Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 115 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend from Colorado (Mr. Polis), pending which time 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

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

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 115 provides a closed rule for consideration of H.J. Res. 44. This bill would fund the government through March 18 and reduce federal spending by $4 billion over the remainder of the fiscal year. The measure cuts $2.7 billion in earmarks from Energy and Water, Labor-HHS, Transportation-HUD, Homeland Security, and Legislative Branch appropriations, but most importantly, this measure averts a government shutdown and allows the Senate time to continue to consider H.R. 1, the bill that we successfully passed in this Chamber just 1 week ago.

Mr. Speaker, on that bill, we had roughly 50 hours of debate from both sides of the aisle, debate that ran late into the night that allowed the House to work its will for the first time in a long time. And the end result was that continuing resolution, H.R. 1, that now sits idly in the Senate.

This resolution today, this rule today, which I urge Members to strongly support, will allow for the 2-week extension of Federal funding to allow the

Senate time to seriously consider this bill, again, H.R. 1, the first bill in a long time on which the House has had a chance to work its will.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

say to my friend, I could not agree with him more. We must ask ourselves: How did we get here? How did we get here? I have been on the job for 60 days, but the fiscal year began back on October 1 of 2010. How did we get here?

We got here because the work of the people's House didn't get done last year, and I regret that. Candidly, I'm not sure how. I hear so many folks talk about the partisanship in the Congress and the partisanship in Washington, DC, and people can't get things done because of the partisanship. But, of course, last year Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. And yet we still sit here today without a budget, without the appropriations that the speaker knows we need for the government to continue its operations.

How did we get here? I don't know. But I know this: Nobody elected me in November to come up here and point the finger of blame. They elected me to work with my friend to clean up this mess. Irrespective of how we got here, we have to move forward.

I have to say, because I was at home for the past week with my constituents working through these very same issues we are talking about today, the question I got over and over and over again is: Rob, that is a great start, but let's do more. That's a great start, but let's do more.

You know, getting started is what is hard. It is hard to get started. Over and over again we have heard our friends on both sides of the aisle say: You know, this program, it can be fixed. It can be fixed.

I wonder if we will have a day here where we can start from a blank sheet, just a blank sheet, and say: What is it that is worth borrowing from our children for? What is it that is worth increasing our children's credit card balance for? What is it that is worth mortgaging our children's future for?

Let me just say to my friend, because I know he has a great passion for education, and it is a passion I very much respect, I have the great fortune of coming from the part of the world called Gwinnett County, Georgia. And Gwinnett County was the recipient of the Broad Prize for the single best urban education school district in America. We made it as a finalist 2 years ago, but last year we won. And we won in spite of Federal Government intervention--not because of it, in spite of it. We won because, as a community, we got together back in 1996 and said there is a better way. What can we do to enable our children to succeed better?

We were doing standardized testing in Gwinnett County before standardized testing was in vogue because we knew we had to have a way to measure. We knew we had to have a way to sort out what works and what doesn't. Well, folks, we need some of that standardized testing here on Capitol Hill: What works and what doesn't?

And there are a lot of things that aren't working. Not only do we need to get the bad out of the budget, we've got to decide that we're going to choose between good and good, between good and good because every school group I spoke to over our district workweek is a school group from whose future we are borrowing, whose future we are mortgaging over and over and over again.

It has to be said that the House worked its will in an unprecedented fashion, an unprecedented fashion. Mr. Speaker, I don't say that lightly. I mean never, never before in modern times has the House worked its will on a continuing appropriations bill the way it did last week. Again, I don't care whose fault it is. I don't care why we couldn't get it done last October. I don't care why we couldn't get it done in November. I don't care why we couldn't get it done in December. What I care about is we have an opportunity to get it done, and we did that last week.

The House worked its will, and we had some winners and we had some losers. I voted for a number of amendments that failed. I didn't get everything that I wanted in that bill. I know my friend from Colorado didn't get everything he wanted in that bill, but the House worked its will, Mr. Speaker, with unprecedented openness, and H.R. 1 was the result.

Well, I asked my staff to call over to the Senate before I came down here. I wanted to find out exactly how much debate the Senate had been putting in on H.R. 1. Of course, we debated it for almost 50 hours. We went through the night on a couple of nights. We wanted to make sure that the entire House had an opportunity to be involved. My staff tells me, Mr. Speaker, not a moment. Not a moment.

