Floor Statements

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

I also want to thank the gentleman from California and the gentleman from Colorado for their enthusiasm about this important project. The amendment that my colleague from California is bringing forward is modest in scope. I'll say to my colleagues who want to see spending reduced, we're talking about the difference between an 81 percent cut, as is in the chairman's mark today, to a 74 percent cut, if we add this $20 million back in. It's a modest number, but it's an important number because the committee could only do what the committee could do. And I thank the gentleman from New Jersey, the chairman. I know he is committed to this research.

I hate to hear folks describe the commitment to advancement, Mr. Chairman, the commitment to next-generation technologies as a Republican or a Democrat commitment. I think it's an American commitment. It's certainly a House commitment, and it's one that the chairman and the ranking member tried their best within their allocations to satisfy.

What are you going to take the money away from, Mr. Chairman? Look at what we're dealing with in this appropriations bill. We're talking about nuclear security. We're talking about environmental cleanup. We're talking about uranium enrichment, decontamination, and decommissioning. The choices we have here are tough choices. And the amendment that's before us now, knowing that we want to put the money where it's going to do the most good, says let's take the money out of administration. That's not to say that there doesn't have to be administration. That's not to say phones don't have to be answered and electricity doesn't have to be turned on. But when you have to make tough choices, the one that the gentleman from California is asking us to make today is: Are we going to invest in the bureaucracy or are we going to invest in that opportunity to make tomorrow so much more different than today?

If my colleagues haven't had a chance, look at those project teams like the one my colleague from Colorado mentioned and what they are researching. Mr. Chairman, I come from coal-burning country. And the work that ARPA-E is doing on carbon sequestration could change the debate about American energy independence forever.

ARPA-E isn't working on what is going to happen tomorrow. They're working on what's going to happen in the next generation; what is it going to be that changes the debate forever. Those are the kinds of ideas that this $21 million will support.

Mr. Chairman, it's the commitment to fundamental research, the commitment to game-changing ideas that is a bipartisan commitment. It's one that goes from coast-to-coast, from north to south, and on both sides of the aisle.

Again, I'm grateful to the gentlelady from Ohio and the chairman from New Jersey for all they have done to try to support these accounts. It is my great hope that my colleagues here in the House will support the gentleman from California's amendment and we'll get this $20 million plus-up.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I rise in strong support of this amendment.

I would say to my friends on the Republican side of the aisle who have spoken, I agree with absolutely everything you have said. But as I look at the chairman, who I know has more of a love for this Nation and our national security than perhaps any other Member of this body, he and I both voted in favor of the Budget Control Act in August of 2011. Rightly or wrongly, we set the law of the land of how much we were going to spend on national defense. Today, we are talking about how much we are going to spend in Afghanistan.

If we need to spend more money to improve National Guard readiness here at home, to deal with maintenance accounts here at home, we need to come together and change those budget caps; and I support doing that. But I am tired of living in a town where when you don't like the rules, you find a way around them. When the President doesn't like the law of the land, he just ignores it. If we don't like the defense budget caps, we just ignore it and fund it through OCO instead.

We ought to give the Joint Chiefs of Staff every penny they're asking for to support our men and women in Afghanistan. If they come back and ask for more, we should give them every penny of that as well.

But the law means something; these caps mean something. We should either change it or stick with it, Madam Chair.

Mr. Speaker, it's my great pleasure this morning to introduce my colleagues to Dr. Tom Elliott. Not only is he our guest chaplain today and the senior pastor at Cannon United Methodist Church in Snellville, in my district, he was also my youth minister growing up in Decatur, Georgia. For over 30 years, I've known Tom.

He's here today with his wife, Kelly. He is surrounded in love by his daughter, Lucy, and his son, Thomas. He has a love of the Lord, and that's a love that he shares in the pulpit on Sunday morning, and a love that you can find expressed in music at coffeehouses around the district in his Wild at Heart band nights during the week.

It's my great pleasure to have Tom with us today. I thank you for your service to our community, Tom, and I thank you for your service to the Lord.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from Florida for yielding me the time.

I hadn't anticipated coming down here today, Mr. Speaker. I came down to listen, but I hadn't anticipated coming down to speak. And I will say to my friend from Maryland his words struck me, because twice in his presentation he said, you know, I think it's especially cynical that we're using this process to bring forward two bills that in a bipartisan way we agree on.

I would say to my friend with a heavy heart, Mr. Speaker, that I think it's especially cynical, since we both know these bills need to be passed, to describe what is happening here in any terms other than that which is exactly necessary in order to get these bills passed.

Let me get this off my chest, and I'd be happy to yield to my friend. I would be happy to yield when I'm done, because I have a copy of the rule here.

And the gentleman was in the Rules Committee last night, and the gentleman knows this is what section 3 provides, that pending the adoption of a concurrent resolution on the budget, we're going to move forward, pending the adoption.

Now, my friend knows, Mr. Speaker, how hard it is to find that agreement. And the reason my friend knows is because I voted for the Budget Control Act in August of 2011, which put my friend and five other Members of the House, it was six House Members, six Senate Members, six Republicans, six Democrats, it put them in a room together for August, September, October, and November with the entire Federal budget over the next 100 years in front of them, allowing them to choose anything they wanted to to agree on to let us move forward as a nation.

Do you know what, Mr. Speaker? Collectively they agreed on not one dollar. I don't fault my friend for that. I know my friend was working as hard as my friend could possibly work to find agreement. But finding agreement is hard. What we're talking about finding agreement with, Mr. Speaker, this comes from The Washington Post editorial page. It's entitled, ``The Democrats' complacent budget plan.'' It says:

Partisan in tone and complacent in substance, the budget

scores points against the Republicans and reassures the

party's liberal base but deepens these Senators' commitment

to an unsustainable policy agenda.

This is what it is that we're trying to find agreement on. Now, my friend from Maryland knows, in fact, he may have even brought it to my attention yesterday, a letter directing the chairman of the Rules Committee, on which I sit, Mr. Speaker, from the chairman of the Budget Committee, also on which I sit, that's signed by Chairman Paul Ryan. It says this, over Paul Ryan's signature:

I want to emphasize that this is a request for an interim

measure while the Committee on the Budget continues to work

towards an agreement with the Senate on a budget resolution

for the coming fiscal year.

And I would, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, I would ask my friend from Maryland, does he doubt the chairman's word when the chairman says this is an interim solution until we find agreement?

I'd be happy to yield to my friend.

Reclaiming my time, the gentleman knows that Chairman Ryan has no control over the inside workings of the United States Senate, and Chairman Ryan did not block what was going on in the United States Senate. The United States Senators were blocking it.

I would ask the gentleman again: Does the gentleman doubt the chairman's word? I understand that the gentleman is frustrated about process, and goodness knows, as someone who supports open rules, I'm frustrated with process, too. We have that in common. But notwithstanding that process, what I have here is a letter from a man which you and I both support--and ``support,'' I mean we believe in his integrity. And he tells us that he is working towards a solution and that what we're doing here today is just an interim step to get these bills that we all agree are so very important, we all agree are so very important, the interim step to get these moving down the process.

I would yield to ask the gentleman does he disagree with the commitment made by the chairman? And I yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, I would say to the gentleman that's just not the case.

I'm aware of the Appropriations Committee 302(b) allocations. And what I'm aware of, Mr. Speaker, is that we have to have those allocations to begin the process. The gentleman is talking about where we are going to finish the process on October 1. I'm trying to get it started today. The gentleman knows that we can't get started.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding.

I want to quote what one of my Democratic colleagues quoted last night in the Rules Committee, and that's Federalist Paper No. 58, written by James Madison for the Independent Journal back on February 20, 1788. And he said this:

This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the

most complete and effectual weapon with which any

constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the

people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for

carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.

Because that's the constitutional responsibility of this body, Mr. Speaker, to appropriate these dollars. This process of appropriations, this constitutional responsibility, cannot begin until we have some numbers against which to budget and appropriate.

What my chairman on the Budget Committee has asked is that as an interim step, and an interim step only, we adopt these numbers today on bills about which we all agree. What is cynical, Mr. Speaker, is that these are things on which we all agree, and we're using this as a position to talk about other issues about which we disagree.

As my friend knows from his time having to negotiate on the joint select, what we'll call the supercommittee, my friends at The Washington Post go on to say:

In short, this document--

Talking about the budget passed by the Senate.

--gives voters no reason to believe that Democrats have a

viable plan for--or even a responsible public assessment of--

the country's long-term fiscal predicament.

Now, I will say, Mr. Speaker, that gives me great concern about whether

we will be able to reach agreement with the Senate. As my friend from Maryland knows, Mr. Speaker, the House budget reduces spending by trillions of dollars and the Senate budget increases spending even more. In many years, it spends more than even the President requested.

As my friend from Maryland knows, we keep tax revenues the same and the Senate increases taxes by almost $1 trillion.

I thank my friend from North Carolina for yielding me the time, and really appreciate her leadership on this issue.

You know, Mr. Speaker, I tell the young people when I speak to them back home, I say, turn on C-SPAN. If you don't have cable, don't buy cable; go to your friend's house to watch it. But turn on C-SPAN, and every person who comes to the House floor is going to say whatever they're doing today, no matter what it is that they're doing, they're doing it for the young people. They're doing it for that next generation, so the next generation can have a better life.

And I hear that from every single one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We want to come down here and we want to defeat this rule today and we want to defeat this bill today, and we want to do it for the young people.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm down here for the young people of my district too. The young people of my district say, Rob, what about our prosperity? What about our future? What about fiscal responsibility?

Why are you and previous generations doing to us what you're doing?

How can we have a guaranteed access to opportunity, not guaranteed success, but guaranteed access to opportunity, going forward?

And the answer is, when we get out of the business of playing political games with every single issue, every single day, and we get back into the business of providing some certainty.

Mr. Speaker, you remember how we got in this predicament today. We got in this predicament because when my friends on the left were in control and they began to deal with student loan rates, at the time they said a 6 percent rate would be good. At the time they said a 4.5 percent rate would be good. Now, suddenly, only a 3.4 percent can be good.

With every single one of these changes, Mr. Speaker, there are economic consequences. We now know in America today student loan debt is greater than all credit card debt combined. It's an amazing burden that we're passing on to the next generation. We're not giving them opportunity; we are ensuring decades of servitude.

This bill, Mr. Speaker, begins to realign marketplace rates with student loan rates, giving every student a tremendously subsidized Federal rate.

And here's the thing, Mr. Speaker. You hear this debate. It's as if this very small portion of the marketplace, these 3.4 percent subsidized loans, are the ``end all, be all'' to every student in America. Not true. Not true.

As my friends on the other side of the aisle know perfectly well but never say, more than 70 percent of all of our students take out both subsidized and unsubsidized loans. And as my friends on the left know perfectly well but never say, they leave those unsubsidized rates at 6.8 percent.

The bill that Ms. Foxx has worked on so carefully with Chairman Kline brings those rates down to 4.5, maybe even 4.4. We'll see in that last week of Treasury markets in May. But we're tying the fiscal realities of this country to opportunities for our students.

I encourage students, Mr. Speaker, look at your bills, look at your rates. Look at the subsidized and the unsubsidized. You will see what this bill will do for you.

I rise in strong support, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 164 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy the reading of the resolution. There are a lot of readings that you can waive on the floor of this House, but not so with a Rules resolution because this resolution is framing the nature of the debate we are going to have perhaps on the most important issue that we've taken up so far in this Congress.

The underlying bill is H.R. 624. It's the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.

Whenever we start talking about cyber intelligence sharing and protection, folks often think that sharing and protection are oxymorons--you can't have protected sharing, and you can't have shared protection. It's not an easy nut to crack, Mr. Speaker. I don't sit on the Intelligence Committee, but I've been down to the classified briefings where folks are sharing details of the amazing successes that our teams, both domestically and abroad, are having and combating in cyber threats; but it's getting harder and harder every day, and we have to balance the national security implications of failing to address these threats with what we, as all Americans, love, which is our liberty here at home--our liberty here at home, our privacy here at home.

In order to try to crack that, Mr. Speaker, you'll know that we brought this bill to the floor in the last Congress, and it has been changed and improved since that time. Today, this rule makes in order an additional 12 amendments. Now, of course we'll have the traditional 1 hour of debate on the underlying bill, but there will be another 12 amendments, each debated--2 hours of total additional time--so that Members can have their voices heard. Of these additional 12 amendments, four of them were offered by Republican Members; seven of them were offered by Democratic Members; and one of them is a bipartisan amendment. But the rule is designed to allow that further discussion because of the very important nature of the underlying bill.

I rise, of course, in support of the rule to allow for that debate, and I rise in support for the underlying bill. In today's world, you don't have to have a battlefield full of tanks to wage war on your enemy. A nation-state can have a roomful of young computer scientists and a couple of computers and begin to be a threat to the largest, most democratically controlled country in the world.

How do we stop that, Mr. Speaker? Because we don't want to close our borders. We don't want to have Federal control over the Internet. In so many of these nation-states, the government does control the Internet. That's never going to happen here in America. That's not who we are. That's not what we're about. In fact, 10 private sector providers control about 80 percent of the networks here in America--as it should be.

But what can we do to make ourselves safer tomorrow than we are today? Here is what the underlying bill does, Mr. Speaker: it enables, for the very first time, businesses and governments to share information about the threats that they are facing.

If you go up the road to Maryland, where the NSA is operating today, there are some smart, smart folks there, and I'm glad we have every single one of them on the front lines of cyber warfare--protecting America, protecting American enterprise. Yet today, when they are aware of threats that are impending threats to our financial system, threats to our economic system, they can't share that information with the private sector.

Back in my home district, Mr. Speaker, we're home to UPS--the United Parcel Service--Delta, Home Depot. If those companies come under attack today, Delta can't share that information with American Airlines and say, Look at what has just happened to us. Be on the lookout. It might happen to you. Home Depot can't share with Lowe's today, This is what has happened to us. We want you to be on the lookout. Don't let it happen to you.

This bill changes that. This bill, for the first time, says in the name of defending America and American interests against cyber threats around the globe, you can begin to share with one another what your experiences are and opportunities to protect yourself from having that happen to you again in the future.

Now, the real important thing to me about this bill, and I will just hold it up for you, Mr. Speaker, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection aspect of this bill, it's the important part. It's the meat of this bill. It's what's going to allow us to be safer tomorrow than we are today, but the bulk of the words in this bill don't speak to the sharing in terms of enabling it. It speaks to the sharing in terms of restricting it. Page after page after page after page of this short, 24-page bill talks about how we as citizens must, must, must continue to be safe and secure in the privacy of our own information.

It's a four-step process the bill lays out, Mr. Speaker, in terms of how we can ensure that no personally identifiable information is being shared from Home Depot or Delta or UPS or any of the other folks who are out there on the Internet when they're sharing that with the government or with one another in order to prevent threats to American security or economic prosperity, to ensure that personally identifiable information is not a part of that information that's shared, because privacy is paramount.

I've been tremendously impressed through this process, Mr. Speaker, because I'm one of the folks who is most likely to be suspect when we start talking about sharing information with the government. I'm a big lover of liberty. There's not many things I'm willing to give liberty up for. In fact, I dare say there's not a one that I'm willing to give liberty up for.

But the Intelligence Committee, from which this bill came, has worked with Members month after month after month after month to ensure that privacy is protected, that we as citizens can be secure. At the same time that we're fighting threats that perhaps we're not allowed to talk about on this floor, we're protected from threats that each and every one of us experiences in our day-to-day lives--a threat to privacy.

