Floor Statements

Offered By: Mr. LaTourette of Ohio

Amendment No. 540: Strike all after the enacting clause and

insert the following:

Mr. Speaker, I wasn't going to come over and talk on this bill this morning, but there's some things that are upsetting me as we wind down this lame duck session, and I think there's one merciful thing that could happen around here--this lame duck ought to be killed because nothing good's occurring at the moment.

But this particular bill, I am a proud cosponsor of this bill with Ms. Kaptur and I commend her for moving this legislation; and as a matter of fact, we were engaged in some conversations last night to clear it for unanimous consent. That didn't quite work out because there are, as you know from the debate today, some objections.

But I have to say that having listened to the discussion, the objections fall short, in my estimation. This bill doesn't extend TARP. By the way, for the record, I voted against TARP despite the fact that President Bush wanted us to vote for it, Secretary Paulson and a number of our leadership. I thought it was a bad idea, continue to think it's a bad idea even though some people say it saved America. Bad idea because it had no rules. We're going to do this--no, we're going to do that--we're going to buy banks, whatever.

But, anyway, so the money is already out there, however, and all this bill does is say that States may have an option, if they choose, to take some of the money in the hard hit fund and allow people who are being foreclosed upon unjustly to use those funds for legal representation. No class action, no ACORN, no peanuts, no nothing. I mean, this is a clean bill when it comes to that, and I think that we are letting form subsume substance.

Yesterday, I was on the floor and I was a cosponsor on a piece of legislation with the gentlelady from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum) that would have just moved money, no new money, would have moved money so that societies that are coercing young girls into marriage, we could build them latrines so they could go to school or we could make sure that they could stay in school so they're not forced into marriage at the age of 12 and 13. All of a sudden, there is a fiscal argument. When that didn't work, people had to add an abortion element to it.

Look, this is a partisan place. I'm a Republican. I'm glad that we beat their butt in the election and we're going to be in the majority next year. But there comes a time when enough is enough, and McCollum's bill was a good bill last night. Kaptur's bill is a good bill today. We should stop the nonsense, approve the bill and move on.

Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Chairman, on page 56 of the bill currently under consideration, at the bottom, beginning with the last partial word on line 19 and then proceeding through lines 1 through 4 on page 57, it constitutes legislation and authorizing on an appropriations bill in that it creates a new program, basically a grants program to the Secretary of Transportation. It sets a dollar amount of $250 million, and it further has a limitation clause in terms of the time when that would become effective.

I am aware that the rule waives all points of order against this legislation for violations of rule XXI, paragraph 2(a). I would assert in my parliamentary inquiry that this, in fact, is a violation of the House rules that the Rules Committee has waived. I am aware of that.

Yet it is my understanding that the precedents of the House indicate that, when a legislative provision is inserted into an appropriations bill and that piece of authorizing language is permitted to go-- offending the House rules either by the fact that nobody from the authorizing committee gets up and makes a point of order against the provision that violates the rules or if the Rules Committee, as they have done in this case, issues a blanket waiver, waiving all violation of that particular section of the House rules--that it then ripens, and only at that moment in time does it ripen, which is when the rule is adopted or when the provision is read and a member of the authorizing committee doesn't stand up and exercise his or her committee's jurisdiction. It then ripens for there to be a perfecting amendment.

I am further aware that the rule by which this bill came to the floor also only makes in order 24 amendments, not the historic open rule under an appropriations bill.

So my question to the Chair is: At what moment in time would it be appropriate to offer a perfecting amendment to the language that I have just indicated, which is on pages 56 and 57, in light of the fact that this matter only ripened when the rule was passed?

Just by way of making an observation before the Chair gives its answer, if you think about the operation of this rule, there are no perfecting amendments available to authorizing language in a bill until such time as the House has permitted the offense.

The House didn't permit the offense, that is, the waiver of its rules, until the Rules Committee was successful in achieving the passage of this rule.

So my parliamentary inquiry is, when would a Member who might be interested in modifying or perfecting this offending language, in violation of the House rules, have the opportunity to do that?

If I may ask a further parliamentary inquiry.

Just so I am clear on the Chair's ruling, and that is that when the Rules Committee passes a rule waiving the rules of the House and protecting language that is clearly in violation of House rule XXI (2)(a), if the Rules Committee further compounds that by announcing a rule that only a certain subset of amendments are going to be made in order, that no Member, not just majority Members, or the chairman, no Member of this House has the opportunity to do anything about that offending language. Am I correct in that?

Further parliamentary inquiry. That was a long sentence. I think the answer to my question was yes.

On this particular amendment, Mr. Arcuri, I congratulate you as a thoughtful member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for coming up with a beautiful amendment that's apparently going to be adopted by both sides.

Now that I've talked about the amendment, I want to talk about the parliamentary inquiry that I asked a few minutes ago, and discuss what's at stake here, and ask the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee to reconsider what I consider to be a sad decision.

We spend a lot of time talking about jobs in this place. Some people say they're creating jobs; others say they're not. A lot of people are wandering around saying, where are the jobs.

But at the end of the day, what is immutable, or what is irrefutable, and I believe it's included in the Committee's report on this bill, is that all across the country, in 84 percent of the transit authorities in this Nation, because of the way that the current formula is structured, transit companies

around the country have plenty of money to buy buses. They don't have any money to hire or retain people to drive them.

And the last total that I saw since this situation began is that 10,000 people, 10,000 Americans who work for transit companies and drive buses in this country, and rail cars and everything else, are currently out of work.

Now, the transit authorities of this country have come to our attention, and I assume they've visited all Members on the Hill that have transit authorities and they have said, you know what? Just for this year, if we could take some of that capital improvement money that we have sitting around, it's stupid for us to buy a new bus because we don't have enough people to drive the buses that we currently have. And so, if we could just take the cost of fuel and move it from the operations side over to the capital side, we could bring back the people that we have laid off.

So it boggles the mind. And when I offered this in the subcommittee, the chairman shot it down. When I offered it in the full committee, the chairman had a substitute amendment that causes the offending language to rule XXI(2)(a) that's contained on pages 56 and 57.

And let me just tell you why anybody that cares about a transit worker in this country should be upset by this substitute language.

First of all, it's $250 million. It doesn't help every transit authority in the country. It makes it a grant program. So Secretary Ray LaHood can choose, pick and choose, which transit authorities across the country he would choose to participate in this grant program.

But worse than that is the restrictive language that indicates that it only goes into effect if the highway bill comes into play on or before September 30 of 2011.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I spent 12 years on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and I know how the highway bill works. I participated in writing two of those highway bills.

The President of the United States, through his Secretary, has indicated they don't even want to talk about the reauthorization until March of 2011. Now, even if Jim Oberstar, who is a skilled chairman and has the able assistance of people like Mr. Arcuri, is able to work a miracle and put on this floor the reauthorization, and the Senate ever gets their act together enough to pass such a thing and have it signed by the President of the United States, you are looking now at October, November, December, January, February, and March.

Why don't we care enough to put down the partisan nonsense and simply say we care about the 10,000 transit workers in this country who are out of work.

It doesn't spend any more money. It has all the incentives of the green fuel initiatives that, actually, the champion of this thing is Mr. Carnahan of Missouri, has a bill with a lot of cosponsors on it. Why we wouldn't do that and, instead, hide behind rule XXI (2)(a), hide behind the rule that's been produced by the Rules Committee. Why don't you let these people come back to the work?

The majority and the President of the United States, with the signing of this bill, could claim credit for creating or saving 10,000 jobs with the stroke of a pen. I don't know why we do it.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I heard the majority, the leader of the House, during the debate on the rule give a really good talk about how we wished that every Member could have something to input on this bill and that there are 435 of us, so they structured a rule in the way that they think.

There is one choice that is missing. There is no ability for a Member of the House tonight to vote on the Senate bill and send to the President of the United States before the 4th of July a clean funding bill for the troops who are in the field. Because the rule is self- executing an amendment already, if that bill passes, it conflicts with the Senate bill, and nothing can go to the President. The Senate is in West Virginia.

So, Mr. Speaker, what I think the House ought to be doing is clearing the Senate amendments for presentation to the President, not sending more proposals to the Senate, but putting the test that the Senate has already passed on the President's desk for approval of law tomorrow.

So, to that end, I wonder if the proponent of the pending motion, the gentleman from Wisconsin, would yield to me for a unanimous consent request. I'll even tell you what it is in the hopes that it might be propounded.

I would like to ask unanimous consent that the pending motion to concur in the Senate amendment with amendments be considered as withdrawn in favor of a motion simply to concur in the Senate amendment. I would ask the gentleman if he would yield to me for that purpose.

Will you yield to me to permit the Members of this House to have a clean bill on war funding to support the troops? It is a ``yes'' or ``no'' question.

Mr. Speaker, I've got to tell you the silence on the other side is deafening. There is no ability tonight to cast a vote on a bill that the Senate has passed that can go to the President.

I am happy to yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, quite frankly, my understanding of where we are is that the Senate hollowed out the House bill so that you don't have a motion to recommit, so that you don't have any amendments except the ones that you have structured, and you have denied the Members of this House the opportunity to cast an up-or- down vote on the war funding instead.

I only need 10 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill, H.R. 4899, with the Senate amendments thereto, and concur in the Senate amendments.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, this is really unfortunate. We have troops in the field; we have a holiday upon us, and no one in this House is going to be able to cast a vote on a clean supplemental. The President of the United States, for crying out loud, has asked for it. He has issued a veto threat against this charade that we're performing tonight, and I think it's a shame that we can't at least have a vote and let the House work its will.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the recognition. I want to thank the minority leader, Mr. Boehner, for granting me the privilege of speaking here this evening.

What prompted us to come forward this evening is an announcement that took place before the Memorial Day weekend by the majority in the House, the Democratic majority leader and others, that it was not anticipated that they would be producing a budget. This is my 16th year in the Congress, and I know that that has not happened in the previous 15 years that I've served here. And in checking, I'm not aware, since the Budget Act of 1974 was enacted, that the House of Representatives hasn't put forth and produced a budget.