I hear the sense of urgency from my friend from Colorado that we have to take action; this is no way to run a government. I think he is right. I think cleaning up this mess means passing a single continuing resolution that gets us through to the end of the fiscal year. For Pete's sake, the Appropriations Committee is already taking testimony to try to get us into the 2012 budget cycle. This is leftover work that simply didn't get done last Congress. Not one second has been spent on the Senate side, Mr. Speaker, from what my staff tells me. Not one second has been spent considering a bill on which the entire United States House of Representatives worked its will; a bill that was the only open process that this House has seen on a continuing resolution; a bill that allowed Members from both sides of the aisle to come down here to the House floor and represent their constituents back home by doing exactly what my friend from Colorado is suggesting--trying to make good cuts, trying to make those things, present those things on the House floor that make the most sense to folks back home.

Well, Mr. Speaker, we are where we are. No one wants the Senate to act expeditiously on the work of the people's House more than I do. But given that not one moment has been dedicated to that, we have to come down here and fund the government one more time. It is the responsible thing to do. It is the responsible thing to do.

The better thing to do would be to act on H.R. 1, which the House passed last week with the support of Members in this body. But now, we have to come down here and extend for 2 weeks to give us time to finish those negotiations with the Senate side. And if that is not enough time, I suspect we will be back down here again. My friend from Colorado and I will be back down here in this well doing this same thing.

But it is no way to run the government, Mr. Speaker. It is no way to run the government. This is just what we have to do while we wait on the Senate to take up that bill on which the House worked its will last week.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, to put these cuts in perspective, because, again, we have to get started somewhere, there is not going to be a speaker who stands up here today who doesn't speak out in favor of fiscal restraint. The questions are: When do we start? How much do we do?

Compare the bill that's before us today, which is the continuing resolution to fund the government for 2 weeks and is adding about $4 billion in cuts, to the bill we passed last week, which had $100 billion of cuts in it. Now put that $100 billion of cuts in perspective.

Let's take the average American family who has to go out and buy groceries. That family has a 31-day grocery bill. Knowing that you've got to go out and buy 31 days' worth of groceries, what we're asking of the American people is to cut 1 day out. We're going to tell you now that we're going to cut 1 day out, and we need you to stretch your 30- days' worth of groceries into 31.

Mr. Speaker, that doesn't seem that draconian. In fact, it doesn't seem draconian at all. It seems like what American families are doing over and over and over again in the recession that we've been battling.

When we talk about these jobs numbers, these are the same jobs numbers about which folks said, If only you'll put your children in debt to the tune of another $1.5 trillion, we'll get unemployment down under 8 percent. It's the same economist who said, Well, it didn't work the first year, but what if we do it the second year? If we put you in debt to the tune of $1.6 trillion, in addition to the 1.5, in addition to the 1.3 the year before, then we're going to get unemployment back down under 8 percent.

Those jobs didn't materialize because the Federal Government can't create jobs. We can destroy jobs--we can and we do--but we can't create jobs. Our young entrepreneurs create those jobs. The business owners in our communities create those jobs. We destroy jobs, but we cannot create jobs. That is what this continuing resolution is a recognition of, Mr. Speaker: that the government can absolutely get out of the way. We're not going to hear today about the numbers of jobs that will be lost if the EPA continues to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant and hamstrings the American economy in a way that no other economy on this planet is hamstrung. We're not going to hear those jobs numbers. H.R. 1 would solve that, and we have to get started somewhere.

Mr. Speaker, I take no pride of authorship. I'm just a participant in H.R. 1 as it passed the House, as the House worked its will, as Democratic amendments passed and as Republican amendments passed. I wish we'd been governing the right way and that this had been done back on October 1. We passed that continuing resolution, and it's unclear to me why there was no open process there. We passed the second one in December and then the third one in December.

Again, the openness that this House has seen in this 112th Congress is absolutely unprecedented.

Now, I know my friend from Colorado is a strong supporter of CBO and of the work that CBO does. I couldn't agree with him more. Then when Mr. Dicks came before the committee last night with an amendment that would cut even more, as someone who believes we need to cut more, I was incredibly enthusiastic about that. My understanding was that CBO hadn't had a chance to score that amendment, that there was no scoring to be had, and so we couldn't tell whether or not this was going to cut or whether or not this was going to add or how the spend rates were going to sort themselves out, because it came at the very last minute.

Yet what didn't come at the last minute was the opportunity for the minority to offer a substitute. The Speaker reached out to the minority to say if you were interested in offering the same continuing resolution that you had offered before, which was going to freeze funding--and we've heard that a lot. Let's just freeze things. We don't want to cut anything, and we don't want to be draconian--the majority would have absolutely made that in order.

