on it, the bill is so far from perfect, we need to continue to work on it and defeat this rule and allow more amendments.

Any American who values his or her privacy should be concerned by the implications of this bill trusting Big Government and secret agencies with our most personal information. The reality is that CISPA represents a massive government overreach in the name of security. We need accountability and we need oversight. We can't have secretive agencies accountable to no one with vast powers over American citizens on our soil.

For these reasons, I oppose the underlying pieces of legislation. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule and the previous question.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

The point being made is that it depends on one's political perspective where one sees a national security threat. Some see it on the left, some see it on the right. I don't trust Big Government decisionmakers to decide who is and isn't a threat to security.

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

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

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

First of all, I do want to thank the chairman for working with us in a bipartisan way to protect our country from this very serious threat of cyberattacks.

As the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, people often ask me what keeps me up at night. I tell them: weapons of mass destruction entering the country undetected and also a catastrophic cyberattack shutting down our water supply, power grid or banking systems; and those are just a few of the many areas that could be attacked and shut down.

Every day, U.S. Web sites and our Nation's networks are threatened by foreign governments like China, Iran, Russia, and other groups trying to steal our money and valuable trade secrets. According to the National Counterterrorism Executive, the number one thing cyberthieves are trying to steal is information and communication technology, which form the backbone of nearly every other technology. In fact, according to the United States Cyber Command, $300 billion worth of trade secrets are stolen every year. This proves we need to make real changes to how we protect our cybersystems.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act helps the private sector protect itself and its clients from these attackers and data thieves. The intelligence community has the ability to detect these cyberthreats, these malicious codes and viruses, before they are able to attack our networks; but right now, Federal law prohibits the intelligence community from sharing the classified cyberthreat with the companies that will protect us, that control the network--the AT&Ts, the Verizons, the Comcasts, those groups. We have the ability to give them the information to protect us; yet we have to pass a law to do that, and that's why we are here today.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act will clearly do that if we pass the bill. It allows the intelligence community to share the codes and signatures associated with malware and viruses and the means to counter the bad stuff with the companies. These companies keep a lookout for these viruses and work to stop them before they are able to attack their system.

Companies then voluntarily give information about the cyberattack back to the government, machine code consisting of strings of zeroes and ones that uniquely identifies the malware. Cyberanalysts will use this information to better understand the attack and try to figure out who launched it and where it came from.

This information will be used to protect against similar attacks in the future.

Now, the Democrats worked hard to protect privacy and civil liberties in this bill throughout the entire process. We fought for additional privacy protections in the original bill that was marked up in committee. In the version we will vote on tomorrow morning, additional changes are also included in the amendments.

Privacy and civil liberty groups and the White House all agree we made important positive changes that went a long way to improve the initial bill that came out of committee. We severely limit what information can be shared with the government and how it can be used.

It is also important to note the entire process is completely voluntary and provides industry the flexibility they need to deal with business realities.

The bill also requires an annual report from the inspector general of the intelligence community to ensure none of the information provided to the government is mishandled or is misused. This is a very important privacy issue.

The review will include annual recommendations to improve the protection of privacy and civil liberties. That review will be done again by the inspector general.

We also made it clear this legislation grants no new authority to the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, or the intelligence community. At the urging of the White House and others, we included the Department of Homeland Security in the process so that there is not even a perception that our intelligence agencies or military will be in control of this. The Homeland Security Department will be coordinating as a civil body.

In addition, companies that act in good faith to protect systems and networks can receive liability protection. This is what our bill does.

Now, what does it not do? The bill does not allow the government to order companies to turn over private email or other personal information. This is not surveillance. The bill does not allow the government to monitor private networks, read private email, censor, or shut down any Web site.

We have a broad coalition of support with 100 cosponsors, close to 30 companies and industry groups, and dozens of trade organizations like Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, a lot of different groups that are supporting this bill.

