Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to commemorate the single bloodiest day in American combat history--the Battle of Antietam--September 17th, 1862. We are a product of our history and we can learn a lot from this terrible day in 1862.

On this day 141 years ago, nearly 100,000 Americans met at Antietam creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. In a battle that lasted less than twelve hours, over 23,000 Americans lay dead or wounded.

More than twice as many Americans were killed or mortally wounded in combat at Antietam as in the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War combined. Amazingly more Americans were killed or wounded at Antietam than on June 6, 1944--D Day on the Normandy beaches in World War II.

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Union Confederate Total ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Killed................................. 2,100 1,550 3,650 Wounded................................ 9,550 7,750 17,300 Missing................................ 750 1,020 1,770

Total.............................. 12,400 10,320 22,720 ------------------------------------------------------------------------

chronology of the battle--what happened

On September 17, Union Major General George McClellan confronted Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg, Maryland. At dawn, Hooker's Corps mounted a powerful assault on Lee's left flank. Attacks and counterattacks swept across Miller's cornfield and fighting raged throughout the day around the Dunker church. After repeated delays a Union corps under Burnside finally got into action and attempted to cross the stone bridge over Antietam creek and roll the Confederate right.

Union General Ambrose Burnside's corps of 12,000 men tried to cross the 12 foot wide bridge over Antietam creek for 4 hours. About 450 Georgian sharpshooters took up positions behind trees and boulders on a steep wooded bluff overlooking the bridge. Greatly outnumbered the Confederates drove back several Union advances toward the bridge.

Confederate eyewitness: burnside bridge

Lieutenant Theodore T. Fogle, 2nd Georgia Infantry: ``At a bridge on the Antietam Creek our Regiment and the 20th Ga., in all amounting to not over 300 muskets held them in check for four hours and a half and then we fell back only because our ammunition was exhausted, but we suffered badly, eight cannon just 500 yards off were pouring grape shot, shell and canister into us and our artillery could not silence them. We held our post until Major William Harris ordered us to fall back. Our Col. (Col. Holmes) . . . was killed about half an hour before. . . .

``We went into the fight with only 89 muskets and had eight officers and 35 men killed and wounded. So many of the men were shot down that the officers filled their places and loaded and fired their guns.''

After horrific losses the union forces finally punched through and moved on Sharpsburg. But General McClellan had hesitated too long, allowing General Lee to consolidate his vulnerable forces and counterattack into Burnside's flank and rear. McClellan then hesitated once again, failing to pursue a retreating Lee. The opportunity for total victory was gone.

The Union's General McClellan hesitated many times that day. He lacked the courage to accept short term sacrifice even when it meant the long term salvation of the nation. As a result, the Confederate Army escaped that day and the war lasted another three bloody years.

This day in history reminds us that decisive leadership can save lives, end wars and prevent future attacks.

Today, we must continue to recognize that the survival of our nation is again challenged. President Bush and our military leaders have shown that they have the courage to face the reality of our world.

Last Friday at Fort Stewart Georgia President Bush said: ``We are not waiting for further attacks on our citizens. We are striking our enemies before they can strike us again. Wars are won on the offensive--and America and its friends are staying on the offensive.''

By taking the fight to our enemies we are diminishing our foes, securing our people and building the hope of people across the globe.

We owe the security of our nation and our way of life to the hosts of Americans who have unselfishly served and died. We are blessed to have those soldiers in our ranks once again and we are blessed that their leaders understand what is at stake for the nation and the world.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to say as a supporter of the Gutknecht bill that this bill is about safety because it is unsafe not to take your medicine.

If you need Glucophage, if you need Lipitor, if you need Tamoxifen, you have to get it as inexpensively as you can or you are going to be skipping your groceries to do it.

What you can do is join millions of Americans and go to our biggest trade partner, Canada, and get it at 40 percent less than what we are paying now. And incidentally, in the next 10 years senior citizens alone will spend $1.8 trillion on prescription drugs.

