Reserved for the Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 48 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

For the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend from 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.

Mr. Speaker, we're here today, as you heard from the Clerk, on House Resolution 48, which provides a structured rule for consideration of H.R. 444, which is the Require a PLAN Act. This is a resolution that will require that the President, if he doesn't submit a budget that ultimately comes to balance, submit then a supplementary budget that shows how he would bring the budget to balance.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, we've been grappling with serious budget challenges throughout this President's administration. We go back to FY 2009, the very first year of the administration; the deficit tripled the previous record-high deficit in this country to $1.4 trillion. It was $1.3 trillion in FY 2010, $1.3 trillion in FY 2011, $1.2 trillion in FY 2012. And, Mr. Speaker, there's no plan that the administration has produced to get us from where we are--fiscal irresponsibility--to a point in the future of fiscal responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, we've been doing our part here in the House. We've been proud to work together across the aisle in order to pass budgets that tackle

those hard challenges that are ahead of us. If you read the President's comments, Mr. Speaker, you will see that he recognizes the challenges are hard. The question is: Are we going to deal with those or not?

I hold here, Mr. Speaker, a speech that the President made to the Democratic National Convention on September 6, 2012, where he said this:

I will use the money that we're no longer spending on war

to pay down our debt and put more people back to work.

And my notes here said that it was followed by extended cheers and applause. I expect my friend from Massachusetts supports that spirit wholeheartedly, that, ``I will use the money we're no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work.''

But, Mr. Speaker, I also hold in my hand a transcript from the Budget Committee, on which I have the pleasure of sitting, when we had the President's Treasury Secretary come before the Budget Committee to explain the budget, and I said this:

Can you tell me just in simple terms--in true or false

terms, this budget never, ever, ever reduces the debt, is

that right?

Treasury Secretary Geithner:

Uh, that is correct. It does not go far enough to bring

down the debt, not just as a share of the economy, but

overall. You're right.

I then said this:

It doesn't bring down the debt at all.

Mr. Speaker, that's the conflict that we face here as a people, as a country. Not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as a people. On the one hand, what our politicians are saying is we're going to use the money to pay down our debt. But what the reality is is that proposals are coming out today that never, ever, ever pay down a penny of debt.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if you want to see that for yourself, you can look. The President's budgets each year are posted online on the OMB Web site. In fact, the very first one he submitted--I hold the cover page here--it was called ``A New Era of Responsibility.'' ``A New Era of Responsibility'' is the first budget that the President ever submitted. But as I go through that budget, Mr. Speaker, what I see is projections for 2020, for 2030, for 2040, for 2060, and for 2080.

Mr. Speaker, hear that. You have got young children--2020, 2030, 2040, 2060, and 2080--and in each one of those years, according to the President's budget, not only does the budget never balance under his plan, but it continues to get worse. 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050, 2060, 2080--the President's budget. And I think that comes as news to so many of us, Mr. Speaker, I confess, because I've listened to the speeches, just as my friend from Massachusetts has, where we talk about getting the deficit under control, where we talk about paying down the debt. Only when you get into the plan, do you see that we never pay down one penny.

So this rule today, Mr. Speaker, would allow us to take up a bill that would require the President for the very first time to submit a balanced budget. It doesn't have to balance the way I would balance it. It doesn't have to balance the way you would balance it. But to submit a balanced budget. And as you know, Mr. Speaker, the statute actually required the President submit his budget yesterday. He's going to miss that deadline, but I'm expecting it soon and I'm looking forward to reading it soon. It's so that we actually give the American people a plan.

I want to say--because we heard it in the Rules Committee last night, and I believe my friend from Massachusetts brought it up and he was absolutely right--the history of debt and deficits in this country, Mr. Speaker, is not a mark of shame on the Democratic Party and it is not a mark of shame on the Republican Party; it is a mark of shame on all of us collectively.

Candidly, you and I here, Mr. Speaker, in the big freshman class of 2010, I'm less interested in finding out who to blame and I'm more interested in finding out who has a solution to solve the problem. This House passed a solution to solve the problem. I'd like to see the Senate create a solution. I'd like to see the President create a solution. I'd like to see us discuss that solution as the American people, Mr. Speaker.

There were 14 amendments submitted to this piece of legislation, Mr. Speaker. We heard testimony on that in the Rules Committee yesterday. Unfortunately, six of those 14 amendments were nongermane; we were not able to make those in order. But we did make in order three Republican amendments, one Democratic amendment, and one bipartisan amendment. In fact, all the Members who came to the Rules Committee yesterday to testify on behalf of their amendments, we were able to make those amendments in order.

Mr. Speaker, all this bill does, should it become law, is require that if the President doesn't submit a balanced budget--it's certainly my great hope that he will, but if he doesn't, he share with the American people--again, not in 5 years, not in 10 years--whatever number he believes is the right way to set priorities, tell the American people what steps he will take to get us back on track.

Candidly, Mr. Speaker, it's unconscionable that we can look at projections going out to 2080 and have folks never, ever, ever pay down one penny of debt. Contrast that with what we did here in the House of Representatives, where with a budget that passed this House, the bipartisan vote that passed that budget, passed the only budget that passed anywhere in this town, not only would we have balanced the budget in that time frame, Mr. Speaker, we would have paid back every penny of our $16.4 trillion Federal debt.

That's no small conversation. It's a conversation that's long overdue on this House floor. It's a conversation that has been too long ignored by both Democrats and Republicans, and I'm pleased to be here today to take that up with my friend from Massachusetts, and then later on, the underlying bill.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank my friend from Massachusetts because he's highlighting exactly what our challenges are and exactly why it's so important that we pass both the rule and H.R. 444 today. He went through item after item after item that have absolutely tied our economy up in knots. Short-term problems and short-term solutions are trumping the discussion of long-term problems and long-term solutions.

The sequester that he mentioned, Mr. Speaker, do you know that it was the month of May last year that this House first passed a replacement to the sequester? Now, as you know and as history has recorded, the Senate never acted on any replacement of a sequester, and now we talk about what happened on January 1 as if it was something that was created by this House, as if that fiscal cliff was something that this House invented. In fact, we have a very proud history, bipartisan history, of looking further down the road to try to find the best answers and the best solutions to very serious problems. But we can't do it alone, Mr. Speaker.

One of the great successes we've had just early in this year--and by ``we,'' I mean this entire House, the people's House--is that we appear to have persuaded the Senate to pass a budget for the first time in 4 years. All indication is that this year, unlike last year and the year before that and the year before that, this year they're going to pass a budget to lay out their plan.

