Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 3094) to amend the National Labor Relations Act with respect to representation hearings and the timing of elections of labor organizations under that Act.

For fear of offending the training that my mother gave me, I will again say that I stand here unaddicted and recognize that there are those who are addicted to throwing the vulnerable on the trash heap of life. Time and time again, in those budgets that my good friend from New York (Mr. Nadler) voted against, I assume that he refused to throw the vulnerable on the trash heap of life.

We come again to a time when we want to abdicate our responsibility under the Constitution. But, my friends, I want to remind you that time and time again the Republicans came back to that tired old formula, balanced budget amendment; and time and time again they were rejected.

This Constitution is sacred. It has nothing in it about the balanced budget. Twenty-six amendments, and they have been rejected. Why? Because they don't want to do the job that the people of the United States have sent us to do. The job that says give and take on how we fund this government.

Someone wants to talk about State governments. Yes, 49 States have a balanced budget amendment; but it is on the operations budget, not on the capital budget. The United States of America is responsible for disasters when they hit New York, Missouri, and Texas. The United States is responsible for lifting a military and providing for our sons and daughters on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan, World Wars I and II, Korea, and, of course, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and many other places. Our States are not responsible for that.

Balanced budget amendment, maybe we want to be able to follow the good work of our dear friends on the supercommittee. I have great respect for them. The headline says: ``Supercommittee Well Short of a Deal,'' because this is not the way we run a country.

And I refuse to be called ``addicted'' without the explanation that my mother would want me to give. I am addicted to saving lives. I'm addicted to making sure that Social Security is not violently cut by the balanced budget amendment, Medicare being cut by

nearly $750 billion if this resolution were to pass, Social Security almost $1.2 trillion, veterans benefits $85 billion through 2021.

So my argument is to be able to analyze what we're doing here, my friends. The Constitution gives this House the power of the purse strings; yet it will take a two-thirds vote in the middle of a crisis, a war, a disaster, the need to invest in our young people--numbers that Dr. Jeffrey Sachs said that we need for a legitimate apprentice program that leads young people from college or training into a job.

Creating jobs invests in America. Would you understand that we have the lowest number of white males going to college, the lowest number of African Americans going to college, the lowest number of Latinos.

I thank the distinguished gentleman.

We need investment in human resources. And all we're doing today is denouncing and ridding ourselves of the obligatory responsibility that we have when we take an oath to this Constitution every 2 years.

I don't want to be a spoilsport today. I believe we should tighten our belt. There are many ways of doing so, looking at the financial transactions on Wall Street or the Chicago commodities. Many ways to do it. But this is a stranglehold on our neck. I refuse to cut seniors, children, Social Security because you won't do your job. This is a bad amendment. I will not vote for it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to H.J. Res. 2, ``Proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.'' While I support bipartisan efforts to increase the debt limit and to resolve our differences over budgetary revenue and spending issues, I cannot support a bill that unduly constrains the ability of Congress to deal effectively with America's economic, fiscal, and job creation troubles.

In my lifetime, I have never seen such a concerted effort to ransom the American economy in order to extort the American public. While I support bipartisan efforts to increase the debt limit and to resolve our differences over budgetary revenue and spending issues, I cannot support a bill that unduly robs average Americans of their economic security and ability to provide for their families while constraining the ability of Congress to deal effectively with America's economic, fiscal, and job creation troubles.

This bill would put our national security at risk. If our nation is under attack or needs to respond to an imminent threat, the last person I would consider contacting is an accountant. I would expect that this body would act swiftly and this mandate takes away that ability.

We need to change the tone here in Congress. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said it best when he stated recently before the House Committee on Financial Services. ``We really don't want to just cut, cut, cut.'' Chairman Bernanke further stated, ``You need to be a little bit cautious about sharp cuts in the very near term because of the potential impact on the recovery. That doesn't at all preclude--in fact, I believe it's entirely consistent with--a longer-term program that will bring our budget into a sustainable position.''

national security--veterans and military families

I am outraged to find that revisions to this legislation include a provision that will hurt our veterans and military families and seriously compromise our ability to combat terrorism. As a senior Member of the Homeland Security Committee, I am deeply concerned about any measure that undermines the men and women of the Armed Forces or the safety and security of the American people.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has already agreed to cut its budget by $450 billion over the next ten years. The Center for Strategic and International Studies predicts that further budget reductions, including those that would stem from a balanced budget amendment, will cause substantive modification to our defense strategy, capabilities and force structure.

