To prohibit Members of Congress from receiving any automatic pay adjustments through the end of the One Hundred Thirteenth Congress.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 66 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, I object.

Will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, I rise to claim time in opposition to the point of order.

I'd like to say to my friend that I endorse, Madam Speaker, his request to do away with stale political gamesmanship. I would put in the stale political gamesmanship category making a point of order against an unfunded mandate in the bill and then failing to make any indication that you actually believe there's an unfunded mandate in the bill, but simply using this time to talk about an issue that we have already litigated in a multihour hearing last night.

That said, I know, Madam Speaker, the gentleman's heart is felt in this issue. I would say to the gentleman that, while there was only one objection in this body, I make that objection out of great affection for the gentleman because, as I read the underlying bill, I see absolutely no way to divide this legislation into the components that the gentleman would like to debate.

The gentleman would like to debate a Member pay freeze. The gentleman would like to debate a Federal employee pay freeze.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

I thank the gentleman. In fact, I thought that's where the gentleman's heart lay.

As the gentleman knows, the reason the Bera-Connolly amendment is not on the floor today, among others, is that it is nongermane to this legislation. We cannot subdivide this piece of

legislation to include nongermane components, which, again, I know the gentleman wants to debate those components. And, Madam Speaker, when the House schedules those bills, I look forward to having that debate, too; it's just not in this bill.

One of the great pleasures I've had in this body, Madam Speaker, has been being a part of a majority that is bringing bills that are simple to read and simple to understand. This is a front-and-back bill. I happen to have mine on two pages because I like to flip, but if I had been more conservative with my printer, it would have been a front-and- back page here, Madam Speaker.

What we talked about in the Rules Committee all last night--and it would have created more points of order for germaneness issues and others--was adding amendment after amendment after amendment that did not affect this language, but instead created brand-new debates about brand-new issues.

Again, I associate myself with the comments of my friend from Colorado. I think the American people are absolutely fed up with the way that this process works. But what I think they're fed up with are those bills that stack a transportation issue beside a health care issue beside a Commerce Department issue beside a military issue beside a child care issue, all of these things that are completely unrelated to one another, Madam Speaker.

In this bill, one issue and one vote. And the gentleman is absolutely right: in a vote in the Rules Committee last night, Madam Speaker, we decided not to allow this bill to be complicated with nongermane issue after nongermane issue after nongermane issue. Those measures, these debates can actually come to the floor one item at a time, but we were not going to allow that to subsume what is also an important debate, and that's on the provisions that actually are contained in H.R. 273.

So given, Madam Speaker, that the gentleman observed no unfunded mandates in this bill, because there are no unfunded mandates in this bill, I ask the Chair to reject the point of order for there being unfunded mandates in this bill.

Madam Speaker, if I could conclude by just asking that in order to allow the House to continue its scheduled business for the day, I urge the Members to vote ``yes'' on the question of consideration of this resolution.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida, my friend, 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.

Madam Speaker, House Resolution 66, this rule that we're considering today, will allow for debate on the underlying bill, H.R. 273.

This rule that we're considering today is a little bit unusual in that it not only allows for the underlying resolution, but it also takes care of some housekeeping business that we have here on the floor of the House. For example, all of America, Madam Speaker, has read of the nuclear tests that happened in North Korea, and this resolution allows us to consider tomorrow a bill under suspension of the rules to condemn that activity in North Korea. It's very important business that we are able to take care of here in the House. We would not be able to take care of it but for this rule. I'm glad we considered that here in the rule.

In this underlying bill, Madam Speaker, we're continuing what the President himself continued through March of this year. We're continuing through the end of the calendar year a freeze on the automatic increases in Federal employee pay. Again, I brought down a copy of the resolution, that small, front-and-back bill.

So often you see findings in these bills, Madam Speaker, you see findings about what the Congress believes and why this bill is coming to the floor. And I promise you, Madam Speaker, if you read this resolution--and, again, it's only a page and a half long, so it will be easy to do--you will not find one finding of contempt for Federal employees. In fact, if you had listened to the hearing in the Rules Committee last night, what you saw is universal praise for the hard work that our men and women in the civil service are doing for this country.

We have a lot of work that has to be done. I know it's a popular sport in some districts to kick Federal employees. Federal employees, by and large, work hard, though I'm happy to say you can distinguish, for example, the love and affection that so many of our constituencies have for our men and women in uniform. You see those pay-raise bills move through very quickly, versus a little suspicion that you have from time to time from folks who say, well, golly, I was just down at XYZ Federal office, and I didn't get great service. Golly, Rob, I was on the telephone trying to get results from X, Y or Z agency, and they kept me on hold for 3\1/2\ hours. What are my dollars paying for?

I blame us for that, Madam Speaker. We owe better to our Federal employees than to put them in that circumstance. And gradually, not nearly fast enough, but gradually, our Federal employee system is moving towards recognizing hardworking, successful and dedicated employees through merit pay, through merit increases, through bonuses and through bumps--ways to say, do you know what, service matters. Service matters. And a one-size-fits-all pay scale does not work across the Federal system.

I'm very proud, Madam Speaker, I've just been appointed to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in whose jurisdiction this bill is. I hope we're going to be able to take up those issues and build on that progress that has been made. But in all the conversation you'll hear on this floor--I won't say ``rhetoric,'' Madam Speaker, because, again, I know people's hearts are in this issue--in all the debate you will hear on this House floor, what you will not hear is that $1 is being cut from those merit bonuses. What you will not hear is that $1 is being removed from agencies that have an opportunity to say, Do you know what, job well done. You deserve a bonus. What you will not hear is that $1 is being taken that would have gone to recognize performance above and beyond in the service of our citizenry.

What you will hear is that in line with the recommendations of the much-discussed Simpson-Bowles Commission, a 3-year freeze on Federal automatic salary increases will be continued, upheld. It's been in effect for 2 years and 3 months, and it will continue through the end of the year.

Now, so often I hear, Madam Speaker, my constituents say, Rob, I just want to make sure that Congress is abiding by the same rules you ask everybody else to abide by.

I want to make that clear. That's what my friend from Colorado was discussing. It's not actually a provision in this bill that's extra. It's a function of law. Members of Congress' pay will absolutely be frozen for just as long--just as long. The same rules that apply to everybody apply to the Vice President, Mr. Speaker, apply to the executive branch, apply to folks back home in Georgia, apply across the board to Federal employees, and apply to everybody here in this Chamber.

We had one of the longest, and I would argue most intensive, hearings of our Rules Committee cycle last night, Mr. Speaker, where we explored this bill line by line, detail by detail. I was pleased to be part of that debate. I'm glad we had an opportunity, really, for unlimited time in which to do that. But I believe we crafted a good rule, Mr. Speaker, that will allow for thorough debate of this underlying bill.

Again, I would remind you, Mr. Speaker, and all Members, this bill,

posted on the House Rules Committee Web site, front and back of a sheet of paper, is simple and direct for everyone in this House to be able to read and everyone back home to be able to read so that we can have a thorough debate on this bill this afternoon.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 90 seconds to say to my friend, I always appreciate the eloquence of his words. My only saving grace, Mr. Speaker, is that the facts are on my side. If the world was as the gentleman from Florida had described it, I'd probably be where the gentleman from Florida is in terms of position. That's not the case.

Every dollar we spend in this town, Mr. Speaker, has consequences. The $11 billion that we're talking about in this bill is not money that's being cut from the Federal budget; it's money that's not being given as an automatic inflater to every Federal salary in the land. Instead, it remains available to those agencies to perform the services that they were created to perform.

Let me just be clear, Mr. Speaker. That means for every dollar that is not going into a clerk's pocket at the Veterans Affairs Administration, that's a dollar that's going to go to implement Veterans Affairs services. For every dollar that's not going to be an automatic pay increase in my hometown at the CDC, it is going to go for critical research and infrastructure there to perform the very important role the CDC was created to perform.

We have to make choices, Mr. Speaker. Google ``Greece and pay cuts.'' Google ``Greece and pension cuts.'' In fact, don't just use Google. Use Yahoo. Use Bing. Use anything you'd like, Mr. Speaker. You will see where we are headed.

When you refuse to make the tough decisions that my friends are refusing to make with respect to the Federal budget, you know where those cuts are going to fall.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield 5 minutes to one of our very distinguished freshman Members, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Williams).

