Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, this is disappointing, disappointing that the House has had to resort to a martial law to further stifle the voices of those of us in the minority who represent nearly half the American people.

We have had a debate on this rule. I have listened to the debate. I even participated in part of the debate and listened to my colleagues in the majority complain about the fact that we spent 3 or 4 hours the other day trying to debate a measure that we were not going to have much time to debate on because we didn't have a committee process, it was going to be brought to the House under a closed rule. And my colleagues pulled the bill and have been whining now for days that we spent 3 or 4 hours doing dilatory tactics.

Now, some of you were here in 1998 when the Ag appropriations bill was on the floor of the House, and that bill was held up for 9 hours by the then minority over the fact that there was an amendment that a Member wanted to have heard on the Foreign Operations bill. It just so happened it was the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) who wanted an abortion amendment on the Foreign Operations bill and wasn't sure she was going to be able to get her amendment; and, as a result, she and some of her colleagues held up the bill with dilatory tactics for 9 hours.

Now, who were those Members who held that bill for 9 hours on this floor?

It was the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), it was the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), it was the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), and it was who is now the distinguished Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi.

Nine hours of dilatory tactics over 3 days. So what did the Republican majority do? They went to the Rules Committee, and they got a rule. And do you know what they did in the rule? They told all Members any amendment that is filed will be made in order under the rule, and we came back to the floor and we spent 9 hours debating every amendment that Members wanted to offer, and we completed the bill.

Now, if you want to bring a rule out here, at least allow us to be heard, at least allow us to participate, at least allow the 202 of us on this side of the aisle to represent the millions of American people that have sent us here to do their work.

All I have asked and all my colleagues have asked all year is for fairness. All we want is fairness. I know how you wanted to be treated when you were in the minority. I say to my colleagues on the both sides of the aisle we have both been in a minority. We both know what it is like to not have many tools at your disposal. I, when I was chairing the Education and Workforce Committee, made sure that all of our members were treated fairly and treated honestly; and I think my work with the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) demonstrates that, while we had differences, we had a very fair process.

I understand that over the last 12 years some of my predecessors may have handled, may have handled, this floor in a less than delicate way. Over the last several years, my colleagues in the majority now complained that we

ought to have a more fair and open process here. I agreed with many of you, and you know it. And all I am asking for on behalf of the Republican Members, the minority Members here, is to be treated fairly and honestly.

The rule that we have before us that shuts us down is unfair, it's unwise, it's undemocratic, and it does not deserve the support of any Member in this House.

Let me thank my colleague from Texas for yielding, and say to my colleagues, the issue of competitiveness is an important issue in America. We are competing with countries all over the world and, as a result, real competition brings out the best in all of us.

When I look at the bill that we have before us, it really shows me everything that is wrong with Washington. This bill left the House with a $23 billion authorization. It comes back with a $43 billion authorization, creating 40 new programs.

Now, these are well-intentioned programs. I am sure there are some very good things in this bill. But when you begin to think about 40 new programs that are being authorized, there is no spending available for these. We authorize all kinds of bills, but then we have to go find the money to pay for them.

We know what the appropriations process is like, and I will just point out one tiny example. There are 208 math and science programs that are operated by 13 Federal agencies; 208 math and science programs, 13 different agencies. And guess what we do in this bill. We create five or six new ones.

Now, I have been trying to get my arms around this for about the last 5 years. Why can't we find a way to take these programs and the money that we are spending on them and try to do some coordinated approach that really will produce more math and science majors? That is not what we do. We just keep adding new programs. It happened last year. It is going to happen again this year.

It just reminds me of the old adage: If you throw enough mud against the wall, some of it is sure to stick. In Washington, that adage has been turned around: If you throw enough money at the wall, some of it is bound to stick. But at the end of the day I don't think that is what the American taxpayers want us to do. I think they want us to do things that pass the straight-face test. And adding five more or six more math and science programs to the 208 that we have makes no sense to me at this time.

If we are serious about competitiveness and serious about allowing our manufacturers and our companies, our software companies and others in our country to be able to compete, let's look at the regulatory burden that we put on our companies that doesn't exist around the world. We regulate things until it can't hardly breathe, and we wonder why our companies can't compete as well around the world.

