Prohibiting the consideration of a concurrent resolution providing for adjournment or adjournment sine die unless a law is enacted to provide for the extension of certain expired or expiring tax provisions that apply to middle-income taxpayers.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 778 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my good friend from Florida (Mr. Hastings), 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

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

House Resolution 778 is a closed rule for the consideration of two bills, H.R. 6365, which is the National Security and Job Protection Act, and H.J. Res. 117, which is the Continuing Appropriations Resolution for FY13.

Mr. Speaker, I'm a freshman on the Rules Committee. It's a good committee to be on. I enjoy it. I get to work with learned Members like my friend from Florida, who is across the aisle, but it falls to me to handle continuing resolution bills. As you'll remember, when we showed up at the beginning of 2011, there was a lot of unfinished business from 2010, and we went right into continuing resolution act to continuing resolution act to continuing resolution act--sometimes 2 and 3 weeks at a time. That's no way to run a government. It's no way to have a Congress.

My friend from Florida and I disagree on a great deal of policy, but we believe that a deliberative process yields better results than the ``right here, right now, hurry up and wait'' kind of mentality that this body so often adopts. So what we've done here today with this bill, with this H.J. Res. 117, is to say we understand that the appropriations responsibilities of this Congress have not yet been completed. The Constitution gives this Congress--not just this body, but this Congress--the responsibility of providing appropriations for this Nation.

Now, as the Speaker knows full well, this House has set about getting its business done. We divided those appropriations bills up across a number of bills. The Commerce-Justice-Science bill passed this House with a bipartisan majority. It went to the Senate, and the Senate had no floor action whatsoever. Mr. Speaker, you know that the Energy and Water bill passed this House with a bipartisan majority. It went to the Senate, and the Senate did nothing with it whatsoever. You know that the Homeland Security bill passed this body--again, with a bipartisan majority. It went to the Senate, and the Senate took no action. I can go on and on and on. There is the leg branch bill, the military construction bill, the defense bill, on and on and on.

So here we are. We don't have control over the Senate. We only have control over what goes on here in this body, and I've got to tell you that I'm proud as a freshman that we've set about getting our business done. With one deliberative bill at a time and one open rule on appropriations bills at a time, we allowed every Member of this body to come to the floor to offer their amendments and to have their voices heard in order to produce the very best work product that we could produce. I might add, Mr. Speaker, that we did that at a funding level even lower than what the American taxpayer asked of us in the Budget Control Act. I'm very proud of that work.

But in the absence of the Senate taking action, Mr. Speaker, we have to move on. The American people are going to have a referendum in this country. They're going to have a referendum on what fiscal responsibility means.

We're going to have an election in November, and new House Members are going to come and new Senate Members are going to come. The administration may change. We're going to have that opportunity for all of us as citizens to speak out in November and choose a path for 2013. But our business today, Mr. Speaker, is making sure the doors stay open moving into 2013.

As my colleagues know, in the absence of action, Mr. Speaker, government offices begin to close on October 1 of this year, one by one--national parks, veterans services, Social Security services, Medicare services. That's not the kind of governing responsibility that we all swore an oath to uphold.

So I'm pleased to be here today, Mr. Speaker, to bring this rule to the floor to say, yes, we have gotten our work done in this House, but we've been stymied by the leadership in the Senate that has not scheduled votes on these bills, but we will not allow the American taxpayer and American citizens to pay the price of inaction by the United States Senate. We will make sure that government services continue with this great referendum that this great Republic will have in November. It's a 6-month continuing resolution, Mr. Speaker, and it will solve that need.

This rule also, Mr. Speaker, provides for consideration of H.R. 6365. It's called the National Security and Job Protection Act, but what it is is a sequester replacement bill. Mr. Speaker, I don't know that I've ever been more disgusted in my 18 months in this body.

We came together here in this House in a bipartisan fashion. We passed the Budget Control Act, which gave six House Members and six Senate Members--six Republicans, six Democrats--12 Members of this Congress, esteemed Members of this Congress, talented, bright, conscientious, American-loving Members of this Congress, an opportunity to look at our entire budget. They didn't just look at the $3.8 trillion that we'd spend this year, Mr. Speaker, not just that $3.8 trillion, but next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, well into the three-generational window. It was hundreds of trillions of dollars these 12 men and women had an opportunity to look at to find bipartisan agreement.

About 4 months they worked on that project, Mr. Speaker, and you know how that story turns out. After 4 months of labor by 12 of the brightest, most conscientious Members of this body--six Republicans, six Democrats, six House Members, six Senate Members--looking at hundreds of trillions of dollars in tax expenditures in social programs, in taxes and tax cuts, they agreed on absolutely nothing. Not one dollar out of hundreds of trillions did they come together on. That was a tremendous disappointment.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, in order to try to bring agreement to that body, we passed legislation that implemented what they called the sequester, to say, if against all odds this joint select committee were to fail--candidly, it was not on my radar screen that they would. This was a solemn responsibility. These were talented Members who were assigned to it. But if they were to fail, we would implement automatic spending cuts that would achieve the kind of budget reductions that every American knows that we need. The problem in this town is spending, and the sequester said we will not fail on this opportunity to address it.

Well, that sequester goes into effect in January of next year, and hardest hit will be the United States military. Again, this was a device that was put into place not because folks thought it was the best policy in the room, but to be there as the hammer to say surely this 12-member committee, this joint select committee will come to the agreement that will bring us back from this fiscal cliff. They didn't. Now this sequester hangs over the head of not just the United States military, but over Medicare, over social programs.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I'm just so proud to be a freshman Member of this House. This House said back in the spring that is an unacceptable outcome. It was never intended to be the outcome. No one ever desired that it be the outcome, and we can change that outcome.

So we passed a sequester replacement right here in this House that went into mandatory spending programs, which is where the real problem is in the budget, as we all know, and said let's replace the sequester that may harm

defense--cuts that are going to deal with our military, that are going to put our national security at risk, and let's replace those with spending reductions that make sense.

Again, we passed that in the House. The Senate has taken no action whatsoever.

I don't mean to suggest, Mr. Speaker, that they've taken no action on our bill. They most certainly have not. They're under no obligation to. It's the right thing to do, but they're under no obligation. They are under an obligation to do something about it. They are under an obligation to stand up and listen to the same constituents that my colleague from Florida and I listen to to say there must be action. We must prevent this tremendous threat to our readiness, to our troops, and to our troops' families.

This bill, introduced in this body by Colonel Allen West of Florida, gives us an opportunity to do just that in the bipartisan, open-minded way that I think has characterized the 18 months that I've served in this House because of the leadership of folks like you, Mr. Speaker. It doesn't say you have to use the House-passed bill already.

Was it a good bill? Absolutely. Was it the right answer? I believe that it is.

But what it says is use the House-passed bill or use something like it. If you can find a better plan, if the Senate, in its wisdom, can find a better plan, that's going to work, too. It's not our way or the highway. It's that we know that there's a right way and a wrong way to deal with our budget challenges, and we want to do it the right way.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this rule. I rise in strong support of the two underlying provisions, as well. I look forward to the debate on that this afternoon. We're going to be able to debate these individually, which I believe is the right way to handle questions of this magnitude and this importance.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, before I yield to my freshman colleague from Pennsylvania, to say to my friend from Florida, I don't think you heard the word ``Democrat'' come out of my mouth during my presentation except to talk about those things on which we cooperated together. There are absolutely challenges in this Chamber, but the challenges I'm talking about are challenges with the United States Senate.

Democrats and Republicans in this body came together to pass 7 of the 12 appropriations bills this cycle. We began back in April. Far from being an 11th-hour solution, we began, as the Constitution requires us to begin, one piece of legislation at a time in the most open process this body can implement, Mr. Speaker, where every Member of this body gets to offer any amendment that they desire. Seven appropriations bills we've moved through this body, Mr. Speaker. And then it became apparent, as the Senate has moved not one of 12 bills, that that process was going to be fruitless--fruitless.