But what does it say, Mr. Speaker, about this House, about this process, about the future of this country that it's controversial whether or not the President of the United States should introduce a budget that balances ever? That's the debate today, Mr. Speaker. That's how out of touch Washington has become. That's how confused the speeches have been written. We're debating whether or not the President should introduce a budget that ever balances. I'm advocating, yes, he should. Others are advocating, no, that shouldn't be a requirement; when you take the oath to fully execute the laws of the land, when you take the oath to faithfully protect and defend the United States of America, it shouldn't be a requirement that you balance budgets. In fact, you should be free, not just for 10 years, not just for 20 years, not just for 40 years, not just for 80 years, but forever to deficit spend, to borrow from a generation of children and a generation of grandchildren to pay for our wants today, taking away from their needs tomorrow.

This rule debate is going to come to a close in 40 minutes and we're going to vote. Then if the rule passes, we're going to go into a vote on the underlying bill. There are going to be ``no'' votes on the board that say, no, the President should never have to explain to the American people how we're going to make our fiscal tomorrow better than our fiscal today.

I would like to change his mind, Mr. Speaker, but for now I'm going to focus on changing the minds right here in this Chamber. Because if there is anything that unites us in this body, rather than divides us, it is a true love of this country. And I challenge anyone, Mr. Speaker, to define their love of our freedoms and of our country in a way that allows us to continue borrowing from the next generation forever.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I just want to say to my friend from New York, for whom I do have tremendous respect and value her counsel, to call this a stupid piece of legislation I think really misses the point about what we're doing here.

I would encourage you to ask your constituents in New York, and, Mr. Speaker, I would encourage you to ask your constituents back home, do folks realize, because I didn't, that in the four years that the President has been President of the United States, the budgets that he has introduced come to balance never?

My friends on the other side are making a persuasive case, Mr. Speaker, for why it is they would support doing things with different priorities than I would support doing things. And that's absolutely going to be true. When we debate the budget resolution, we're going to have different approaches for getting to balance. But the President's budgets never get there. If we give him every spending cut he asks for, if we give him every tax increase he asks for, if we do absolutely everything that the budget that he is required by law to submit requests, we will begin to pay down the first penny of debt never.

In fact, if we do absolutely everything that the budget he is required by law to submit to us asks, the debt will continue to grow forever.

I agree with so much of what my friends on the other side are saying about the sequester, about the fiscal cliff. That's why we acted in May in this body. That's why we acted in August in this body on this tax bill. That's why we passed another sequester replacement in August. That's why we passed another one in December. I agree. But can't we also agree that if you're going to be Commander in Chief of America, if you're going to be the President of the United States, if you're going to uphold and defend the Constitution--and we have our former Joint Chief of Staff Chairman telling us that our greatest national security threat is our growing debt--shouldn't it be fair to ask the President to tell us when, if ever, he plans to begin paying back the first penny?

Mr. Speaker, it's not a stupid piece of legislation that we're dealing with today. What's almost laughably ridiculous is that it's controversial.

I believe the gentleman has much more time. I will be happy to reserve the balance of my time, though, and allow my friend to control.

Mr. Speaker, there's a reason that we're spending so much time talking about things other than the underlying bill, other than the rule. The reason is because the rule is a good rule, and the bill is a good bill. We can use this time for the political theater that my friend from Massachusetts appears to disdain, but I would say he's got a talent for it and he should not disdain it so rapidly.

Mr. Speaker, we handled the sequester in May. I hope whenever my friend from Massachusetts refers to his friends on the other side, he means the other side of the Chamber, not the other side of this House, because we, you and I, acted, Mr. Speaker, to solve those issues.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Reclaiming my time, my friend is exactly right. Of all of the multiple efforts that we did last year that were all rejected by the other side, we have not recreated those efforts again this year. He's exactly right.

What we have done, however, is created a pathway that's going to produce the first budget on the Senate side, the first opportunity for the bodies to come together in conference.

My friend from New York tells us about, I'm just a bill and what schoolchildren are learning all over America. Mr. Speaker, they're going to have to learn on TV because they have not seen it in this town. We can't. We can't go to conference on a budget unless the Senate passes one. And this year, Mr. Speaker, as governed by the rule book, the United States Constitution that I have right here in my hand, we're going to be able to get that done. That's the kind of work this House is doing. That's the groundwork that we're laying.

My friend from New York is exactly right, Mr. Speaker, when she says that this body, led by Chairman Ryan on the Budget Committee, is going to produce a budget so serious and so responsible, it's going to come to balance, the balance the American people are demanding, faster than any other budget we have seen in this President's administration.

All we're asking, Mr. Speaker: Doesn't it seem reasonable to let the President submit any budget he wants to? We don't want to change the budget he's submitting at all, but just to share with the American people because they don't know when they come to balance.

Who knew, Mr. Speaker, when the budget was entitled a ``New Era of Responsibility,'' that it wasn't going to come to balance in 80 years? Who knew? I didn't. There are people in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, who did not know that in 4 years of his Presidency, this President has never, ever--assuming a world where he gets everything that he wants-- crafted a plan that begins to pay back the very first penny of our debt. That's dangerous, Mr. Speaker.

This bill can put a stop to that process. That is why I know it's going to get support here in the House.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say to my friends that I haven't actually mentioned that the President's budget was late. You're exactly right. He did miss the statutory deadline. He's not going to make it on time. In fact, the story is that it's not going to get here until March. In the years that I've had a voting card, he has never submitted a budget on time. I'm not asking him to get it here on time. I am only asking him, when it gets here, would he tell us when it's going to balance.

With that, I would like to yield 4 minutes to a colleague on the Rules Committee, the gentleman from Texas, Dr. Burgess.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say to my colleague that I share her great passion for America's children and protecting America's children. And I would say to my friend that I don't believe we can continue to operate under budgets that borrow from those children, not just this year, not just next year, but forever, and candidly say that we're protecting them. We're putting our most vulnerable at risk with these deficits, and we have to make the tough decisions.

I'd be happy to yield.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to read from the President's inaugural address. It took place just outside our backdoor here. He said:

We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health

care and the size of our deficit.

He didn't say we should make the easy choices, because there aren't any easy choices left to make. Every single one of them is hard. And I have such great respect for Members of this body who have taken the hard votes and made those hard decisions.

All this bill says is: Mr. President, put your budget where your speeches are. Make the hard choices, any of the choices you want to make to balance, anytime you want to balance, but we can't begin to pay down the debt until we stop running up the debt. And we have yet to see a budget from this President that puts us on that path.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds to say to my friend that I know his commitment to Social Security is heartfelt, and it's one that I share. I hope it gives him comfort to know that there is absolutely nothing in this legislation that changes any of those commitments that he read there on the House floor. In fact, I would say the opposite is true. As someone who's going to retire after Social Security is projected to have gone bankrupt, I think it is critically important that every budget we look at looks at how it is we're going to pay back all of those government bonds that this Congress has swapped the cash in the Social Security trust fund for. Without paying back those bonds, there is no Social Security check to go out the door.

The reason we talk about balanced budgets is because numbers are important. We talk about balanced budgets because commitments are important. And we cannot, we cannot meet our Medicare commitments. We cannot meet our Social Security commitments, and everyone in this body knows it.