I yield myself 4 minutes to talk about cheap political stunts because I see a few cheap political stunts down here from time to time. I don't want to characterize anybody's behavior in that way as I don't think that's appropriate, but what I would say is, if we go to the very top of the GS scale and take a good senior person, like a GS- 14 who is making $84,000 a year, this one-half percent pay increase that the President did by executive order and that we're saying won't go into effect until next year is going to give that one working person, that income earner for that family, $2,000 for that family to use over the next year.

I will yield to the gentleman to answer this question: The gentleman sees here $10,793. That's the additional burden that the gentleman, when he controlled this Congress for 2 years with the President of the United States, also of his party, added to this working family's burden.

Now, when you come to the House floor and profess your affection for the working people in my district and when you express that affection by ensuring that, this year, one-half percent of their pay is going to go up, you're adding $10,000 for that worker, $10,000 for that worker's wife, $10,000 for that worker's oldest child, middle child and youngest child--for a family of five in my district. The gentleman added $50,000 in debt and deficit that has to be repaid.

Now, I know the gentleman was using his heart when he passed those programs that did this. I don't question the gentleman's motivation at all. What I do is take offense that the gentleman questions my motivation in shifting $2,000 from workers' salaries into programs-- programs for veterans, programs for research, programs for health--and that he questions my commitment to working class people when, while he did this, he voted ``yes'' after ``yes'' after ``yes'' with no remorse whatsoever.

I'd be happy to yield to my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts.

In reclaiming my time, I welcome my friend to the sequestration debate, the one that we tried to have last May with absolutely no assistance whatsoever.

Here we are at midnight on sequestration day, saying, Hey, let's do it. Folks, let's do it. Let's do it. Back in May, we passed a bill here. Let's do it with the bill we passed in August to solve the fiscal cliff. Let's do it with the one we passed in September. Let's do it with the one we passed in December.

There is not a person in this body I don't want to work with to solve these problems--there is not one--but when we do it here at the eleventh hour and say, Golly, I wish folks had gotten serious about it earlier. Mr. Speaker, we've been trying to get serious about it for 18 months. When the President passed the law of the land and signed this sequestration into law after the Joint Select Committee failed, the question isn't why are we having to plan for sequestration today; the question is why wasn't the administration planning for it 13 months ago, when we knew the law of the land was going to put it into effect come March 1, 2013?

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

I actually asked that question--or a version of it--of the distinguished gentleman from Maryland, the minority whip, last night.

If the gentleman would continue to yield.

I asked, What would it have taken to get that Joint Select Committee to succeed? Because that's why we're here in sequestration; that's why we're dealing with these things. He said he did not know what more we could have done to find agreement then.

So I say to the gentleman that those same challenges the minority whip observed last night that were preventing agreement then are those same challenges that are preventing us, whether we work until midnight tonight or not, from solving them today, though I would be happy to stay with the gentleman just as long as there is work to be done here in this House.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, at this time it is my great pleasure to yield 2 minutes to a good friend here, Mr. Wittman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. And I want to say of my friend from California, he gave a very thoughtful presentation in the Rules Committee last night. And as my colleague from Florida suggested, I am a big fan of open rules. It's early in the process. It's always harder to go through regular order until the committees have spun up.

But I would just say to my freshman friend from California that even if we had made an open rule controlling for this bill, the gentleman's amendment still would not have been made in order. It would have been ruled by the Parliamentarian as out of order, as being nongermane to the underlying bill.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

I appreciate my friend's comment. He's absolutely right.

So my advice to my new freshman colleague from California would be, in this case, it's not an open rule that he's after; it's his colleagues on the Rules Committee working their Rules Committee magic to waive the rules. It would have actually taken a waiver of the House rules to allow the gentleman's amendment to come.

But he made a very passionate case last night, Mr. Speaker, and I know his heart is in this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I want to be clear about what this bill is and what this bill isn't. And what it isn't is a pay freeze for Federal employees, and, in fact, what has been the law of the land for the last 2 years has not been a pay freeze.

All of the increases that come with longevity have been taking place. All of the increases that come with promotions have been taking place. All of the increases that come with meritorious pay and bonuses and all of those activities have still been going on.

What this is, however, is a 9-month suspension of the automatic, across-the-board .5 percent increase that the President directed by executive order in December. That is all this bill is, and that's all this bill will be under this rule.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes to say to the gentleman--he heard it from the gentleman from Virginia on my side of the aisle--the respect for Federal employees and the job that they do is not a question that's being debated here today.

The admiration that I have for the folks at the CDC, in my neck of the woods, the support that, led by the Speaker of the House from my State, Speaker Gingrich, to double the NIH budget, and then double it again. The kind of work that goes on here is undisputed.

But I want to show you, Mr. Speaker, what my constituents also see in their tough times, because it's not just the clerk at the VA that hasn't gotten a raise in 2 years.

I was talking with a friend of mine who's a clerk at a furniture store, single mom, child, son, 6 years old, hasn't gotten a raise in 2 years, makes $11 an hour.

Average median Federal wage, $74,000.

What I show you here is a chart from the CBO, the same organization that sites the job loss figures that you've quoted here earlier, that compares the work of folks with high school degrees, with a little bit of college, with college, in the private sector, the salaries and the benefits in the private sector with that of the public sector.

Now, I say to the gentleman, in no way, Mr. Speaker, do I want to minimize the tremendous responsibility placed on our Federal civilian workers. Again, I have chosen a career of public service, as have they, and I admire them for it. I know it's at great sacrifice to themselves and their families.

After this one sentence, and that is, in this tough time, until we can get our handle on the debt and the deficit, my constituents continue to look at how their tax dollars appear to be paying salaries and benefits higher to Federal employees than what my folks are getting back home.

I hope the CBO will produce a different report that shows a different result; but until it does, I wish my friends wouldn't categorize what's going on here as some sort of hateful act, disrespectful act towards Federal employees and could recognize it as a balancing of salaries and benefits that our own Congressional Budget Office has suggested is actually an inequity that exists today.

With that, I would be happy to yield to my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey.

I yield myself 2 minutes.

I just want to read from the Simpson-Bowles Commission report. And I want to read from it not because I support everything the Simpson- Bowles Commission had to say. I want to read from it not because it's a bill that has passed here on the floor of the House--it's been introduced but it hasn't passed--but I want to read from it because it was put together by the President to be a thoughtful, nonpartisan, deliberative body that would try to find those things in the Federal Government that should change to right the fiscal ship that is the United States of America. And this is what that group, appointed by President Obama, Republicans and Democrats, a thoughtful deliberative body, had to say:

Out of duty and patriotism, hardworking Federal employees

provide a great service to this country. But in a time of

budget shortfalls, all levels of government must trim back.

In the recent recession, millions of private sector and State

and municipal employees have had their wages frozen or cut

back, and millions more lost their jobs altogether. In

contrast, Federal workers' wages increase annually due to

automatic formulas in law, providing them with cost-of-living

adjustments totaling more than 5 percent in the last 2 years.

This proposal would institute a 3-year government-wide freeze

on Federal pay at every government agency, including the

Department of Defense civilian workforce. This proposal will

save $20.4 billion in 2015.

In 3 years, the President, to his credit, implemented the first 2 years of this proposal. Perhaps there was consultation with someone in this body. It wasn't with me. I serve on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The President, by executive order in December, decided he was not going to extend it a third year and was instead going to give a half percent pay raise.

These are issues that can absolutely be debated, Mr. Speaker.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

This isn't a Republican idea; it's not a Democrat idea; it's not something that was created in the minds of folks who hate Federal employees and the Federal Government. It's an idea that came directly from the commission appointed by President Barack Obama to solve exactly the kind of fiscal problems that we are facing today.

Like it, don't like it, but don't say it's something that it's not, Mr. Speaker. This is an idea from the President's fiscal commission, and we're bringing it to the floor today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I also have no further requests for time and am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say the gentleman believes we're wasting the American people's time. An equally precious commodity is the American people's money.

I talked earlier about the $10,000 per American inhabitant. A lot of folks do their numbers by American tax-paying families, Mr. Speaker. A lot of folks do their numbers by per adult or per children. I didn't want to game the system like that.

The chart I have right now, Mr. Speaker, $52,381. If you take today's $16.5 trillion debt that America has and divide it by every single human being that the Census Department tells us is in America in January 2013, you will find that we have borrowed and spent $52,381 for every human being in America.