Again, is that what the American people want from us? Absolutely not. Are we doing what the American people deserve in this body? Absolutely we are. In my 18 months, I have not found it to be a Republican- Democratic problem. I've found it to be a problem of ideas.

I said to my friend from Florida, I know that he believes in his heart every single word that he has just enunciated. He speaks for inspiration, Mr. Speaker. I have the great pleasure of sitting behind him on the dais in the Rules Committee, so it's always his words that inspire me before it's my turn to take the microphone.

My constituents back home, they say, Rob, what have you learned in 18 months with a voting card? I said, What I have learned is it's not theater on the other side of the aisle. Folks aren't taking to the microphone for their 15 seconds of fame on television. They're taking to the microphone with heartfelt beliefs that they know in their heart to be a reflection of their constituents back home.

And so as we hear two different presentations about what it is we're doing today--a presentation that suggests it's an 11th-hour, last- minute process versus that presentation that says we've done it all right in the openness of day, and here, 4 weeks before the deadline approaches us, we are going to take action to make sure that uncertainty does not further slow this economy.

I'm told, Mr. Speaker, that the fewer days Congress is in session, the higher the stock market goes because at least nothing bad happens here. We're the problem, Mr. Speaker. Government is not the solution. Government is too often the problem.

The last Congress that passed as few bills as this Congress has passed, it was the 104th Congress, when Republicans took control of this House for the first time in over 60 years, because they were elected then not to expand the size and scope of government but to improve the size and scope of government, to reform those processes.

What my friend from Florida says about 2005, 2006, unfunded priority after unfunded priority, I'd love to tell him he's wrong, but he's absolutely right. He's absolutely right. The American taxpayer knew it, and Republicans in this Chamber paid the price for it in the very next election. That's the ace in the hole for America, Mr. Speaker, the American taxpayer. They're paying attention to what happens here.

My colleague may believe that we're on the wrong track. I'll tell you, in 18 months, I've never been more proud for what this institution has done. We're going to find out when the American taxpayer speaks out in that referendum November 6.

With that, Mr. Speaker, there are 87 new freshmen in this freshman class and two more added. I yield 2 minutes to a freshman colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino).

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

I'd just like to remind my colleague from Massachusetts how we ended up here; and, again, we ended up in a way I think that we can all be proud of.

Take ourselves back to April of this year. Again, this is the 2013 funding bill we're talking about. We sit here in September of 2012, we're talking about funding 2013 spending. We began this process back in April on the floor of this House, bill after bill after bill passing in a bipartisan way.

The Military Construction, Veterans' Affairs bill, Mr. Speaker. What could be more important and what could be more bipartisan? Passed this House 407-12. We went through that bill, Mr. Speaker. We went to every single Member of this Chamber. Not just 435, Mr. Speaker. We went to every delegate as well and said do you have a voice that needs to be heard on this floor on this issue and gave every Member that opportunity.

At the end of that, Mr. Speaker, which was just a free-for-all of democracy right here--it was our Republic at its best--this House came together, 407-12, to pass that bill. Mr. Speaker, 226 Republicans, most of our number, 181 Democrats, most of their number, passed that bill-- 407-12 for our military and our veterans. That bill didn't see the light of day on the Senate side, Mr. Speaker.

Our failure to pass this continuing resolution today sees those dollars go to zero. Far from being an abdication of responsibility, this is the height of taking responsibility. Abdication of responsibility has already happened. I can't fix it. I can't change it. We did our business here in this House. But we are being held hostage. And by ``we,'' I mean we, the citizens of this country. I mean ``we,'' the voters of this country. Those with the priorities of this land, we are being held hostage by a Senate that is finding other priorities, priorities other than military construction and our veterans.

Mr. Speaker, it doesn't end there with Military Construction. It goes on. It goes through Leg Branch appropriations, Homeland Security appropriations, Energy and Water appropriations, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations.

How about Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, Mr. Speaker? I mean, when you listen to some of the voices on this floor, there's a reason, there's a benefit to being a Southerner and talking slow. It gives your blood pressure time to come down just a little bit before the words begin to come out of your mouth, because Transportation, including mass transit, Housing and Urban Development, those programs for the neediest among us, passed this House 261-163 in a huge bipartisan majority; 182 Republicans, 79 Democrats came together to say let's focus on the priorities of our constituents back home.

Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Let's move that bill through this body. Again, Mr. Speaker, in the most open process this institution can imagine where every single Member has a chance to be heard, where every single Member can offer their amendments right here in the well.

There are no voices that are being quieted here. We all represent American citizens back home. It's their voices that get shut out.

Do we have a closed rule today on this continuing resolution? We do.

I think back, Mr. Speaker, I know you do, too, to H.R. 1, back in the spring of 2011. It's the only continuing resolution I've ever known of that came under an open rule, and boy did we have a show of democracy here.

It began on a Tuesday, Mr. Speaker. Congress was supposed to adjourn by Thursday afternoon; but by early in the morning on Thursday, it was clear we were nowhere near done. As a freshman, I was a little cynical about this process. I had a suspicion the leadership was going to close that process down because Members had planes to catch and events to go to, and after all, all it was was a continuing appropriations bill.

You know what this leadership said, Mr. Speaker? They said not on our watch. We're going to go into Thursday night. And I don't mean Thursday night at 9. I mean Thursday night past midnight. We're going to go all night long. We're going to go all night long into Friday. We're going to go Friday to noon and Friday through dinner and all night long on Friday night. We finished at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Mr. Speaker, I jumped on the first flight out of National. Flew home. Did a town hall meeting no later than 3 hours after we adjourned that Saturday morning. I was on fire because this House gave every single Member a chance to offer every single amendment that their constituents would have them do. That was extraordinary.

We can't do that every day. We can't go marathon sessions 5 days, day and night. I'm young and vigorous, Mr. Speaker, but I've got to tell you, some folks may not be able to handle it. I'm with you, Mr. Hastings, if you're ready to go those days and nights. I'll do them with you.

But we did that, those 12 appropriations bills. We did that in this body. Not all in one package, but one at the time, at the time, and the Senate said no.

Our choice here today is do we close the doors at these agencies? Do we close the doors on these social services? Do we go through another one of those government shutdown scenarios that benefit absolutely no one, or do we do the right thing which is observe our budget caps, continue to reduce spending? That's right, Mr. Speaker, you know as well as I do on these appropriations bills, on this discretionary spending we spent less in 2011 than they spent in 2010. We spent less in 2012 than we spent in 2011. And if we pass this bill, we'll spend less in 2013 than we spent in 2012.

It hasn't happened since before World War II. Three years in a row, Mr.

Speaker, of this body coming together and telling the American people we can do better with less. That's what this bill is about today, Mr. Speaker.

Again, strong supporter of this rule. Strong supporter of the two underlying measures.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

I'm grateful to my friend for yielding.

I'd say to the gentleman, I think we would be here until 5 a.m. yet again. But our experience, as was our experience on H.R. 1, is time and time again we do the people's work here and the Senate says, no. I have had no indication from the Senate that they will accept anything in that body except this continuing resolution.

If the gentleman will yield?

I'd say that I regret I'm not high enough up the chain to know all the strategic decisions, but I will tell you that the bill that came out of the Senate is a sad 2-year bill that provides absolutely no certainty to any of the farmers in my district. It spends more and provides less certainty.

The farmers in my district say, Rob, we need a farm bill, but why can't you do it right? And I know my colleague would agree with me.

Mr. Speaker, I'd say to my friend from Florida that I have no further speakers remaining.

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

I appreciate my colleague for his words. A lot of folks, Mr. Speaker, have the burden of working with folks whose motives they question. I have the great benefit of working on the Rules Committee with a team of folks whose motives I absolutely never question because I know folks are operating from their heart and from their constituents' best interest.

