Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I was not going to speak on this amendment. I was somewhat encouraged by the silence on the other side of the aisle when it originally came out.

But then when the majority party indicated that they are going to oppose this amendment, I have to stand up and say just, at least, one thing. We are going to have some amendment debates later today about how much money to spend on various programs and how much to spend on various things and how much to spend overall on this bill, whether we should be spending more of the taxpayers' money on things or less of the taxpayers' money on things.

We are going to have that debate today and tomorrow and the next day, and there are certainly disagreements between the majority side and the minority side on those issues as to whether we should tax people more and spend their money or tax people less and let them spend their own money.

But, interestingly, this amendment isn't about that. This amendment doesn't change the funding in the bill. It simply says we ought to have a mechanism to make the money that's there go farther.

I really don't understand why my Democratic colleagues would have some ideological objection to that. If we are going to spend a certain amount of money on a program, regardless of what that program does, couldn't we all agree that we would like it to do as much as it can with that amount of money?

Certainly, if we allow private contractors, or contractors, the opportunity to say, hey, we can do this thing for less money, and we can do the same thing, and the agency determines that it's the same thing for less money, wouldn't we want them to do that?

This, actually, is not about spending less money. We will get to that later. But this is about having the money we spend go farther.

I mean, it's just like for people, Mr. Chairman, that are watching at home, imagining that, well, I am going to go out and, you know, get dry cleaning today, but I don't care how much it costs, and I don't care if the place next door does it cheaper, and they are every bit as good or better. I don't care, I am going to use the more expensive place because we are not going to make competition.

I will yield.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that I clearly said, ``Mr. Chairman, people who see this may wonder.''

I did, I believe. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, whether it's you, or anyone in this room or whoever, we have money that we spend on things, and we like to shop to see if we are getting the best price, getting the same product or as good a product or a better product for the best price. That's what this amendment says, is that we're going to allow people to shop or get the better product for the best price.

Mr. Chairman, it is beyond me why the majority party would object to something so sensible, so reasonable in being a steward of the taxpayers' dollars.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

There were so many inaccuracies in that last speech, but there are at least a couple that I would like to correct relative to taxes, one of them being that in the last 6 years, the tax reductions that have been put in place actually reduce taxes for every single American who pays income taxes, and actually took some people that were paying income taxes and took them off the tax rolls. And that the Democrats' budget, which has in fact been passed, unlike the minimum wage increase which is not actually in the law at this point, but the Democrats' budget which has in fact been passed has proposed potentially to roll back all of those tax increases and thereby increase taxes on every single taxpayer in America.

With that, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

I thank the gentleman, and I would just like to amplify what he said, that if in fact what this amendment does is take spending to last year, then it's not a cut at all. It's not even a cut of the bureaucracy that you're talking about, it is in fact making this line or this area of expenditure the same as last year.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr Chairman, one of the last speakers on the other side of the aisle mentioned that he wasn't quite sure why we kept talking about taxes and tax increases, because inevitably if you head toward the balanced budget, that is what all spending turns into: it turns into taxes.

In fact, the Democratic budget, which, to the majority party's credit, is heading toward a balanced budget in 5 years, as were I believe virtually all of the budgets that were presented this year, but it does so by saying, in its own terms, that they will raise taxes as much as they need to at the end of that 5 years in order to achieve a balanced budget.

So when we are talking today about things that are increasing in spending, this isn't something that is abstract. This isn't $20 million here, $40 million here, $100 billion there of just sort of faceless, nameless money. That is money in figures that are so large that most people, Mr. Chairman, have a hard time even comprehending how much that is and how it can relate to the things that we are doing.

But it makes it a little more down-to-earth, brings it a little more home, when you look at each one of these, which is the way we should look at them, Mr. Chairman, each one of these spending increases on each program, on each bill, on each thing here, and realize that every dollar of increase there is a dollar that the majority party wants to go get out of the pockets of taxpayers at home. That is what we are really talking about. That is why, Mr. Chairman, I propose this amendment.

Now, this amendment refers to just one of the many, many projects and many, many programs in this appropriations bill. This one is something that deals with weatherization assistance, and the bill that is before us proposes to increase weatherization assistance spending by 20 percent over last year.

Now, what is interesting is that in the President's budget, which this amendment proposes to reduce the spending to, the President has actually proposed to reduce this to almost half. Why is that? Because in something that is called energy efficiency and renewable energy, this program is actually not at all efficient.