I don't minimize the burden that will be on a family of four in my district when they don't receive that half a percent pay bump that the President tried to do by executive order that we're rescinding here today. I don't minimize that at all. But it is minimal compared to the $52,000 for each member of that family of four. That half a percent pay raise is minimal compared to the $208,000 that that family owes as its share of the Federal debt.

The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Speaker, made a very passionate presentation last night, and I believe he is absolutely right. He referenced himself and our ranking member as the only two folks in that committee who know anything about sacrifice. I always go through my grandparents' stuff. I was one of those kids who loved being in the attic. You always find neat stuff in the attic and the basement. I have all the ration stamps, Mr. Speaker--sugar, rubber. I don't know what that's like. I don't know what that's like for a Nation to come together with such a sense of purpose that they say we're going to police ourselves and our own family. We're going to have the posters up on the wall that say ``loose lips sink ships,'' and don't waste because we need it for the war effort, and we're going to come together and make that happen.

In fact, the last time, Mr. Speaker, this country had the kind of debt as a percentage of the size of its economy that it has today was when we were coming out of World War II. In that time, when we were rationing rubber and sugar, when we no longer minted our currency with copper because we didn't have enough to go around--or nickel--we were using steel to put the coins together at that time. In that time of crisis, Mr. Speaker, when we thought the freedom of the world was on the line, we borrowed the largest amount of money ever borrowed in the history of this country to win World War II.

As we stand here today, we have borrowed trillions more in actual dollars, but that same gargantuan number of 100 percent of our economy. And for what? What does that leave us when the next crisis comes--and I promise you it will. The next crisis will come, and the tools that we have to address it will have been eroded by the policies of today.

I take no pleasure in being down here today managing the rule that will extend into year 3 a Federal employee pay freeze. I told folks in my constituency, Mr. Speaker, I said I want to come back home and I want to tell you how much I've been doing good work for you in Washington and doggone it I deserve a pay raise. I want us all to be so successful that we can go back home and tell folks we deserve it. But with $16.4 trillion in debt, 4 years of no budgets at all coming out of this town, trillion-dollar annual deficits, we don't.

If you think the pain of a 3-year pay freeze is bad, Mr. Speaker, Google Greece, Bing Greece, do your Yahoo search on Greece--not half a percent freezes, but double-digit cuts to Federal benefits; double- digit cuts to pensions that seniors are relying on; double-digit cuts to salaries; layoffs, double-digit percentages. It doesn't get better on its own, Mr. Speaker. We have to do it.

My friend from Florida is so right, Mr. Speaker: we have to come together to solve the bigger problems. This is not the bigger problem. At best, this is a symptom of a problem. At worst, it's just something we're trying to do to manage through.

In this body, Mr. Speaker, and the Senate, the President, we put six of our best minds from the House, three Democrats and three Republicans, six of our best minds from the Senate, three Democrats and three Republicans, and we locked them in a room for about 3 months and said do anything, do anything you want to with the Federal budget. Dream your biggest dreams. Come up with your best ideas. Get outside the box. And we're going to close the door so you can have that conversation with the utmost candor, Republicans and Democrats alike, House Members and Senate Members alike.

After 3 months, Mr. Speaker, having looked at literally hundreds of trillions of dollars of Federal spending going out for decades, they found that they could agree on not even one dollar, not one dollar in changes.

Mr. Speaker, as you well know, and as the freshman Members of this body are going to learn, we only control one-third of the budget here, just one-third of the budget, that discretionary spending, one-third of the budget. That's where the Federal employee salaries are, one-third of the budget. So everything we do to try to get a handle on $52,000 in debt per man, woman and child in America, everything we do to try to get our fiscal ship sailing straight once again is coming from that one-third.

Because to get to the real drivers of the debt, Mr. Speaker, to get to the real drivers, we've got to get into the two-thirds, the two- thirds that can only get to the table when the House and the Senate and the President all agree.

As highly unorthodox as that is, my great respect for my friend requires that I do.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker--and again, pleasure to yield--I say to my friend, I fear it's thinking like that that's going to take us exactly there.

Mr. Speaker, again, I take no pleasure in this freeze today. I believe in shared sacrifice across this country to solve our problems. The only thing that would be permissible in this legislation is to ensure that Members of Congress and fellow employees are both frozen together, as is ensured in this legislation.

I urge my colleagues to support this rule, bring this bill to the floor, support this underlying resolution, and remember that until $52,381 per man, woman and child in this country reads ``zero,'' we're going to have these discussions again and again and again.

The President, Mr. Speaker, I'm told is planning to produce a budget. It's not going to be this month. It may come next month. Do you know that in the 2 years I've been here as a Member of Congress, the President's budgets never, ever, ever pay down one penny of this debt? We're complicit in this, Mr. Speaker; and, together, we can get ourselves out of it.

The material previously referred to by Mr. Hastings of Florida is as follows:

An Amendment to H. Res. 66 Offered by Mr. Hastings of Florida

(1) At the end of the resolution, add the following:

Sec. 6. Notwithstanding any other provision of this

resolution, following debate on H.R. 273 it shall be in order

to 1 consider the amendment received for printing in the

Congressional Record pursuant to clause 8 of rule XVIII and

numbered 1, if offered by Representative Van Hollen of

Maryland or a designee. That amendment shall be in order

without intervention of any point of order, shall be

considered as read, shall be separately debatable for one

hour equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an

opponent, and shall not be subject to a demand for a division

of the question.

(2) On page 2, line 5, insert ``with or without

instructions'' after ``recommit''.

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

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 99 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule for the consideration of H.R. 933, the Department of Defense, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013.

The rule is a closed rule, which provides for the consideration of fully conferenced Department of Defense and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bills and a continuing resolution for other government programs at the FY 2012 levels. This rule provides for 1 hour of debate, equally divided between the chairman and the ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations. In addition, the rule incorporates a purely technical amendment to the bill by Chairman Rogers.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 933 accomplishes several key objectives.

First, it preserves military readiness and national security capability, while maintaining core commitments to our troops and our veterans.

Second, it ends the current uncertainty of the fiscal year 2013 budget. It seems that over the past year, we have moved from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis. Thanks to the leadership of Chairman Rogers and Chairman Sessions, we are able to consider funding the Federal Government through the end of the fiscal year at this point, avoiding the threat of a government shutdown.

Additionally, by considering full-year DOD and MilCon-VA bills, we are able to establish a stable baseline for the Department to act upon, as opposed to having them rely on fiscal year 2012 priorities. This bill realigns the appropriation accounts for Department of Defense and MilCon-VA to better reflect the fiscal year 2013 execution, rather than the fiscal year 2012 levels carried forward in a CR.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation operates under the caps of the Budget Control Act of 2011 as modified by the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. There are across-the-board reductions in security and nonsecurity spending to reach the caps of $1.043 trillion. Additionally, there is a provision which ensures that the funding will be reduced to the post- sequester level of $982 billion in total spending, a reduction of $85 billion in overall Federal spending for fiscal year 2013.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to spend a moment discussing the anomalies in this bill. Let me assure my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that none of the anomalies in this legislation, on net, do anything that raise the cost of the bill above the statutory Budget Control Act caps.

Some of the anomalies in the bill are things like turning off the $100 million in convention funding for Charlotte and Tampa, and turning off $31 million in funding for the Eisenhower Commission, where funding has been delayed indefinitely and no funds have yet been expended.

These anomalies are limited. There are only approximately 80 in the entire bill. For reference, in the last full-year continuing resolution, there were over 600 anomalies. The Appropriations Committee has been judicious in its use of anomalies, only providing them in cases where mission-critical operations might be impacted.

Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill. I urge support for the rule and the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I just want to make a few quick comments in reference to my good friend's remarks. You referred to an interesting phrase, ``selective bipartisanship.'' I would suggest to my friend that we've probably practiced that more in 2 months than they did in 2 years when they were in the majority.

These were major pieces of legislation that we did move in a bipartisan fashion. As my good friend knows, I helped on all three of those occasions, was happy to do so, and I'm sure the Speaker will continue to try and work across the aisle whenever he can.

My friend also referred to the nature of the cuts. Let me assure him of this: these are cuts, and they are going to occur; but we've repeatedly told our friends and the President and the Senate that we would be more than happy to redistribute where the cuts are going to occur. We did that twice: in May of last year and in December of last year, after the election, in good faith. In neither case did the Senate pick that up or the White House respond with a serious offer. Now my friend is asking us to do it for a third time in the hopes it will be different.