Let me say, because we talk so much about productivity down here on this floor, Mr. Speaker, The Washington Times did an article earlier this year on productivity in the House and the Senate. They called it ``the futility index''--the futility of all the efforts in the body. They said the Senate ranked number one of all the years that they've been keeping records; less activity going on in the Senate by a large margin than ever before. Then they came to the House and they said, you know what, it's true the House hasn't passed a lot of bills. As you know, Mr. Speaker, we outlawed all of those silly commemorative bills that were not about the people's business but were about folks and their campaigns. Those no longer come to the floor. We eliminated a whole portion of that that was not about the people's business. What The Washington Times said was this: that we had more time in this House in session than all but 10 Congresses since they began keeping records and that we had more debate in this House, Mr. Speaker, than all but two Congresses on record; more debate, more discussion about those ideas and those priorities that are important to the American people.

Now, I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, there's not a man or woman in my district that defines success by how many bills the President of the United States will sign; or if they do, they find those things to be inversely proportional. They don't want us to take over any new industries; they don't want us to regulate any new industries; they don't want us to pick any more winners and losers. They want us to stop. And even better than stopping, they want us to roll those things back.

We're having that debate in America, Mr. Speaker: Who are we? Who are we as Americans? Who are we as a people? And what is so wonderful about this country, despite all of our differences there has always been more that unites Americans than that divides us, always. You can't pick up a newspaper today, Mr. Speaker, without them talking about the ideological divide in this country being as stark as it has ever been, but there is still more that unites us than divides us.

I believe, when we come into this election in November, Mr. Speaker, we're going to have the largest voter turnout in American history. I have no idea what they're going to conclude. But I believe in this country, and I believe that if more of us are at the ballot box participating in this Republic--as we are required, duty bound to do-- we're going to end up with a better result.

I look at the young faces in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker. I like to think of myself as young, but I'm in my forties. The gentleman from Florida expressed his age, despite his youthful vigor. It's about the young people, Mr. Speaker.

And when the gentleman says America is strong enough that we can handle all of these growing debt challenges, I say to the gentleman, I admire his optimism but I disagree with his conclusion. The numbers I look at tell me, if I take everything from everybody, if I take everyone's house, everyone's car, everyone's bank account, if I nationalize every single company in this country, if I take it at all and put it in a bank account today, I still can't pay the hundreds of trillions of dollars in promises that this Federal Government has made to generations to come.

We don't have a problem in this country, Mr. Speaker, that we're not taxing people enough. Our problem is that we're spending too much.

I serve on the Budget Committee as well as the Rules Committee, and we took that challenge on head-on, head-on, Mr. Speaker. They call some things the third rail of politics. We said, in this House, in a bipartisan way, the third rail of politics is failing to deal with these challenges. Failing to deal with these challenges is the problem; dealing with them is the solution.

This wasn't a solution that everyone agreed with. It was a solution that got the only bipartisan majority in this entire town. And we did it not once, but twice, Mr. Speaker.

This is not a happy day. I usually come to the floor; I talk about how excited I am to be here because we're going to do an open rule and we're going to have the Republic at its best. That's not today.

That day was May 10 on the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill, where we had every voice heard. That day was July 19 on the Defense Department bill, where we had every voice heard passing those bills in huge bipartisan fashion. That day was June 6, when we did it with the Energy and Water bill, huge bipartisan majority; and again on June 7 with the Homeland Security bill, and the Legislative Branch bill on June 8; May 31 on Military Construction, on and on and on, Transportation, HUD, June 29.

We've done those things, and the silence on the Senate side is deafening. We could do all those bills again, but this House has already spoken. The people have already spoken. And this continuing resolution gives this body and the American people 6 months for that referendum in November, for every voting-age man and woman in this country to come out and have their voice heard.

We've done all we can do in this body, Mr. Speaker.

I would be happy to yield to my friend.

Reclaiming my time, I have had no prouder moment than our debate on H.R. 1--no prouder moment.

Though I will say to the gentleman, as the gentleman knows quite well, it is frustrating that we can't do the business today. We tried.

As the gentleman from Florida knows, we tried all of these appropriation bills. They weren't 6-month bills. They weren't 2-week bills. They were entire FY13 bills, and we did them right. We did them the way they were supposed to be done. Some people won, some people lost, but, in the end, a bipartisan majority came together and passed every single one. That's what

we should be doing here, Mr. Speaker, and we have.

The American people are going to decide in November: Is the problem the House? Is the problem the Senate? Is the problem the executive branch? I have my own suspicions, but I trust the American people more than I trust any other vote that we make in this House, Mr. Speaker.

Again, I rise in strong support of this rule. I rise in strong support of the two underlying bills, the continuing resolution bill and our opportunity job protection sequester replacement bill.

I urge my colleagues to support the rule. I urge my colleagues to support the two underlying bills.

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

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 788 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to claim the time in opposition to the point of order and in favor of the consideration of the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, the question before the House is: Should the House consider H. Res. 788? While the resolution waives all points of order against the consideration of H.J. Res. 118 and H.R. 3409, the committee is not aware of any points of order, and the waiver is basically prophylactic in nature.

We heard a lot of emotional and interesting points as to the basis of the bill that could be debated if, indeed, this rule were to be passed. I don't think it is actually the time right now in a point of order to go over the benefits of the bill or the detriments of whatever may happen if the bill, itself, is actually debated. There is time for that.

We do know that the number of individuals receiving welfare has dropped by 57 percent, that poverty amongst all single mothers has fallen by 30 percent, that the poverty amongst black children has dropped to its lowest level since 2001, and that employment and earnings amongst single mothers have increased significantly.

But that's all debate to the bill, which still has to go through the rule debate, and we're not talking about that. This is a procedural issue.

We could talk about the fact that in '93 the Ways and Means Committee did say that waivers granted after the date of enactment may not override provisions in the TANF law that concern further mandatory work retirements. But, once again, that would be the kinds of things that we should be talking about in the debate of the bill, which will come after the debate on the rule, which will come after our discussion of this procedural point of order.

So, actually, the merits of what the bill is is not the same thing as the purpose of the procedural point of order. The procedural point of order still has to be based on the idea of unfunded mandates within the rule.

The Congressional Budget Office believes that H.R. 3409 would impose an intergovernmental mandate as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. However, based on the information for EPA and a small number of public entities would be required to comply with the bill's requirement, the CBO estimates that the cost of those entities to comply would fall below the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act's annual threshold for intergovernmental mandates. It's a threshold that is set and adjusted for inflation.

So the Congressional Budget Office states that H.J. Res. 118 also contains no intergovernmental or private sector mandates as defined by the Mandates Reform Act. That is the basis of the point of order. The bottom line is there is no violation of both an unfunded mandate within the rule or in the bills themselves.

The rest of the discussion is actually to the merits of the legislation and is appropriate at the time as we are debating that legislation.

So, Mr. Speaker, although I really have this great desire to use the full 10 minutes of discussion here, the bottom line still----

No, thank you.

I appreciate the honor. Will the gentlewoman from Wisconsin let me finish the statement?

I appreciate the interruption, but let me finish here. And probably not. Let's get on with the issue at hand here.

The point of order basically, Mr. Speaker, is still specious. It is in order to allow the House to continue its scheduled business for the day because the issue of the point of order is the unfunded mandate, not the other merits towards the legislation.

So I do urge Members to vote ``yes'' on the question of consideration. We will have an additional hour to discuss anything you wish to on the rule debate, as well as a whole lot of time on the merits of the bill when we debate the bill itself.

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

Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Ms. Slaughter), 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

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days during which they may revise and extend their remarks.

This resolution provides for a closed rule for the consideration of H.J. Res. 118, the congressional disapproval waiver of work requirements, and provides 1 hour of general debate, with 30 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means and 30 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

This rule also provides for a structured debate for consideration of H.R. 3409, the Coal Miner Employment and Domestic Energy Infrastructure Protection Act, and provides for 1 hour of general debate, with 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Natural Resources, 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Finally, this rule makes in order a number of important amendments on both sides of the aisle. If staff doesn't change my mind, I believe there are 13--7 Republican and 6 Democrat--amendments which is as close as you can get with an uneven number to a fair rule. So it is a fair rule.