What should we do about the people who are buying these drugs from Canada? Should we arrest them now? Or since it is so unsafe, why do we not just wait for them at the hospital and then arrest them?

The reality is that this right now is the domain of the border State constituents and the savvy Internet buyer. I want to support this bill so that the working people can have access at their local pharmacists to these low-cost prescription drugs. That is what this is about. Support the Gutknecht bill.

Mr. Speaker, when the Republicans took over the House and the Senate and the White House, a lot of critics in this town said, well, now they have an opportunity and they won't be able to capitalize on it because no one gets along in Washington, DC, and it doesn't really matter who is in charge.

But that has not been the case. The President passed his No Child Left Behind with a statement in there that I think is very important, and there is no bigotry as bad as the label of low expectations, challenging the status quo in education. He has fought and led the fight in the war against terrorism, taking our troops to places like Afghanistan and Iraq, making very difficult decisions and yet making the world safe once more and telling terrorists, we're not going to let you get away it.

We have just recently passed Medicare reform which gives our seniors a much-needed prescription drug bill so that they will not have to choose between prescription medicine and food. And, of course, we have passed a substantial tax reform and reduction package, one that will get Americans working again, one that will create jobs, one that will allow middle-class families to keep more of their hard-earned income.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

I just wanted to point out, Mr. Speaker, that when we hear about the bill having more money for acquiring more land, it is important to keep in perspective how much land is actually owned by the United States, which is approximately one-third. Thirty-three percent of the land in America is owned by the Federal Government; and that does not include military bases, it does not include easements for interstate highways, it does not include State and local parks and recreation areas. So if we put in all that, it may be as high as 40 percent.

I am not on the Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations anymore, but I had the honor of serving on it for 6 years, and I would often ask the director of the National Park Service or Fish and Wildlife or the Bureau of Land Management, how much land is enough?

We know politically 435 Members of Congress can always go home as heroes, session after session, saying I bought more land, I protected the environment, and yet nobody knows how much is good. Should the Federal Government own 90 percent of the land in America? Should it be a smaller percentage?

I think, if my memory serves correctly, in the East, it is a lot smaller percentage. In fact, I think in Georgia it is probably less than 10 percent. Massachusetts, I believe it is 14 percent. California, it is 60 percent. In Nevada, it is about 90 percent. But we have no national policy on it whatsoever.

I asked these questions to the Bush administration. I asked these questions to the Clinton administration. How much land should it be? Should it be 15 percent? Should it be 75 percent? What is the magic number?

I want my colleagues to think about this in terms of appropriations and so forth.

We had this week, most of us were visited by people from the education community on IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

We passed our Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill this week; and we funded IDEA at 18 percent. We should be funding it at about 40 percent, but we have something to discuss because we have a specific vision of what funding level is adequate.

Here we are, when it comes to land acquisition, already again up to a third of the land in America owned by the Federal Government, and we do not have a top end to it. We do not have a policy. Meanwhile, not only do we not have a policy, we have a tremendous backlog.

Now, the Republicans, since 1997, have spent $2.1 billion on backlog for our public lands, maintenance and so forth. But here we still have billions of dollars in backlog, and we do not seem to be worried about that.

So I think that this subcommittee has done the right thing by going very cautiously in terms of not just funding everybody who wants a new land acquisition reelection plan, but they are trying to go at it with a little more science, a little more balance; and I think that that is a far better approach than the so-called CARA approach or some of these other plans that are out there.

Mr. Speaker, when the Republicans took over the White House, the Senate and the House, the critics in this town came out of the woodwork, which does not take much to rile them up, but they said they are never going to get anything done. The first year in office Mr. Bush passed No Child Left Behind, a great bipartisan education reform package; this year taken on a world leadership role to liberate Iraq from the oppression of Saddam Hussein and make it possible to inspect for weapons of mass destruction; and now we are leading Iraq towards democracy. We have also passed economic relief in the form of tax relief for small businesses, for families and for farmers, something that will turn the economy around. And then earlier last month we passed Medicare reform with a prescription drug benefit.