Just like at home, the reason that a budget is important is that it allocates resources and says what you're going to spend on what and, in the case of the government, what you're going to overspend and are going to have to borrow from places like China to finance the deficit and the debt. As a matter of fact, the news reports indicate that we are projected to have a budget deficit--that's just spending more money this year than we have--of about $1.4 trillion, which is certainly significant.

The thing about that debt, it's not money that we just have laying around or we borrow from the guy down the street. Most of it is borrowed from the financial institutions on Wall Street that we spend a lot of time bailing out and also foreign countries. China and others own a good portion of our debt as well.

So it was alarming that the announcement was made that we wouldn't be producing or the majority would not be producing a budget. Alarming because you wonder, maybe we've been really busy here and we haven't had time to get to something as important as the budget. And then, of course, after the budget is passed, that leads to what's called the appropriations process where the Appropriations Committee gets together and determines what we're going to spend on defense, what we are going to spend on education, what we are going to spend on the environment and so forth and so on. So, until you have the budget trigger, there's no allocation to the Appropriations Committee so they can begin their work.

So it's not just a matter of not having a blueprint, not having a budget; it's a matter of them not having the spending bills in place. Although, again, we're sometimes late in delivering those, it's pretty unusual that we don't even start the process with a markup in the subcommittees of Appropriations, certainly preparing the bills for floor activity.

In thinking about it, the President of the United States, President Obama, he's also charged with delivering a budget, and I think we all know that President Obama has been pretty busy. I mean, there's a lot going on. There have been a lot of things happening since he became the President of the United States that require attention. Some have been disasters; some have been financial difficulties. We've seen Greece go bankrupt on the other side of the ocean. But even as busy as President Obama has been, he discharged his statutory obligation and delivered to Capitol Hill in a timely fashion a budget. Now, you may not be crazy about the budget. You may think that the budget spends too much as I do, the President's proposal, but at least he did what he was supposed to do and present a budget.

That caused me to sort of examine what it is that we've been doing here in the House of Representatives or, more correctly, what the majority has decided we should be doing in the House of Representatives here since the beginning of the year to determine what it is that we have been so busy doing.

It's particularly important to talk about that a little bit because the first 12 years that I served in the Congress--I happen to be a Republican--there were more Republicans in the House of Representatives than there were Democrats, and so we were the majority party and we determined what came to the floor, when it came to the floor, just like the Democratic majority does today. And we were doing such a bang-up job that in 2006 the voters replaced us and made the Democratic Party the majority party.

But one of the central themes of that campaign that the Democrats made all across the country was you need to put us in charge because the Republican Congress is a do-nothing Congress, they're just not doing anything. And, as a matter of fact, they indicated that we weren't working full time. Now, anybody that's been here knows that that's really a specious argument, a false argument, but it sold newspapers. It looked good on the talk shows when people would say, well, we're not even working a full week. Well, you know, some of the work is done here on the floor, a lot of the work is done in committee, a lot of the work is done back in our districts, but to say that we weren't here five days a week and they were going to change all that was an interesting campaign slogan.

But just walking over here, Mr. Speaker, I got a notice from the majority leader. We've just come back from our work period back in the district for Memorial Day. We didn't have any votes on Monday. We've done something called suspensions that I'm going to talk about the last couple of days, together with a bill that I guess we'll try and finish up tomorrow. But I just got an email, courtesy of the majority leader's office so that we know what our schedule should be, that we're not going to have any votes on Friday.

So, despite the fact that the Republican majority in 2006 was labeled as the do-nothing Congress and we didn't work 5 days a week, we have accomplished a whopping 3 days of floor activity here in the House of Representatives after being at home for Memorial Day for an entire week.

I thought to myself, well, maybe we should look to see what it is we've been doing because, clearly, if we're not producing a budget--and we're going to talk a little bit about other things that haven't been occurring around here--maybe we've been preoccupied with really, really important matters that needed to be addressed.

What I found out was, as I examined it, that there have been 337 recorded votes on something known as suspensions, and, you know, Mr. Speaker, but just so the record is clear, a suspension is a noncontroversial bill where it's cleared, usually by the majority who says to the minority, We'd like to do this on suspension. Most of those things are by agreement.

The way that works, it's called a suspension because you're suspending the rules, you're not bringing a bill to the floor pursuant to the regular order. You're bringing it in a way that's debated for 40 minutes. Each side gets 20 minutes, and then there's a recorded

vote if it's requested. And rather than the simple majority, it takes two-thirds of those Members present and voting to pass a suspension.

Now, the interesting thing about suspensions is that both parties file legislation that becomes suspensions, and there have been more suspensions than 337, but the 337 that have occurred since January of this year were those that actually required a recorded vote. So, for each one of the 337 suspensions with a vote, you had 40 minutes of debate, so 40 minutes of floor time plus a 15-minute vote.

Now, to be fair, when they put a series of the suspensions in a row, not every suspension gets a 15-minute vote; some get 5-minute votes. But also, there are very few, simply, 15-minute votes around here because Members have to come from committee or their offices or wherever they happen to be to cast their votes, and so at least the first vote in the series, it's not unusual, even though the clock runs down beginning at 15 minutes, that the actual time consumed is closer to half an hour.

So, just for a rule of thumb with that sort of asterisk, so you have 337 suspensions debated for 40 minutes apiece and each one getting a 15-minute vote, and we'll do the math in a little bit, but clearly, that's a significant amount of floor time in a Congress that's really only here 3 days a week discussing noncontroversial bills.

In looking at the suspensions on this side, first of all, we have named 19 post offices or public buildings. And so, in each of those instances, a Member put forward a piece of legislation--and I don't make any observation about that these weren't worthy honors to name a public building after someone or a post office after someone, but 19 times the majority has put on the floor a suspension, consumed 40 minutes of time in a debate about whether or not we should--let's see, for instance, we designated a post office called the Roy Wilson Post Office, as an example, one time this year. So that bill was called up, debated for 40 minutes, and then there was a 15-minute vote. So, all told, just shy of an hour is consumed naming a post office after Mr. Wilson, and I will tell you that if you look up the recorded vote on that, I doubt that anybody that was present that day voted against it.

As a matter of fact, we just named two post offices earlier this evening, one after Ronald Reagan and the second one, I believe, was after a couple of Marines. Again, both are worthy designations, but there were no ``no'' votes.

So you sort of say to yourself, well, okay, then why did we have to have a recorded vote? Why did we have to consume 40 minutes of debate and then consume another 15 minutes on a vote when nobody was opposed to it and everybody thought it was a good idea?

As a matter of fact, you know, Mr. Speaker, that you could call up a post office bill and say, you know, ``I want the post office'' in wherever this happens to be--I apologize, I don't know--``but I want this post office named after Mr. Wilson,'' and ask everybody to vote for it and sit down.

And then the Speaker would say, ``All those in favor, say, `Aye.' All those opposed, `No.' '' And the ayes would obviously have it because everybody thinks it's a good idea. You wouldn't have a recorded vote. And I don't know how long that took, but it was a lot less than 55 minutes.

So, 19 times we consumed 55 minutes naming either a public building or a post office in honor of somebody.

The other thing I found was, in those 337 noncontroversial bills that each require 55 minutes, on over 30 occasions, I think it's 36 occasions, we congratulated a university or a college in this country for doing something like winning the lacrosse national championship or winning the NCAA basketball tournament.

And, again, all of the young people and all of those institutions deserve recognition. And I am not indicating, for example, that the University of Virginia men's soccer team, who won the 2009 Division 1 NCAA national championship--I know that every parent, every student on that team is extremely proud of his or her son's accomplishment in doing that.

But, again, if you look up the recorded vote, which was requested by the sponsor of that legislation, nobody voted against it. And so you have to say to yourself, well, okay, then why does it take 55 minutes on over 30 separate occasions since January of this year to congratulate all of these fine activities that have occurred?

And I only brought up the colleges and universities, but, in looking at the list, I know we have congratulated--and if I was a golfer, I could tell you, but we congratulated the guy who won the Masters, we congratulated a NASCAR race driver for winning his race.

And, again, all of those are important things, and I am sure that when the bills are finally passed and signed by the President, that makes a nice memento for that school or that individual to hang on their wall.

But when you are not doing other things such as producing a budget or producing a jobs bill that actually puts people back to work in this country, you have to ask yourself, well, why are you so busy taking 55 minutes times 36 to do that?

In addition, just sort of randomly, in pulling out some of the 337 suspensions that required a vote, because the majority asked for a vote, that don't have anything to do with schools and don't have anything to do with public buildings, you find that we are all about congratulating a lot of people who are engaged in certain activities in this country.

So, H. Res. 117, one of the first ones because 117 is kind of a low number, we supported the goals and ideals of National Engineers Week. Now, again, if you look up the vote, you will find that everybody that was here that day voted to commend the fine engineers in this country because they were having a good week.

The next one, again in the low numbers, 197, we wanted to commend the American Sail Training Association for its advancement of character building under sail and for advancement of international goodwill.

Again, worthy goals, but you have to say, when you are not attending to the business of the people of the United States through legislation that makes a difference in their lives and you are making choices about limited floor time--because, again, we are not here 5 days a week; we are here, really, on an average, about 3 days a week, even though, when campaigning to become the majority, they indicated we are going to work 5 days a week--you wonder why that takes 55 minutes when everybody votes for it.

A lot of things dealing with education: We indicated that February the 1st was going to be National School Counselor Week. We recognized National Robotics Week. And I am not really sure what that is, but I am sure, I guess, we have a week dedicated to people who make robots. The only robots I have seen are those ones on TV that battle each other all the time. But, again, that take a lot of smarts to put together a good robot.

We had a week recognizing School Social Work Week. We supported the goals and ideals of National Public Works Week. And I guess that that means, you know, like, sewers and bridges and things like that, that we felt it was necessary to take 55 minutes to say that national works are good things.