Mr. Speaker, now speaking towards the merits of this particular resolution, I would like to make special mention of Congressman Johnson, who is the base sponsor of H.R. 3409, the Coal Miner Employment and Domestic Energy Infrastructure Protection Act. He definitely has been one of the leaders in this entire area of the issue of coal as it is used in energy. Not only is it important to his constituents, but this is an important issue for the entire country. And I want to recognize Mr. Johnson as having been tireless in committee, asking questions that go to the core of this particular issue, providing amendments, and then finally culminating with his bill which deals with how we actually can use coal to further our energy needs in this particular country. Representative Johnson is a freshman who has learned fast and is a true champion for inexpensive energy that will expand our economy and create jobs for American citizens.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I hope you will forgive me if I try to limit myself to what is actually in the resolutions and the bills that we are presenting today as far as the Rules Committee is concerned.

There is, though, a common thread that runs through the two resolutions that happen to be here and deals with the definition of what is administrative and what is legislative. Even if the current administration seems to have a problem in making that definition of what is administrative, we in Congress need to clearly understand what is our legislative responsibility.

Our good friend, Louie Gohmert of Texas, always says that he who learns the lessons of history will find some other way to screw it up. That's probably true. I don't want to sound like an old history teacher, but I am. I do want to say that there are some things that we in Congress should be doing to learn from our past history.

John Page, in 1771, a Congressman from Virginia, was on the House floor when it was determined while the House was debating whether they stuck around to actually determine where postal routes should be. People wanted to go, and, more importantly, the people trusted the President. The question was, Why don't we just let the President do it all?

It was John Page who stood up and said, and I move to adjourn and leave all objects of legislation to his, the President's, sole consideration and direction. He shamed Congress into doing their job of writing the legislation and not allowing the executive branch, the administration, simply to do everything by fiat. We sometimes have forgotten that.

In the TARP language, we put in language like, the Secretary of the Treasury will be able to purchase troubled assets on such terms and conditions as are determined by the Secretary; or authorize any purchase on which the Secretary determines, promotes financial market stability; or the Secretary is authorized to take such action as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out all authorities in this particular act.

That is legislative authority that we passed on to the executive branch. That was a tragic mistake. We should not incorporate that tragic mistake, wider now, by simply allowing the executive branch to take on responsibilities and authorities of their own free will and volition.

We have this same situation once again in the history of this country. We had a President of the United States who wrote a book about Congress without ever visiting Congress itself, who said what the Founding Fathers realized, in which their effort to have vertical separation of power between State and national government--what we call federalism--and horizontal separation of powers between the three branches, which we call the separation of powers--and every public school student is taught that--they were put in there so that individual liberty, which I always consider to be individual choices and options in running their lives, would be protected against the concentration of power in one branch or another.

Now, this former President of the United States called this separation of powers political witchcraft. He said it was wrong to try and separate powers perplexingly subdivided and distributed to be hunted down in out-of-the-way corners. An earlier President than him thought, you know, the President of the United States is elected by everybody, Congress by a few people, the courts by none. Therefore, ignore the courts, which has some appeal, but at the same time the President should speak for the government.

This other President, coming back later, built upon that so he increased the role and power of the executive branch under the concept the President is the President of the whole people and, therefore, he has the ability to transcend separation of powers.

His effort to improve democracy was to eliminate democracy and instead ensure that the decisions were not made by the people or the voice or representatives of the people, but by experts, experts who were serving in the administrative branches. We, if you like that concept, call it the administrative state. If you don't, we call it ``nanny government.'' Nonetheless, that was the concept.

One of the other Presidents that came shortly before him said there will be little permanent good that can be done by any party if we fail to regard the States as anything other than a convenient unit for local government. He said there is no harm by concentrating power in the hands of one individual. He also said that he would not be content with keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin. That's perhaps why the Speaker of the House at the time said he had no more use for the Constitution than a tomcat has for a marriage license.

The bottom line of what happened in the history is that all of a sudden we found that the Founding Fathers who believed in people and believed in the legislative branch, listening to John Locke, who said you cannot transfer the power of the legislature to another branch, those type of people decided at that time that the people should not be running their own affairs, that government experts should be making that policy.

To be honest, when we're talking about the first resolution that deals with TANF, the welfare issue, I don't care if the waiver is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it is still extra-constitutional and it should not be used and Congress should not allow it to take away what is the role of Congress, and only Congress, to establish these issues and set these boundaries.

In the other bill that we're talking about, we're talking about prohibiting future actions by entities, in this case, specifically the EPA, which would destroy jobs, increase the cost of our utilities that would cause greater costs of lighting homes and heating homes, especially for those who have the least ability to do so.

Congressmen and Congresswomen must stand up and insist that Congress create these standards and create these options, not being made by executive

fiat. That is the very purpose of why we are here.

The first President, to whom I referred, ended up with a legacy of many programs implemented which we still today find controversial. He was labeled by historians as an arrogant President at that time who refused to talk to Congress. Because of that, he lost some of his last, most precious programs in an effort to try and go around Congress rather than working with Congress.

Now, Mr. Speaker, that's why this resolution is before us and why these two separate bills are here. Both of them attempt to set the record straight and show that it is Congress' responsibility to set the rules and the guidelines. It is not an administrative prerogative. And we as Congress need to step forward and say we are the ones who do this. We should not allow it to be done by anyone else, regardless of why it's being done or the merits of why it's being done. It's our job.

We should learn from history. We should be more like John Page and try and make sure the Congress does these types of issues and makes these types of decisions and less like Presidents later on who thought the President speaks for everybody and the President has every right to transcend separation of powers and do it for himself. That's the basis of these two bills. That's the important issue. We should learn the lesson of history.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

With gratitude for the last speech, which was such a stirring support of fracking, which has made gas so plentiful and useful in this country, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn).

I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the chairman of the Science Committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall).

Mr. Speaker, I have some empathy for the gentleman from Iowa, but I will have to say that one of the reasons that those amendments were not made in order was, quite frankly, because both of them were nongermane to the base bill, and that becomes a concept.

One of the reasons that Ms. Slaughter speaks on wishing to stay here until we pass middle class tax cuts--and I think I can approve of that because, actually, when we considered H.R. 8, the Rules Committee took an extraordinary step of waiving the rules of the House--including CutGo and other budget-related points of order--so an amendment could be given by Mr. Levin, and he could have an opportunity to present that amendment. That amendment was debated, and it was rejected on a bipartisan vote of the House in August.

Unlike the amendment, then H.R. 8 passed the House with a bipartisan vote, which means the House has voted for a middle class tax cut. We have done our duty. It is one of the myriad of bills that is sitting over on the Senate side waiting for them to do something so that we can proceed to a conference committee.

So I actually approve of what the gentlelady from New York is saying because basically we've done it, and we did it on August 1.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I actually don't think I have any other speakers. I may be surprised in the next few minutes, as will be the case.

It happens, yes.

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

In our discussion of this particular rule today, we have, as oftentimes is the case, wandered far and wide.

I would point out to one of the speakers who was just up there saying that we should stay here doing the sequestration act, dealing with the sequestration issue, the House did. On May 10, we passed the Sequestration Replacement Act. Once again, it's sitting over in the Senate. To wait here until we do the middle class tax cuts, we did that in August. It's waiting over on the Senate to do something.

We have issues that are significant in the two that are before us. If we're talking about welfare in some particular way, whether the rule that was made coming out of the executive branch was appropriate or not, we could go back and say why it was done. It is true the President, in 1997 and once again in 1998, said he would not have supported the legislation that created the system that we have. It's also true that in The Washington Post editorial, they made comments that said the Obama administration is waiving the Federal requirement that ensures a portion of able-bodied TANF recipients must engage in work activities. If this is not getting welfare reform, it's difficult to imagine what would be.

But even if the substance of that was inaccurate, the fact that it was done by regulation, by rulemaking coming from the administrative branch, puts us in suspect category. Rules should not be establishing what is our priority; it should be laws made on this body. If you want to change it, if you want to do waivers, it should be coming from this particular body.

