Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, because the amendment to equalize benefits for wounded Guardsmen and Reservists with the regular Army was rejected by the Rules Committee yesterday, I offer a privileged motion.

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

Mr. Speaker, last month more than 1,200 students from across the country visited Washington to participate in the national finals of We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution.

This program is the most extensive educational program in the country, developed to educate young people about the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

It is with great pride that I recognize a class from my own Highlands High School of Fort Thomas, Kentucky, in the Fourth District for their accomplishment in this competition.

These outstanding students, using knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, won their statewide competition and earned the chance to come to our Nation's capital and compete at the national level. At the national level, these dedicated students won the Unit One: Foundations of Democracy Award.

I would like to take a moment to recognize the names of these outstanding young people from Highlands High School: Alex Adams, Evan Bush, Kara Dyer, Jessica Earlywine, Jessica Federle, Maria Gurren, John Holloway, Alan Hutchinson, Marjorie Kimball, Connie Kremer, Sam Laskey, Heather Moyer, Emily Nordling, Anna Remley, Lauren Runk, Andrea Spencer, and Corwyn Wyatt.

I also wish to commend the teacher of the class, Julie Kuhnhein, who is responsible for preparing these young constitutional experts for the national finals. Also worthy of special recognition are Rachel Bingham and Robin Winkfield, the State coordinators, and Glenn Manns, the district coordinator, who are among those responsible for implementing the We the People program in my State.

I congratulate these students on their exceptional achievement at the We the People national finals. One thing we can all remember is that

there is no substitute for participating in the governmental process, no substitute for the investment of our lives and our time. I commend all of you for your hard work and for the long hours of preparation, and commend you for a victory well earned, well deserved and bringing honor and credit to the Fourth District of Kentucky.

Six

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I just want to say I appreciate the leadership you have shown since the beginning of this Congress on being the lead sponsor of the Countdown Crew.

Both Bill Shuster from Pennsylvania and I were small business owners. We have lived out in the real world. We are not attorneys. We come from an environment of working and manufacturing and distribution and logistics with real people. We know the burdens on making sure our employees are covered with health insurance. We know the impact of tax increases and tax cuts.

For those of you joining us right now, we would love to hear your stories, the impact on being able to keep more of your own money, what it has meant to you and the ability to invest in your children's future, to build a future for yourself, to build a nest egg, to start a small business, to expand the small business that you have.

Bill and I have heard literally hundreds of stories since the first of the year. We would like to hear yours. You can communicate with us directly at [email protected]. That is [email protected].

At the end of the day, I believe that the key principle that we have shared over and over and over again is that our focus and the focus of the government is that the government cannot create value or wealth for people. What the government can do, done rightly, is create a playing field and a framework to unleash the creativity in the American people, to give them the opportunity to pursue their dreams, to pursue a future, to build a future for themselves, and ultimately we start that process by making sure that people can keep more of what they earn.

When you have control over your money, you are going to invest it in such a way that it makes a difference for you, your family, ultimately for your community and the country. That is why we say we want to create taxpayers, not raise taxes.

It has been a few weeks since we were able to get together here on the floor

as we have been counting the days since our first session the second week of January when we began sharing what was ahead. We predicted at that time that there would be tax increases coming.

Much of the change in the election was not driven by fiscal policy. It was driven by anger or resentment or emotion related to the national security situation. But as people are waking up, I am traveling in different parts of my district, many folks upset about that said, ``I didn't realize I was voting for a tax increase.'' In fact, what was voted on in the House last month with was the largest tax increase in American history.

My friends, that is not a solution to the country's challenges. By raising taxes, we limit opportunity. By raising taxes, money comes out of our communities, it comes out of working families' pockets, it comes to bureaucrats in Washington.

When some of my colleagues on the other side made comments about wanting to reduce the deficit and spending, they didn't want to reduce spending. What in fact they wanted to do was reduce defense spending, but not reduce spending on other programs. Indeed, that spending has increased under this budget. What we are looking at over 5 years is an estimated $900 billion tax increase. That is going to be devastating to the economy.

In Kentucky alone, I come from a district that is very diverse with agriculture, manufacturing, distribution, logistics. We have river industries. We have the largest inland port in North America with the Port of Ashland-Huntington, where much of our Nation's energy supply transits. Our average working family in Kentucky is going to see a tax increase of $2,563, right off the bottom line. When I think what we could do with that, I have got my second child going into college now, I think of what we could do with $2,500 is immense.

We look at the counterpoint, I look to the gentleman's point earlier regarding what happened when taxes were cut by President Kennedy, what happened when taxes were cut by President Reagan, what happened when taxes were cut by President Bush and the Republican Congress at that time, at a very difficult period in this Nation's history as we entered into war, just prior to the 9/11 attacks. There was a recession in 2001 that was inherited from the prior administration.

What we have seen is record revenues to the Federal Government by reducing taxes. By raising the ceiling, in fact pushing the burden upward on taxes and reducing the burden on working class families, taking millions of people off the tax rolls, by creating a 10 percent tax bracket, has resulted in the creation of 7.5 million jobs, record revenues to the Federal Government, and that done in a time of war. What that tells me is that these principles work; that Republican, conservative fiscal principles work by allowing people to keep more of their own money.

My question in fact to folks is if you had to write that $2,500 check, what do you want to get in return for that? At the end of the day, we want to get something that is going to make a difference for our family, our community and our country, and not fuel empty rhetoric, particularly spending on programs that aren't necessarily going to add any value.

180,000 jobs were created in March alone. As we travel throughout our districts, I hear stories in a wide variety of industries, many of them I have shared here on various evenings as we have come back to Washington, D.C., the successes that people have had by being allowed to keep more of their own money and build a future in their hometown, in the heartland, and not send it to bureaucrats far away.

I would like to invite my colleagues from Texas, Congressman Conaway and Mr. Shuster, to continue the dialogue with some of these examples. But if you just joined us again, we are the [email protected]. We would like to hear your stories. We would like to hear your testimonials, how it has made a difference for you in creating jobs and small businesses in our local communities where 88 percent of all new jobs created in this country come from.

It is not going to come from giant corporations. It is certainly not going to be created from liberal policies of the folks on the other side of the aisle. It comes by you producing your future, chasing your vision and investing your dollars to build that.

With that, I yield back to the gentleman.

You might want to share about the idea of PAYGO which means something to us as Americans and means something very different in this Congress. It is not how you balance your checkbook at home.

I go back to Yogi Berra's old saying about deja vu all over again. You talk about what the right tax rate is and how do we explain it to the American people. I think it would be helpful if the Democrats would simply tell the truth.

The reason I lay this out, as a former small business owner, I remember in 1992 being told stories by then-candidate Bill Clinton how he was not going to raise taxes. President Bush at the time made the statement that Clinton ran saying he wouldn't raise taxes, and then turned around and made a deal that raised taxes, damaged his credibility and hurt the economy at the time.

I was getting ready to step out into the entrepreneurial world and leave the software industry to start my own business. I had manufacturing clients that wanted me and eventually some of the folks that I hired to work with me and assist them in improving their competitiveness nationally. We started that business in late spring of 1992, getting it up off the ground. We managed to feed our families that first 6 months and do all right in that time, but our real opportunity was going to come in 1993.

All of a sudden after Mr. Clinton became President, he came before the American people and he didn't say I am going to keep my promise and cut those taxes because we know that allowing people to keep more of their own money creates a future for them. He offered me a new alternative as a new small business owner with employees, with health plans to pay for, with taxes to pay for, with regulatory fees to pay for, dealing with workmen's compensation and disability and costs that I had never known in the large corporate world, and he invited me to invest in the United States Government.

I looked at this as a small business owner and a former military officer. I thought my investment in the United States Government should be first in providing for the national defense, how was I going to promote the general welfare as the Constitution would ask us to do, I would hope in infrastructure, in projects that were going to be seed money to create more jobs and to stimulate the economy in our area. But what did we get, the largest tax increase in American history at that time, actually a fraction of the one that was passed in this recent liberal Democratic budget.

We reduced the size of our military and we weakened national defense by taking several divisions out of the standing Army, reducing the size of the Marine Corps, reducing the size of the Navy, reducing the airlift capability in the Air Force.

We increased spending in social programs. We increased the mandatory spending rate in social programs to nearly twice the rate of inflation while shorting our men and women in uniform in the mid-1990s as an administration priority.

Then radical Islamic extremism intruded itself upon the United States on 9/11. We had been dealing with it before then, but like the old saying of the Purlator man commercial, ``you pay me now or you pay me later.''