Enacting a balanced budget requirement would severely limit the ability of the Armed Forces to procure the equipment necessary to keep our troops safe, and prepare them for potential combat. A balanced budget amendment would dramatically constrain discretionary budgets, so much so that procurement, research and development, and the acquisition of new technologies would have to be zeroed out of the DOD budget.

These deep cuts to research and development and procurement would threaten the safety of the men and women of the Armed Forces. For example, the constraints caused by a balanced budget amendment would seriously endanger the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey program, as well as the intended order of 340 F-35B Joint Strike Fighters. The effects of a balanced budget amendment would hinder the Navy's planned expansion from 287 to 320 ships.

This bill will deeply impact the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), a group of companies and contractors that supply equipment and technology to the Armed Forces. The budget reductions caused by a balanced budget amendment would deeply impact modernization and procurement. In fact, Army Secretary John McHugh recently said that to facilitate any further budget cuts, ``you'd probably have to take some 50% out of modernization.''

The DIB has resulted in the development of the most advanced military force the world has ever seen. However, large cuts in procurement funding would seriously compromise our ability to develop some essential future capabilities. Moreover, the downsizing that a balanced budget requires would leave a large number of highly skilled and professional workers unemployed in an economy unlikely to absorb them for quite some time.

Passing this legislation will not, as many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle believe, result in a more stable budget. An amendment requiring a balanced budget will render discretionary budgets, particularly the DOD and national security budgets, much less predictable. The Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security will have to compete for their shares of the national security budget, and furthermore, a likely response to a balanced budget amendment will be an increased reliance on emergency, ad hoc appropriations.

A provision of H.J. Res. 2 requires legislation to spend money that will take the budget out of balance due to a military conflict or national security need. As it stands, this bill will require a Joint Resolution from both houses of Congress with the specific dollar amount being spent.

In order to spend more than has been appropriated, agencies tasked with defense and national security will need approval from Congress. This increased reliance on emergency appropriations will have detrimental effects on the sound functioning of our defense and national security institutions. The more these institutions are forced to rely on emergency funding, the more unpredictable their budgets will become.

This legislation would allow a military conflict or threat to national security to take the budget out of balance. However, in order to authorize additional funds for military engagement or threats to national security that require action, Congress would need to pass legislation citing a specific dollar amount.

As a senior Member of the Homeland Security Committee, I know that the threats against the nation are constantly changing and ever present. We cannot ask those responsible for protecting this nation to ask Congress for a specific amount of money every time there is a threat to our national security that requires action. Should we ever experience another attack on American soil, we cannot expect out first responders to wait for authorization before intervening.

Mr. Speaker, I am incredibly disheartened to see my colleagues on the other side of the aisle champion this legislation, legislation that has so many negative impacts on our veterans and military families. The permanent budget cuts necessitated by a balance budget amendment would require the DOD to drastically curtail the number of active duty service members, retirement benefits, and healthcare benefits for veterans and military families.

There are currently 22.6 million veterans living in the United States, and all of them deserve the retirement and healthcare benefits that were promised to them. In my home State of Texas we have nearly 1.7 million veterans, and 18th District is home to 32,000 of them. Of the 200,000 veterans of military service who live and work in Houston; more than 13,000 are veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan. We should not compromise the benefits for one of these patriotic Americans with this harmful legislation.

There has been a theme this Congress of focusing on cutting programs that benefit the public good and for the most at need, while ignoring the need to focus on job creation and economic recovery. Debate of this balanced budget amendment is wasting a tremendous amount of time when we should be focused on paying our nation's bills and resolving our differences!

As I mentioned, a balanced budget is not something that should be mandated in our Constitution, nor something that should be automatically required every year. In particular, during economic downturns, the government can stimulate growth by cutting taxes and increasing spending. And in fact, the cost of many government benefit programs is designed to automatically increase when the economy is down--for example, costs for food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid increase when more people need to rely upon them.

These countercyclical measures lessen the impact of job losses and economic hardship associated with economic downturns. The resulting temporary increases in spending could cause deficits that would trigger the balanced budget requirements at the worst possible moment.

A constitutional amendment requiring Congress to cut spending to match revenue every year would both limit Congress's ability to respond to changing fiscal conditions and would dramatically impede federal responses to high unemployment as well as federal guarantees for food and medical assistance.

H.J. Res. 2 would amend the Constitution to require Congress to balance the budget each year. It would also impose new procedural hurdles to raising the debt ceiling, and require the President to submit a balanced budget each year.