The other half of it deals with coal. This is a Nation with the largest coal reserves in the world. We have 500 years of potential electricity at cheap rates coming from coal. A coal plant today is as much as 99 percent cleaner than one built 40 years ago, and yet rules and regulations that have been promulgated or are being threatened to promulgate are one of those that impede the ability of building new plants.

There is no valid reason why the American coal industry should be suffering at the hands of overzealous Washington regulators or why workers are being laid off in the Midwest, in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and other places; although, today, it was again announced that there will be 1,200 coal mining jobs that will be eliminated across central Appalachia by a company, one company.

And once again, there is the kind of unfair regulations that are taking place. It is true that H.R. 3409 is cobbled together with other bills that have passed this body, but I would remind you that each of those four that have already passed this body were passed on a bipartisan vote, with anywhere between 16 and 37 Democrats, depending on the bill, joining with Republicans to pass those. And, when put together in a package with H.R. 3409, presents a good package to make sure that we are in favor of cheap energy, energy that will drive and build our economy and provide jobs for those who need those particular jobs.

I went historically in a while earlier because I wanted to say that we have faced these types of situations in the past, where the question was: Should the President make the rules or regulations or should Congress actually pass legislation?

The President to whom I referred ended his tenure in a somewhat bitter way, refusing to work with Congress, instead, trying to go around Congress, which produced, at that time, a historic deadlock between the Presidency and the Congress.

This is a Nation of laws. Laws are made here. It's not a Nation of rules. And if the rules and regulations are going to have the effect on the future and are going to have an effect on the American people, they should not be done by executive fiat. Whether you like them or not, they should not be done in that manner. It should be done here legislatively.

That's the purpose of both of these issues that are tied together in this rule; that's the thread that comes together--whether or not we actually believe Congress should be doing the job of creating the standards and the rules, or we're willing to simply abrogate our responsibility, our power, our options to some other body.

And I would hope that as Congress we would be very careful and considerate about what our responsibility is, and we would take very seriously any encroachment on the role of law that is given to us by the Constitution. It was the vision of the Founding Fathers that this should be the body that makes those decisions, not the executive branch.

This is a good bill, these are good bills, and this is a fair rule.

We haven't even talked about the amendments that were made in order, but they do cover, in fact, we did have one statement about the amendment that was not made in order, and I half wish--the Member is no longer here, but his issue of concern is covered in another amendment that is made in order and will be discussed on this floor.

So it is a fair rule. It will have a vigorous debate. And there are two good bills that would be brought before this body that I hope sincerely pass. I do urge their adoption, and I sincerely urge the adoption of this rule that will move us forward.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bill, H.R. 6233, the supplemental agriculture disaster assistance.

Look, weather impacts our lives. I'm going to talk a little bit about climate change and some of the driving factors that are causing more severe weather conditions, be they droughts or floods. Yes, they affect businesses, but the solution is not another Republican Big Government government bailout of yet another industry. The Republicans have bailed out Wall Street. The Republicans have bailed out the banks. Now the Republicans are seeking to bail out cows. Yes, Mr. Speaker, another Big Government solution to another problem, in part, of their own creation by refusing to take up action and reducing our carbon emissions for climate change.

Where does this all end, when it's too cloudy? The solar industry might suffer. Are we going to bail them out? When it's not windy enough, the wind industry might suffer. Are we going to bail them out? We have restaurants on Pearl Street Mall in Boulder that have rooftop lounges. When it's too hot, less people go up to the rooftop lounges. We've had a drought in May and June and not enough people went to rooftop lounges. I would like to ask my colleague, Ms. Foxx, if there could be government bailout money for those rooftop lounges.

I yield to the gentlelady from North Carolina.

Reclaiming my time, there's just a particular sector. Maybe they have a lot of lobbyists. Maybe they're a big special interest, they own cows. We're going to bail them out because the price of hay has gone up. That's what we're talking about here today.

We're talking about a closed rule. We're talking about a closed process. This is nothing new, this lack of transparency, this limited debate, pushing through a Big Government Republican bailout on short notice without even giving Members enough time to offer improvements to the bill, to change the bill. The first time that Republicans and Democrats even saw this bill was late Tuesday night, and here we are on the floor of the House without a single hearing, without a single markup, pushing through this bill, shutting out opportunities for Democrats or Republicans to offer improvements to this bill.

This is one of the worst and widest droughts we've seen in decades. I see that firsthand in Colorado. We have had devastating fires this summer coupled with extreme heat in the West. This is indicative of a need to address the true culprit: climate change. The evidence that recent droughts and heat waves are linked to climate change is growing suddenly and represents the strong scientific consensus.

We need the very conservation programs in the farm bill that are being gutted for this Big Government bailout of cows. The very programs cut by this bill are needed to help farmers and ranchers conserve soil, conserve water to make their farms and ranches more resilient to the devastating impacts we see from climate change and to mitigate that impact.

Look, American farmers, ranchers, and environmentalists have all been waiting for months to see a farm bill come to the floor. To the disappointment of many, instead of a farm bill, which I understand for at least 5 weeks we're not going to see in the House of Representatives, we're presented with a cow bailout, which is yet another Republican Big Government bailout of an American industry.

When the Senate passed their farm bill over a month ago, the House majority couldn't even manage to bring a package to the floor for Members to debate. Earlier this week, the Republicans were looking at a 1-year extension of the farm bill and have now decided to pull that 1- year extension in favor of a cow bailout.

Let me once again stress that our severe concerns around droughts in the West and across the country are critical, but we mustn't gut programs that are some of the very programs that can help prevent the impact of droughts in seeking to bail out a particular industry. When we look at drought assistance funding, we need to have a bipartisan discussion about how we're going to structure it and where it's going to come from and why certain industries are going to be favored over others.

Why is there going to be a cow bailout instead of a rooftop terrace bailout? When it's too hot, businesses suffer. If you're going to have a big Republican bailout, why don't you discuss who it goes to and not just give it to who has the most lobbyists here or who gives the most campaign contributions.

Furthermore, the conservation provisions that are cut by this bill do have strong bipartisan support in both Chambers. Both the Senate and the House Agriculture Committees understand the importance of the farm bill's conservation title. Both farm bills retain funding for the conservation title because many folks on both sides of the aisle agree that conservation practices are critical to protect our soil, the future production of our agriculture, water, and wildlife resources. That's yet another reason to consider a comprehensive bill, to help ensure the strength of agriculture and protect American jobs, rather than another Republican bailout.

Instead of voting on the underlying bill, instead of even talking about a 5-year extension of the agriculture bill, here we are today gutting critical programs with bipartisan support to bail out yet another industry with a centrally planned Big Government solution.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I listened very carefully to the gentlelady from North Carolina. I didn't hear her defend this bovine bailout that the Republicans are proposing here today. Now, I'm going to take a few minutes and address some of the mischaracterizations of the President of the United States that were in some of those comments, but then I do want to bring it back to this Big Government bovine bailout that the Republicans are proposing here before us today.

Look, the President understands and I understand, as somebody who started several businesses before I got here--I created several hundred jobs--that of course I didn't do it alone. If we didn't have roads so that employees could get to work, I wouldn't have been able to start a company. I wouldn't have been able to have any employees to get to work. If we didn't have schools that help prepare programmers and technicians to work technology companies--tech companies that I started that hired programmers, that were good-paying jobs--I wouldn't have been able to start a company. If we didn't have investors and shareholders and the right level of securities regulation to prevent fraud and to give them the confidence to invest in the companies that I started, we wouldn't have capital formation and venture capital flowing to the companies that needed it.

If we didn't have the rule of law, if we didn't fund our courts, if we didn't invest in basic research, if the government hadn't provided the funding to start the Internet, I wouldn't have been able to start a single company.

And most of my friends who are entrepreneurs, who have started companies, who are corporate executives agree. Yes, the entrepreneur is critical. And the President's Jobs Council recognizes that, and this President has been more friendly to entrepreneurship and to business than any President in my lifetime, working to ensure that small businesses have the opportunity to succeed and grow and create jobs in the private sector.