Again, the House could work its will, but my understanding is that that offer was turned down and that folks were not interested in offering that substitute. I would have been a proud ``no'' vote on that substitute, but I still believe, as the gentleman from Colorado said, openness in the process yields a better result.

This brings me full circle, Mr. Speaker, to H.R. 1, which is the single continuing resolution that has had more openness in the process than any other continuing resolution this House has ever considered. It led to the best process, and it led to the best outcome. This is the bill that sits in the United States Senate today, that could be acted on today, that would fund the government and provide the certainty that we need today through the end of the fiscal year, which is on September 30.

So when we're talking about certainty, and I absolutely believe that our economy needs certainty, it is the government that's creating the uncertainty. We are creating the uncertainty. We have historically created the uncertainty. We have an opportunity with H.R. 1 to eliminate that uncertainty for the rest of the fiscal year and to get back to doing what this House always should have been doing, which is considering appropriations bills under regular order.

Candidly, I hope my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle are throwing down that gauntlet today. I hope they're saying, You know, Rob, it's not easy to lead. It's not easy to move bills through regular order.

I want that opportunity to try. I want an opportunity to do it the right way. If we can move H.R. 1 through the Senate and onto the President's desk, we can then come together with the same kind of open process that we began 2 weeks ago to consider all of the appropriations bills and to make the priorities that this House chooses to make priorities, not the last Congress, not two Congresses ago, not President Obama in his first year, not President Bush in his last term--but this House today, together. What are our priorities?

As soon as we move this continuing resolution behind us, Mr. Speaker, we can begin to focus on those priorities, which is where the true work of the House is intended to be.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I associate myself with the gentleman from New Jersey's comments. We absolutely have to work together. It's a great source of pride for me that I've only been on the job 60 days and we've already seen more working together than this House has allowed in the past 4 years combined. Understand that. Understand that as we're working on this appropriations bill, as we're working through this appropriations process, that 2 weeks ago you saw more openness and working together in this Chamber--right here, right here in the people's House--more working together than you had seen in the previous 4 years combined.

Can we do more? I say to the gentleman from New Jersey, I think we can, and I look forward to being a partner and making that happen. But to say that what is sitting on the desk in the Senate is the product of take-it-or-leave-it legislating could not be further from the truth. It's the furthest from take-it-or-leave-it legislating that the House has seen in 4 years. Arguably, it's the furthest thing from take-it-or- leave-it legislating that the House has seen on continuing appropriations bills in modern time.

So when we talk about where we are and where we're going, we have to ask that question of, why are we characterizing this as a process that's broken? Why are we characterizing H.R. 1 as something that doesn't work? Why isn't H.R. 1 the very best, the very best, given the makeup of this House, given our collective intellect and wisdom? Why isn't H.R. 1 the very best that we can do? Because when the process is open and everyone gets to participate, it ought to bring out our very best.

And I'll say to the gentleman from New Jersey, he has some of the lowest gas prices in the country. I enjoy traveling through his great State. Every time I go through, not only do I get full-service gasoline, I get it for the best prices in the country.

Gas prices are up 25 cents a gallon in Gwinnett County, where I come from; 25 cents a gallon in the past 10 days. We have economic crises in this country; we have economic challenges in this country; but spending more government resources is not the answer. We have about a $15 trillion economy. Even with a $3.5 trillion Federal budget, the Federal player is small, small--8.5 cents of every dollar in education in Georgia comes from the Federal Government. The rest comes from exactly where you expect it to come from, local communities and State governments. We have to get the government out of the way.

And if you're worried about uncertainty, as I am, if you share our concern about uncertainty, then let's pass H.R. 1. Let's be done. Let's be done with this 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 12 weeks. Let's get us through the end of the year. Let's finish the job that we should have gotten done last year. Let's put it behind us, and let's start that new open process again. And it's one that I look forward to joining my colleagues in.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds only to say that's why we're here today, as the gentleman knows, so that there is no government shutdown. And I could not be more proud that we're here taking that responsibility exactly as seriously as it is.

It's very difficult to have a conversation about jobs when we have carbon regs coming down the pipe that will destroy jobs and we have financial regulations coming down the pipe that will destroy jobs and we have health care regs coming down the pipe that will destroy jobs over and over again. My folks are saying ``enough.''