Perhaps this time you should go first. Perhaps the Senate should actually pass a plan or the President actually lay one out. I don't think we've really seen that. But again, if we see that, we'll be willing to work with our friends and try and redistribute the cuts.

But don't have any illusion that we're going to eliminate them. We're not, any more than our friends eliminated the idea of tax cuts when the Bush tax cuts ran out. This is something we feel is a first step in getting our fiscal house in order.

And let me remind my friend, as I know he knows, this bill, in itself, is an effort to work with the President and the administration. The President has said, and I think quite correctly, that we need to avoid a government shutdown. Mr. Rogers and the Appropriations Committee are acting early and acting, I think, in a very responsible manner to put a vehicle out there and begin to move it through the process.

We are more than willing for the Senate to do the same thing, would expect that they will. They may well add other departments. Frankly, speaking only for myself, I would hope that they do. I would like to recapture a lot of the appropriations work that was done for the fiscal year 2013 and lost during the CR process, and we can have, I think, a good negotiation going back and forth between the two parties.

So this is the beginning of a process. It's the beginning of a return to regular order, and it's an opportunity to work, I think, in a bipartisan fashion.

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

Just for the purpose of response, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I appreciate my good friend's offer on staying in session last week. It would have been nice if we'd have dealt with this 18 months ago. We've known it's been coming. We tried to do that twice.

I'm not sure the President would have been around last week. Frankly, he spent the last 6 weeks crisscrossing the country, campaigning and bludgeoning people, as opposed to having a dialogue. He did not bother to invite the Speaker, the Majority Leader, or the leader of the Senate or the minority leader of this House to a meeting until the very last day--the very last day. Now, that suggests to us there wasn't a great deal of interest in serious negotiations.

So, again, this process is going to allow that to occur. We're going to advance our bill through this Chamber. It's going to have incorporated some of the work in the appropriations process. It's going to help the Defense Department a great deal.

We're waiting for our friends in the Senate to do the same thing. They're going to, undoubtedly, add some things. I think there will be a negotiation. I think we will end up in a good place. But we will preserve the spending reductions of the sequester in the final product of the bill.

With all due respect to my friend, revenue's off the table. You had revenue about 6, 8 weeks ago with no cuts. This time I suspect you're going to get cuts and no revenue.

With that, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Texas (Mr. Burgess), my distinguished colleague, classmate, and a distinguished physician.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Listening to my colleagues, I'm reminded of that old saying that Washington, D.C., is 10 square miles surrounded by reality.

Let's talk a little bit about the definitions we use for cuts. First of all, the Government will spend more money this year than it did last year, just as last year it spent more money than it did the year before. We're not cutting anything. We're slowing down the rate of growth. In parts of the budget there are real cuts. But in terms of overall spending, it's ever and ever higher.

According to the much quoted, much loved Congressional Budget Office, this year we will have the highest level of income for the Federal Government in history. In the history of the United States, we will have more money to spend than we have ever spent before. And yet that same CBO estimates it will run a budget deficit if we keep sequester, if we allow the revenue that occurred in January of over $850 billion.

Now at some point you have to reconcile the highest level of income and an $850 billion deficit. We don't have a revenue problem here; we have a spending problem of historic and massive proportions. This is one small step in the right direction to try and get that under control.

We look forward to what our friends in the Senate do. We look forward to what the administration does. And we look forward to having a conversation over not just this bill but in the next several months we're going to have that opportunity when the Senate finally presents a budget. We'll present a budget. The administration for the fourth time in 5 years will be late but surely will at some point present a budget.

The American people can look at all of those.

We're going to have an opportunity for a great debate, and I suspect we'll continue to try and adjust things as we move forward to get ourselves more in balance. But let's recognize the reality. We've had four trillion-dollar deficits in a row. We have, with these cuts and with additional revenue, an $850 billion deficit, at the minimum, in front of us. Maybe that ought to be the focus.

I can assure my friends--we all talk a lot about polling and what the American people think. I can assure you, I've done a lot of polling in my lifetime. They think the Federal Government is too big; they think it spends too much; and they would like to see

us take less of their money, not more. So if we get into a real debate here, I suspect the American people will say: Figure out a way to live within the highest level of income in American history as opposed to coming to us and asking us for more.

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

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

Just, again, to get back to the big picture for a moment, as my friends know, we're going to spend about $3.5 trillion this year in the Federal budget. These dreaded cuts, in terms of the total budget, amount to 2.4 percent of all spending--2.4 percent of $3.5 trillion. I suspect the American people think: You could find a better way to distribute those cuts than closing our towers.

I agree, actually, with my friend, Mr. McGovern. One of those towers, by the way, is in my district, so I certainly understand it. I have 20,000 Federal defense employees in my district, so I'm quite aware of the problems with the distribution of the cuts.

Now, I'll leave it to my friends on the other side of the aisle and Mr. Woodward to argue whose idea this was and what purpose and how it was constructed, but it's hardly as if the President of the United States or our friends in the Senate were innocent bystanders in all of this.

We tried twice last year to sit down and renegotiate. We moved something through. We've said repeatedly this year we're willing to sit down and renegotiate the cuts. To me, that's compromise.

The President talks a lot about a balanced approach. Two months ago, he got a lot of revenue. That's his side of the equation. This time it should be cuts. That's an appropriate balance. We'll sit down and renegotiate where they should come from--we think we've got some great ideas on that--but they are going to occur. They're the first and appropriate step toward getting our fiscal house back in order.

So when my friends want to work with us about the distribution, I know they'll find a willing negotiating partner in the Speaker. Until such time, we will follow the course that the President laid out, advocated for, and signed into law. If he wants to revisit that, we agree with him, let's revisit it and redistribute it, but the cuts are going to occur.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume for the purpose of response.

First, I appreciate my good friend, whom I have worked with on a number of things, most recently the Violence Against Women Act, where she certainly ably represented the bill in the Rules Committee and on the floor, and I appreciate that very much. I'm going to gently correct in return.

When we talk about cuts that were previously agreed to, with all due respect to my friends, most of those cuts still haven't even taken place. If you look at them, they are far in the future, in the 10-year window.

These were not cuts, by the way, that the two sides found contentious. This was the easy stuff that they all agreed

to right up front. It wasn't as if there was some concession.

The real discussion was in the next round of cuts, where the supercommittee wasn't able to come to an agreement. Even there, there were $600 or $700 million in agreed-upon ``cuts'' that both sides acknowledge. There just wasn't agreement about revenue, and so the cuts didn't occur.

Well, we're here today, and just as the tax increases were written into law effectively when the Bush tax cuts sunsetted in January, these cuts are also written into law.

Again, since they're written into law, they're going to occur. Now, we're willing, again, to sit down with our friends and redistribute where they come from. We think that would be the prudent thing to do. We tried to do it twice last year. It didn't work out. Nobody was interested in talking to us last year. The President wasn't interested in putting a proposal on until, if anything, recent days, and I really couldn't still tell you what it truly is.

I will finish my point, and I will be happy to yield to my friend briefly.

I think that the reality is we ought to recognize--just as I urge my friends on my side of the aisle to recognize--as we approach the end of the Bush tax cuts, that they're going to end. We ought to sit down and negotiate with our friends some better and more proper distribution, whether we like it or not. That's just the case. It's going to be that way. That's what's going to happen here.

Now, we would rather renegotiate, minimize the harm and spread that 2.4 percent over the entire $3.5 trillion budget. I suspect our friends would like to do that, too, over time, and hopefully we can arrive at that. So I look forward to continuing the dialogue, but the cuts are going to be secured. This legislation will move through the House, and then I'm sure something will move through the Senate and we'll sit down and negotiate in a bipartisan, bicameral manner.

With that, I yield to my good friend from Texas.

Reclaiming my time, if I may, I think the gentlelady asked a good question, and I look forward to working with my friends on the other side of the aisle. I actually think today is the beginning of a process where that will happen. It's one of the reasons I really commend Chairman Rogers for moving early.

We're not in a last-minute crisis atmosphere here, and we're not trying to jam our friends in the Senate. We want them to move as quickly and expeditiously as they can. We would like to move toward the discussion and talks with them, and I'm sure the administration will be involved in that.