But without that basic infrastructure, we have to ask ourselves what separates the United States of America from a country like Somalia or even a centrally planned country like North Korea. A lot separates us. But a big part of that is this collaboration of a public sector role that enables entrepreneurship, enables success in the private sector, enables people to create fortunes, enables people to create jobs. That's the proper role of government.

Government doesn't stand in the way of job creation. The government's policy framework, courts people can trust, roads for people to get to work, good public schools, good health care--that's what enables success. As somebody who reached some degree of success in the private sector before I got here, I agree completely with President Obama that I couldn't have achieved that degree of success without the public infrastructure that played a role in allowing me and so many other entrepreneurs to succeed.

Now, moving back to the topic, the topic of the bovine bailout that the Republicans have proposed here today. The gentlelady from North Carolina said, We have no control over climate, basically. That was the quote that she just said. Well, the vast majority of scientific consensus and agreement would indicate otherwise.

We don't control weather. But climate is different than weather. And, yes, humans are contributing to climate change through carbon emissions and emissions of other greenhouse gases. The global climate has warmed. The average climate in Colorado now is two to three degrees warmer than it was a century ago, and it continues to accelerate. Now, that doesn't cause a drought or a flood in any one particular year, but it causes an increased incidence of severe weather patterns that cost us all money, which is why we're even talking about a bovine bailout here today.

Now, look, I wish this had come to the floor under an open process. I would have offered an amendment just to talk about it to say, why don't you bail out rooftop restaurants, rooftop terraces?

Look, we're talking about the role of the government, the role of the private sector. I find it ironic and to the point of being bizarre-- almost like I'm in an alternative universe--that in the very same remarks that the gentlelady from North Carolina railed against a President who dares to say that the public sector has a role in creating the landscape for private businesses to succeed, at the same time, she is advocating for a bovine bailout of a particular industry.

Now why this particular industry? Why not rooftop terraces? Why not solar, if it's too cloudy? Why not wind, if it's not windy enough? Many, many, many businesses are affected by weather. Retail stores are affected when it snows too much. Should they be coming to Washington, clamoring for a bailout?

Look, both sides respect the role of the private sector. And when you have government preempting the private sector by picking out a particular industry and elevating it above all others, by giving it government subsidies and a big bailout, you are upsetting the very market forces that the gentlelady from North Carolina espoused support of in another context.

This bill today gives us a terrible choice between drought assistance and conservation. Now, both might be worthy; but disproportionate cuts to conservation programs that are used to fund this bill undermine the continued success of conservation programs that have bipartisan support and are helping farmers mitigate the impact of climate change in their businesses.

There are so many other issues of relevance for farmers that this House could be taking up. Why aren't we talking about the estate tax, which affects small farmers across this country? If we don't act by December 31, the estate tax will go to a 55 percent tax above $1 million in assets, forcing many small farmers out of business and preventing them from being passed down from one generation to the next.

Are we going to leave it until the last minute? Is that a plan for the lame duck session? Are the Republicans scared to take on the estate tax before the election?

I would advocate that we get down to work and start addressing issues that actually affect farmers. We should be voting to provide for the success of American agriculture, opening new markets, investing in basic research, helping to ensure that families have access to healthy food and nutrition.

We need to make sure that farmers' and ranchers' needs are addressed. And if we don't address the fundamental drivers of climate change, we're only going to be faced with more and more difficulties, more and more requests for bailouts. It may be cows this time. It may be chickens next time. It may be corn the next time. There are always going to be folks here in Washington, hat in hand, coming to Republicans, saying, Give us a Big Government solution.

And the question will come to this Congress, Are we going to do something about the underlying problem? And whether that approach is through a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax or incentives for renewables, what are we going to do to prevent farmers in this country from being driven out of business? This bill does nothing.

Sure, you can hand them government money. You can hand them taxpayer money, if that's the lack of regard that you have for taxpayer money, you want to hand it out to whoever comes to town and begs for it. Go right ahead. And I have some rooftop terrace restaurant owners in my district. Give them some while you are at it.

That's not a solution. That's what got us into this budget deficit. That's what got us into this hole. Let's address the underlying issue of climate change in a scientific manner, have the real political discussions that are necessary to negotiate a bipartisan solution that reduces our carbon emissions, reduces the impact of climate change on American farmers, reduces the incidence and severity of droughts across the United States of America, and also be the global leaders that we need to be on this critical issue.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I am the only remaining speaker, and I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to make in order an amendment which proposes that Congress will not adjourn until the President signs middle class tax cuts into law.

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

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. This will give us the opportunity to renew middle class tax cuts. When we talk about job creation, when we talk about growing our economy, the need to make sure that we don't increase taxes on the middle class during a recess is something economists from both sides of the aisle agree on, something Democrats agree on. I hope Republicans agree, too, that we shouldn't raise taxes on at least 98 percent of Americans.

Then let's have the discussion about the other 2 percent. But let's agree on what we agree on. Let's not raise taxes on 98 percent of American families before Congress goes on break. Before the Republicans send us all home to enjoy our summers, let's do something about jobs. Let's do something about the economy, and let's demand that we give middle class families across America the surety and the security to know that they're not going to need to pay an additional $1,000 a year in taxes, an additional $2,000 a year in taxes.

I think it is critical, and I call upon my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question so that we can bring forward this critical amendment to provide the certainty that America needs to grow our economy and create jobs.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from my neighboring State of Georgia, whom I consider to be one of the most conscientious, hardworking individuals in the Congress, and I appreciate the fact that he's 18 months here in the Congress. He and I know that he understands this institution considerably, having worked here for a number of years, and I'm grateful the process allows and he has allowed that I receive the traditional 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, this rule provides, as has been said, for consideration of two bills. To identify them again, H.J. Res. 117 is the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, and H. Res. 6365 is the National Security and Job Protection Act.

When my colleague began his remarks, he said the magic words, ``This is a closed rule.'' When I was, as he, 18 months in the House in 1992 and I would be on radio, people were talking about how awful it was that the Democrats had so many closed rules. The Democrats lost the election that following year in 1994, and one of the leading reasons was closed rules. Yet we find ourselves on something as important as the financial circumstances of this country coming to the floor at the 11th hour with a closed rule, and, in fact, not having many more days that we are scheduled to be here, but having absolutely no reason why we could not be here at any point in time between now and the time that our financial circumstances would begin to be, as they are, much worse. Maybe the Republicans should have added a third entitled resolution. I would call it the ``No More Getting Anything Done in This Congress Act,'' because that is the message of this particular package.

This continuing resolution is merely a reminder that my friends in the majority were unable to complete work on the regular appropriations bills.

Instead of devoting congressional time to tackling the needs of essential government programs, Republicans have spent the summer trying to repeal the health care law, giving away benefits to the oil and gas industry, and chipping away repeatedly at women's rights.

Now, my colleague is correct in many respects to point out that the other body presents us with challenges, but it is not as if the other body has not done something. Let me tell you one of the measures that I have a continuing interest in because of my constituency, and that is that the Senate has passed a farm bill for a 5-year extension.

What my colleagues or leadership on the Republican side will not do is put that farm bill here on the floor even though we are faced in this country with a residual from one of the worst droughts that America has ever experienced. Even though food prices for all of the people in this country are continuously rising, here we are with this time that the chair of the Agriculture Committee and the ranking member begging the leadership, cannot find time for it to be on this floor. Instead of devoting our time to tackling the needs of essential government programs, we decide that we're going to attack women's rights.

Now, suddenly, you seem to have awakened to the looming, described, fiscal cliff. It's kind of good that you've noticed; but rather than address this challenge head on, the Republicans are pushing a bill that doesn't do anything. The sequester replacement does not actually prevent the sequester with a prudent mix, and every panel that has looked at this says that we have to have a prudent mix of spending cuts and revenue increases. What the Republicans simply do is kick the can down the road, which is no surprise.