I actually had some personal experience with this program, not personal in the sense that I was dealing with the program from a recipient standpoint, but when I was in the State legislature with this program in California. By the time that you deal with the Federal bureaucracy and then you get the money to the State and there is the State bureaucracy, and then you put this money out, very little of this money was actually going to anything toward the goal that was accomplished. And what is interesting is it is also creating a subsidy for something that already pays for itself.

The reason people weatherize their homes or seal leaks and so forth or cracks in windows and doors is because it saves you money on your energy bill over time.

So this is a program that has been shown to be inefficient, has been shown to not be effective, that subsidizes something that doesn't need subsidization, and which in this bill is proposed to increase by 20 percent.

Now, the President's budget proposed to reduce this. It is one of those things on that list of programs that a number of people have that are saying these are some of the most inefficient programs in the Federal Government today, and this is one of them that certainly should be reduced or perhaps eliminated.

But instead, this bill proposes to increase it by nearly $40 million. And, again, $40 million, I guess sometimes this is the difference between government and not government. When things don't work in government, it seems that there is always a group of people saying the reason they are not working is because they don't have enough money, and we need to spend more money on them. Whereas, normally in the real world, Mr. Chairman, when something isn't working, that is when people take money from it, make it become more efficient, or not fund it anymore if it is not working.

So, Mr. Chairman, this amendment, just this one area of this one Department, proposes to reduce this to the President's proposed budget.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Texas.

I want to make a last couple of comments relative to the comments made by the gentleman from Massachusetts. A lot of what the gentleman from Massachusetts said I agree with. I think we differ in three basic areas.

One is that the gentleman from Massachusetts believes this program has been effective. My involvement with it in California and things that I have seen statistically here say otherwise. Certainly the administration agrees this program has not been a cost-effective program.

Second is talking about how this thing might save money here. But where does this money come from? It is $245 million. This money does not come from the sky. It does not come from the air. It comes from taxpayers. And the question is not does it save anybody any money or anybody anything; is it cost effective in what it does? And I think the answer is ``no.''

The third comment I would like to make is that the gentleman pointed out a number of programs in this bill which have all been increased in this proposed bill. That is fine, but I guess I would ask this: Are there no programs here which are not effective? Are there no programs that deserve some reduction in spending or perhaps even elimination?

Ronald Reagan said that the closest thing to eternal life is a government program, and I believe we are seeing with programs like this that those words Ronald Reagan made some time ago ring true.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 21: Page 16, line 19, after the dollar amount

insert ``(reduced by $101,550,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 14: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Sec. 503. Appropriations made in this Act are hereby

reduced in the amount of $1,305,000,000.

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 15: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Sec. 503. Appropriations made in this Act are hereby

reduced in the amount of $1,130,000,000.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

This debate that began yesterday and continues today is really about two things. One thing we've heard a lot about here recently in the last few speeches that people have given is whether or not the majority party wants to have earmark spending that is secret and that is not subject to individual vote. We believe that such spending ought not to be secret and ought to be subject to an individual vote. That's one thing.

But there is another thing, and that is that this bill simply spends too much. This bill has an increase in it, and I know the gentleman from North Carolina and I had a discussion on this yesterday. Let's just talk about the nonemergency spending.

This bill increases spending from year to year by 13.6 percent. Again, that is a lot. It is a lot more than inflation, which has been running under 3 percent. It is a lot more than most people see as an increase in their salaries. Why, in fact, if someone out there listening, Mr. Chairman, makes $15 an hour, if they were to get a similar increase this year, they would make over $17 an hour next year. I mean, most people out there making $15 an hour would love an increase to $17 an hour, but they're probably not going to get a

$2 increase, but yet this bill proposes to expand the spending by 13.6 percent.

Now, people on the other side of the aisle, Democrats that continually criticize our amendments and the things we're talking about by saying that we are cutting spending, the two amendments before us right now and the previous amendments we voted on last night and most of the amendments, if not all, that we're going to see later, are not cutting anything. They are slowing the growth. If you get $1 a month and somebody gives you $2 a month, that's an increase; it's not a cut. But they keep saying cut on the other side of the aisle so much that I believe perhaps a little visual assistance is required.

So, Mr. Chairman, I just want to make this very, very clear. One equals one. If you are getting $1 and you still get $1, that is not a cut. That's the same amount of money that you had before. Two is actually more than one. So that if you were getting $1 and now you get $2, that also is not a cut, even if you wanted $3. Because what Members on the Democratic side of the aisle continue to say is, oh, we're getting one, we want three, you're only going to give us two and so, therefore, it's a cut. No, it is not. One equals one, two is more than one, regardless of what you want.