It's not been easy to craft this bill, and it has been an incredible bipartisan effort throughout, Mr. Speaker, in order to put this language together. Again, we have four Republican amendments made in order by this rule, seven Democratic amendments made in order by this rule, and one bipartisan amendment made in order by this rule. It is my great hope that we can move forward today with this rule, with debate on the underlying bill, and move forward with something that is far, far, far overdue, Mr. Speaker, and that's protecting America--American business and American individuals, American citizens--from the threats posed by nation states through cyber warfare from abroad.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time it's my great pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), one of those Members on the Intelligence Committee my friend from Florida spoke of, a gentleman who serves us all.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to say I know my friend from Colorado's concerns are heartfelt, and he shared those last night in the Rules Committee. The gentleman has a great deal of experience in this industry. And as heartfelt as his concerns are, I know, too, equally heartfelt are his concerns to national security if we fail to come together and address this issue.

I would like to be able to say, Mr. Speaker, that when we pass this bill today, it's going directly to the President's desk for signature. I don't actually believe that to be true. I think it's a long process between now and getting it to the President's desk for signature. And I know the gentleman will be raising these concerns throughout that process.

But I just cannot emphasize enough, Mr. Speaker, the dangers to the liberties of the American people of failing to begin this process today. I'm very proud we're allowing 12 amendments today to work through the concerns that the gentleman has, among others. But the importance of beginning this process today cannot be overstated.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds to say I agree with my friend, that the private sector is often in the best position to get the work done that we're talking about in this bill.

I would refer my colleague, Mr. Speaker, to the Intelligence Committee's Web site--it's intelligence.house.gov--where you can see the long list of those private sector actors who are supporting this bill here today, that long list of folks in the private sector responsible for the security of their firms, of the information that Americans have entrusted to them, asking this body to move forward with this bill today.

There's no question, Mr. Speaker, when you're dealing with something of the magnitude of the national security threats posed by cyber warfare and the privacy protections that everyone in this body is committed to, that you're going to end up with conscientious men and women on both sides of this issue. But it is important to note that the private sector--which is being bombarded each and every day with threats from nation-state actors overseas--is asking, pleading with this body to move forward with this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds again to say to my friend from Colorado that I know his concerns are heartfelt; but he knows, as I do, there's nothing that we can do in statute here today that would trump any of our civil liberties that are protected under the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution of the United States of America trumps all.

What we're doing here today, Mr. Speaker, is responding to a very serious national security threat, and we're doing so in a way that can give Americans great comfort that their civil liberties are every bit as protected today as they were yesterday. In fact, Mr. Speaker, in that these nation-states are hacking into these accounts and accessing our personal information every single day, I would tell you that we will actually have our privacy more protected in the presence of a secure Internet than we do today, as nation-states are frequently eroding our cybersecurity border here in the United States of America.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank my friend. I have one speaker remaining.

Mr. Speaker, at this time it is my great pleasure to yield as much time as he may consume to the chairman of the Rules Committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions).

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

I thank my friend from Florida for his service on the Rules Committee and his service on the Intelligence Committee.

The work that goes on in the Intelligence Committee, Mr. Speaker, is work that so many Members of Congress do not involve themselves in. It goes on deep in the bowels of the Capitol Complex. It's under great security, all electronic devices left outside the door, so that they can discuss things within the four walls of that committee that we're not allowed to discuss here on the House floor.

In fact, when they asked me to handle the rule today, Mr. Speaker, I was a little concerned because throughout this process of developing CISPA, I traveled down to that committee room time and time again in order to understand the threats that this Nation is facing, understand the challenges that this community of intelligence professionals is grappling with around the globe, and I don't want to be the one who shares those stories here on the House floor by mistake. I don't envy the gentleman from Florida having to balance being in that committee every single day, trying to protect the security of every single citizen, and not being able to come out of that committee room and share with, not just your colleagues here in the House, but your constituents back home, why it is you're doing the things that you do.

Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, what would have happened in World War II if we had to keep the bombing of Pearl Harbor a secret? It's a secret. Nobody knows. What do you think the support would have been, Mr. Speaker, for taking affirmative action in World War II? It would have been hard to generate that support. I would have voted ``no.''

There are things going on in this Nation and in this world today, Mr. Speaker, that our Intelligence Committee grapples with, that our intelligence professionals grapple with, things that are frightening, and things that threaten the liberty of this country and the economic security of this country. Now, I don't want to be a fear-monger, Mr. Speaker. What I love about this country is no matter what the challenge is, we are great enough collectively to rise to meet it.

In this case, we happen to need to rise to meet it in a subject matter that is near and dear to the heart of every American, which is my Internet privacy. I care a lot about Internet privacy, Mr. Speaker. I've got a VPN system set up so nobody is listening in on my Wi-Fi. I change my password about every 10 days to make sure nobody is making any progress towards hacking my system. I'll occasionally go on the Internet and use one of those anonymizers to make sure my IP address isn't being tracked when I'm looking at things that perhaps my friends in Congress, I'm trying to get a bill done, I don't want you to know I'm getting that bill done. Who knows what those people down in HIR, House Information Resources, what they're tracking that we do here? We have tools available to us in that way, Mr. Speaker.

But do you know who I can't outsmart? Perhaps I can outsmart my next- door neighbor who wants to piggyback on my Wi-Fi system. Perhaps I can outsmart the guy at the hotel who is trying to piggyback on my information there in the hotel room. Perhaps I can even outsmart the U.S. House of Representatives. But what I can't outsmart is that team of cyber warriors gathered by nation-states around the globe who are hacking my information and your information every single day, stealing our intellectual property, stealing our military technology, threatening the privacies that we've

talked so much about here on the floor today.

I'm very glad, Mr. Speaker, that as you page through this bill, you will find line after line after line aimed at protecting your and my privacy. I think we do a good job of finding that balance. We even will offer amendments today on the floor to do even better. But without security at the Internet border, I have no protection of my privacy because those agents of the state of China, North Korea, and beyond are accessing that information today.

Mr. Speaker, it's been 18 months that we've been working to craft that balance of privacy and security. We'll continue to work on that throughout 12 amendments here today. I urge my colleagues, look through this resolution, look through H.R. 624 to see the efforts that have gone into crafting this bipartisan piece of legislation; and look at those 12 amendments, look at those 12 amendments that we'll have an opportunity to vote on over the next 2 days to make this bill even better. But the time for delay, Mr. Speaker, has passed us, and the cost of delay is most certainly measured in dollars, and I fear it is measured in lives.

Let's move forward with this bill today, Mr. Speaker. I urge strong support for the rule, and I urge strong support after the debate of these 12 amendments on the underlying legislation.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Woodall

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I offer an amendment to the resolution.

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

The previous question was ordered.

Yesterday was tax day, and I've got taxes on my mind, Mr. Speaker. You know, as most folks in this Chamber do, that H.R. 25, the Fair Tax Act of 2013, is the most widely cosponsored, most widely supported fundamental tax reform legislation in the House and in the Senate. In fact, both the House and the Senate. Sixty-four of our colleagues in the House, Mr. Speaker, have put their name on H.R. 25, the Fair Tax Act. Eight of our Senate colleagues have put their name on H.R. 25, the Fair Tax Act.

The FairTax is a revolutionary proposal, Mr. Speaker, in that it takes all of the power of the Tax Code out of Washington, D.C., and returns it to men and women back home. You know that we can manipulate the behavior of absolutely anyone in America through the Tax Code. If I want folks to wear

more pink ties and fewer blue ties, I'll subsidize pink ties to the tune of 50 percent and I'll tax blue ties to the tune of 50 percent and we'll change behavior overnight.

Do you remember, Mr. Speaker, when we had the Electric Vehicle Tax Credit back in 2010? It was a $7,500 tax credit. And we said we're going to give $7,500 to every American who goes out and buys an electric car. Now the plan was folks were going to go out and buy these $100,000 electric cars and we were going to defray a little of that price. But it turns out the lawyers got involved and figured out that golf carts were electric cars. And if only we put seatbelts and rearview mirrors and brake lights on these golf carts, every American could get a free golf cart.

Mr. Speaker, I'm not going to ask if you got one of those free golf carts, and I'm not going to ask my colleagues who are back in their offices watching on TV to send me a note if they got a free golf cart. It was the law of the land. And if you got a free golf cart, I guess you deserved it.

But so abused was that tax provision, Mr. Speaker, that at the end of 2010 the IRS released tax guidance that said, We wanted you to have to take delivery of these golf carts before the end of 2010 to get the tax credit, but the demand has been so great, the manufacturers cannot fill it fast enough. Actually, you just need a VIN number and you can take delivery into 2011. Well, that's not the way the American Tax Code ought to be used, Mr. Speaker, and it's not the way American tax dollars ought to be used.

There are so many challenges we have in the American economy and so many reasons that American-made products cost more than the products that our competitors produce overseas--and so many of those reasons we do not want to change. The fact that American wages are higher than Chinese wages, I want to celebrate that. I don't want to bemoan that. The fact that environmental regulations in America are stricter and protect us in ways environmental regulations in India do not, I don't want to bemoan that. I want to celebrate that. But the fact that the American Tax Code places the highest burden on businesses and employers in America than any other place in the world, that's a problem.

We live in a very fluid economy, Mr. Speaker. Folks can locate their business anywhere on the planet they want to. They don't have to come to America. Why is it that America's not the magnet for capital around the globe? Why do we have the absolute worst Tax Code in terms of rates instead of the absolute best? And that's what I want to talk about. Because it's one of those areas of agreement, Mr. Speaker.

This is a quote from President Barack Obama in his 2011 State of the Union address. He said:

To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan

solution to strengthen Social Security for future

generations.

I mention Social Security, Mr. Speaker, because the Fair Tax Act, that bill, H.R. 25, the most widely cosponsored bill in the U.S. House of Representatives for fundamental tax reform, replaces income taxes and the payroll taxes--payroll tax is that 15.3 percent that comes out of every Americans' paycheck in order to fund Social Security and Medicare. It replaces both of those with this 23 percent sales tax. It replaces all your income taxes, all your payroll taxes with a sales tax.

And so for the first time, Mr. Speaker, we would begin to link the size of the Social Security trust fund not with wages in this country but with the size of the economy in this country. So when we double the size of the economy, we double the contributions to the Social Security trust fund, we protect Social Security for future generations.

Mr. Speaker, in a poll, I think it's been 3 years ago now, they asked young people, college-aged students, Do you believe in UFOs? Folks said yes, folks said no. They said, Do you believe you're ever going to see a Social Security check? Folks said yes and folks said no. Do you know that more of those young people believed in UFOs than thought they'd ever see a Social Security check, Mr. Speaker? That's outrageous. Because Social Security, by the very nature of its name, is to provide security. And if you don't believe it's going to be there, it provides no security whatsoever.

We can guarantee Social Security not just for the current generation but for future generations by reforming the way that we pay for it, by reforming our Tax Code, by moving to a pro-growth system like the FairTax.

The President knows we need to, and yet in his budget this year we did nothing to extend the life of the Social Security trust fund. In fact, the Social Security disability trust fund, Mr. Speaker, that trust fund that so many Americans depend on, that runs out of money before this President even leaves office. It runs out of money within 4 years, Mr. Speaker, and yet the budget proposal this year provided absolutely no certainty that changes would be made in order to protect that for future generations. That's wrong, and it's an opportunity for us to come together and do things that we all agree on.

Here's another quote, this time from President Obama's 2013 State of the Union Address:

Broad-based economic growth requires a balanced approach to

deficit reduction, with spending cuts and revenue, and with

everyone doing their fair share.

Who disagrees with that, Mr. Speaker? We talk so much about fair share here; I can't find anyone who disagrees with fair share.

I think about Dr. Carson at the annual Prayer Breakfast. Did you see that, Mr. Speaker? Dr. Carson was speaking at the Prayer Breakfast right down the street this year, and he was telling a tale of billionaires and someone who might have made $10 billion but they were taxed to the tune of $1 billion. They chipped in $1 billion to help fund America and folks were complaining that they hadn't done enough. I have not chipped in $1 billion, Mr. Speaker, far from it.

What does it mean to do your fair share? For me, it means having skin in the game. One of my great regrets, Mr. Speaker, is that during the Bush administration, for the first time in American history, we cut taxes and went to war at the same time. I think that's wrong, Mr. Speaker. I think about all the young people who had skin in that game.

In my part of the world down in Georgia, Mr. Speaker, a lot of folks are in the military, a lot of sons and daughters in uniform. Those families have skin in the game of foreign policy. But if you don't have a son or daughter in uniform, if you don't have a husband or wife in uniform, where is your skin in that game when you're not paying for those decisions? And when we make decisions that we don't have to pay for, we make bad decisions.

I agree with the President: folks need to pay their fair share. I think we all need to have some skin in the game. Folks who make more ought to pay more; folks who make less ought to pay less. But we are all members of the board of directors of the United States of America, Mr. Speaker. All 320 million of us sit on the board of directors of the United States of America, and, yes, you ought to have skin in the game when you're making decisions about how this organization runs. How do we create revenue? How do we reduce deficits? How do we make sure that folks are paying their fair share?

Well, the good news is, Mr. Speaker, the President is aware of the FairTax. I'm not willing to call him a FairTax President yet--again, the Fair Tax Act, that's H.R. 25, Mr. Speaker. I don't think the President is quite on board. We're not going to wait on the President to get on board though. We're going to go ahead and drive forward here in the House.

The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee here in the House, Mr. Speaker, that committee that has jurisdiction over all tax legislation, they are serious about fundamental tax reform in this Congress like I have never seen in my lifetime. I dare say that folks with a lot more gray hair than I have, Mr. Speaker, who've been here since 1986--the last time we did fundamental tax reform--looked at the kind of work that Chairman Dave Camp and his entire committee, majority and minority alike, have put into fundamental tax reform. And I have more hope that we are going to see fundamental tax reform--not just in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, but in this calendar year--than I have ever had before. The FairTax is going to be a part of that discussion.

The White House, to its great credit, Mr. Speaker, the White House is just leaps and bounds ahead of other White Houses in terms of how it deals with the public. They have this online petition process, Mr. Speaker, where anybody can go out there, and if you have enough folks sign your petition, you can ask the White House to do whatever you want to do. Well, here in FairTax world--which is where I come from down in Georgia, Mr. Speaker, where folks believe in the FairTax, believe in its power to reenergize the economy, believe in its power to return freedom to families and individuals and take it away from the Federal Government--we started a petition to say, Mr. President, please meet with Neal Boortz. He's one of the leaders of the FairTax movement. He has a radio program and has spent a lot of time investing in the kinds of freedom and opportunity the FairTax would bring us. It said, I want you to meet with Neal Boortz to talk about the FairTax. I want you to give Neal Boortz 1 hour.

Well, we got all the signatures that were required on that petition, and the White House's response was this:

The FairTax would apply to virtually all expenditures on

goods and services, including tuition, medical care, and new

homes, all typical family purchases.

Well, he's partly right. I highlighted tuition here, Mr. Speaker, because the FairTax doesn't tax tuition; it taxes all consumption. Tuition is more of an investment in your future, so it's not taxed. But the question isn't: Why does the FairTax tax everything? The question is: Why are some things exempted in the current Tax Code, Mr. Speaker? Why do Americans get free golf carts? Why is that? Is that a real national priority that we make that happen? Why is it we subsidize some loans and we don't subsidize other loans? Why is it folks are able to deduct some interest but not other interest? Why is it that we're willing to help people get some businesses started but not other businesses started? That doesn't speak to fair share to me, Mr. Speaker.

Running for Congress, you get this voting card and you slide it in the little slot here on the House floor, Mr. Speaker, and you get to make some decisions. For me, it's on behalf of about 640,000 people back home in Georgia. But even more power than that voting card, Mr. Speaker, is the way people use their wallet. Those 640,000 people back in Georgia, Mr. Speaker, use their wallet every day to make millions of decisions: Am I going to buy this or that product? Am I going to support this service or that service? Am I going to be involved in this activity or that activity? We run this country, Mr. Speaker, not just through our votes in November, but through the power of our wallet every single day.