Every budget the President produces shows it. But we can do better; and working together, we will do better, Mr. Speaker.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I'd say to my friend, I'm prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time to thank my friend from Massachusetts for being down here with me today to get this rule to a place where we can vote on it. I always look to my friend from Massachusetts to find those things that we agree on, and we certainly agree that Congress has an awfully low approval rating.

I would disagree with my friend though, Mr. Speaker, and say it's a low approval rating because we don't deal with important issues like this. It's a low approval rating because folks will say Republicans want to privatize Social Security, even though our budget did no such thing.

It's a low approval rating because folks will say our budget destroys Medicare forever, even though our budget did no such thing. It's a low approval rating because folks say they want to grapple with the tough challenges of the country, and yet they continue to borrow and spend as they always have.

But I'm an optimist, Mr. Speaker. I really do believe that we've come to a place--not just in this country, not just in this House--I think we've come to a place in each individual in this country, where folks are prepared to do those things that must be done to ensure that our children's tomorrow is better than their today.

Mr. Speaker, when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about their deep love and affection for the next generation and how they want to ensure that the most vulnerable are taken care of, they mean it from the heart. They mean it from the heart.

But when the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tells us that our biggest national security concern is our growing debt and deficits, how much love can you show to the next generation, Mr. Speaker, when you continue to dig into their pockets instead of your own?

It's not incumbent upon us to decide how our children set their priorities. It's incumbent upon us to set our priorities so that they don't have to make those tough decisions.

Mr. Speaker, if we went out in the street in front of this Capitol and asked every man and woman who brought their family here to visit the Nation's Capitol how many of them knew that in not one budget, and for not 1 year does the President ever propose that we come to balance, that would be shocking, shocking news. And yet it's the truth.

Mr. Speaker, title 31 lays out in intricate detail congressional requirements for the President's budget. Congressional requirements for the President's budget. H.R. 444 would incorporate those requirements and add one more and, that is, that in this time of economic challenge, you be honest with the American people about the tough choices that we're all facing.

Mr. Speaker, if it was easy, they'd have done it before you and I got here. It's hard, and it's getting worse every single day any one of us fails to deal with it.

We can deal with it today, Mr. Speaker. I know our Budget Committee is committed to dealing with it. I know this House is committed to deal with it. Let's make the President a partner in that today.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge strong support for the resolution. I urge strong support for the underlying bill.

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

I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia, my good friend, 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, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this restrictive rule and to vote ``no'' on the underlying bill.

The process here is awful. The bill before us was not even considered by the Budget Committee. They didn't hold a single hearing, no markup, and on a party-line vote last night the Rules Committee denied Mr. Van Hollen, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, the opportunity to offer a meaningful substitute. The Rules Committee also, on a party line, voted against an open rule. To all of the Republican freshmen and sophomores who campaigned on the need for openness and transparency, by voting for this rule, you are officially part of the problem.

This bill before us isn't a meaningful attempt to address the budget; it's a gimmick wrapped in talking points inside a press release.

Two weeks ago, this House passed the so-called ``No Budget, No Pay Act,'' then they went on another recess. There wasn't a holiday, mind you. I guess it was the Super Bowl recess. Now they're back with today's bill. It calls on the President to tell Congress when his budget will come into balance. If his budget doesn't say when it will come into balance, then he must submit a supplemental statement telling Congress when it will come into balance.

Why are we doing this? Because the President is late submitting his budget for the next fiscal year. Okay, fine. The President should submit a budget on time, and I support that. But lost in all of this Republican budget Kabuki theater is the truth: the reason the administration is late with their budget is because they just spent months trying to avert the disaster that was the fiscal cliff.

As the Speaker was trying in vain to corral House Republicans into doing the right thing, we had Plan B and Plan C and Plan--who knows what. Finally, we reached a deal on January 1, technically after we went over the cliff. In the meantime, back in the real world, we are less than 24 calendar days away from the disastrous sequester taking effect--less than 24 calendar days from massive, arbitrary, and devastating cuts to defense and nondefense

discretionary programs, cuts to jobs programs and medical research and education, cuts to military personnel and law enforcement, cuts that will cost jobs and do real harm to the American economy as it struggles to recover.

And the reality is that we don't even have that much time. We only have 9 legislative days left in February to address the issue, 9 days to negotiate a trillion-dollar deal with the Senate and the President. And instead of a meaningful plan to address the crisis that we need to avert, we have this nonsense before us today. This is no way to govern.

The disturbing truth is that many Republicans seem downright giddy when it comes to the sequester cuts. There is news story after news story about how the Republicans are going to allow the sequester to take effect. In the Rules Committee last night, the author of this bill, the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Price, couldn't support these cuts fast enough. I was shocked.

Mr. Speaker, it was only last week that the economic numbers for the fourth quarter of 2012 were released. Unexpectedly, we saw a contraction in those numbers, a contraction fueled by a massive reduction in defense spending. What do you know: huge cuts in government spending during a fragile economic recovery damage economic growth. The Republican response is to double down on this stupid.

These Republican games of Russian roulette with the American economy must come to an end. It is time to replace short-term partisan political interests with the greater good.

The President today is asking us to consider a thoughtful, balanced plan to stop the sequester. I urge the Republican leadership to bring that plan to the floor of the House for a vote as soon as possible. That's what the American people want and that's what they deserve: a real plan. The bill before us today isn't it, and I urge my colleagues to reject it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I would like to submit for the Record a letter sent to the Honorable Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, from the Executive Office of the President in the Office of Management and Budget which explains why the President's budget for this year is delayed--because of the theatrics that my friends on the other side forced us to go through to avoid going over a fiscal cliff. So I think it's understandable why the budget may be a little late.

And I would say to the gentleman, submitting a budget is not controversial. What is controversial to me is the fact that so many of my friends on the other side want to go over this sequester cliff in which millions of jobs will be lost. That to me is controversial. We should be about protecting jobs and creating jobs.

My friends have budgetary plans that would throw people out of work, and I find that unconscionable. I find that unconscionable. We should be about lifting this country up, not trying to put people down.

And the plans that have been proposed by my friends on the other side, including this kind of giddiness about the prospect of going over the sequestration cliff, would cost millions of people in this country jobs. It would hurt our economy.

That's not the way we want to govern. That's what is controversial on our side. We don't want people to lose their jobs. We want people to keep their jobs, and we want to create an economy that creates more jobs.

Executive Office of the President, Office of Management

and Budget,

Washington, DC, January 11, 2013.

Hon. Paul Ryan,

Chairman, Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of

Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Ryan: Thank you for your letter dated January

9, 2013, requesting information on when the Administration

will submit the President's fiscal year (FY) 2014 Budget.

For over a year and a half, the Administration has been

working with Congress to forge agreement on a plan that would

both grow our economy and significantly reduce the deficit.