Now we are in a big catch-up situation from a national security standpoint of things that could have been handled 10 years ago.

I think back as a small business owner, what were the costs that were taken away when I invested in the government? Well, the additional tax money, we saw no benefit of that. I saw my clients hurt. I saw manufacturing companies hurt, and I saw other machine tool companies hurt by increased environmental compliance and the increased cost of regulation. And the attempts to manage health care from a national perspective actually drove costs up. In Kentucky, by doing a plan that was called Hillary-lite, something that was a lesser plan of the Democrat health care proposals of that same year of 1993, we drove 45 of 47 insurance carriers out of the State, quadrupled the cost of health care for small business owners in a relatively short period of time. To me that was the opposite of the original intent.

If I invest in something, I would like to see a return. If we spend money in our community, we would like to see a benefit accrue for our community and it certainly didn't happen there.

Just on the taxes that we paid, and we don't know where they went to support all of these programs with this increased investment, we could have hired probably three more consultants or nearly a third larger workforce which would have created more taxpayers and which would have been helping more businesses to compete and would have been putting more dollars into the Federal treasury.

But on the other hand, now we found ourselves at the end of the Clinton administration needing to come out of a recession. We have reduced taxes and we have moved to simplify regulation. But because of the actions last November, I believe that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle sincerely but incorrectly have interpreted that election as another opportunity to affirm their desire to have small business owners invest.

And the truth of the matter is that if 88 percent of our jobs are created by small businesses owners, the last thing we want to do is tax those who are going to be starting those companies and starting those family enterprises.

Again, in 1,335 days from now the average family in my State will have a $2,563 tax increase. You mentioned the 50 percent increase that is coming for those in the 10 percent tax bracket. That benefited 1.2 million people in my State, but let's look at senior citizens.

My mom lives on a fixed income right now. She draws Social Security and her retirement. Fortunately, she has a supplemental Medicare insurance plan to help offset some of the additional cost.

But if you take an elderly couple with a $40,000 income, their tax bill is going to rise 156 percent in 2011 from $583 to $1,489. So we have helped them reduce the average cost of their prescription medication by $1,200, but we will increase their taxes by $1,400 by what the Democratic Congress intends to do by simply not doing anything.

They are going to allow these cuts which have had so much positive impact on the communities and the country expire.

One point of order here to point out. The ATM right now is going to be the American people for the Democrat tax program. They are going to have the largest tax increase in history.

Our tax dollars pay for somebody to actually write this, too.

I think the one thing that gets lost in all this, too, I remember when I was young and I did a little work on the side when I was first in the aerospace industry and I thought it was so great to make a little bit of extra money basically to pay for Christmas, and when I went in to do my taxes the following spring, I found out that at the very low-income level I was at, because it was independent contractor work, that heralded the alternative minimum tax and almost made it not worthwhile to have expended the many hours that I did on the project.

I think what gets lost, what Mike was reading here, I still am marvelling that our tax dollars paid to create such a behemoth, that we were investing in something like that, which gave me a headache just listening to it. Although I could see the goose bumps there.

But other than being a job creation program for accountants, most of whom do not like the complexity of many of these rules because of what it does to their clients, I think we need to look at a more human side of the impact that regressive taxes have. By reducing taxes, by allowing people to keep more of their own money, it created jobs, over 7 million jobs. It has kept our money local.

I think that one of the things I would like to point to for folks here who are watching the Countdown Crew, and you can contact us at [email protected], we want to create taxpayers, not raise taxes. By creating taxpayers, there will be more revenues that go for all of our communities.

But at the local level, oftentimes the question comes up and I hear it from children a lot in the schools who go around talking with my own kids, Daddy, where do the police come from, where do the school teachers come from, where does the library come from. Ultimately, that comes from our local communities, from taxes. It is property taxes in the vast majority of our taxes that pay for our schools.

My oldest daughter is about to graduate from college soon, and she is going to become a schoolteacher and getting ready to move out into the economy and very excited on the one hand, but also concerned about the tax structure that is going to be facing her and the incentives to advance her education, the burdens that are going to be placed upon her just from what she has seen in the workforce. The quality of our schools is largely funded by local jobs in our communities that pay those property taxes, people who can buy homes, and if you do not have a job, it becomes very difficult to make that investment in a home.

If we do not have small business owners creating jobs, we are not going to have those local taxes to be able to make the investments that are necessary in public safety, in public works, that keeps the water running in our house, that keeps the electricity moving, that keeps our roads paved and being able to expand and ultimately to be able to invest in quality of life in our communities.

This is one of the reasons we have this 1,335-day countdown to the largest tax increase in history, that the American people need to know that when they can keep more of their own money, there are results. I don't want to see the average Kentucky family have an unnecessary tax increase of $2,563. We will find the benefit, not in complex tax documents like that, but simply by allowing people to keep their money to invest in the future to follow their vision and ultimately to build that nest egg for their children.

I think it was 6.4 billion hours were taken this year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a distinguished businessman, philanthropist, decorated military officer, fellow West Point graduate and a pillar of our community in northern Kentucky and Cincinnati.

Next month Mr. George Schaefer will retire from his position at Fifth Third Bank. Beginning as a management trainee in 1971 after completing his service in the Army, George rose through the ranks at Fifth Third and helped the company to grow into one of the largest financial institutions and bank holding companies in the United States.

As George's career grew, so too did his commitment to making the entire Cincinnati metropolitan region a better place to live, work and go to school. He has raised millions of dollars for the United Way and the Cincinnati Fine Arts Fund. For 12 years, he sat on the board of trustees of the University of Cincinnati where he helped the University grow into one of the Nation's premier educational institutions.

George, while your talents and leadership will surely be missed at Fifth Third, I know that your inspired work in the community will continue. I wish to thank you and your wife Betty Ann for all of your service and wish you the best as you embark on this new chapter in your life.

Thank you for your service to our Nation in uniform, for answering the Nation's call. Thank you for your contributions to our community. Thank you for pouring yourself into so many aspects to improve the quality of lives for our communities in northern Kentucky and the greater Cincinnati area and every city where Fifth Third is involved.

We are grateful for that commitment, for the example of service and your upholding the values that we both share of duty, honor and country.

Mr. Speaker, it's the most solemn duty that I have to honor those who have served our Nation, those who have answered the call of this generation, as us in prior generations have, to answer to that call to be ready to serve and to deploy.

I rise today to honor a great American, Navy Chief Petty Officer Greg Billiter. Greg was a native of Villa Hills, Kentucky, a graduate of Covington Latin, and a true fan of his hometown teams, the Cincinnati Bengals and the Cincinnati Reds.

Greg was tragically killed in action in Northern Iraq during combat operations. He leaves behind his young son, Cooper, a caring wife, loving family and a legacy that will be honored for generations to come.

For Cooper, as you grow into a man, know that your dad loved you. He was a great American. He cared about you and he answered the call of this Nation.

I had the opportunity to visit with his family, and they all conveyed similar sentiments of a brave, dedicated and heroic sailor.

When I asked his wife, April, about Greg she told me that he truly loved what he was doing. April said, ``He was extremely patriotic, and felt that it was important for him to be part of the war and to help the other soldiers who were serving there.'' His bravery and ultimate sacrifice remind us that they were all part of a larger mission.

His parents told a local newspaper that he really felt he was helping to make Iraq a safer place, especially for the children. As an explosive ordnance demolition specialist, he made a tremendous difference in the lives of many, many civilians, military personnel, and especially those children. We wonder today how many will grow up in the future and have a future because of Greg's call and his willingness to answer that call and to go and serve. Indeed, his mother said that he loved what he was doing. He felt what he was doing was right, and he knew that he made a difference.

I stand here today to honor his heroic work in Iraq and in the United States Navy, and to thank him and his family for making that ultimate sacrifice. We've lost a great American in Greg, but his work will live on. Thank you, Greg. Thank you April, Cooper, Pat, and Barry, for sharing your husband, father, and son with our Nation. We are forever indebted to him.

As Jesus spoke in John 15:13, no greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his lives for his friends. Indeed, Greg literally did that every day in his work to protect other service members, to protect civilians, to make a difference.

Greg's reputation as a chief was quite clear. Many of his fellow shipmates came into the funeral and showed a strength of solidarity that was impressive and moving to this old soldier.

I have spent many years in uniform and been with thousands and thousands

of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, and one thing spoke out clearly to me was that Greg epitomized the warrior ethos of the civilian who went into the military, who answered the call of the Nation, who grew in character, and was an exemplar in all that he did, representing the will of the founders of this Nation.