In order to find the broadest tax base of all--because economists tell us, Mr. Speaker, if you have a lower tax rate and a broader tax base, you get more economic growth in your economy. The Joint Tax Committee did a symposium on that, Mr. Speaker, in the late 1990s-- because we didn't have a computer model at that time that would model a consumption tax system--and they asked eight macroeconomic modeling groups: What would happen if we switched from the income tax America has today and moved to a consumption tax? Well, these economic modeling groups from the left and from the right, Mr. Speaker, some in the center--you know, economists, for Pete's sake, they don't agree on much. In fact, the results of these modeling groups were all across the charts, across all of the metrics that they were working on, except for one.

When the question was would the economy grow faster under a consumption tax than under the current income tax system, every single group said yes. Now, some of those said it would grow a little bit faster, some of those said it would grow a lot faster, but every single macroeconomic modeling group said the economy would grow faster, that Americans would generate more wealth, that employment would be more available if we moved to a consumption tax system.

The question isn't, Mr. Speaker, why we tax some things. The question is, today, in the current system, why don't we tax everything, tax everything once, but only once, because when we don't, we pick winners and losers.

Again, through the power of my voting card here in the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker, I can manipulate the lives of every single American back home by taxing this good and subsidizing that good. That's wrong. That's wrong. Because as all members of the board of directors of the United States of America, Mr. Speaker, the entire United States of America, all of our citizens, we have the power to make those decisions with our wallet; we don't need the law to tell us.

Now, what price, Mr. Speaker, today do we pay for that law? Thirteen hours is the time the average taxpayer spends paying their taxes.

Mr. Speaker, #taxreform will bring folks to all the information that has been coming out of the House this week during tax week--hour after hour, 13 hours of productivity for the average tax filer. Now, of course, some people's taxes are simple and some people's taxes are complicated, Mr. Speaker, and we're sucking that time out of their day.

What does it turn into in dollars, Mr. Speaker? $168 billion American taxpayers spend each year to comply with tax rules. $168 billion produces nothing. It doesn't help us with our trade deficit with China. It doesn't help us export more grain to Russia. $168 billion we ask American taxpayers to dig into their pocket and pay for the pleasure of paying their income taxes.

More and more Americans every year, Mr. Speaker, find they cannot do their own taxes, that they have to go to a professional tax preparer. Doggone it, Mr. Speaker, I don't mind paying my taxes. In fact, I think America is a great country and I think I'm getting my money's worth, but to have to pay somebody to help me pay the taxes makes me angry. And it's wrong. It's wrong.

I look at what's happened in those former Soviet Bloc countries, Mr. Speaker. Do you know those former Soviet Bloc countries have all moved to flat taxes? What they found is, when they had really high tax rates and they were very difficult to comply with, folks just didn't pay their taxes at all; but when they lowered that rate, made it flat and applied it across a very broad base, folks began to voluntarily remit their taxes. That's not rocket science.

Well, that's not rocket science. That's exactly what we've seen in example after example after example around the world; $168 billion, Mr. Speaker, Americans waste simply trying to pay their taxes each year.

Now, why is tax reform so complicated? I have another quote from the President here, Mr. Speaker. This is from his weekly address back in December. He was talking about the fiscal cliff, to be fair, to put this into context. He said:

We've got to do what it takes to protect the middle class.

Now, there's great disagreement about who the middle class is, Mr. Speaker. When I go back home to townhall meetings, absolutely everyone I meet believes they're in the middle class. Whether they're at the low end of the income spectrum or at the high end of the income spectrum, that's who we are in America. We believe in that middle class dream, that upward mobility to move from that space on the bottom rung of the economic ladder up to that middle class rung.

Folks worry about the middle class, as well we should. FairTax takes that into account. The big knock, Mr. Speaker, on consumption taxes, is that rich people have to spend less of their income buying things than lower income people do. Now, that's absolutely true. At my first job out of school, Mr. Speaker, I was making under $20,000 a year. I was trying to pay rent and pay back student loans and pay insurance on my automobile. It was tough to sort all those things out in a high-rent district, high cost of living. I had to spend every penny of that $20,000 just to make ends meet.

Now, if I had been making $100,000 at that time, Mr. Speaker, I would have had a lot left over. So, yes, if you make more, as a percentage of that income, you consume less.

Well, we take that into account with the FairTax, Mr. Speaker. This is what we say. The poverty level--the poverty level in America--is calculated on

what it takes for the average individual, the average family to pay for their basic necessities. We all have rent, we all have clothes, Mr. Speaker, we all have to eat, we all have health care expenses. What is it that is kind of that basic level of subsistence? We call that the poverty level.

Now, what the FairTax does is through a tax rebate check--it's actually a prebate check because it goes out the beginning of the month instead of the end of the month--it indemnifies every American, every American family from the tax consequences of spending up to the poverty level. So that, in effect, if you're a miser, Mr. Speaker, you save every penny you have, and you're only spending up to the poverty level, you would pay no taxes. I don't care if you're Warren Buffett, I don't care if you're Bill Gates, I don't care if you're that young person just graduating from high school and getting your first job. No one taxed up to poverty level spending; everyone taxed on every penny of spending beyond that.

Here's the thing. When you open up The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Speaker, and it bemoans consumption declining in America, it hurts me. Because when consumption is declining, that means savings are rising. We need more savings in this country, Mr. Speaker. Oversaving is not a problem in America. I wish that problem upon us all. And we have a unique--a unique--window in the world economy right now, Mr. Speaker.

For years, it's been America that has been consuming everything that the world has been producing. We used to be the manufacturer for the world; now we're the consumer for the world. But as literally millions and millions and millions of new middle class consumers are coming online in China and in India, millions and millions and millions that are going to continue to grow, we have a window of opportunity right now to quit being the consumer for the world, as we have been for the past few decades, and return to our status as manufacturer for the world.

We're having this natural gas boom right now, Mr. Speaker, that's driven the cost of manufacturing down in America, the likes of which we haven't seen in decades; that's made us competitive, even with our higher wages, even with our more aggressive environmental protection regulations, made us more price competitive with goods from all across the world. We can be the producer for the world, Mr. Speaker. We don't need to be the consumer.

That's why the FairTax taxes consumption. We shouldn't tax people based on what they earn. If you're earning a lot and you're saving a lot, we should applaud you for that, not punish you for that. Mr. Speaker, when you're in the low-income class today and you're trying to move into the middle class, you begin to lose benefits--you lose your health care, you lose your education subsidy, you lose some food subsidies.

The marginal tax rate, Mr. Speaker, when you're trying to get from the lower rung of the ladder to the next rung of the ladder, can be upwards of 60 percent--60 percent on folks who are trying to make it. The FairTax says, no, no, we shouldn't tax anyone up to poverty level spending, and we should applaud anyone who finds a penny to save, because savings is what drives an economy, not consumption.

So here we have a chart, Mr. Speaker, of what happens to the FairTax rate for a two-adult, two-child household. And what you see is if you're down at a lower income bracket, Mr. Speaker, earning under $20,000 a year, you're not going to pay a penny in taxes, not a penny in taxes. In fact, you're actually going to get some money back through the FairTax rebate. If you get up to $30,000 a year, you're still not going to pay a penny in taxes; you're going to break even paying zero. If you're doing better, if you're making $45,000 or $60,000 or $121,000, you're going to see your rate continue to climb. Not the marginal rate, Mr. Speaker, but the effective rate. That's what's so lost in this body.

So often when we have our tax debates, I can have a single flat rate for everyone, a single rate; but based on what the standard deduction is at the bottom of that rate, I make that rate progressive such that folks at the bottom end of the income spectrum are getting a check back so that folks in the middle aren't paying a penny at all and so the folks at the top are paying more and more and more, depending on how much they spend. Progressive tax with the FairTax, Mr. Speaker.

You can't see this chart, Mr. Speaker, but it's the most dangerous chart that anyone is going to have on the House floor today. It shows two diverging lines. It's a chart that goes back to 1979, Mr. Speaker. The last time we had a President from the great State of Georgia was Jimmy Carter. We go back to 1979, and we chart who's paying the taxes in America, going back to the President's vision of having a FairTax system.

This blue line, Mr. Speaker, is the bottom 80 percent of all Americans, bottom 80 percent. Most of us--80 percent. It's tough to call yourself the bottom when you're the majority. But 80 percent of income earners, just distinguishing that part of America from the top 20 percent--80 percent of income earners.

What percentage of the American tax burden, income tax burden, is that 80 percent of America paying? And conversely, because we talk so much about the 1 percent, Mr. Speaker, what percentage of the American tax burden is the 1 percent paying?

And I have something that's just staggering, Mr. Speaker. Folks wouldn't believe it if you didn't see the data. Back in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was leaving office, 80 percent of Americans paid 35 percent of all the tax bills in this country, all the income tax bills; 80 percent of Americans paid a total of 35 percent of the burden. Now, we can argue whether that's too much, too little; but 80 percent were paying 35 percent of the burden.

Today, Mr. Speaker, go all the way out to 2009--it's the last year for which the IRS produced this record, that's why it's the last year that we have information for--come out to 2009, 80 percent of Americans are now paying 6 percent of the bills in this country. Eighty percent of Americans, 80 percent of the voters, are paying 6 percent of the bills. That's staggering. Most of us are in the 80 percent, Mr. Speaker, and we think that we are paying our fair share. In fact, so many of us think we probably ought to cut taxes a little bit more, and yet we're only paying 6 percent of the bills.

I want to tell you that that's dangerous. It's dangerous because that free golf cart I talked about earlier, there is no way I'm paying $7,500 for a golf cart. I would rather walk. I don't need a golf cart, don't have any place to put a golf cart, don't know how much it costs to charge a golf cart, don't really have any place I can go on a golf cart. I'm not paying $7,500 for a golf cart. But if you give me the golf cart for free, I'm going to tell you where to deliver it. I'm going to phone it in today--free golf cart--and tell you right where to send it.

When we don't have skin in the game, we make different decisions. In fact, we make bad economic decisions. They may be good decisions for us, right? It's a good deal if you can get a free golf cart. I recommend it to everyone. But it's a bad deal for the American taxpayer who's giving away those free golf carts.

When we, the 80 percent, Mr. Speaker, are only paying 6 percent of the burden, we begin to make bad voting decisions about what the cost of government is. And here's the other thing: it goes again to that innate sense of fairness that everyone in America believes in. We all believe in fairness. We may not believe in equal outcomes, but we believe in equal opportunity, that everyone should have a fair shot at success.

That top 1 percent that we talk about so much about, Mr. Speaker, I'm not in it, but I aspire to be in it one day. I hope I'm successful. I don't see the pathway from here to there yet, but I'm going to keep working at it. In 1979, when Jimmy Carter was President, that 1 percent paid 18 percent of all the bills in the country. Today, Mr. Speaker, 1 percent of the people pay 38 percent of the bills. The 1 percent are paying more than 80 percent combined. In fact, the 1 percent is paying more than 90 percent combined.

When you live in a land of self-governance, the biggest experiment in self-governance the world has ever known, an experiment about which Alexis de Tocqueville said, when he wrote about

it in the mid 1800s, As soon as the American people can decide they can vote themselves benefits, that will signal the end of the Republic.

They wonder how does America work, how can self-governance work. And de Tocqueville said, It's working today because everybody is pulling the wagon together, but as soon as they figure out that 51 percent of the Americans can tax the other 49 percent of the Americans, that's going to signal the end of self-governance.

We all believe in the fair share, Mr. Speaker. Folks ought to do their fair share of the work; folks ought to get the fair share of the benefit. We all believe in fairness. It's something that every preschool in America is teaching children, every family in America is teaching their children. But in the past four decades in my lifetime, every single year we've shifted the burden so that most of us don't have to shoulder the burden as heavily as we did the year before, such that 80 percent of us in 1979 were carrying 35 percent of the weight, and now we're only carrying 6 percent.

I don't know whose definition of fairness that falls into, Mr. Speaker. It threatens self-governance. I want a seat at the decisionmaking table. I want to be a part of the solutions for everything that happens in this country. I want to pay my fair share, and I want to do my fair share. And I think that is the feeling, the sense, the commitment of every single American today, Mr. Speaker, but we hide those results in a Tax Code that folks can't see: 80 percent of the people paying 6 percent of the bills.

Now, I know what you're saying Mr. Speaker. You've looked at some of those income distribution tables too, and you're thinking, Well, golly, Rob, maybe that 1 percent is just earning that much of the income. No, that's not true. Again, this is the latest year, 2009, for which the IRS has produced records. The top 1 percent, as the share of the pretax income, all the income earned in America, the top 1 percent earned 13 percent of the income and paid 38.7 percent of the taxes.

Now, here's the question, Mr. Speaker: If the top 1 percent--again, I'm not there. I don't know if I'll ever get there. If I stay in public service, I will absolutely never get there. If the top 1 percent are paying 38 percent of the bills while earning 13 percent of the income, in what world are they doing less than their fair share?

Here's the thing: I need to borrow money from time to time, Mr. Speaker. I borrowed money for my house. I borrowed money for my car. I need to borrow money. If folks aren't saving money, I can't borrow the money they put in the bank. I want folks earning money and saving money so that I can borrow money. Every single one of us who borrows money, we're not borrowing the bank's money; we're borrowing another citizen's money who put that money in the bank so the bank could lend it to us. We need those savings in this country, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad folks are successful. I'm glad they're creating businesses. I'm glad they're employing me and my neighbor's and my neighbor's children. I'm glad they're building my community back home.

I don't demonize success. I celebrate success. You know, Bono from U2, Mr. Speaker--I don't know if you're a fan of U2 like I am. Those were some coming-of-age albums they were producing back in my youth. Bono said what he loved about America is that in America you put your arm around your son, you take him and you look up at the big house on the hill, and you say, Son, one day if you work hard, that could be you. Bono then said over in Ireland, they put their arm around their son, they look up at the big house on the hill, and they say, Son, one day we're going to get that guy.

That's not who we are in America. We celebrate success, and we believe--in fact, we're certain of it--that if we work hard, we apply ourselves by the power of our ideas, the sweat of our brow, we can move our fate from yesterday to tomorrow. We can elevate ourselves pursuing whatever it is that we want to pursue from yesterday to tomorrow because we live in America. But something has gone on in this body, Mr. Speaker, not just in the House of Representatives, but across the street in the Senate and down the street at the White House, where folks have begun to demonize success.

Home Depot came out of the great State of Georgia, Mr. Speaker. I love Home Depot. I encourage everybody to get themselves an orange apron, put that on and get some work projects done. They do great activities for the kids on Saturday morning. They get folks started with building activities at an early age, Mr. Speaker. That company was started in the great State of Georgia, and the four men who started Home Depot--and you all know Home Depot as well as I do--they said if they got together today to try to start Home Depot, they would fail.

In America today, we are so demonizing success, we are so punishing success, we are making it so difficult for entrepreneurs to get started, that if the same four people with the same good idea got together today, they would fail. The only way this country works is if entrepreneurs succeed.

The Department of Labor, Mr. Speaker, they keep statistics on these things. They say today in America, these years during the President's administration, we've had the lowest level of entrepreneurial activity since the Department of Labor began keeping records. It's not the lowest level of people succeeding, but the lowest level of people trying. The word is out, Mr. Speaker, that you cannot succeed in America any longer, and it's just not true. If it is true, we have the power to change it. We get to decide the rules of this country, Mr. Speaker. We sit on the board of directors of America, and we get to make these rules.

Success, Mr. Speaker. Opportunity. America. Those are synonyms. They have been synonyms since 1776. They will be synonyms until the day that I die unless you and I trade those things away.

The FairTax says we're not going to be in the business of punishing people any longer; we're going to be in the business of celebrating success. The more you save, the less you'll be taxed; the more you spend, the more you'll be taxed.

Now, you all know, Mr. Speaker, about jealousy just as well as I do. I don't know if you had this same issue, Mr. Speaker. When I got ready to apply for college, I applied for all the Federal grants. I filled out that big FAFSA form trying to get some help from the Federal Government. I got nothing. They said, Sorry, your family has saved too much money.