This is not a perfect bill, but the threat is great. I believe this legislation is critical for our national security and yet deals with the issue of privacy. We can do better in privacy, and we hope to get the bill to the Senate, where there will be a lot more negotiation. Congress must act now, and I encourage my colleagues to vote for this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of Utah (Mr. Boswell) who formerly served on the Intelligence Committee.

I yield the gentleman an additional 10 seconds.

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of New Jersey, Mr. Rush Holt, who was formally on the Intelligence Committee.

I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of California, Mr. Adam Schiff, who is also the ranking member on the Technical and Tactical Intelligence Committee.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of Mississippi, Mr. Bennie Thompson, who is also the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee.

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague and friend from the State of Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), who is also a member of our Intelligence Committee and has worked very hard with the chairman and myself on the issue of cybersecurity. I consider him one of our experts on the Hill in the area of cybersecurity.

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

I yield the gentleman from Rhode Island 30 additional seconds.

I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of Georgia (Mr. Johnson).

Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of Oklahoma (Mr. Boren), who is also a member of the Intelligence Committee. He has worked very closely with me and the chairman to bring this bill to the floor today, and we thank him for that.

Madam Chair, may I ask how much time we have on both sides?

Madam Chair, I have no more speakers, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First thing, there were some comments that I would like to respond to.

First thing, this bill does not allow the wholesale violation of privacy rights. This bill is extremely important to our national security, but also important to our citizens of this great country, our privacy rights, and civil liberties.

The chairman and I have taken this very seriously, as have the members of our caucus. We know this is not a perfect bill--there will probably be additional changes. We will have more debate later on this afternoon.

Now, some of the things I want to address. During the drafting of this legislation we put forward a wide range of privacy protections. We worked for the last year with the White House, privacy groups, and business groups to come to a coalition to make sure that we get this bill right.

First, the bill severely limits what kind of information can be shared with the government. Only information directly pertaining to the threat can be shared, which is mostly formulas, X's and O's of the virus code. It's almost something that the companies deal with now in dealing with spam.

Second, the bill encourages companies to voluntarily strip out personal information that may be associated with these zeroes and ones. Occasionally, that does occur, and we have to deal with that, and we'll continue to deal with that issue.

There also are strong use limitations on the data. This information must be used for cybersecurity purposes or the protection of national security. The information cannot be used for regulatory purposes. For example, if there's evidence of tax evasion, that information cannot be used in a criminal proceeding, only in national security, only in the areas of life and limb, or for anything involving juvenile crimes.

The bill prohibits the government from requiring the companies to give information to the government in exchange for receiving the cyberthreat intelligence. That means that when we pass the information of the attacks--it's called the secret sauce--to the providers, it's only voluntarily. The government can't put any restrictions on that whatsoever. That really means that this is not surveillance at all.

The bill does not allow the government to order you to turn over private email or other personal information. This is not, again, surveillance.

The bill does not allow the government to monitor private networks, read private emails, censor or shut down any Web site. This is not

Madam Chair, I have a speaker on the way.

Mr. Rogers, do you have any more speakers?

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of Georgia, Mr. John Lewis, one of the most respected Members of our Congress.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In closing, I want to say again that the purpose of this bill, as the chairman just said, is very basic and simple. We want to protect our citizens from attacks. We are being attacked as we speak right now. Just last year, it was estimated we lost $300 billion worth of trade secrets. We even know that one country is attacking a fertilizer company to find out how we make it better than they do. This is putting our businesses in jeopardy and jobs in jeopardy, and we know we sure need jobs.

More importantly, those of us who work in this field know how serious these threats are. The head of our FBI, whose responsibility it is to provide our domestic national security, has said that one of the most serious threats, if not a bigger threat, in terrorism would be a catastrophic cyberattack. We've already talked today about what that would be. We have Secretary Napolitano, the Director of Homeland Security, who has said the same thing: that it is one of the most serious issues our country has to deal with. It's unfortunate, but most of our citizens aren't aware of how serious this threat is.