The thresholds proposed in H.J. Res. 2 are completely unrealistic. Even during Ronald Reagan's presidency--before the baby boomers had reached retirement age, swelling the population eligible for Social Security and Medicare, when health care costs were much lower--federal spending averaged 22 percent of GDP. This would impose arbitrary limits on government actions to respond to an economic slowdown or recession.

Cutting spending during a recession could make the recession worse by increasing the number of unemployed, decreasing business investment, and withholding services needed to jump-start the economy. As written, this bill would render Social Security unconstitutional in its current form. By Capping future spending below Reagan-era levels would force devastating cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Head Start, child care, Pell grants, and many other critical programs.

Only five years in the last fifty has the federal government posted an annual budget surplus; all other years the government has been in deficit. Even the House-passed Republican budget resolution, which requires immediate and sustained drastic spending cuts, never reaches balance in the ten-year window required by H.J. Res. 2--indeed, it is not projected to be balanced for several decades, only reaching balance by 2040.

Because this proposal makes it so much harder for Congress to increase revenues than to cut spending, it in essence forces the President to match those same restrictions in his budget. In other words, H.J. Res. 2 is a political ploy designed to force the President to submit a budget that reflects the Republican priorities of ending the Medicare guarantee while cutting taxes for millionaires.

social security & medicare

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, H.J. Res. 2's balanced budget requirement could result in Medicare being cut by nearly $750 billion, Social Security almost $1.2 trillion, and veterans' benefits $85 billion, through 2021 assuming that the spending cuts would be distributed evenly across the government. These cuts would devastate millions of seniors, veterans, children and the disabled.

These cuts would have a devastating effect on the millions of aged, disabled, veterans, children, and others who depend on Social Security. The BBA would have the foreseeable effect of plunging millions of Social Security beneficiaries into poverty and making for a very bleak future for most others. Over two-thirds of seniors and 70 percent of people with disabilities depend on Social Security for half or more of their income. Close to half--47 percent--of all single (i.e., widowed, divorced, or never-married) women over age 65 rely on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income.

Seniors are spending more on their health care costs, and Americans in general are making less. The face of poverty is a child's face. If a private employer attempted to do what is being asked of us here today, which would be to use their pension plans in a manner that H.J. Res. 2 would deal with Social Security that would be against the law.

Furthermore, the need to raise the debt ceiling has no correlation to whether future budgets are balanced; increases in the debt ceiling reflect past decisions on fiscal policy. And as demonstrated by this year's current disagreement about whether and when to raise the debt ceiling, Congress does not need to impose further barriers to its consideration. Treasury has warned that failing to raise the debt ceiling and the resulting government default, which would be unprecedented, could have catastrophic impacts on the economy. Interest rates would rise, increasing costs for the government and potentially on American businesses and families.

Any cuts made to accommodate a mandated balanced budget would fall most heavily on domestic discretionary programs; the immediate result of a balanced budget amendment would be devastating cuts in education, homeland security, public safety, health care and research, transportation and other vital services.

The Founders purposely made the Constitutional amendment process a long and arduous one. Having a Constitutional balanced budget amendment is not a novel idea. Balanced budget amendments have made it to a floor vote in the Senate five times, and in the House four times, according to CRS. The Senate barely passed a version in 1982, but it failed to gain the necessary two-thirds majority in the House. The House passed a version in 1995, but it failed in the Senate.

Do my Republican colleagues really expect Congress to capriciously pass an amendment altering our nation's founding document on such short notice; an amendment that will fundamentally change our country without reasonable time for debate; without the opportunity for a hearing or questioning of witnesses; without any reports as to what impact it may have?

By tying the fate of whether the United States pays its debt obligations to the historically prolonged Constitutional amendment process, the Republicans who support this bill have demonstrated, at this critical juncture in American history, that they are profoundly irresponsible when it comes to the integrity of our economy and utterly bereft of sensible solutions for fixing it.

Potential Impact on Medicare

Medicare covers a population with diverse needs and circumstances. Most people with Medicare live on modest incomes. While many beneficiaries enjoy good health, 25% or more have serious health problems and live with multiple chronic conditions, including cognitive and functional impairments.

Today, 43% of all Medicare beneficiaries are between 65 and 74 years old and 12% are 85 or older. Those who are 85 or older are the fastest- growing age group among elderly Medicare beneficiaries. With the aging and growth of the population, the number of Medicare beneficiaries more than doubled between 1966 and 2000 and is projected to grow from 45 million today to 79 million in 2030.