Why don't we talk about extending and making permanent the tax cuts, giving companies in America certainty about the reasons to invest in the American economy, reasons to invest in their own future? And if we were to make those tax cuts permanent, people would have some feeling and some certainty about what the tax regime is going to be in our country so that we can in fact allow them to put greater investment here.

What about tort reform? Nowhere in the world do our companies get beat up by the courts and the trial lawyers and no place any more than here in America. If we want to be able to compete around the world, if we want to bring the cost of doing business down, why don't we do something about tort reform?

Let's talk about expanding free trade and markets around the world. We have got three or four trade bills that are laying around here languishing for countries in Central and South America. Again, we want to be competitive, but why don't we help work with countries around the world to reduce those barriers so that we have more markets for our companies to go out and compete in?

And, at the end of the day, if we are serious about being able to compete in a worldwide market, we have got to do something about educating our children. I think most of us that are here today know that we educate about half of America's kids. Maybe a little more than half get a high school diploma. Some of them can't read it. But the fact is that we have never been serious in this country about providing all of America's children a chance for a decent education.

And that doesn't mean that Washington has to drive all of it. But we as a country, as a Nation, need to get serious about finding ways to give every person in this country a chance at a good education. Because if we educate more of America's kids, we will have more math teachers, we will have more scientists, we will have more engineers, we will have more teachers. But we can't do that if we don't get serious about improving our schools and making sure that all kids have a chance.

This bill creates a lot of Washington bureaucracies and a lot of Washington bureaucrats, and the only thing competitive about this bill will be the competition for office space created by all the new bureaucrats that will be employed as a result of this bill.

I know there are some good things in this bill, and I know my colleagues worked hard at it. But at the end of the day, this looks too much to me like Washington as usual and, as a result, I am unable to support this bill.

I object.

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I move to adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, let me thank my colleague for yielding.

Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, the State Children's Health Insurance Program was created 10 years ago by a Republican Congress, along with our Democrat colleagues and a Democrat President. It clearly was a very bipartisan process from the beginning, and as we reauthorize this important program that Republicans, Democrats, the White House, everyone supports, I am saddened that we are here today with a very partisan bill done in a very partisan way.

I thought in this reauthorization process, I know on our side, Mr. Barton, Mr. McCrery, their respective committees, wanted to work with our Democrat colleagues to develop a bill that we could all vote for. But that process never even got started. While there may have been some hearings in the Ways and Means Committee on this bill, there were no hearings in the Energy and Commerce Committee. We were presented with a 488-page bill the night before the markup. Now we have brought this to the floor without a markup in committee, no amendments allowed to be offered by the minority and a limited time for debate. This saddens me and disappoints me. It did not have to be this way.

The result of this flawed process is a bill that expands government- run health care beyond anything that any one of us could have imagined over the last 10 years. I really do believe that Republicans and Democrats can work together to reauthorize this program in a way that will receive bipartisan support.

Last November, the American people sent us a message here in Congress, but I don't think that message was, ``I want you to cut my Medicare and I want you to raise taxes. I did not want you to raise my taxes.''

When you look at the bill that we have before us, we have $193 billion worth of cuts to Medicare, a program to provide health insurance for our seniors. We are going to cut this $193 billion over 10 years, and we are going to raise tobacco taxes, which affects the poorest of America's citizens, and lay more of this tax burden on their backs.

In my district alone, some 14,267 seniors are going to have their Medicare costs increased, and about 73 percent of that number are likely to lose their Medicare Advantage Program altogether.

That is not what the voters sent us here to do; and, believe me, the seniors in my district who take advantage of this very valuable program don't want to lose their benefits which will result from the passage of this bill.

And so I say to my colleagues, we have a flawed bill on the floor today; and the flawed bill is the result of a flawed process. As I said last night to all of my colleagues, we represent nearly half of the American people. We have a right to be heard. We have a right to participate. And through the process over the last couple of weeks we have been denied the right to be involved in the process, denied the right today to be involved in trying to amend the bill to a point where we can have a bipartisan product to send to the other body. I am disappointed by that.

Later today, Republicans will offer a motion to recommit this bill, the only option that we have. And that motion to recommit will do this: It will reauthorize the SCHIP program for 1 year. There will be no Medicare cuts involved in this program, no benefits will go to illegal immigrants, and we will see to that in the motion to recommit.