Indeed, it was clear to me, from his sailors, from his family, that he was a leader, that he was a mentor, that he was a friend, that he was a proud son, that he was a loving husband and father. He was the epitome of all that we call dear and great and honorable in this land.

Madam Speaker, some of the Democratic leadership have declared it the job of Congress to micromanage the war in Iraq. Yet we learn today that the Speaker of the House has refused to be seen face-to-face with the very military commanders whose hands will be tied by the Democrat war funding bill.

This latest insult to our troops should come as no surprise as others in the Democratic leadership have declared the war lost despite our military commanders' statements to the contrary, and before General Petraeus has gotten the reinforcements he has requested. His reinforcement hasn't even been fully implemented before Congressional leaders have called it a failure.

I urge my colleagues to insist on a funding bill that does not give our enemies a date for our surrender. I believe our soldiers when they say the war is not lost, and we must give our military the resources it needs to win. Language of surrender is inappropriate with troops in the field and reinforces the perceptions of our enemies.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

One of the most solemn duties that we can have in the House of Representatives is to recognize the sacrifice, devotion and service of those who protect this Nation.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the memory of Army Specialist Joey Cantrell, a soldier from Westwood, Kentucky, who recently lost his life fighting in Taji, Iraq, serving with the Army's Second Battalion, Eighth Cavalry Regiment.

Specialist Cantrell graduated from Fairview High School in 2002 and was a celebrated athlete both on the football field and around the track. His football coach and mentor, Fairview school superintendent Bill Musick, told a local paper, ``You always noticed Joey Cantrell because of how he presented himself. He was a sharp kid.'' Joey overcame adversity, achieved academic excellence, was a leader and a tough competitor in athletics, and won the friendship of many. When it came to serving, his coach shared with me that Joey felt it was a call to go into the military.

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit with his mother Sondra Adkins. His family and friends remembered his warm smile, thoughtful nature and his ability to excel at everything he did. Joey Cantrell will be deeply missed by all who knew him. His mother shared that Joey believed in what he was doing and gave his life doing what he wanted to do.

Today, as we honor Joey's memory, our Nation grieves with his mother and his family. We are deeply indebted to Joey and thankful for his service. Soldiers like Joey Cantrell make me proud to be an American.

Would the gentleman yield for one second?

I just want to share, those who are joining us tonight have joined the Countdown Crew. We meet the first night of votes each legislative week. We can be reached by e-mail at CountdownCrew@mail. house.gov.

And the one thing that I would like to share from my perspective, we hear a lot of statements about a desire to support the troops. And I have said for the last 2\1/2\ years that, if we say we support the troops, it is important that we listen to what they have to say. As a former member of the 82nd Airborne Division and other military units with comrades serving in all the major line Army units, commanding brigades, serving on the senior staffs, receiving e-mail reports on a weekly basis, even from a platoon leader who is in Sadr City right now, we get a somewhat different perspective on the politics and debates that are going on back here in the House Chamber. And I would say this from a perspective of looking at the fiscal implications of decisions.

When we talk about the supplemental spending, the vast majority of money, and the original clean bill before politics got involved was designed for one thing, it was designed for troop support, it was designed for equipment reset, it was designed to provide support for provincial reconstruction teams for the transition of Iraqi security forces to be effective in their mission on the ground.

Unfortunately, due to the Hatch Act, the troops themselves don't have a voice where they can come into this Chamber and debate, and so as we have seen on numerous occasions, opinion is often substituted for fact. And it is an honest opinion; it is an honest viewpoint. I think we have honest disagreements. I think one thing that both sides can agree on is that there were strategic mistakes that were made early in the campaign due to institutional infrastructure and process issues that are endemic in the United States Government and need to be reformed.

But the truth of the matter, at the moment, is we have people in harm's way that are deployed forward who actually watch C-SPAN, who watch these debates. Many of them are friends of mine that I have known for well over 30 years and we have served together, a number of us served together in the Middle East. And the perspective that I would bring is this when we talk about emergency supplemental spending, and it comes back to an aspect of fiscal responsibility, to the gentleman from Pennsylvania's point earlier: a supplemental spending bill is designed specifically to augment needs that were not covered in regularly budgeted, authorized, or appropriated lines.

And to put this into context, there are many divisions in the Congress, particularly in the Democratic Caucus, regarding the war. We are all well aware of them. I have many friends on both sides of the aisle. There are honest disagreements and disputes. But the one thing, to quote my friend, Hal Rogers from Kentucky, where he said, ``Attention K-Mart shoppers,'' at the end of the appropriations hearing last week. ``A variety of spending provisions have been placed in a military supplemental bill that have nothing to do with national security in order to encourage those to vote for it.''

And I want to put this into context, that over $20 billion in nonmilitary, nonnational security spending has been included. They include $283 million in milk subsidies that are already funded in other programs. It includes $74 million for peanut storage.

Now, when I went to flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama, at the U.S. Army Aviation Center, there were two great economic engines in the area. One was the United States Army Aviation Center that trained the pilots for the U.S. Army, the rotary wing force that provides our air assault and attack helicopter capability worldwide today, and also the peanut industry. The last time I checked, the peanut industry was not directly related to American national security.

Twenty-five million dollars are in payments to spinach producers on a national security supplemental bill. And this also rescinds $89 million in homeland security funding that allegedly would have lapsed in fiscal year 2006.

The reason that I bring these up, and the billions of dollars in spending, is

not to highlight honest disagreements about policy issues which have a rightful place in this Chamber.

And my friends on the other side are certainly entitled to their views, the basis of their perception. I certainly have my views on the subject which are different from many in the administration and on my side of the aisle as well. But the one thing that I will share is let's translate these dollars into reality from a fiscal perspective.

When Secretary Gates came over to testify before the Armed Services Committee in his first hearing in January of 2007, the first major request, and I was very heartened by this, was a request to increase the end strength of the United States Army by 96,000 soldiers. Now, why that number is important, I have advocated for nearly 5 years for a 100,000 soldier increase to the end strength to deal with and augment the operations tempo that our troops have experienced since the draw- downs in the mid-1990s. The rate and the pace of that transition is very significant upon our soldiers. And as a matter of fiscal responsibility for the investment that we have made in them and the commitment that we have made to them, I think it is important that we see that increase. And I was very heartened to see an acceptance of that need in the civilian appointed leadership of the Defense Department.

But here is the fiscal issue. When we talk about $20 billion in nonmilitary spending that were put on that supplemental bill, here is what $1 billion means. Regardless of your views on national security, $1 billion roughly translates into 10,000 fully equipped light infantry soldiers and fully trained and accessed into the military.

The reason that that number is important to keep in mind, at the end of the day, as we talk about force structure and staffing, I would ask my friends, would it have not been a more prudent use of our national security dollars and emergency supplemental, rather than going for programs or peanuts and spinach and the milk program, which I think would be more appropriately addressed jurisdictionally in the farm bill, to use that money, if there was a need, to assess it for troop training, to augment the needs for the conflicts that we are going to be facing in the 21st century, which are going to be significant. And I think that those conflicts would have come regardless of our policies there.

But nonetheless, this approach, I believe, is a poor use of fiscal stewardship and begs the real question at the end of the day of what we actually have voted for from a policy change, a world view change when we changed Speakers in January. As I have shared with many when we get asked about how is this going to be paid for, every working family in America making between $30- and $50,000 will have a $2,098 tax increase if those tax cuts are not extended and made permanent by 2010.

And with that I will yield back to the gentleman, but I just wanted to clarify that point from a national security perspective. Understand that it would be helpful for, I think, the American people to understand there are many nongermane issues and spending lines that have been added on this bill that have nothing to do with our current national security situation.

I think, to the gentleman's point, I received some correspondence from a colonel who came back from Iraq recently, and he shared this perspective. He shared that he had worked for General Abizaid, and he just made the comment, General Abizaid, the Central Command Commander, made the comment that dealing with Islamic radicalism is something that you want to do as an away game. And unlike different times in our history that, again, regardless of perceptions of the decisions that were made before you and I came here to be engaged in this conflict, there are second- and third-order effects that will be inherited by a precipitous withdrawal.