Now, we come from a single-income family, Mr. Speaker, but my buddy down the street, he came from a two-income family. His mom was an architect and his dad was a lawyer. They had money stacked up in the windows, Mr. Speaker. They had vacation homes. They went skiing in Vail. They had boats. They all drove--I say all. There were four of them in the family, and three of them drove Mercedes and one of them drove a BMW. They all were new. When he applied to get money from the Federal Government, the government said, You know what, we've looked at your savings account for the family and you don't have a penny in it. You need help. Here's some money for you.

Something's wrong in our Tax Code, Mr. Speaker. It celebrates the consumption of goods, and it penalizes savings. We need to be in the opposite camp. The reason we have to go to China and to Germany to borrow money to fund America is because Americans can't fund it any more. Back in the 1970s, Mr. Speaker, we were still borrowing money, we still had a national debt, but Americans lent the Federal Government the money to fund the processes of the Federal Government.

Today, almost 50 percent of the money we spend and 50 percent of the money we borrow comes from foreign nations. We as a people can't even save enough money to fund the United States Government any longer, and our Tax Code encourages that conspicuous consumption at every level.

Mr. Speaker, let me just show you some of the things that are in the Tax Code. Again, these are all complicated questions. You've got to make these decisions for yourself. If they were easy questions, Mr. Speaker, they wouldn't need you and me and these two new freshman classes to sort them out. The easy questions were sorted out long, long ago.

Again, Mr. Speaker, you wouldn't believe this unless you dig deep into the numbers. We spend more in tax credits and tax loopholes and tax giveaways than we do on all other discretionary spending accounts combined.

What do I mean by that?

We have what we call ``mandatory spending'' here. That's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest on the national debt. We call that ``mandatory spending.'' Everything else--roads, bridges, courts, parks, the environment--is what we call ``discretionary spending.'' Everybody knows what the tax rate is. Everybody knows they're paying into the tax system. We give away things in the tax system--promote this idea; promote that idea; give away this pot of money. We give away more through the Tax Code--we spend more through the Tax Code--than we spend on all other aspects of government combined, but the spending is hidden.

I've put up a few of what we'll call ``income tax expenditures'' here. Let's see what that is.

For example: exclusion of interest on public purpose State and local bonds. Right? That seems pretty innocuous, State and local bonds. We want to encourage State and local governments to take responsibility, so we're going to allow those bonds to pay interest tax-free. Well, okay, but it's not free. Somebody else is paying for it. Those folks who have those bonds aren't paying for it, but the rest of America has to pick up the tab.

Here is one: individual retirement accounts. Right? If you put money in your IRA, we want you to save for your retirement. We don't tax you on that money, but it's not free. Somebody else is paying that tax. It's just not those folks who are saving their money in their IRAs.

I'm not saying these things aren't good ideas. I'm saying we have to talk about where this money is coming from. I'm closer to death than I am to birth, Mr. Speaker. This $16.7 trillion that we've borrowed from America's kids, I'm going to be dead before we pay that back, but it is going to be an albatross around their economic neck for another generation or two or three, and we're making those choices today. We're spending money through the Tax Code instead of through the appropriations process.

The FairTax says: no more. The FairTax says: a tax isn't about manipulating behavior. A tax is about collecting revenue to fund the necessities of a government.

We can argue about what those necessities are. Should it include the President's health care bill? Should it not? Should it include wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Should it not? Should it include environmental protections? Should it not? We can argue about all of those things, but that's what revenue is for. You collect the revenue to fund those priorities that we, the American people, believe in.

But what we use our Tax Code for today is for the Congress of the United States, for the President of the United States and other folks with political power and influence to pick winners and losers through the Tax Code, so much so that we spend more money through the Tax Code than all other aspects of government combined--everything on the discretionary side.

It wasn't this way when we got started. Back in 1913, the passage of the 16th Amendment allowed Americans to have an income tax for the very first time. Do you know what they said, Mr. Speaker? You've probably heard this before. They said, This is only going to be a very small tax on the very wealthiest of Americans.

My calculations, using CPI, Mr. Speaker, tell me that it was a 1 percent tax on folks who made over $9 million a year. On $9 million a year, a 1 percent tax--I'm pretty sure we could get 51 percent of the folks to vote for that--but over time, that income tax grew so that it touches every single American family. Thirteen hours, on average, an American family spends to comply with the Tax Code. And for what? It destroys opportunity. It hides spending. It protects from scrutiny those items that this U.S. House of Representatives has decided are worthy of taxpayer expense.

We have a choice: don't lower wages in America. In fact, study after study says, if we pass the FairTax, we're going to see wages go up. It's going to increase economic activity and make us a magnet for capital from around the world. Why in the world are we borrowing money from China when we could just change our Tax Code, and money that American companies have already earned would flow back into this country in order to create jobs?

The FairTax says: no more. Let's have one tax rate on everything that Americans buy and consume.

I'll close with this, Mr. Speaker. Here is the catch. We are the only OECD country in the world--the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development--that does not have a consumption tax.

Now, what does that mean?

It means, when we build a Ford right here in the United States of America, that Ford has buried in the cost of that Ford that 15.3 percent payroll tax that every employee and employer has to pay, the income tax that every employee and employer has to pay--all of the tax burdens of the United States of America. Again, the highest corporate tax rate in the world is buried in the price of that Ford. When it gets to Germany, they add their Value Added Tax on top of that, and they ask, Who wants to buy a Ford? But the BMW that's leaving Germany, where they have a consumption tax, doesn't have those taxes buried in it, Mr. Speaker. In fact, it's tax free because the tax goes on top of it at the sale. So, when they ship that BMW overseas, it comes over here completely tax free, and then we add on top of it our income taxes, our payroll taxes, our corporate taxes.

That's an unlevel playing field, and the person it disadvantages is not the owner of Ford. The person it disadvantages is the employee at Ford, who needs that job. We used to have a Ford line and a GM line in the city of Atlanta, Mr. Speaker. They're both closed. They are both closed today because they couldn't make it work.

We can bring those jobs back to America. More importantly, we can prevent jobs from leaving America, not because we're making them stay, not because we're going to tax them if they leave, but because we make America the magnet for job creation and economic activity across the planet. Today, we're the worst. Tomorrow, we can bring ourselves back to the middle.

My question to the body today is: Why don't we commit ourselves to making America the very best place to do business on the planet?

We can continue to borrow money from the Chinese if we want to. We can continue to add burden to all the young people in America if we want to--or we can take America back to our roots. There is no more productive worker on the planet than the American worker. If we free the American worker, if we free the American entrepreneur through a Tax Code that the American people can understand, we will bring a new era of prosperity to America, the likes we have not seen in my lifetime.

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

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 2 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, April 17, 2013, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the House floor today fresh from a Budget Committee hearing. We had the OMB Director presenting the President's budget today.

I know so many folks have said, I thought the budget was required by law to be here the first week of February. That's true. Better late than never continues to be true, as well. But as we listened to the details of the budget, Mr. Speaker, what we heard was that the President is proposing to increase spending, increase taxes, and increase the debt.

Mr. Speaker, there are thousands of pages to this budget. I hope we'll find some things that we can agree on. But I know that the American people agree with Republicans in this House when we say taxes are already too high, spending is already too high, and the debt is already too high.

The President's budget never, ever pays one penny of our Federal debt. It's wrong. We can do better. This House must come together and lead that charge.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

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

I bring a budget today, a substitute, on behalf of the Republican Study Committee, a budget that balances the Federal budget in just 4 years. It does that, Mr. Chairman, by setting priorities for this Nation, priorities that our constituents back home know need to be set.

I want to begin, Mr. Chairman, by showing you the priorities as they relate to revenue and spending. Within 4 years, we bring revenue above the level of spending so that we can begin to repay our debt and eliminate our deficits for the first time since the Clinton administration, which will bring deficits and revenues in line, Mr. Chairman.

What we do is we prioritize those programs that are important to so many Americans. As you see from this chart, Mr. Chairman, Social Security spending is up each and every year in our budget while extending the life of the Social Security trust fund; Medicare spending is up each and every year in our budget while extending the life of the Medicare trust fund.

Mr. Chairman, if a budget is nothing else, it is a statement of our values and our priorities. And the Republican Study Committee's value and priority is to end the passing of responsibilities from this generation to the next, to be responsible for the bills that we create today and pay for those priorities today.

In 4 short years, Mr. Chairman, we can be out of this conversation about debt and deficit and begin the conversation about freeing the next generation from the $16.7 trillion that you and I and previous Congresses have racked up on their behalf.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, while I regret the Rules Committee didn't give us more time to correct that misinformation, they did give us wonderful speakers. I would like to yield 4 minutes now to a former chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a former chairman of the Republican Conference, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Mr. Chairman, at this time it's my great pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee.

Mr. Chairman, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), one of the visionaries of the Republican Study Committee.

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

Mr. Chairman, at this time it's my great pleasure to yield 1 minute to a colleague of mine from the great State of Georgia, Dr. Broun.

Mr. Chairman, at this time it's my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Huelskamp), a gentleman who came into the House with me in 2010.

Mr. Chairman, I'd inquire of my friend if he has any remaining speakers.

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

Mr. Chairman, you and all Members can find every word of this budget on the Internet at rsc.scalise.house.gov. This isn't just about trying to go through the math. This is about laying out priorities. That's what every budget is.

This budget provides flexibility to States to care for our poor and our underserved in our health care communities. This budget provides the flexibility to seniors to find doctors, doctors that are no longer taking Medicare today and are threatening the health care quality that folks like my mom and dad are having to contend with.

This is a budget that makes tough decisions. You're not going to find a family in this country, Mr. Chairman, that hasn't had to make tough decisions during tough economic times. And the question is, why won't the U.S. House of Representatives, why won't the U.S. Senate, why won't the United States President do exactly the same thing?

We're trying to fulfill that request of the American people today, Mr. Chairman, in this budget. Every word laid out right here talking about, Mr. Chairman, responsible budgeting, prioritizing, as we did, our seniors who are counting on Social Security, our seniors who are counting on Medicare, our seniors who are counting on the solvency of both of those programs.

We ensure that that does not continue, Mr. Chairman, because solvency is not guaranteed. In fact, it's guaranteed not to be there under current funding systems. We change those systems to ensure that it will be a sustainable path, Mr. Chairman, a path where revenues and spending align, radical idea for this Chamber. And you'll hear it described in radical terms by my friends, where spending and revenues align. We commit ourselves to that, and we achieve it.

They say that talk is cheap, Mr. Chairman. That's why we back up this budget with real ideas, real proposals, real solutions. But when they say talk is cheap, and as my colleague from Maryland begins to close, I want to observe that talk, in this case, is not cheap at all.

The words that you'll hear from the gentleman from Maryland, in opposition to our proposal, in support of his proposal, are the difference between the $33 billion surplus that our budget generates and the $5.11 trillion deficit that the gentleman's proposal creates.

These are not questions of math, Mr. Chairman. These are questions of what kind of future do we want to leave to our children and our grandchildren. I feel the burden of responsibility for the $16.7 trillion this Nation has already put on its credit card. We take difficult steps in this budget to begin to reverse that for the first time.

In the absence of this budget, Mr. Chairman, in the absence of powerful ideas, like what you see in the House Budget Committee budget, we relegate our children to a second-class future, a future in which they owe $5.1 trillion more than the already immoral debt load that they face today.

There is a better way, Mr. Chairman. There are alternatives in this town. We are presenting one right here. It's called the Back to Basics budget, Mr. Chairman. It's a product of the Republican Study Committee.

To close, Mr. Chairman, these things don't happen by themselves. While the President has been unable to produce a budget, we've produced five in this house. It's because of the work of folks like Nick Myers on my staff. It's because of the work of folks like Will Dunham on the RSC staff. I know the gentleman from Maryland has the same kind of hardworking team working with him. These things don't happen in a vacuum. They happen because folks put in hour after hour after hour. I'm grateful to them. I hope America will support the product of their minds.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 122 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my good friend, the ranking member from New York, pending which time I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, Mr. Speaker, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, that was a mouthful as the Clerk was reading through this resolution, and it was an exciting mouthful. I'm not sure that folks actually were able to get from just the prose the excitement that is in this rule today.

What this rule provides for is two very important things. I'm going to take them in order of my personal passion, but they're both equally important. Number one, this rule provides that every single Member of this House--not just Republicans, not just Democrats, not just folks who are favored, not any particular category--but every single Member of this House who represents a constituency back home had an opportunity to submit their own budget for the United States of America.

So often, the problem in this town is not enough good ideas, Mr. Speaker.

We don't have that problem today because every Member of the House that chose to submit a budget is going to have their budget considered and debated on the floor of this House if we pass this rule today.

Now, that is only five budgets, Mr. Speaker, five plus the Budget Committee's mark, because it's not easy to put together a budget. A lot of folks talk a good game about what they would do if they were king for a day; but when you try to craft your own budget, you've got to put, literally, money where your mouth and ideas are.

In this rule, we make in order a Congressional Black Caucus substitute budget, a Progressive Caucus substitute budget, and a substitute budget by the ranking member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen). We make in order a budget introduced by Mr. Mulvaney from South Carolina that tries to capture the essence of what the Senate is working on right now, and we make in order a budget produced by the Republican Study Committee. All of those exist as an alternative to the budget that was produced by the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I have the great pleasure of sitting on the Budget Committee. What you see here in my hand is the Budget Committee report. We produced this on March 15. It's bound and it's published. They did a very nice job. It's been proofread, and the minority has had a chance to add their views. That was March 15 that we produced this budget.

But as we sit here today with March quickly leaving us, what we do not have yet is a budget from the United States President. I only point that out, Mr. Speaker, to say I understand that it's hard to produce a budget. I know because I produced one in this cycle. I had the great pleasure of working with a team that produced the Republican Study Committee budget and produced the House budget. So in a time period where the President has failed to follow the legally required mandate of introducing a budget by the first week of February, I've had the great pleasure of producing two budgets.

My friends on the Progressive Caucus have produced a budget. My friends on the Congressional Black Caucus have produced a budget. My friend, Mr. Van Hollen, has produced a budget. And I think it is fair when we ask in this debate why we have been denied a chance to look at the President's budget. We didn't see it in February. We didn't see it in March. Word has it now we might see it in April.

It's hard work to produce a budget, but it's important work. In fact, it's legally required work. I take great pride not just that the House will meet its statutory deadline, but that we're meeting it in this very open and honest forum as this rule proposes.

But the second thing this rule does, Mr. Speaker, is it provides for consideration of the committee funding resolution. This Congress doesn't have a penny to spend except for pennies that we take from the American taxpayer. That's the only place any revenue comes into this United States Government. Part of that revenue goes to fund this very institution.

Thrift begins at home, Mr. Speaker. Before you and I arrived in this body, Mr. Speaker, the committee process here in this House was authorized to spend $300 million a year. Now, the committees do amazing work. It's important work to produce reports like this Budget Committee report, and they do the oversight on the executive branch. I don't for a minute suggest that the work that the committee structure does isn't critical to the functioning of our Republic. But every single account in the United States Government has to be looked at, examined, critiqued, and reformed if we are to get our fiscal books back in order.

The very first committee funding resolution you and I had a chance to vote on, Mr. Speaker, we reduced that committee funding from $300 million back in the 111th Congress down to around $260 in the 112th.

Here we come down again to $240 million in this resolution. In the 26 now short months that you and I have served in Congress, Mr. Speaker, this body has examined its own books and reduced its spending by 20 percent on committees. That is not an easy task. That's not a task that came lightly. That's a task that has taken tremendous effort by both the majority and the minority.

But my question is, Mr. Speaker, if we can do it, as the American people expect us to do, what could the executive branch do? If we in the people's House can take 20 percent out because our constituents have demanded that we view every single dollar with an eye toward thrift, what could the executive branch do if only they would partner with us as we begin the leadership right here in this body?