Fourthly, it will have a sense of the Congress that this bill should go back to the committee and, over the course of the next year, have the Republicans and Democrats on the respective committees work together to produce a bipartisan product that the President can sign into law. I think that is a responsible course of action, given what we have dealt with here over the last couple of weeks.

I would ask my colleagues to reject the underlying bill and vote for the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, our Nation faces an increased threat of a terrorist attack, and yet, Members on both sides of the aisle are well aware of a problem with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. There is a giant loophole that handcuffs the ability of our Nation and our intelligence services to gather the information that would better protect the American people and our allies around the world.

Congress has known about this issue over the last 3 or 4 months, and yet the majority has refused to bring that issue to this floor.

I encourage all of my colleagues to insist that before we leave here for the August district work period, that Congress deal with FISA modernization and close this terrorist loophole so we can better protect the American people.

Will the gentleman yield?

I appreciate my colleague yielding.

There is no question that there was an agreement between Mr. Hoyer, Mr. Obey and myself to try to facilitate the movement of the appropriation process. During the time in the minority, the Democrats worked with us to facilitate that process; and over the course of the last 4 or 5 weeks I think that it has worked reasonably well. Maybe not to everyone's satisfaction, but reasonably well.

What's happened here is that we have the greatest expansion of government-run health care about to go out to the floor, where there's never been a legislative hearing in the Energy and Commerce Committee on this issue. The bill has not gone through committee. We're about, as the minority, about to have this thrust upon us, a 488-page bill that was in the committee that no one ever really had a chance to read; and to bring this in such a rush in the last week has caused concern amongst members in our caucus from every wing of our caucus.

Now I understand that the gentleman would prefer that we move the appropriations process quickly. But there was a discussion all of last year and the year before and a lot of promises made earlier this year about having a more open House, allowing Members the opportunity to debate, allowing the opportunity for the Members to bring amendments to the floor; and I and my colleagues on our side are very disappointed that not only have not all of those promises been kept, that we've actually regressed beyond the time that we were in the majority. And so it is unfortunate that we find ourselves at this spot. All that we've asked, all year, is to be treated fairly.

And I would say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, I understand that we have differences. I'm a big believer that we ought to allow the House to work its will. But, at the end of the day, for us to work our will and for other Members to work their will, there needs to be more open debate. There needs to be more opportunities for amendments. And I will say, from the point of view of the minority, all we're asking is to be treated fairly.

In 1995, when we took the majority for the first time in 40 years, some of my colleagues in the Republican leadership wanted to treat the minority, the new minority the way we had been treated. I argued that we should never do that, that we should treat the minority the way we asked to be treated. And over the course of, again, the last several years, you have made your case about how you wanted to be treated and how the minority should be treated. You made it very clear.

We're there. And I think all we're asking, all we're asking is that you treat us the way you wanted to be treated. And if that, in fact, is the case, we can do our work. We can do what the American people sent us here to do. But we can't do it when our voices are stifled and our constituents are not allowed to be represented with their views on the floor of this House.

So I regret that it has come to this. It is going to be a tough week, but we are not going to sit here representing nearly half the American people and not allow their voices to be heard.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

We will be happy to work with you and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee on a unanimous consent request for both the Ag appropriations bill and the Defense appropriation bill. We just want some understanding that there is going to be ample time for debate on the SCHIP bill that we expect to show up sometime this week. If we can agree on 2 or 3 hours of debate on the SCHIP bill, we will be more than happy to facilitate this process.

Our concern, based on what we have seen of the schedule, is that there was going to be very little debate on the SCHIP bill. That is why Members felt compelled, the need to come down and talk about it today on this bill. But we can work this out. I will just throw that out there for the gentleman's consideration.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Let me first congratulate Mr. Peterson and Mr. Goodlatte and the bipartisan group of members on the Ag Committee who have brought this bill to the floor.

Unfortunately, the several tax increases contained in the bill I think are problematic, and we will deal with that later in this process.

But the amendment that I bring to the floor today aims to fix a problem that has been identified by the administration and others but has not been addressed in the bill that we have before us. This bill would extend a policy that permits farmers to receive loan deficiency payments based on a daily posted county price, and I think that would allow a mistake to continue.