And when I go back, I listen to so many different voices with so many different perspectives, but the one unity of purpose that they say is that there would be profound consequences. In fact, one of the ones most recently was a friend who was in Task Force Ranger in Mogadishu, which I believe President Clinton reinforced an operation in 1993 to capture a tribal leader, a warlord, Mohammed Farah Aideed. This friend and Task Force Ranger shared that at the end of the Blackhawk Down incident, where America, frankly, lost the information war despite completely removing this militia, he shared with me over coffee recently and said, you know, little did we know that there were al Qaeda technical advisers who had served in Afghanistan fighting the mujahedin and were sent by Osama bin Laden to assist these groups because they were dealing with Americans and the consequences of leaving, when, in fact, he said if we had simply been able to stay, it would have sent a very different message. We could have accomplished the mission of apprehending the foe.

And to your point, again, the troops, I think, oftentimes inadvertently are used as human shields in debate, but we don't get down to the issues of what they really see on the ground and the perspective that they bring to this discussion.

I think your point on that too, if I might interject, the Members of the other party, for whom I have great personal respect though I disagree in execution of the policy, are those that have been very staunch and very consistent in their opposition to the use of our troops in offensive operations overseas.

And the reason that I bring that up is that some of the statements that have been made, and I am not referring to provocative statements, simply positions that were taken, had been controversial in their own caucus as well as in the Congress in general. But the reason that I bring it up is that those convictions, I think, echo at one point where we have mutual agreement, and on a variety of issues. And the point I called for during the debate a few weeks ago on the resolution regarding whether one accepted the ability of the Commander in Chief to authorize the combatant commander to reinforce troops on the ground was this: that if we are going to have a real vote that affects real people in the field, then we need to use the power of the purse of the United States Congress to vote to cut or sequester funding related to that.

And I think that is a noble cause regardless of which side one is on in that from the standpoint of the Republic. I know where I am. I am with my former

comrades who are in a country right now to make sure they have the resources they need. But one of my friends, one of our colleagues, made a comment last Thursday night that there was a bit of a fishing expedition going on for votes, and the irony wasn't lost on me when I actually saw the list of appropriations he was talking about: $120 million for the shrimp and Manhattan fishing industries, that would equip over 1,000 of our light infantry soldiers with what they need to do their job; $5 million for those engaged in the breeding, rearing, or transporting of live fish, think what $5 million can do from an operational standpoint.

We start going through this in detail, and we see $16 million for additional office space for the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the legacy of a brave young man who lost his life serving in Iraq. Sergeant Phillip McNeill, who grew up in Owingsville, Kentucky, was killed in Iraq on January 20, 2007. Sergeant McNeill was serving with the 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, based in Fort Richardson, Alaska, when his Humvee was struck by an IED, bringing his bright young life to a tragic end.

Sergeant McNeill came from a family steeped in American military tradition. His military service was inspired by the brave men in his family who had served before him. His family described his dedication to his mission, saying that he ``believed in the cause and that he was a soldier who wanted to be over there.'' This was Sergeant McNeill's second tour in Iraq.

As we celebrate the spirit of this great soldier, my thoughts and prayers are with Sergeant Phillip McNeill's family and friends. We are humbled by Sergeant McNeill's dedication, and we are forever indebted to him for making the ultimate sacrifice for our Nation and for our freedom.

Thank you, Bill. I appreciate the leadership you have taken on this issue. The one thing that our group is consistent in is all of us have come from the small business world. All of us have come from that arena that creates the jobs in America, pursuing a vision, pursuing opportunity.

For those who have just joined us, you have joined the Countdown Crew. You can join us at [email protected]. We have gotten thousands of e-mails from around the United States based on the first few evenings that we have been talking about the impact of positive, progressive, pro-growth economic policies that allow working families to keep more of what they own and create incentives for small businesses.

As we go into the time right now, the reason we are called the Countdown Crew is because of the fact that unless legislation is passed to extend the tax cuts that have been so bountiful and so beneficial to the American people, to the United States economy, in creating millions of jobs, those tax cuts will expire at the end of 2010 and every working family in the United States is going to receive a tax increase.

And 1,398 days from now, there will be a tax increase on every working family. A family of four making between $30,000 and $50,000 a year will have a $2,092 tax increase imposed upon them. That doesn't come with additional legislation being passed. In fact, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the gentleman from New York, has said that he is not going to introduce any tax legislation to extend those tax cuts and they will expire. So for everybody watching tonight, your tax bill is going to go up by a minimum of $2,000.

When you think about what that means, let's look at the other side, the positive side of the Republican policy, the conservative policy of allowing people to keep more of what they earn.

First, by keeping more of what you earn, it is invested in causes that are important for you, whether it is put into your home, whether it is put into your family, whether it is saved for education, whether it is invested in a new car, in clothing. We can think about any wide variety of issues, but those are the dollars that fuel the economy.

I believe very firmly we see it in the numbers, that when people are allowed to keep their own money in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks by extending those cuts in a time of war, that we have seen unprecedented economic growth take place in this country and a recovery that shows right now industrial productivity, our manufacturing productivity in the United States, is at an all-time record high, which is an amazing thing as the United States economy continues to churn along. In fact, the growth that has taken place in the United States economy in the last 3 years is greater than the entire economic output of China, which is the largest potential economic competitor to us in the long run.

The reason that I share this is because it has made a difference in the lives of ordinary people. When folks are allowed to keep more of what they earn, they are going to make sure that those dollars are accomplishing things

for their family, especially over the long term.

I would like to tell one story as we begin tonight that I think typifies the success that can be seen by allowing people to keep more of their own money. As Bill said, this is not a partisan issue. John Kennedy cut taxes and had economic growth take off and record revenues come into the Treasury. We have allowed people to keep more of what they earned, and what happened this past year, record revenues have come into the United States Treasury. And the real issue is controlling spending, not taking more of people's hard-earned dollars.

Well, pursuing that vision was something that Bill Shuster has done. It was something that I did back in the early 1990s starting my business, helping our manufacturing companies compete and keep their jobs here in the United States.

One person who I would like to highlight tonight, a man who has become my friend, but also somebody who pursued that vision himself, was a man named George Hammond. He runs Hammond's Automotive. He started with its first operation in Covington, Kentucky, over 20 years ago. He took that chance that many Americans take to pursue the American Dream.

He started off with a mechanics shop. The reason that his automotive shop grew in customers was not by popular advertising, it wasn't by media, it was by word of mouth, because the character of George and all the folks who worked with him demonstrated a desire to care for their customers and to make a difference, and they got more business and they grew. They opened a body shop.

Suddenly, the things that they began to encounter were the regulatory system that was increasing costs upon them as they were repairing cars. But even with that, he continued to grow beyond the impact of the regulatory system, hiring more people.

As a result of the tax policy that has taken place over the last 6 years, where people are allowed to keep more of their own money, unlike sending it to bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., where we may not know how it is going to be spent, George took that and he reinvested it. He reinvested it in his people, in training, and most recently opened another business in Burlington, Kentucky, moving out into the suburbs from Covington where he is reaching more and more people, all by word of mouth, and there a following that is going with that.

But I don't know what would have happened to George Hammond if he did not have that flexibility, if he had the tax increase that is coming down the road at the end of 2010, in 1,398 days. He probably wouldn't have had that opportunity to grow his business and create that opportunity.

But instead of raising taxes, we have created taxpayers with this policy. This is a family-friendly policy. That is a policy that allows people to pay for college tuition. It allows them to invest in their children's future. And for George Hammond, not only did it benefit him, but it benefited all of the employees, now going into a second generation of employees with three different business units that are creating jobs, creating a future for folks right there in Boone County and in Kenton County, Kentucky.

It is a typical small business where he has over 25 employees.

I think the one thing that he has experienced, too, the discussions that we have had when I have taken my F-250 pickup truck in or our Chevy Astro van to get worked on, the one thing we talk about is health insurance. And I remember as a small business owner having to deal with the issues of the high cost of health insurance, dealing with tax policies. He has gone the extra mile to help his people, probably similar to some the experiences that you have had.

I think that is a great point. George is an institution in the community. The one thing is that his attitude toward service has spiraled down to his employees, to their vendors, and that kind of dedication and devotion is I think not necessarily found in the very large corporations that are out there. It is those small businesses, like you say, that are connected.

For those folks who are watching, we invited you to join the Countdown Crew. You can contact us at [email protected]. We encourage you to tell us your stories, your thoughts, your desires for policy.

In particular, what we are seeing over and over again in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of messages that are shared back to us is the impact of a positive economic policy that allows people to keep more of what they earn. What we have coming, if we don't take action, if the House doesn't pass legislation by the end of 2010, every working family in this country is going to have a $2,092 increase. So many benefits are going away.

What we want to do is keep positive policies that empower people, create jobs, and create a future.