Mr. Rogers will propose an amendment later that has already been described by the other side as a massive cut, except it will leave a 7 percent increase, I believe, roughly, in spending in this bill. A 7 percent increase from year to year is not a cut.

The amendment that is before us right now, Mr. McHenry's amendment, proposes to spend less money than the bill before us on the Secretary's bureaucratic operation, but it actually allows the Secretary's bureaucrats to spend more than they spent last year. That, again, is not a cut.

So, Mr. Chairman, let us make it clear here that Republicans are not proposing to cut this bill. We are not proposing to cut spending in the Department of Homeland Security. We are proposing to increase it at a rate which is sustainable because if you continue to increase things at 13.6 percent a year, then that requires that everyone out there who's making that $15 an hour get a raise to $17 and give it all to the government in order to keep paying for this sort of increase. American taxpayers cannot afford that kind of increase after increase after increase.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I've been listening to the debate on this particular amendment, and I've heard a number of people who are opposed to it speak, I suppose, about their theories, about how this won't work or why it may not be effective or what it may do or affect people in a community or whatever.

I am here, Mr. Chairman, not to talk about theories or not to talk about speculation, but to talk about what this particular program has done, in fact, in Orange County, California. My congressional district is entirely encompassed within the County of Orange in California. There are five other Members of this body whose congressional districts are either entirely within Orange County, California, or partially within Orange County, California, and two jurisdictions within that county, both the Orange County sheriff's department and the police at the city of Costa Mesa, California, have been engaged in this program.

I would like to read from a press release that was issued from the Office of Sheriff-Coroner Mike Carona. This press release was issued just last month relative to the effectiveness of the program that is the subject of the lady from Virginia's amendment.

It says, ``Since the inception of Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona's cross-designation program in January 2007, deputies have increased the number of immigration holds by more than 400 percent, from approximately 350 to over 1,600. Of this amount, more than 1,000 of the undocumented individuals who were booked into Orange County jail were charged with felony law violations, and over 100 were known gang members.''

Now, Mr. Chairman, this is fact, that since the Orange County sheriff's department participated in this program and had its deputies trained on how to enforce our illegal immigration laws, they have taken off the street 1,600 illegal aliens, 1,000 of whom were felons. So because of this program, there are 1,000 fewer illegal immigrant felons walking the streets in Orange County, California.

That is not theory. That is not conjecture. That is actually fact.

Also, in the city of Costa Mesa, which I do not represent, but is represented by Congressman Rohrabacher, but it's adjacent to my district, they've recently trained their officers in enforcing immigration laws, and between March and May of 2007, they identified and placed containers on 146 illegal immigrants in the city jail, and of this amount, 53 had committed felonies.

Now, this is in addition to the 1,000 felons that I talked about before, because it's a separate jurisdiction, a separate city police force dealing with their jurisdiction within the County of Orange.

So, Mr. Chairman, this program is effective, and I know some people who are opposed to this amendment have said that somehow it's going to disrupt community relations or something like that. I can tell you that the Orange County sheriff's office has been very, very involved in the community generally, broadly in Orange County, both in ethnic communities and in regular communities, and very involved in stopping drugs.

Because what a lot of people are interested in, particularly in some lower-income communities, is getting the drug dealers and getting the problems that drugs create out of their community. That's what they're interested in. They're not necessarily interested in protecting felons or in making sure that somehow when we have illegal alien felons that we handicap or restrict the ability of local law enforcement to find those people, identify them and bring them to justice and eventually out of this country.

So, Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment from the lady from Virginia, and I support it on the basis of actual, real experience that has happened in my county; and, that we know of, well over 1,000 felons who are no longer on the street.

Mr. Chairman, I have amendment No. 43 at the desk.

I am not aware of what the printing error is.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the bill that we have before us today would increase spending. When coupled with the supplemental bill that the President just signed a few weeks back, would increase spending in the area of homeland security by nearly 17 percent. Now, perhaps people on the other side of the aisle have not noticed, but we have a deficit, a very large deficit in this country. And we still are adding to that deficit every year.

Now, I think Members on the other side of the aisle have noticed this because they have talked about their PAYGO and other principles, that we won't be increasing spending without some way to pay for this. However, with this appropriations bill we are doing exactly that. We are increasing spending by billions of dollars, by 17 percent over last year's level, without paying for it in any way, without reducing spending anywhere else, which means that we are adding to the deficit because of the spending, the additional spending that is in this bill.