If we are going to continue loan deficiency payments, I think we need to address the situation that allows farmers to lock in an LDP when prices are low and then to sell that crop when prices are high. LDPs are a valuable tool for farmers, and in order to preserve this valuable tool, we need to fix this problem.

Loan deficiency payments enable farmers to receive financing early in the harvest season, preventing farmers from forfeiting their crops to the government and allow commodities to be marketed in response to market demand. As I said, they are a valuable tool, and if we do not preserve their integrity, I think they are likely to blow up and to be eliminated entirely.

This amendment would replace the daily posted county price with a monthly posted county price. The monthly PCP would be the average of five daily PCPs on preset days during the previous month, taking out the high price and the low price for that month. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns included this provision in his farm bill recommendations.

The problems with calculating LDPs based on the daily posted county price were highlighted in the days after Hurricane Katrina. Because of the hurricane, transport of grain on the Mississippi River was stopped for several days. This caused a short-term precipitous drop in market prices which then triggered a number of farmers to go in and trigger their LDP payments. The farmers who locked in these artificially low LDPs were simply using the program to increase payments that they received from the government.

This was not the purpose of the marketing loan program or the LDP program. Marketing loans and LDPs are intended to allow farmers to receive financing early in the harvest season to allow commodities to be marketed in response to demand.

If we want to increase subsidies for farmers, let's be honest about it. If we allow the marketing loan program and LDPs to continue to be used in this manner, we'll be undermining their integrity by allowing them to game a pricing system that reacts to daily natural disasters.

I think supporting a good farm policy is important, but exploiting catastrophic natural disasters cannot stand. So I believe we need to make this change if we're going to preserve LDPs and the integrity of our good farm policy.

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

Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of our time.

In the days after Katrina, and just several days after Katrina, when we had the precipitous drop in prices, it cost the Federal Government $3.5 billion in extra LDP payments. So what we're talking about here is sound agricultural policy and sound policy with regard to America's taxpayers.

Think about the fairness of the farmer who sold his crop the day before Katrina. Think about what he felt like when several days later his fellow farmers ended up with hundreds of thousands of dollars more in extra benefits from the government because they just happened to sell a day or two before Hurricane Katrina hit.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Reclaiming my time, I served for the last 17 years with Mr. Peterson on the Ag Committee. I'm on leave, and I know all my colleagues on the Ag Committee are glad that I'm on leave. But the fact is that marketing loans and loan deficiency payments were there to facilitate the marketing of a crop. They weren't there to make or set up a system to allow or to put farmers in a position where they become day traders, and the current system does, in fact, allow that.

So instead of looking at a daily posted county price, if you looked at a monthly posted county price where you take out the high for the month and the low for the month and pick 5 days, you've got a fair price for all farmers. You've got a fair system that prevents people from gaming the system because of some abnormality in the market that may occur on one or two days.

This is a commonsense amendment. I would urge my colleagues to adopt it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, let me thank my colleague for yielding, and I rise today to support the gentleman's amendment.

The bill before us spends some $10 billion more than the President requested, $7 billion more than what this bill spent last year. And what the gentleman seeks to do is reduce the overall amount of spending in this bill to the level we spent last year.

Now, our job as Members of Congress is to make decisions, decisions about spending, and when we keep increasing spending and increasing spending, guess what? There's no reason to make a decision. We don't have to make the tough choices because we just keep spending more.

Now, this bill is some $7 billion more than we spent last year. This will be on top of the bills that we've already spent this year, spending some 10 to $12 billion more than the President asked for and above last year's levels.

On top of that, there's $6 billion of additional spending that was in the continuing resolution in February; $17 billion more in the supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Katrina, over and above what was needed in those theaters. And the appropriation process is not finished yet.

What's happening here is we're continuing to spend more. We've got the largest tax increase in American history coming, and I thought we were here to ensure that our kids and their kids had a better chance in life than what we had. I mean, every generation of Americans has been proud of the fact that they left the country and left opportunities for our children and their children that were better than what we had. And I think it's our obligation to make sure that our kids have a better chance at the American Dream than what we had.