With that, I yield back to the gentleman.

One thing I would highlight, a few examples to share just from back in our district, and feel free to jump in with your experiences from Pennsylvania, growing up in the Ohio Valley and seeing our industry having problems competing, I know one of the choices I had when I left high school was to go in the mills or go in the military. I am so glad I went in the military because when I came back years later, those mills were gone. The environment had changed dramatically, and expectations had changed dramatically.

The people who are allowed to keep more of what they earn are going to invest it locally and invest it in their family. As our dollars stay in our community, there is going to be increased opportunity.

In northern Kentucky where I live, in Kentucky's Fourth District, which runs on the south side of the Ohio River, right across from Cincinnati, we have one of the largest air hubs in North America, the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport. Being in Kentucky, we are very proud of the fact that Cincinnati's airport is located in the great commonwealth of Kentucky, but there is a story which affects the Tristate area in a profound way that has taken place over the past couple of years.

Delta Airlines, one of the great flagship carriers of this country, has a major international hub located there. They also have a home grown regional carrier, Comair, which started out as a small commuter airline, which has grown into quite a presence.

They have gone through a very, very tough time over the past several years, since 9/11, dealing with the fluctuations in fuel prices and the issues of security costs, the challenges that have been faced in the economy turning around. The tax cuts that have been so beneficial to America's families that have created 7 million new jobs, that have allowed people to keep more of what they earn, on average between $2,000 and $3,000 per family in this country, has had a direct impact on this company.

The reason I want to highlight Delta and Comair and all of the businesses in our region, they have gone to great lengths to sacrifice and do something different than other airlines have. Rather than cutting their pensions for the expediency of institutional investors on Wall Street or other creditors, they worked with their creditors and all of their vendors not only to keep the airline going at a world class level, but to make sure that they kept their benefits and pension plans in place for their employees.

The commitment of the employees have been so great through all of this. Many of them have made tremendous sacrifices. The one thing I can see is that these employees who are making 40 percent or less than what they were making 1 year ago, 2 years ago, are now suddenly faced with not only having substantial reduction in their income to keep their job moving, but, in 1,398 days, according to this regressive policy, they are going to have an additional $2,092 on average added on top of those families.

I think it is entirely unreasonable because the impact can ripple all of the way across the economy, not only in terms of demands on those families, but the consuming families, some of the ways people spend that money, is travel. They travel for business. They buy products from companies that fuel that business travel economy. One of the great gateways to Florida, people traveling to vacation in the south from different parts of the United States, are flying on low-cost fares from Delta through Cincinnati and other gateways in the region. And that $2,000 on average per family will have an impact on that aspect of the economy, too.

You might ask, why are you bringing this up? Our economy is so complex, so interconnected, we are so interdependent on one another, by having a significant impact on one side will eventually have an impact on the other side. It is kind of an economic butterfly effect, not in the extreme like the proposition in chaos theory, but it will create a lot of chaos in our economy.

Another benefit I will share, I have a very good friend who is head of the Manufacturers Association, a committed, small business community executive, named Rick Jordan, who is chairman of the board of our Gateway Technical Community College which focuses on advanced manufacturing and information technology education to train our next generation workforce.

He is also the president of LSI Industries, which does extremely innovative engineering for lighting systems and retail display systems. One of the companies that has been driven by an increase in consumption in a very literal and physical sense is a big client of theirs, is Dairy Queen. Because people have had a little more discretionary income, they are able to meet their needs, and they want to take their family out for that treat, that hamburger, that ice cream. It just doesn't end there. When they hit the drive-through and they get that Blizzard for their kids, then it starts through the supply change and works its way back.

LSI, being one of our premier businesses in the Cincinnati-North Kentucky area, has their employees manufacturing all of the signage for all of the Dairy Queens in this competitive environment in the entire country. They won that contract because of the increased growth that has taken place when, over the last 4 years, when the full impact of this positive tax policy has been felt.

As we share other stories, I think those are two, one from manufacturing, from the leisure industry, from transportation, from the restaurant industry, which show this connectedness.

I think you have hit the nail right on the head there, and for those who just joined us, you are watching the Countdown Crew. You can contact us at [email protected]. We come to the floor the first night of every vote to talk about the positive impacts of tax policies that let people keep more of what they earn, keep more of what they own by default, and ultimately create the jobs and create a future for folks here.

Most folks do not realize that with the vote that took place, changing the House's Congress in 2006, put us on the clock for a tax increase that will come. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the tax-writing committee in the House, has said that there is no tax cut that he sees that is worth keeping.

I think that shows a blindness to the dramatic economic impacts that have hit where we are at all-time manufacturing productivity and all- time low unemployment that is remarkable in these times, that we have created 7 million new jobs. What is going to happen in 1,398 days is a tax increase that will hit the average working family in this country with a $2,092 tax increase, and that will happen without any legislation being introduced.

The way the prior tax cuts were drawn, we would extend them every 2 years. That extension right now appears to not be happening. On behalf of the Countdown Crew, we would encourage you to write your Member of Congress to encourage your Member for the district that is represented by you watching at home to make sure that those are extended.

More than that, we would like to hear your stories, if you would send to us [email protected] and tell us what you have done with that additional money. We have heard stories of folks who have been able to meet personal needs, start businesses and create jobs. The goal of a constructive government policy related to revenue is not to raise taxes, not to create taxes for their own sake, but to create taxpayers to have an empowering policy that lets people work, pursue their vision, and pursue opportunity in the long run.

Probably one of the most interesting stories that I can share I think has a little bit of humor in it. If we go to a shopping mall in the United States right now, you can look out and see there is always a group of kids somewhere in the mall, the Goth group, that is dressed in black, black shirts, black shoes, black pants, black hair, black garments that they will have on them.

There is a little secret that I will share with America's youth and the Goth movement tonight. The color black, the person who owned the patent on the color black comes from the Fourth District of Kentucky. A brilliant chemical energy engineer named Bill Stoeppel some years ago discovered that there was a real problem in manufacturing waste in paints and in dyes for clothing and paint for the automotive industry. He developed a unique solution dispersion to carry the graphite that would be that color black. He named his little company Solution Dispersions. He took the idea from the experience that he had. He ended up buying a company that at one point he worked for. He started another facility in this business and it grew. He had an exclusivity, made a very, very small profit on processing this graphite for the large coatings and coloring companies that support our manufacturing industry around the United States.

Right there, in Cynthiana, Kentucky, is the headquarters of the color black. The reason I bring that up is there is one person, one man, who has created hundreds of jobs in different parts of the country and also is fueling a supply chain at a reduced cost to be able to compete not only domestically but

internationally as well, with strong and high-quality products.

He did not just stop there and bury his money in the ground. The profits that he made he reinvested in his community. He was one of the people that you had alluded to earlier when you talked about Harold. Well, Bill was one of those pillars of the community that worked with the hospital and the school system, was somebody that was active in the Rotary Club, made sure that the hospital board had resources and assets, and he also invested back in the land, a personal love of his. He was ranching quality, very high quality grade, again creating more jobs and opportunity and participating in the consumption economy.

Many of those opportunities literally have the chance to go away on December 31, 2007. When we talk about tax policy, oftentimes there is a misnomer, this class warfare idea, that it is always the super-rich who get off or the rich who get off and do not pay their burden, that it is always unfairly pushed down on working families and on the poor.

The truth of the matter is with these tax cuts the ceiling was actually moved up. The burden was moved up. Millions were taken off the tax rolls. A new tax bracket was created for 10 percent which will disappear, a transitional tax bracket for those who were coming into the workforce, who are moving upward.

There is a $1,000 child tax credit that is coming. Just in my family alone, when that went from $500, and that was set a long time ago when $500 had a different value in the economy than it does now, to $1,000 that made a difference. Patty and I have six children. Right there that is a $3,000 tax increase to my family that will take place at the end of 2010.

The marriage penalty is going to be restored, and I think practically the one thing that we must do is make sure that we have policy that is friendly to families, that encourages jobs, and encourages and strengthens the family. By putting the marriage penalty back in place, it actually makes it more profitable to be single, and I think that flies in the face of our American values here.

You mentioned the estate tax earlier. It is a pernicious tax that confiscates money from families once that money has already been taxed. It is not the super, super-rich of the world, the Bill Gateses of the world, the multibillionaires of the world. They are not the ones that are going to have to worry about paying that. It is the small business owners who have capital-intensive businesses. It is going to be farmers, small manufacturers that have the most dramatic negative effect from that.