To me, that's a step back toward what I would like and what we all talk about around here, which is regular order. While that's going on, we can engage in the normal appropriations process for fiscal year 2014.

So, as difficult as this is--and we've been through a difficult time, I think, in recent months and over the last year plus, honestly--this may be the first step back in the right direction.

Again, I respect that my friends have a different point of view on this, but I'm talking what I would view as political reality to them, just as I did to my friends on my own side of the aisle a few weeks ago. This is going to occur, so let's just be reasonable and rational about how it is. We're going to have a lower deficit because of that. I think that's one of the reasons that Wall Street is doing well. But who knows? It's always hard to predict what's going on there.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to agree with my good friend from Virginia on his point about discretionary spending. It's probably an area that he and I would find a considerable amount of common ground on. I certainly do think that far too much of this is coming out of the discretionary side of the budget, particularly in defense, but I would say across the board.

I have Indian health facilities in my district that will be hit, and I have the National Severe Storms Laboratory in my district that will be hit. I understand my friend makes those points. He's making a very important point.

Now, we've been willing to go where no man has gone before, the nondiscretionary side of the budget. The Ryan budget, which you may like or not like, or the Ryan plan on Medicare is a real attempt to deal with where we all in the room know the real problem is, and that's on the nondiscretionary side of the budget.

I hope that our friends put their ideas out there. The President has put, and sometimes withdrawn, but has put a number of interesting ideas on the table at various points. We never seem to quite get there, whether it's change CPI or raising age over time gradually on some of our programs.

Now, my friends on the other side, at least our distinguished minority leader, has refused to ever do that. Whether it's Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, it's been: We're going to defend this ground; we're not going to make any changes. At the end of the day, that's the kind of thing that we're going to have to deal with.

As an appropriator, as somebody who, like my friend from Virginia, sees the impacts of these discretionary reductions and this squeezing down, I think that is the solution. I think that's at least a big part of the solution.

I have no illusions we're going to settle all our deficit problems with this bill, but we are taking a step in the right direction. Hopefully our friends, and our side as well, will expand the dialogue to include the nondiscretionary side of the budget in the weeks and months ahead, and we can begin to arrive at common ground. But we can't simply allow Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and farm programs--I'll put some of our sacred cows on the table as well--to expand by a matter of law without any effort to look at them.

We've offered to do that. We've actually written a budget that has done that. We've gone through the political fires. I can assure my friends you can do that and still survive as a majority. And we're anxious to do that going forward. If we can find willing partners in that, both on the other side of the aisle, the other side of the rotunda, and the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, I think we'll actually be on the road to doing something.

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

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

I want to thank my friend. I can assure you that we take this very serious, as well. I have lots of Federal employees, and the real job loss won't be theirs. They will certainly be hard-hit, they'll be furloughed, but the real job loss, as my friend suggests, really is in the private sector, and that's why we should sit down and have a serious discussion about entitlement costs.

With all due respect to my friend, Mr. Van Hollen, my friends on the other side of the aisle, I don't think that proposal would pass. I certainly wouldn't vote for it. I want that very much in the Record.

If our friends want to do something, they do have control of the United States Senate. That's a body that can do whatever it wants to do, and we'll see what happens going forward.

Again, what I'm pleased with is, I think this is the beginning of a real discussion and the beginning of a real dialogue. We're going to do some good things in terms of giving flexibility to the Defense Department and our friends that deal with military construction and the VA. We're anxious to hear ideas on the other side. But we are going to reduce spending, and we're going to reduce it not by an extraordinary amount, but by 2.4 percent of the entire $3.5 trillion Federal budget, and we're willing to renegotiate where those cuts come from. I think that's a pretty reasonable position to have.

I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Reclaiming my time, I'd be happy if the United States Senate decided to operate collectively instead of individually, but I didn't write their rules and neither did my friends. I'm sure if we got to write them--although we've both sent a lot of our friends over there, neither of them seem to be willing to sit down and change the rules to make them a more functional body.

But I'm glad you've moved the discussion to where we both agree away from our adversarial discussion toward the real enemy, the United States Senate, which has a hard time acting.

In this case, honestly I think they are going to act, and I say that with a great deal of respect to Senator Reid and to Senator McConnell. I think that they will produce a product to make sure that something doesn't happen that we all agree shouldn't happen. The President doesn't think the government should shut down. We don't think the government should shut down. I don't believe our friends in the Senate think it should shut down.

This is actually a pretty good day. It may not be the perfect bill from my friends's standpoint. I certainly respect that. It's probably not the perfect bill from all of our Members' standpoint.

I will in a moment. Let me just finish my point.

But we will move in the right direction. We will actually move to avoid a government shutdown. We'll leave open an avenue of negotiation with our friends in the Senate. I'm sure the President will be involved in discussion at some point too. So I take some heart from that.

With that, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Reclaiming my time, we'll have an opportunity in the sense of the previous question. We'll see how the majority shakes out on that issue. I'm sure my friends will regard that as effectively a vote on their proposal.

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

I'm certainly prepared to close whenever my friend is.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

I want to begin by, frankly, agreeing with my friend. The time to act has long since passed. We tried to act a long time ago. We tried to act in May, but nobody in the Senate chose to pick up our bill. They sent us back something different, which was their right, but it didn't do anything at all. We tried to act in December, but nobody did anything in the Senate then.

We offered to negotiate with the President for weeks. Instead, we saw a 6-week, an 8-week campaign all over the country. There was no time, evidently, in the President's busy schedule in city after city, at photo op after photo op to simply get on the phone, call the Speaker and say--How would you like to come down and talk?--until the very last day before the sequester, when it had become evident that this type of political bullying wouldn't work.

So we believe the time has passed to act. That's why we're acting today. We are actually going to secure the cuts that are in the legislation that the President advocated for. He originated the idea--I accept the Woodward version of that, I suppose--and he signed it into law. He had 18 months to do something about it. We offered two opportunities in that timeframe to do something, and the Speaker has always been available to sit down with the President and do something.

We are going to take a small step in the right direction. Now, let's not overestimate what we're doing. We could probably take more pride in this than is warranted. Our friends, I think, are shouting more alarm than is necessary. This is $85 billion in a $3.5 trillion deficit--2.4 percent. We ought to be able to do that in our sleep. Quite frankly, we are willing to sit down and renegotiate with our friends from where they come. We are not willing to renegotiate the total amount of the money involved. Over time, it does add up to $1.2 trillion. That's a lot of money, but it's not anywhere near what it's going to take to get our budget in balance.

I look forward to the debates we're going to have on that in the budget discussions ahead; but let's right now, while we have that debate and while we go through that process, take the responsible step that the President urges us to take and that we all agree on, which is simply to make sure that the government doesn't shut down while we have our discussion and sort out our differences.

I applaud Chairman Rogers and Chairman Sessions for making that possible, particularly for bringing this bill in a timely fashion, giving us enough time when we're not going to be jammed. I know our friends in the Senate are going to try and do the same thing. They're going to produce, I have no doubt, a different product than we have. That's fine. We'll negotiate it out, and we'll avoid a government shutdown, but we will secure these savings for the taxpayers of the United States, and we will then take the next step in a longer discussion.

I believe we've had a good debate on the rule. I believe the underlying bill provides the American people with the hope that we can do the basic functions that we were sent here to accomplish--funding the government. I would urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Oklahoma, my friend, Mr. Cole, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are here to consider the rule for H.R. 933, the continuing resolution for the rest of fiscal year 2013. This is a disappointing bill, Mr. Speaker, and this is a disappointing process.

This continuing resolution, quite frankly, is inadequate. It does not meet the needs of our people. And because it does not address sequestration, it actually will hurt many millions of our people. The Department of Defense and the VA are given some flexibility to deal with the devastating sequestration cuts, but no other agency is given that tool.

This is clearly, in my opinion, a tacit statement by the majority that they are going to keep this harmful sequester, one of the stupidest things ever to come out of Congress.

And that, Mr. Speaker, is the disappointing part of this entire process. The majority has had plenty of opportunity to address the sequester. Time after time after time after time, Democrats, through the efforts of the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, Mr. Van Hollen, have offered a sequester alternative. And time after time after time after time, the Republican majority has blocked this amendment from being debated and voted on the House floor.