None of the easy decisions are left, Mr. Speaker. The only decisions left to be decided in this budget, to be decided in this rule, are the hard decisions. We have provided in this rule the opportunity to consider every alternative that Members have proposed to decide these solutions, Mr. Speaker.

With that, I encourage my colleagues to support this rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to refer the gentlelady to the House Budget Committee report.

If she were to read just the first few pages, she would see that spending increases under this budget by $500 billion in the next 5 years and by $1.5 trillion over the next 10. I promised myself I would count how many times we heard the words ``extreme cuts'' applied to what is a half-trillion dollars in new and additional spending, but I confess I've lost track already today.

With that, I would like to yield 5 minutes, Mr. Speaker, to the chairman of the Rules Committee, a man who crafted this rule that has allowed all ideas on the budget to be considered today. He would be the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. If I can just ask my colleague from California before she leaves, and I have the great pleasure of serving with her on the Budget Committee, and I would certainly disagree with most of her characterizations about the work product there, and look forward to dispelling those tomorrow, but today with this rule, I heard you encourage our colleagues to reject this rule. This is, of course, a rule that has made every single idea of every single Member who had a budget plan in order. Does that not satisfy the gentlelady's need for a full and open debate on our budget priorities?

I'm happy to yield to the gentlelady.

Reclaiming my time, I would not ignore those at all. I believe we have made priorities of those in this budget. I look forward to debating that tomorrow.

With that, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), another one of my colleagues on the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes to speak to accusations of forces of darkness. I've found in my time that light is one of those great illuminators. How convenient in that route.

And I would just refer folks to the budget that's posted online. It's budget.house.gov.

Mr. Speaker, as you know, the budget report is there that goes through line item by line item by line item and increases spending, not by the 5 percent that current law would do it, that current law that is sending our children and our grandchildren to bankruptcy, but increases spending by 3.5 percent instead. And within that, the gentlelady from Ohio, Mr. Speaker, is absolutely right. We've got to make priority choices about where it is we want our dollars to go.

But I would say to the gentlelady--and I know her heart is pure as she talks about the investment and where she wants to make it in this country--tell me what it is that you and I are willing to pay for today, and let's make that investment.

You know, I think about Hurricane Sandy, for example, all those families in need that we wanted to help; and, you know, we didn't raise a single penny here to do it. We asked our children and our grandchildren to pay for every nickel.

I don't need encouragement to visit those food banks. I've been there already, and I know exactly what the gentlelady's talking about.

I'd be happy to yield to the gentlewoman.

Reclaiming my time, indeed I have. I've seen our neighbors there filling those needs as well.

Again, it is so frustrating to me, Mr. Speaker, in this body, we do not argue about who are the poorest and the neediest among us. We know with certainty who those folks are. What we argue about is whether it's your and my obligation to feed and clothe those folks, or whether we should pass that obligation along to our children and our grandchildren.

And I say, Mr. Speaker, it is immoral. It is immoral for us to ask our children and our grandchildren to pay bills for charity that you and I are not willing to do ourselves today.

I'm so pleased that this rule has made every idea available on the floor of the House for a vote today, but we must choose to do it ourselves. The time for passing the bill to our children and grandchildren is long gone.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds just to say to the gentlelady, my sister and brother-in-law and two beautiful nieces live in Athens, Ohio, one of the poorest regions in southern Ohio. I know exactly what the gentlelady is saying.

We do have to make these choices, and I commend our friends in the Congressional Black Caucus budget and the Progressive budget for laying out their guidelines for raising taxes by $4 and $6 trillion, respectively, to try to pay for some of those priorities; but even in those budgets, they still never balance.

I'm saying that you and I today, from the great wealth that is in this country today, have a chance to either pay for things that we think are important or borrow money from our children and our grandchildren to pay for things that we think are important. You and I are closer to death than we are to birth. These bills are going to be paid by our children and our grandchildren. And today, for example, the President's budget, we've never seen a budget that projected paying back even a penny over the next 75-year window.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds, Mr. Speaker.

I would welcome the opportunity to work closer across the aisle than we are here today to address those needs that we all agree on. I would say to the gentlelady, our disagreement is not on whether or not those needs exist; it's whether or not you and I are obligated, morally, spiritually, as a function of our community, to serve those needs or whether we can pass that bill on to others.

I know the gentlelady has a strong passion for doing that. I hope she would join with me so that we can do it together, not ask someone else to do it.

I would be happy to yield to the gentlelady.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time it is my great pleasure to yield 5 minutes to a new member of the Rules Committee, but a senior member and leader of this House, the gentleman from Texas, Dr. Burgess.

I will say to the gentlelady I do not have further requests for time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to thank the gentlelady for being with me on the floor today.

I'll say that we sometimes have some controversy in the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker. There's a lot of responsibility that lies in the Rules Committee. With 435 folks here in this Chamber, and we all would like to have our say--and we'd all like to have our say probably more than once--the Rules Committee is tasked with managing that debate.

I'll tell you, I think the rule we passed last night is the best rule we've done all year along. Now, my colleague from New York may think I'm damming it with faint praise. But I would say that having this open debate that we will have tomorrow on budgets is about the best we can do in this institution, Mr. Speaker. To allow every single idea, every single individual from the most junior Member who was just elected 2 months ago to the most senior Member who has been here 40 years, if you have a budget idea, you get to have it heard on the floor of the House. In this case, Mr. Speaker, that's going to be six budgets we're going to look at tomorrow.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I believe having an open process is important. We made in order the Progressive Caucus budget. That Progressive Caucus budget raises taxes by $5.7 trillion--unashamed, unabashed. Tough economy; let's raise taxes by $5.7 trillion, and let's increase spending even more than we are today. I'm glad that that budget is going to be here on the floor.

The Congressional Black Caucus raises taxes $4.2 trillion. Mr. Van Hollen's substitute raises taxes $1.2 trillion.

As you saw from the chart that the chairman of the Rules Committee had on the floor of the House earlier, Mr. Speaker, we don't have a tax problem in this country, we have a spending problem in this country. If we took everything from everybody, we still wouldn't have enough money to pay for all of the promises that previous Congresses and previous Presidents have made. What that translates into is fear.

We can do better for the American people than election after election to scare them with the looming bankruptcy of programs that they depend on. Yet we know the Social Security Disability Insurance program-- already out of money, Mr. Speaker. The Medicare program--which my mom and dad depend on--going out of business in 2023. The Social Security retirement program, Mr. Speaker, not enough money to fund future promises. We have a chance to either ignore those promises or embrace those challenges.

I will tell you we do not have a crisis in this country; we have an opportunity in this country to do the things that we have long known we needed to do.

In 1983, Mr. Speaker, Republicans and Democrats came together, extended the life of the Social Security program and provided certainty and security to another generation of America's seniors. We have an opportunity tomorrow to do the same thing for the Medicare program, or to kick the can down the road and ensure uncertainty, crisis, and fear in yet another generation of Americans who depend upon these programs.

I urge all my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to support this rule that will allow every single idea to be considered tomorrow. And when you come to the floor tomorrow, choose that budget that makes the tough decisions.

It takes no courage at all to let someone else pay the bills, Mr. Speaker. It takes no courage at all to let the next generation sort out the problems. The courage is coming together today to say, even though the weight is going to fall on our shoulders to solve the problem, we owe it to the next generation. We owe them nothing less.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this rule. I yield back the balance of my time and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 7 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, March 19, 2013, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you, and I thank the majority leader for allowing me to utilize the time today.

Mr. Speaker, a lot of folks, as votes have finished for the day, have headed for their flights back home. A lot of folks are back in their offices trying to finish up work for the week. I appreciate your being here because what we've heard, when we haven't been debating the SKILLS Act--that fantastic bill that consolidates so many important job training programs from the multiple, duplicative programs that we have today down into a few, effective, targeted programs--when we haven't been talking about that important work today, folks have been taking shots at the budget process.

I'm a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker. And, in fact, I'm the chairman of the Budget Subcommittee on the Rules Committee, Legislative and Budget Process, and I believe what we do here with the budget is so important. I know my colleagues who will be debating this next week share that same view.

I brought with me, Mr. Speaker, a copy of ``Path to Prosperity: A Responsible, Balanced Budget.''

This is the budget that we produced in the Budget Committee. We went from about 10 a.m. on Wednesday through almost midnight. We took every amendment that folks had to offer. We took a vote on every topic that folks wanted to consider, and we produced a responsible budget that deals with the fact that spending is the problem.

I heard my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, over and over again today on the other side of the aisle talk in terms of heartlessness, of callousness, talking in terms of the production of this budget in a way that does not reflect American values. I tell you, that's just patently false, which is why I had to come down and speak to it this afternoon, Mr. Speaker.

What I have here is a chart that shows taxes. This begins in 2006; it runs out to 2041. It shows taxes as a percent of the size of the economy. You know, population grows, inflation devalues our currency. Quantitative easing devalues our currency. That's a different topic for a different day.

But we measure that in terms of size of the economy what our burden of taxation is, and, historically, that burden of taxation has been about 18.1 percent. We had a dip in the recession back in 2009, 2010 that took that level of taxation down below historical norms.

And so when we talk about that here on the floor of the House, we, together--Republicans, Democrats, moderates, liberals, conservatives-- everyone agrees we need revenue at historical levels to fund the historical obligations of the government.

But here's the thing, Mr. Speaker. You look out from--here we are in 2013, on out across the horizon as far as the eye can see, you see a level of funding of our tax burdens. You then, here, in this blue line, see a graphical representation of every single tax increase that the President proposed. I mean, hear that, because so often on the floor of the House, Mr. Speaker, we talk about spending reductions on one side of the aisle and tax increases on the other side of the aisle. This blue line represents every single tax increase proposed by the President of the United States.

So we have all the taxes we have today. We have all the taxes in the blue line proposed by the President. And then in the red line, we have a reflection of the promises that this Congress has made to the American people and future generations in terms of spending.

Now, again, Mr. Speaker, green represents historical taxes; blue represents all the taxes imagined by the President of the United States; and the rest represents the spending that is flooding the town of Washington, D.C.

Spending is the problem, Mr. Speaker. If we took everything from everybody, if you and I got together with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and we decided we needed a 100 percent tax on everything that everyone in America has or will have and we took it all, we still couldn't fund this red line.

There's no level of taxation--this is 40 percent of the economy we're talking about here, Mr. Speaker. There's no level of taxation that we could have that could pay for the spending promises we've already made, and there are some on the floor of this House who want to make new promises tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

It's not a function of where our priorities are. In terms of taking care of one another as Americans, we share that priority. It is a function of whether or not we can afford to do it all from Washington, D.C., and we can't.

Spending is the problem, Mr. Speaker. This is hash tag spending is the problem. You'll see that trending on Twitter as folks come to the realization that we can't tax our way out of this circumstance.

So what do we do in the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker? What did we do for 12 hours on Wednesday and, in fact, months and months and months of preparation?

Well, this is one of my favorite charts, Mr. Speaker. It's a chart that tracks the deficits. Sometimes we get confused as we're talking about it, Mr. Speaker. Of course, the deficit is what you're adding to your credit card each year. The debt is what that total balance on the credit card is. This is a reflection of what we're adding to the credit card each year. And what you see, Mr. Speaker, is a dramatic reduction in those deficits in 2013, 2014, and 2015, and let me tell you why.

You're part of this new freshman class, Mr. Speaker. I'm part of the freshman class that came in just 2 years ago. And we have a natural suspicion of all of these wonderful plans in Washington, that they're laid out over a 10-year timeframe. And we say, Oh, goodness. Out there in years 8, 9, and 10, we're going to do all these wonderful and difficult things. But today, in years 1, 2, and 3, what we really need to do is raise your taxes to get there.

If I make a promise to you about what I'm going to do in year 10, you need to be suspicious. You need to ask me what I'm going to do between now and the next election, between now and your next opportunity to vote me out of office, if I'm making the wrong decisions.

And what you see reflected here in this red line, which represents current law, Mr. Speaker, you see the path that current law has our deficits on. Folks say, Golly, Rob, that looks kind of good. We're headed straight down. Looks like Congress is doing a lot of good work.

Well, yes and no. We are headed down. We're headed down from record deficits begun in the Obama administration, record deficits, deficits four times higher than the worst deficit ever experienced in the Bush administration. The Bush administration was the former record holder for the most deficit spending in this country. President Obama dwarfed that annual budget four times higher.

So I came in this freshman class, Mr. Speaker, this freshman class of almost 100 folks on both sides of the aisle who decided to run for Congress because they wanted to solve problems. They didn't want to talk about who to blame for the problems. They wanted to talk about how they could solve the problems. And we got together, over the last 2 years, and we turned the corner on those rising deficits, began to bring deficits back down.

But when these tools that we've been able to put in place, Mr. Speaker, expire, those deficits start heading right back up under current law. What can we do about it?

We can change the way we do business in Washington, D.C., which is what we did in the budget that we've passed out of the Budget Committee, the budget that's going to be on the floor of the House next week. And as you see represented by this green line, Mr. Speaker, we go from the record-setting deficits of 2010 and 2011 down to a budget that balances for the first time since the Clinton administration. First time since Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, Republicans and Democrats, came together on the floor of this House to balance budgets; the first time in about 15 years we're doing that, Mr. Speaker. And we're not doing it out in year 10.

This budget, Mr. Speaker, that I'm so proud of that I've had just a small part in helping to craft, it begins the tough decisions today, because we don't need to make promises about how we're going to fix things 10 years from now. We have certainty about how difficult things will be 10 years from now. We need to fix those things today. Every day we put it off it gets harder.

But we're having a tough time finding agreement, Mr. Speaker. And I don't mean agreement on how to reduce the deficit. I don't mean an agreement on how to eliminate the debt. I mean an agreement on whether or not the debt, in fact, needs to be eliminated.

Now, at the end of this presentation, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to get to why this is important. This is not a mathematical exercise. This is not a green eyeshade exercise. This is an exercise that impacts the quality of life of every single family in America. Every child growing up in America today is going to have their opportunities curtailed by the debt that their parents and grandparents are leaving to them if we fail to act today, a debt that is growing faster and faster and faster.

This isn't about numbers. This is about real lives and real opportunities. But I want to talk about the numbers before we get to the real lives and the real opportunities, because I want you to understand the magnitude of the challenge.

This is World War II, Mr. Speaker. This is a chart that reflects the debt, the debt held by the public. In World War II, when we were fighting for freedom around the globe, when, literally, the future of the world hung in the balance, we borrowed an amount of money theretofore unheard of in America, almost, well, just over, in fact, 100 percent of the size of the economy America borrowed to win freedom around the globe. We began to pay that back, of course. And over the years, that debt became lower and lower and lower and lower and lower and lower.

Well, here you see the spike in modern times, Mr. Speaker, that spike in the end of the Bush years, the beginning of the Obama years, running on until today; and you see the red line that projects the current path of debt, again, if we do nothing.

Folks often tell me back home, Mr. Speaker, they say, Congressman, why don't you just go shut the government down and save some money?

Well, I have some bad news. If we closed the Congress today, if we locked the doors to the White House this afternoon, if the Congress and the President never passed another law, never made another promise, this red line represents the promises we've already made.

This red line isn't what happens if we act poorly. This red line is what happens if we fail to act at all. It takes affirmative action in order to bring that debt crisis down.

Look at the green space, Mr. Speaker. That's the path to prosperity. Remember, this chart represents debt.

Debt. Not the deficit when you try to bring a budget to balance, but the debt that we're trying to pay back when you bring a budget to balance, when you create a surplus and use that surplus to pay back the folks from whom you've borrowed.