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

This amendment, while superficially appealing, is one of the most damaging things we could do to the Constitution of the United States. And, yes, it is true, if you ask people do they think we should have a balanced budget, they say yes; and if you ask people do you think we should have an amendment requiring a balanced budget in the Constitution, they say yes. But if you ask them do you think we should have an amendment requiring a balanced budget in the Constitution if it meant a cut in Social Security, they say no; if it meant a cut in Medicare, they say no; if it meant a cut in other essential services, they say no.

And when you probe further, you find that this is a very damaging provision. For a number of reasons, economists tell us that, in a recession, you want to increase the government spending temporarily. You have to increase it because unemployment insurance payouts go up, food stamp payouts go up; and if you decrease the spending, it reduces the amount of products that people want in society, it reduces the amount of money in circulation, and it makes the recession into a depression.

In good times, you should run a surplus; in recession, you should run a deficit. Over a long period of time, the budget should be balanced. But if you attempt to balance the budget during a recession, you generate a much worse loss of jobs. And that's why you don't want this--or you shouldn't want this.

Secondly, this amendment is not self-enforcing. All it says is outlays shall not exceed receipts, and Congress can pass appropriate legislation.

But what does that mean? It means that if outlays exceed receipts or if someone thinks that the estimates are wrong and outlays are going to exceed receipts, then you go to court, and then a court has to decide whether that's correct. A court has to decide whether the estimates are correct. And if the court decides the estimates are not correct, then the court has a choice. It can say, ``This is political. We're going to exercise judicial restraint,'' as the gentleman from Virginia said yesterday, in which case it won't enforce the amendment and the amendment is meaningless; or the court will say, ``Okay, we'll order a tax increase'' or ``we'll order an expenditure cut,'' in which case you have those judges making political decisions, which I don't think we'd want to see.

Thirdly, a balanced budget amendment starting where we are now with a huge deficit that's been accumulated over a few years means that you're going to have to make drastic cuts in Social Security and Medicare and veterans' benefits. Some people say on the other side of the aisle, well, that won't be true because they don't count; but, yes, they count.

The amendment says ``outlays.'' Outlays are defined as all expenditures other than debts. Social Security is not a debt; the courts have held that. Medicare is not a debt; there's no contractual right. This means that if you're going to reduce outlays, Social Security is right in it. And if you're not going to reduce Social Security, you've got to reduce a lot of other things by much more. So this is a dagger pointed at the heart of Social Security and Medicare and veterans' benefits.

Now, we're told that the only way we can get our budget into balance is by this amendment. Well, the fact is that's not true. The reason we have the problem we have now is because of years of reckless Republican Presidents and administrations.

When President Clinton took office, we had a huge budget deficit-- $300 billion a year. The forecast was for 500 and 600 billion by the mid-nineties. Within a few years, we had turned that around. Congress made decisions to turn that around followed by the President's recommendations in 1993 and a smaller one in 1997. That one the Republicans held with, with Speaker

Gingrich. As a result of those decisions, by the time President Clinton left office and President Bush assumed office, we had a huge surplus. And the question was: What are we going to do when we've paid off the entire national debt by 2012? That was what was going to happen.

What changed that? Two huge tax cuts for rich people, pushed through by the Republicans and President Bush. And we said, at the time, that that would generate tremendous deficits. In fact, the reason they were set to expire in 2010 was because the CBO said that after 2010 they would generate tremendous, ongoing deficits, which they are doing.

Secondly, we had two unfunded wars. For the first time in American history, we didn't raise taxes to pay for wars. Thirdly, we doubled the Pentagon budget, not including the wars. And fourth, we had a recession starting in 2008 during the end of the Bush administration.

Now, some people say, well, it's the Obama administration, the unfettered spending of the Obama administration. Nonsense. The amount of money being spent on non-defense discretionary spending--that is, all spending other than defense--veterans' benefits, Medicare, Social Security, and interest on the debt, is the same today, the same, not a penny more, adjusted for inflation and population growth, as it was in 2001. And in 2001, we had a huge surplus.

Where did the surplus change to a deficit? Wars, tax cuts, and increased Pentagon spending.

Now, what can we do about this? So the problem is not spending alone, the problem is that we're not taxing the rich and the corporations enough. In 1970, corporations paid 30 percent of all Federal income tax receipts from corporate income taxes. Today, it's 8 percent. We've let the corporations get away with murder--the big businesses, with Exxon paying no taxes on profits of $6 billion, General Electric paying no taxes, getting a refund. That's our problem. But we don't want to deal with that, we want to pass a constitutional amendment.