We thanked Vancouver for hosting a wonderful Winter Olympics. And, again, when that came to a vote, I don't recall anybody in the House of Representatives voting against it. Certainly, people who saw the Olympics thought that that was a very nice Olympics. The American teams did better than they normally do during a Winter Olympics.

So, again, I don't have any big difficulty with the fact that one of our colleagues sat down and drafted a resolution to do any one of these 337 things. I think the question is: Why, unless you are making it appear that you are doing something, would you consume 435 Members, all of the wonderful staff that works here, why would with you consume all that time to do these things, when, instead, you could be dealing with things that people are concerned about?

So, I am not smart enough to do the math, but just for those that may be interested, that will read the Congressional Record, if you take out your calculator and indicate 337 for the suspensions where they have required a

vote, multiply it by 40 minutes, and then also multiply 337 times 15 minutes for the votes that occurred, that will give you the amount of floor time that has been consumed with these suspensions.

For instance, we recognized the importance of manufactured and modular housing. I think that that's important. I never lived in a modular house, but if I did, I am sure that I would think that it was a good thing to honor the people that made it so that it didn't fall in on me, and we should recognize them.

But, again, why do you have to take an hour on the floor of the greatest deliberative body of the world to congratulate or recognize people who are in the modular home industry rather than dealing with other things?

And let me just talk for a minute about what those other things are. I mentioned the budget. No one around here can recall a time since the Budget Act of 1974 when the House of Representatives has not produced a budget.

Everybody at home, certainly in my part of the world in Ohio, when they sit down and figure out, you know, okay, we were sending the kids to school and it's going to cost this much, the car payment is this much, insurance is this much, you have to budget it. And if you don't budget it, you run into trouble. And then the trouble you run into is you either don't know what's going on with your finances or you spend more money than you have. And that's certainly the case with the Federal Government.

But one way that people that were here long before I got here decided that you could, sort of, track that and keep an eye on it was to produce a budget. And it also is a good tool for our constituents because there is a lot of concern about how much money is being spent in this country.

However, Americans tend to be generous people. Americans also recognize the importance of national defense. And if you said to my constituents or any constituents that, ``Look, we have to spend more money than we are bringing in in tax revenues this year, but here is what we are spending it on, because you can look at our budget,'' then sometimes people would say, ``Well, okay, I mean, borrowing money is not a good idea, but if we are going to borrow money, at least we understand that you are going to borrow it for''--for instance, there is a horrible situation going on in the Gulf of Mexico, with the oil literally gushing out of the bottom of the ocean.

And if you have seen the pictures of the wildlife and you recognize that hurricane season is about to hit the gulf and, you know, when that water gets stirred up, the damage and the oil is going to spread much further than it has today, there are a number of people who would say, ``Well, okay, borrowing money is not a great idea. Maybe we would prefer that you go find cuts someplace else to pay for it. But we understand that emergencies happen, and so if you need to spend X millions of dollars to deal with that situation and then hopefully get it repaid from BP or those responsible for the mess that has been created down there, we think that that's okay.''

But without a budget, we not only deprive Members of the Congress from understanding where it is we are going fiscally, we also deprive all the people that are paying the bills, the taxpayers of the United States, from knowing how the government proposes to spend their money in the next fiscal year.

And it's a fiscal year, Mr. Speaker--and I know you know this, but I will indicate it just for the record--that the Federal Government's fiscal year goes October 1st to October the 1st. And so these things need to be in place by October 1st, both budget and the appropriations process, the spending process, or else calamitous things happen. The government shuts down, there is no predictability about how things are going to be spent, and it's a mess. And it's certainly not the preferred way of governing.

And, as a matter of fact, there are a number of statements made by gentlemen who now hold the position of majority leader or chairman of the Budget Committee who, when they were in the minority party and it was the Republicans' job to cobble together a budget and get it passed, which we always did, they indicated in words to the effect that the inability or the failure to create a budget is a failure to govern.

And, you know, words are funny things, just like when you say we should work 5 days a week and we wind up working 3 days a week, but the reason that you said we should work 5 days a week is to say that other people are bad, that can come back and bite you in the nose.

And, similarly, when you make statements like, you know, ``The failure to produce a budget is a failure to govern,'' when you are in the criticism business rather than the governing business, and then all of a sudden the voters put you in charge, and they say, ``Well, we are not even going to try to do a budget,'' it gets you into trouble.

You know, one of the dissatisfactions, one of the many dissatisfactions--and you are seeing it in election after election across the country--is that people think that the Federal Government has stopped listening to them and their representatives have stopped listening to them. And I happen to think one of the biggest contributors to that is this venomous partisanship that goes back and forth.

And, you know, you have to recognize that, when you are in the minority and you are making a statement that the failure to produce a budget is a failure to govern, well, sometimes, you know, the dog catches the car. And you then are put in a position where it's your job to craft the budget. And so, what are we to think if you don't produce a budget? I think you are to think that it's a failure to govern.

And, rather than saying that, it would be my preferred path that we would work together, Republicans and Democrats. Just because a Democrat has an idea, I don't dismiss it as a bad idea because it came from a Democrat. And my Republican colleagues, a lot of them are very bright people and they have very good ideas that, if they were incorporated into some of the things that the majority was up to, perhaps we could have legislation.

And that's always been, you know, how I have tried to conduct myself in the 16 years I have been here. And the proof is sort of in the pudding. And the National Journal, one of the publications here on Capitol Hill, sort of looks at how Members of Congress vote. And there was an article, about a month and a half ago, that talked about who voted either for or against the clearly identified initiatives of President Obama the most.

And so, not untypically, the numbers were pretty high on the Republican side in opposing some of the things that President Obama is putting forward; and again, not surprisingly because the President is a Democrat, the members of the Democratic Party voted for his proposals in pretty large amounts. But I was surprised--and I think I'm probably lucky I didn't get a primary from a tea party person because that analysis showed that on 65 percent of the occasions where President Obama identified what his goal or priority was, I supported President Obama. That's a pretty high number. It wasn't the highest among Republicans, I think it was fifth or sixth, but that's what I'm talking about.

The way that things work and the way you govern is when you take the best ideas of a lot of bright people here, a lot of good-intentioned people here, and craft something that maybe you don't get everything you want--the only two people that I ever knew or do know that were right 100 percent of the time were my mother and my wife. And I know that because they both told me they were right 100 percent of the time.

So, again, you have to say to yourself, what are we doing? Why are we spending an hour times 337 honoring football teams and lacrosse teams and swimming teams and recognizing the--well, we did modular housing. Let's see, what else did we do? We honored a historic community and expressed condolences to the Chatham County Courthouse. Again, I don't know what horrible event befell the Chatham County Courthouse, but we took an hour here doing that rather than doing other things.

And so what is it that we haven't accomplished, and what is it that the American people, I think, would appreciate if we got around to it? The first I indicated--and I apologize, Mr. Speaker, my writing is bad and it looks like chicken scratch--but the first is a budget, and I think I've talked enough

about the fact that we haven't produced a budget.

Another thing, 12 years I spent on the Transportation Committee around here, and every 6 years we have reauthorized something known as the Surface Transportation bill. It was called ICE-TEA in 1991, it was called TEA-21 in 1997, it was called SAFETEA-LU in 2005, and it expired last September. Now, that legislation is what funnels literally billions of dollars to the States so that they can build roads and bridges and make safety improvements and build bike lanes and a whole host of other things.

But aside from being a bill that keeps our country competitive-- because it really started, even though we have a 6-year bill now, it started in 1956, I believe, with Dwight Eisenhower when he decided we should have a dedicated gasoline tax and built the national highway system. And if you think about the national highway system and what it has meant to this country in terms of commerce, it's unbelievable. Even if you go beyond commerce, you have to say to yourself, wait a minute, it's also a big item in national defense.

So you would think that that would be something we would like to take care of. As a matter of fact, the rule of thumb on the Transportation Committee was that for every $1 billion that was expended in that legislation, it created 47,500 jobs. Republicans now are asking where is the budget, but before that we were asking where are the jobs.

The job figures, Mr. Speaker, you know, came out last week. There was an uptick in employment, but included in that uptick in employment was the fact that the government has hired 400,000 people to conduct the census. Now, anybody who is interested can go back and see how many people were hired to conduct the census in 2000. It's an important job. But 400,000 people were hired to conduct the census, counting all the people in the United States of America.

When you take out the 400,000 government jobs that were created temporarily--and again, if you're talking about jobs, a job to me is something where you can earn a wage, have health care security, have retirement, potentially, and the ability through that wage to support yourself and your family on a long-term basis. Very, very few people would consider it to be just a sweetheart job, to get a job counting people in the United States and then being done and not being employed when you're done with that.

So if you look at the jobless figures and you take out the 400,000 people that have been added to conduct the census, job unemployment in this country is stagnant. It's hovering between 9 and 10 percent. We've been joined by my good friend, Mr. McCotter of Michigan. Michigan has been hard hit because of the auto industry. The gentleman from Michigan can tell us in a minute what that unemployment is.

But, again, by recognizing National Teachers Day and taking an hour of time to do that, we haven't gotten to the transportation bill. It's about a year overdue; it will be soon. We keep kicking the can down the road, but it's not being done. So if your question is, where are the jobs? How can the government assist? The government doesn't create jobs--unless you're a census worker. But how can we assist, sort of give the economy a boost? And under this administration we've had stimulus 1, we've had stimulus 2, we've had bailout 1, 2 and 3, son of bailout, son-in-law of bailout; and we still hover around 9 or 10 percent unemployment across the country.

What is significant about the transportation bill is that the people--although the 47,500 jobs that are created for each billion of spending are on a wide array of things--the people that cook food and serve it to highway workers in restaurants, the people in the uniform business that produce or clean uniforms for the people out building roads and bridges, the people that make the orange cones and the reflective vests--the bulk of the highway work is done by laborers and operating engineers and designed by civil engineers.