The Path to Prosperity, this budget, Mr. Speaker, that we've crafted in the Budget Committee that I hope this House will pass next week, puts America on track not just to eliminate annual deficits, not just to end the increase of our $16.7 trillion in Federal debt, but to begin to pay that debt down so that we owe the world zero. Zero. Balancing the budget is not an exercise in and of itself. Balancing the budget is what has to happen first so that you can pay back the folks from whom you've borrowed. We take debt down to zero.

This is what the President said on Sunday morning television, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, March 13 of this year:

We don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next 10 years, it's going to be in a sustainable place.

Here it is, Mr. Speaker. That red line you see rocketing towards the top of the page, it doesn't actually end up here at the top of the page; I just ran out of ink, Mr. Speaker. That red line continues straight up off the chart in perpetuity. This is what the President calls ``a sustainable place.''

But this is what's even more important. And every mom and dad in America knows this. When you're planning for your children's future, you don't begin with what you want for them today. You begin with what you want for them 10 years from now and you begin to plan and work and save and scrimp so that it will be a reality 10 years from today. And not just 10, but 20 and 30. To achieve the goals we want in the future, we have to begin today.

And, Mr. Speaker, when I quote the President back home, folks often think I'm mean-spirited. They say, Rob, why do you say those awful things about the President? I say, I'm not saying awful things about the President. I think the President is a good man. He's got some awful ideas, but he's a good man. And I'm just telling you what his ideas are. And if he were here, he'd tell you the very same thing. I don't need to engage in hyperbole on the floor of the House, Mr. Speaker, because the President believes that we don't have a debt crisis. The President believes that it's all right if the debt continues to go higher and higher and higher forever. Forever. That's not hyperbole. He would tell you that if he was standing here today.

In fact, we can look at every budget the President has ever submitted. Now he hasn't submitted a budget this year. He's going to go down in the record books as the President who has introduced his budget the longest past the legally required deadline in the history of Presidents presenting budgets. That's not a title that folks aspire to, but that's where we're going to be today.

He has never introduced a budget that balances. But more importantly, he's never introduced a budget that stops raising the debt. Not only does the President not pay back a penny of debt in any budget he's ever introduced--and I just don't mean a 1-year window, a 5-year window, and a 10-year window; I mean in a 75-year window. He increases that debt more and more each year. And he believes--again, I'm not trying to say anything that he wouldn't tell you himself, Mr. Speaker--he believes that what our goal should be as America is not to actually pay the debt back, as we try to do in our budget, taking that green line down to zero, but what our goal should be is just to slow the rise of the debt below the rate of growth of our economy.

What does that mean? In practical terms, it means if you have a credit card, your goal should not be to pay your credit card back. In fact, your goal shouldn't even be just to pay the interest on your credit card. What your goal should be is to make sure that as that balance on your credit card continues to rise, it rises slower than whatever your income is rising to be. If your credit card balances go on in perpetuity and get higher and higher, it's as if your goal as a family is to keep that rise from going any faster than your paycheck is rising.

It's a crazy philosophy, Mr. Speaker. Absolutely no family in America shares that philosophy. That's what the President said on George Stephanopoulos, that's what he believes today, that's what he told the Republican Conference when we met together this week.

So let's talk about what those alternative ideas are. The President's plan is not to balance, our plan is to balance. Again, when the President says a balanced approach, that means he wants tax increases and spending reductions. That's the definition of a balanced approach. But it's an approach that never balances.

Our friends in the Senate have not passed a budget for 4 years. But it looks like they're at least trying this year. And I applaud them for that. This is an editorial from The Wall Street Journal this morning, Mr. Speaker, that talks about that outline of the Senate budget that was shared with America yesterday. The Wall Street Journal says this:

The bill manages the unique achievement of offering no net

non-defense spending cuts and no entitlement reform worth the

name while proposing to raise $1.5 trillion in new tax

revenue in such a way that would ruin the prospects for

bipartisan reform.

Spending, Mr. Speaker. Spending is the problem. The problem we have is spending. And what The Wall Street Journal observes is that the budget that's being proposed over in the United States Senate--and, again, I applaud them for at least beginning that process. The law requires them to do it every single year. They haven't done it for 4. I hope they'll do it this year. We passed the No Budget, No Pay Act. So at least if they don't do it, they won't get a paycheck for that dereliction of duty. But this is what they have proposed: a bill with no net spending cuts, no entitlement reform, and tax increases of $1 trillion, so says The Wall Street Journal:

Democrats admit to raising taxes by $975 billion over 10

years by increasing the fairness and efficiency of the Tax

Code. Ms. Murray provides few details. The real tax increase

is closer to $1.5 trillion because the budget omits about

$480 billion in more unspecified taxes to replace

sequestration and $100 billion to offset the cost of the new

stimulus.

New stimulus.

Spending, Mr. Speaker, is the problem. The House budget puts us on a track not just to a balanced budget within 10 years, but paying back every penny of debt that we've borrowed from Americans and the world. And the Senate budget has yet to pass committee--it remains to be seen if they can pass it in the Senate--but the proposal is to increase spending and increase taxes.

We're not up here bickering about how to name a post office, Mr. Speaker, or whether or not we ought to meet on Tuesdays or Thursdays or Fridays. We're up here arguing about whether the future of the Republic, whether opportunity for our children and grandchildren, lies in a future where you have paid back all of your debts or lies in a future where you allow those debts to rise forever. That is a legitimate discussion. Only in Washington--there's not a kitchen table around the country where that would be the discussion that we'd have.

I read from The Wall Street Journal, and I know there might be some folks back home, Mr. Speaker, who say, Rob, that Wall Street Journal, that's a conservative publication. No wonder they don't like what the Senate is doing. What do the liberal publications think? Well, it just so happens, Mr. Speaker, since you and I are in Washington today, I had a copy of The Washington Post in my office. They're no fan of conservatives. That's certainly no conservative rag.

This is what the official editorial from The Washington Post said this morning about the Senate budget:

Partisan in tone and complacent in substance, it scores

points against Republicans and reassures the party's liberal

base--but deepens the Senators' commitment to an

unsustainable policy agenda.

They go on. The Washington Post says:

It is on the issue of entitlements that the Democrats'

document really disappoints. There is literally nothing--not

a word--suggested of trimming Social Security, whether

through greater means-testing, a more realistic inflation

adjustment, or reforming disability benefits. The document's

fuzzy call for $275 billion in ``health savings'' is $125

billion less than the number President Obama has floated.

There's plenty of excoriation of the GOP ``premium

support'' plan. But there's no explanation of how the

Democrats would pay for their ``promise''--nary a hint of the

many cost-saving reforms that would extend Medicare's life

without embracing the GOP plan.

Washington Post.

It scores points, but it deepens an unsustainable policy agenda. There is literally not a word suggested of reforming entitlements. It's less ambitious than even President Obama's agenda. It excoriates the GOP's plan, but provides no explanation of a Democrat alternative.

And it closes with this, Mr. Speaker:

In short, this document gives voters no reason to believe

that Democrats have a viable plan for--or even a responsible

public assessment of--the country's long-term fiscal

predicament.

That's The Washington Post talking about the Democrat plan in the United States Senate. ``In short, this document''--and to be clear, Mr. Speaker, the first budget to be produced by the Senate in 4 years; it remains to be seen if they can actually produce it, but at least they're suggesting they're going to produce one. The Washington Post assessment of that plan is that ``this document gives voters no reason to believe that Democrats have a viable plan for--or even a responsible public assessment of--the country's long-term fiscal predicament.''

Mr. Speaker, that's what we're talking about here. This isn't a bunch of children bickering about who gets to take home the ball. We're talking about whether or not opportunity will exist a decade, two decades, three decades from now. There's not a family in America that believes they can borrow in perpetuity without consequences. There are terrible, terrible consequences.

Lest you think--and I'll be the first to say, Mr. Speaker, I have been suspicious of newspaper editorials. I don't believe the media always gets it right, so I brought a quote from actually the hearing that was going on yesterday.

Senator Mike Crapo is over on the Senate side. He was questioning the Democratic staffers who put together the budget. I know, serving on the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker, what happens is budgets are very technical documents. When you craft one, they take all the committee counsel and they put them at a table in front of all of the Members, and all the Members get to ask the staffers who helped to prepare all the complicated numbers about the details of the document. So it's a give and take with the folks who actually prepare the document.

This is what Senator Crapo asked:

``In terms of overall deficit reduction that is to be achieved, whether through taxes or spending reductions that are claimed in the budget, what percentage of those are achieved in year one?''

This is what he says. He says, I'm not asking whether you're raising taxes or you're cutting spending. What I'm asking is what are you doing in year one to begin immediately to put this country on the path to paying its debts?

The committee staffer says, ``There are spending savings in year one, but in total, it's about no in the first year.''

``It's about what?'' Senator Crapo asks. The staffer says, ``It's zero in the first year in total because there are spending savings and spending costs.''

You're thinking that sounds like Washington double-speak, Mr. Speaker. Well, Senator Crapo thought so too. He says: ``So I didn't understand you. It's zero in the first year?''

The staffer says: ``Yes, sir. On net, sir.''

Senator Crapo says: ``That confirms my worry.''

Understand, here's a budget that is increasing taxes by $1.8 trillion, and changes our deficit for next year by nothing. It does not put us one dollar closer to a balanced budget. It does not put us one dollar closer to stemming the rise in debt. Taxes going up in this budget by $1.8 trillion, and they want to spend it all as it's coming in, such that they change nothing about our fiscal condition in year one.

It's one of those back-loaded budgets, Mr. Speaker, we hear so much about. It was Wimpy, I think, in the Popeye cartoon who said, I would gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today. That's what we have going on right here--I'll gladly make the tough decisions 10 years from now if only you'll let me keep spending today. Mr. Speaker, it is that mentality that got us here. You can't measure budgets by what they do 10 years from now; you have to measure by what they do today.

I'm not alone saying this. This is President Obama, President Obama in 2008. He said adding $4 trillion to the national debt was irresponsible and unpatriotic. I want to read you the whole quote, Mr. Speaker. He said:

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the

last 8 years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of

China in the name of our children, driving up our national

debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42

presidents--number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his

lonesome--it was $5 trillion for all Presidents combined

up until President Bush. President Bush added $4 trillion

over his 8 years as President.

President Obama goes on:

So that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that

we are going to have to pay back--$30,000 for every man,

woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

President Obama rightly noting that during 8 years of the Bush administration our Federal debt rose from $5 trillion to $9 trillion. Through the first 4 years of the Obama administration, it rose from $10.6 to $16.6; $6 trillion in 4 years. President Bush, $4 trillion in 8 years, President Obama calls it irresponsible and unpatriotic. The President is running up debts twice as fast, and since he has been in office has produced not one budget plan that would stop that rise.

In case you couldn't follow it, Mr. Speaker--I blew it up in red because I didn't want it to be missed at all--the national debt under President Obama has risen $6.1 trillion, from 10.6 when he was sworn into office in January of 2009 to 16.7 today; a 57 percent increase. It was irresponsible and unpatriotic, the President said, to increase the deficit $4 trillion over 8 years; $6.1 trillion for the President over 4.

I say this, Mr. Speaker, because we're not supposed to be arguing about this. I mean, it's so frustrating. You're here in your freshman year; I'm here just 2 years into the job. We didn't come here to find out who to blame; we came here to make a difference. Tell me what that is. Tell me what on the mandatory side of the ledger folks want to begin to reduce, Mr. Speaker, what they want to reform, what they want to do to guarantee that Medicare and Social Security survive for another generation. I will partner with them to do it. Not one budget that has saved not one dollar in 5 years of this White House, not even a budget plan from the Senate in the last 4.

I don't want to tell the American people who to blame, Mr. Speaker. I want to tell the American people who got together and worked with one another to solve the problem. But what the President knew was a problem--a problem he called irresponsible and unpatriotic while he was running for President--he seems to have forgotten all about after getting elected President.

Here he is in 2009, Mr. Speaker. In 2009, the President believed that a failure to control the deficit would make it harder for the economy to grow. How often have we been on the floor of the House talking about jobs, Mr. Speaker? This is the part that really gets me excited--and I don't mean excited because I'm happy about it, Mr. Speaker; I'm getting excited because I'm energized about it. This is not a green eyeshade exercise. We want to pass a budget so that we can pass on a more prosperous America to our children and our grandchildren. The President knew that. He said this--newspaper article, Bloomberg, February 2009:

``President Obama wants to reduce the deficit because he's

concerned that over time Federal borrowing will make it

harder for the U.S. economy to grow and create jobs,'' said

the official, ``speaking on the condition of anonymity.''

Now, you shouldn't have to be anonymous about the fact that you believe a growing debt is going to curtail job opportunity in the future. Of course it is. We all know that to be true. Every economist in this town knows that to be true. The President, before he was President, and the President, right after he became President, knew that failing to act on this would put the America that we all know in peril and would put the opportunities that we have all had out of reach for our children and our grandchildren.

If you don't believe it, Mr. Speaker, go to the Department of Labor-- not conservative Republican Rob Woodall's Department of Labor, not the U.S. House's Department of Labor, but President Obama's Department of Labor. They said this. They keep a record of entrepreneurial activity in this country. I love that, Mr. Speaker. That's who we are. At our core, we're not big corporations; we're individual mom-and-pop operations who go out and risk it all because they have a good idea that they think through the sweat of their brow and their hard work, they'll be able to succeed. The Department of Labor keeps statistics on that.

Sure, we're an entrepreneurial country. The Department of Labor is tracking entrepreneurs. As the President was implementing his spending agenda, that agenda I said that took us from the record high deficits of the Bush administration to deficits three times higher in the Obama administration, the Department of Labor told us this: the number of new establishments--that's the new entrepreneurial activity--for the year ending in March 2010 was lower than any other year since the series began, since they began keeping records, Mr. Speaker.

In 2010, under this administration's stimulus policies, entrepreneurial activity was at the lowest level in America since we began keeping records. I don't mean at the lowest level of people succeeding. I mean at the lowest level of people trying--the lowest level of people trying, Mr. Speaker. What does it mean about us? What does it mean about our future when we have beaten the enthusiasm to try out of our people, frightened it out of our people?

Mr. Speaker, that's not just a Department of Labor report. We talk a lot about that. What is it that the guys down at the agencies are producing, those technical reports? I'll tell you what they're producing. I'll tell you the impact it's had. The Federal Register, Mr. Speaker, I don't know if you've picked up a copy since you've been here. The Federal Register measures all the new regulations coming out of Washington. In fact, they have to publish them there.

In 2012, last year, you and I--well, you weren't here yet, Mr. Speaker, I've been here for 2 years--we were not passing a new regulatory agenda. Those department agencies, they were not implementing a new congressional regulatory agenda. They were implementing the old one. They hadn't gotten the old one out yet, and last year, $33 billion, 34, really, 33.9, $33 billion is what those own agencies estimated the cost of complying with their new government regulations would be. Those agencies, those agencies that put out their regulations are required by law to explain to the American people whether it's worth it or not. And so they have to certify how many hours it's going to take the American people to comply with all of their new regulations.

Last year, Mr. Speaker, 81 million hours, 81 million hours just last year were added to the Federal regulatory code book in new work for men and women across this country. Why is that entrepreneurial activity low? Well, the Federal Government is borrowing all the money to spend here; there's no prospect for tax relief on the horizon. In fact, taxes keep going up. There's a brand-new health care bill in place that folks don't understand. They're frightened it's going to destroy their health care system, not to mention to add to their costs of their business, and the Federal Government last year in the midst of this terrible recession, in the midst of this difficult economy, added $33.9 billion in additional costs through regulatory activity that's going to take 81 million hours to complete.

Now, let's just do some back-of-the-envelope math, Mr. Speaker: 81 million hours, let's say the average work year is 40 hours a week. If you work 50 weeks a year, that's 2,000 hours--2,000 hours. That's 40,000 people who will spend every working hour of every working day all year long just to meet the new Federal regulatory burden.

