Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this rule to bring the Full Faith and Credit Act to the House floor.

I had hoped that amidst all the controversies gripping this Congress that certainly we should at least be able to agree that the full faith and credit of the United States Government should not hang in the balance every time there's a fiscal debate in Washington. Unfortunately, even so commonsense a proposition as this cannot produce a consensus in today's Congress.

This bill simply guarantees the debt of the United States. No matter what political storms are raging in Washington, the public credit must be maintained. Yet this President and his followers--who have taken our Nation on the biggest borrowing binge in its history, who have run up more debt than almost all of his predecessors put together--oppose this commonsense attempt to assure credit markets that whatever else happens in Washington, their loans to this government are absolutely safe.

You know, most States have had similar provisions in their laws or constitutions guaranteeing their debt for generations. Last year, in testimony to the Senate, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke praised these State provisions for maintaining confidence in State and municipal markets. He told our own House Budget Committee that a similar measure at the Federal level would help protect our Nation against the threat of default.

The President and his followers argue that this is somehow an excuse for not paying our other obligations. What absolute nonsense. I challenge them to name one Member of Congress who has ever suggested that this measure is an acceptable alternative to not paying our other bills.

Their reliance on this falsehood is a measure of the bankruptcy of their argument. Do they actually suggest that all of these other States--that have guaranteed their sovereign debts for many generations--have ever used these guarantees as an excuse not to pay their other bills? On the contrary, by providing clear and unambiguous mandates to protect their credit first, they actually support and maintain their ability to pay for all of their other obligations.

The gentlelady from New York puts forth the argument that this measure would put foreign creditors ahead of programs serving Americans. Well, I would remind her that public credit is what makes possible all of the other programs of this government, from paying our troops to seniors' health care. Without it, we cannot pay our other bills.

I would also remind her that most of the public debt is held by Americans--much of it through American pension funds. China holds less than 10 percent. So the overwhelming effect of this measure is to protect the investments that Americans have made in their own government while protecting the credit that supports every other expenditure of this government, including our troops.

In its original form, this measure restated the already existing authority of the Treasury Department to prioritize the other obligations in order to assure prompt and full payment of the debt, and added a mandate requiring it to do so. The committee's much simpler and more practical approach directs the Treasury Secretary to pay the debt, even if it means temporarily borrowing outside the debt limit in order to do so. I want to thank it for this improvement, which I gratefully acknowledge and wholeheartedly endorse.

Let me say this again: no one advocates that this government delay paying any of its bills, and this legislation does no such thing. Indeed, this measure protects our ability to pay all of our other bills because paying those bills depends on maintaining the Nation's credit.

But given the precarious nature of our Nation's finances, principle disputes over how the debt limit is addressed are going to happen from time to time. I remember just a few years ago when then-Senator Barack Obama vigorously opposed increasing the debt limit sought by the Bush administration. Well, I've never equated Mr. Obama's opposition to the debt limit increase as anything other than a principled and well-placed concern over the proper management of our finances. It's sad that he cannot grant the motives of his opposition the same courtesy.

But when these controversies erupt--as they inevitably will do in a free society--it is imperative that credit markets are supremely confident that their loans are secure.

So I say this a third time: an impasse on the debt limit is something much to be avoided because it could do enormous damage to our Nation's prestige and its prosperity. But there is one thing that could do even more damage than delaying payments on our other bills, and that is the threat of a default on our sovereign debt. This measure takes that threat off the table. It assures credit markets that their investments in the United States are as certain as anything that can be had in this life.

Mr. Speaker, let us pass this rule and proceed with consideration of the bill.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Once again, the dominant theme from our friends on the other side seems to be China first, this pays China first. That's the constant refrain we're hearing.

Let me again remind them, China holds about 10 percent of our debt; Americans hold more than half of it. All of our spending from this government depends on maintaining our credit.