The Administration continues to seek a balanced approach to

further deficit reduction that cuts spending in a responsible

way while also raising revenues.

As you know, the protracted ``fiscal cliff' negotiations

that led to enactment of H.R. 8, the American Taxpayer Relief

Act of 2012, created considerable uncertainty about revenue

and spending for 2013 and beyond. The Act resolved a

significant portion of this uncertainty by making permanent

the temporary rates on taxable income at or below $400,000

for individual filers and $450,000 for married individuals

filing jointly; permanently indexing the Alternative Minimum

Tax exemption to the Consumer Price Index; extending

emergency unemployment benefits and Federal finding for

extended benefits for unemployed workers for one year;

continuing current Medicare payment rates for physicians'

services through December 31, 2013; extending farm bill

policies and programs through September 30, 2013; and

providing a postponement of the Budget Control Act's

sequestration for two months. However, because these issues

were not resolved until the American Taxpayer Relief Act was

enacted on January 2, 2013, the Administration was forced to

delay some of its FY 2014 Budget preparations, which in turn

will delay the Budget's submission to Congress.

The Administration is working diligently on our budget

request. We will submit it to Congress as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey D. Zients,

Deputy Director for Management.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York, the ranking member of the Rules Committee, Ms. Slaughter.

I yield the gentlelady an additional 2 minutes.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Ms. Slaughter).

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

The issue is not whether the President should submit a budget. He should. And he would have submitted a budget by now, but because of the theatrics that my friends on the other side put us through dealing with the fiscal cliff, which was just solved on January 1, things are a little bit delayed. The issue is why is the House wasting time on this while the sword of the sequester hangs over the American people?

The President can submit any budget he wants. That's what the President has the right to do, just like George Bush submitted whatever budget he wanted to do.

We have a job here in this House, and that is to address this looming fiscal crisis called the sequester. What we're doing here today is doing nothing at all to move that ball forward.

In less than a month, arbitrary cuts are going to go into effect, people are going to lose their jobs, and this economy is going to go into a deeper slump. For the life of me, I can't understand why there's not more urgency. We shouldn't be taking vacations. We actually should be working here and trying to resolve this. This is stupid legislation because it is not addressing the crisis. It is doing nothing to advance the cause of trying to get to a solution. This is just a press release. This is yet another gimmick.

I think the reason why Congress and especially the House of Representatives is held in such low regard is because we spend so much time on trivial matters debating passionately, and we skip over debating the important things. We ought to be doing something important here today. We ought to be trying to avert this sequestration. We ought to be trying to keep people in their jobs. And we ought to be trying to create an economy that will create more jobs, not this theater.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

This is the 113th Congress. We haven't done one thing to solve this fiscal crisis that's looming on March 1st. This is the 113th.

Under the Constitution, when a new Congress begins, we have to start all over again. Okay?

Mr. Speaker, this bill does nothing. It does absolutely nothing. It's a press release.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to ensure that the House votes on Mr. Van Hollen's replacement for the sequester, which was blocked yesterday in the Rules Committee.

My friend from Georgia talks about this being a good rule and a good process. This bill was not even considered by the Budget Committee, which is the committee of jurisdiction. It had no hearing. It had no markup. It mysteriously appeared at the Rules Committee. We wanted an open rule, and we were denied an open rule. Mr. Van Hollen actually had a substantive amendment to replace the sequester. That was denied.

So I want to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Van Hollen, to discuss his amendment.

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

Let me just respond to the gentleman from Texas by saying he's wrong. He's on the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Affordable Care Act had hearings in the Energy and Commerce Committee--and markups. There were multiple hearings on that bill. I'm not sure what he's talking about.

Then to the gentleman from Georgia who says that he didn't mention the fact that the President missed the deadline, I thought he did, but the bill that he's touting here mentions it in these very political, inspired findings. Read your own bill. It's three pages long. I know that may be too much, but we're all told to read the bill.

Look, rather than being here and telling the President what to do-- he's going to submit a budget--we've got to do our job. Our job is to avoid this sequestration because, if we don't, there are millions of people in this country who will be without work. There are

programs that will be arbitrarily cut, and this economy will be hurt. Now, if you want sequestration, then you can continue to take your recesses and do this kind of trivial stuff on the House floor, but we ought to be finding a way to avoid going over this sequestration cliff.

At this point, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

I yield the gentlelady 10 seconds.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We all want to make sure that our children are protected, but embracing a sequester that cuts things like Head Start, that's no way to protect our children.

At this point, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the gentleman from Georgia how many more speakers he has.

I'm prepared to close as well, Mr. Speaker. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very frustrating debate, in large part because it's much ado about nothing. What we're doing here today is a press release. It's doing nothing at all to avoid this prospect of sequestration in which arbitrary cuts will go into play. This is just more talk and talk and talk and talk.

Again, that's one of the reasons why the American people are so frustrated with this place. They want less talk and more work. We should be working. We should be coming to some sort of agreement to avoid the catastrophe of sequestration; but, instead, we're doing this.

Mr. Speaker, I want to put some things in perspective. The Center for American Progress reported that since the start of fiscal year 2011, President Obama has signed into law approximately $2.4 trillion of deficit reduction for the years 2013 through 2022. Nearly three- quarters of that deficit reduction is in the form of spending cuts, while the remaining one-quarter comes from revenue increases. Congress and the President have cut about $1.5 trillion in programmatic spending, raised about $630 billion in new revenue, and generated about $300 billion in interest savings, for a combined total of more than $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction. That's a quote from the Center for American Progress.

So three-fourths of the deficit reduction we've achieved so far was from spending cuts. But my friends on the other side have the nerve to continue to claim that Democrats are ``loathe'' to agree to spending cuts. I mean, give me a break, Mr. Speaker. Give me a break.

The CBO projects the Federal deficit to be about $845 billion, which I think is very high; but it's the first time the nonpartisan office forecast a deficit below $1 trillion. So we are going in the right direction, and the President wants to continue to move in that right direction in a fair and balanced way.

Now, here's the deal. My friends keep on referring to what they did last year which, again, was last year. We have to get them to think about this year because they have to act now; it's a new Congress.

But last year the proposals they came up with to try to bring our budget into balance were all about lowering the quality of life for our citizens. Their budget proposal ended Medicare as we know it. Ended Medicare. It's gone.

My friend from Florida talked about Social Security. Their plan for Social Security is to privatize it. And deep reductions and cuts that provide support for people who are most vulnerable. That's their plan.

And now, we see, because we're not trying to address this latest fiscal cliff, I think they really do want the sequestration to go into effect. I think that is outrageous. I think it's going to be dangerous to our economy. But their plan, by allowing sequestration to go into effect, is basically to try to balance the budget by making more people unemployed.