With that, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), the chairman of the Rules Committee, the gentleman that I give credit to for giving us the most open process on a continuing resolution that we've seen in modern times.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

And we could not have done it without your support.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds just to invite my friend from New Jersey to join me on H.R. 25, the Fair Tax Act. Not only will it create jobs in this country, it's the only bill in Congress that will eliminate every single corporate piece of welfare, loophole, tax exception, credit, so on and so on, because none of them need a nickel of it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Given that it eliminates the payroll tax, which is the largest tax 80 percent of American families pay----

Twenty-three percent.

Less than what you're paying now.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I am the final speaker.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today for one reason and one reason only, and that's to provide ample time for the Senate to consider H.R. 1, to keep the doors of the Federal Government open, to keep important services being dispensed, to keep the government of America on track for 2 more weeks while the Senate takes time.

I will associate myself with the gentleman from Colorado when he says we can't always get what we want. I sadly haven't gotten what I wanted so far, and I am prepared to get even less of what I want going forward. But I don't mind telling you I don't know how we are going to get to what any of us want if folks don't even start considering the bill.

This was our very best shot. It was our very best work product. Whether you love it or whether you hate it, it was the most openly produced work product in continuing resolution history. And there it sits, and there it sits, almost 10 days now with no advancement whatsoever.

Mr. Speaker, I hope these 2 weeks are enough. I recognize the caution that my friend from Colorado suggests that we may be back here one more time doing this again. I hope this is the last time that we will be here.

But I know this: I know we can't continue to mortgage our children's future while we wait. I know we can't fiddle while Rome burns. So we have passed, we have presented this continuing resolution with cuts there to prevent our children's future from continuing to be mortgaged.

As I spoke with school groups across the district last week--and I share my friend from Colorado's passion for education--I asked them to turn on C-SPAN this week, because I said it doesn't matter who stands up, whether they stand up on the left or the right, or whether they speak from the well or from the leadership table, they will tell you that the reason they are there

today is for you, is for you, the children. It's for your future that they are there on the floor of that House.

I believe that. I believe that in everyone's heart they are here to make sure that tomorrow's generation does better than today's generation. I would just say, Mr. Speaker, that if there are schoolchildren out there watching today, perhaps they will pick up the phone and they will give us a call and let us know exactly which one of us is on the right track, because I know it's all about them that we do what we do.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I proudly submit this statement congratulating two young people from my district, Miss Myasia Burns and Mr. Charles Orgbon III, who were recently chosen as being among the top youth volunteers in the State of Georgia for 2011 in the

16th annual Prudential Spirit of Community Awards Program.

The Prudential Spirit of Community Program is an annual honor conferred on the most impressive volunteers in each State and the District of Columbia.

Miss Burns, age 17, of Monroe, Georgia, was nominated by her school, Monroe Area High School, for her work in raising more than $16,000 for the American Cancer Society through the ``Team Burns Charitable Foundation,'' an organization started in memory of Miss Burns' father.

Mr. Orgbon, age 15, of Dacula, Georgia, was nominated by Mill Creek High School for founding ``Greening Forward,'' a national environmental awareness campaign, which he started in 2008.

Both of these individuals possess a servant's heart and a leader's mind. Ms. Burns and Mr. Orgbon should be proud to have been singled out from close to 29,000 volunteers who participated in this year's program. They are not only making a positive impact on our communities, but they are setting the standard for their peers and for future generations of young Americans.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 92 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my new friend, the gentlelady from New York (Ms. Slaughter), 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 have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 92 provides for a modified open rule for consideration of H.R. 1. This bill reaffirms our commitment to fiscal responsibility by implementing two main pillars of our pledge to America: to cut discretionary spending and to ensure an open and bipartisan debate.

If you had told me 6 months ago that I would have been standing here on the floor of the House handling my very first rule on the floor of the House and that we would have been succeeding on two pillars of the pledge to America, I would have told you that might have been wishful thinking. But we have come together as a House, not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as a House to bring this process forward today.

Now, you know, Mr. Speaker, as an experienced Member of the Rules Committee in a former life, how unusual it is to have an open process on a continuing resolution. I daresay, even the dean of the House, the gentleman from Michigan, has not seen a continuing resolution come to the floor under the open process that we're bringing it to the floor under today. And that's important, because as I listened to 1-minutes this morning, and I heard some folks on the left and heard some folks on the right who weren't quite happy with the way H.R. 1 turned out, that was an important consideration over the past 4 years, even over the past 10 years, over the past 20 years, because if you weren't happy with the way a continuing resolution turned out when leadership brought it to the floor, too bad for you. You didn't have a voice. You didn't have a vote. You didn't have a process. It was take it or leave it. Whether it was Republican leadership or whether it was Democratic leadership, take it or leave it. In the 112th Congress, our new leadership said we can do better, we have to do better, and the American people deserve better. And today, we are fulfilling that promise.