We have other things that we are going to do for medicine. We are going to take on malpractice reform. It has already passed in the House. The other body is debating on it very soon. We are passing in the House health savings accounts so that people could set up a medical savings-type account approach to healthcare. We are taking on lots of new initiatives, and so the critics, they are always going to be here in Washington, DC., but if we look at the scorecard, it has been a very solid record.

Republicans in the House, Republicans in the Senate, Republicans at the White House are getting things done for the American people. We welcome the Democrats to join us. We do not want this to be a partisan show. We want bipartisan ideas because what this is about is not a better Republican Party, but a better America, and we need both parties and all people to participate.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to say he is correct. There is no

specific language that just says funding in it. And I also want to say that as the chairman of the committee, it certainly would fall on me to know about this language. I have to confess I did not know about it, but I will certainly take responsibility and support the agreement to remove it.

I will also agree with the gentleman from Wisconsin that it may be a topic that at some point we should discuss. But, in the meantime, we should do it in open forum and not through the back door in this manner. This was put in as one of the administrative agency's budgets, but we do certainly agree to take it out.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 2657, and that I may include tabular and other extraneous material.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 311, I call up the bill (H.R. 2657) making appropriations for the Legislative Branch for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

I wanted to say that the legislative branch bill is somewhat the inside baseball bill, the operating budget for the U.S. Capitol. It includes not just the legislative branch per se but the Capitol Hill Police, the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office, the General Accounting Office and many other important government agencies which we all depend on.

The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), the ranking member, and I have worked very closely on our bill this year, and its total spending is $2.7 billion, which is a decrease of about $34 million below last year, or about 1.2 percent. It is 10 percent below the actual request. Every agency has had to take reductions, and we have had to say no to many of our friends to get to this number, but we think that we have been fair across the board.

For example, this bill does not require any reductions in the current force, and it fully funds the traditional COLA of the leg branch employees at a level of 3.7 percent.

The other thing the bill does, along with keeping a very tight line on the fiscal side of it, is that it does not provide any new authorizations. So we are not changing anything in this bill. It is what we refer to as a clean appropriations bill.

One issue that has come up is the U.S. Capitol Police, and they do a great job; and we all here in Congress depend on them, not just every day but really every hour, to keep the U.S. Capitol safe. This is a unique building in that it is a historical building. It is a tourist site in itself; and then, in addition to that, Members of Congress are conducting business in it. So we have lots of people, a mom, dad, the three-and-a-half kids who come up from Peoria, as the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood) would always remind us; as well as the 435 Members of Congress and 100 Members of the Senate conducting business here and hearing from all kinds of constituency groups. Yet throughout all of it, the Capitol Hill Police keeps it safe so that the tourists, the business people and those in government and all the employees can enjoy a safe working environment.

Since September 11, we have funded 512 new positions for the Capitol Police. That is a 37 percent increase in a year and a half. The salary account has grown from $113 million in fiscal year 2002 to a requested level of $218 million in fiscal year 2004, so a 93 percent increase in a 2-year period of time for the salary account.

General expenses for the police have climbed from $6.7 million in 2001 to a requested level of $72 million in fiscal year 2004, a 975 percent increase. All this has already been done. This is all in the name of security, and we absolutely have supported it.

In addition, there has been another $167 million that has been appropriated in supplemental funds. This committee, on a bipartisan basis, can take pride that the Capitol Hill Police Department has moved into the 21st century with a 20 percent increase in salaries over the last 2 years and a lot of other changes that are beneficial to the police officers in terms of recruitment, hiring and retention. But the budget request for fiscal year 2004 includes an increase of 25 percent for the salary account and an increase in general expenses of 158 percent.