Let me just give you a sense of what a 17 percent increase is. If someone outside of this building in the world is making $15 an hour, they would have to get a raise this year to $17.55 an hour in order for their income to keep pace with the spending increase in this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that most of the people out there making $15 an hour, or any number you want, are not likely to see their bosses come in and say we want to give you a raise of 17 percent from $15 an hour to $17.55 an hour, not something that they are likely to see. But yet to keep and sustain this level of increase in spending, that's exactly what would have to happen or else we just take more and more and more money out of individuals' pockets so we can spend it here.

Now, I'm sure that people on the other side in support of this bill are going to start to talk about how important this bill is to homeland security. Okay. We will have that debate over the next couple of days about what is in this bill, but what this amendment does is deal purely with bureaucracy. We're not dealing here with any program. We're not dealing here with officers in the field. We're not dealing here with equipment that's being used or computers or anything else for homeland security.

What this amendment says is simply that the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management, the office of the Secretary, purely bureaucracy, gave the Secretary of Homeland Security and the people in that person's office, right now this bill gives them an 11 percent increase, when we're trying to get a deficit down, when we want to, at least some of us do, keep taxes low.

What this bill says is you ought to be able to get by on what you had last year. It is not even proposing that we cut the spending of this bureaucracy, not even proposing that we take the Secretary's office and just their bureaucracy in there and cut it, but simply saying get by on the same amount of money you did last year. Now, how many people in America do that every day but somehow the bureaucracy in Homeland Security can't do that?

And by doing that, Mr. Chairman, this amendment saves $10 million. Now, maybe in a $3 trillion budget it doesn't sound like much, but $10 million is still a lot of money. It's a lot of money to everybody out there. It's lot of money to me. It's a lot of money to you. And $10 million and $10 million and $10 million and we will eventually get our spending down, and that, Mr. Chairman, is how we are going to eliminate this budget deficit and that's how we're going to do it without having the largest increase in taxes in American history, which the other side has proposed to do.

And what is that tax increase for? It's for things like this, for things like taking a bureaucracy of people, sitting around doing phone calls and paper and saying we're going to give you an 11 percent raise. We should not be doing that, not in this environment and not in this bill.

So, Mr. Chairman, I would respectfully ask that Members support this amendment, not feed the bureaucracy further and save the taxpayers $10 million.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Texas. The gentleman from New York said that there were two types of amendments, one that tried to do something that you believe in and others that make statements.

I would like to assure the gentleman from New York that I believe in this amendment, and I think a lot of people on this side of the aisle believe in this amendment because we believe that we need to start controlling costs in this government.

And is this amendment all by itself going to do that? No, of course not, but it will begin the process of doing that, and in combination with a lot of other amendments like it, yes, it will start to control the cost of government, and, yes, I firmly believe in what this amendment is about, in spite of what the gentleman from New York suggested.

The gentleman from North Carolina talked about numbers, and perhaps my numbers are incorrect, but this bill is now at $36.254 billion over and enacted last year $31.905 billion which is a 13.6 percent increase.

I thank the gentleman from Texas.

To the gentleman from North Carolina, this is something I guess we'll probably need to work out as we go along because I'm not looking at increase over a baseline. We're looking at increase over actual enacted last year, and maybe we can compare notes. But my notes show that that actual last year was $31.905 billion, and then there was the supplemental which has been added on top of this bill itself.

But in any event, one other thing the gentleman from North Carolina alluded to was that this amendment proposes to cut spending in this area in the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management. I want to make that clear. This is a definitional thing which we often have problems with in this House and in this building.

What this amendment proposes to do is to leave the budget for the Office of Secretary and Executive Management equal to what it was in the prior fiscal year. That is not a cut. If you have $10 and I give you $10, I take away $10, give you back $10, that is not a cut. That is the same amount of money you had before. What this does do is it prevents the 11 percent increase that is in this bill.

So let's make it very clear in vernacular that if I make $10 an hour and I want to make $11, if somebody gives me a raise to $10.50, it is still a raise; it is not a cut. And that's what is going on here.

We are not proposing to cut this office. We are merely proposing to tell them, do continue your operations on the same amount of money that you did last year. I don't think that is a great leap to ask of what is clearly an element of the bureaucracy, in spite of the gentleman from North Carolina's admonitions that it is not.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia.

To the gentleman from North Carolina, just to clarify again on these numbers, we agreed that it's $36.3 billion in this bill, and the number you threw out, $34.2 billion, I believe, was the President's budget proposal for this, and that the prior year enacted, 2007 enacted, was $31.9 billion.

Do you have different numbers on that?

I thank the gentleman from North Carolina.