We had one took place in my county that is a perfect example of this, a farmer. When the patriarch died, they did not understand. They loved farming. They wanted to focus on that business. They did not understand the impact of an estate tax, having a farm in a growing county with appreciating real estate values. Because they had gotten some incomplete legal advice, they came to find out that they literally were going to have to sell half of a farm that had been in the family for five generations because they wanted to keep farming just to pay the tax bill. I think that flies in the face of American values. It flies in the face of creating opportunities.

One of the things that relates to that, too, is that money just does not end at the personal savings account or even at the grocery store, the auto shop or dealership, or the Dairy Queen for that matter, as we mentioned earlier.

There are others who are very, very dependent upon the benefits, the profits of these small businesses, the revenue from salaries, from jobs that are created, and that is all of our public servants.

I have a daughter who is now doing her student teaching practicum. She is

getting ready to go out and become a public school teacher in our district. Her salary ultimately is paid by the salaries of those who are employed, who own houses, who have jobs, who can contribute to the payroll tax in the community. Our policemen, our world-class law enforcement that we have, is funded. All the training that they receive is funded by taxpayer dollars that come from folks who are out in the economy, who are in jobs that are creating that value. They are creating that tax revenue that comes into the government, that pays for them. We have to make sure in order to keep them strong and to keep them well-funded we have to have a robust and strong economy.

The key to keeping those services world class, whether it is in education, whether it is public safety, whether it is even funding our military at a Federal level; a strong and robust economy is critical to that in the long run, because the entire supply chain, the entire chain of individuals is interconnected. We are in a society, in an economy, where everybody is connected, one to another, in some way. It is not just a circle of folks that we interact with, but it is those that we interact with. That chain moves on and on throughout the entire economy, rippling back and forth in a very positive way, in all, ultimately, being very beneficial.

I have two friends who are in the insurance business. Ironically, they are both not only good friends and strong supporters of mine, they are extremely active in the community. I think the only place that they are not working in concert together is with insurance offices. Bob Boswell and Bob Kelly of Florence, Kentucky, are literally across a mall road together.

But they get along well together, they work together on projects to benefit the community. They see it firsthand, introducing folks to financial planning. As they are trying to build a future, they are trying to look to the future for retirement savings. My friend, Dale Viniard, who is an insurance agent in Crestwood, Kentucky, was one of the very first people that Pat and I met when we moved to East Crestwood, Kentucky, at the opposite end of the district, experiences of people having a concern over their ability to provide for their family and the future, having that ability to make sure that they can have a job, make an income and ultimately have some type of retirement, build that nest egg.

When you touched on the impact of the capital gains tax earlier, I think it's a huge, huge issue, because the majority of Americans now don't have these defined pension plans like somebody might have gotten 50 years ago, working for the large automotive company. Because most people are coming out of the small business world that creates 88 percent of the new jobs in this country. Their retirement plans are going to be in some form of deferred compensation of 401(k). Some type of retirement savings are diversified, spread over different types of investments. In most cases, they will have some degree of control over that.

Just the change in these taxes could have a dramatic impact on senior citizens. They could literally see their tax burden double overnight when they seek to access their retirement funds just to live.

Again, once that money comes out of the economy, it is not creating jobs. That investment is there; not only is it benefitting them, but it is creating jobs for the future.

Thank you. For those of you joining us at the end here, you are with the [email protected]. Our motto is create taxpayers, not taxes. We want to allow you to keep more of what you earn, because when your dollars are in your pocket or in your community, it is creating America's jobs and advancing the economy.

One person who has joined us tonight is a former certified public accountant from the great State of Texas, and his name is Mike Conaway. We have worked together on numerous issues in the committees, and I think that he would like to share something for a couple of minutes here.

We were hoping you were a recovering CPA.

I want to thank everybody for joining us. For those of you who are regulars and are corresponding with us, we appreciate your joining us and contacting us at [email protected].

We believe that the key is not raising taxes; it is creating taxpayers to project economic growth and opportunity for the future. Our backbone is of small business owners that have created the jobs, created the vision, have created the innovation that have help make this country great. We want to continue standing by you and the working families of America.

With that, Mr. Speaker, we yield back the balance of our time.

Mr. Chairman, first I would like to commend Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus and Congresswoman Maloney for putting together this important bill that exemplifies the bipartisan work of the Financial Services Committee. H.R. 556 succeeds in striking a balance that ensures neither the national security of the United States nor the investment climate will be compromised.

This bill was originally introduced in the 109th Congress in response to the public outcry after the Dubai Ports World case. H.R. 556 formalizes the role of the Director of National Intelligence in the CFIUS process, establishes accountability in CFIUS by ensuring senior officials are involved in clearing transactions and establishes better communication with Congress so that we can perform our oversight function.

However, I am a strong believer in simplifying processes to achieve the best possible outcome. I do not think we should make CFIUS an overly complicated and burdensome process for foreign investment. The goal is to maintain the attractiveness of the U.S. markets as a destination for foreign investment, while protecting our national security.

While I submitted three amendments to H.R. 556 that I was unable to offer today, they address important issues that deserve consideration as the bill moves through the Senate and into a conference committee.

Two of my amendments would eliminate the roll call requirement for both the approval of a deal and as recorded in the annual report. As we have gone through the Committee process in the 109th Congress and in the 110th, I have learned a great deal about how the CFIUS process works. I think it is important that we incorporate this suggestion from the Administration on CFIUS. Currently, the different agencies that make up the CFIUS committee work as a team until they arrive at a consensus view. It is my understanding that the committee does not take roll call votes agency-by-agency on each transaction deal that is examined. The current CFIUS approach is much more holistic and fosters a team effort.

I have concerns that requiring a roll call vote on each deal could discourage one agency from raising an issue if all the others are prepared to sign off. I would not want a roll call vote to have any unintended consequences.

I do not believe we should override the way CFIUS currently works as a team. It is effective and encourages the agencies to interact and communicate throughout the examination of the deal.

The third amendment I submitted would eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy for the transaction deals that are relatively easy to approve by allowing the actual signing off process to be accomplished by a Senate confirmed official. This of course does not mean the Secretary and Deputy Secretary are unaware of the deal or left out of the loop on CFIUS matters. They are briefed on every deal on a regular basis. And they will still be required to sign off on certain cases that are of concern to Congress. However, this amendment would provide for a more expedient CFIUS process for the majority of transactions that pose no threat to national security.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 755, the Promoting Transparency in Financial Reporting Act. And I also would like to thank the gentleman from Georgia for his hard work on this bill. We started nearly 18 months ago, and it is, I think, a true credit to bipartisanship in a way that it is going to help the American people, help small business, and ultimately help to create jobs and give people the opportunity to see clearly into the operation of the financial markets.

In the post-Enron financial era, transparent reporting has become an increasingly important component of promoting a healthy corporate environment. Financially stable and accountable corporations are essential for expanding the U.S. business sector, promoting investor confidence, and strengthening the economy.

However, it is important to examine ways in which such accountability and reporting standards can become both more efficient and more transparent. A cumbersome, costly system will only reduce our competitiveness in a connected world economy and ultimately cost us jobs.

I regularly hear complaints from business owners and executives in Kentucky about the costs and complexities of financial reporting requirements mandated by the Federal Government. As a former small business consultant, I know firsthand the difficulties faced during the time-consuming and costly processes of accounting and financial disclosure. Unfortunately, financial reporting remains an arduous task with too many opportunities for error and for manipulation. Reassessing outdated accounting standards and improving the ability of the average investor to understand and utilize financial documents are essential to the livelihood of American business and the protection of America's investors.

Requiring annual congressional testimony by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board stresses that simplification, cost reduction, and transparency in accounting standards and financial reporting are public priorities. H.R. 755 will help hold the SEC, FASB, and PCAOB, as well as Congress, accountable for making progress on these important issues. H.R. 755 will give Congress a way to measure progress on the efforts of these organizations over the next 5 years and ensure they are working to streamline and to modernize the process of financial reporting.

As stated in the bill, we would like to direct attention to several areas of interest: first, we would like to reassess outdated and complex accounting standards; improve the understandability, consistency, and overall usability of the existing accounting and auditing literature; develop principles-based accounting standards; and encourage the use and acceptance of interactive data or extensible business reporting language, also known as XBRL; and, finally, to promote disclosures in plain English. I think it would be great ultimately for investors not to need a CPA and a lawyer to understand their own financial statements or the reports that they receive from companies they invest in.

H.R. 755 isn't intended to imply that these organizations have yet to move towards these goals. In fact, there are many examples of progress already. Each organization has already taken strides to improve financial reporting and the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and I applaud these efforts.