So we've attempted to allow our intelligence community, which is one of the best in the world, to have the ability to see these threats coming in from other countries or from terrorist groups and to be able right now to give this information over to the private sector to protect us, you, me, our businesses. That's what this bill does. Nothing more. What we're attempting to do is to move the bill and get the bill to the Senate.

We can always do better in the area of privacy and civil liberties, and we're going to continue to do that. We can always do better in the area of homeland security and go further to protect those institutions and our grid systems and that type of thing; but this is the start, because the one thing that now is stopping our country and is stopping us from protecting our citizens is this Congress.

This Congress needs to pass this bill now. We need to move forward. We need to get it to the Senate. We need to start working with the Senate. Then hopefully we'll deal and work very closely with the White House and find a bill so that we can protect our citizens and also protect our civil liberties and privacy.

I also understand Mr. Lewis. We all respect him and what he has gone through. As a former prosecutor and lawyer who has worked on many search and seizure warrants and that type of thing, I can tell you this: there are no violations in this bill at all. That is not what this bill is about. If it were, I wouldn't be in favor of it.

I thank you, Mr. Rogers, for your cooperation and for working with us in this bipartisan manner. It is a very serious issue.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I claim time in opposition to the amendment; however, I do not oppose the amendment.

I agree with Mr. Issa's comments. This is a joint amendment of Mr. Rogers and me. The amendment would make it clear that while FOIA exemption protects information obtained under the bill, regulatory information required by other authorities remains subject to FOIA requests.

The chairman and I agree the law should not create a broad change. The type of information that is available under the Freedom of Information Act, we have a responsibility to protect classified information from disclosure, but we also understand the need to keep information open to the public. The amendment makes clear that information available under other authorities remains subject to FOIA, and I urge all Members to support this bipartisan amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from Utah.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

I rise to claim time in opposition, but I do not oppose the amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson). He is on the Intelligence Committee and also a sponsor of this amendment.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment; although I do not oppose the amendment.

I also support this amendment. It is very important. It's another example of what we're attempting to do to protect the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens but yet have a bill that we clearly need to protect them from a national security perspective.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the majority leader, the gentleman

from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule for the week to come.

I thank the gentleman for his information.

The gentleman, in his comments, indicates that we might go to conference on the surface transportation bill. As the gentleman knows, the Senate surface transportation bill passed overwhelmingly and with a very substantial bipartisan vote and a vote led by Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma. There were 22 Republican Senators. About half of the Republican Senators voted for it, and so it passed overwhelmingly.

I am wondering, given the timeframe in which we are dealing, whether or not the gentleman feels comfortable with some assurance that we are going to move to go to conference so that we can get a conference under way. I know the majority indicated it wanted a bill so that it could, in fact, go to conference. I have had discussions with, I think, you but I know Mr. Boehner, the Speaker, and Mr. McCarthy, that that was the intent to go to conference.

What would preclude us, I suppose would be the better way to phrase the question, from having a motion to go to conference next week? As the gentleman knows, we are going to be out the week following so that we will not be back until May, into May; and to the extent that we delay going to conference, we are going to delay the resolution of what I think is a very, very important bill. I know the gentleman does as well. We believe this is a real job creator.

As you know, Mr. LaHood is the Secretary of Transportation, your former colleague on your side of the aisle. He has made it very clear that this is a very substantial jobs bill. To the extent that we could move quickly, I think it would be in the best interests of our country, of infrastructure investment, and the creation of jobs.

I yield to my friend.

I thank the gentleman.

And in light of the fact that he looks forward to my help, I want to tell him that if he brings a motion to go to conference next week, I will bring the overwhelming majority of my caucus to a vote with that motion to go to conference so that we can get that done. I will be glad to help in that respect.

Will that help him?