Increases cannot be sustained at the allocation that we have been given. So at this time we are not going to increase more staffing, as we want them to absorb the growth that we have already given them.

Another issue that we spent a lot of time on in committee is the Capitol Visitors Center. The Capitol Visitors Center is something that started out at one level, and is now at a completely different level in terms of spending. The scope of the job changed because we have put in some additional office spaces and because of some security concerns. Yet at the same time we, on this committee, are very concerned that the spending has gotten out of hand.

We have not put in a $48 million estimation for additional expenses. We understand the other body has done so; but at this time, the House bill has not and we intend to have a lot of discussions about that before we move forward on it. At present, there are still 37 items, according to a recent GAO study, which are unknown in terms of additional expenses. So our committee is trying to get a good grip on the Capitol Visitors Center--but we are very, very concerned about some of the expenses.

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

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of it, but I certainly am proud of it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood).

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

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I say to my friend from Maryland that I believe it is the intent of this committee to conform with whatever the other Federal employees end up getting in terms of COLAs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and say I believe this is a very interesting proposal. I think it is a promising idea and something there is probably a lot of good bipartisan support for.

I have sponsored the Congressional Arts Awards Program in my former district for 10 years and have always been amazed by the talent that is out there amongst 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds, and so I would like to see the brilliance that is there from the 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds as well.

I remember when I had a science project. We wanted to study if there were more protozoa in a stream where water was moving or a pond where it sat still; and we could not conclude anything, but it was very interesting. My sister studied phototropism and geotropism, and I still remember her project as well.

I am always amazed when I go to State science fairs to see the brilliance of these kids and what they are doing. I think this has a lot of potential. It is really an issue that the Committee on House Administration needs to look at, and so I would like to join the gentleman in seeking their guidance and possible action from that committee because we probably would not need to do an appropriations. I am not sure, but we do need to talk to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ney) and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson) and seek their guidance on it.

I believe that Members could use their existing Members representational allowances so we probably would not appropriate more money, but we will see about that. I want to assure the gentleman that I think we can find a way that Members can sponsor such a high school science competition awards program in their district.

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

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) and understand the need for scientific advice to Members of Congress on complex issues, and I support reports that assist Congress with its work.

For this reason, the committee has funded since fiscal year 2002 technology assessments to be completed by the General Accounting Office; and once again, the report accompanying this bill requires the GAO to allocate funding for three studies related to issues facing Congress. With a staff of over 3,200 employees, GAO is in a position to contract for scientific assessments, and an independent expert determined in fiscal year 2002 that the GAO approach and results were sound.

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

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

I wanted to emphasize on behalf of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) and me the great work that our staff has done. Liz Dawson and Tom Forhan have done a great job on this bill. Chuck Turner, Kelly Wade, Jack O'Neill, Tim Aiken have all worked very diligently with us, and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) and I and all the committee members appreciate everything they have done.

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

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to say tonight rather than the usual monologue by one Member, and of course it depends on who the Member is as far as the interest level; and usually if it is your own monologue, you find it very interesting, but the rest of Congress and the American people may not agree, and so the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) of the infamous Blue Dog Caucus has suggested that we have a debate about the budget and spending and other matters of great importance before this House.

With that in mind, I want to yield to the gentleman from Texas and his team, and then our team will speak. Our team looks like the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) and me, and hopefully other Members will be running down here as they see it is our turn at bat.

Mr. Speaker, let me respond on a few points that the previous speaker made. And I wanted to say that, as the gentleman knows, the passage of laws is not always perfect, and it is not always neat, particularly when we are in the majority and have to make some decisions and keep the train moving.

My preference on the budget, incidentally, was the one introduced by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey), H. Con. Res. 95, which actually balanced the budget in 4 years and reduced spending far more than the Republican budget that passed and far more than the Blue Dog budget that passed. And I would point out to my colleague that if we are bringing up past votes, there was not one Democrat who voted for that budget, which was the model in fiscal restraint. So rather than stand here and just point fingers, I want to talk about some of the realities that we are faced with.