Now, if we pass this constitutional amendment, it would mean that any time we went into a recession, it would drive it into a depression. It would mean we would have to make huge spending cuts now. It would mean we would have to decimate Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits. It makes no sense at all.

If this were in effect now--we were told by the macroeconomic analysts that if this amendment went into effect for next year, it would increase unemployment by 15 million people. So I urge that we not pass this amendment, and instead we do the hard work of increasing taxes on corporations and rich people, of getting discipline into our expenditures. But the first thing to do is jobs. If we got unemployment down to 5 percent, where it was in 2007, that by itself would reduce unemployment by 40 percent.

In a recession, first you take care of the jobs. When you're back into better times, then you can start thinking about balancing your budget, and that's when you ought to do it; not force cuts in expenditures or increasing taxes during a recession, which just makes the recession much worse and the unemployment much worse, which is what this amendment would do.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would simply point out that when S&P downgraded our debt, they were so well respected that the interest rates went down and the price of our bonds went up. So much for S&P.

I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I would point out that families are able to borrow to pay for the car and to pay for the mortgage. Under this amendment the Federal Government would never be able to borrow. It's quite different.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Boswell).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, it is now my privilege to yield 4 minutes to a member of the Ways and Means Committee, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal).

Mr. Speaker, I would point out that if this amendment passed, we would never be able to borrow money to do the infrastructure that we need.

I now yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 90 seconds.

It is not true, as we have heard on this floor repeatedly today, that both parties are addicted to spending and that the deficit is equally the fault of both parties.

It is the fault of George Bush. It is the fault of the Republican Congress. Under President Clinton, a Democratic Congress voted for tax increases and for spending cuts, and produced balanced budgets 4 years in a row of such a significance that we were going to eliminate the entire national debt by 2012. The Republicans came in and without Democratic support voted for huge tax cuts, for two unfunded wars, and for doubling the Pentagon's budget without increasing taxes to pay for it.

That generated the huge deficit we have. The deficit was also generated by the fact that, because of, arguably, Republican deregulatory policies, we got into this huge depression caused by Wall Street, and that increased the deficit. In January of 2009, before President Obama took office, 1 month before, the CBO said that the next year's deficit would be $1.2 trillion without this President's having done a thing.

The point, as I said before, is that nondefense discretionary spending--everything other than Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, veterans benefits, and interest on the debt--has not increased since 2001 when adjusted for inflation and population growth. So that is not the source of our budget deficit. The source of our budget deficit is that we cut the taxes on the rich and the corporations and that we spent money on wars we didn't pay for.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

I yield the gentlelady an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains, please?

Mr. Speaker, I would point out that the 49 States borrow for capital budgets. They have balanced budget amendments for operating budgets. This makes no distinction and would not let us borrow ever.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt).

Mr. Speaker, either we will have the discipline to do what we have to or this amendment simply puts those decisions in the hands of a Federal judge, which we don't want to see, I don't think.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have, please?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Ms. Velazquez).

Mr. Speaker, how much time does each side have remaining?

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Linda T. Sanchez).

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on each side?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

Mr. Speaker, Social Security and Medicare will be there unless we pass this balanced budget amendment because this balanced budget amendment will cause the inability to pay for them. The trust fund is amply funded right now for Social Security.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

I thank the gentleman.

In response to the gentleman from New York, I just want to point out a few facts: first of all, in the last 50 years, the budget has been balanced six times. Democrats have controlled the House of Representatives 37 of those years, and in only two of those years did they balance the budget. Four times when Republicans were in the majority, the budget was balanced: 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001.

When those budgets were offered in this House, many Democrats voted in a bipartisan fashion for at least one of those budgets. The gentleman from New York voted against all four of the last balanced budgets that occurred in the time that he has been in Congress.

I thank the gentleman.

I need to comment on the revisionist history that we are hearing.

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that tough votes are made when Congresses make the decision to balance the budget. That decision wasn't made in 1993 when Democrats voted to raise taxes; it was made when we sent a budget to the President that he vetoed. The government shut down, and after that shutdown, then and only then did President Clinton get in favor of welfare reform and other things that led to a slowing of the rate of growth in government spending.

He calls a ribbon cutting to show up and vote for budgets that are actually balanced. The gentleman from Virginia, my good friend, voted against all four--all four--of the budgets that were balanced in the 1990s and leading up to 2001.

Mr. Speaker, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to point out that this does allow you to borrow; you just have to have a supermajority and a special reason to do so. And I point out that if the States had anything like the proportionate debt that is constituted by this government today of $15 trillion, they wouldn't be borrowing much money either.