You know, we will lose jobs. In the defense sector that's already happening. But then we're going to see losses in jobs in other areas. There'll be cuts in education. Police grants are cut. Payments to Medicare providers are cut. And The New York Times reports that even the aid just approved for victims of Hurricane Sandy will fall under the sequester's axe.

I mean, this is how we're going to solve our budgetary problems?

Yes, we do have a big debt. A lot of it has to do with these unpaid- for wars, with these tax cuts that weren't paid for; and it's going to take us a while to get out of it. But as we get out of it, we can't destroy our country. We need a balanced approach. We need to cut where we can cut, we need to raise revenues where we need to raise revenues, but we also need to invest.

Cutting the National Institutes of Health, which will happen if sequestration goes into effect, will not only cost jobs, but it will prolong human suffering. If we could find a cure to Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's disease, not only will we prevent a lot of human suffering, you would end up solving the budgetary challenges of Medicare and Medicaid. There's a value in investing in these things, not arbitrarily cutting them.

Now, last night in the Rules Committee, we tried to bring some substance to this debate. Mr. Van Hollen had his amendment, which was blocked. The one substantive thing that we could have done here today to avoid sequestration was blocked.

So, Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to ensure that the House votes on Mr. Van Hollen's replacement for the sequester which was, again, blocked last night in the Rules Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, again, I would urge my colleagues to reject this rule which, again, is illustrative of how closed this process has become in this House. We ought to reject the rule because it is not open. The Budget Committee never even considered this bill.

But we ought to also reject the underlying bill because this is nonsense at a time when we should be doing something real to avoid a real catastrophe in this country, to avoid something that will have an adverse impact on our economy. Instead, you know, we're all fiddling while Rome is burning.

This is outrageous. We can do so much better. We ought to work. You know, you're passing resolutions asking the President to do X, Y, and Z. We ought to pass a resolution to instruct us to do our job, and that's what we ought to do. That's what the American people expect.

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. 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 want to take a little time tonight with my colleague, Representative Young from Indiana, to talk a little bit about health care in America, talk a little bit about the Affordable Care Act that is currently being implemented, and talk about the need for real health care reform in this country.

I want to start out by just emphasizing that I firmly believe we need health care reform. I believe that the health care reform we got in the form of the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, is not the health care reform that we need. And I would say that we have lots of proposals here in the House. I think last Congress we had over 200 bills introduced that related to the health care system, reforming our health care system. And this Congress, we have dozens of health care reform related bills as well.

So the idea that it's either the Affordable Care Act as we're seeing it unfold, or nothing at all, it's a false choice. That's not the choice that we have. There are lots of ideas; lots of much better ideas, I must add. And while I am personally for repeal--I certainly want the Affordable Care Act repealed--I want to replace it with quality, patient-centered health care reform.

I am not against providing relief to Americans who are feeling the burden of the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare right now. In fact, we had a hearing on the implementation of the ObamaCare law in the Ways and Means Committee today, a committee of which I am a member. And my colleague Representative Young is also a member. And we heard a lot of people say hey, this is the law of the land, don't mess with it. This is the law of the land, let it go. This is the law of the land, any attempt to criticize it, to discuss its shortcomings, is a waste of time.

Well, I reject that outright. And, you know, I think the President, through his actions, has rejected that.

What am I talking about? Well, it's interesting because we've passed seven bills in this House, seven bills, that relate to ObamaCare, changing ObamaCare, repealing a part of ObamaCare, seven that not only passed this House, we sent them to the other side of the Capitol. They passed the Senate. And you know what? The President signed them into law. That may come as a surprise to some folks, but it's the truth. We passed seven bills to change, to modify, to repeal parts of, to make better ObamaCare, and the President has agreed with us on all seven. He signed them into law.

Those are the same bills, and I would like to go through, if I can, the seven bills, and talk a little bit about what they do and how they were an improvement. I think they are evidence that yes, we'd like to replace this bill with something much better, this law, but in the short term, we will do whatever it takes to provide relief to American workers, relief to American families, relief to small businesses that are under the burden of ObamaCare.

So let me mention a few of these.

H.R. 4: H.R. 4 repealed the small business paperwork 1099 mandate. I remember when I first got to Congress, I heard from a bunch of folks about the 1099 filing obligation under the President's health care law. We repealed that. You know what the President did? He agreed. Bad part of the law.

Next, H.R. 1473. We cut $2.2 billion from what was characterized as a stealth public plan, a consumer-operated and -oriented plan, and froze the IRS budget. The President signed that into law.

Next, H.R. 674. We saved taxpayers $13 billion by adjusting the eligibility for ObamaCare programs. The President signed that into law.

H.R. 2055 made more reductions to the consumer-operated and -oriented plan that I mentioned earlier, also to the IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, an independent board that's going to cut Medicare, because it hasn't been reformed, when it runs out of money. So that was signed into law. And again in today's hearing in the Ways and Means Committee, folks on the other side of the aisle were saying this talk, this criticism about the President's law, ObamaCare, a waste of time, meaningless, all politics. Hogwash; the President signed a bunch of it into law.

Precisely. And a lot of people ask, why all the focus, why all the energy, why all the speeches? Because it's important, number one. And, number two, it takes the energy, the focus, the time, the prioritization, the resources, to convince people, the President included, that this is not the way to go.

Now, I think if you were to throw these seven different bills out there a few years ago when ObamaCare passed and say, hey, what are the chances of the President signing this? People would have said no way. No way it's going to happen. So it's a process. It's a process of making the argument with facts; not through personal attack, with facts. Make the vigorous argument. That's what this body and democracy is about, make the argument, win the argument, and then repeal or change.

And I would mention, there are three more: H.R. 3630 slashed billions of dollars from some discretionary funds, some slush funds which they had some flexibility to use, and the President agreed with that. He signed that into law.

H.R. 4348 adjusted a drafting error. It saved $670 million.

And H.R. 8 repealed what was called the CLASS program--Community Living Assistance Services and Support program. The former Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee called the CLASS program ``a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would be proud of.''

We saved billions of dollars through the repeal of H.R. 8. So to reiterate, there are seven bills we fought hard for, and every single one of them ultimately was signed into law by the President of the United States.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the biggest change, the most consequential change to ObamaCare, the most open and full recognition that the President's health care law is unworkable and problematic and a burden is the fact that the President himself just a few weeks ago on July 2, through a blog post, a Department of Treasury blog post, said, you know what? I am going to suspend, postpone for a year the so-called employer mandate that is one of the key pillars of the ObamaCare law.

Now, what is that mandate?

If you were to ask me what does full-time mean to you, I'd say, growing up in south Arkansas, full-time means 40 hours in a week or more, right?

That's a commonsense, practical application of what full-time is.

Would that be right under ObamaCare?

So the bottom line is the President recognized--and I applaud him for this--I applaud him for recognizing the problem, the burden of his law, particularly the employer mandate. And he said, I'm going to postpone that part of the law. I'm basically going to repeal, in effect, repeal that for a year; just make that go away for a year as a practical matter.

