Adjusting the amount provided for the expenses of certain committees of the House of Representatives in the One Hundred Twelfth Congress.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 496) adjusting the amount provided for the expenses of certain committees of the House of Representatives in the One Hundred Twelfth Congress.

Madam 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. Res. 496.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 496. This resolution adjusts the amounts provided for the expenses of the select and standing committees of the House of Representatives in the 112th Congress.

Last November, the Committee on House Administration held a full-day hearing at which we heard from our chairs and ranking members. At that hearing, we discussed how each committee absorbed the 5 percent budget reduction implemented at the beginning of the 112th Congress and how, as we continue to reduce government spending, they will manage additional reductions this year.

Madam Speaker, I know, as a committee chairman myself, that we face the difficult task of doing more with less. Yet I also know that my constituents, all of our constituents, need us to do more with less and to rein in government spending. Families have been required to tighten their belts, and they constantly ask us to do the very same thing. They do not suggest it is easy, because it has not been easy for them. But they ask of us that which they have asked of themselves. Today's economy has forced our constituents to sacrifice and, as I say, tighten their financial belts to make ends meet at home. Congress should not be and will not be immune.

While most committees are taking a 6.4 percent cut in line with the reduced funding levels of the 2012 legislative branch appropriation, certain committees faced with additional oversight responsibilities in 2012 were cut at a smaller percentage in order that they might be able to conduct their work.

Particularly daunting will be the Armed Services' charge of managing the automatic sequestration of $600 billion in defense cuts triggered by the Budget Control Act. And I hasten to add that is in addition to, or on top of, the $400 billion cut that is already being enforced by prior decisions by this Congress and the President.

In addition to Armed Services, the Ethics Committee, tasked with holding Members and staff to the highest ethical standards, has requested and will receive a reprieve from funding reductions.

To help offset these exceptions and match the reduced appropriations, we've identified and reduced authorizations of three committee budgets that we feel are able to absorb a slightly higher reduction in 2012. In addition to

our committee, the Committee on House Administration, the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and the Committee on Small Business will receive a slightly higher reduction than the 6.4 percent applied to the remaining House committees.

Madam Speaker, as we've demonstrated over the past year, this House is committed to living within its means and leading by example by putting an end to excessive spending. Our committees do vitally important oversight of the executive branch and Federal agencies, and that ought to be underscored if we are, in fact, going to be successful in holding down and controlling spending in the executive branch. We, the legislative branch, are the extension of the people we represent in an oversight capacity, and that is an extremely important responsibility. Our committees, as I say, do vitally important oversight of the executive branch and our Federal agencies; and while these reductions in committee funding will require committees to allocate their resources more judiciously, I am confident, based on the hearing, that they are prudent and manageable.

Madam Speaker, these are extraordinary times. We face extraordinary debt, deficits, and unemployment. Trillion-dollar deficits year after year after year would be practically unheard of just a couple of years ago; yet, unfortunately, they have become commonplace. That is unacceptable. We haven't had an unemployment rate at the levels we have seen for such a sustained period of time since the Great Depression. Those are not facts that I like to recite on this floor, but those are the real facts that face our constituents every single day.

Unfortunately, my area, over the last several years, we have had a higher unemployment rate than that which has prevailed in this country. California has had an unemployment rate, I believe, that has been the third worst in the entire country. We are not immune from what is being felt by the rest of the country. And when I am home, as I am sure other Members have found in their districts when they are home, we constantly hear the refrain, Where are the jobs? And following that, we hear the refrain, Why don't you get your House in order, referring to the entire Federal Government. Why don't you bring spending under control, because we believe it has a specific and direct and immediate drag on our ability to create jobs in this country. That ought to be, along with national defense, homeland security, our greatest objective.

And so this is just a small part of our effort to be responsible. Through the adoption of this resolution and the 5 percent cut during our first session of the 112th Congress, this House is doing its job to step up to the plate and reduce spending and find cost savings wherever possible. We are taking bold steps to demonstrate our commitment to reduced spending and tighter budgets.

This is not easy. I don't suggest it is. It is not easy to say that we are going to bring our budgets down and that our employees are not going to have increased salaries along with Members of Congress, but it is at least what we ought to do.

Combined, I would say these measures--that is, last year and this year--represent the largest percentage cut to committee budgets since the 104th Congress, when the House then adopted a resolution with an amendment by then-House Administration Committee Member John Boehner to reduce committee funding by 30 percent.

Madam Speaker, H. Res. 496 was reported out of the committee in December, and I now look forward to its passage by the House. I support H. Res. 496 and urge my colleagues to do the same.

I reserve the balance of my time.

At this time, Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Harper), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Elections on House Administration.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey, who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight on the House Administration Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Nugent), a distinguished member of the House Administration Committee and the Rules Committee.

Madam Speaker, I'm prepared to close out the debate. I have no other speakers. So if the gentleman would finish his time, I would be happy to as well.

Madam Speaker, I would just say that this is an effort on our part to give an example to the rest of the government. This will be a culmination of about a 10 percent cut overall to the committees of this House. We have had combined cuts in terms of our own MRAs, that is, the amount that each Member has for his budget. And I think as we go forward and having to make some very difficult decisions with respect to future controls of spending on the Federal establishment in its entirety, it will serve us well that we have shown the way, that we can make difficult decisions in this regard, and that this is an appropriate, responsible action to take.