That means whoever is loaning us money, whether China or Timbuktu, whether it's the Teamsters pension fund or a child's savings bond that they've gotten for their birthday, we are borrowing over a quarter of everything that we spend. If we cannot borrow, if the confidence of the credit markets is ever compromised, this whole house of cards collapses around us, a house of cards constructed by this administration's profligate borrowing.

Our credit is now bearing a greater burden and strain that it has ever borne before. All this measure suggests is that we should at least reinforce that credit with exactly the same guarantees that most of our States have successfully employed for generations and, I would remind my friend from California, California has had in its Constitution for over 100 years.

Mr. Speaker, amidst all the controversies gripping the Congress, certainly we should at least all be able to agree that the full faith and credit of the United States, the very trust that the public has when it loans money to the government, should not hang in the balance every time there's a fiscal debate in Washington.

This week, the House is expected to consider H.R. 807, to allow a temporary exception to the debt limit solely to assure that the full and prompt payment of principal and interest is made on the debt in the event of an impasse in Washington.

Now, that should make perfect sense. As a practical matter, a family that's depending on its credit cards to pay its bills had better make sure to pay the credit card bills first.

The executive branch already has considerable powers to protect the Nation's credit, but the administration hasn't always acknowledged it. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution

places the validity of the public debt beyond question.

The Government Accountability Office has consistently held that the Treasury Secretary already has ``the authority to choose the order in which to pay obligations of the United States'' in order to protect the Nation's credit. This authority is inherent in the 1789 act that established the Treasury Department and entrusted it with the management of the revenue and the support of the public credit.

Even with record deficits, our revenues are roughly 10 times greater than our public debt service, so there's no excuse for a debt default. And yet, when an impasse over the debt limit loomed 2 years ago, then- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner insisted that his only option was to default on the Nation's credit.

Now, whether this was a crude attempt to hold the Nation's credit hostage to political demands for higher spending or whether it was the sincere misunderstanding of his powers and responsibilities is really immaterial.

In the future, this measure would order the Treasury Secretary to promptly and fully pay all principal and interest due on the national debt, even providing a temporary exemption from the debt limit in order to do so.

Now, most States have provisions in their laws or constitutions guaranteeing their debt. Last year in testimony to the Senate, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke praised these State provisions for maintaining confidence in State and municipal markets, and he told the House Budget Committee that a similar measure at the Federal level would help protect the Nation's credit.

Is this a tacit suggestion that we shouldn't meet our other obligations? Well, does anyone suggest that all the States that have had similar provisions in their constitutions and statutes for hundreds of years have ever used them as an excuse not to pay their other bills? Of course not. On the contrary, providing clear and unambiguous mandates to protect their credit first, they actually support and maintain their ability to pay all of their other obligations.

For a Congress that's borrowing nearly 40 cents on every dollar that it spends, the importance of this provision should be obvious. With the Nation carrying a total debt that exceeds its entire economy, it is imperative that credit markets be absolutely certain that the risk of an American default is nonexistent. Without this confidence, rising interest rates could rapidly consume vital government programs and make a mockery of the even modest budget savings wrought by the sequester.

Opponents charge that protecting the public credit above all other expenditures would subordinate many other essential obligations, like payments to troops or children's nutrition, but they forget the public credit is what makes it possible to meet every other obligation of the government.

A prolonged impasse over the debt limit is something that is much to be avoided.

Postponing payment of any of the government's bills would be dangerous and unprecedented. Although existing revenues could support critical government responsibilities for a while, distress to other Federal employees and contractors would be severe, would rapidly compound, and would eventually threaten core governmental functions.

Yet there is a worse fiscal outcome, and that is a failure to honor the Nation's debt obligations. We should remember that if the full faith and credit of the United States is ever compromised, all programs are jeopardized.

We must recognize that today our country is divided over fiscal policy and that bitter fiscal disputes in Congress are likely to continue for some time. Financial markets ought to be confident that their Treasury bonds are safe regardless of what political storms are raging in Washington.

Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, the Democratic whip charged that the Full Faith and Credit Act places America's credit at risk of default. As Churchill said:

It would not be possible to state the opposite of the truth

with greater precision.