If I can refer to the gentleman, I believe I heard, and maybe we can sort this out, but I think that if you include

the supplementals on both sides, that we went from $34.2 billion to $39.2 billion, which would be a 15.2 percent increase, perhaps not the 17 I said earlier, but in either event, frankly, whether it's 17 percent, 15 percent or the 13.6, if you leave both of the supplementals out, it's a lot of money. It's billions and billions and billions of dollars of increase.

Some of that increase is a lot more than inflation, multiple times more than inflation, and it's a lot more than taking the growth in inflation and the growth in population and put it together. Most importantly, it's a lot more than personal income growth.

That's something we need to look at, as we are looking at all these appropriations and all of these spending bills. Because if we increase spending faster than people's incomes are increasing in America, it is unsustainable over time unless you continue to take more and more and more of their hard-earned money away from them.

Now, I know that's what many of you on the other side of the aisle want to do. But, A, we don't; and, B, even if you want to do it, eventually you'll run out of space. Eventually, you'll take it all if you increase at this kind of level.

Once again, this amendment does not ask anybody to cut anything. It simply tells this one element, this one part of the bureaucracy in Homeland Security to do, get by and exist on the same amount of money that you had last year.

I thank the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I too want to comment on some of the comments made by the Appropriations Committee chairman, the gentleman from Wisconsin.

There are two things we are doing here. One was just very eloquently presented by the gentleman from Arizona.

We are trying to say and trying to insist that when these projects, when these earmarks, when these sorts of things appear in these bills, that there is sunshine, that people know what they are, that they can see them and that they are subject to an up-and-down vote, rather than these big slush funds that appear in this bill and others as they are currently constructed.

The other thing we are trying to do here is very simple, and that is saving the taxpayers $21 billion. There is $21 billion more that has been proposed to spend in the Democrats' appropriations bills than what the President proposed to spend.

Now, I might add that I am one of the 160 people who voted for a budget to spend $20 billion less than the President has proposed. It is not like what the President proposed was a flat budget. It is not like the President proposed a budget that didn't increase spending; it did. But what you have done is taken the President's proposals for spending increases, accepted all that, and added to it in most cases.

I think it is very interesting that the chairman of the Appropriations Committee seems so surprised that the amendments that some of us are offering, including the one that I offered just about an hour or so ago, that these were reducing spending that was actually proposed by the administration.

It may come as a surprise to people on the other side of the aisle, but we don't really care who proposed it, whether the President proposed it, a Democrat proposed it or a Republican proposed it. If it is spending more money than we believe should be spent, if it is increasing spending that increases the deficit, if it is further putting pressure, further trying to create a reason to enact the largest tax increase in American history that you all want to do, then we are going to want to stop it. And that is what we are doing.

Now, there was a comment also made by the chairman of the Appropriations Committee that there were 120 amendments, I believe he said, on this bill. We are talking about a lot money. I would bet there are a lot more than 120 earmarks that get put in here by the time things are done. I know there is at least $21 billion of more spending in all of these appropriations bills, and specifically on this bill itself a nearly $5 billion increase in spending over last year. So, for $5 billion and countless thousands of earmarks, 120 amendments is not a problem.

It may be many more than that. It could take many more than that.

These are big issues. These are important things. This is about whether we are going to start to arrest spending where we can, or whether we are going to let it continue to grow and grow and grow. Whether we are going to allow Americans to keep at least the amount of their own money that they keep now, or whether this government is going to continue to tax them and tax them and take more of it. If it is 120 amendments or 240 amendments or 480 amendments, we will stand here and we stand ready to do that.

I would hope that the message would get across at some point to the other side of the aisle that what they are doing is not right, and that these amendments are processes by which we are getting to what is right, which is not increasing spending on everything, not increasing all of these things and trying to keep it under control and making sure that when we do spend the taxpayers' money, we are up front about what it is, about who requested it and why. And that people have an opportunity to challenge that request.

Mr. Chairman, we have begun some amendments and we have a lot more. This is not a joke. This is not silly, this is not something that we don't believe in. This is something we believe in very deeply, and it is something that is important and that's why we are engaged in this fight and will continue to be engaged in this fight.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I want to clarify again that the gentleman from North Carolina just said that this amendment proposed by Ms. Foxx cuts $1.24 million from the President's request.

It is true that, in fact, it proposes to spend less on the Office of General Counsel, which is the attorneys, than what the President has proposed. But that does not make it a cut. Because what it proposes to do is leave the spending for the Office of General Counsel, for the attorneys, in the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management at exactly the same level they had last year.