For example, in December, 2006, PCAOB proposed new standards for auditing of internal controls designed to focus auditors on the most important issues. The proposed standards eliminate unnecessary audit requirements and, most importantly, provide guidance on how to adjust the audit for a smaller, less complex company. I appreciate the willingness of the PCAOB to respond to feedback from Congress and the investment community.

Another example is the SEC's encouragement of the use of interactive data. Interactive data uses ``tags'' for key facts in financial statements so investors can quickly extract and analyze information in an easily understandable format. The SEC recently announced the expansion of the voluntary test program, which already includes two dozen companies representing more than $1 trillion of market value. Participating companies are rewarded with expedited reviews of SEC filings. In turn, the test group will help the SEC to decide how interactive data can be of most use to investors. These kinds of public and private partnerships will ultimately serve the American people best and keep our markets robust and strong.

Many have criticized the burden and cost of Sarbanes-Oxley, and particularly section 404, on small public companies. It is critical that we strike the right balance between requiring financial reporting to bolster investor confidence and keeping our markets open to both domestic and foreign investment. H.R. 755 will help Congress maintain an active and essential role in this balancing act.

Modernizing reporting processes, increasing transparency, and reducing the costs of financial reporting will help ease the regulatory burden on businesses and strengthen the ability of individual investors to make educated financial decisions. To quote SEC Chairman Chris Cox, this process is going to be ``a long one, but it is worth it to make sure that the capital markets remain strong and vibrant.''

The Promoting Transparency in Financial Reporting Act will hold the SEC, FASB, and PCAOB, as well as Congress, accountable for making progress on these important issues.

Let's pass this bill as a first step towards creating a process for continuous improvement that will simplify our financial reporting regulatory framework.

I would like to thank in particular Ranking Member Bachus, Chairman Frank, and Chairman Kanjorski for their support and my friend from Georgia for his hard work on this to bring this to the floor now.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material thereon.

The subject of our Special Order tonight is to remember a great man of this Chamber and a great Kentuckian and a great person, a friend to virtually all who knew him. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to pay tribute to my friend and fellow Kentuckian, Congressman Gene Snyder.

Born in Louisville, Gene Snyder began his political career in 1954 as a city attorney for Jeffersontown, Kentucky, at the age of 26. In 1962 he ran for Congress and was elected to represent the Third District of Kentucky. After losing his bid for reelection in 1964, he turned right around and ran again in 1966. This time, he was elected to the seat that I now hold from Kentucky's Fourth District.

He went on to serve Kentucky and the Nation for another 20 years until his retirement in 1986, bringing a record of credit upon his office and doing great service to the people of Kentucky's Fourth District. Gene had a tireless work ethic, both in Washington and in Kentucky's Fourth District. He was a master political operator and strategist, and his dedication to the conservative cause was without equal in the 1960s and 1970s.

He stood by Barry Goldwater for President and was swept out of office in the 1964 Johnson landslide, only to return 2 years later.

I can personally relate to that and Gene's character and his persistence, having lost my first election and announcing on election night that I was running again and getting up the next morning and going to work for 2 more years to win and to make a difference.

Gene was a great example with his work ethic, with his character, with his devotion and his tenacity. He enjoyed campaigning, and he relayed to me stories of many people who cut their proverbial teeth on his campaigns. I have heard stories literally from hundreds of people across the old Fourth District who remember him, who remember meeting with him.

He worked and reaped the benefits for those who followed him in office. He laid a foundation for those of us in the delegation who came after him. Ground work for a strong Republican Party in the Fourth District, campaigning was not something that Gene did every 2 years. It was a life-style for him.

He was in a constant state of campaigning, reaching out, building friendships, reaching across the aisle, reaching across the fence on an arm, across the wire at the county fair, meeting people in storefronts. He used to tell me how on Saturdays he would often get in his car when he was back in the district and drive Highway 42 from Pewee Valley where he lived on up towards northern Kentucky, stopping in small coffee shops, in storefronts to visit with ordinary people.

He was a man without pretense, one who people simply knew as Gene. Everyone from our region still remembers Gene's famous campaign jingle, and more than one person has nostalgically sung the whole song to me word for word since I got into politics in 2001. We have heard those words: ``Vote for Gene Snyder. He is your working Congressman.''

In fact as recently as the last few years, that jingle, which has not been used in a campaign since 1984, was still considered the best political song in the radio stations in Louisville. Gene thoroughly enjoyed interacting with his constituents, and his enthusiasm for his job showed in his ability to recall the names of thousands with whom he came in contact.

Even more telling was the fact that many of his constituents simply knew him as Gene. They never knew the fact that their Gene was considered by columnist Jack Anderson here in Washington as one of the 10 most influential Members of the House of Representatives because of his work ethic, because of his knowledge of the rules, his knowledge of policy and procedure, and the commitment that he made to the citizens of his district and to this country.

During his time in the House, Gene was an unyielding force whose visionary efforts laid the groundwork to improve our region and the lives of Kentuckians for generations to come. Though a fiscal conservative through and through, he worked tirelessly to bring Federal funds back to Kentucky and the Fourth District.

He did this for one purpose: he understood the value of investment and meaningful infrastructure for economic growth, to lay a foundation for job creation in the future. The key to that is what we see today, areas that were farm fields 25 years ago, 20 years ago, 15 years ago have born the fruits of his investment, the seeds of his vision that were planted in economic development and economic growth that has made this area the Fourth District from the eastern part of Louisville up through northern Kentucky one of the greatest technology growth corridors in the Commonwealth and also in the Ohio Valley.

When my friend Rick Robinson, the new legislative director for Gene's successor, now Senator Jim Bunning, attended a Congressional Research Service briefing on policy and procedure as a new congressional staffer, he told me recently that many of the examples that were cited by the instructors on parliamentary procedure, on the rules, on the way the House of Representatives works were all centered around Gene Snyder and his efforts, his example of being able to build momentum, his example of being able to force an issue when it was necessary or deter or slow one down and that it was not going to be productive for his party or for the citizens of the Fourth District.

It is rumored that when he would walk into the committee with the Jefferson rules, the rules of the House under one arm, the chairman would simply lean over and ask him, Well, Gene, what do you want this time? As a member of the Public Works and Transportation Committee, he helped secure Federal funding for critical transportation infrastructure in Kentucky.

Some of Gene's projects included the Big Mac Bridge of I-471 from Newport over to Cincinnati dedicated in 1981, Clay Wade Bailey Bridge from Covington to Cincinnati, which opened in 1971. He also secured Federal dollars to protect Bellevue and Dayton from flood waters of the Ohio River. He was responsible for creative engineering to bring about, from a legislative perspective, the construction of the bridge over the Markland Dam.

I would like to highlight his creativity on these for a moment. Gene was a man who built relationships and friendships on both sides of the aisle. He was known for his card games. He was known for a happy hour that he ran out of his office in the days of the old House.

In fact, he told me late one night at his house years ago, the story of how the I-471 bridge came about. He said to me, he said, Geoff, how do you think we got that bridge? Answering as somebody from the outside, I said, Well, I figure you had the studies from the Corps of Engineers and the economic impact and the designs and the budget. He laughed and he said, No, it was the happy hour that got Newport, Kentucky, that bridge.

He told me how Tip O'Neill, who was a good friend of his, would regularly come by, the Speaker of the House, to his office, sit with him, play cards, have an occasional drink. One night he had come by, had a few drinks and sat back in Gene's chair, and the Speaker put his feet up on the desk and said, Gene, you've got your bridge. He built relationships to get results. He built partnerships for success on both sides of the aisle in the House of Representatives.

Markland Lock and Dam is another area that illustrates his creativity in legislation. He made a comment to me on another conversation and he said, you have got to make sure you have

got a legislative director who knows how to read the rules and the laws governing every aspect of projects or investments that you want to make in your district, on guiding legislation that will benefit our citizens. And he cited this as an example. Southern Indiana and the Central Part of the Fourth District near Carrollton and Gallatin County were suffering economically. He was seeking for a way to link that north and south commerce across the river.

What was there was the Markland Lock and Dam, a Corps of Engineers structure that had no bridge. He set his legislative director to work, and his legislative counsel researched for several weeks and came about with an arcane statute from the late 1800s that stated that not a bridge, but an access road could be placed across a Corps of Engineers structure. So laughingly, late in the night he said to me, Geoff, that is not a bridge down there on the Markland Dam that links Indiana and Kentucky. That is an access road. And if you go and look carefully you will see that.