Well, their unemployment rate, the unemployment rate in the trades isn't 9 or 10 percent. Depending upon what trade you're talking about, the unemployment rate is between 27 and 40 percent. So these people who have had jobs--we're not talking about people that don't want to work or anything else--these people who have had jobs, because of the shrinking of the economy and because of Congress' failure to act on a transportation bill--which was due last September, it's not like it was last week and we just sort of skipped over it and didn't quite get there from here--it's almost a year late.

And there are really no prospects, despite the really good intentions of a guy named Jim Oberstar, who is the chairman, a Democrat from Minnesota, of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. If it was up to him, we would have had a transportation bill on time, but it's not up to him. The leadership of the House has indicated that we're just not going to do a transportation bill between now and certainly the election. And the President's Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, has indicated that the administration has decided that they want to go on an 18-month listening tour to listen to ideas about transportation and has no intention of even addressing the highway bill until March of next year.

And so at that point it's going to be 1\1/2\ years late before the bill is even hobbled together. And bills just don't all of a sudden spring up like crocuses here in the spring. There have to be some hearings and adjustments and amendments, and then it's brought to the floor for floor activity.

So when we are spending an hour times 337 doing things like, oh, I don't know, in support of National Safe Digging Week, we spent an hour on that--nobody voted against it, but in order to make it look like we were here 5 days a week, to make it look like we were doing something, we spent an hour both discussing and voting on National Safe Digging Week. Now, I don't know exactly what National Safe Digging Week is, but I think it's when you go out in your back yard and you want to put in a garden, you should call the utilities first and not stick the spade in the ground or else you're going to cut your neighbor's gas line. So I think that's National Safe Digging Week.

But regardless, again, I'm not aware of any big push by anybody that would condemn National Safe Digging Week, and I certainly have never seen a resolution around here that wanted to promote National Unsafe Digging Week. But we took an hour, we took an hour, rather than producing a budget so that we could, in an orderly fashion, figure out where we are in this country financially.

Instead of just borrowing trillions and trillions of dollars that we don't have, we could have been doing a transportation bill for a sector that, unlike the 9 or 10 percent--which is really high all by itself, and if you sort of flashback to February of 2009, the President's observation was we have to do this $800 billion of stimulus spending because if we don't, unemployment is going to go above eight percent. Well, the economy is an unpredictable thing, and I certainly don't fault the President for--or his advisers actually, I don't think the President actually sat down and crunched the $800 billion--but you certainly can't fault him and his advisers for thinking that was the case.

But the fact of the matter is it hasn't been the case, and unemployment has risen, cresting double digits; and now it's not getting better unless we spend more money hiring people--400,000 people--to count people in the census.

Maybe the gentleman from Michigan could just share with us briefly what the economic picture is and what's of concern to his constituents in the State of Michigan. I yield to the gentleman.

I thank the gentleman for those observations. Again, it's tough for you to see, so I just want to elevate this chart for a minute. But two of my favorites that we've spent an hour on is H. Res. 1294, expressing support for the designation of National Explosive Ordnance Disposal Day.

Now, I guess that means, you know, if you live next-door to a Korean War vet and if he smuggled home a couple of grenades and he has them in your basement that we are honoring the getting rid of those without blowing people up. Again, at a time when we haven't done a budget and we haven't done a transportation bill, the fact that we would spend an hour of time here coming up with honoring people who dispose of unsafe ordnances is a strange thing.

We've been joined now by my great friend from Ohio, Mr. Tiberi, of Columbus, Ohio.

You know, a lot of people point to the collapse of the subprime market and to the fact that we weren't on the ball when it came to the residential housing market. You can go back and forth. You can blame the Republicans, you can blame the Democrats, but the blame game really doesn't matter much.

The gentleman talked about a second recession. We do know that the mortgage market for a commercial property is about to explode. We have seen it. We see it coming. We know it's coming. Basically, what has occurred is because of the difficulties in the economy. Just as an example, if you were in the real estate business and if you purchased a building, an office building, and if it were fully rented--everybody pays you rent--but you bought it for $1 million and today it's not worth $1 million, the banks, which we've bailed out again and again and again, are now in the process of saying to the people who own those buildings, Well, wait a minute. We can't finance that for $1 million anymore because it's only worth $600,000. We know that that is coming. We know it.

Again, we are passing bills about the safe, you know, disposal--not even the safe disposal of hand grenades. We're just honoring people for having a week when they dispose of hand grenades.

You know, with the last one down here, H. Res. 1301, we supported the goals and ideals of National Train Day. That's about the fifth time that I can recall since the Democrats became the majority that we have recognized National Train Day. I happen to like trains. I support trains and so forth and so on. Yet how come we spent an hour of time and 337 hours of time having bills and having votes when everybody votes for them rather than dealing with this commercial mortgage crisis? I mean, where is the bill that does that?

What you will get instead is inaction. We'll honor, you know, a couple more universities for winning a swim meet or a curling tournament, and we'll not deal with the commercial mortgage crisis. Then we're going to start the blame game all over again. We're going to say, Well, it happened on your watch. It's George Bush's fault. It's Barack Obama's fault. How about, rather than honoring trains, we take an hour of our valuable time here and we do something about a crisis that we know is coming?

I yield to my friend from Ohio for his thoughts.

I thank the gentleman for that.

I just want to give credit to somebody who is in the Chamber with us. He can't speak because he happens to be the Speaker pro tem, the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Minnick), and he is presiding over the House for this Special Order.

When you talk about commercial real estate, he has got a plan. I mean, he has put together some very bright people to help avert what he sees and what everybody in this Chamber should see, if they don't see, which is that we are headed for this big fall off the cliff in commercial real estate, which will make the housing market, the residential housing crisis, really--and you're talking about millions and millions of dollars per building.

Go ahead.

I'd be happy to.

I thank the gentleman.

Here are three quick examples of things that we haven't done that could, one, make sure we don't spend more than we are supposed to and, two, that could deal with the sector of the economy workforce that is not facing 10 percent or 13 percent or 15 percent unemployment but that is facing, rather, 27 percent to 40 percent unemployment. We're not looking forward, as the current resident of the Chair, Mr. Minnick, is, to averting another meltdown for which we will again engage in a lot of finger pointing: It's this person's fault or it's that person's fault.

The gentleman from Ohio, I know, serves on the Ways and Means Committee, and the other side of this is not just what haven't we done in terms of action, but there are a number of things that are set to expire that have to do with job creation, and I'll ask the gentleman to address some of those in just a second.

Again, referring to the list, rather than dealing with these issues or with the issues that we are going to talk about in a minute, we spent an hour here in the House of Representatives expressing the support of the week of April 18 through April 23 as National Assistant Principals Week.

Now, you know, there are a lot of things that honor teachers, school counselors, so forth and so on. I don't know what my friend's experiences were, but it was the assistant principal you would see when you went to get spanked, when I was growing up, because you were misbehaving. So I'm trying to figure out, you know, of all of the people we honor--and I suppose I voted for it as did everybody when the roll was called; but you know, assistant principals, I'm not so sure, are up there with everybody else.

I'll yield to the gentleman from Ohio to talk a little bit about what are affectionately called the ``Bush tax cuts.'' What we're talking about is the tax legislation that was enacted in 2001 and 2003. They are characterized by our friends on the other side of the aisle as tax breaks for filthy rich people, but maybe you could go through a few of them, and we could identify them, because I think they go from cradle to grave.

What is about to expire? People are going to pay higher rates on what?

Well, to the gentleman's point, you mentioned a variety of tax provisions that are set to expire. I want to focus on two--interest and dividends.

So any senior citizen who is living on a fixed income, who receives his or her income as a result of investments that he or she makes and who receives interest income if he or she is invested in

the stock market or in some other fund and he or she gets dividends as a result of that, currently, under the current law, what is the rate that that senior pays on his or her interest and dividends?

Okay. Now, what's going to happen when the majority party indicates that it is not going to take any action?

Again, as they're not on the budget, as they're not on the transportation bill, as they're not on the commercial real estate side, when they fail to take action to extend those, the senior citizens who today are paying 15 percent on the money they earn in interest and on the money that they earn in dividends, what is their tax rate going to be?

Okay. So, you know, some of my favorite discussions here are semantics, so we're going to hear that because people who raise taxes repeatedly usually don't get reelected because people aren't real crazy about that. So we'll hear, We're not raising anybody's taxes. We're just letting this set of tax rates expire. Okay. But, you know, if I've made 100 bucks in interest and today the tax on that is $15 and it's going to go up to at least $20 that then I'll have to pay, I have a tough time, and I would really have a tough time explaining to the commonsense people whom we represent in Michigan and Ohio how that is not a tax increase.

But, with a straight face, there are people who will come down to the well of this House and say, ``We're not raising anybody's taxes. We just let these taxes expire.''

And I see the discussion of taxes has once again gotten the gentleman from Michigan on his feet, and I yield to him.

I thank you.

The Chair tells us we have about a minute and 45 seconds, and I'd just yield to my friend from Ohio for any closing observations that he has.

Well, that's right.

And it's interesting, this special order, we have people from Ohio and Michigan. And at least each November we don't get along very well, but on this issue we're very united. And I thank both of you for participating, Mr. McCotter and Mr. Tiberi.

And, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of our time.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 33 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, June 10, 2010, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to veer off this message. We are supposed to be talking about where's the budget, and I guess I wonder where the budget is.

But I have to tell you, I think as a Republican, I am supposed to love Fox News and hate MSNBC. Now, I am going to tell you I do hate MSNBC, but something just happened on Fox News that compelled me to come to the floor. They have run this diagram, and it really is, I think, blaspheming my good friend, Pat Tiberi from Ohio, and indicating that there are nine Republicans who are supporting a bill that will bail out unions.

Well, that's nonsense, and I don't know who the pinheaded weenie is at Fox News that decided to put that story together, but the true facts of this piece of legislation are as follows. This bill will save the taxpayers by saying to those corporations that have union pension plans, if you find yourselves in a bind, rather than thrusting that upon the taxpayer, it spreads out over 5 years the ability to bring those pension plans up to speed.

That's good government. It's a good bill. It's a good Tiberi bill. And I don't know what they are doing at Fox News, but they should stop smoking it and get back to reporting the facts.