I really have a hard time understanding how it is always a cut when it is less of an increase than you want it to be, or than somebody wants it to be, in this case, I suppose, than the President wants it to be. But we are not looking at this as Republican spending or Democratic spending, we are looking at it as spending.

The reason, I am not sure that it's been made quite as clear as perhaps it ought to be, that in the Democrats' budget that you all passed a month or so ago, where you moved towards a balanced budget, and I take you at your word that it's your intention to, at some point, get to a balanced budget, but you did it by enacting, proposing, I guess it's the second largest tax increase in American history, which means that as you increase spending on things, you intend to then balance the budget by increasing taxes.

That is clearly what you are going to do. That is what your budget does, and you have made it very clear through your PAYGO provisions what you intend to do. When you increase spending, going to balance the budget will increase taxes.

So with this amendment and with every other amendment we are looking at, we are saying here that we are not going to increase spending in the Office of General Counsel by $1.2 million. That is $1.2 million of additional spending that will not occur if this amendment passes.

But that means it is $1.2 million of taxes that you all won't raise if this amendment passes. Now that works on this amendment, it works on various other amendments that will be coming up through the evening. So it's more than just an academic exercise about whether or not a certain department's budget should be increased.

It, in fact, affects, Mr. Chairman, people at home today now watching this. Is this $1.2 million that you want to see your taxes increase to spend? I think not. I think most of the people on this side believe not; and that is really what we're talking about, because if you say, as you did in your budget, that you will increase whatever taxes you need to to get to a balanced budget, then this $1.2 million is $1.2 million of money that you will take out of Americans' pockets that you're not taking now.

And it's really more than that, because if this were to go in, then next year there's a new base, and it's a higher base, and if you increase it another 10 percent beyond that, then it's another $1.22 million; and if you increase it again, it's another $1.44 million. And it goes on and on, and so that over a 5-year period this $1.2 million magically turns into about $6 million or so of people's money that gets spent, and which you will propose, undoubtedly, to increase taxes to cover so that you can balance the budget.

We can balance this budget, and we can balance it without taking any more money out of Americans' pockets. And we can balance it by passing amendments like this and simply asking government to live with the money they have now. This is not a cut, just live with the money you have now.

Can't this General Counsel's Office, can't these attorneys operate for another year on the same amount of money that they got last year? I think they can.

Mr. Speaker, later today we will have a budget on this floor proposed by the Democratic majority which is guaranteed to raise taxes by about $200 billion. Now, that budget will also increase spending by about $200 billion over and above the budget that the President proposed.

Do we think that those two numbers are the same by coincidence? No. And it's not an increase in spending by $200 billion, it's an increase over the increase proposed by the President by $200 billion. This is not a tax increase that we need to have. This is a tax increase that they want to have because they want to spend a lot more money than we are already spending, and we are already spending too much.

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to this debate and listening to the arguments on the Democratic side of the aisle, and I am waiting for David Copperfield to show up as a member of their Budget Committee because what they are doing is magic. They are over here bragging about all of the additional money they are spending. And bragging, which they are, and bragging that they are balancing the budget, which they say they are, but then saying they are not raising taxes. Which they are.

This budget contains over $200 billion in tax increases. That is about $1,000 for every taxpayer in America. And oddly enough, isn't it strange that it also contains about $200 billion in additional spending over the President's proposed budget.

So they want to raise Americans' taxes by $1,000 a taxpayer so they can spend it on new spending. Make no mistake about it, a vote for this budget is a vote for at least the second largest tax increase in American history, if not the largest.

Mr. Speaker, we learned this week that in April of this year, the Federal Government received more tax revenue in that month than in any month ever in the history of the Republic. It results in an over 11 percent increase in revenue to the government this year, on top of over an 11 percent increase last year and an almost 15 percent increase the year before that. But, yet, the budget that the Democrats propose includes the largest tax increase in American history as they continue to impose tax increase after tax increase after tax increase. The question is, why? When Federal Government revenues have increased over 37 percent in the last 3 years, why do we want to increase spending by 40 percent in 3 years, 50 percent, 60 percent? Why? We should not be confiscating more money from the people in order to increase government. We should be allowing the people to keep more of their own money so that the economy can continue to grow.

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to all of this debate, and I guess what I don't really understand is, why? I mean, why the Democrats here on the other side of the aisle want to oppose this motion to instruct.