I note the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd) is here from the Committee on Appropriations. I think there are six things that help get spending out of control in the House that hurts all of us. One of it is that we do not go to zero-based budgeting. Every year appropriations starts out where they left off last year. This has been the case for many years in the Congress no matter which party is in charge, and I would love to see us go back to zero base when these agencies come in to justify their budgets and ask do they really need it? One of the examples is the western forest fires. When they have a forest fire disaster, and we fund firefighting at a certain level, the next year if we reduce that because we have handled the fire, we get called for cutting forestry money. And the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd) and I have to battle that all the time.

The other thing that I want to mention, the second issue that helps drive up the cost is the matter of mandatory spending, and I would think that is a little bit ironic because we are the U.S. Congress, and things do not have to be mandatory when someone is the one setting the rules. But mandatory is basically the automatic spending, and here is the budget breakdown for the year 1980, and the part in green is the mandatory spending, the Medicaid, Social Security and so forth. And the discretionary, the red part, which is almost 50 percent of the pie, that is the amount that we actually can vote on and squeeze and twist and do different things, whereas this is all kind of on automatic pilot.

As the years have gone by, and that was again 20 years ago, this is fiscal year 2002, and the mandatory portion has gotten bigger and bigger. The discretionary portion, which is the part we can control far greater, it has gotten smaller. And what that means is the part where there is honest debate we control a lot better. The part where everybody is afraid to touch Social Security, except for the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm). I want to commend him on the work that he and the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) have done over the years.

Veterans spending, Medicare spending and so forth, these are all issues that we tend to shy away from in terms of honest debate, but look at these charts just to show the impact of these. Here is the veterans spending since 1995. And I am not making a judgment on if the spending is worthwhile or not. I am just saying this is the reality of that big portion of the chart. Veterans.

Here is Medicaid. That is the healthcare for the poor, straight up during the period since 1995.

Here is Medicare, the healthcare for the seniors. It has gone straight up.

And I would say one of our big problems is if we are really going to get a serious handle on spending, we have got to quit using veterans and senior citizens and the poor as our partisan wedge shield that is going to scare the other party into not touching it, because if we are really serious about this stuff, we have got to get into that.

I have three other points that I wanted to make, but I wanted to introduce the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy).

Does the gentleman want to react to the previous speaker, because I kind of have a track here myself.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, actually I am glad the gentleman mentioned this, because we are the majority party, we take responsibility for governing. There is no question about that. We get the credit if it is good. We get the blame if it is bad. But let us also admit that often the forces that cause more spending and cause us to get away from the budget, which has always driven me up the wall where we passed a budget in March, but we actually passed the final spending bills in the fall of the year, and by then March is ancient history. No one is really worrying about the budget. They just want to go home and cut a deal, and often it is the other body or the White House that causes large increases.

On the topic that the gentleman is talking about, the Republican spending, let me say what the Democrat record is in claiming that nearly every single appropriation bill that we have is not enough money, and I have a copy of some of the amendments that I will get into that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) offers every single time on appropriation bills, and the gentleman knows how this business is. The gentleman wants to say we are the majority to help with the Democrats, but it is not just a matter of numbers. The gentleman has split philosophies in his party. The gentleman has some extremely liberal folks; we have some extremely conservative people. And every time they pick up a group here, they lose some votes here. So as they are trying to pass a bill, they get a net 3, but they swap around 9 or 10 votes, and that is one of the things that drives up spending that I want to talk about that.

Mr. Speaker, I am kind of losing track of the time here, but just to keep it going, I want to yield to the gentleman from Florida, but I also want to be sure that we are not going to shortchange me at the end of the evening.