But we're not doing that. We're mortgaging our children's future by continuing to raise taxes and increase spending. We've done it all year, and we're not even to the end of the year yet. Now we're only in July and we've got numbers that will add up to close to $100 billion of additional spending. How much is enough? How much is enough?

I think that the gentleman's amendment is a good amendment, just to bring the spending level in this bill down to last year's level, and let's make the tough choices that the American people sent us here to make.

Mr. Speaker, let me thank my colleague from California for yielding and thank all of the Members for what has really been a very serious debate about our efforts in Iraq.

When we think about what we went through this past spring, the fight over funding our troops that went on for about 112 days here in the House, I had thought that we had come to some resolution. Forty-eight days ago we sent to the President of the United States a bill passed by this House, passed by the Senate and signed into law that would fund our troops through the end of September.

That same bill, we asked General Petraeus to report back to the Congress on July 15 his interim report and asked him to give a more complete report by September 15 of this year. And here we are some 48 days later saying, we give up.

One can only imagine why this bill is on the floor today. If Members were serious about this bill, we would have seen it come through committee, come through the Rules Committee. No, no, this bill showed up Tuesday night about 9 o'clock out of thin air that we were going to have this debate this week. One can only look at what is happening on the floor of the House and describe it as a partisan political stunt, because that is exactly what it is.

This House voted to support our troops, to fund our troops, and to fund our effort in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And here we are, once again, back here posing for holy pictures, as our good friend from Wisconsin would say.

This bill that we have before us makes our troops pawns in a partisan political battle. I don't think that is what anyone wants. I think this bill on the floor today undermines General Petraeus and undermines the mission that he has to help make Iraq and America safe.

So what we have here is not leadership; it is negligence. My colleague, the majority leader, my friend from Maryland, and the Speaker of the House both say we want to fight the terrorists; we want to fight them where they are. Well, who is our biggest enemy in

Iraq today? Who is the biggest fight that we have in Iraq today? It is al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is losing, and that is why we see the bigger bombs going off and the bigger demonstrations and the bigger casualties, because they are losing and trying to influence public opinion here in the United States.

But what surprises me about what we are doing here today is the willful ignoring of the consequences of failure in Iraq. If we fail in Iraq, we know what happens, we make America less safe. We know that we will provide a safe haven for al Qaeda to operate around the world out of their new safe haven that they will have in Iraq. We will destabilize the Middle East, we will endanger Israel. We will embolden the Iranians even more than they have already been emboldened, and we will allow al Qaeda to be stronger and to be able to recruit more people to kill Americans and our allies around the world. These are serious consequences for the American people and our allies around the world, and we can't shrink from our responsibility here.

General Petraeus is making progress. Not as much progress as we would all like for him to make, but he is making progress on the ground, as he reported in the report that came out today. The Iraqi government has made some progress. Not nearly enough, but to just pull the rug out from under General Petraeus, to pull the rug out from under our troops that are in Iraq fighting for our freedom and fighting for the freedom of the Iraqi people at this moment is absolutely the most negligent action that I have seen this House take yet on this issue.

Why can't we sit back and allow General Petraeus's plan to have a chance to succeed? Why can't we wait until September 15, as we had all agreed, for his final report to come forward and to assess the progress that is being made and what, if any, new direction ought to be taken?

I believe, and I think the American people believe, that we ought to allow the generals on the ground in Iraq to make those suggestions to us and not sit back and let politicians here in Washington make decisions about our future and about our safety.

But while we are sitting here debating this meaningless bill that we have before us, we could be acting on serious legislation to help make America safer. There is a giant loophole in the terrorist surveillance program that means that activity between terrorists overseas cannot be acted upon and cannot be listened to by this government. There is information that would help make America safe, that would bring more terrorists to justice; information that is being left on the table because of partisan political games in this House. Why don't we bring the FISA modernization bill to this floor? Why don't we give the NSA the terrorist surveillance program and other agencies the ability to track these terrorist activities and these terrorist phone calls and information movement that we know today that we can't touch and we can't use?

We all know through reports over the last couple of days that al Qaeda has increased in its strength. We also know from news reports over the last couple of days that there has been increasing chatter among terrorists around the world. And yet here we are debating a meaningless bill that undermines our troops, ignoring the fact that there is information that could help keep America safer that we can't touch because this House will not act. I think that is negligent, and I think it is irresponsible.