Now, I applaud his recognition that the law has problems. The problem I had with that action is I don't think, still do not believe the President had the power to do that. If he wants the law changed, he should have called Congress. We would have been more than happy to deliver up a bill--send it over to the Senate--that postponed the employer mandate a year.

In fact, because of the President doing that, that's precisely what we did. So I introduced H.R. 2667, that does that in legislation, not through a regulatory change, a blog post. But I introduced the Authority for Mandate Delay Act, which we voted on. We passed on this floor.

Why?

It does the same basic thing, a little bit different, but the same basic thing that the President was doing, and we did it so that what he did would be legal. And you know what? Thirty-five Democrats supported this bill. Thirty-five Democrats supported this bill, and I applaud them for doing it.

And I would add to that there are many of us that believe the reason this law is not working is because it will never work. It is unworkable by design. It is top-down. It is the old way of doing things in a world that is becoming network bottom-up, innovative, new way of doing things. This is an old central control, top-down way of legislating.

And so the President recognized that. But, of course, for partisan politics reasons, even though my bill did basically what he did, he opposed it. He opposed the bill that would have made his actions legal.

And, of course, now it is sitting, napping, because we hope to awake it, it's napping in the Senate, in the United States Senate, with your companion bill, the Individual Mandate Delay.

Thirty-five Democrats.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

Well, and one in nine of the Democrats voted for your bill. I think it was 22 total. I think, just a year or two ago, that would have been unthinkable, that 35 would have joined voting for the Employer Mandate Delay and 22 or so for your bill. It would have been unthinkable.

It is because we have been relentless in pursuit of a better way, relentless in pursuit of real health care reform, relentless in identifying and letting folks in Washington know that the people back home, constituents, have made their voice very clear, where I live, in Arkansas, on the issue of the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare.

And what's interesting is, today, in the Ways and Means Committee, we had the head of the IRS testifying. And he was explaining why the President decided to delay, for 1 year, one of the two key components of the Affordable Care Act--one being the employer mandate, and the other part of the law being the individual mandate.

We know that the President delayed that one, the employer mandate, and he was explaining why he did that. And this is a paraphrase of what he said.

It's the head of the IRS describing why the President gave 1 year relief to businesses impacted by the employer mandate. He said, to paraphrase, not a direct quote, but to paraphrase, he said, in effect, we heard from a lot of American small businesses that this was a burden on them, and so we acted to give them relief. That's a paraphrase, but that's effectively what he said.

I agree with the general sentiment. It is a burden on American workers and small businesses, et cetera, and they do need relief, and I'm glad they're getting it.

But it raises the question, why wouldn't you give that same relief, as a matter of fairness, to individuals, families, workers impacted by the individual mandate, the other key component of ObamaCare, of the Affordable Care Act?

Why would you give relief to small businesses and businesses and what have you, but not give relief to individuals?

It fundamentally doesn't make sense. It's not fair.

And when he said that, I thought to myself, well, is it possible that he doesn't know, that the head of the IRS and the administration don't know that individuals and families and workers are also impacted in a negative way, that they are burdened, many of them, by this law?

Yes, they want health care reform. Yes, people need insurance. Yes, people want to be covered. But this is not the way to go.

Does he not know the impact that this law is having?

So I thought, why don't we put all the opinions aside, the op eds, the editorialists, and why don't we just talk about some of the news headlines?

Without my commentary, I thought you and I could just read some of the headlines. These are news stories, not op eds, not editorial writers. These are news stories from a variety of publications from around the country. And I thought it would be instructive to run through some of those tonight.

I tell you what, I'll read through one of these, and I'll put one up. You could read through, and then I'll take one. These are headlines from around the country. And we're going to run through them because they are news stories that, regardless of what you hear from this administration, this is what's happening around the country.

The AP: Florida Insurance Officials: Rates Will Rise Under ObamaCare.

Georgia Insurance Rates Spike Under ObamaCare.

Now, I would point out, we don't have to guess what's going to happen anymore. We don't have to predict what's going to happen.

Why? Because we're already there. Implementation is under way. It's already happening. So we'll just let the facts speak.

Chattanooga Business Owner Says ObamaCare Costing Workers Pay Raises and Benefits.

Consumers Could See 25-Percent Premium Increases Under ObamaCare.

UNA Asks Student Employees to Work Fewer Hours.

I would point out that these are from all over the country. Growing worries about ObamaCare forcing insurers out of State markets.

Iowa Public Radio: Full-time vs part-time workers. Restaurants weigh ObamaCare.

ObamaCare forces work-hour limits for CMU students.

Brevard cuts some workers' part-time hours to avoid ObamaCare rules.

ObamaCare delay is a relief for a family business.

As we see here:

Texas Business Owner Facing $1 Million in Annual ObamaCare Costs;

Maryland Employers Cutting Hours Due to ObamaCare;

Waitress Said She's Losing Full-Time Status Due to the ObamaCare Rule;

St. Pete College: HCC Cut Adjuncts' Hours Over Health Care;

Local Entrepreneur Sells Part of Business Due to ObamaCare.

I share your feeling there. I found common ground with a lot of labor union folks on the Keystone pipeline because they want the jobs.

Here, the labor unions are realizing this is a nightmare.

The members are speaking out.

Here you see:

Restaurant Shift: Sorry, Just Part-Time.

There's a theme here.

Workers' Hours Cut--`ObamaCare' Blamed.

Again, for those just tuning in, we're just reading news headlines, not op-eds. These are news headlines, stories from around the country, everything from the Weekly Standard to the Huffington Post, the AP.

ObamaCare Strikes: Part-Time Jobs Surge to All-Time High; Full-Time Jobs Plunge by 240,000;

16,500 Working Fewer Hours Due to ObamaCare Mandate.

This is one of the mandates we've been talking about here tonight.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying to my colleague, Mr. Dreier, we've served together here for many years on the Rules Committee. I think that his knowledge of both the Rules Committee and its functions and the rules of the House are unsurpassed, and I think he will be very greatly missed.

I want to wish him the very best in his new endeavors in the rest of his life. Nothing but happiness and joy. And thank you. I feel I've learned a great deal from you, David. Thank you for that.

Mr. Speaker, the legislation before me, as my colleague said, is no great victory. It's only a partial answer to a much larger problem, and it sets our Nation up for another fiscal showdown in mere months. As we vote, let every Member of this Chamber reflect on the dysfunctional legislative process and the irresponsible leadership that brought us here today, and the need for the majority to come back to the bargaining table in good faith as our work continues. And I share Mr. Dreier's hope that from now on we will put this all behind us and that this next term will be a bipartisan term.