I didn't know whether those votes would help you get the job done that I think needs to be done. I don't say that facetiously. I think we want to go to conference. I have been told you want to go to conference, and I would hope we could move forward on that. As a matter of fact, the chairman of your committee, Representative Mica, said yesterday we should go to conference immediately, and we would be very interested in helping you towards that process.

Mr. Leader, the Appropriations Committee has started to mark up its bills and has dealt with the reconciliation instructions. My understanding is the reconciliation instructions, the result of those instructions will be coming to the floor probably the first month, the month of May.

Is that accurate?

With respect to the appropriations bills, much was made of the fact that you wanted to bring appropriations bills to the floor one at a time and under open rules. I think that's a good practice. Frankly, I would have liked to have done that when we were in charge, and we didn't get that done. I said then that I didn't think it was good for the institution for the consideration of appropriation bills, and you, I think, rightfully criticized us for that--not you, personally, but the Republican side of the aisle.

Is it your intention to bring the appropriations bills to the floor singly, individually, with an open rule as Speaker Boehner indicated would be the case, and, if so, when will that occur?

I yield to my friend.

I thank the gentleman for his comments.

I make the additional observation that we passed a budget. Many of us voted against that budget, as you know, that passed. We voted for our alternative. But the American people, I think, have an interest and, frankly, a right to know what the ramifications of that budget that was passed are; and obviously they will find that out as the appropriation bills move forward, are considered on this floor, open to debate and open to amendment. That will educate the American people on what the consequences are of passing budget A over budget B, your budget, our budget, or an alternative budget.

It's really in the appropriations bill. The budget doesn't really do anything, as we all know, other than set a 302(a) allocation. That is the amount of discretionary dollars that can be applied in the appropriations process. What that means is that the only thing it does is set that limit and does not apportion resources to particular objectives in the appropriations bill or, for that matter, in the Ways and Means Committee bill in terms of actions that might occur with reference to taxes and revenues.

So I say to my friend that the importance of bringing the appropriation bills to the floor is to give that transparency to the American public so they can make a judgment on which priorities they support. We think it's going to be very difficult, frankly, to bring appropriation bills to the floor under the constraints that have been imposed. And we regret, as the gentleman knows, very much that we did not follow the agreement that was reached when we precluded the country's going into default. We agreed on a figure of $1.048 trillion to be the figure that the Appropriations Committee would mark to.

I don't know whether the gentleman had an opportunity to see, but 12 out of the 14 Senators on the Appropriations Committee voted to honor the agreement that was reached today, including Senator McConnell. Regrettably, we did not do that in the House. We reduced that figure very substantially, and we also shifted some of the resources from one object--nondefense to defense--which cuts even further the nondefense portion of the budget by about $8 billion.

So I ask the gentleman, in that context, is the committee going to mark to the House-passed budget, which we have deemed adopted? Notwithstanding the fact it has not been adopted, is the House going to mark to those figures, and will it mark to those figures knowing full well what dollars are left for bills that are to follow? In other words, are you going to front-load and make those appropriation bills sweeter? That will then not leave resources for bills that will come after.

I know the gentleman doesn't like to relitigate history, but when he says spending got out of control over the last two decades, I may agree with him on the last decade we went deeply into debt, but certainly the decade preceding that my friend surely remembers that we ran 4 years of surplus and a net surplus over 8 years during the Clinton administration. A $62.9 billion net surplus after 8 years. And we had 4 years of surplus. Two of those were actual surpluses--and we counted Social Security's revenues, which obviously were borrowed money from the Social Security trust fund. So we swapped Social Security money for IOUs. But 2 of those years of actual balance.

So I would agree with him on the last decade, but I would not agree with him on the decade before that because, frankly, working from both sides of the aisle and an exploding economy, we created those deficits essentially together.