At this time, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Duffy), a member of the Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is now my honor to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Platts), chairman of the Government Organization Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to respond to the gentleman.

If the gentleman's complaint is that there have been decisions made during Republican Congresses that he doesn't agree with that spent too much money, that didn't yield to balancing budgets, the gentleman is correct.

But the gentleman neglects to point out that there have been many, many Democratic Congresses in the last 50 years, 37 of them, of which only two of them resulted in a balanced budget. That is not a good record either. In fact, during the 1990s, when we were fortunate enough to receive four balanced budgets, those balanced budgets were under a Republican Congress and a Democratic President.

In point of fact, it was only after there was a confrontation about the level of spending and a government shutdown that the necessary reforms were made to slow the rate of government spending so we could achieve those balanced budgets.

The gentleman from North Carolina takes credit for his vote in 1993, which I did not agree with. I'm going to take credit for my four votes that were balanced budgets in 1998 through 2001, which he voted against. So we need bipartisan support for a rule in our Constitution that requires that the budget be balanced every year, except in times of national emergency when we should have bipartisan support to not balance.

At this time it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hultgren), a member of the Agriculture Committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Posey), a member of the Financial Services Committee and, as a realtor, may want to comment on some of the remarks made here today regarding the ability of people to borrow money under certain circumstances.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. DesJarlais), a member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Mr. Speaker, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tipton), the chairman of the Agriculture, Energy and Trade Subcommittee of the Small Business Committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Rokita), a member of the Budget Committee and a leader on this issue.

I yield an additional minute to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), who is not only the vice chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee but has been a great partner in this effort to pass a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), a distinguished member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Stutzman), the chairman of the Economic Opportunity Subcommittee of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

I am happy to yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson), the chairman of the Conservation, Energy, and Forestry Subcommittee, my subcommittee on the House Agriculture Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond to the gentlewoman to say that 49 out of 50 States have a balanced budget requirement. And while she sites California as perhaps the worst example--and it may be the worst example--still, the fiscal situation of California is much better than the fiscal situation here in Washington. The $25 billion deficit that they have to deal with this year--and they have to deal with it--for a State that has one-eighth of the population of the country of America which, taken nationwide, would mean a $200 billion deficit nationwide. We have a $1.3 trillion deficit, more than six times as much. And this is good discipline. It's worked in the States. It will work here as well.

It is now my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake), a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce), a member of the Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to address the Chair but in response to comments made by the gentleman from Massachusetts.

We do need to look at that way-back machine. I hear the gentleman's complaints about decisions made by Republicans. In the last 50 years, and the gentleman has been here for many of those years, in the last 50 years, this Congress has balanced its budget a mere six times. Thirteen of those years Republicans were in control of the House, and four of those years we had balanced budgets, including the year the gentleman mentioned.

And in that year, the gentleman voted ``no'' on the balanced budget that was passed by this Congress that year. And the year before that, we had a balanced budget; the gentleman voted ``no.'' And the year before that, we had a balanced budget. And then in 1998, we had a balanced budget. And the gentleman voted ``no'' every single time a balanced budget was offered in this Congress. In fact, for the 37 years that Democrats controlled the Congress in the last 50 years, only twice did they do it.

Now, I have to agree with the gentleman about something, and that is that Social Security and Medicare are endangered.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds to say that Social

Security and Medicare are endangered. And do you know why they're endangered? Because we have a $15 trillion debt. And in all of those years that we didn't balance the budget, what did the Congress do? They went into the Social Security trust fund and took every penny of it and spent it on something else.

And how ironic will it be that all that debt that we're transferring to the next generation, all of that debt will be on our children and grandchildren; and when they need Social Security and Medicare, it won't be there for them, not because of anything in a balanced budget amendment but because of the debt that we have accumulated.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Gardner), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston), the chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.

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

I rise today in opposition to the rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, with this rule and underlying bill, Congress continues months of inaction on job growth, months of ignoring real solutions, choosing instead to use our economic struggles as an excuse to push partisan and ideological legislation.

The American people deserve jobs now rather than bills aimed only at stoking the rhetorical fires and antagonizing political opponents. It's time to stop the games and seek compromise for the betterment of our Nation.

A middle class tax increase is looming. With the extension of the payroll tax, many middle class families earning $70,000 to $80,000 a year will be forced to pay over a $1,000 a year more in taxes. Apparently, the Republicans believe that the government knows how to spend their money better than American families.