Let history show that the fiscal cliff and the dire economic consequences that would come with it were the deliberate creation of this House. Because of hyperpartisan actions taken by the majority, the body has pushed our Nation closer to a self-created economic recession and the greatest displacement of workers that the Nation has known since 1929.

The idea behind the fiscal cliff was that the potential for a self- inflicted wound would force Congress to address the growing deficit and debt. Yet from the beginning, the plan was flawed. Over the last 10 years, our deficit has ballooned because of the cost of two wars and massive unpaid-for tax cuts. Yet discussion over the cost of war-- conflicts that have cost the lives of thousands of Americans and forever changed the face of American families--has been almost nonexistent. At the same time, the majority's desire to protect tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires quickly hardened into intransigence and has led us to where we are today. Just a week ago today, it looked as though Congress was close to a solution, until the House majority walked away.

Instead of seizing an historic opportunity for compromise, the majority introduced a so-called ``Plan B,'' which quickly morphed into Plan C before being scrapped altogether and leaving us with almost no time to avert the fiscal cliff. By making tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires their biggest priority, the majority not only endangered our economy but they led the House through a legislative process that violated any sense of regular order and transparency. Indeed, as my colleagues and I sat in the Rules Committee last week, the legislation we were considering was changing by the minute, leaving us to guess at what would actually be included in any bill that required our vote.

Sadly, such dysfunctional governing comes as little surprise. For the past 2 years, the majority has led with a toxic combination of extremism and hyperpartisanship that has resulted in the 112th Congress being the least productive in history. During the summer of 2011, the majority threw our Nation into crisis when they took our economy hostage and threatened to default on our Nation's debt. This dangerous and irresponsible approach rattled investors around the world and led to the first-ever downgrade of our Nation's credit. In addition, over the last 2 years, the majority has voted more than 33 times to repeal the historic Affordable Care Act, despite knowing full

well that the repeal votes would never be signed into law because the Senate would not do that bill. In so doing, they took up valuable time from other legislative priorities. And CBS News reports that these votes consistently trying to repeal health care, Mr. Speaker, cost the American taxpayer almost $50 million.

For over a year and a half, this type of irresponsible and unproductive governing failed to provide any solutions to the American people. And coming out of the November elections, our mandate was clear. The American people demanded an end to the political theater and the dangerous legislative games. They demanded that we finally get to work and solve the looming fiscal cliff in a balanced, responsible, and bipartisan way.

In the middle of last July, all of the ranking committee members in the House of Representatives sent a letter to the Speaker asking that we begin in July to find a solution to the fiscal cliff and sequestration. We called for a bipartisan approach and something we could get finished before the August recess so that we could spare the American people and most other people in the world and financial markets the worry that we have put them through. We got our answer tonight.

So, unfortunately, today, what we are doing here does not give the American people a solution worthy of their full approval--and I'm sure we don't have it. The legislation before us fails to seriously address the deficit and debt, protects too many wealthy Americans, and sets the Nation up for another round of high-stakes negotiations. However, what we do have before us is a product that can avert the worst of the fiscal cliff and begin the process of balancing the budget and returning fairness, we hope, to the Tax Code.

Under today's legislation, millions of Americans will be spared from a tax increase, and valuable tax extensions for middle-class families and students will remain in place. In addition, today's legislation extends unemployment insurance for millions of Americans struggling to find work.

In closing, this legislation is far from perfect, and the process that has led us here is an utter disgrace. Yet in this time of crisis we must act first and foremost to try to protect the American economy. And today's legislation will do that. In the coming weeks, we must continue the hard work of creating a fair Tax Code and ensuring we reduce our deficit in a balanced, responsible, and bipartisan way. And as we do, I urge my fellow Members to avoid brinksmanship and partisan games and to come to the table in good faith on behalf of all the people who sent us here and put their faith in us.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), a member of the Committee on Rules.

I believe I have three, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, when I spoke earlier, I referred to a letter that we had sent to the Speaker, and I would like to insert that in the Record.

July 25, 2012.

Dear Mr. Speaker and Chairs of the Committees: As the

senior Democratic Members of the Committees of the House, we

call upon the Republican Leadership and the Chairs of our

respective committees to begin immediate negotiations with

Democrats on replacing the scheduled 2013 sequester with a

balanced deficit reduction plan. We all agree that a

sequester starting in January, 2013 is not in the country's

best interest and is not the best way to assure responsible

deficit reduction. The American people want us to work

together to avoid unnecessary economic uncertainty at this

crucial time in our recovery. Failure to reach an agreement

would have devastating consequences for our economy, small

business and the middle class.

The looming possibility of a January, 2013 sequester is

already creating uncertainty in our economy. Working together

and in good faith, Democrats and Republicans can negotiate an

alternative to the defense and non-defense discretionary

sequester as well as the mandatory sequester for fiscal year

2013. We are confident that we can identify revenue sources

and prioritize investments in a bipartisan fashion to avoid

the sequester while achieving our deficit reduction goals.

We look forward to hearing from you and sitting down to

negotiate an alternative to the sequester. We strongly

recommend that this bipartisan process begin before the

August recess so that the American people can be reassured

before September 30 that the sequester will not take effect.

Best regards,

Collin C. Peterson, Ranking Member, House Committee on

Agriculture; Norman D. Dicks, Ranking Member, House

Committee on Appropriations; Adam Smith, Ranking

Member, House Armed Services Committee; Chris Van

Hollen, Ranking Member, House Committee on the Budget;

George Miller, Ranking Member, House Committee on

Education & the Workforce; Henry Waxman, Ranking

Member, House Energy & Commerce Committee; Linda

Sanchez, Ranking Member, House Committee on Ethics;

Barney Frank, Ranking Member, House Committee on

Financial Services; Howard Berman, Ranking Member,

House Committee on Foreign Affairs; Bennie G. Thompson,

Ranking Member, House Committee on Homeland Security;

Robert A. Brady, Ranking Member, House Committee on

Administration; John Conyers, Ranking Member, House

Committee on the Judiciary; Edward Markey, Ranking

Member, House Committee on Natural Resources; Elijah

Cummings, Ranking Member, House Committee on Oversight

and Government Reform; Louise Slaughter, Ranking

Member, House Committee on Rules; Eddie Bernice

Johnson, Ranking Member, House Committee on Science,

Space, & Technology; Nydia M. Velazquez, Ranking

Member, House Committee on Small Business; Nick Rahall,

Ranking Member, House Committee on Transportation &

Infrastructure; Bob Filner, Ranking Member, House

Committee on Veterans' Affairs; Sander Levin, Ranking

Member, House Committee on Ways and Means; C.A. Dutch

Ruppersberger, Ranking Member, Permanent Select

Committee on Intelligence.

I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).

Mr. Speaker, if I could inform my colleague, I have no further requests for time and I'm prepared to close if he has no further speakers.

Mr. Speaker, failure to avert the fiscal cliff could lead the Nation back into an economic recession and create the largest displacement of workers in the Nation's history. The dangers are avoidable, and it is our solemn obligation to avert the fiscal cliff and protect the American people.