I said in an earlier Rules meeting, and it was during the Olympics, that if kicking the can down the road were an Olympic sport, then Congress and the Republican majority would win gold, bronze, silver, and tin. This poor can doesn't have much more space to be kicked on, and I can tell you it places the burden on someone else to deal with this in the future. And this is what my Republican colleagues would call fiscal responsibility?

We got into this mess because of the massive deficits the Republicans piled on this country. Two wars in the Middle East not paid for, huge tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans--for those among us that are in a high-paying position--and huge, unpaid prescription drug benefits are all things that Republican Members in this House voted for despite the huge costs that would be imposed.

In fact, just 61 bills have been signed into law this year, the fewest in more than 60 years. In all of 2011, only 90 bills were signed into law. When Democrats controlled both Chambers in 2010, 258 bills were signed into law.

Now, I don't want to sound like I'm the only person who is making this observation that is being made. Let me cite two people, especially here inside the Beltway, that have made this observation, and that are generally respected as nonpartisan and accepted as experts by Republicans and Democrats.

We on this side are not the only ones who have noticed the lack of productivity that I just identified with the 61 bills. Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann wrote in a Washington Post column, the two gentlemen, and I am quoting them:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for

more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this

dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both

parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we

have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the

problem lies with the Republican Party.

That's from two particularly nonpartisan observers that everybody around here recognizes as experts. Now we are asked to support the Romney-Ryan vision of America, which ignores any responsibility for today's economic difficulties and instead demands that those who have the least in this great country should sacrifice the most. While Republicans last year were fighting tooth and nail to default on our debt obligations and crash the economy, millions of Americans were fighting to keep their jobs and millions lost them.

Millions of Americans were fighting to pay off their mortgages, and millions could not pay them. Millions of Americans were seeking access to quality health care, and they could not afford it. Millions of children of parents who wanted them to go to college are finding themselves without the capacity to get a decent education largely for the reasons that I have suggested.

But under the Romney-Ryan vision those priorities should take a back seat

to increase defense spending, and yet give more tax cuts for the wealthiest among us in our society. When it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, student loans and public safety, the Republicans are quick to dismiss billions of dollars in essential funding with a wave of their hand and the crocodile tears of deficit reduction. But when the defense contractors stand to lose just $1, Republicans suddenly find their fighting spirit and cry about a weakening America.

It's a shame, Mr. Speaker, that Republicans can't shake off their do- nothing indolence to fight as hard for all Americans as they do for the richest.

We have a long list of programs, tax cuts, and activities set to expire at the end of this year; but rather than confront those challenges head on, Republicans are wasting our time with do-nothing bills. I suppose that when you have absolutely no ideas to offer besides tax cuts for those that are better off among our society, you may as well campaign on a platform of ``we have no ideas or even a plan to offer.'' But the American people need and deserve much more.

Mr. Speaker, I reject the Republican notion that a do-nothing Congress can help grow our economy, create more jobs, and address the many challenges facing this Nation from crumbling infrastructure to the impossibly high cost of education; and I also reject the Romney-Ryan vision that the only solution, at least that they have offered to these challenges, is tax cuts that help the rich and increase military spending.

My Republican colleagues paint a very pessimistic vision, Mr. Speaker, of a country where it appears to them that we have given up on trying to better everyone's lives and instead use the public's resources to enrich those who have already made it.

But I believe differently. We can afford to invest in our future. We can afford to create jobs. We can afford to make the choices now that will reap benefits for future generations--right now.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, before yielding to my good friend and colleague, Mr. McGovern, I would just urge my colleague from Pennsylvania to know that all of us are mindful, and rightfully should be concerned, about what's transpired in the Middle East. But he cites to one set of finances, and I would urge that he look at how and why the United States is involved in a compact with the Egypt military for the moneys that are distributed there, and not base it on what is happening today but look at what has happened throughout the years to assist in stabilizing that area. It didn't just happen overnight. It happened as a result of a serious compact in peace negotiations.

I am very pleased to yield 3 minutes to my good friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

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

My good friend from Georgia speaks out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, you're saying that we began this process open and this democracy flourished, and you were so passionate about it until when we left at 5 a.m. in the morning you rushed home and you were on fire.

I'm curious to know when we finish up here, ostensibly tomorrow afternoon, what is it that would cause us not to be able to be here and allow, as you put it, every Member to have his or her say for their constituents on this measure?

But, no, we're here on a closed rule.

I understand that the government has to continue and that's why we are doing a continuing resolution, but I also know we could have done an omnibus bill, and I also know that my colleague and others were the ones that caused this country to come to the brink and our credit rating to be assaulted; and you are going to tell me that we can't stay here tomorrow, that we can't come back here after the holidays or tomorrow and stay here if need be to get this done?

But, no, we're doing it now before April so that when we come back, we will be faced with the same crisis, and the only thing that's going to change is the faces and the places that the people come from, and all I'm saying is let's do it now. Let's do those things that you were talking about. And if it requires 5 a.m. in the morning, let's do it at 5 a.m. in the morning. I'm 76 and I'm still staying up. I don't know about you.

I yield to my colleague from Georgia.

Reclaiming my time, first I ask my colleague. You know and I know you have farm interests in Georgia the same as I do, not necessarily the same, but we have farm interests in Georgia and farm interests in Florida. The Senate did pass the farm bill.

Can my colleague tell me why we don't have the farm bill on the floor during all of this period of time? We could at least do that in light of the disaster relief that took place.

I yield to my friend.

Where did you get the number 2-year rather than 5-year bill from? Because the 5-year proposal is what the chair of the Agriculture Committee, your and my colleague, Mr. Lucas, is seeking to offer. But I don't want to get us caught in the weeds.

Let me go ahead and yield 2 minutes to my friend, the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

I also have no further speakers and I'm prepared to close, and I thank the distinguished gentleman.

I also would like to offer an apology to my colleague. I committed a parliamentary faux pas when I said you speak out of both sides of your mouth. In the heat of the moment, I guess what I was trying to say is you said one thing one way than you said at another point in time, so I offer you my deepest my apologies.

Mr. Speaker, we will soon start another long district work period even though we haven't given the middle class an extension of tax cuts for the next year. If we defeat the previous question, I'm going to offer an amendment to the rule to ensure that the House won't leave town until middle class tax cuts are signed into law. The first step is to give this House a vote on the middle class tax cut, introduced by Mr. Levin, which is the same proposal the Senate has already passed and the President is eager to sign.

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

Mr. Speaker, there is an upside to the Republicans' ``do-nothing'' Congress.

First, it creates a clear contrast between the Republicans and Democrats.

Democrats want to press forward with meaningful ideas to create jobs, improve access to affordable health and education, and invest in the kinds of programs that bring about progress and prosperity for all Americans. I believe that my friends in the majority want to push legislation that either cuts taxes for the wealthiest among us, or increases spending on the military, or does nothing more than pay the bills today--play politics while accomplishing nothing.

This is not about the deficit. The United States doesn't lack the money to prioritize our future. What we do lack is the political willpower and leadership necessary to set gainful priorities.

The Romney-Ryan vision for America is nothing more than a reckless sellout to the ideological extremes of the Republican Party, a party that is utterly dominated at this point in our history by a Tea Party dogma which cares more to preserve tax cuts for the rich than to be about the business of ensuring the well-being of our entire society.

The so-called ``sacrifices'' continually demanded by the Republican majority in order to provide ever more money for foreign wars and tax cuts for the wealthy are shortchanging the future of this Nation. Continuing to move further to the right--or to the left--does not constitute progress. Furthermore, the closed-door negotiations and closed process is truly disheartening and does not reflect the democracy that is supposed to be the hallmark of this institution.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question, and I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Will my colleague yield?

I just want to ask, 6 months from now, when we come back, if you and I are here, will you commit that we would have that debate 6 months from now under an open rule?