As a businessman and an entrepreneur, I'm proud to have created many jobs and many businesses. I meet with the businesses in my district on a regular basis. Not a single business has raised this issue as any kind of impediment to job growth, any kind of impediment to getting the economy growing again. This is simply a non-related subject that pursues a longtime agenda to destroy the ability of workers to organize.

This bill represents the Ohio-ization of America. Just as Republicans attempted in the State of Ohio, House Republicans are simply union busting. But we saw what happened in Ohio, where Ohioans across the ideological spectrum overwhelmingly said ``no'' to this kind of anti- worker agenda. And the American people reject it as well.

This bill's singular goal is to shut down workplace elections. It would overturn the proposed National Labor Relations Board rule, it would modernize the union election process and avoid delays. But instead of creating efficiency in government, the workplace election prevention actually mandates inefficiency; it makes inefficiency the norm rather than the exception. The bill puts in place 35-day delays in holding elections after filing petitions. The bill includes no limit on how long the elections can be delayed.

In the case of workplace elections, delay is a critical issue. The intent of delaying an election is to give anti-union employers a chance to prevent workers from organizing. Despite Republicans' professed outrage over frivolous lawsuits and tort reform and many other areas, H.R. 3094 incentivizes a mountain of litigation for the sole purpose of stalling workplace elections. This creates a massive backlog of cases, including frivolous ones, all on the taxpayers' dime. Republicans don't seem to have a problem with trial lawyers as long as they're suing unions.

This bill even allows managers to stuff the ballot boxes of employer elections.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I'm sure many of us in this body here are following our State redistricting processes to see how various districts across the country are gerrymandered. What this bill would allow employers to do is effectively gerrymander what the negotiating unit is at the company. If there's a group of employees that's interested in forming a union, it would give the employer the ability to say, no, that's actually not a valid group; it needs to include this other group or this other group, and decide on what the electoral body is, what is the electorate, choosing their own electorate, as too many Members of Congress attempt to do through the redistricting process, choosing their electorate to try to rig the election against the workers.

This bill is just the latest assault on workers' rights and it's, again, typical of this do-nothing Congress. The Republicans have been fixated on attacking the National Labor Relations Board, the board that is in place to strike a balance between labor and employers by cutting the agency's funding, by holding up new appointments and, now, by reversing a rule on notice-posting to inform employees of their rights.

Mr. Speaker, the people are wise to see what's going on here in Congress. Every week we're in session, we see a parade of special interest bills paraded on the House floor, while taxes for middle class families risk going up because the Republicans believe that government knows how to spend their money better than the American people. The big energy companies have got numerous exemptions from the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. The rest of us got pollution, asthma, and other illness.

Look, is it possible to create jobs by lowering standards? It is. If you want to remove workplace safety standards you can create jobs, unsafe jobs. If you want to reduce the minimum wage to $2 an hour, you can create jobs, $2-an-hour jobs.

Is that the America we want? Is that the America we want for our children and grandchildren? We can do better, and we must do better.

Why are we here? When will Americans get the jobs bill that we desperately need to the floor of the House of Representatives?

If you've got some ideas to create jobs, let's get them out, put them in front of us and discuss them. Let's start by preventing the payroll taxes from going up for middle class Americans.

It's obvious why this body has an approval rating that's actually lower than communism now, and even lower than President Nixon when he resigned. It's time for this Congress to get to work to provide solutions to help get this economy going, or it's going to be time to get a new Congress.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California, the ranking member of the Education and Workforce Committee, Mr. Miller.

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

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

I did yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 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 additional minute to the gentleman from New Jersey.

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

I will inquire of the gentlelady if she has any additional speakers.

Very well.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the middle class of this country doesn't need a higher payroll tax, more dirty air, dirty water, fewer workers' rights; and they certainly don't need more partisan gridlock in this do-nothing Congress. Yet that is what is being offered here today.

The American people and the American economy need jobs, need optimism. Our Nation needs to know that we're working to ensure American competitiveness and access to hope and

opportunity, to work to ensure that kids get the best education in the world so we can drive the economic engine of today and tomorrow, invent new technologies, propel future generations of American ingenuity and leadership.

This kind of political gridlock in this do-nothing Congress does not help America move forward. This bill's singular goal is to delay and ultimately prevent workers from voting in workplace elections. These rights have helped to create the American middle class in the last century. In recent decades, the erosion of these rights has lowered paychecks for families, led to jobs outsourcing overseas, and widened the income disparities in our society.

Are environmental and workplace laws, which have been around for decades, the reason the economy is lagging? Of course not. Yet these are the types of so-called solutions that are being put forward in bill after bill after bill.