Quite the contrary, this measure guarantees that whatever political storms are raging in Washington, America's debt will always be paid in full and on time. I would remind him that if the full faith and credit of the United States is ever compromised, all programs are jeopardized. This bill protects the public credit so that the public credit can protect seniors and disabled veterans and all of our other obligations.

No one wants to see a stalemate that would delay any payment. That would be unprecedented, disruptive, and dangerous. But the worst and most lasting damage of such an event would be to imperil our Nation's credit. This bill simply ensures that even in the worst-case scenario, that will never happen.

I rise today in strong opposition to a proposal by the National Park Service to remove longstanding tourist facilities from Yosemite National Park, including bicycle and raft rentals, snack facilities, gift shops, horseback riding, the ice skating rink at Curry Village, tennis courts and swimming pools, the art center, and the historic stone Sugar Pine Bridge.

These facilities date back generations and provide visitors with a wide range of amenities to enhance their stay at and their enjoyment of this world-renowned national park. To add insult to insanity, all of this comes with a quarter-billion-dollar price tag to American taxpayers.

Mr. Speaker, Yosemite belongs to the American people, and the Park Service's job is to welcome them and accommodate them when they visit their park, not to restrict and harass them. Indeed, Yosemite was set aside nearly 150 years ago by legislation signed by Abraham Lincoln specifically for ``the public use, resort and recreation for all time.'' This proposal fundamentally changes the entire purpose for which Yosemite was set aside in the first place.

Tourists don't go where they're not welcomed. Yosemite competes with thousands of vacation destinations; and the more inconvenient and unpleasant Park managers make it for Yosemite visitors, the fewer visitors they're going to have. Now, that might be convenient to them, but it will devastate the economy of all of the surrounding communities whose economies depend upon tourism.

The Park Service is attempting to justify this as a court-ordered response to the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. This is disingenuous. The settlement agreement they refer to simply requires that a plan be adopted consistent with current law. It does not mandate such radical changes in longstanding visitor services and amenities.

Former Congressman Tony Coelho, who authored the act that designated the Merced under provisions of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, has just released a strong letter condemning the proposal, saying in no uncertain terms:

The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was never intended to apply

to the Merced River within

Yosemite National Park at all. The Merced River within

Yosemite National Park is protected and regulated by the

National Park Service and has never needed an overlay of

inconsistent and confusing regulation. The Merced River in

Yosemite Valley has been recreational for almost 150 years.

Yosemite Valley has never been wilderness. Any plan which

proceeds should not change any infrastructure or ban any

activities traditionally carried on in Yosemite Valley.

Indeed, when Mr. Coelho authored the legislation designating the Merced as ``wild and scenic,'' these tourist facilities already existed, and nowhere in the bill's findings is there any mention of an intention to force their closure or to override Park policies. In fact, many of the facilities slated for removal are not even on the Merced River and do not in any way impede or affect its flow.

The officials of the National Park Service are clearly not required to take these actions. It's becoming increasingly apparent that they want to take them and that they intend to take them despite widespread public opposition from all but the most radical elements of the environmental left. Indeed, when 13 members of the California congressional delegation, including liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alike, asked for an extension of the public comment period, the Park Service grudgingly extended it by only 12 days.

It is obvious that Park officials have already made up their minds and are merely walking through the formalities. I believe that this matter and related issues of public access cry out for a congressional investigation.

In the meantime, if members of the public want to protest the elimination of many of Yosemite Valley's tourist amenities and iconic landmarks, their time is running out. My Web site, at mcclintock.house.gov, provides guidance on how people can protest this action, and I strongly urge them to do so.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge Dennis Cocking, who will be retiring May 1, 2013, from the South Tahoe Public Utility District in California after 25 years of service.

Beginning his career part-time in the field, Dennis worked his way up to his current role as the public information officer handling both public relations and legislative affairs. In this capacity, Dennis has become the face of the Utility District and has been described as the bridge between the community and the board.