Madam Speaker, it is fitting that today, May 12, we are on the floor to honor our nation's nurses on the 20th anniversary of National Nurses Week. Why is May 12th significant? Because it is the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.

As co-chair of the House Nursing Caucus, I am a proud supporter of H. Res. 1261, which was introduced by my colleague, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson.

More than three million jobs in this country are held by nurses, and they represent the largest single component of the health care profession. Nurses are the rock stars of the medical profession, and often are patients' greatest advocates. They do not get the recognition they deserve.

They work tirelessly, and often are the greatest source of comfort and compassion for the sick. They are American heroes with huge hearts and sensible shoes. Nurses have probably done more to popularize CROCS clogs than any other single profession. Whoever runs CROCS should give the nursing profession a high five for helping make their footwear a staple from coast to coast.

If you know a nurse, or have received kind and professional care from a nurse, take a moment to thank them. Today, which marks the close of National Nurses Week, is a perfect time to do it. Our nation's nurses deserve our praise, thanks and support, and I am proud to be here today to honor them.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I served 14 years on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and was proud of the wastewater treatment plants that we were able to install in my district. But I have to tell you on a busy Friday night, I saw less sewage go through those facilities than I've heard here this evening.

The President invited people down to this big powwow down at Blair House. It reminded me of my favorite movie, ``Braveheart,'' where the king has all the Scottish nobles down and gonna talk peace, and winds up hanging them all in the barn. The takeaway from that meeting, however, was the President said, These are the things that I agree with you Republicans on.

So it really surprises me to hear my friend from California say that the Republicans didn't want to work together.

One of the things the President said he thought was horrendous were the special deals in this bill. I've heard my friends proudly talk about Florida and Nebraska. Unless I am misunderstanding it, Connecticut, still a hundred million dollars for a hospital; Montana miners are treated differently than everybody else; North Dakota frontier counties get an enhanced physician payment; Massachusetts and Vermont get higher Medicaid reimbursement rates; and Nebraska and

Michigan--I thought the health care insurance companies were evil around here--they don't have to pay the tax. And the pharmaceutical companies, I thought they were bad, but if they're in New Jersey, they get a billion dollars.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to take the gentleman from California at his word. I want to work together, and I would like to offer an amendment to this bill.

So I would ask the distinguished chairwoman of the Rules Committee if she would yield to me for the purposes of a unanimous consent request so that I could offer an amendment.

I would ask the gentlelady from New York, would you yield to me for the purposes of a unanimous consent request so I could amend this bill simply by keeping the President's word to remove these special deals.

You can't or you won't? Of course you can.

You will not.

I want to thank the minority leader for giving us the leadership hour on our side this evening. I will be joined by a number of Members. Already joining me on the floor, Mr. McCotter from Michigan and Mr. Tiberi from the great State of Ohio.

Before we begin with our subject matter, when this group gathered a little while ago we, in an attempt to bring some levity, which there is not very much of here to the situation, we used probably in my mind one of the greatest games ever invented, the game of Operation. You go home and they say, Wow, boy, that was a good one. I was particularly proud of the ``You got to be kidney'' in talking about some of the provisions in the health care bill under consideration at the time.

But I got a letter after we did that special order from the lawyers at Hasbro, saying basically I was violating their copyright, and so on forth and so on. Apparently some of those lawyers were absent the day they taught constitutional law, because not only the speech and debate clause in the Constitution, but also the fair use doctrine sort of made that not accurate.

Having said that, I don't want to further inflame the lawyers at this New

York law firm, and so we are not going to talk about this, nor am I going to use this chart this evening.

Mr. Speaker, what we are going to talk about, however, is March Madness. It is now upon us. People all across the country saw the President of the United States, because he is a big basketball fan and he likes to play basketball, pick his brackets. I think that if I read the news reports right, he picked Kansas to win it all. And I think last year, if I remember right, President Obama nailed the winner. He picked it and off he went.

I think a lot of people who had brackets took a bath on Georgetown yesterday, but other than that, most other people's brackets are in shape.

But I thought we would use the theme of March Madness and what has gone on here on Capitol Hill, and sort of talk about some of the match- ups that have happened. We are a little further along than the NCAA tournament, so we start and we are down to the Sweet 16. I thought we would talk about the relationship of what is going on.

Let me turn first to the gentleman from Michigan. Pick a game and let's talk about it.

She is indeed a wily veteran.

Does my colleague from Ohio agree that the Speaker beat the minority leader?

Okay. I would simply add not only did she beat the minority leader, she humiliated the minority leader in that there is not--well, there is one proposal by Republicans in this health care bill we are going to vote on on Sunday. But that is it. Out of 2,700 pages, the most they could do is squeeze in one Republican provision. And that was actually by Senator Grassley of Iowa, who indicated that primary care physicians should get paid a little bit more for taking care of people.

I thank you so much.

So we declare the Speaker of the House the winner of round one. I just want to mention that these regionals are taking place in some interesting locations. They are interesting because of other things that are included in the bill that we will talk about.

Mr. Broun of Georgia, when he was here, talked about the Louisiana purchase and Gator aid. We'll get into that in a minute.

But, Tiberi, pick a game, and let's talk about it.

I appreciate that. I would just say to the gentleman, the reason we don't have all of those venues is we can't make a chart big enough.

For all the sweetheart deals that are included in it. You know, the great thing is each one of them now has sort of a nickname that is becoming a household word in America. So I bet most people, Mr. Speaker, have heard of the Cornhusker kickback, most have heard of the Louisiana purchase. But we're going to attempt to coin some new ones for the new ones because they really are coming up fast and furious.

So a billion dollars is going to the drug companies in New Jersey. So I think we should call that the New Jersey needle exchange. And today there was news--and I think that the senator involved has since asked that it be withdrawn--but all banks in the country are going to be removed from student lending except one in North Dakota. So I think we call that the Bismarck bank job. But we were already done with this by the time the news broke.

I will yield to the gentleman.

That is correct.

Well, and we're going to give that game to the people.

And you know, Mr. Speaker, you may not remember what the Cornhusker kickback was. Well, basically, people who don't have insurance are going to have the ability throughout the many States to apply for insurance through the State Medicaid program. And sort of one of the dirty little secrets of this bill is, how do you reduce costs by including 30 million more people into a program? Of course you don't. It's going to cost more money.

In our State of Ohio, Mr. Tiberi's and mine, the estimate is $656 million to take this uninsured population and cover them. And I would just say that the President indicates that we agree on 80 percent of it. I agree that the uninsured should have access to health coverage, but it comes with a price. And I think what doesn't get acknowledged is the price.

So the Cornhusker kickback involved a senator from Nebraska basically saying that it's going to cost his people in Nebraska more money to take the uninsured and put them in the Medicaid program--like every other State in the Union--but he didn't want his people to pay it. Well, and so at the end of the day, the reason that the people rose up and the reason that the people, I think, prevailed in it, it's not fair. How is that fair that people in Michigan and Ohio and every other State of the Union are going to participate in this plan. I mean, if you like the plan to cover more people but Nebraska isn't going to have to pay a dime? And that is why I think the people prevailed.

And today or Sunday when we vote on whatever we're going to vote on, the Cornhusker kickback has been defeated by the people.

And apparently they're still being made. There was a newspaper article the other day where the Speaker is quoted as saying, The store is now closed. And that meant no more special deals, I think. But that came as a surprise to some of us. One, I didn't know that the store was open, and two, I didn't think I knew there was a store. But apparently there was a store, and it was open, but now the Speaker has closed it. I suppose unless they don't have the votes necessary to pass the bill on Sunday then perhaps they'll reopen for Sunday hours and violate the blue laws of the State and let people shop.

I'm going to take one over here from the Florida venue. I will start at the top.

You have MoveOn.org against the Blue Dogs. MoveOn.org is, of course, the liberal organization funded by George Soros and others that has really become sort of the main grassroots motivator for the liberal left. The Blue Dogs are conservative Democrats--if there is such a thing--primarily from border States with the southern States, and they have been giving the Speaker and her team fits all year long on cap- and-trade--cap-and-tax as we called it--and a variety of other things. So they're tough to bring along.

In this particular matchup, I think the MoveOn.org had like a 7- footer and came in and basically began threatening primary elections against any Blue Dog who wouldn't come to heel and support this bill even though it may not be what the people from their districts want them to do.

So unless either of you have an objection, I'm going to give this game to MoveOn.org.

All right. Mr. McCotter, it's up to you. Pick a game.

Mr. Speaker, you can't see this chart, but I just have ``Rahm'' here, I couldn't fit ``Emanuel'' in the box.

But this refers to the distinguished chief of staff for the President of the United States, Rahm Emanuel, who, of course, was an honorable Member of this House serving a district near Chicago, Illinois, until he was tapped by the President to serve as the chief of staff. And Eric Massa was a Representative--and I say ``was'' because he has resigned-- from the State of New York. And there was a pretty well-publicized dust-up between the two.

And why don't you tell us who won.

Do you agree with that?

Give that to Mr. Emanuel. Mr. Tiberi, you're up. Pick a game.

All right.

Over in the Louisiana area because of the Louisiana purchase.

And again, just in case, Mr. Speaker, you've forgotten what the Louisiana purchase was, like Nebraska--even though it didn't get the same attention as Nebraska--like Nebraska, the Senator from Louisiana didn't want her people to have to pay increased costs that are going to be occasioned by this bill. So I think a number like $300 million is slated to go to Louisiana.

But go ahead. Let us talk about Mr. Waxman, who is, of course, the distinguished chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. And ``taxes'' is pretty self-explanatory.

How old are they now?

What about what's built up in a pension? We all have thrift savings accounts as Federal employees. We take a portion of our pretax dollars, put them in there. And until the last couple of years they were doing okay, but they would build up X amount of interest during the course of the years.

So I hear you're saying we're going to give the game to Waxman?

I think you're right.