Let's talk about preventing a looming increase on taxes in the middle class. I encourage the supercommittee and, if it need be, standalone legislation to ensure that we can keep payroll taxes at their current level. It's time for Congress to take up the President's Jobs Act, which includes extending the middle class tax cut. The American Jobs Act, which Republicans still refuse to consider, includes job-creating proposals, including rebuilding our schools, tax breaks for small businesses to create jobs, and modernizing our air traffic control system.

It's time for this Congress to stand up for the American people, to offer solutions, to get serious about getting our economy back on track instead of just scoring political points that appeal to the base.

I urge a ``no'' vote on this rule and the underlying bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Seventy-five years ago this Nation decided as a matter of right and a matter of law that the decision of whether or not workers wanted a union belonged to those workers, and this Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act to give workers this right and an election to decide.

Ever since that time, companies have fought to take away the right of the workers because they believe that the companies control all of the rights in the workplace. They believe that the workers should simply take and do as they say, and that's the end of the discussion. And this has been a battle throughout the economic history of this country since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act.

But the fact of the matter is that when workers decide they want an organization, they go out and they talk to their fellow workers, they form a union, and they have an election.

But what we now see is the companies constantly trying to insert themselves into that worker-controlled process by trying to disrupt the elections of those workers and trying to keep them from exercising their rights under the law. And this is the goal of this very antiworker, antifamily legislation. It would end the collective bargaining rights for working people in this country because it would so skew the process that you would never get to that election that workers are guaranteed under the law.

This is Wisconsin and Ohio all wrapped up into one. This goes across the Nation. What they can't do in the States where they don't control the governorship or the legislature, where they made the attempt right after the election to take away workers' rights at work, where they can't do that, they now seek to do in the Halls of Congress, to so change the process and to discriminate against the rights of workers so that, in fact, the process ceases to exist.

How do they do that? They do that by having endless delays. Why are endless delays important to employers? So that they can hire union- busting law firms to come in and intimidate and teach employers how to intimidate workers because, don't forget, the employer has the right from the moment they're served notice to have captive meetings in the workplace where they threaten the workers with the loss of jobs, where they threaten the workers with being fired, where they threaten the workers of sending work to China or elsewhere, where they threaten the workers that they won't get the promotion, where they change the workers' shift time from maybe day shift to graveyard shift and keep rotating them around to show them that they're in control and the workers have no rights. And if you can do it for 7 days, you have a chance. If you can do it for 10 days, you have a better chance. If you can do it for as many as 2,000 days that these law firms have kept the process open, you can kill the drive for a union. You can intimidate the workers.

How else do they do it? When workers decide among themselves that we want a unit within this company, within this factory to represent us, this bill now says that the employer can come in and rearrange the members of the unit that would have that election. They can stuff the ballot box. They can pick your candidates to stand for election. Doesn't sound very Democratic to me. But that's what they get to do under this bill that's proposed.

The workers no longer get to decide, as the law says they get to decide. The workers no longer get to decide, as the Supreme Court says they get to decide. The employer gets to decide. The arrogance of these people to suggest that they should pick the leaders of the workers, that they should pick the organization of the workers who have a right to organize.

So they get to delay the elections. They encourage and provide for and define the right to continue to file frivolous lawsuits so that this process never ends. You can bankrupt these workers if they try to run head-on-head with these big law firms that are specialized in this, that travel around the country to take away the rights at work.

What does this mean? This means underpinning the basic organization in the American workplace today that speaks on behalf of the middle class. This is from the organization that brought you the great American weekend. This is the organization that brought you the 8-hour day. This is the organization that brought you overtime pay if you work longer than 8 hours. This is the organization that brought you sick leave. This is the organization that brought women their rights at work. This is the organization that makes safe work places. This is the organization that provided, for the first time, pensions and retirement benefits for workers.

Any wonder why these corporations, why the Chamber of Commerce is so set against this? Because they don't want to do this anymore. They want to ship the jobs to China. They want no minimum wage. They want a sub- minimum wage. They want no rights for workers. How will the American families survive that? They've already off-loaded all of the health care costs they possibly could.

They've off-loaded all of the pension costs they possibly could on the backs of these workers.

We should not allow that to happen, not in this country, not in this Congress. We should not allow it to happen to American workers and to their families. We should defeat this very anti-family piece of legislation.

As for regular order, I would like to remind the gentlewoman from North Carolina that when the vote came, there wasn't a single Republican vote back in the Clinton era. Not a single Republican vote. Once again, you balked when it came time to vote.