Dennis's service to the community of South Lake Tahoe has been indispensable over the past decades, ensuring that the public always had access to information about their water resources and providing clear communication on events in the district. His retirement will be spent traveling with his wife Kathy, enjoying their first grandchild and continuing their involvement in the community.

Dennis is a fine example of the culture of service that ought to be reflected in public officials and it is my privilege to rise today in recognition of his service.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize High School Football Coach and legend Bob Shaffer for his tremendous contributions to the community of Truckee, the Truckee Football Program and the many players he has influenced over the years.

Since taking over the head coaching position in 1995, Coach Shaffer has had an overall record of 170 to 32, becoming the 3rd most winning football coach in the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association history. Throughout his eighteen year career, Shaffer has led the Truckee High School Wolverines to win nine state titles, including back-to-back championships in the past four years.

Shaffer has set a standard for excellence on and off the field and has been a role model for his players, teaching them that hard work and perseverance are part of being a champion. A former player describes Shaffer's ability ``to take many kids who didn't think they had what it takes to play football and make them believe they were champions.''

The success of his football program is not only shown in the number of wins, but also in the great team of coaches he has assembled. These coaches help instill in their players life-long skills for success with many graduating with high honors, playing college football, and becoming leaders in their communities.

Shaffer will spend his retirement from coaching watching his two youngest sons' college athletics and continuing to teach Physical Education at Truckee High School.

It is my privilege to rise today in recognition of Coach Shaffer's accomplishments in the continuation of the Truckee Football tradition.

Madam Speaker, the House has been considering H.R. 624, the so-called CISPA bill.

Although its sponsors assure us that a person's Internet data would be stripped of personal identification, this bill then allows this data to be used to prosecute certain Federal crimes. Well, how could they do it? It turns out the Federal Government, having stumbled upon this evidence, can then seek a warrant to obtain that personally identifying information.

That makes it the functional equivalent of the ``writs of assistance'' used by the English Crown in colonial times. It is antithetical to the Fourth Amendment, which requires that, before the government can invade your privacy, it must first present a court with reasonable cause to believe you have committed a crime. This bill effectively allows the government to search through your personal records indiscriminantly and then use that information to form the basis of a prosecution.

Cybersecurity is an important national security issue, but it does not trump the Bill of Rights or the American freedoms that our Constitution protects.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, the so-called streamlining that the Bureau has pledged to do and has done has produced no new projects for reasons that were made very clear to our Subcommittee on Water and Power by numerous witnesses. NEPA is at the heart of the problem. As the chairman said, the Bureau of Reclamation operates 47,000 miles of pipelines and canals that have already undergone extensive environmental review. By installing small generators in the existing pipelines, we could add the equivalent generating capacity of major hydroelectric dams, meaning millions of dollars of new revenue to the government, millions of watts of new, clean, cheap electricity, and all the jobs these projects would produce.

The gentlelady has said that she supports the objective and is willing to do everything that she can to help except by getting government out of the way. The Federal bureaucracy has made it cost prohibitive for people to install these small generators in these existing canals and pipelines. Rather, they force them to conduct crushingly expensive environmental reviews, navigate time-consuming bureaucratic mazes, pay exorbitant administrative fees, and risk the uncertainties of endless internal review and external litigation. These bureaucratic obstacles often cost more than the projects themselves and turn sensible, economic electricity projects into cost-prohibitive farces.

As proposed to be amended, this bill requires the Bureau to categorically exclude the installation of these small, hydroelectric generators in existing facilities that have already undergone environmental review. It designates the central office within the Bureau to provide uniform guidance on processing applications. It establishes a sensible and streamlined process to determine development rights. And it ensures that installation of hydrogenerators will not disrupt existing water operations.

Mr. Chairman, think about the implications just to farming as one example. Some irrigation districts are forced to use diesel generators to pump water to their fields. You put hydroelectric generators in existing canals and pipes, and they become virtually self-sustaining, while reducing reliance on other sources of electricity that do produce air emissions.