With that, I would urge my colleagues to vote for H. Res. 496.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I rise in strong support of H. Res. 496, offered by my good friend, the chairman of the House Administration Committee, Mr. Lungren.

With all due respect to the ranking member, Mr. Brady from Pennsylvania, I have to agree with the chairman that this runaway spending that we have seen occur over the last 4 to 6 years has got to stop. And the American people clearly, Madam Speaker, are looking to Members of Congress to tighten their own belt. And that's why I think it's very important that we give them the message that we're willing to cut our own salaries, we're really willing to cut our own benefit package. And we have done that; we have voted to do that.

And these cuts, as painful as they are in regard to our House committees--indeed, 9.5 percent when we include this cut over all of the committees, although we do cut the House Committee on Armed Services by a lesser amount, and we plus-up the House Ethics Committee, and we think that's very important.

It is so crucial that we bite the same bullet that everybody else has to bite. And this bloated spending, this runaway spending that occurred during the previous majority in this House has got to stop. Spending $850 billion on a failed stimulus program, increasing the deficit-- doubling it, in fact--having over $1 trillion worth of deficit spending for now 4 years in a row when we anticipate the President's next budget, this has got to stop.

So we have to put our money where our mouth is, we have to walk the same walk as everybody else, and we have to tighten our belt. So, Madam Speaker, that's why I stand here today as a member of the Committee on House Administration and one of the subcommittee chairs in strongly endorsing and supporting these necessary, painful cuts in H. Res. 496. I hope we will have support on both sides of the aisle. I'm confident we will.

I respect, as I say, the ranking member. He's a great Member, he works in a bipartisan way, and that's what this is all about.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to House Resolution 496, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to House Resolution 496, which would reduce spending in most of the committees of the House by an average of 6.4 percent below the level provided in House Resolution 147, which was adopted last March. That resolution, which passed the House unanimously, cut committee funding 5 percent lower than the levels for the 111th Congress.

I've been pleased to work in a bipartisan fashion with my friend and my chair, Mr. Lungren, to find ways to reduce the cost of running Congress. We have worked together in finding cuts in printing, subscription, and technology services, and we have worked together opposing cuts to the Capitol Police and in providing for the safety of our visitors and our staff. But this deeper cut to committees is the wrong cut at the wrong time.

In reality, we have no idea what effect these new cuts will actually have on committee operations. Testimony at our committee's oversight hearing last November by both chairs and ranking members confirmed that additional budget cuts could undermine our ability to conduct legislative and oversight operations.

I am fearful that further cuts to committees could continue to handicap our ability to effectively oversee the executive branch. We are cutting deeply into committees who oversee billions of dollars of Federal spending. We may not agree on this resolution, but we certainly agree that Congress is the first watchdog on executive power and executive spending. We need the necessary tools, and they need the necessary tools, to do that work.

I urge my colleagues to defeat this resolution. I urge a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve.

I thank the gentleman again.

I urge my colleagues to defeat this resolution, and I urge a ``no'' vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, as a member of the Committee on House Administration, I rise in support of H. Res. 496, the 2012 committee funding resolution, with full knowledge of the impact the reduced funding levels contained in this measure will have on the committee system.

For example, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, on which I also serve, stated during the day-long hearing on this resolution that his committee would not be able to hold valuable field hearings during 2012 and would have to restrict other committee activities. More severe still, more than one ranking member stated that committee staff would have to be laid off as a result of the funding reductions contained in the resolution. This is unfortunate, but many American families have faced reduced activities and layoffs as a result of the current economic times, and Congress cannot exempt itself from such pain.

This resolution will roll back committee funding to pre-2007 levels and is, I think, a necessary action as we cut spending throughout the Federal budget. The committee went to considerable lengths to be fair both to all the chairmen but also to the minority with no change made to the traditional funding split between the majority and minority. This resolution will mean that the current Congress will spend almost 10 percent less than the previous Congress did. It requires every Member of this body, in a nonpartisan manner, to participate in the austerity that the American people and the rest of their government are experiencing.

I commend Chairman Lungren for his work on this resolution, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on the resolution.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of this resolution. This is an important resolution because it brings us back to the greatest cut since the 104th Congress.

You know, in tough times like today where the American people are pinching pennies to get by, shouldn't they have the same expectation of those that serve them in this great House? I believe they should.

You know, when talking to people in my district, they ask and say, what are you doing to get your house in order? By supporting this piece of legislation, this truly talks about cutting the spending in D.C. While it's a small amount comparative to the whole budget, it is the right step in the right direction. It is about doing more with less. The American people are doing that today. So why shouldn't this government do the same thing? I appreciate where the chairman, Mr. Lungren, has brought us in regards to this important piece of legislation. It really moves us in the right direction.

Cuts across the board are tough; and if you notice what this committee did is it didn't cover everybody the same, didn't treat everybody the same. Under Chairman Lungren's leadership, and also the ranking member, they did it, I believe, in a bipartisan way, that didn't take away from the minority in regards to funding as it relates, nor differently than it did from the majority.

So, Madam Speaker, I strongly support this resolution as we move forward to cut the budget of committees in this House, just like the American people have had to cut their budgets in their house.