I mean, do you want to raid the Social Security surplus? Do you like telling people that they are paying money for their own Social Security and retirement and then taking it and using it for other things? Do you like that? Do you want to do that? I mean, do you want to enact the biggest tax increase in American history? Do you want really to tax people more on capital gains and dividends when over 50 percent of Americans now own some sort of stock? Do you want to go back to penalizing married couples and having them pay more taxes after they get married than two people would when they were single? Do you really want to reduce the child care tax credit? Do you want to stifle economic growth?

I know some of you say you don't think that these tax cuts caused this economic growth. Let's assume they didn't cause it all. It can't be a coincidence that since the tax reductions went into place, we have had enormous economic growth, enormous job growth and enormous revenue growth to the Federal Government.

Do you really want to do all that? Do you really want to pass the largest tax increase in American history; and for what? So you can raise spending a lot over the next 5 years because if you just didn't increase spending, you could do all of this. You could allow Americans to keep their own money.

But no, you want to take their money from them and spend it on your priorities. Now I guess that is what you want to do. I still don't understand it. I don't understand why the government having money is so much more a priority, but I guess it is because you look at all money as the government's, and you allow people to keep some. We look at money as belonging to the people who earned it, and we allow the government to take that which is necessary.

But understand that if all you did was keep spending level or increase it a little bit over the next 5 years, then you wouldn't have to raise taxes and then you wouldn't have to raid the Social Security surplus. But apparently that is what you want to do.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, we have a budget problem here in Washington, the Federal Government. The budget that was recently passed off of this floor has a deficit in it, continues that deficit for the next 4 years. It has a tax increase in it, the largest tax increase in American history, going forward. And it also continues to raid the Social Security funds, take the Social Security surplus that we have and spend it on things that are unrelated to Social Security. So we have a budget crisis going on.

What this amendment does is it says that there are certain things upon which we should not be spending money through this bill during this time of budget deficits, stealing Social Security funds, and increasing taxes.

What this amendment does, it says there's just a couple of things that we should not be increasing the deficit by spending money on, and I quote, ``The Archives of Andean Knotted-String Records,'' or to study ``The Accuracy in Cross-Cultural Understanding of Others' Emotions.''

This amendment also says that we don't want to increase spending and, therefore, increase taxes in order to pay for a study of ``Bison Hunting on the Late Prehistoric Great Plains'' or ``Team Versus Individual Play'' or ``The Sexual Politics of Waste in Dakar.''

And it also says that we don't want to increase spending and spend any of this money in this authorization and, thereby, be continuing to raid the Social Security Trust Funds in order to study ``The Social Relationships and Reproductive Strategies of Phayre's Leaf Monkeys'' or ``The Cognitive Model of Superstitious Belief.''

Now, Mr. Chairman, I understand that there is a process of peer review from which these studies come in the National Science Foundation, and that's all well and good. But our job here is we are the elected representatives and stewards of the taxpayers' money, not the academics in the National Science Foundation, and it is our decision whether or not we wish to spend taxpayers' funds on studies of the social relationships and reproductive strategies of Phayre's leaf monkeys or on bison hunting on the late prehistoric Great Plains. I think we should not do that.

I am sure that some believe that these are very fine academic studies. That's excellent. Within the realms of academic halls, they may think a number of things are fine academic studies. That's not the question.

The question before us is, do these things rise to the standard of requiring expenditures of taxpayer funds in a time of deficits, proposed tax increases and raiding Social Security funds? I think the answer is a resounding no. I think the answer should be a resounding no, which means that I would hope that the vote on this amendment would be an equally resounding yes.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding.

I appreciate the academic arguments, and I understand them. I am a history buff myself. I love this stuff. I might actually love this report, might enjoy reading it, might find it fascinating. That's not the point. The point is do we want to spend taxpayer funds on this?

The United States taxpayer cannot fund every bit of academic research for every university, for everything that every professor wants to do across this country. We can't do that. The question before us is, are these the sorts of things we do want to spend taxpayer money on? I would suggest that they are not, and that is why I would suggest that to vote against this amendment is to say that you believe that taxpayer money should be spent on these specific items. That is the question before us. Not whether it is interesting. I am a Civil War buff. I love all kinds of interesting stuff about that, but I don't think the taxpayer ought to pay for research into it.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

We are qualified by virtue of the fact that we have been elected by people in our districts to be stewards of their money. As I said, this is not a question of whether or not these things have academic merit within a field of academics. It is a question of whether they are worthy of spending taxpayer money in that area. I think they are not.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, my colleague from Washington mentioned that he didn't think this last amendment that I proposed was the correct way to save money, so perhaps this is the more correct way; maybe this is something that he would find more to his liking.