It is truly mystifying that a Nation plagued by prolonged economic stagnation, chronic unemployment, and increasingly scarce and expensive electricity would adopt a willful and deliberate policy obstructing the construction of these inexpensive and innocuous generators in already- existing facilities. Even FERC, a bastion of regulatory excess, agrees that these studies are unnecessary when conducted on similar non- Federal facilities.

I believe this bill is a model for the future. I hope that similar regulatory reforms will soon be extended to other Federal and non- Federal facilities.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, this amendment strikes the NEPA exclusion for small hydroelectric projects. That's the principal point of the bill.

As the Subcommittee on Water and Power has repeatedly been told, it is precisely this process that has doubled the cost of small hydro projects simply making them cost prohibitive. This is akin to having a full environmental review done when you build your home and then having to do it all over again when you want to install a microwave in your kitchen.

One witness testified that installing 15 very small hydropower units on a nearby Bureau of Reclamation canal system would cost over $450,000, or $30,000 per unit, for additional NEPA reviews that would ultimately conclude that there is no environmental impact.

That means the paperwork costs would be greater than the actual capital cost of the hydropower units. No one in his right mind would invest in a project with this kind of requirement. It simply makes no sense, and that's the primary reason conduit hydropower development is not happening.

It is true that the Bureau of Reclamation instituted a new NEPA Categorical Exclusion for small hydroelectric projects back in September of 2012, but 6 months later, this new policy has resulted in precisely zero new projects moving forward. Even if projects were moving forward today, this is only an administrative change and could be changed back at any time.

In addition, an expert witness who happens to be a litigator testified to our subcommittee that the current administrative process is full of legal holes that could be exploited by those wanting to stop these projects. Investors need certainty, and that requires a statutory and not an administrative fix.

I appreciate and support the gentlelady's effort to allow the Bureau to consider units with 15 megawatts, but I would remind her that zero projects times 15 megawatts still equals zero electricity. Indeed, there are practically no projects in this range to begin with, which makes the amendment somewhat disingenuous. Even if there were, if the current regulatory scheme isn't allowing 5-megawatt units, it certainly won't allow 15-megawatt units. That's the problem.

Mr. Tipton's bill provides an automatic exclusion from this duplicative and destructive NEPA requirement. The gentlelady's amendment takes it back out again. That's not constructive and it's not helpful.

To assure us that one supports small hydropower but opposes the automatic exclusion in Mr. Tipton's bill reminds me of Leo Tolstoy's observation when he said:

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me,

and all the while, I assure him and anyone who will listen

that I am sympathetic for his plight and I am willing to do

everything I can to help--except by getting off his back.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Our fiscal problem can be summed up in just three numbers: 39, 37, and 64. Thirty-nine percent is the combined increase of inflation and population over the past 10 years. Thirty-seven percent is the increase in revenues. The third number is what's killing us: 64 percent is the increase in spending. It's nearly

twice the rate of inflation and population growth.

This has never been a revenue problem; it has always been a spending problem. Yet characteristic of other Democratic budgets, the Senate further accelerates spending while trying to chase it with $1 trillion of new taxes. And despite $1 trillion of new taxes, they can't ever balance their budget. And there's a reason: because it's a spending problem, and dogmatically trying to address it on the revenue side will simply drive more and more spending until we become Greece or Detroit.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Van Hollen recently pointed out that Democrats and Republicans both want to get rid of a range of tax loopholes but Democrats want to spend that money and Republicans want to lower the overall burden. That difference is very important.

We have the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. That's the principle reason why we're losing American jobs to nations with much lower taxes. As economist Arthur Laffer has warned, there's nothing more portable in this world than money.

This policy might fit the left's ``eat the rich'' crusade, but the jobs it destroys are eating our middle class alive. We are sacrificing permanent, upwardly mobile, productive private sector jobs for makeshift subsidized ones that disappear the moment the money runs out. That is precisely the difference between FedEx and the post office or between Apple and Solyndra. And that's all the difference in the world.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, this debate over the budget reflects a great struggle between American families and their government over whether they or the government can best spend the money that they have earned. This budget bends that struggle slowly back in favor of those families by returning to them a little of the freedom to spend more of their own money and make more of their own decisions once again.