Yet the Republicans in Congress have yet to put forth a sequester alternative. Of course they will say that they have passed two different proposals, but that was last Congress. As many of my friends on the other side of the aisle know so well, legislation dies at the end of each Congress. Every 2 years, Congress repopulates and every bill must start over. There is no carryover from one Congress to the next. We all learned that in the most basic political science class, Politics 101. So this claim that we did something last Congress is irrelevant to addressing the sequester that the Republicans let take effect last week.

And let's remember the context of those two bills the House Republicans are so proud of. They were the result of, once again, the Republican leadership walking away from difficult bipartisan negotiations just at the moment when a deal seemed to be within reach. They both are completely partisan bills, and they both were dead on arrival in the Senate. So they were not genuine efforts to solve problems. They were all for show. They were simply political theater.

On the other hand, at the end of the last Congress, the House Republican leadership had a bipartisan, bicameral negotiated omnibus appropriations bill that would have taken us through fiscal year 2013, the result of hundreds of hours of careful bipartisan negotiation. But the House Republicans would not let that bill come to the floor for approval, a bill that would have passed the Senate and gone straight to the President's desk for signature.

Instead, they chose to waste the House's time on its two highly touted, highly partisan budget bills that went nowhere. But as I said, Mr. Speaker, that was the last Congress, and we must now start all over to address the sequester and provide funding for the remainder of this fiscal year.

Frankly, I don't know what the Republicans in the House are scared of. Speaker Boehner seems to have moved past the Hastert rule, which is a silly notion that the bill must only pass if it has the majority of the majority, and he has replaced it with selective bipartisanship. That's right, Speaker Boehner clearly believes that the House should operate under a process of selective bipartisanship.

This means he turns to Democrats when he needs the votes to pass important bills, like he did for VAWA, the fiscal cliff, and Hurricane Sandy relief, when only 49 Republicans, only 49 Republicans out of 232 voted to help our fellow citizens on the east coast who were devastated by that storm. The Speaker should do the same thing with the sequester and allow the House to debate and to vote on the Van Hollen amendment.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, this is part of a broader Republican economic plan that is, to put it mildly, extremely disappointing.

First, Republicans brought us to the brink of economic mayhem with the fiscal cliff. At the last minute, the Senate swooped in to save the day with leadership and help from the administration. Then House Republicans allowed the sequester to take effect, once again playing Russian roulette with our economy. Now we are going to consider this hybrid CR that just doesn't pass muster, despite the best efforts of the appropriators.

No one--no one--wants a government shutdown, and we all know that some kind of bill funding the Federal Government through the end of the fiscal year will pass before March 27. The real fights are going to come in the next few weeks and months when the Republicans outline their budget priorities with the new Ryan budget and when the debt limit, once again, needs to be raised.

What is clear is that the Republicans are hell-bent on cutting spending just for its own sake, no matter how mindless or senseless. We know that the economy is slowly rebounding, and we also know that these cuts in government spending--Federal, State, and local--are taking their toll on the economy. Fourth-quarter growth last year was reduced only because of reduced government spending--the cuts to cops, the cuts to firefighters, the cuts to teachers, and other workers--when that showed up in that economic report.

Now we are going to see a Republican budget that supposedly eliminates the deficit in 10 years. Call it the Ryan budget on steroids. It is going to cut Medicare, food stamps, and nearly every nondefense discretionary program funded by the Federal Government; and during the debt ceiling debate, we will see another attempt to arbitrarily cut these programs.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a responsible way to govern. The continuing resolution before us today is just one more example of how the House Republicans are leading with their heads in the sand. Instead of working to jump-start our economy, instead of engaging in true bipartisan negotiations, House Republicans continue to push on with misguided and ill-conceived budget cuts that do harm, but no good.

Like I said, this is a disappointing bill and a disappointing effort. We should be considering an omnibus appropriations bill. We should work to replace the sequester. We should be thinking long-term about economic recovery. We should be putting country ahead of political party. Instead, once again, we are playing games with our economy. This is no way to run a government.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

And I have great respect for my colleague from Oklahoma, and I appreciate the efforts that he has made toward bipartisanship on a number of bills; but, quite frankly, the leadership of this House has not adhered to regular order. We haven't seen regular in order a long time.

And when he talks about trying to find an alternative to sequestration, I would remind my colleague that Mr. Van Hollen, who is about to speak, has tried on four occasions--on four occasions--to be able to come to the floor and offer his alternative to sequestration that the Democrats support--I think some Republicans would support it as well--to have a debate and to have an up-or-down vote to avoid these mindless, senseless, across-the-board, indiscriminate cuts that have now gone into place. He's been denied all four times.

Now, by contrast, the Republicans have had zero alternatives. That's right, zero. They have brought nothing to the floor in this Congress to avoid sequestration. We're in March--January, February, March. We're in March, so we've had time to come up with alternatives. We've had an alternative that we have not allowed to be brought to the floor.

And let me just say, the United States Senate did actually pass an alternative with 51 votes. That's a majority. Unfortunately, I think, partly due to the influence of some of the House leadership here, the Republicans said, no, you need 60 votes to get that thing through.

So we have been trying. The White House has been trying. So the fact that we are here and that my Republican friends have allowed sequestration to go into effect, I think, is, quite frankly, unconscionable. We should not be in this mess.

And sequestration took effect last week. We should have stayed in session all week and tried to figure this out. And my friends adjourned the House, recessed the House on Thursday--no urgency, no nothing. And research to education funding to funding for roads and bridges. It will impact, in a negative way, jobs. People will lose their jobs.

This is not a good deal. This is not a good deal. And, quite frankly, we should be here today trying to find an alternative.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), the ranking member on the Budget Committee.

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

Just so there is no confusion, I think it's important that I point out to my colleagues that we have had three rounds of cuts to one round of revenue increases. The cuts have overwhelmed the revenue increases. So the notion that somehow we've engaged in a balanced process I don't think is the case. And the notion that somehow closing these tax loopholes and corporate tax loopholes that even Mitt Romney and George Bush at one time supported in order that we don't cut medical research, research aimed at trying to find cures to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and diabetes--if we found cures for those diseases, not only would we prevent a lot of human suffering, we'd save a lot of money.

But we're cutting medical research and we're pushing farther off the date that we're going to find breakthroughs in order to protect taxpayer subsidies to big oil companies that are making zillions of dollars? They really need a handout from the United States taxpayer? And you're cutting medical research, you're cutting Head Start, you're cutting programs that help people get an education, that protect our communities, our law enforcement officials, environmental protection. We're cutting all those things mindlessly in order to protect these corporate tax loopholes.

This is crazy. I really believe that outside of this little bubble here in Washington there is a bipartisan consensus that what we're doing here is crazy. This doesn't make any sense. This does not make any sense. Mindless, senseless, across-the-board cuts.

No urgency. We're going to go home today. There's a little snow on the ground. National Airport is closed. We can't really go anywhere until it reopens. We ought to stay here and figure out an alternative to sequestration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. Speaker, last night, the FAA announced that 173 air traffic control towers will be closed by April 7. So I would say to my colleague, tell the communities whose economies will be devastated by the fact that they will no longer have air service that this is not a cut. I mean, they will be losing an essential service that is vital for businesses to thrive all across this country. That is a cut.

At this point, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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

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

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

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, can I inquire of the gentleman whether he has any additional requests for speakers?

We are prepared to close as well, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I would say to my friend, the gentleman from Oklahoma, that the time to act has long since passed. We are now in sequester.

Budgets across the board and in a mindless and senseless way are being slashed. Air traffic control towers are being shut down. That will result in an adverse impact on local economies. We will lose jobs. You've heard over and over that we're told that we should expect a job loss of 750,000 people.

What do they do? They lose their job, and they go on unemployment. Where is the future? Where is the savings that my friends are talking about when you throw people out of work?

My friends talk about tough choices. Well, we ought to assume tough choices. You're going to have health clinics that are going to be reduced in their funding. You're going to have transportation projects reduced in their funding. You're going to have cuts in WIC; you're going to have cuts in Head Start; you're going to have cuts in programs that benefit the most vulnerable people in our communities.

None of us in this Chamber has to absorb a tough choice. It's the people we represent. It's the people in this country who are getting shafted as a result of this sequestration.

The time to act has long since passed. Mr. Van Hollen has time and time and time again--not once, not twice, not three times, but four times tried to bring an alternative to the House floor. All he's asked for is that we have an up-or-down vote on his proposal, and four times he has been rejected. By contrast, this year, my friends have brought up not a single alternative to avoid sequestration.