The gentleman from Texas wants to speak a little bit about

the issue you mentioned about the lobbying groups in town who are out fighting for their little chunk of the pie, because I think his approach to fiscal restraint in the form of tax reform makes some sense. I wanted to make sure the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) has an opportunity to speak.

Mr. Speaker, could you tell us how much time we have left?

Total?

Seven-and-a-half per side.

Why do we not go into debt a little bit and borrow some from the next group? Just a joke, guys. We need to figure out our strategy for our 7 minutes to close.

Mr. Speaker, what I wanted to do with whatever time is left on our side was give 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy), 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith), and 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart); as I understand it, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) does not want any more time. And since you all have about equal time, I know you have some folks that want to speak.

Mr. Speaker, would it be possible for you to tell us at 2-minute intervals? Could you just maybe tap your gavel every 2 minutes?

The gentleman who controls the time has no watch because I went skiing with it this weekend. Does anybody have a watch over there? All right. I have a very expensive watch here. Okay.

Mr. Speaker, people who are watching this are saying, no wonder they cannot get their money straight.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith).

I want to respond real quickly on the tax cuts thing because, as you know, one of big problems we have is controlling spending on a bipartisan basis, and there is a lot of pressure, no matter what it is, there is not enough for education, not enough for seniors, not enough for the poor, not enough for the farmers. You name the group, this town is geared up in that direction.

One great advantage of tax reductions, it is not just a matter of stimulating the economy, we do believe in economic growth and jobs. I think the more money that the people have, and it is not a matter of us affording the tax cuts, it is a matter of can the working folks pay for all the government we are giving them. The more you look at what tax cuts do for the economy, the more jobs that are created.

This is just the Standard and Poor's increase since we passed the latest round of tax reductions. Here is the Dow Jones increase. All these mean more jobs out there, more people paying into the system, and revenues will go up. But the best part is the money does not come to Washington, so we do not spend it.

I think that is something that we will continue to debate about, and I want to say this has made some progress tonight.

I did not know that we had abandoned the pay-go system that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) had mentioned. I want to work with you on that.

The balanced budget amendment, it would be an awkward position for me to sign the discharge petition, but philosophically I do support it. I want to help you get that bill to the floor, and I want to pledge that.

I am glad we are all mutually interested in zero-based budgeting. Let us move in that direction.

Another issue, if we could get away from just the terminology ``mandatory spending'' and say, hey, that is automatic, we are too lazy to debate it year in and year out, nothing is mandatory for the U.S. Congress. That might be something that we can work together on.

The gentleman extended this debate invitation originally. Let me right here extend one to you, and let us schedule for next week or whenever we can do it.

With that, I yield back and thank the gentlemen for all participating.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Appropriations have until midnight, July 3, 2003, to file a privileged report, making appropriations for the Legislative Branch for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry. May I use the name of a Senator, a sitting Senator in attributing a quote to him or her?

Mr. Speaker, today we are going to be working on the intelligence bill, probably voting on it later this week; and we are going to be hearing a lot from the left in this Chamber that we have not located weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and somehow the President is at fault. I just wanted to remind my colleagues what some of their Democrat Members in the other body said.

Here is a Member from Indiana, October 3, 2002: ``Saddam Hussein possesses chemical, biological weapons and, if events are allowed to run their own course, will some day possess nuclear weapons.''

Here is another Senator from California, a woman. My colleagues get the choice which of the two: ``I believe that Saddam Hussein rules by terror and has squirreled away stores of biological and chemical weapons.'' That was October 10, 2002.

Here is a Senator from West Virginia, one with a very common name: ``The people of the United States and the rest of the world are at risk as long as Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction,'' March 18, 2003.

And here is another one from a Senator from Maryland: ``Over the last 12 years he's ignored U.N. resolutions and embargoes and has illegal chemical and biological weapons . . .'' That was March 18, 2003.

Many, many leading Democrat liberals were in support of our going into Iraq in the name of weapons of mass destruction. I just want our colleagues to keep that in mind as we debate this bill today.