The prosperity of American families is directly affected by government spending. Government cannot put a dollar into the economy that it first hasn't taken out of the economy.

It's true we see the government job that's created when government puts that dollar back in. What we don't see as clearly is the job that's destroyed when government first pulls that dollar out. We see those lost jobs as chronic unemployment and a stagnating economy.

Every billion dollars spent in Washington means taking $9 from an average family, either in direct taxes or in tax-driven price increases as businesses pass along their costs to consumers. That means that $1 trillion of new taxes that the Senate has proposed means $9,000 per family. Now we're told, don't worry, that's all paid by businesses. But businesses don't pay business taxes, they only collect them. They pass them on to us as consumers through higher prices, to us as employees through lower wages, or to us as investors through lower earnings, usually on our 401(k)s. A trillion dollars of deficit, as we ran up last year, really means $9,000 of future taxes for every family, robbing our children of their futures.

It's about time we started thinking about these numbers in family- sized terms, because ultimately these numbers have a very real impact on families who are struggling to balance their own budgets, to set their own priorities and to look after their own needs.

Now, these days, we've passed more than one-third of the cost of government on to our children, and we financed the remainder through a tax system in which politicians pick winners and losers through an appallingly unfair and distorted Tax Code.

This budget calls for doing away with these tax distortions that reward some and punish others, distortions that shift capital away from economic expansion and into the service of political interests. This budget calls for flattening and lowering tax rates to assure that no American family pays more than one-quarter of its earnings to the Federal Government.

Those nations that have adopted similar reforms have been rewarded with explosive economic growth. That means fairness for every American taxpayer and an economy unshackled from the burdens and political favoritism of our current system.

In short, freedom works, and it's time that we put it back to work.

Madam Speaker, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire offers us a sobering warning of a great nation that became overextended and war-weary abroad while it became utterly profligate and decadent at home. Its economy in shambles and its treasury bankrupt, the mightiest military power on Earth fell prey for backward hordes that had previously existed only on the fringes of civilization.

Now, 3 years ago Admiral Mike Mullen warned our Nation that our national debt is our biggest national security threat. Now, that was 3 years ago when our debt stood at $13.5 trillion. Today we owe over $16.5 trillion. In other words, just since he issued this warning, we've added more to our country's debt than we did in our Nation's first 200 years of existence.

No nation has ever taxed and borrowed and spent its way to prosperity, but many nations have taxed and borrowed and spent their way to economic ruin and bankruptcy, and history today is screaming this warning at us, that bankrupt nations aren't around very long because before you can provide for the common defense, you have to be able to pay for it, and the ability of our Nation to do so is now coming into grave question.

Now, just in the first 4 weeks of this year, Congress added more than a third of a trillion dollars of new spending to this already crushing burden. The fiscal cliff deal added $300 billion and the Hurricane Sandy bill another $50 billion, more than 90 percent of which had nothing to do with emergency relief for storm victims.

Earlier this month, Congress simply did away with the debt limit altogether until mid-May. Two years ago, Congress passed the Budget Control Act that authorized the biggest single expansion of debt in our Nation's history; but Congress at least also agreed to reduce the projected deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, either through the supercommittee or, failing that, through automatic budget reductions called ``the sequester.''

Now, the sequester doesn't actually cut spending in any conventional sense of the word. After a decade in which spending has grown 64 percent, or nearly twice the rate of inflation and population growth, the sequester merely limits the increase next year to about one-half of one percent.

I opposed that act, in part because the sequester was less than one- third of what officials at Standard & Poor's warned was the minimum deficit reduction necessary to preserve our Nation's AAA credit rating. I also objected to across-the-board cuts that treat our highest priorities the same as our lowest priorities and to the disproportionate impact that it would have on our defense budget. Those warnings fell on deaf ears at the time.