I would urge my colleagues to let's let General Petraeus and the troops have a chance to succeed. Let's help them in their mission to help make Iraq safer and to make America safer, and the way we do that is to take this bill that we have before us and defeat it.

Let me thank my colleague from Indiana for yielding, and thank he and his colleagues who have introduced this amendment for their work.

All of this talk about bringing back the fairness doctrine caused me to think about the whole idea of the Federal Communications Commission, set up in the 1930s to regulate the air waves and the spectrum that's out there so that we didn't have two radio stations on the same wave. This was set up in the 1930s.

And then in the 1940s we got into the idea that, well, there aren't that many options in TV and radio, and so maybe we ought to make sure that all of them, in terms of what they say, is fair.

Well, that might have been helpful in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s, but my goodness, we're in the 21st century, where people get their news from thousands of different sources. It could be radio, from hundreds and hundreds of radio stations. It could be from TV, where we now have hundreds and hundreds of stations. It could be from the Internet. It could be from the newspapers. There's lots of places for people to get their news.

And at the end of the day, as I think about the fairness doctrine, I think about those of us in Congress. We get elected based on our constituents and what we're for and what we're against, whether they like us or they don't like us. And if they like us, they might vote for us again. And if they don't like us, guess what, they get to go punch the ballot for somebody else.

Well, when it comes to the issue of the fairness doctrine, when we're dealing with radio, they can go a lot of different places. And I think that the best way is to let the judgment of the American people decide. And they can decide with their finger. They can turn it off or they can turn it on. They can change channels or they can decide to go to their computer and read it on the Internet.

And the idea that people are calling for the fairness doctrine to be called back reminds me, once again, of why I came here. I came here because I thought government was too big, it spent too much, and no one was holding the government accountable.

Let's trust the American people to do what they think is best. Their finger can make all the decisions, all that they need to make on their own behalf. Let's trust them to do the right thing.

Let me thank my colleague from Ohio for yielding, and let me thank him for bringing this amendment to the floor.

All this amendment says is that we are going to reduce the level of spending in this bill to last year's level. It's overdoing. We are not whacking away

at everything, and I think that the gentleman has a very good point. I do that because excessive spending makes it more difficult for us to balance the Federal budget.

It takes money away from our children and our grandchildren. An across-the-board cut is another way of being fair and simple, but it gets us back to last year's level.

Now, the spending in these appropriations bills is one issue. But let's make sure we review the bidding on what's happened here thus far this year. In February, when the supplemental spending bill came through, the CR to fund the government for this year came through here, it had $6 billion of spending over and above the President's level.

And then we had the budget come through with an additional $20 billion worth of domestic discretionary spending included in it.

And then just last month we had the supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Katrina that had an additional $17 billion over and above what the President has asked for.

If you look at all of that, $1.1 billion in the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill that's already passed, another $1.9 billion in this bill, you begin to add all this up, and it's real money. And at some point, somebody has to pay for it. And that's the real crux of the issue here.

Most of us came here to make sure that we had a government that was affordable, so that we could keep the American Dream alive for our kids and theirs. And the more that we spend and the more that we mortgage their future, the harder it is for them to have the same chances in life that many of us have had.

And if the spending that we've talked about isn't bad enough, if you look at the budget that my friends across the aisle passed last spring, there's no entitlement reform. My colleague, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Obey, will soon rise and talk about the $4 billion or $4 trillion worth of debt that's accumulated over the last 6 years.

We know that we have to deal with entitlements. I'm trying to help you give your speech, Mr. Obey. We have to deal with entitlements. Over the course of the 12 years that Republicans ran the House, we dealt with entitlements some three times, not as often as we should have, not as aggressively as we should have.

But we have made promises to ourselves, those of us who are baby boomers, promises that our kids and our grandkids can't afford. And at some point we, as responsible stewards of our government, need to grab a hold of these entitlements and begin to change them.

Several years ago we made a modest effort, some $40 billion in entitlement reductions over 5 years, a step in the right direction. But to bring a budget out here that says we're not going to deal with entitlements for the next 5 years, I think, is totally irresponsible. And so if we're serious about making sure that our kids and their kids have a real chance at the American Dream, we've got to say no.