I would just add the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Tiberi, has talked about increased cost. And a lot of people are saying it's not going to cost anything; it's going to reduce the deficit. Just today a company that is pretty well known around the world--and certainly known in the President's home State of Illinois--Caterpillar Incorporated, said that the health care legislation being considered by the U.S. House and voted on Sunday will increase the company's health care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone.

In a letter Thursday to the Speaker and the Republican leader, Caterpillar urged lawmakers to vote against the plan because of the substantial cost burdens it would place on its shareholders, employees, and retirees. If they're right, and you're a retiree from Caterpillar, based upon what you were just saying, Mr. Tiberi, it's sort of a double whammy. One is that their health care benefits are going to be

taxed potentially; two, their health care benefits may cost them more in terms of premiums or copays that they receive as a retiree. And three, if they have retired and put their money in the bank and are drawing interest, that interest is now subject to taxation.

And I forgot to ask you. What's the rate of taxation on interest in a bank account that a senior citizen is earning under this proposal?

It's kind of like being in a hole and trying to get out and digging the hole deeper. That is the analogy I would use.

I'm going to pick off an easy one where I don't think we're going to have any disagreements.

Just like over in the House we had the distinguished Speaker and the distinguished minority leader. Same situation over in the Senate. You've got Senate Majority Leader Reid of Nevada and Mitch McConnell, who is the Senate Republican leader from Kentucky. And there was this big health care powwow down at Blair House a few weeks ago.

It was on TV 6 hours. I watched most of it, and I thought it was great. I thought the President did a wonderful job. And the President said, This thing should be bipartisan. There are things we agree on. We should work it out.

Well, the AP, the Associated Press, moved a story, I apologize, I don't have it right here at my fingertips but--here it is. The Associated Press moved a story and basically the story talked about what the President said at that pow-wow and what the Congress, the Democrats in Congress, have given him. It's kind of illuminating. The President said he would give Federal authorities the power to block unreasonable rate increases. I don't know about you guys, but when I go back to my district, I hear from human resources people in every company that no longer are their health care costs going up 5, 6, 7 percent; it's double-digits. And if they're lucky, it's only in the tens and the teens. But in some instances it's more. So I think that some people were sort of excited about the idea that, in fact, there would be some oversight over these increases, but that's missing in the bill.

There were several Republican ideas, and this goes to Senator McConnell, that the President said he wanted to include in the bill. There was also a--one of them was a plan, I remember watching this from Senator Coburn of Oklahoma--to say one of the ways that you root out waste, fraud and abuse is to send patients, people pretending to be patients, and so people that are scamming either the system that is set up in the bill or the Medicaid or the Medicare system, they go to jail. And I think that is entirely appropriate. But none of those were adopted.

And the special deals, we have talked a little bit about Louisiana, Florida and the Cornhuskers, the President said he would eliminate all of the special deals that we have talked about and we are going to continue to talk about.

As we stand here tonight, the only deals that have been eliminated are the Cornhusker kickback, which actually, you know, it hasn't been eliminated in that it is still in the Senate bill. And so maybe the gentleman can talk to us about this strange procedure we are going through, because my understanding is there is going to be two votes, but never a vote on the Senate bill which contains the Cornhusker kickback and some of the other things.

So, Mr. McCotter, you're sort of the parliamentarian around here in waiting. Why don't you talk to us a little bit about the process?

I thank the gentleman. And basically, again, Mr. Speaker, I know you know, but we are being told there is going to be two votes, one on Sunday and then maybe one on Monday. The Sunday vote will be on a rule. It's not even going to be on a bill; it's going to be on a House resolution, which is a rule, that's going to authorize the vote that takes place, we think, on Monday; but included in there is something called the self-executing clause, and so it will self- execute passage of the Senate health care bill, which does, to my point, does include still the Cornhusker kickback and also the issue in Florida.

And we talked about Gator aid, but we never talked about what Gator aid was. And so the Medicare program which, of course, provides health care for millions and millions of seniors, has a program in it called Medicare Advantage. And it's optional. You don't have to sign up for it, but you can if you want to. I have about 14,000 people that live in my district that are in Medicare Advantage, and it has high satisfaction numbers. There are some people who don't like it, and there are some people who criticize it.

So the Senate bill, which was going to be deemed without a vote--and that really caught me by surprise. I got up, I think it was Wednesday, Tuesday or Wednesday morning, and one of the headlines above the fold in the Washington Post, Mrs. Pelosi, of course who is the distinguished Speaker of the House, may seek to pass health care bill without a vote. I said, holy mackerel, I thought I had missed something while I had been asleep, sort of the Rip Van Winkle thing. But, no, that is exactly where they are headed.

But the Florida deal was--again, Mr. Speaker, you know that there are a lot of retired people in Florida because the weather is warm and so forth and so on, and in order to ameliorate a problem that a Senator from Florida had, every State in the Union, all 49 States, plus the District of Columbia, that have people on Medicare Advantage can no longer be on Medicare Advantage. It's wiped out--except the 800,000 Floridians who happen to be on and enjoy Medicare Advantage.

Now, again, just like the Cornhusker kickback where Nebraska and Louisiana don't have to pay, why is it fair that--again even if you love this bill, the underlying policy--why is it fair that in one State if you like Medicare Advantage you get to stay on it and in 49 other States you don't? So currently the way they have designed this is that the House, the Senate bill will be deemed on Sunday under this self- executing rule, and then they have promised a bill with a series of fixes.

Now the big problem with the series of fixes is, when the Senate bill is deemed on Sunday, the President can sign it right away. It becomes the law of the land if he signs it with the Cornhusker kickback, with the Louisiana purchase and with the Gator aid. Now we have heard, and I think to be fair to our friends in the majority, the draft of their fixes bill would remove those two, two out of 12 of the deals that the President said would be gone. But it still has to go over to the other body. It still has to pass. And then through a process known as reconciliation, they have indicated that they don't think that their rules will permit them to pass it as it leaves here, that it's going to be modified again, which means it has to come back here.

At the time, the Democratic Party had a 60-vote majority over in the United States Senate. They couldn't get 60 people on their own team to row in the same direction without giving away these sweetheart deals. I would be nervous if I was voting on Sunday on the promise, like Wimpy from Pop-eye, I will glady pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. I would be nervous. And I don't think it is a done deal. We are going to give that game to Harry Reid.

I agree wholeheartedly with the gentleman. It makes it a tricky business.

Because I had mentioned the President of the United States a couple of times, you will note that I don't have President Obama in the Sweet 16, because I will tell you as I went through this Associated Press story and I have watched his negotiations on this bill, when he says we agree on 80 percent of it and we should work this out in a bipartisan way, I believe him. I really believe that he would not have written this bill the way that it is currently being written. And I don't think he would say that the process has been okay.

As a matter of fact, the aforementioned AP story comes down to--it reports that it came down to President Obama making promises that Congress didn't keep. That I think is the appropriate distinction here. I don't think that when the President made the promises to include these four or five Republican ideas he was not telling the truth. I think he was serious. I think he wanted them in the bill. But when the bill got written, they are not in here.

I would say it's a pretty well known axiom in sports, at least in football, the home team relies on the 12th man. And in this particular instance, the issue was whether or not taxpayer funds would be utilized in the purchasing of these sort of cooperative health care things that people could sign up for and that those plans could provide abortion services. And so Mr. Stupak is a very devout, pro-life Representative, and obviously NARAL is not. They are on the side of pro-choice we call it. And so when it came--when the House bill--and the reason we are not doing the House bill is when the House bill came up a little while ago, Mr. Stupak and 12, which would be the 12th man, Members of the Democratic Party said they are not going to vote for this unless you fix it.

And they gave an amendment vote, and we had a vote over here in the House, and that satisfied Mr. Stupak for the moment, defeating NARAL. In my opinion, I agree with you, we will go to Mr. Tiberi in a minute, but now they find themselves in the same position, why there is so much angst here on Capitol Hill over the last few days is because they have to get to this magic number of 216, and at least at the moment some of these people who thought that there were not going to be taxpayer funds used to purchase insurance to provide abortion believe that it does.

And so, Tiberi, we are going to give this game to Stupak if that's all right with you.

We're almost down to the Great Eight.

I appreciate the gentleman's observation.

Mr. McCotter, before I go to you for your comments, we agreed that PhRMA takes out Medicare in this particular round one?

Well, I want to just elaborate for a minute on the gentleman's point about the insurance companies, because in all of the remarks--and the President was recently in Strongsville, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland, giving what was described as his closing argument to get it done. Again, the health care insurance companies are singled out for being particularly greedy and so forth and so on. So, like the pharmaceutical companies, you wouldn't think that there would be any special provisions for medical insurance companies in the bill. But if you said that, you would be wrong, because, again, Nebraska rears its ugly head, but also the State of Michigan.

In Michigan and Nebraska--and, Mr. Speaker, to those who may follow along at home or on the Internet, if you go to section 10905 of the Senate bill, which we will deem on Sunday, it levees an annual new health fee, the taxes we are talking about, on all health care insurers. And, again, that additional tax on everybody's health care coverage--which, again, something that mystifies some of us on this side is: If you recognize we have a problem with preexisting conditions, if you recognize we have a problem with people that we need to get coverage so that they get adequate care, why do we have to horse around with the other 85 percent of the people in the country who are satisfied with what they have?

But, in order to raise money for this program, a new tax is put on health insurance companies; however, the bill provides an exemption to a narrow group of companies. This section will specifically exempt Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Nebraska and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan.

Now, I know that the gentleman from Michigan, probably his constituents may see some benefits from that, but I doubt you are jumping for joy over that. Again, like all of these special deals, that is not fair. I mean, how can it be fair in a competitive marketplace if you are buying insurance from a health care insurance company and one company has to pay a tax and two companies--well, all companies have to pay a new tax except for two?

I thank the gentleman.

And I want to go back to Mr. Tiberi's observation, because the published reports that I saw about PhRMA were

not only reimportation of drugs from Canada, that they would be protected from that--and that actually gets into our next matchup, Waxman versus PhRMA, because the reported deal in the newspapers was that the pharmaceutical companies would pony up $8 billion over the next 10 years, and in return for that--because, again, money needs to be raised. People are arguing about the numbers and what it does to the budget, but I think almost every American understands it is counterintuitive that you can insure more people and it is going to cost less.