But since then, twice the House has tried to correct these shortcomings with legislation to replace the worst of the defense cuts with long-term entitlement reform. Ultimately, that's the only way we're going to bring our fiscal crisis and its spiraling debt under control.

Both measures died in the Senate; and after the November election, the likelihood of entitlement reform over the next several years is exceedingly remote, which means that however imperfect the sequester may be, it is at this moment in our history the only tool currently available to us to begin to point our Nation back toward fiscal solvency and away from the perilous fiscal path that we are now upon.

We need to give administrators, especially the military command, the flexibility to set priorities and manage our money accordingly; but the overall sequester reductions must be maintained.

A few months ago, the chief of sovereign debt for Standard & Poor's made this point: that although the sequester was insufficient to justify maintaining our AAA credit rating, it was at least a step in the right direction. He said:

The sequester was an agreement that Congress made with

itself, and we would view any step back from that agreement

very negatively.

Madam Speaker, when the history of our era is written, let it not be said that ours was a generation of locusts that consumed not only the wealth we inherited from our fathers and mothers, but also stripped bare the futures of our sons and daughters. Let us instead begin a new direction for our Nation, stepping back from the fiscal precipice that threatens to destroy our Nation from within.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join the city of Rocklin in dedicating a portion of Interstate 80 in memory of Highway Patrol Officer Raymond Carpenter.

This dedication is meant to pay tribute to Ray's life and his long service to our nation and our community.

His great sense of duty and commitment came as no surprise to those who knew his story; in fact it was a testament to his humble upbringing. He was born in a small cabin and raised on the Sullivan Ranch in Auburn, where he learned the long hours and hard work of a ranch hand. This hardy experience taught him the uniquely American values of hard work and the freedom that self-reliance provides. That same tenacity and perseverance would lead him to later become an Alaskan homesteader while stationed there as a Technical Sergeant with the U.S. Air Force, building his own cabin on the frontier of our nation, like his forebears before him had in the rugged wilderness of northern California.

It was to the blessing of his native state that Ray was called to return home in 1956, where his love of the outdoors, motorcycles, and his passion for service led him to the California Highway Patrol. His kind disposition made him friends easily, and he was always fast in offering a helping hand. Whether in his time with the Air Force or as a Highway Patrol Officer after returning to California, Ray had spent the better part of his life in service to his fellow Americans. It was in that service that Ray surrendered his life when he was shot and killed in the line of duty on February 17, 1970.

Mr. Speaker, while Ray's life was cut short, we must celebrate his contributions, for as General Patton said ``it is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.'' I am proud today to rise to honor his memory and in grateful recognition of his many years of service and sacrifice.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chairman, a family that earns $27,000 but spends $36,000 and has run up a credit card debt of $165,000 is obviously on the brink of financial ruin. Proportionally, that is exactly where our Federal Government is today.

Now, if that family went to see a credit counselor, the first thing he's going to tell them is we've got to sit down and draw up a budget. Now, that family is going to have to make some very difficult choices. It may take several years to work its way back to solvency. But our Senate has not passed a budget in nearly 4 years, and our President has offered only entirely un-serious budgets that continue to spend recklessly and that never balance.

This bill simply requires that if the President can't balance the budget this year, he tell us how long it will take and what needs to be done to do so. We would expect that from any family. We should demand it from our government.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal.

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

Mr. Speaker, the House is poised to pass H.R. 325 today. I respect the sincerity of its supporters, but I must firmly dissent.

This bill accommodates spending at ruinous levels far beyond the limits set by the House budget. It sets a terrible precedent by abolishing the debt limit for nearly 4 months, giving an unlimited credit card to this administration. I think Members will be stunned by the borrowing that this moratorium makes possible. Certainly, thousands of dollars of new debt will be heaped on every household in America.

House Republicans have passed two budget plans that put our Nation back on a path toward fiscal solvency. If the debt limit were increased within that trajectory at 2-month intervals, it would require only small and incremental reforms each time. That would both avert default now and the fiscal crisis that we are fast approaching. I believe that it is achievable and far preferable to the bill to be voted on today.