Mr. Speaker, it is time to revise and reform Medicare. It is time to move us away from a government oriented, a Soviet model of socialism approach to health care for our senior citizens. We need a program that is light, a program that is solid, a program that is efficient, not one that is heavy with burdensome bureaucratic red tape.

We need to have a prescription drug benefit. We need to have one that does not just blanket us all with a brand new entitlement, one that does not necessarily worry about Ross Perots or some retiree from General Motors who already is getting it anyhow. But we need to help the widow out there who is choosing between tamoxifen for her breast cancer and rent for her home.

We want to help people stay independent. In 1965, when Medicare was conceived, the miracle drugs that are available to our seniors were not out there. They were not foreseen. Now we have drugs that enhance our life-style, that make us live longer and healthier and in less pain, and Medicare needs to adjust to this. That is what this bill is about that we will be voting on this week.

I am confident that we can take the best ideas of Democrat Party, the Republican Party, the Independents and move it out of this body, combine it with those in the other body and come up with a plan that is best for our seniors.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, is it not true that the Democrats did not pass a budget last year, and during the period of time after 9/11 when we were trying to fund the troops and the war on terrorism, homeland and internationally, that the Democrats on the Committee on Appropriations, bill after bill, insisted on more spending, and in fact offered amendments on every appropriations subcommittee to increase spending; and now they are coming out here as fiscal conservatives. It seems there is a little tap dance going on that is difficult to follow.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

I want to say, first of all, this door is wide open on the Republican side of the House. If the Democrats want to join us in holding the line on appropriations spending, we welcome you. If you want to join us in cracking down on waste, fraud, and abuse in government, we welcome you. If you want to join us in eliminating some duplication in government programs, we welcome you. And I hope that the Blue Dogs will work with us and anybody else over there who will.

On this issue, which is one of expanding welfare, we are trying to work with you. You know you voted against welfare reform, and you know it worked. There were 14 million people on welfare when we passed welfare reform. President Clinton signed it. So we can claim bipartisanship, even though the majority of the House Democrats voted against it. Welfare reform has been a success. Nine million people are not on welfare that used to be on welfare.

Now we still have 5 million; that is too many people. It may be your way

of giving them an additional benefit, and maybe this is a good idea. It is not a tax rebate because you do not get a rebate on a tax that you do not pay. I know a lot of my colleagues will say, well, they do pay sales tax and so forth; that is true, but that is disingenuous on your part. As my colleagues know, we are talking about income taxes, and those folks do not pay income taxes.

Now, that being the case, and I will yield to my friend from Texas; that being the case, let me say this. There is a guy out there, as the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Weller) said, he is a policeman, his wife is a teacher. He shops at Wal-Mart for Christmas. He goes to Home Depot on Saturdays to pick up a hammer and some two-by-fours to do a little home repair. When his car needs tires, he goes out and gets three different quotes for them. He owes on his house. He owes on one of his cars. The other car is paid for because it is 8 years old. He scrimps, he saves to get his kids into college. His son goes off to war. They are the first in standing up for the country.

It is very difficult for that guy to get any tax credit because he falls through the cracks in this country. The combined income is $125,000. This gives him eligibility for that $1,000 tax credit. And I am a believer that the more money we put in his pocket, the more money he is going to spend on the economy. When he spends, small businesses expand. When they expand, more jobs are created, more jobs are created, and less people are on public assistance, more people go to work, more people are paying into the system rather than taking out of it. I believe that tax reductions actually increase revenues. They are good for jobs; they are good for the economy. That is why I am going to support this.

Mr. Speaker, if I have time remaining for my friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), I yield.

Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman cannot use pages as props for his speech. They can be of assistance in holding the sign, but they cannot be referred to as props in the manner in which my friend, the gentleman from Mississippi, has just done.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is right. He is using the pages in an incorrect manner.