The American people sent us here to make decisions about how to best spend their money. And if we just keep adding more money, guess what? We never have to make a decision. That's not what the American people expect of us. They expect of us to have a government that's affordable, that's accountable, and something that they can afford in their family budget.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the retirement of Fred Worth, a History and Government teacher at Miami East High School in Miami County, Ohio, and to express my appreciation for his dedication and commitment to the youth of our Nation.

For the last 30 years, Fred has contributed his time and his talents to the betterment of so many young adults and for this I offer him my utmost congratulations and thanks. Whether it is coaching baseball, volunteering at St. Patrick's Church or teaching in the classroom, his students and players exhibit the best of our younger generations. I know many of Fred's former students and players have blossomed into wonderful adults and he's played a big part in shaping their character.

I'm proud to call Fred my friend and for that I express my most sincere gratitude. His leadership will be missed, but the footprint he leaves will inspire many to dream big, reach high and achieve great things.

I consider it an honor to represent Fred in Congress and I wish him and his wife Janet a long, happy and healthy retirement.

Mr. Chairman, let me thank my colleague for yielding.

We are having a debate here about whether we should cut spending. Most American families go through a process of trying to decide what it is they can afford in their family budget. The American people send us here to make the same kind of decisions. But when we just add spending and add spending and add spending, which we have done all year, guess what, we don't have to make decisions.

That is exactly what is happening here. The majority wants to denigrate this amendment because they think it is frivolous. They think it is an across-the-board 1 percent cut; you don't have to think.

The point I am trying to make and my colleagues are trying to make, we are sent here to make decisions; and if the majority isn't going to make decisions, we are going to try to make the decisions easier. Let's just have a 1 percent across-the-board cut, bring this budget in line with what the President requested on behalf of the American people.

I have been hearing all year from my friends on the other side that we heard the electorate and we heard the message they sent to us. Well, I have to tell you that one of the messages they sent to us is that we here in Congress need to be more fiscally responsible.

We are going to have a debate over spending all summer. We are going to have a debate over spending all fall. Because, at some point, how much government do we need? How much of the American family budget to we need to take in taxes?

I think my colleague has a very good amendment here. I urge my colleagues to support the gentleman's amendment.

I appreciate my colleague for yielding and I appreciate the work he is doing bringing this amendment to the floor.

I came to Washington 17 years ago because I thought government was too big, I thought it spent too much and didn't think that it was being held accountable. And the reason I am here this afternoon on this bill is because this amendment offered by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Campbell will reduce the overall spending level in this bill to the President's request.

The President submitted a budget back in January that said we can balance the budget over the next 5 years without raising taxes. But to do that, it's dependent upon us holding the line on spending. Even at the President's level, there is an increase over last year, and I believe that bringing the level of spending down in this bill to what the President requested puts this bill in a position to actually move through the process and become law.

If you looked over the course of this year, our friends on the other side of the aisle have a budget that will balance over the next 5 years, but with the largest tax increase in American history. If we want to review the bidding on spending here in Washington this year, you go back to February with a CR that was some $6 billion over the President's request. And then we can look at the supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Katrina and other things that was $17 billion over the President's request. And now if we look at the appropriations process that we're in the midst of, we have an additional $20 billion over and above where the President is.

At the end of the day, the American people want to keep more of the money that they earn and want to send less of that money here to Washington. And I think to the extent we can hold the line on spending, we're protecting the taxpayers, protecting their wallets.

I think this is a modest amendment that reduces the spending in this bill by some $1.13 billion, it's the right move, and our colleagues ought to support the amendment.

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding.

The purpose of this remedy, a point of order on consideration of the conference report, is to deal with earmarks that may have not been considered by the House or the Senate, what we have come to term airdropped earmarks. There are cases where over the length of the consideration of an appropriation bill in the House and the Senate, circumstances may change and there may be a reason to put an earmark, if you will, in an appropriation. And to preserve the right for all Members to consider these earmarks, having the point of order on the consideration of the appropriation bill, we believed, was an appropriate way for any Member to bring to light one of these earmarks. There is 10 minutes of debate on each side, and then the House can decide whether to proceed with the consideration of the conference report or not.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield further, we went through a great debate last year over this issue. As we all know, we have work to do, and to allow debate on a conference report on every individual issue, you get into a ping-pong effect of the House objecting to one issue, a Senate issue, we could send it over there, they would send it back, we would never get the bill finished.