Mr. Speaker, I don't wonder why it is that entrepreneurial activity is the lowest it's been since we began keeping records. The wonder is that folks are still trying at all. I had someone say that to me, Mr. Speaker. I was visiting with a group of honor students in Forsyth County there in the north metro Atlanta area, and we were talking about what do you want to do when you grow up. We were talking about America as a land of opportunity where you can do anything that you want to do, where it's our birthright to be filled with opportunities that our parents never dreamed of having. A young woman on the front row raised her hand. She said, Congressman, you're talking so much about going out and hanging out your own shingle and being an entrepreneur. She said, It looks really, really hard. She said, Why would anybody even try today?

One of the best high schools in my district, an award-winning high school, honor students in that school, asking the question, In America why is it even worth trying today? You're making it so hard. Those aren't just the words of a naive 18-year-old. Those are the words of some of the most successful entrepreneurs in America today.

Up here in orange, Mr. Speaker, it's not quite Home Depot orange, but it's orange. Home Depot is one of those great companies that was founded down in my part of the world. It's grown across the country. It's just a tremendous success story. We're so proud. They're a great corporate citizen. They give back to us so much in the community. Ken Langone, one of the four founders of Home Depot, wrote an open letter to the President in The Wall Street Journal. Again, one of the captains of industry, one of the most successful companies in America, this is what the founder of that company wrote in an open letter to President Obama:

If we tried to start Home Depot today under the kinds of

onerous regulatory controls that you have advocated, it's a

stone cold certainty that our business would never get off

the ground much less thrive.

These budget exercises are not about numbers. They're about families and opportunities. And when the captains of industry in America, those folks who risked it all with their ideas and every hour of their day for years of their life to try to get something to grow their idea from a concept into an actual business, into an international enterprise, those folks, the most successful among us, say if they were trying to do it today in the America that Washington, D.C., has created today, they would fail.

Folks, this isn't about dollars and cents in a Federal budget. This is about dollars that are going to regulatory agencies that are crushing dreams and opportunities. This is about the failure of government to weigh benefits and burdens, to do those things that don't encourage opportunity but restrict it. And these are not the words of folks who are here trying to pursue a partisan agenda. It's the words of folks who put families to work and put food on the table.

It is not just Ken Langone. We heard it from the founder of Subway. Just this month, late last month, in fact, February, being interviewed on TV, Fred DeLuca said this--again, you see a Subway on every corner in America. The $5 Foot Long happens to be one of my favorites. It's a bargain in this town, and the $3 Six Inch, but the founder of Subway said this just last month:

If I started Subway today, Subway would not exist.

If I started Subway today, one of the most successful restaurants chains in all the land, Subway would not exist.

He didn't say that because he thinks Americans are unwilling to work today. Americans work harder than any other people anywhere on the planet. He didn't say that because we, as a people, are unwilling to take risks today. There is no more entrepreneurial culture on this planet than the American people. He said it because Washington, government, has structured a landscape in which opportunity cannot thrive--tax burdens, health care burdens, regulatory burdens, labor burdens, on and on and on.

Folks, there is nothing special about America that exists in our landscape. What is special about America is the idea of who we are, that we could break ties with the motherland such that we could come here and try it our way so that we could take the risk that maybe we succeed and maybe we fail, but the chance to succeed is such a great motivator, hope is such a great motivator, that family after family

after family for over 200 years has risked it all to come here and risked it all to make sure their kids have more opportunities tomorrow than those parents have today.

Our captains of industry, our entrepreneurs are telling us that government regulations, government overspending, government borrowing, rising debt is crushing that dream for the next generation of America. That's not news. President Obama knew it when he was running for election and he knew it after he got elected. We just need a willing partner to work with us today to solve that problem.

I'll go back to Home Depot again. It's just a fantastic Atlanta company that has grown around the world. Bernie Marcus, a tremendous philanthropist in Atlanta, gives of his time and his resources to every worthy cause in town to try to make sure his neighbors are taken care of. He believes to whom much is given, much is expected. He lives up to that model every day. He says this:

Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell

you that today the impediments that the government imposes

are impossible to deal with.

Bernie Marcus, a huge philanthropist, a wildly successful entrepreneur, looks out at the landscape today and says the impediments put forward by government are impossible to deal with. He goes on to say:

Home Depot would never have succeeded if we tried to start

it today. Every day rules and regulations from a group of

Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a

business--and I mean every day--is becoming stifling.

Let's go back to that chart, Mr. Speaker. This is what Bernie Marcus is talking about, regulations coming out every day.

The Federal Register is published every day. You can pick it up at your local Federal depository library. Sometimes it's this thick and sometimes it's this thick. And for the last year, and last year alone, this government, the Federal Government--not the State governments, not the local governments--the Federal Government, and the Federal Government alone, imposed $33.9 billion in new requirements on Americans, requirements that, by the government's own estimation, are going to take 81 million hours to fill out. That is 40,000 full-time workers working every hour of every day for a year creating nothing, no productivity, only complying with Federal regulations.

I'll finish, Mr. Speaker, where I began, and that's why it matters.

This is that chart of debt in America, borrowing from the Federal Government. I read the President's words, Mr. Speaker, where he said it was irresponsible to allow our children to have amassed a $30,000 per child debt under the Bush administration. That debt, Mr. Speaker, is fast approaching $60,000 for every child under the Obama administration. And if we do nothing, this red line of debt, Mr. Speaker, that destroys opportunity, that destroys America as we know it, continues if we do nothing.

We can't ignore this problem away, Mr. Speaker. We must do something. So year after year, Mr. Speaker--it makes it sound like I'm an old hand at this. In the 3 years I've been here--2 years and 2 months--this House has presented a budget every single year, budgets that make tough choices, budgets that challenge each and every one of us to set those priorities of things that must happen versus those priorities of things that we would like to happen versus those priorities of things that we could really do without if it means a better America tomorrow.

Three years in a row, Mr. Speaker, we've been touching things that the prognosticators said would never be touched. Folks said Medicare was doomed to failure, Mr. Speaker, because no Congress would ever be bold enough to do those things necessary to save it for another generation. But all 3 years I've been here, all three budgets I've had the pleasure of helping to produce, we made those tough choices and made those vital changes.

To fail to reform Medicare is to destroy it. To fail to reform Medicare is to end it forever. In 2023, it runs out of money, Mr. Speaker. We all know it. Those aren't my numbers. Those aren't your numbers. Those are the numbers from the Medicare actuaries downtown working for President Obama. In 2023, there is no more money.

How many of us have family members who rely on that program, Mr. Speaker? We do them no favors by ignoring the problem and careening towards that failure. We do the responsible thing, the hard thing, by making those tough choices, as we have in this budget, that will save that program not just for my mom and dad, not just for your parents and your grandparents, but for more generations to come.

Our responsibility here, Mr. Speaker, is not to scare America. Our responsibility here is not to tell America whom to blame. Our responsibility here is to serve America and make the tough decisions that previous Congresses have not.

There are two paths, Mr. Speaker, two paths. I'm not going to tell you the path we've laid out in the Budget Committee is an easy path. It's not. When you've been living beyond your means--and I mean $1 trillion beyond your means each year. Thirty-three cents out of every $1 the Federal Government spends is borrowed. When you've been living that far beyond your means, change is hard; but it's the right thing to do and, I tell you, it's the only thing to do.

This chart, Mr. Speaker, that shows the red chart of where America is headed today. I only ran that chart out to 2023. The truth of matter is--and you can see for yourself the Congressional Budget Office numbers at www.cbo.gov, Mr. Speaker.

The models we have that predict economic growth in this country, they stop working in about 30 years because they cannot calculate, they cannot see, they cannot imagine in those models how America could still exist as an economy having borrowed as much money as it will have borrowed in 30 years if we do nothing. The models break--there is a little asterisk. At cbo.gov--see it for yourself--there's a little asterisk that says we can't predict that we could even continue beyond this point.

Paul Ryan is fond of saying that this is the most predictable crisis America has ever faced. Everyone, every man and woman in every seat from the most liberal Democrat to the most conservative Republican, every Congressperson knows the economic destruction that awaits us if we choose to do nothing.

Folks have been asking all day, Mr. Speaker: What's the ``there'' there in the Paul Ryan budget, and what is the House Budget Committee budget? What I hope next week will be the House budget, what I hope before the April 15 deadline will be the law of the land, will be the American budget, the ``there'' there is that we shift directions from a pathway that will most certainly mean the end of opportunity for our children to a pathway that will mean more opportunity for our children than even you and I have had, Mr. Speaker.

We are not in this Chamber talking about numbers. We are in this Chamber talking about people. And if we fail to act, the devastation, the destruction is not going to be measured in red lines on a ledger. It's going to be measured in real pain for real families, and it doesn't have to be that way.

I urge all of my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to give prayerful consideration to the House budget. Dig deep into these numbers, dig deep into these choices. That is what America is. It is about making the tough choices.

We have the freedom to succeed, and we have the freedom to fail. To date, Mr. Speaker, Congresses have been adopting the freedom to fail. We can change that this year. And I urge my colleagues in the Senate and I urge the President to join us in that quest.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, as a freshman here on the House floor just 2 years ago, it does my heart good to see my freshman colleagues coming down from the other side of the aisle, because I came down with that same vision 2 years ago to work together to address the big issues that are out there.

I serve on the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker, and for fiscal year 2013, we're going to post a $1 trillion annual deficit. This sequester that every Member is rightly concerned about is $85 billion, less than one-tenth the magnitude of the decisions we really need to make to get America back on fiscal track.

Is the sequester anybody's idea of the right way to do it? I don't believe that it is.

Is everyone's idea of the right way to do it to deal with that part of the budget that we don't do in discretionary spending? The big two- thirds, that mandatory spending that we have to come together on to deal with? And the answer is absolutely, yes.

I stand ready to work with my freshman colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do those big things that need to be done. But Mr. Speaker, we have raised taxes already in 2013. The CBO reports that an additional $1 trillion will come into the Treasury over the next 10 years.

What we need is not more taxes. What we need are responsible spending cuts, Mr. Speaker.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 66 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, I object.

Will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, I rise to claim time in opposition to the point of order.

I'd like to say to my friend that I endorse, Madam Speaker, his request to do away with stale political gamesmanship. I would put in the stale political gamesmanship category making a point of order against an unfunded mandate in the bill and then failing to make any indication that you actually believe there's an unfunded mandate in the bill, but simply using this time to talk about an issue that we have already litigated in a multihour hearing last night.

That said, I know, Madam Speaker, the gentleman's heart is felt in this issue. I would say to the gentleman that, while there was only one objection in this body, I make that objection out of great affection for the gentleman because, as I read the underlying bill, I see absolutely no way to divide this legislation into the components that the gentleman would like to debate.

The gentleman would like to debate a Member pay freeze. The gentleman would like to debate a Federal employee pay freeze.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

I thank the gentleman. In fact, I thought that's where the gentleman's heart lay.

As the gentleman knows, the reason the Bera-Connolly amendment is not on the floor today, among others, is that it is nongermane to this legislation. We cannot subdivide this piece of

legislation to include nongermane components, which, again, I know the gentleman wants to debate those components. And, Madam Speaker, when the House schedules those bills, I look forward to having that debate, too; it's just not in this bill.

One of the great pleasures I've had in this body, Madam Speaker, has been being a part of a majority that is bringing bills that are simple to read and simple to understand. This is a front-and-back bill. I happen to have mine on two pages because I like to flip, but if I had been more conservative with my printer, it would have been a front-and- back page here, Madam Speaker.

What we talked about in the Rules Committee all last night--and it would have created more points of order for germaneness issues and others--was adding amendment after amendment after amendment that did not affect this language, but instead created brand-new debates about brand-new issues.

Again, I associate myself with the comments of my friend from Colorado. I think the American people are absolutely fed up with the way that this process works. But what I think they're fed up with are those bills that stack a transportation issue beside a health care issue beside a Commerce Department issue beside a military issue beside a child care issue, all of these things that are completely unrelated to one another, Madam Speaker.

In this bill, one issue and one vote. And the gentleman is absolutely right: in a vote in the Rules Committee last night, Madam Speaker, we decided not to allow this bill to be complicated with nongermane issue after nongermane issue after nongermane issue. Those measures, these debates can actually come to the floor one item at a time, but we were not going to allow that to subsume what is also an important debate, and that's on the provisions that actually are contained in H.R. 273.

So given, Madam Speaker, that the gentleman observed no unfunded mandates in this bill, because there are no unfunded mandates in this bill, I ask the Chair to reject the point of order for there being unfunded mandates in this bill.

Madam Speaker, if I could conclude by just asking that in order to allow the House to continue its scheduled business for the day, I urge the Members to vote ``yes'' on the question of consideration of this resolution.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida, my friend, Mr. Hastings, pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

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

Madam Speaker, House Resolution 66, this rule that we're considering today, will allow for debate on the underlying bill, H.R. 273.

This rule that we're considering today is a little bit unusual in that it not only allows for the underlying resolution, but it also takes care of some housekeeping business that we have here on the floor of the House. For example, all of America, Madam Speaker, has read of the nuclear tests that happened in North Korea, and this resolution allows us to consider tomorrow a bill under suspension of the rules to condemn that activity in North Korea. It's very important business that we are able to take care of here in the House. We would not be able to take care of it but for this rule. I'm glad we considered that here in the rule.

In this underlying bill, Madam Speaker, we're continuing what the President himself continued through March of this year. We're continuing through the end of the calendar year a freeze on the automatic increases in Federal employee pay. Again, I brought down a copy of the resolution, that small, front-and-back bill.

So often you see findings in these bills, Madam Speaker, you see findings about what the Congress believes and why this bill is coming to the floor. And I promise you, Madam Speaker, if you read this resolution--and, again, it's only a page and a half long, so it will be easy to do--you will not find one finding of contempt for Federal employees. In fact, if you had listened to the hearing in the Rules Committee last night, what you saw is universal praise for the hard work that our men and women in the civil service are doing for this country.

We have a lot of work that has to be done. I know it's a popular sport in some districts to kick Federal employees. Federal employees, by and large, work hard, though I'm happy to say you can distinguish, for example, the love and affection that so many of our constituencies have for our men and women in uniform. You see those pay-raise bills move through very quickly, versus a little suspicion that you have from time to time from folks who say, well, golly, I was just down at XYZ Federal office, and I didn't get great service. Golly, Rob, I was on the telephone trying to get results from X, Y or Z agency, and they kept me on hold for 3\1/2\ hours. What are my dollars paying for?

I blame us for that, Madam Speaker. We owe better to our Federal employees than to put them in that circumstance. And gradually, not nearly fast enough, but gradually, our Federal employee system is moving towards recognizing hardworking, successful and dedicated employees through merit pay, through merit increases, through bonuses and through bumps--ways to say, do you know what, service matters. Service matters. And a one-size-fits-all pay scale does not work across the Federal system.

I'm very proud, Madam Speaker, I've just been appointed to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in whose jurisdiction this bill is. I hope we're going to be able to take up those issues and build on that progress that has been made. But in all the conversation you'll hear on this floor--I won't say ``rhetoric,'' Madam Speaker, because, again, I know people's hearts are in this issue--in all the debate you will hear on this House floor, what you will not hear is that $1 is being cut from those merit bonuses. What you will not hear is that $1 is being removed from agencies that have an opportunity to say, Do you know what, job well done. You deserve a bonus. What you will not hear is that $1 is being taken that would have gone to recognize performance above and beyond in the service of our citizenry.

What you will hear is that in line with the recommendations of the much-discussed Simpson-Bowles Commission, a 3-year freeze on Federal automatic salary increases will be continued, upheld. It's been in effect for 2 years and 3 months, and it will continue through the end of the year.

Now, so often I hear, Madam Speaker, my constituents say, Rob, I just want to make sure that Congress is abiding by the same rules you ask everybody else to abide by.