And I want to move to this Waxman-PhRMA matchup because, as we have indicated, the distinguished chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee is a crafty veteran, not tall in terms of height, but he has been around the game a long time and he knows the way the game is played.

PhRMA, with a lot of muscle, came into this thing, and they thought that the deal that they made was, if they ponied up $8 billion, they would be held harmless, not only from reimporting drugs from Canada-- which I really don't understand. Everything that I have read says that if you could reimport drugs from Canada, you could cut the cost about 28 percent. Even if it is only 20 percent, who cares. But the argument that has been made by both Republican and Democratic administrations is that it is not safe. We can't trust it if it is coming back from Canada.

Now, I would argue that if that were true--my district has one of the longest areas on Lake Erie up in Ohio. If that was true, I would go home to my district and find a lot of dead Canadians floating up on the beaches, and that is just not happening.

The second piece of that is that the deal as reported was that not only would they not get any reimportation in the legislation, but they would not have to be subject--because the government is now under this program, or the proposed program, and become a big customer for drugs, that there would be no provision in the bill that the government could compete for best price.

And I can remember when we did Medicare part D--I think both gentlemen were here for that--and speech after speech from our friends over here, and I happen to agree with them, that it is nuts. Everybody can go in and negotiate for best price except us? But the deal was, between PhRMA and the White House, was: No. No negotiation for the price.

But a funny thing happened, I think, to PhRMA on the way to the deal. They ran into the wily veteran from California and he said, Oh, no, you don't. So I have to give this to Waxman, unless anybody has a problem with it.

All right. We are actually past it, now almost into the quarter finals. We have got Pelosi versus Stupak, MoveOn.org versus Rahm, and the People versus Senator Reid.

We have a few more, but we need to pick up this one, this one, and that one.

I think the gentleman is right, but I think the cat is out of the bag on this. And I would say that perhaps--well, sadly, they are both on the eastern time zone. But I think that, for the purposes of this discussion, we can say that this bracket is on the East Coast and these games will start later.

It is like ``The Sting'' with Paul Newman and Robert Redford where they pretaped the race. We don't intend to do that.

Again, Mr. Speaker, we'd encourage people watching at home to not wager on the brackets or any sporting event.

So we're going to give this one to Senator Reid. Mr. Tiberi, do you want to talk about MoveOn.org?

I think we have about 15 minutes.

Go ahead.

We're going to have to come back to that in just a second. There was a label around here someplace, and I can't find it.

Well, I was going to say about this matchup, there's really not a big difference between the two. You could declare this matchup a tie. But I think that, again, that perhaps it goes to the President's Chief of Staff. He's a pretty powerful guy. Are we all right with that?

I think that's right. I thank the gentleman. So while I look for my Rahm sticker to put up here, why don't you fellows go back to the East Coast. We have two games up. The People versus Senator Reid.

Why don't we do that?

Not yet.

That really is one of my favorite things. We've had a lot of artificial deadlines. We had to have the stimulus bill by President's Day. I don't know whether George Washington or Abraham Lincoln were calling for it. We had to have cap-and-trade by the Fourth of July. I couldn't tell you why. And we were told we had to have the Senate bill by Christmas. So you had sort of this strange sight of these octogenarians sleeping on cots over on the other side of the Capitol. More show than play. But we're going to give this to Senator Reid.

And a height advantage.

I think I agree with that. There are a couple of rumors out of the trainers' room that Mr. Stupak will in fact need medical attention for some twisted arms and legs as a result of this. But while we were talking, I found the Rahm Emanuel sticker, so we're going to slap that up there.

Mr. Tiberi, any disagreement here about the Speaker versus Mr. Stupak?

We're down to two games to come to the semifinals. Let's go over to Senator Reid and Chairman Waxman. What do you think?

Mr. TIBERI: Well, while the cagey veteran from California put up a pretty good game, I think it's hard to top the Christmas Eve dealings of Senator Reid and the Senate bill, which ultimately, if it's deemed in the House, will be the one that actually becomes law over everything else. So I think you've got to give it to Senator Reid over Waxman.

Sure.

McCotter.

That's a good point. I think that that's a clear victory for the Senator from Nevada. So that brings us over to this side. I'm still trying to peel the back off of the Pelosi sticker. But we do have the last quarter-final games between the President's Chief of Staff, Mr. Emanuel, and, again, the cagey veteran from California, the Speaker of the House, Mrs. Pelosi.

Guys?

McCotter.

I have heard he does in fact have a salty tongue. I think that's right. We'll give that to the Speaker. So we're down to the last quarter-final. It's Waxman versus Reid. Did we solve that?

So here we are as we come down to championship day. And the championship will be determined on Sunday here in the House of Representatives. It appears that the contest is going to be not with any Republican leader, not with the People, not with the conservative Democrats, not with Mr. Stupak and the people that believe in the pro- life movement. It's going to be between the two Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate, Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi.

Mr. Speaker, how much time have we got?

All right. Here we go. Then in this last 4 minutes I want to yield to each of my friends. And we can't yield specific blocks of time, but if you could each take about 2 minutes to give us your final thoughts and perhaps give us a prediction on the championship.

McCotter, you're first.

I thank the gentleman. I think I agree with it. This is going to be a barn-burner. This is one where you want to be on the edge of your seats because this thing, I expect, is going to go back and forth; first half, second half.

I thank both gentlemen for joining me this evening.

Mr. Speaker, where are we?

Two sentences. Tune in Sunday. Thanks.

Madam Speaker, yesterday the President of the United States was in beautiful Strongsville, Ohio, and the biggest applause line he got was when he said, We need courage. We need courage to have an up-or-down vote on the health care bill.

Now, I'm not a big fan of the health care bill, but I thought, My, that's pretty brave. And I looked up ``courage'': mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, withstand danger, fear, or difficulty. So good for the President; he's standing up for his principles.

Well, imagine my surprise when I padded out in my jammies this morning and got The Washington Post, and the headline on the top of the fold is ``Pelosi may try to pass health bill without vote.'' And I said, No, she didn't. But, I thought, perhaps sometimes newspapers are misleading and the headline might not describe the story. But no, sadly, this is the story.

So it's not courage that we're going to have here. So I went a little further in the dictionary. ``Cowardly,'' that fits. ``Craven,'' that fits. You go a little into the Ds; ``deceptive,'' that's appropriate. Go a little bit further, ``gutless,'' into the Gs. Right. ``Spineless,'' under the Ss. And you can go all the way to the Ys, ``yellow-bellied.''

Madam Speaker, before I begin my 5 minutes, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

I didn't want to interrupt the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas, but is it proper in debate to utter words that Senator Bunning does not care about the unemployed? Is that an appropriate observation?

Well, excuse me. It is not a hypothetical. The gentlewoman said it, so it is not a hypothetical. She said it 2 minutes ago.

Are you saying that I am asking you a hypothetical?

Madam Speaker, I think regular order has prevailed in the House. The regular order is that we don't follow the rules and that we issue gag rules. This is another gag rule. It is a closed rule, and we are going to talk about, not only the bad underlying bill, but the bad rule. This isn't a jobs bill.

I have great admiration for the gentlewoman from California, the manager on the majority side of this rule, but my admiration has grown today because she has been able during this debate to call this a ``jobs bill'' with a straight face. She has not giggled once. But she should have. This isn't a jobs bill. This is a no jobs bill. This is a faux jobs bill. This is a snow jobs bill.

Mr. Doggett, with whom I rarely agree, I think was right on the money. The centerpiece of this bill is $13 billion for a tax credit-- $13 billion out of $15 billion. The way this things works is, if you're a small business person in this country, struggling, and if you hire somebody at $30,000 a year, do you know what? You don't have to pay the payroll taxes, 6.2 percent payroll taxes, which is about $1,500.

I had three chambers back in Ohio--chambers of commerce, small business people, Republicans, Democrats, Independents. I said, You know what? Here's the deal. How many of you are going to hire anybody? Nobody. Nobody raised their hands. This is not going to create one job, and it's the centerpiece of the bill.

So, Madam Speaker, I will be asking Members to defeat the previous question so I may amend the rule. If the previous question is defeated, I would propose to amend the rule to make in order an amendment to modify the proposed further House amendment, which would eliminate the $13 billion in this stupid tax provision and would transfer it to infrastructure spending and, further, that that infrastructure spending be distributed pursuant to the House-passed formula and not the Senate- passed formula.

I want to get now to the underlying policy on the infrastructure side. I spent 14 years on the infrastructure committee--love the infrastructure committee, love Chairman Oberstar--but I can't figure out why people would vote for this thing based on the infrastructure spending. I understand, if you're from California, you might like this bill because, under this bill, California gets $277 million and, under the House bill, only $85 million. Illinois, the President's home State, I understand why he might like it--$151 million under this bill and $15 million under the House bill. Oregon, I don't know why a person from Oregon would vote for this bill: $40 million under this bill and $11 million under the--well, actually, you should vote for this bill, people from Oregon. You'll do better.

Texas. Really, I saw Ms. Jackson Lee, who apparently can say that Senator Bunning doesn't care about unemployed people in this country. I don't know why anybody from Texas would vote for this bill, Mr. Sessions. Under this bill, you will get $1 million and change. Under Mr. Oberstar's proposal, Texas would have gotten $78 million.

Now, why is that fair? Why is that fair that 22 States get zero? Why is it fair that you have winners and losers? Why is it fair that California gets 30 percent of the money under this bill? Well, it's not, and you know it's not.

Finally, to the process. You know, I was tipping my hat to the Democratic majority a little earlier today because the original plan was just to bring the Senate amendment to the House bill over here, which of course, would have cut off the minority's ability to offer an amendment and a motion to recommit--but no, they didn't do that. I thought that was pretty crafty. What they did do is amend it with these 15 pages that were available 3 hours ago for our consideration. I'll give the gentlewoman from California the nod that, yes, these ideas have been talked about for a long time. Nobody had seen the 15 pages before 9:30 this morning. So they amended it. They had a Rules Committee hearing. What did they not permit under this rule? A motion to recommit.