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bills--H.R. 5544, the Minnesota Education Investment and Employment Act, and H.R. 5949, the FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act. There are significant problems in both pieces of legislation. However, both bills are, nevertheless, being brought forward under a restrictive process, despite the efforts of my colleague, Mr. McGovern, to amend the rule to allow for an open rule on amendments on both debates. Unfortunately, that motion failed in the Rules Committee. Instead, this rule is a restrictive process that limits debate and discussion that can improve this legislation.

Let me briefly address the lands law before getting to the FISA bill, which is of great concern to our civil liberties.

We have before us a bill that allows for the exchange of 86,000 acres of Minnesota's school trust lands within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for unidentified Forest Service lands. The wilderness is a critical asset for northeastern Minnesota's tourism and recreation industry, as well as the most popular wilderness area in our Nation's wilderness system. But since the bill doesn't even give details about what public land would be lost, we can't even say how bad a deal this is for the American people. It is simply bad policy to push through a controversial land swap bill without adequate public involvement and participation.

I strike that in contrast to a bill that I recently introduced, H.R. 6370, the Conveyance of the Forest Service Lake Hill Administrative Site. This bill does have accompanying maps that will be made available to the committee so that people can see where the land in question is. It is land that no longer fits the characteristics of forest land, having been deforested near the highway, about 40 acres, and it should not be a controversial bill.

In direct contrast to this bill, the bill I introduced today has support from the counties, towns, and local environmental community, and no local opposition to that bill. On the other hand, Mr. Cravaack's bill doesn't even identify what Forest Service parcels would be sold by the Federal Government and acquired by Minnesota. This kind of ambiguity in a land exchange bill is unprecedented for a land exchange bill and is not providing the adequate information to the Members of this body to make an informed decision on the underlying bill.

Now, let me address FISA--I take issue with a number of elements of FISA--which extends the sweeping electronic surveillance network established under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 for 5 years. I did not support the bill when it came before the House Judiciary Committee on which I serve, and I do not support this bill now.

Now, of course everybody in our country understands the serious threat our Nation faces from terrorist organizations and foreign nations, but we can't give up what makes it special for us to be Americans in the name of defending our country. Our privacy rights should not be eviscerated in the name of national security.

Many of these concerns are addressable, but unfortunately the bill fails to strike an appropriate balance between protecting our liberties and security. Some of its many shortcomings include giving the U.S. Government the ability to intercept U.S. residents' international phone calls and email communications without having to even name the people or groups it's monitoring or show its targets who are suspected of wrongdoing or terrorism. The target could even be a human rights activist, a media organization, a country, a region, an ethnicity. Nothing requires the government to identify its surveillance targets at all, nor are there sufficient parameters around making sure that they are narrowly tailored to our national security needs.

In addition, this bill unfortunately allows the U.S. to intercept communications without having to identify the location, the phone lines, the email addresses to be monitored. In essence, the government can use this new law to collect all phone calls between the U.S. and abroad simply by saying to the FISA court that it was targeting someone abroad and that a purpose of the new surveillance program is to collect foreign intelligence information.

The lack of judicial oversight is also startling. While the FISA courts have a limited role, it's limited to overseeing the government surveillance activities rather than reviewing individualized surveillance applications, including whether they are sufficiently broad or not.

Yesterday, the chair of our committee, Mr. Dreier, also mentioned that Congress itself has an oversight role in making sure that the broad powers given to the Federal Government under FISA are not abused. However, this Congress--and myself, personally--have not had any briefing with regard to the use of FISA.

Now, yesterday, representatives of the Intelligence Committee offered to make those briefings available, but I think the proper order to go about things, if Members of Congress are to make an informed decision about whether these vast powers given to the Federal Government are being used appropriately, would be to have the classified briefing first before bringing a 5-year extension bill to the floor so that Members of Congress, in a classified setting, have access to the information that we need--the information that I need, the information my colleagues need--to make an informed decision about whether the proper controls are in place and the extent of the use and/or abuse of the vast powers given under FISA.

In addition, there are no real limits on how the government uses, keeps, or disseminates the information it collects. The law doesn't say what government can keep and has to get rid of. Potentially, this could lead to the archiving of material over decades. It fails to place real limits on how and to whom information can be disseminated. Whether it's our U.S. intelligence partners in other countries, whether it's contractors to our own government, we need to have the right controls around where private information is shared.

Finally, I want to address another element of the bill in my initial remarks, and that is the indemnity that is given to companies that violate their own terms of service and allow the government to trample the privacy rights of thousands of Americans.

Effectively, telecom companies and others that provide the government with enormous amounts of information are effectively completely indemnified, so there is no way to hold any of these companies accountable for their activities in violation of their own user agreement signed by two parties, themselves and their customer. There remains no way to enforce the violation of that user agreement because there is complete indemnity for those organizations.

I think there needs to be a way, through the regular court system, to hold companies accountable for their activities. Letting them off the hook entirely only invites widespread abuse and disregard of their own customer agreements. Why bother even having to post or have a privacy policy if, at the whim of the company--not the government, the whim of the company--it can be completely shared with the government in disregard to their own privacy policy because that is the most effective way for the company to receive a blanket indemnification to any civil liability that might arise from violating privacy laws and/or its own terms of use.

Again, national security is a critical imperative. We need to make sure that our agencies charged with keeping us safe have the right tools at their disposal to do so. But in the process of making sure that Americans are safe, we need to make sure we don't give up what makes it special to be an American.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Remarkably, the underlying bill produced by Mr. Cravaack actually uncovered a permanent earmark that the CBO found provides $6 million a year to three Minnesota counties. I think that in a Congress that is supposed to move past earmarks it's not a good precedent to include that earmark in the transition.

I'd also like to clarify that Governor Dayton, while, of course, asking for the land to be exchanged--and there doesn't seem to be disagreement about that--did not ask for NEPA to be short-circuited, nor do they ask to bypass the normal appraisal process.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, Congress will soon leave town again for a long district work period. We believe it is essential that before we go home we must extend tax cuts for the middle class. If we defeat the previous question here today, we will amend the rule to say that Congress needs to stay here to vote on the Middle Class Tax Cut Act and not go home until we've made sure the middle class tax cut extension becomes law and that tax rates do not increase for millions of American families.

To speak about the previous question, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

I would like to inquire of the gentleman from Florida how many speakers he has remaining.

Then I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, at a time when millions of Americans continue to struggle to find work, our Federal deficit continues to mount. Here we are in Congress after a 5-week recess--doing what?--considering, one, a faulty land swap deal that is a bad deal for the general public, that contains a hidden earmark and is controversial among local communities in Minnesota, and, two, a major reauthorization bill under a closed process that significantly curtails our liberties as Americans without there being any opportunities for Members of either party to offer suggestions about how to reconcile liberty with security.

Look, Congress' ``to do'' list remains long, and it's steadily growing. The American public is upset that Congress isn't tackling the deficit or the debt. Congress isn't tackling jobs, infrastructure, moving forward and investing in our future economic growth. Among Congress' unfinished business is a tax increase that will hit the middle class unless Congress acts.

If we defeat the previous question, we will make sure that Congress does not go home before making sure that middle class taxes do not go up. In fact, according to the House Clerk's Office, only 61 bills have become law in 2012. That's the fewest number of bills in 60 years. We only have 7 days that this House of Representatives is working here in Washington in September, yet this Congress continues to refuse to make the hard choices needed to get our economy moving.

It's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work in making sure that we have the ability to protect Americans from threats. Let's do so in an open way that encourages ideas from both sides and that has a classified briefing at which Members of Congress can receive the information we need to suggest how or if FISA needs to be changed before it's authorized for a carte blanche 5 additional years.

It is important to reject both of these underlying rules and these underlying bills. It is time to focus on job creation, deficit reduction, and tax reform, not on trying to rush to the floor an earmark land swap with no map for Minnesota, for what can only be taken to be purely political reasons, as well as there being under a closed process a bill about which many of us have grave concerns and that undermines our right to privacy as Americans.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule and the two flawed underlying bills, and I ask unanimous consent to insert into the Record the text of my amendment to the rule, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to cast a thoughtful vote and to vote ``no'' on the rule and the bills and to defeat the previous question.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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