I want to make that clear. That's what my friend from Colorado was discussing. It's not actually a provision in this bill that's extra. It's a function of law. Members of Congress' pay will absolutely be frozen for just as long--just as long. The same rules that apply to everybody apply to the Vice President, Mr. Speaker, apply to the executive branch, apply to folks back home in Georgia, apply across the board to Federal employees, and apply to everybody here in this Chamber.

We had one of the longest, and I would argue most intensive, hearings of our Rules Committee cycle last night, Mr. Speaker, where we explored this bill line by line, detail by detail. I was pleased to be part of that debate. I'm glad we had an opportunity, really, for unlimited time in which to do that. But I believe we crafted a good rule, Mr. Speaker, that will allow for thorough debate of this underlying bill.

Again, I would remind you, Mr. Speaker, and all Members, this bill,

posted on the House Rules Committee Web site, front and back of a sheet of paper, is simple and direct for everyone in this House to be able to read and everyone back home to be able to read so that we can have a thorough debate on this bill this afternoon.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 90 seconds to say to my friend, I always appreciate the eloquence of his words. My only saving grace, Mr. Speaker, is that the facts are on my side. If the world was as the gentleman from Florida had described it, I'd probably be where the gentleman from Florida is in terms of position. That's not the case.

Every dollar we spend in this town, Mr. Speaker, has consequences. The $11 billion that we're talking about in this bill is not money that's being cut from the Federal budget; it's money that's not being given as an automatic inflater to every Federal salary in the land. Instead, it remains available to those agencies to perform the services that they were created to perform.

Let me just be clear, Mr. Speaker. That means for every dollar that is not going into a clerk's pocket at the Veterans Affairs Administration, that's a dollar that's going to go to implement Veterans Affairs services. For every dollar that's not going to be an automatic pay increase in my hometown at the CDC, it is going to go for critical research and infrastructure there to perform the very important role the CDC was created to perform.

We have to make choices, Mr. Speaker. Google ``Greece and pay cuts.'' Google ``Greece and pension cuts.'' In fact, don't just use Google. Use Yahoo. Use Bing. Use anything you'd like, Mr. Speaker. You will see where we are headed.

When you refuse to make the tough decisions that my friends are refusing to make with respect to the Federal budget, you know where those cuts are going to fall.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield 5 minutes to one of our very distinguished freshman Members, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Williams).

I yield myself 4 minutes to talk about cheap political stunts because I see a few cheap political stunts down here from time to time. I don't want to characterize anybody's behavior in that way as I don't think that's appropriate, but what I would say is, if we go to the very top of the GS scale and take a good senior person, like a GS- 14 who is making $84,000 a year, this one-half percent pay increase that the President did by executive order and that we're saying won't go into effect until next year is going to give that one working person, that income earner for that family, $2,000 for that family to use over the next year.

I will yield to the gentleman to answer this question: The gentleman sees here $10,793. That's the additional burden that the gentleman, when he controlled this Congress for 2 years with the President of the United States, also of his party, added to this working family's burden.

Now, when you come to the House floor and profess your affection for the working people in my district and when you express that affection by ensuring that, this year, one-half percent of their pay is going to go up, you're adding $10,000 for that worker, $10,000 for that worker's wife, $10,000 for that worker's oldest child, middle child and youngest child--for a family of five in my district. The gentleman added $50,000 in debt and deficit that has to be repaid.

Now, I know the gentleman was using his heart when he passed those programs that did this. I don't question the gentleman's motivation at all. What I do is take offense that the gentleman questions my motivation in shifting $2,000 from workers' salaries into programs-- programs for veterans, programs for research, programs for health--and that he questions my commitment to working class people when, while he did this, he voted ``yes'' after ``yes'' after ``yes'' with no remorse whatsoever.

I'd be happy to yield to my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts.

In reclaiming my time, I welcome my friend to the sequestration debate, the one that we tried to have last May with absolutely no assistance whatsoever.

Here we are at midnight on sequestration day, saying, Hey, let's do it. Folks, let's do it. Let's do it. Back in May, we passed a bill here. Let's do it with the bill we passed in August to solve the fiscal cliff. Let's do it with the one we passed in September. Let's do it with the one we passed in December.

There is not a person in this body I don't want to work with to solve these problems--there is not one--but when we do it here at the eleventh hour and say, Golly, I wish folks had gotten serious about it earlier. Mr. Speaker, we've been trying to get serious about it for 18 months. When the President passed the law of the land and signed this sequestration into law after the Joint Select Committee failed, the question isn't why are we having to plan for sequestration today; the question is why wasn't the administration planning for it 13 months ago, when we knew the law of the land was going to put it into effect come March 1, 2013?

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

Will the gentleman yield?

I actually asked that question--or a version of it--of the distinguished gentleman from Maryland, the minority whip, last night.

If the gentleman would continue to yield.

I asked, What would it have taken to get that Joint Select Committee to succeed? Because that's why we're here in sequestration; that's why we're dealing with these things. He said he did not know what more we could have done to find agreement then.

So I say to the gentleman that those same challenges the minority whip observed last night that were preventing agreement then are those same challenges that are preventing us, whether we work until midnight tonight or not, from solving them today, though I would be happy to stay with the gentleman just as long as there is work to be done here in this House.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, at this time it is my great pleasure to yield 2 minutes to a good friend here, Mr. Wittman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. And I want to say of my friend from California, he gave a very thoughtful presentation in the Rules Committee last night. And as my colleague from Florida suggested, I am a big fan of open rules. It's early in the process. It's always harder to go through regular order until the committees have spun up.

But I would just say to my freshman friend from California that even if we had made an open rule controlling for this bill, the gentleman's amendment still would not have been made in order. It would have been ruled by the Parliamentarian as out of order, as being nongermane to the underlying bill.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

I appreciate my friend's comment. He's absolutely right.

So my advice to my new freshman colleague from California would be, in this case, it's not an open rule that he's after; it's his colleagues on the Rules Committee working their Rules Committee magic to waive the rules. It would have actually taken a waiver of the House rules to allow the gentleman's amendment to come.

But he made a very passionate case last night, Mr. Speaker, and I know his heart is in this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I want to be clear about what this bill is and what this bill isn't. And what it isn't is a pay freeze for Federal employees, and, in fact, what has been the law of the land for the last 2 years has not been a pay freeze.

All of the increases that come with longevity have been taking place. All of the increases that come with promotions have been taking place. All of the increases that come with meritorious pay and bonuses and all of those activities have still been going on.

What this is, however, is a 9-month suspension of the automatic, across-the-board .5 percent increase that the President directed by executive order in December. That is all this bill is, and that's all this bill will be under this rule.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes to say to the gentleman--he heard it from the gentleman from Virginia on my side of the aisle--the respect for Federal employees and the job that they do is not a question that's being debated here today.

The admiration that I have for the folks at the CDC, in my neck of the woods, the support that, led by the Speaker of the House from my State, Speaker Gingrich, to double the NIH budget, and then double it again. The kind of work that goes on here is undisputed.

But I want to show you, Mr. Speaker, what my constituents also see in their tough times, because it's not just the clerk at the VA that hasn't gotten a raise in 2 years.

I was talking with a friend of mine who's a clerk at a furniture store, single mom, child, son, 6 years old, hasn't gotten a raise in 2 years, makes $11 an hour.

Average median Federal wage, $74,000.

What I show you here is a chart from the CBO, the same organization that sites the job loss figures that you've quoted here earlier, that compares the work of folks with high school degrees, with a little bit of college, with college, in the private sector, the salaries and the benefits in the private sector with that of the public sector.

Now, I say to the gentleman, in no way, Mr. Speaker, do I want to minimize the tremendous responsibility placed on our Federal civilian workers. Again, I have chosen a career of public service, as have they, and I admire them for it. I know it's at great sacrifice to themselves and their families.

After this one sentence, and that is, in this tough time, until we can get our handle on the debt and the deficit, my constituents continue to look at how their tax dollars appear to be paying salaries and benefits higher to Federal employees than what my folks are getting back home.

I hope the CBO will produce a different report that shows a different result; but until it does, I wish my friends wouldn't categorize what's going on here as some sort of hateful act, disrespectful act towards Federal employees and could recognize it as a balancing of salaries and benefits that our own Congressional Budget Office has suggested is actually an inequity that exists today.

With that, I would be happy to yield to my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself 2 minutes.

I just want to read from the Simpson-Bowles Commission report. And I want to read from it not because I support everything the Simpson- Bowles Commission had to say. I want to read from it not because it's a bill that has passed here on the floor of the House--it's been introduced but it hasn't passed--but I want to read from it because it was put together by the President to be a thoughtful, nonpartisan, deliberative body that would try to find those things in the Federal Government that should change to right the fiscal ship that is the United States of America. And this is what that group, appointed by President Obama, Republicans and Democrats, a thoughtful deliberative body, had to say:

Out of duty and patriotism, hardworking Federal employees

provide a great service to this country. But in a time of

budget shortfalls, all levels of government must trim back.

In the recent recession, millions of private sector and State

and municipal employees have had their wages frozen or cut

back, and millions more lost their jobs altogether. In

contrast, Federal workers' wages increase annually due to

automatic formulas in law, providing them with cost-of-living

adjustments totaling more than 5 percent in the last 2 years.

This proposal would institute a 3-year government-wide freeze

on Federal pay at every government agency, including the

Department of Defense civilian workforce. This proposal will

save $20.4 billion in 2015.

In 3 years, the President, to his credit, implemented the first 2 years of this proposal. Perhaps there was consultation with someone in this body. It wasn't with me. I serve on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The President, by executive order in December, decided he was not going to extend it a third year and was instead going to give a half percent pay raise.

These are issues that can absolutely be debated, Mr. Speaker.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

This isn't a Republican idea; it's not a Democrat idea; it's not something that was created in the minds of folks who hate Federal employees and the Federal Government. It's an idea that came directly from the commission appointed by President Barack Obama to solve exactly the kind of fiscal problems that we are facing today.

Like it, don't like it, but don't say it's something that it's not, Mr. Speaker. This is an idea from the President's fiscal commission, and we're bringing it to the floor today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I also have no further requests for time and am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say the gentleman believes we're wasting the American people's time. An equally precious commodity is the American people's money.

I talked earlier about the $10,000 per American inhabitant. A lot of folks do their numbers by American tax-paying families, Mr. Speaker. A lot of folks do their numbers by per adult or per children. I didn't want to game the system like that.

The chart I have right now, Mr. Speaker, $52,381. If you take today's $16.5 trillion debt that America has and divide it by every single human being that the Census Department tells us is in America in January 2013, you will find that we have borrowed and spent $52,381 for every human being in America.

I don't minimize the burden that will be on a family of four in my district when they don't receive that half a percent pay bump that the President tried to do by executive order that we're rescinding here today. I don't minimize that at all. But it is minimal compared to the $52,000 for each member of that family of four. That half a percent pay raise is minimal compared to the $208,000 that that family owes as its share of the Federal debt.

The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Speaker, made a very passionate presentation last night, and I believe he is absolutely right. He referenced himself and our ranking member as the only two folks in that committee who know anything about sacrifice. I always go through my grandparents' stuff. I was one of those kids who loved being in the attic. You always find neat stuff in the attic and the basement. I have all the ration stamps, Mr. Speaker--sugar, rubber. I don't know what that's like. I don't know what that's like for a Nation to come together with such a sense of purpose that they say we're going to police ourselves and our own family. We're going to have the posters up on the wall that say ``loose lips sink ships,'' and don't waste because we need it for the war effort, and we're going to come together and make that happen.

In fact, the last time, Mr. Speaker, this country had the kind of debt as a percentage of the size of its economy that it has today was when we were coming out of World War II. In that time, when we were rationing rubber and sugar, when we no longer minted our currency with copper because we didn't have enough to go around--or nickel--we were using steel to put the coins together at that time. In that time of crisis, Mr. Speaker, when we thought the freedom of the world was on the line, we borrowed the largest amount of money ever borrowed in the history of this country to win World War II.

As we stand here today, we have borrowed trillions more in actual dollars, but that same gargantuan number of 100 percent of our economy. And for what? What does that leave us when the next crisis comes--and I promise you it will. The next crisis will come, and the tools that we have to address it will have been eroded by the policies of today.

I take no pleasure in being down here today managing the rule that will extend into year 3 a Federal employee pay freeze. I told folks in my constituency, Mr. Speaker, I said I want to come back home and I want to tell you how much I've been doing good work for you in Washington and doggone it I deserve a pay raise. I want us all to be so successful that we can go back home and tell folks we deserve it. But with $16.4 trillion in debt, 4 years of no budgets at all coming out of this town, trillion-dollar annual deficits, we don't.

If you think the pain of a 3-year pay freeze is bad, Mr. Speaker, Google Greece, Bing Greece, do your Yahoo search on Greece--not half a percent freezes, but double-digit cuts to Federal benefits; double- digit cuts to pensions that seniors are relying on; double-digit cuts to salaries; layoffs, double-digit percentages. It doesn't get better on its own, Mr. Speaker. We have to do it.

My friend from Florida is so right, Mr. Speaker: we have to come together to solve the bigger problems. This is not the bigger problem. At best, this is a symptom of a problem. At worst, it's just something we're trying to do to manage through.

In this body, Mr. Speaker, and the Senate, the President, we put six of our best minds from the House, three Democrats and three Republicans, six of our best minds from the Senate, three Democrats and three Republicans, and we locked them in a room for about 3 months and said do anything, do anything you want to with the Federal budget. Dream your biggest dreams. Come up with your best ideas. Get outside the box. And we're going to close the door so you can have that conversation with the utmost candor, Republicans and Democrats alike, House Members and Senate Members alike.

After 3 months, Mr. Speaker, having looked at literally hundreds of trillions of dollars of Federal spending going out for decades, they found that they could agree on not even one dollar, not one dollar in changes.

Mr. Speaker, as you well know, and as the freshman Members of this body are going to learn, we only control one-third of the budget here, just one-third of the budget, that discretionary spending, one-third of the budget. That's where the Federal employee salaries are, one-third of the budget. So everything we do to try to get a handle on $52,000 in debt per man, woman and child in America, everything we do to try to get our fiscal ship sailing straight once again is coming from that one-third.

Because to get to the real drivers of the debt, Mr. Speaker, to get to the real drivers, we've got to get into the two-thirds, the two- thirds that can only get to the table when the House and the Senate and the President all agree.

As highly unorthodox as that is, my great respect for my friend requires that I do.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker--and again, pleasure to yield--I say to my friend, I fear it's thinking like that that's going to take us exactly there.

Mr. Speaker, again, I take no pleasure in this freeze today. I believe in shared sacrifice across this country to solve our problems. The only thing that would be permissible in this legislation is to ensure that Members of Congress and fellow employees are both frozen together, as is ensured in this legislation.

I urge my colleagues to support this rule, bring this bill to the floor, support this underlying resolution, and remember that until $52,381 per man, woman and child in this country reads ``zero,'' we're going to have these discussions again and again and again.

The President, Mr. Speaker, I'm told is planning to produce a budget. It's not going to be this month. It may come next month. Do you know that in the 2 years I've been here as a Member of Congress, the President's budgets never, ever, ever pay down one penny of this debt? We're complicit in this, Mr. Speaker; and, together, we can get ourselves out of it.

The material previously referred to by Mr. Hastings of Florida is as follows:

An Amendment to H. Res. 66 Offered by Mr. Hastings of Florida

(1) At the end of the resolution, add the following:

Sec. 6. Notwithstanding any other provision of this

resolution, following debate on H.R. 273 it shall be in order

to 1 consider the amendment received for printing in the

Congressional Record pursuant to clause 8 of rule XVIII and

numbered 1, if offered by Representative Van Hollen of

Maryland or a designee. That amendment shall be in order

without intervention of any point of order, shall be

considered as read, shall be separately debatable for one

hour equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an

opponent, and shall not be subject to a demand for a division

of the question.

(2) On page 2, line 5, insert ``with or without

instructions'' after ``recommit''.

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