I can't believe it. You should be ashamed. Excuse me, Madam Speaker. They should be ashamed. This is a fraud. This is an anti-democratic rule.

What are you afraid of? You have 256 votes. Let us offer my motion to recommit that transfers this stupid $13 billion to infrastructure spending that will put people to work in a sector of the economy that has 30 percent unemployment. It will distribute it according to the House proposal, not the Senate proposal so that California, Oregon, and Illinois don't walk out of this place with 58 percent of the money. It's not fair.

Madam Speaker, I have spoken many times on this floor about my great admiration for the chairman of the full Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Mr. Oberstar, and he knows that this bill isn't fair. He knows that this bill isn't fair, because he produced a chart last week that has 50 States, plus the District of Columbia, so it is 51, and 22 States get nothing under this bill and four States walk away with 58 percent.

Not surprisingly, I heard the Speaker likes the bill. California gets 30 percent of the highway funding under this bill. Any Member who is interested is more than free to come peruse this at their leisure.

Now, I give Chairman Oberstar great credit, because he wasn't happy with this, I believe last week, and he fought with his leadership, and he has produced today a letter from Senator Reid saying he is going to fix it sometime in the future.

Now, two things: That is the second big lie, the check is in the mail. The other thing is I hope the majority understands that a letter from Senator Reid just didn't fill us on this side of the aisle with warmth and fuzzy feelings. If you want to fix the problem, fix the problem. And the problem is not fixed.

This is not a jobs bill. I also admire the Speaker of the House, but I admire her more today because she did not break into laughter when calling this a jobs bill. This is no jobs bill. This is a faux jobs bill. This is a snow jobs bill. And I look forward to the unemployment statistics tomorrow, because I believe that we are going to look at about 100,000 Americans will have lost their jobs in the last month, despite all these great successes.

Continuing with my admiration for Chairman Oberstar, my favorite part of the speech that he gives on the stimulus package is all of those jobs which he created through the infrastructure spending in the stimulus are 8 percent of the funding. So that means, I have to figure out the math, Mr. Oberstar, but that means in an $800 billion bill, half the jobs were created by 8 percent of the funding, and that is thanks to you and the work that you and your colleagues do on the committee. So I guess the other half were created by about $750 billion. That is a strange, strange, strange investment.

I would be happy to yield.

Oh, my pleasure, and my appreciation of you grows every day. But I will tell you what; if you can crack the code of the Senate, Republican or Democrat, then you deserve much more money than you are making as the chairman of the full committee, because they are a strange bunch. It doesn't matter who is in charge; they don't seem to do anything.

Now, I want to get to the process now, because the President down at this health care summit down at Blair House said nobody cares about process.

But I have got to tell you, I have never seen this. This is my 16th year in the United States Congress. When Mr. Etheridge made his motion, it says, ``Mr. Etheridge moves that the House concur in the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment with an amendment.''

I appreciate it.

I said, boy, that is really a procedural mouthful. And you know what it means? It is a procedural way to screw the minority, the Republican Party in this House. Not only can't we amend your bill, not only did we get it at 9:30 this morning, we can't offer a motion to recommit. You know what the majority leader, Mr. Hoyer, would be saying if we pulled that on him when we take the majority back next year? He would be screaming bloody murder, and he would be right.

Madam Speaker, as a result of that, I would like to offer an amendment to this bill.

Then I will ask the gentleman from North Carolina to yield to me to offer an amendment to the bill. And so that the gentleman doesn't think that I am sandbagging him, let me tell you what it is going to be.

I would move to amend this bill to transfer the $13 billion in this sham tax credit, that is not going to create one job and is really the dumbest idea I ever heard, to infrastructure spending.

I would further have it in that amendment that the infrastructure spending, now at $14 billion, be distributed pursuant to the House proposal that Mr. Oberstar has proposed, which means every State in the Union benefits, not just California, not just States that are walking away with a bunch of money.

Will the gentleman from North Carolina yield to me for the purpose of offering an amendment?

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. Etheridge, we are going to give it another shot, because we are not going to be able to hide behind ``the rule doesn't offer it.'' I said that. The rule doesn't provide for an amendment. The rule doesn't even provide for a motion to recommit, the only tool in the minority's toolbox.

Mr. Etheridge, I ask unanimous consent--well, first of all, I guess you need to yield to me for a unanimous consent request. Would you yield to me for a unanimous consent request?

Do I have to ask him to yield to me, or do I yield to him to yield to me?

Mr. Etheridge, I am asking you to yield to me so I can make a unanimous consent request that you can deny.

No, I am asking you, sir, to yield to me.

Well, that is nonsense, first of all, because the Speaker has just indicated that if you would yield to me, I could make my unanimous consent request.

Well, I am going to tell you what, Mr. Etheridge. If you would yield to me, which apparently you can under the rules but don't want to because you think the rule says so, which it clearly doesn't, here is the deal. I want to make a unanimous consent request that the $13 billion in this worthless tax credit be transferred to infrastructure spending; further, that that additional $13 billion be distributed pursuant to the House plan, as opposed to the Senate plan, the Senate plan rewarding only four States with 58 percent of money, 22 States getting zero.

Now, Mr. Etheridge, I am asking you to yield to me for that purpose.

I am asking you to yield to me for the aforementioned unanimous consent request.

So that is a no. Is that a no? I still have the time, Mr. Etheridge. Is that a no?

Do you know what that is? That is a soup sandwich answer, because the Speaker has just said you could do it.

Will the gentleman yield?

I promise not to try to amend the bill or anything else. It's just sad that the distinguished chairman of the Surface Transportation Committee wouldn't yield to me, but it doesn't surprise me. He likes this bill. Oregon gets $40 million under the bill, of the $1 billion, and only $11 million under Mr. Oberstar's proposal.

Are you going to give me a 7 percent thing or are you going to say that's not true? I'll yield to you if you don't think it's true.

That's what I'm talking about.

Well, here's the skinny: That depends upon Harry Reid's putting a letter in the mail, sending it over to the chairman and the Speaker, and having another bill. Now, no disrespect to your majority, but you haven't done such a great job in passing bills since you guys took over 4 years ago. So waiting for another bill to come-- and, quite frankly, trying not to be partisan about this, but this mess was created by George Bush and it is perpetuated by President Obama because his Transportation Secretary says they don't want to deal with the 6-year bill until March of 2011. Thirty percent of the construction trade in this country is out of work. Why wouldn't you do this?

To my distinguished friend from Oregon, all I was asking was for his State to do better. Transfer the $13 billion from this worthless tax credit and put it into infrastructure. Put these guys to work. Actually build something. Again, going back to Mr. Oberstar's wonderful speech that he always gives: a million jobs with only 8 percent of that $800 billion. Wouldn't it be great if we could give Jim Oberstar $14 billion to create jobs for America rather than coming up with this goofy tax credit that says if you hire somebody for $30,000, we're going to waive the payroll tax for November and December. Guess what? You can save $1,500 if you just give somebody a $30,000 job. It's nuts. This bill is wrong. That's what I was talking about.

Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize one of my constituents, Dr. David L. Bronson, chairman of the Medicine Institute of the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Bronson recently was elected as the 2010 Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Medical Group Association, AMGA, located in Alexandria, VA. The group represents more than 360 medical groups, and more than 102,000 doctors nationwide are AMGA members. Dr. Bronson is an ideal fit for this position. As chair of the clinic's Medicine Institute, where he is also professor of Medicine and Chief of Clinical Integration, Dr. Bronson is responsible for leading the health system's efforts to improve the value of health care.

Dr. Bronson has been with Cleveland Clinic since 1992 and was chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine for four years. From 1995 until 2008 he developed and led an expansion of the clinic throughout the NE Ohio area and beyond, adding 350 new physicians at 17 sites including operations in Canada. Dr. Bronson has also served as a member of the Cleveland Clinic Board of Governors and Board of Trustees, and is currently chair of the Board of Directors of the Cleveland Clinic Community Physician Partnership.

Dr. Bronson received his undergraduate degree from the University of Maine, and his M.D. degree from the University of Vermont, and he completed a residency in internal medicine there and at the University of Wisconsin. Prior to joining Cleveland Clinic, he was vice chair of medicine at the University of Vermont.

He has been a principal or co-principal in several federal and foundation-funded research efforts, and has published and presented papers in a variety of fields. Dr. Bronson now serves on the Leadership Team and chairs the Clinical Advisory Committee of Better Health Greater Cleveland, a collaborative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to improve the health of people with chronic disease.

Dr. Bronson is well prepared to lead his colleagues and guide AMGA and its members toward improving the delivery of health care in the years ahead.

Again, I want to congratulate Dr. Bronson and recognize his accomplishments.

Madam Speaker, I rise to congratulate the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), on its 20th anniversary. TTD is a leading advocacy organization for transportation workers and for a strong investment in our nation's infrastructure.

Throughout its 20-year history, TTD has consistently stood up for our nation's transportation workers. These outstanding men and

women, many of whom I have the privilege to represent, are a backbone of our nation's economy. They work each day in an industry that has been dramatically altered by the larger economic and security crises facing our nation. Yet through it all, these dedicated men and women remain focused on public service and doing their jobs to their utmost ability.

As I and my colleagues can attest, TTD has helped policymakers understand the needs and concerns of those on the front lines of this important part of our daily life and our economy. We sadly don't invest enough on our infrastructure, and I am heartened to hear TTD call for greater investment in transportation infrastructure. They understand how it can both rebuild our nation and put Americans back to work. In my travels through Northeast Ohio, I see firsthand how our infrastructure is crumbling and families are struggling to get by. Our quality of life and the strength and efficiency of our economy will not fully improve unless we make critical infrastructure investments.

I again commend TTD on their anniversary, and I look forward to continuing to work with them on these issues facing our nation.