This open process will allow any Member, Republican or Democrat, to come to the floor today, tomorrow, bring their amendments to the floor so that they can say, We don't think you got it right. My 600,000 constituents back home want to make a change. We think we can do better. We think you did too much. We think you didn't do enough. The first time a continuing resolution has come to the floor in this open process. I ran on that commitment of openness, Mr. Speaker, and I believe in that commitment of openness.

I can't tell you how many times I said that if Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed a bill through in the middle of the night, that was wrong. And if Speaker Newt Gingrich rammed a bill through in the middle of the night, that was wrong. That right and wrong are not partisan issues. Right and wrong are American issues. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed our Rules Committee hearing last night, Mr. Speaker, where we had the ranking member and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee come forward, lay out competing views about where they think we should take spending in this country, and then agree to come to the floor over the next several days to offer amendments, to work through that process, to make sure that at the end of the day, no longer do we have a take-it-or-leave-it leadership bill from either side of the aisle; that at the end of the day, we have a bill that was truly the work product of this new 112th Congress of this people's House. And it's just with tremendous pride, Mr. Speaker, that I take part in this debate today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, you've caught me both on my first rule on the floor and a day where I am just so pleased to be here because of the things that are going on here today, because of the changes that I believe in, both in terms of fiscal responsibility and in terms of openness here in the process.

Now, I understand this rule isn't going to make everyone happy. It doesn't make me happy because we're only here today, and it's been very confusing for folks back home, Mr. Speaker. We talked so much about receiving the President's budget on Capitol Hill yesterday. Of course, that was his budget for FY 2012. We're still here working on the budget for 2011. This is the fifth continuing resolution that we've had to try to get that process right, and it's the first one since I've been sworn in that we've been involved in.

Now, I can tell you, as much of a voice as you have in this continuing resolution today, we have not seen this much debate or this many amendments in the last four continuing resolutions combined. In fact, I'm told that last night more than 400 amendments were filed to be eligible to come to the floor.

Now, I hear from my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle, for whom I have deep respect and admiration, that they believe this bill was put together in a hasty process. I'll tell you, we've been working on this bill day and night for weeks.

But then I hear from my friends that they're disappointed that we have a pre-printing requirement to allow for the thoughtful consideration of amendments, and they would rather it just be a willy- nilly process that happens here on the floor as folks come up with good ideas, one by one.

Well, I'll tell you, I look forward to that process. I very much hope we can have that as the appropriations bills move forward.

But, folks, this is a time of urgency. We have troops in harm's way overseas. We have economic development projects going on around this country that have no idea after March 4 whether there will be a single nickel available to support their cause. No idea. It is no way to run a government. And, again, to put credit where credit is due and blame where blame resides, both parties, over the last decade, have been guilty of this horrendous practice of bringing continuing resolutions to the floor.

Today we bring forward a bill that will put a stop to this process, that will get us through the end of 2011 and allow us to go through regular order to bring the remaining appropriations bills to the floor. And it's a process I very much look forward to.

I see my friend Mr. McGovern in the Chamber this morning. He and I had a discussion last night in the Rules Committee about how to go after some, what I would call, egregious tax subsidies, those things that happen on the tax side of the ledger that shouldn't happen. I believe in a fair code. I believe in a code that's transparent, that people understand. You'll see my fair tax pin that I'm wearing here today. I believe in fundamental tax reform.

But today we only have a chance to talk about FY 2011 spending. I want to have that discussion about fundamental tax reform. I want to have the discussion that the gentlelady from New York wants to have about entitlement reform because I know precisely what my colleagues know, which is if we're going to be serious about budgets, that's where the dollars are, that's where the growth is, that's where the change has to come.

But today we have, because it's an open process, simply one bill that we can deal with, simply one idea that we can deal with, and that one idea is spending for FY 2011.

It would have been easy, Mr. Speaker, for this new House to have punted on making tough decisions. It would have been perfectly legitimate for this new House to say, we didn't cause this problem, we inherited this problem from last year's Congress, and we're just going to continue a continuing resolution on until the end of the year because we don't have the time or the commitment to start making tough choices. But we didn't. And I'm just so proud that we didn't.