H.R. 1867, this bill before us, would increase spending for the National Science Foundation by 9.9 percent in the first year, 7.4 percent in the second year and 7.3 percent in the third year, for an increase of over 25 percent over a 3-year period. Now, Mr. Chairman, that is an amount, and I, too, am someone who has sympathy for some of the things that the National Science Foundation does. However, even over the last few years where we have had very large percentage increases in our revenues to the Federal Government, they haven't been as large as this over the last 3-year period. In fact, in the next 3- year period, any of the prognosticators, whether it be the Office of Management and Budget or any of the other prognosticators, are not estimating that we will have a 25 percent increase in revenue over the next 3 years. So therefore, this proposes to increase spending at a rate greater than revenue is projected to increase over the next 3 years.

This amendment would simply reduce the amount of this increase by 1 percent per year. So instead of increasing by 10 percent the first year, it would increase by only 9; instead of increasing by 7.4 percent, the second year would increase by 6.4 percent; and 7.3 percent, it would increase by 6.3 percent in the third year. These are still large annual increases, larger than most taxpayers at home are likely to see the increases in their incomes, in their salaries, in their wages.

So this is just a small reduction. It does not deal with, as the gentleman from Washington mentioned, it does not specifically say what, it leaves that issue open. So, therefore, it does not interfere with the selection of these various proposals and research things that the gentleman from Washington just supported in the last amendment.

So with that, Mr. Chairman, I would ask for an ``aye'' vote.

Just a short clarification, that this amendment does not propose a cut in the funding, it proposes to very slightly reduce the rate of growth from what was proposed. That is my only clarification.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 4: At the end of section 3, insert the

following new subsection:

(h) Reduction.--Each of the amounts authorized to be

appropriated or made available under this section shall be

reduced by 1 percent.

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 5: At the end of section 3, insert the

following new subsection:

(h) Limitation.--None of the funds authorized under this

section may be used for research related to--

(1) archives of Andean Knotted-String Records;

(2) the accuracy in the cross-cultural understanding of

others' emotions;

(3) bison hunting on the late prehistoric Great Plains;

(4) team versus individual play;

(5) sexual politics of waste in Dakar, Senegal;

(6) social relationships and reproductive strategies of

Phayre's Leaf Monkeys; and

(7) cognitive model of superstitious belief.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding.

The reason we have this bill and the reason we are having this debate is because the D.C. voting bill, which just passed this House, costs $2.5 million. So in order to have it be neutral, there needs to be $2.5 million found.

Now, what this bill proposes to do is what I would argue is basically a tax gimmick because no one's final tax, no one's ultimate tax pay, will be changed as a result of this bill. What it, in fact, does is change how quickly some people must pay their tax. So they will have to pay it a little earlier. They won't pay any different amount over a year. They will simply pay it a little earlier. But that is what this bill does.

But what was the alternative? Well, normally you would think that if you were interested in fiscal responsibility, if you were interested in keeping budgets balanced over time, that if you are going to spend $2.5 million extra, you would save $2.5 million somewhere else. That is what people at home do. That is what everyday, average American citizens do. If they are going to spend a little more money on something, they spend a little less money on something else.

Let's talk about what you would need to have done. If the Democratic majority had wished to reduce spending, and reduce the growth in spending is all you would actually have to do, but if they had wished to reduce the growth in spending in order to offset this $2.5 million, we are talking about 0.0002 percent. That is the reduction in growth, not even a cut, but the reduction in growth of spending. That is all you would have to do to offset the $2.5 million in this bill. And then we wouldn't even be talking about taxes and tax gimmicks and all that. Point zero zero zero 2 percent.

I ask you, if you can't find 0.0002 percent to reduce growth, not even to reduce entitlement spending, but to reduce growth of entitlement spending, where and when will you ever deal with the entitlement tidal wave that we have coming? By 2037 the entitlements will eat up 100 percent of the Federal budget as we currently know it.

So you have a couple of choices. You can either reduce the growth in entitlement spending over time so we don't have that, or you can double taxes. Well, if you can't find today 0.0002 percent to reduce the growth in spending, I would have to presume, and I think people would have to presume, Mr. Speaker, that the doubling of taxes eventually is where you want to go.

Now, we already saw a budget where you have had the largest tax increase in American history included in the budget, and now we can see why. You can't even find this amount of reduction in spending.

I oppose the D.C. voting bill because I think it is not right and not constitutional. But I oppose this bill as well because if we are ever going to control this budget and we are not going to control it on the backs of the average working American person, then tinkering with the Tax Code to find $2.5 million is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to go find 0.0002 percent of the growth and reduce that amount.