All we're asking for is a little democracy here on the floor of the House of Representatives, a chance for us to debate and have an up-or- down vote not on a procedural motion, but on the actual legislation, up or down. We've been denied that.

My friends, if they have an alternative they want to bring, fine. Bring that up there too. We'll have two votes, and we can debate our priorities so the American people know where we stand.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I'm going to offer an amendment to the rule to ensure that the House votes on Mr. Van Hollen's bill to replace the sequester and on Mr. Connolly's bill to freeze pay for Members of Congress for the next 2 years.

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

I just want to again say to my friends that it is important for them to appreciate the devastation of these cuts.

Head Start: the CR will allow sequestration to cut $400 million, resulting in a potential loss of 70,000 Head Start slots for comprehensive early learning and development services.

Job training programs: the CR will allow sequester to cut $282 million, resulting in hundreds of thousands of unemployed adults, dislocated workers, veterans, young adults and students losing access to employment services.

Title I grants, education of the disadvantaged: the CR will allow sequestration to cut $730 million, which is the equivalent of cutting the extra instructional services for more than 2,500 schools serving more than 1 million disadvantaged children who are struggling academically.

Special education grants: the CR will allow sequestration to cut more than $580 million, which is the rough equivalent of shifting the cost of educating nearly 300,000 students with special needs to State and local education agencies. This also may result in more than 700,000 layoffs of teachers, aides and other staff serving students with disabilities.

Child care: the CR will allow sequestration to cut $115 million, which would cause, roughly, 30,000 children to lose access to child care, further exacerbating the fact that only one in six children eligible for Federal child care assistance receives it.

Cancer screenings: the CR will allow sequestration to cut funding for cancer screenings, resulting in 25,000 fewer breast and cervical cancer screenings for low-income women.

I can go on and on and on, but here is the choice: the choice is either this process, which my Republican colleagues have embraced, or the one that Mr. Van Hollen has outlined--one that would say we're not going to balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable, on the backs of the needy, on the backs of the middle class but that--do you know what?--we're going to get rid of some of these corporate loopholes that my friends on the other side used to be in favor of closing. We're not going to continue to have taxpayer subsidies for big oil companies. We're going to have some balance in our approach to dealing with our deficit. The problem with the approach my friends have outlined--the problem with the sequestration--is that it is

not balanced. It is wrong-headed; it is mindless; it is senseless; and it is cruel.

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

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.

I thank my colleague from the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker and everyone who is listening, you know by now and what you've heard by now is they want sequestration. The local papers and the ones that we've printed on Capitol Hill today all say they want sequestration. The excuse they're giving is they're going to wait and see what the Senate will do, that we're not going to take any action here, that we're just going to be bystanders until we find out they want sequestration.

Over 700,000 workers are going to lose their jobs. A lot of economists tell us that this could be worse than the Great Depression, but they're willing to do it. They're willing to do it because they want to fight this President. I think that means a whole lot more to them than doing their job here as elected Members of Congress. As we've heard before, we only have 6 legislative days left. When we come back from a week's vacation, we will have these cuts that will have this devastating impact on our economy and on the well-being of every American citizen.

I urge the CEOs of America who are very worried, and they've said so for months and months, that they're concerned desperately about the prospect of sequestration, to talk to their Members here and get them to change their mind, if they can.

This is really dire. We're not kidding around here. This is serious business. We are literally facing a fiscal cliff. But the solution we've made to this, as you all know, a manmade crisis here, they take a swing at their favorite punching bag and hold hostage again the people who make their living serving all of us.

Last night was the first time I really heard that what we're doing, we're not going to save anything. Now, bear in mind that the Federal employees have already given in salary give-backs over $100 billion over the next 10 years. That should be enough sacrifice from them, but no, we're going to go for more. But we're not going to use it to reduce the deficit, it is going to be made available to agencies.

Well, there's a lot of ``Alice in Wonderland'' sort of sense in Congress these days. Alice, one of the things that I liked about her the most, and she's a very strange little girl, but she said that she practiced as hard as she could to try to believe six impossible things before breakfast. And I'm trying to put this in that same category, and it simply is impossible for me to believe that we gain anything in the world by taking away the salary and income of hardworking government employees to put back in Federal agencies. Frankly, if any of you can really understand that, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know.

We had a chance--in the last 2 weeks, we've had two chances--to do away with the sequester in a commonsense way and also to cut the deficit with a sensible solution. Mr. Van Hollen, who is the ranking member of the Budget Committee and deserves our respect, was not allowed to do anything.

As you pointed out, and I also heard Mr. McGovern say so, the Rules Committee now runs the House. There's no committee action on any of these bills. No chance for Republicans and Democrats in the committee setup, which the Founding Fathers did, and which we followed for generations and hundreds of years here, no possibility for them to discuss it. It simply is brought to Rules.

Now, Mr. Van Hollen, his sensible solution here, which really does make sense, was simply not allowed to be put on the floor so that we could discuss it and give people a vote. A bipartisan group of the Members of the House don't want this bill passed. I'm going to put a letter in from one of the most thoughtful Members and a friend, Representative Wolf from Virginia, about what he thinks this is about. He calls this a cheap political trick, and I think that pretty well sums it up.

Now, already cuts totaling $1.5 trillion have been made to discretionary spending. And as a result, because of the layoff of employees, our economy experienced an unexpected economic contraction in the final quarter of 2012, which we should pay heed to.

Sequestration would compound our economic troubles even further. George Mason University says sequestration would cause 2.14 million American employees to lose their jobs. Meanwhile, important Federal programs would be crippled because of irresponsible cuts. I need to mention a few of them again.

FAA, which makes flying safer, they would experience a great cutback. The people who guard the border, who do drug interdiction, who keep our border safe and strong, they would have a severe cutback. Sequestration would mean that vital research would be slowed. And as a scientist, let me assure you that research cannot be turned off and on like a faucet. It is necessary for us to maintain that research with dollars because, as it's been pointed out before, we want to keep our population healthy.

How important that is for us, not only for our economic well-being, but for the well-being of our citizens.

This is a foolish thing that we're doing here today, and I can't imagine anybody in the Senate would even contemplate bringing it up. So all of this is simply a waste of time, as we do here so many times.

I urge my colleagues on both sides, vote ``no'' and please give us a chance to let Mr. Van Hollen bring his bill to the floor--or some bill from the Republican side. I don't care where it comes from. We have to stop sequestration.

Congress of the United States,

Washington, DC.

Vote No on H.R. 273

Dear Republican Colleague: Next week, the House is

scheduled to consider H.R. 273. I urge you to vote no on this

legislation.

Let's be honest: this bill is nothing more than a political

stunt that targets the hardworking, dedicated men and women

of the civil service, who have already had their salaries

frozen for more than two years. Everyone knows they are an

easy target. But we are kidding ourselves if we think we can

balance the budget on the backs of federal employees. It's a

drop in the bucket towards deficit reduction and a hollow

gesture absent meaningful mandatory spending reforms. Worse,

this is just busywork as our economy faces the sequestration

meat ax.

I believe that the federal government must be able to

recruit and retain qualified individuals in order to deliver

government services in an efficient manner. And about half of

all federal employees make less than $60,000 a year. These

are individuals who haven't had a pay raise in more than two

years. And now we're talking about freezing their pay for a

full third year. The president's proposed .5 percent

adjustment is cheap grace ($225, since a quarter of it has

already been frozen) and won't bring civil service pay close

to the private sector, but it will at least attempt to tell

these employees that they are valued.

And just who are these federal employees? They are the

people you call when you need help, and 85 percent of them

live outside of the Washington, D.C. metro area.

They are the CIA agents who planned the raid to kill Osama

bin Laden. They work side-by-side with our military. Those

agents depicted in Zero Dark Thirty? They haven't had a pay

raise in more than two years.

They are the FBI agents you call when your child has been

kidnapped. Those agents who rescued the 5-year-old kidnapped

and held hostage in a bunker in Alabama? They haven't had a

pay raise in over two years.

They are the Customs and Border Patrol and DEA Agents who

are working to stop illegal immigrants and human traffickers

and drug runners. The border patrol agents who worked side-

by-side with slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry haven't

had a pay raise in over two years.

They are the nurses and doctors at the VA who care for our

veterans and wounded warriors--they haven't had a pay raise

in more than two years. I know I'm not alone in wanting the

best doctors and nurses to care for our veterans.