As I said earlier, today's legislation is far from perfect; but in this time of crisis, legislators must act. In the months to come, we will face more fiscal challenges and be asked to act again. When that time comes, I hope that we will avoid the brinksmanship that we have seen to date and come to the table in good faith. If we do, I'm confident that we can finish our work and provide solutions for a better future for America.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6726) to prevent the 2013 pay adjustment for Members of Congress and persons holding other offices or positions in the Federal Government from being made.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on the bill under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, for the last 2 years, Oversight has worked diligently. Our professionals have worked, to a certain extent, against their own best interest. They've found excesses in pay and compensation within the Federal system and moved with careful detail to try to reduce those amounts, make them more commensurate with the private sector. Currently, Federal workers receive typically over $100,000 and are about 16 percent higher compensated than their private sector counterparts.

Today we will consider something on the fiscal cliff, but before we do it, I felt it was important to deal first with this bill. And so I'm happy, in a few

moments, to recognize Mr. Fitzpatrick, the author of this bill, which is very narrow, but simply says that the President cannot and should not add about $11 billion to the deficit by the stroke of a pen, by an executive order at a time in which he's negotiating to try to raise taxes to earn maybe another $60 billion or $70 billion, at most, for the Federal Treasury.

So this will stop the Federal workers from receiving a pay increase. It will not stop their step increases. It will not stop their merit increases. It will not stop a great many other increases in their pay and compensation. But it will say that, at this time, when the American people are not getting automatic cost-of-living increases, neither should the Federal workforce.

And oh, by the way, Mr. Speaker, neither should you, neither should the ranking member, neither should I. And this bill stops us from giving ourselves a pay increase that the President has asked for.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fitzpatrick).

Mr. Speaker, I would trust that the gentleman was unaware that Mr. Fitzpatrick also does have a bill that only freezes our pay, and it does not bear the gentleman's name as a cosponsor. Perhaps he can correct that today.

I yield 4 minutes to the gentlelady from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann).

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

The ranking member made a good point, and in this body you should always go along with that which is true and oppose that which is false. The gentleman made an excellent point: we do have hundreds of thousands of hardworking Federal employees. They deliver to the American people a good product. The vast majority of them, if you ask them, do not feel they're overcompensated. They've worked hard; they're highly educated; in fact, they're not overpaid in many ways. They do, in fact, have a very generous defined benefit plan, something the American people usually don't have, something that would guarantee them a pension over and above their 401(k). And automatically it increases with inflation; automatically it is funded. That's true whether you're a postal worker, a Member of this body, or the executive branch.

We're not arguing whether or not the Federal worker is dedicated at all. We're arguing whether this is the right time to add $11 billion to a $10 trillion deficit that we're not dealing with. We have a $10 trillion deficit after today's action on ``ending the cliff'' that is still going to be projected. It hasn't been scored exactly, but it will still be over $1 trillion this year--and if history repeats itself, for every remaining year of the Obama administration.

Now, the gentleman from Maryland did say one thing that perhaps was not accurate--and he didn't mean to. He said, well, if you ask people around here. Well, perhaps he forgot that here in the House of Representatives, this entire body--except for congressional salaries, which are stipulated under the Constitution--we have, in fact, had to deal with a 5 percent reduction year over year in actual money available to run the House, and in the next year, 6.4 percent; meaning, we have dropped more than 11 percent in the dollars spent--not in some hypothetical base plus, but in the dollars spent we have dropped more than 11 percent under Speaker Boehner.

That kind of a cut has not been duplicated by the executive branch. Had it been duplicated by the postal workers, we wouldn't have a $12 billion loss there. Had it been duplicated by the executive branch, to be honest, Mr. Speaker, we would be talking today about how can we cut anymore and both sides would be agreeing. We haven't made an 11 percent drop in actual spending in 2 years. Had we done that, we wouldn't be looking at a hundred percent growth in the last 12 years in the cost of government.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I know my friend from Virginia means well, but, once again, he talks about a lack of accomplishment. Apparently, he hasn't looked at the work that the clerks have done here on the floor. He hasn't looked at the work that CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, has done, or the Government Accountability Office. Those are all funded, and yet we had an 11 percent reduction in spending.

So, in fact, when we're talking about the hardworking men and women of the government, this branch has found a way to reduce spending by over 11

percent in spite of the hardworking men, not just here on the floor and in our offices, but the Governmental Accountability Office, the CBO and others.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I might note for the gentleman, it was posted last night, which means it was actually posted before the cliff bill. The technical dropping is a different rule. But it was posted, so it was available to all Members last night. And, of course, as you know, it's very simple. We simply freeze, and that's not hard for people to understand. I hope the gentleman understands a half percent freeze is all this bill does.

I would be delighted to yield the gentleman 15 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I note, once again, that this is a half a percent that will not be increased by this action--half a percent--so on $100,000 it's $500 of a pay raise that will not occur for Federal workers, and, in fact, the sky is not falling if we choose not to have that happen this year.

With that, I'd like to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Flores).

Not at this time, so I would simply reserve the right to close.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, this bill is going to pass, and it's going to pass likely on a bipartisan basis because it would be the ultimate in inappropriate behavior by this body to allow our pay to be raised. This is something I think that both sides have said fairly straightforward that this is not a time in which Members of Congress should take their $174,000 salary and increase it. I don't believe we've earned it this year. By the way, I believe the President's salary will not go up and the Vice President's salary will not go up, and that is also appropriate.

But as we look at the hardworking men and women of the Federal workforce and look at my colleagues from Virginia who spoke and my colleague from Maryland who spoke, the point that the Federal workforce should be listening to today is that, in fact, it's not how hard they work; it's what can the American people afford. We cannot afford to continue these deficits. It's not how hard they work. It is the inefficiency and waste not just in their office, but in the way government is organized.

Mr. Speaker, everyone had a New Year's resolution, I trust, last night. For all of us, I'm sure it was to lose a little weight, do a few other things that we haven't been doing; but for me particularly, it's to go after the duplication in government, to go after the organizational flaws in government that would allow us to be less critical, perhaps, of what we can afford from our Federal workforce and more proud of the fact that it is organized for efficiency.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, the President called for reorganization authority and then did nothing in his first term. It is my goal to give him reorganization and a reorganizational plan. It is my committee's obligation to do that.

As I vote today to freeze our pay and to freeze all of the Federal workers' pay, I do so recognizing that the best way for Federal workers to get a pay raise without it being on the backs of the American people is for us to reorganize government, whether it's in information technology or any other goods and services that Federal Government delivers. We can do better. We can take waste out of Medicare, and we can take waste out of all aspects of the Federal Government.

Mr. Speaker, I know this bill will pass on a bipartisan basis because it's appropriate to do here today. I urge its support, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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