Well, I drove down there after that conversation just to see for myself, and I started to laugh as I looked and I saw a freestanding bridge simply bolted to the dam. And I think it was is that type of creativity that made a difference, and that dam still today is creating jobs and creating commerce and linking communities on both sides of the Ohio River to the benefit of generations that have come after him.

He secured Federal dollars for a wide variety of projects. Probably the two of his better known legacies are the beltway around Louisville and the Federal courthouse that both bear his name.

Gene was an extremely down-to-earth man. He was without pretense. Literally, what you saw was what you got with him. The only thing that he ever wanted to be named for him was the Federal courthouse in Louisville. This was situated directly across the street from the Louisville Courier Journal, his long time media nemesis and frankly, the media nemesis of Republicans for over a generation. Gene told me that he was thrilled that day and when that opportunity came along, that the editors who so longed to opine against him and his fellow Republicans would have to look at the name of Gene Snyder every day as they left the employees entrance of the Louisville Courier Journal to see the Gene Snyder United States Courthouse.

Ironically, not long after that conversation, one of those editors who was still working for the Courier Journal told me he figured Gene had the building named after himself just to aggravate that specific editor at the Journal.

In 2005, I was proud to carry on the Gene Snyder tradition with a legacy for him to name a new intern fellowship program after him. Working in conjunction with Kentucky University, Northern Kentucky University and Thomas Moore College, my office has had the privilege of bringing talented students interested in politics to work full-time for a semester in Washington, D.C. to see the people's House from the inside, to see that it is not all the writings in a civics book, but it is relationships, it is friendships, it is a process that the Founders gave us to move our government forward and to move the Nation forward.

I thought long and hard about approaching him on the name, and I finally called him and I asked him if I could use his name. And I said, Congressman, we would be honored if we could name this program after you, the Gene Snyder Congressional Internship. He stopped for a moment and he said, well that sounds mighty fine. And then he said, you know, no, Geoff, you need to name that after yourself. And I was taken aback as a freshman congressman when he said that.

We talked back and forth for a little bit and I finally shared with him that I felt it would be not only somewhat ostentatious and vain for a first time congressman to name an internship program after himself, I just felt it would be inappropriate because of the legacy that Congressman Snyder had. And he stopped and he said, you know, you are right, Geoff. Naming it after yourself may cause you some problems. So you go ahead and name it after me. I burst out laughing on the phone and I said Congressman, I said Gene, you are just shameless, to which he responded wryly, he said no, Geoff, I am just looking out for your best interest for the future.

And even today we have Gene Snyder interns working in our office, carrying on the legacy that that man began when he was elected to the Fourth Congressional District of Kentucky in 1966. It is my hope that this program will continue for many years to come and will help foster that spirit of civic service that would make Gene Snyder proud.

In October, 2006, I was part of a historic event that took place in Oldham County, Kentucky during the latter part of my campaign. It was a meeting between Senator Jim Bunning, Gene Snyder and myself, and it was a humble privilege to be part of the final gathering of three Members of Congress who served the Fourth District of Kentucky. Gene Snyder and Senator Bunning have been constant encouragers to me and have helped make the Fourth District what it is today.

I am forever in debt to their hard work and service to the commonwealth and to our Nation. To me, the newest person to inherit a piece of this great legacy that Gene gave us, I can share that the highest compliment that I could pay to him is to say that he was real. I became a better campaigner and certainly a better and more effective Member of Congress listening to Gene's advice. In fact, just today we passed our first piece of bipartisan legislation in this new Congress, and I have put the legacy back to the advice that he gave me before I got elected, of building those friendships and those relationships to benefit the people of this country. And I say thank you to Gene Snyder for that legislation that passed today.

At one event when we were together I was trying to talk to him at length because it was just so exciting to see him. In his last years, he was not in good health and was in constant pain and I cherished the few moments that we had. But he leaned on me and he grabbed my arm and leaned over and whispered in my ear he said Geoff, you have got my vote. Now go get theirs, and pushed me towards a crowd of new people that I hadn't talked to yet. Always the campaigner, always the consummate politician, always caring for the stewardship of the office.

As we look at these times and the legacy that was given, I think there is no better person to share a perspective on Gene Snyder than the dean of our delegation. Hal Rogers was elected to Congress in 1980. He knew Gene Snyder during his time coming up in Kentucky politics. He knew him as a colleague here in the House, and many Members have learned from him. And I would like to yield as much time as the gentleman from Kentucky's Fifth District would consume to just share his perspective.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Congressman Rogers, I think you captured the emotion and the power of that funeral, the eulogies, the reminiscences that brought so many to laughter. Sitting with Gene and Pat Snyder was always a wonderful journey back to the old House in the days before C-SPAN, before 24-hour news cycles, before multimillion dollar campaigns.

The one thing that struck me about him when I first met him was his complete lack of pretense. As a young man, I couldn't believe this was a Congressman, compared to the image that one would have on TV, somebody so approachable, so transparent, and his great gift of humor. He could teach with humor. He could scold with humor and make his point very clearly. He was a man who built friendships that transcended partisan differences.

As Congressman Rogers mentioned from Senator McConnell's eulogy, one of his great friends in the House was Congressman Carl Perkins, who represented what is now the western part of the Fourth District, centered in Ashland, Kentucky, in Boyd County. He and Carl Perkins could fight on the floor, fight in the hallways on issues, but at 5 o'clock they were friends, and they were strong friends committed to the Commonwealth, committed to the future of Kentucky.

He was a strong leader. And probably the highest compliment that I could pay him is that he was real. And that fact is never lost on those who knew him. Those who were his foes in legislation had tremendous respect for him and invariably they liked him.

The real fruit in a person's life comes from the seeds that are sowed in many lives, the fruit that is born from that. I think of several names to mention here that come to mind. Congressman Rogers shared his perspective on Gene's influence in his life. I have shared mine on his influence on me. My wife, Pat, and I used to live in La Grange, Kentucky, down near the Louisville suburbs. My first campaign chairman in Olden County was Harold Smith. Harold Smith, as a young attorney in 1966, managed Gene's first campaign for Congress in the Fourth District, and then he helped manage my first campaign for Congress in 2002 and then again in 2004 and again in 2006. I think about that legacy of friendship and how he reached out and was known by so many in the community.

Another was his staff director on the Public Works Committee, Mike Toohey, who also was with us on Saturday. Mike left government at the time that Gene retired and had a long and distinguished career in government relations, helping Ashland Oil, later Ashland Inc., to reach out and communicate its needs and the needs of our citizens in Kentucky legislatively and was a great friend to the Commonwealth and was also one of those products of Gene's influence and his mentorship.

Another was Joe Whittle, who met Gene the first time in 1975 when he was running for attorney general in Kentucky at a time that it wasn't cool for Republicans to be running on a statewide ticket. Gene called him up on the phone. Joe was a little taken aback to get a phone call from the famed Congressman Gene Snyder, but he invited him to come up to meet him in Louisville and then drive up to Northern Kentucky to give a talk at the Beverly Hills Supper Club to a large group of Republicans there. When Gene got up to introduce Joe Whittle, he used his humor to make that strong point about how he had sized up Joe's character, and he said, This is Joe Whittle. He is a lawyer but not enough to hurt. And they instantly became friends and were close and intimate friends until a week ago when Gene left this Earth. Later Joe Whittle became the United States Attorney for Western Kentucky.

The investment that Gene made in so many lives has transcended their immediate impact and gone to other generations.

Anne Gernstein, who is now the chairman of the Olden County Republican Party, was his office manager at his office in Louisville. And before I first met Gene, I met Anne. She was helping with the local campaign, and I walked in the door as a new volunteer, just wanting to get involved in politics, and I would have never thought at that time that I would have the great honor and privilege to follow in the legacy of that great man.

Gene, we will miss your humor and that twinkle in your eye right before you are about to spring a joke on someone.

To Pat and the children, thank you for sharing this great man with us. Your hospitality and kindness are remembered by so many that you have touched throughout the years.

Gene Snyder left an indelible imprint on Kentucky and our country. With his passing, Kentucky has lost, and the Nation has lost, a great leader and a true statesman; but his legacy continues to live on.

Offered By: Mr. Davis of Kentucky

Amendment No. 8: Page 11, line 2, strike ``in a rollcall

vote''.

Offered By: Mr. Davis of Kentucky

Amendment No. 9: Page 11, beginning on line 7, strike ``or

an appropriate Under Secretary'' and insert ``or an

appropriate Senate confirmed official''.