They are the foreign service officers who represent our

government at embassies in Libya, Israel, Russia and beyond.

The FSO's who worked side-by-side with slain Information

Management Office Sean Smith in Benghazi haven't had a pay

raise in more than two years.

They are the FDA inspectors who trace E. coli outbreaks to

ensure that our food is safe to eat. They are the NIH

researchers working to find a cure for breast cancer, and

prostate cancer, and Alzheimer's and Autism.

They are the defense civilian riggers and machinists and

refuelers and engineers repairing sophisticated electronic

weaponry systems at Army depots and Air Force bases and

shipyards who support our military personnel;

They are the firefighters you call when a lighting strike

sets a national forest on fire and homes and business are in

danger. And they are the park service rangers who ensure that

your constituents can safely hike and camp in our national

parks and tour our battlefields.

They are the scientists working at the DOE labs. They are

the meteorologist at weather service storm centers tracking

hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and blizzards. They are the

NASA astronauts, engineers and scientists.

Over the last Congress, unlike other groups, federal

employees contributed more than $103 billion to deficit

reduction--no other group was asked to sacrifice more. I know

that these patriotic Americans are willing to do more, but

they rightly expect all of us to fully join this effort. A

vote for the bill next week isn't a vote just to cut a

program, but it's a targeted vote to specifically freeze an

individual's pay from a marginal increase--a personal affront

to the employee and their entire family, including their

spouses and children, and the retired parents who care about

their children.

I get it--this vote polls well with certain groups. But we

were elected to represent our constituents. Let's pass bills

that actually reduce the drivers of our nation's debt and

deficit. This is cheap grace. Vote no.

Please don't hesitate to contact me or Mira Lezell on my

staff at 5-5136 if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Frank Wolf,

Member of Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Georgia, for yielding the customary 30 minutes to me. I rise obviously in opposition to the rule for consideration of H.R. 273, to eliminate the 2013 statutory pay adjustment for Federal employees.

I just heard my colleague from Georgia say that this is a good rule; but I've also heard him say what I agree with very frequently, and that is that this body should proceed toward regular order, allow the committee process to go forward in a meaningful way, to have hearings, and to let the will of the body be worked here in the people's House. I've also heard him talk about closed rules; and it's for that reason that I believe that this process is not a good process because it is a closed rule, and this couldn't, in that sense, be good. There were no hearings.

He talks about this one week, one bill. Why this week for Federal employees? Last night, I talked with six members of the American Federation of Government Employees, some of them older, some of them younger, and all of them agonizing, as are Federal employees around the country.

Let me get to the point. The Republicans have decided that they want to continue in the same shortsighted and counterproductive campaign against Federal employees that we saw in the last Congress. When they introduced this very same bill in the 112th Congress, it passed the House and then went nowhere and accomplished absolutely nothing. I'm quite certain--and I'll bet--that it will face the same fate this time around.

Just last week, the Rules Committee considered H.R. 444, the Require a PLAN Act, which should have been called the ``Republicans Have No Plan Act.'' Instead of offering real solutions to the challenges facing our Nation, my Republican colleagues continue to introduce do-nothing legislation that will do nothing to help the American people.

Obviously, all of us know that we face $85 billion in sequestration cuts in a matter of weeks. These cuts were intended to be a fail-safe. They were supposed to be so unpalatable, so horrible for everyone, that Congress would never allow them to go into effect. Yet, instead of making sure that these massive cuts don't threaten the progress that we've made, my friends on the other side would rather play politics at the expense of the middle class and the working poor, underscoring the working poor.

As the President put it in his State of the Union address: ``Arbitrary deficit reduction is not an economic plan.''

Deficit reduction is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. It is just one tool that will help us get our country back on the right track. You can't build a house with just a saw. Deficit reduction needs to be part of a comprehensive economic plan, one that will stimulate growth and create jobs.

A serious economic plan is one that does not take potshots at our economy and our Nation's full faith and credit for political purposes. We must, in this people's House, move beyond politics and work to avoid a dangerous backslide in our Nation's economic recovery.

For the life of me, I can't even begin to understand why House Republicans continue to pick on Federal employees. It's as if the people that keep the Capitol clean, the police officers that keep us safe, the countless people that work right here on this Capitol complex do not deserve this paltry raise and are to be picked on.

My AFGE friends were saying to me last night that Federal employees have already contributed $103 billion towards deficit reduction. Furthermore, Federal employees and retirees have contributed $15 billion in savings over 10 years through an increased pension contribution. A 2-year Federal pay freeze has been in effect since 2011 and will produce an additional $60 billion in savings. The reduction and delay of a 2013 pay increase included in the current continuing resolution will yield $28 billion in savings.

At what point does enough, as my friend from Virginia said, become enough? What's more and puzzles me--and I asked the question of the scrivener of this bill last evening--is: Why aren't Federal contractors, who make twice as much as Federal employees, included in this pay freeze? He gave me some political fogging. I don't know what it was and don't care to even bother to try to remember.

During the debate over the fiscal cliff, Republicans said that we shouldn't ask corporations and the wealthiest in our society to pay their fair share. The reason that was put--this is a while back during the debate on the fiscal cliff--was that if we tax the wealthy, they won't work as hard if they're taking home less money. What about Federal employees? Why is it that that logic does not apply here? It's incomprehensible that we find ourselves in this position.

Mr. Speaker, if the Federal Government is not paying realistic salaries, then we can't expect to be able to provide for people to allow for themselves and their families to have a decent living.

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that the Federal workforce is smaller now than it was in 1988, a historic low compared to the size of the national population. There are fewer Federal workers now than at any time during President Reagan's administration. Something has got to give.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would advise the gentleman that I was a businessperson, too, and there is a distinction between private businesses and civil servants of the Federal Government.

I'm pleased at this time to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman on the Rules Committee and my good friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, before yielding, I would ask

my good friend from Georgia a question: If we are leaving here, as I suspect we will tomorrow for a week, why don't we just stay here and get this done rather than go on vacation or waycation or whatever we do?

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

He doesn't control the House, Mr. Woodall.

I continue to yield.

In reclaiming my time, one thing is absolutely certain: the majority whip controls the floor, and the Speaker controls the House, and if they chose for us to stay here, we could stay here.

With that, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to my very good friend, the distinguished gentlewoman from New York, who is my ranking member on the Rules Committee, Ms. Slaughter.

I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlelady.

Mr. Speaker, would you be kind enough to tell both of us how much time remains.

Mr. Speaker, I'm very pleased at this time to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Bera), a new, very thoughtful Member of the House of Representatives.

Will my colleague yield?

But we have the power in the Rules Committee to waive that germaneness, and we could have done that and allowed Mr. Bera's measure to go forward. I thank my colleague for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I'm very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), my good friend, the former mayor of his city.

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased at this time to yield 2 minutes to my friend, the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

I yield the gentlewoman 1 additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I would alert my colleague from Georgia that I have no further requests for time, and I'm prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance my time.

I really like and have great affection for my friend from Georgia, and I understand exactly what he just did with reference to the President's commission as appointed by Senator Simpson and Erskine Bowles, but the fount of wisdom with reference to what is required in order for this Nation to right its ship doesn't emanate from just any one commission. And while this particular proposal may be listed as an idea from the Simpson-Bowles Commission, I would urge my friend from Georgia to read the whole thing, which does contemplate shared sacrifice. And that's what I tried to get across to my colleagues here in this institution.

As a person that lived as a child during the Second World War, I saw what sacrifice meant, and I saw the people that did the sacrificing. And they did it together, differently than us today. And that's why I think it's wrong to cherry-pick and then use a sledgehammer against Federal employees for something that is not likely to become the law of the land. It's a waste of time.

The only good thing that I have to say about the bill before us today is that it has zero chance of becoming law. I anxiously wait for my friends on the other side, particularly the leadership, to actually start considering legislation that will help, not hurt, the American people.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment which would allow the House to vote on replacing the entire sequester for 2013 with savings from specific policies that reflect a balanced approach to reducing our national debt.

There are only 6 legislative days left until the sequester hits. Now is the time to act. Smart government is not about sequesters; it's about solutions. And it's time to work together for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in 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.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time with the final thought that we don't have that much time to waste, and we are wasting the American people's time.

I know you're on a roll, but will my friend yield for just 5 seconds?

I thank you so very much.

I just want to say America ain't Greece; it ain't going to be Greece.

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