What we said is, we have 7 months left in the year. Let's start right now. Let's start right now; and let's lay these ideas out one by one by one, not in big general terms, but in specifics, line item by line item by line item across literally thousands of appropriations accounts.

And we didn't say it's my way or the highway, Mr. Speaker. We said, if you have a better idea, if you have a better idea, come to the floor and let's talk about it. If you have a better idea, if we did too much here, tell us where we did too much and tell us how we can do better. And if we did too little here, tell us where we did too little and tell us how we can make it better.

I so look forward, at the end of this rules consideration, as we pass this rule and move forward in the general debate, to being able to engage in those amendments one by one, not in a back room somewhere, not off in the corner where it's just the leadership involved, but here on the floor of the people's House, for all of America to see, line item by line item by line item about where our priorities are.

Now, I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker, you know, as I know, that every nickel we collect in Federal revenue today goes to fund entitlements and service our national debt. And every nickel that we spend on every program we're going to talk about today, every program on the discretionary side, on the non-defense discretionary side, is a nickel that we borrow.

So when we talk about are these things good to do, I promise you that that's not where my heart is today. I know there are some good programs out here that are doing good things. What I also know is we're borrowing every nickel to fund those programs from our children and our grandchildren. When we talk about priorities, one of those priorities is paying for what it is we commit this Nation to.

Again, my good friend Mr. McGovern was very persuasive last night when he said, for Pete's sake, they are programs I don't agree with; but dadgummit, if we're going to be involved in them, we ought to fund them; and I couldn't agree with him more. That's hard.

We received the President's budget just yesterday; and over a 10-year window, our systemic deficit never falls below 3 percent of GDP. We don't even qualify to join the European Union. We are so devoid of fiscal responsibility at this point in our Nation's history that we do not even qualify to join the European Union. I tell you, Mr. Speaker,

that's a low standard. We should do better. We should do better. We can do better. We brought H.R. 1 to the floor today, this rule, we'll bring it to the floor this afternoon so that we can do better.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf).

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to yield 2 minutes to the hardworking member of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Georgia, Jack Kingston.

I am pleased to yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I am proud to yield 2 minutes to a hardworking member of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen).

Mr. Speaker, at this time I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham).

Will the gentleman yield?

I appreciate the gentleman's yielding. As a newcomer here to the U.S. House of Representatives, I would certainly defer to the Parliamentarian; but I'm encouraging everyone to bring every amendment. Bring every amendment, Congressman, to the House floor and offer that amendment for debate and discussion.

I would say to the gentleman that having an open process and abiding by the rules of the House is critical to getting our work done. And if the rules of the House permit this amendment, I look forward to supporting it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to yield 3 minutes to a true American patriot, a lover of this country, the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. Steve King.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the freedom-loving State of Idaho (Mr. Simpson).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson).

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the chairman of the Rules Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier).

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

Mr. Speaker, I will say again, I can't believe that here on my first rule we have an open process; for the first time in the history of this House, the best I can tell, an open process on a continuing resolution. Now, we're only dealing with this continuing resolution because of the mess we were left in last year, and we're doing the very best we can with it.

You've heard words like ``draconian,'' ``decimates,'' ``slashes.'' I want to put it in terms that I think we can all understand. I want you to think about it in terms of your family grocery budget, Mr. Speaker. If you went to the grocery store today and bought your groceries for a month, our friends on the other side would have you believe that we want you to fast for an entire day, because that's about what it is, this $100 billion, about 1 day out of a month's grocery budget.

But if you took that 30 days of groceries and you spread those 30 days around--and that's what we do under an open process. We let you spread it around--add where you want to add; cut where you want to cut; spread that around. Can we do that? Can we do that as a very first step towards getting our fiscal house in order? Not only can we do it, Mr. Speaker, we must do it.

I'm grateful to the leadership for allowing us to do it. I urge a strong ``yes'' vote on the rule.

The text of the material previously referred to by Mr. McGovern is as follows:

An Amendment to H. Res. 92 Offered by Mr. McGovern of Massachusetts

At the end of the resolution, add the following new

sections:

Sec. 4. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution the

Speaker shall, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule XVIII, declare

the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on

the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R.

11) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend the

Build America Bonds program. The first reading of the bill

shall be dispensed with. All points of order against

consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be

confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally

divided and controlled by the Majority Leader and Minority

Leader or their respective designees. After general debate

the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-

minute rule. All points of order against provisions in the

bill are waived. At the conclusion of consideration of the

bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the

bill to the House with such amendments as may have been

adopted. The previous question shall be considered as ordered

on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without

intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or

without instructions. If the Committee of the Whole rises and

reports that it has come to no resolution on the bill, then

on the next legislative day the House shall, immediately

after the third daily order of business under clause 1 of

rule XIV, resolve into the Committee of the Whole for further

consideration of the bill.

Sec. 5. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the

consideration of the bill specified in section 4 of this

resolution.

(The information contained herein was provided by the

Republican Minority on multiple occasions throughout the

110th and 111th Congresses.)

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I send to the desk a privileged concurrent resolution and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Woodall

Amendment No. 437: Page 195, line 6, strike ``in excess of

$112,000,000.''

Offered By: Mr. Woodall

Amendment No. 438: Page 195, line 6, strike ``in excess of

$112,000,000'' and insert ``other than amounts contracturally

obligated by the United States prior to enactment of this

section.''

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 1 minute p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, February 15, 2011, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I could not get over here to the floor fast enough when I saw this rule come up for debate, and I rise in strong support of this rule today and in strong support of the underlying legislation.

I am pleased to be joined on this day after the State of the Union not just by my colleagues but with so many young people in the gallery today, because that is exactly what this debate is about.

We've heard much talk on the floor of this House over the past week about the upcoming CBO baseline report. Well, if it arrived in your email boxes this morning like it did mine, you saw that CBO's most recent score predicts a $6.9 trillion, 10-year operating deficit. That's not the $14 trillion in debt that these young people are going to have to pay back, it's the actual operating deficit, the additional debt that we're going to add over the next 10 years. This proposal today is one small step towards attacking that operating deficit.

Now we're talking about big numbers here today. Somewhere between $500 million and $600 million will be saved with the elimination of this proposal. But folks, $6.9 trillion is where we have to go over the next 10 years. So if you think that this underlying proposal, the public financing proposal, has some merit, I look forward to debating that when the time comes, when we get our operating deficit under control. But we don't just need to pass this provision today; we need to pass this provision and 10,000 more just like it to get to a balanced budget.

Now, I want you to think about that. All of the discussion, all of the gnashing of teeth, the handwringing about eliminating this provision today, folks, this is just the beginning. This proposal and 10,000 more just like it are what we need to pass in this House. The question isn't why are we bringing up this proposal today; the question is why don't we have three or four or five more just like it.

I look forward to joining with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to talk about those provisions, talk about those spending items in our budget that we can get rid of. But folks, I am absolutely certain, as the YouCut site pointed out when America voted, that public financing is one of the top 10,000 things that we can get rid of. We don't have to decide today whether this is number one of the 10,000 most wasteful programs in government or number 10,000 of the 10,000 most wasteful programs in government; we only have to decide if it's somewhere on that spectrum. I tell you that it is, and I rise in strong support of this rule.

The second reason I had to rush over here to the floor is I'm brand new. I've been in this House less than 1 month, and I'm down here speaking on a rule that offers an open amendment process.

Now, if anybody has been watching the House floor, as I have, over the past 2 years, you might wonder what an open amendment process is, and you would be right to wonder because you've never seen one. I may be a freshman in this body, but folks who came 2 years before me, the sophomores in this body, they don't have any more experience in this process than I do, because this is the first open amendment process that we've seen on the floor of the House. Why are we seeing it? Because it's the right thing to do for the institution.

Speaker Boehner has made a point of saying the House is going to work its will. I come from a very conservative district in the northeastern suburbs of Atlanta. And I tell you, when the House works its will, we're not always going to get what we want in the northeastern suburbs of Atlanta, because the House sits kind of here in the middle, and I'm a little further over here on the right-hand side of the spectrum. But in order for this Congress to work, in order for this House to work, in order to restore the dignity of this House, we have to allow the House to work its will.

I am just so pleased, in my very first month in Congress, that we not only have seen very narrowly focused pieces of legislation come to the floor, but we're seeing them come to the floor under an open amendment process.

And let me just say one thing about that open amendment process, particularly for folks, again, who haven't seen one before, folks who are in the gallery or watching on TV who have not seen an open amendment process before. Just because it's open doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to do on the House floor. We're talking about the public financing of elections today. So if you have an amendment that's going to change the way we finance education, that amendment is not going to be germane. If you have an amendment about what you want to do with the health care system, that amendment is not going to be germane.