The idea behind the point of order on the conference report is to bring this issue to light, and if you bring an issue to light that is of such substance, the House may in fact vote to sustain the gentleman's point of order and there is no consideration of the conference report.

But we have never been able to find a way to get to each particular item in a conference report, as the gentleman has suggested.

If the gentleman from Kentucky will yield further, the agreement that we have come to with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that for 10 of the 12 appropriations bills, the earmarks will in fact be listed.

Traditionally, the Homeland Security appropriation bill has had very, very few earmarks in it. It won't be like you have to go through a whole laundry list to determine what is in it. Secondly, the bill that we expect to be before us tomorrow, the Military Quality-of-Life Veterans bill, it also has earmarks, but almost all of them have been scrubbed by the Department of Defense, and I think there has been an understanding that, given the time constraints, that these two bills would in fact move without earmarks but that the next 10 bills would have earmarks included in them.

If the gentleman would yield, if you raise a point of order on the consideration of the conference report and the House agrees with your point of order, the consideration of the conference report is stopped and what in real terms happens is the conference report goes back to conference where the issue that was brought to light is dealt with.

There are a lot of ways to deal with, let's say in your case, what you would call an objectionable earmark by bringing that point of order and having the House's support. Basically it goes back and you begin to deal with it.

This is precisely the rule that was adopted by the House last September.

I appreciate the gentleman yielding. And, yes, we on both sides of the aisle over the last number of years, the appropriators have worked through a unanimous-consent request to provide for the consideration of a lot of these bills, under an open rule. We still have an open rule. But the agreement has been, over the past several years, that we work through that process with the Members to make sure that Members have all the time they need to debate their amendment. But, again, it's a unanimous-consent agreement, which means unanimous.

Unanimous means unanimous.

But I think both sides have agreed that we will work with our Members to ensure that they have the right to offer their amendments, that we try to come to some agreements on time so that the process can move along. But that does not mean that we are interested at all in infringing on any Member's right to offer their amendment.

But I do believe that Members on both sides of the aisle want to see this process move along, and that's why it is under consideration for each of these bills that there would be some unanimous-consent agreement that we would come to.

The rule change that has been discussed earlier on the point of order on the consideration of an appropriation conference report with regard to airdropped earmarks is expected to be offered to the House under unanimous consent agreement on Monday evening.

If the gentleman would yield?

I appreciate the gentleman yielding because we have come to an agreement amongst us. The rule we are talking about putting in place is identical to what we had last year on the consideration of a conference report that has earmarks in it that had not been considered by the House or the Senate. And that rule change will be proffered, we believe, on Monday evening by the majority leader.

Would the gentleman yield?

The gentleman from Maryland, the majority leader, has given me his word. The gentleman and I have a long relationship. I have not one doubt that Monday evening this unanimous consent agreement will be entered into.

As soon as I catch my breath, I will be happy to give you one.

The agreement we have reached with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle is intended to preserve every Member's right to make additions, to make changes, to offer amendments to the bill. I think, how can I best describe this, that over the course of at least the last two or three years that I'm aware of, we've brought these bills to the floor under an open rule, and there have been bipartisan agreements, the unanimous-consent agreements, on how we're going to proceed. And the agreement that we have is basically to uphold what we've done in the past few Congresses.

And so as the gentleman pointed out, what we've agreed to is generally, the time limits, times that were used in the past, but it's general. We don't know what these bills look like, some of them yet. We're not sure what they may contain, and so I felt constrained in coming to an agreement on a specific time limit because we haven't seen the bills, but I think there are enough of us in this Chamber who've worked together, who trust each other to be able to come to a unanimous-consent agreement that gets unanimous consent because that's how it works.

I appreciate my colleague for yielding. Unanimous consent means unanimous consent. It's the commitment on the part of myself and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to work with our respective Members to make sure that every Member's needs are met in the unanimous consent agreements.

Now, we will be happy to work with the gentleman on his issues as we go through these bills. It's not intended to deny any Member's right to offer an amendment here on the floor.