I want to say to my friend that in that context, yes, the American people want to see us use their money wisely. We all agree on that. They need to know how we intend to use their money. And if they don't have appropriation bills on the floor--because the gentleman talks about the fact that the Senate hasn't passed a budget in a thousand days. It has had no effect, none, zero on what we are doing. Why? Because all the budget does, as the gentleman well knows, is not allocate money. It sets a ceiling--as the gentleman likes, apparently, ceilings and not agreements--a ceiling on what discretionary spending will be. Other than that, it doesn't do anything. Therefore, it sets forth a plan.

But the key is going to be how you carry out that plan and let the American people know how you're going to carry it out. We do that in appropriation bills and the Ways and Means tax bills.

Does the gentleman have an idea of when a Ways and Means tax bill carrying out the budget might come to the floor?

We passed--if I can go to another subject briefly--we passed a bill today which the gentleman was a principle advocate of which cost $46 billion in terms of revenues in effect forgone, if you will, that otherwise were being expected, if that bill passes. Does the gentleman believe that if that bill passes and is signed by the President, that in light of the fact it's a 1-year bill, does the gentleman believe that it will be only 1 year or does the gentleman intend, if his party happens to be in charge in the next Congress, to see that lapse and that tax increased again on small businesses? What is the gentleman's thought on that? I ask him that question, if I might, in light of The Wall Street Journal's observation today that certainly this did not give small businesses much certainty.

I thank the gentleman, and he is correct, we do have a very substantial difference of opinion. The indication is this is a start. Frankly, we were told it was a start in 2001. We

were told it was a start in 2003 when we cut taxes very substantially. Unfortunately, we didn't cut revenues very substantially. And when you don't cut revenues after you cut taxes, what happens is you have deficit. And that's why we went from a $5.6 trillion projected surplus after the Clinton administration, projected by the Bush administration, to an $11 trillion deficit at the end of the Bush administration-- because we cut revenues and we increased spending.

We were not in charge for 75 percent of that time. In fact, we weren't in charge of ultimately passing legislation any of that time because the President, of course, had an 8-year term. So I say to my friend, we dug another $46 billion hole.

My belief is that your side of the aisle will not want to reinstate that tax next year no matter what the economy is doing, no matter how good the economy is. That's my suspicion. But it's based upon 30 years of experience, I tell my friend. And if that's the case, then we're not talking about $46 billion, we're talking about a half trillion dollars, which is $46 billion times 10 with escalation for inflation, so about a half-a-trillion-dollar additional hole in the deficit unless the gentleman is prepared to say, look, if the economy recovers, we're going to reinstate that revenue.

The difference between us is you want to talk about tax increases, and I want to talk about paying our bills. And I believe that if we don't want to buy, then we don't have to tax. But if we buy, we have a moral responsibility to have the courage to ask people to pay for it.

Very frankly, I think you've taken the discipline out of the system. I think supply-side economics takes the discipline out of the system. What supply-side economics does is, we can cut revenues but don't have to cut spending because magically we're going to get more revenues.

Very frankly, Mr. Greenspan thought for a while that that worked. He said 3 years ago, no, he was wrong. I think he was right the second time. He was demonstrably, graphically not right the first time when he rationalized the 2001 and 2003. We cut revenues, they did not raise sufficient additional dollars and growth in the economy.

As a matter of fact, whether there was a direct result, we had the worst economy I've experienced in my adult lifetime at the end of the Bush term and at the beginning of the Obama term as responsibility for the economy went over to President Obama.

Now, there's a lot of debate during this bill about how we've lost jobs. That's true. Those jobs were lost in the early part of the Obama administration. As the gentleman knows, over the last 24 months, we've had 4 million new jobs created, 10 quarters of economic growth in our country, and the Dow has doubled. The Dow has doubled since March of 2009. It's hard for me to see how that was a failure. It certainly hasn't been the success we'd like, but not a failure.

I tell my friend that, yes, we have a difference, and the public needs to come to grips with that difference and that debate, and that is whether or not we're going to pay for things we buy. And if we don't want to buy them, we won't have to pay for them, and we can cut taxes.

Unless the gentleman wants to say something further, I yield back the balance of my time.