When you bring narrowly crafted pieces of legislation to the floor, the amendments that are germane are narrowly crafted amendments. And folks, I love that. For too long we have had 2,000-page bills, 1,000- page bills that folks can't read and can't understand and that can't be amended. And I am so pleased today to be standing here in strong support of my colleague from North Carolina's resolution. I will be voting in favor of the rule, and I will be voting in favor of the underlying legislation.

I thank the gentlelady for the time.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Madam Speaker, I have been a Member of this body for 2 weeks and 2 days, and I could not be prouder to be on the House floor today in support of the chairman's resolution. For the entire last year in my district we have been focused on one thing and one thing only, since March of 2010, and that is the repeal of the President's health care bill.

You know, before March of 2010 my district cared about health care reform. We talked about tort reform, we talked about putting patients back in charge of decisions. We talked about ending the tax preference that businesses get so that we can purchase insurance on our own and own those policies as we do our other insurance policies. But the moment this bill was signed into law, the moment the President's bill was signed into law that discussion stopped and the repeal discussion began. And with the repeal yesterday, we now begin anew the discussion of how properly to reform the system. And I am anxious to have that discussion.

You know, we learned a lot in our time in the minority. One of those things we learned is that bringing simple, straightforward resolutions to the floor is better for the process. It's better for the American people. The Speaker has made that commitment. We continue that commitment today with these instructions to go back to the drawing board and bring things forward one at a time.

Now, I sat through 10 hours of hearings in the Rules Committee, where folks came forward and said go ahead and repeal the bill, but save this one provision. Let's have this one provision stay. Go ahead and repeal the bill, but keep this other one provision. We now have that opportunity. We have now repealed the bill here in the House, and we have the opportunity to bring those provisions forward one by one.

And I will tell you what, I am not going to like all those provisions. And some of those provisions are going to pass the House. And that's the way it ought to be. You shouldn't have a one-size-fits- all, take-it-or-leave-it kind of system. You ought to be able to have that discussion on both sides of the aisle. And I have no doubt that provisions are going to come forth from our committees that I am going to vote ``no'' on, but my colleagues on the left and on the right are both going to vote ``yes'' on, and it's going to pass. And that's the way the process ought to be, one provision at a time, one idea at a time. Tort reform, insurance reform, putting patients back in charge of those decisions, putting doctors back in charge of those relationships.

Thank you for yielding, Mr. Chairman.

Madam Speaker, I return to the well because I wonder if folks have the same small business people in their district that I have in my district. I wonder if folks are doing the same listening in their district that I'm doing in my district. We are here today to respond to exactly what folks have been asking for.

Now to give credit where credit is due, last year before the last Congress expired, Democrats and Republicans came together to extend for 1 year, and I would have liked to have seen it extended longer, but to extend for 1 year the tax cuts that our small business men and women were demanding. But the second part of the indecision that was there in the small business community, of the anxiety that was there, the uncertainty that was there, is what's going to happen with my health care cost. What's going to happen with the health care plan? Now we have not solved that. We have not solved that anxiety. We have not solved that indecision, because we've only gotten one-half of it done. We've gotten it passed in the House, but we've still got to take it to the Senate and we've still got to take it to the White House.

Now again, in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I told folks throughout my campaign that I thought the President identified exactly the right two health care challenges, rising costs and access, and then came up with exactly the wrong solutions to those problems. Now we talk about what's going to happen to folks when the doughnut hole change goes away. Well, did we have a chance last year? And I'm new to Congress. Did we have a chance in the last Congress to vote on that standalone doughnut hole closure? I don't believe we did. Did we have a chance in the last Congress to vote on a standalone preexisting conditions solution? I don't believe we did. Did we have a chance in the last Congress to talk about kids under the age of 26 and what they can do? We did not. But what we do, we have this resolution today that is going to give us, for the first time, the opportunity as a nation to vote on those provisions one by one, because the only option Congress had last time under Democratic leadership to vote for a doughnut hole solution, to vote for preexisting condition solutions, to vote for insurance for kids under the age of 26, was to do it with the unconstitutional mandate, a trillion dollars in new spending, and hundreds of new bureaucracies.

I thank the chairman.

Madam Speaker, I would just say to my friend that I absolutely voted no on every single one of those Rules Committee amendments in the name of repealing the bill yesterday, and now today I have returned to speak in favor of this resolution so that you can work with the committee leadership to bring each and every one of those provisions to this floor for a vote again for the very first time. For the very first time. I'm glad to support you in having that opportunity and I'm pleased to be here in support of this resolution today.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore