The Chairman: The unfinished business is the demand for a recorded vote on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Reichert) on which further proceedings were postponed and on which the noes prevailed by voice vote.
The Clerk will redesignate the amendment.
The Clerk redesignated the amendment.
The Chairman: A recorded vote has been demanded.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The Chairman: This will be a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 218, noes 205, not voting 14, as follows:
| Roll No. 455 - Reichert of Washington Amendment | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AYES--218 | ||||
| Aderholt | Akin | Alexander | Altmire | Bachmann |
| Bachus | Baker | Barrett (SC) | Bartlett (MD) | Barton (TX) |
| Bean | Biggert | Bilbray | Bilirakis | Bishop (UT) |
| Blackburn | Blunt | Boehner | Bonner | Bono |
| Boozman | Boswell | Boustany | Brady (TX) | Brown (SC) |
| Brown-Waite, Ginny | Buchanan | Burgess | Burton (IN) | Buyer |
| Calvert | Camp (MI) | Campbell (CA) | Cannon | Cantor |
| Capito | Carter | Castle | Chabot | Coble |
| Cole (OK) | Crenshaw | Cubin | Culberson | Davis (KY) |
| Davis, David | Davis, Jo Ann | Davis, Tom | Deal (GA) | Dent |
| Diaz-Balart, L. | Diaz-Balart, M. | Doolittle | Drake | Dreier |
| Duncan | Ehlers | Ellsworth | Emerson | English (PA) |
| Eshoo | Everett | Fallin | Feeney | Ferguson |
| Flake | Forbes | Fortenberry | Fortuno | Fossella |
| Foxx | Frelinghuysen | Gallegly | Garrett (NJ) | Gerlach |
| Gilchrest | Gillmor | Gingrey | Gohmert | Goode |
| Goodlatte | Granger | Graves | Hall (TX) | Harman |
| Hastings (WA) | Hayes | Heller | Hensarling | Herger |
| Herseth Sandlin | Hill | Hoekstra | Holt | Hulshof |
| Hunter | Inglis (SC) | Israel | Jindal | Johnson (IL) |
| Johnson, Sam | Jones (NC) | Jordan | Keller | King (IA) |
| King (NY) | Kingston | Kirk | Kline (MN) | Knollenberg |
| LaHood | Lamborn | Langevin | Larsen (WA) | Latham |
| LaTourette | Lewis (CA) | Lewis (KY) | Linder | LoBiondo |
| Lucas | Lungren, Daniel E. | Mack | Mahoney (FL) | Manzullo |
| Marchant | Matheson | McCarthy (CA) | McCaul (TX) | McCotter |
| McCrery | McHenry | McHugh | McIntyre | McKeon |
| McMorris Rodgers | McNerney | Meeks (NY) | Mica | Miller (FL) |
| Miller (MI) | Miller, Gary | Moran (KS) | Moran (VA) | Murphy, Patrick |
| Murphy, Tim | Musgrave | Myrick | Neugebauer | Nunes |
| Pascrell | Paul | Pearce | Pence | Peterson (MN) |
| Peterson (PA) | Petri | Pickering | Pitts | Platts |
| Poe | Pomeroy | Porter | Price (GA) | Pryce (OH) |
| Putnam | Radanovich | Ramstad | Regula | Rehberg |
| Reichert | Renzi | Reynolds | Rogers (AL) | Rogers (KY) |
| Rogers (MI) | Rohrabacher | Ros-Lehtinen | Roskam | Royce |
| Ryan (WI) | Sali | Saxton | Schmidt | Sensenbrenner |
| Shadegg | Shays | Shimkus | Shuster | Simpson |
| Smith (NE) | Smith (NJ) | Smith (TX) | Smith (WA) | Souder |
| Stearns | Stupak | Sullivan | Taylor | Terry |
| Thornberry | Tiahrt | Tiberi | Turner | Upton |
| Walberg | Walden (OR) | Walsh (NY) | Wamp | Weldon (FL) |
| Weller | Whitfield | Wicker | Wilson (NM) | Wilson (SC) |
| Wolf | Young (AK) | Young (FL) | ||
| NOES--205 | ||||
| Abercrombie | Ackerman | Allen | Andrews | Baca |
| Baird | Baldwin | Barrow | Becerra | Berkley |
| Berman | Berry | Bishop (GA) | Bishop (NY) | Blumenauer |
| Bordallo | Boren | Boucher | Boyd (FL) | Boyda (KS) |
| Brady (PA) | Braley (IA) | Brown, Corrine | Butterfield | Capps |
| Capuano | Cardoza | Carnahan | Carney | Carson |
| Castor | Chandler | Christensen | Clarke | Clay |
| Cleaver | Clyburn | Cohen | Conyers | Cooper |
| Costa | Costello | Courtney | Cramer | Crowley |
| Cuellar | Cummings | Davis (AL) | Davis (CA) | Davis (IL) |
| Davis, Lincoln | DeFazio | DeGette | Delahunt | DeLauro |
| Dicks | Dingell | Doggett | Donnelly | Ellison |
| Emanuel | Engel | Etheridge | Farr | Fattah |
| Filner | Frank (MA) | Giffords | Gillibrand | Gonzalez |
| Gordon | Green, Al | Green, Gene | Grijalva | Hall (NY) |
| Hare | Hastings (FL) | Higgins | Hinchey | Hinojosa |
| Hirono | Hodes | Holden | Honda | Hooley |
| Hoyer | Inslee | Jackson (IL) | Jackson-Lee (TX) | Jefferson |
| Johnson (GA) | Johnson, E. B. | Jones (OH) | Kagen | Kanjorski |
| Kaptur | Kennedy | Kildee | Kilpatrick | Kind |
| Klein (FL) | Kucinich | Lampson | Lantos | Larson (CT) |
| Lee | Levin | Lipinski | Loebsack | Lofgren, Zoe |
| Lowey | Lynch | Maloney (NY) | Markey | Marshall |
| Matsui | McCarthy (NY) | McCollum (MN) | McDermott | McGovern |
| McNulty | Meehan | Meek (FL) | Melancon | Michaud |
| Miller (NC) | Miller, George | Mitchell | Mollohan | Moore (KS) |
| Moore (WI) | Murphy (CT) | Murtha | Nadler | Napolitano |
| Neal (MA) | Norton | Oberstar | Obey | Olver |
| Ortiz | Pallone | Pastor | Payne | Perlmutter |
| Price (NC) | Rahall | Rangel | Reyes | Rodriguez |
| Ross | Rothman | Roybal-Allard | Ruppersberger | Rush |
| Ryan (OH) | Salazar | Sanchez, Linda T. | Sanchez, Loretta | Sarbanes |
| Schakowsky | Schiff | Schwartz | Scott (GA) | Scott (VA) |
| Serrano | Sestak | Shea-Porter | Sherman | Shuler |
| Sires | Skelton | Slaughter | Snyder | Solis |
| Space | Spratt | Stark | Sutton | Tancredo |
| Tanner | Tauscher | Thompson (CA) | Thompson (MS) | Tierney |
| Towns | Udall (CO) | Udall (NM) | Van Hollen | Velazquez |
| Visclosky | Walz (MN) | Wasserman Schultz | Waters | Watson |
| Watt | Waxman | Weiner | Welch (VT) | Wexler |
| Wilson (OH) | Woolsey | Wu | Wynn | Yarmuth |
| NOT VOTING--14 | ||||
| Arcuri | Conaway | Doyle | Edwards | Faleomavaega |
| Franks (AZ) | Gutierrez | Hastert | Hobson | Issa |
| Kuhl (NY) | Lewis (GA) | Sessions | Westmoreland | |
The Chairman (during the vote): Members are advised there are exactly 2 minutes remaining.
Mrs. Bachmann and Mr. Larsen of Washington changed their vote from "no" to "aye."
So the amendment was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
The Chairman: The unfinished business is the demand for a recorded vote on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) on which further proceedings were postponed and on which the ayes prevailed by voice vote.
The Clerk will redesignate the amendment.
The Clerk redesignated the amendment.
The Chairman: A recorded vote has been demanded.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The Chairman: This will be a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 379, noes 45, not voting 13, as follows:
| Roll No. 456 - King of Iowa Amendment | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AYES--379 | ||||
| Abercrombie | Ackerman | Aderholt | Akin | Alexander |
| Allen | Altmire | Andrews | Baca | Bachmann |
| Bachus | Baker | Baldwin | Barrett (SC) | Barrow |
| Bartlett (MD) | Barton (TX) | Bean | Becerra | Berkley |
| Berman | Berry | Biggert | Bilbray | Bilirakis |
| Bishop (GA) | Bishop (NY) | Bishop (UT) | Blackburn | Blumenauer |
| Blunt | Boehner | Bonner | Bono | Boozman |
| Bordallo | Boren | Boswell | Boustany | Boyd (FL) |
| Boyda (KS) | Brady (TX) | Braley (IA) | Brown (SC) | Brown, Corrine |
| Brown-Waite, Ginny | Buchanan | Burgess | Burton (IN) | Butterfield |
| Buyer | Calvert | Camp (MI) | Campbell (CA) | Cannon |
| Cantor | Capito | Capps | Capuano | Cardoza |
| Carnahan | Carney | Carter | Castle | Castor |
| Chabot | Chandler | Clay | Cleaver | Clyburn |
| Coble | Cole (OK) | Conyers | Cooper | Costa |
| Costello | Courtney | Cramer | Crenshaw | Crowley |
| Cubin | Cuellar | Culberson | Cummings | Davis (AL) |
| Davis (CA) | Davis (IL) | Davis (KY) | Davis, David | Davis, Jo Ann |
| Davis, Lincoln | Davis, Tom | Deal (GA) | DeFazio | DeGette |
| Delahunt | DeLauro | Dent | Diaz-Balart, L. | Diaz-Balart, M. |
| Dicks | Doggett | Donnelly | Doolittle | Drake |
| Dreier | Duncan | Ehlers | Ellison | Ellsworth |
| Emanuel | Emerson | English (PA) | Eshoo | Etheridge |
| Everett | Fallin | Farr | Feeney | Ferguson |
| Filner | Flake | Forbes | Fortenberry | Fossella |
| Foxx | Frank (MA) | Franks (AZ) | Frelinghuysen | Gallegly |
| Garrett (NJ) | Gerlach | Giffords | Gilchrest | Gillibrand |
| Gillmor | Gingrey | Gohmert | Gonzalez | Goode |
| Goodlatte | Gordon | Granger | Graves | Green, Al |
| Green, Gene | Hall (NY) | Hall (TX) | Hare | Harman |
| Hastings (FL) | Hastings (WA) | Hayes | Heller | Hensarling |
| Herger | Herseth Sandlin | Higgins | Hill | Hinojosa |
| Hirono | Hobson | Hodes | Hoekstra | Holt |
| Honda | Hooley | Hulshof | Hunter | Inglis (SC) |
| Inslee | Israel | Issa | Jackson-Lee (TX) | Jefferson |
| Jindal | Johnson (GA) | Johnson (IL) | Johnson, E. B. | Johnson, Sam |
| Jones (NC) | Jones (OH) | Jordan | Kagen | Kaptur |
| Keller | Kennedy | Kildee | Kilpatrick | Kind |
| King (IA) | King (NY) | Kingston | Kirk | Klein (FL) |
| Kline (MN) | Knollenberg | LaHood | Lamborn | Lampson |
| Langevin | Lantos | Larson (CT) | Latham | Levin |
| Lewis (CA) | Lewis (KY) | Linder | Lipinski | LoBiondo |
| Loebsack | Lofgren, Zoe | Lowey | Lucas | Lungren, Daniel E. |
| Lynch | Mack | Maloney (NY) | Manzullo | Marchant |
| Matheson | McCarthy (CA) | McCarthy (NY) | McCollum (MN) | McCotter |
| McCrery | McDermott | McGovern | McHenry | McHugh |
| McIntyre | McKeon | McMorris Rodgers | Meek (FL) | Meeks (NY) |
| Melancon | Mica | Michaud | Miller (FL) | Miller (MI) |
| Miller (NC) | Miller, Gary | Miller, George | Mitchell | Moore (KS) |
| Moore (WI) | Moran (KS) | Moran (VA) | Murphy, Patrick | Murphy, Tim |
| Musgrave | Myrick | Napolitano | Neal (MA) | Neugebauer |
| Norton | Nunes | Oberstar | Obey | Olver |
| Ortiz | Pallone | Pastor | Paul | Pearce |
| Pence | Perlmutter | Peterson (MN) | Peterson (PA) | Petri |
| Pickering | Pitts | Platts | Poe | Pomeroy |
| Porter | Price (GA) | Price (NC) | Pryce (OH) | Putnam |
| Radanovich | Rahall | Ramstad | Rangel | Regula |
| Rehberg | Reichert | Renzi | Reyes | Reynolds |
| Rodriguez | Rogers (AL) | Rogers (KY) | Rogers (MI) | Rohrabacher |
| Ros-Lehtinen | Roskam | Ross | Rothman | Roybal-Allard |
| Royce | Ruppersberger | Rush | Ryan (WI) | Salazar |
| Sali | Sanchez, Linda T. | Sanchez, Loretta | Sarbanes | Saxton |
| Schakowsky | Schiff | Schmidt | Schwartz | Scott (GA) |
| Scott (VA) | Sensenbrenner | Serrano | Sestak | Shadegg |
| Shays | Shea-Porter | Shimkus | Shuler | Shuster |
| Simpson | Sires | Smith (NE) | Smith (NJ) | Smith (TX) |
| Smith (WA) | Snyder | Solis | Souder | Space |
| Spratt | Stearns | Stupak | Sullivan | Tancredo |
| Tanner | Tauscher | Taylor | Terry | Thompson (MS) |
| Thornberry | Tiahrt | Tiberi | Tierney | Towns |
| Turner | Udall (CO) | Udall (NM) | Upton | Van Hollen |
| Velazquez | Visclosky | Walberg | Walden (OR) | Walsh (NY) |
| Walz (MN) | Wamp | Wasserman Schultz | Watson | Watt |
| Waxman | Weldon (FL) | Weller | Wexler | Whitfield |
| Wicker | Wilson (NM) | Wilson (SC) | Wolf | Wu |
| Wynn | Yarmuth | Young (AK) | Young (FL) | |
| NOES--45 | ||||
| Baird | Boucher | Brady (PA) | Carson | Christensen |
| Clarke | Cohen | Dingell | Engel | Fattah |
| Grijalva | Hinchey | Holden | Hoyer | Jackson (IL) |
| Kanjorski | Kucinich | Larsen (WA) | Lee | Mahoney (FL) |
| Markey | Marshall | Matsui | McCaul (TX) | McNerney |
| McNulty | Meehan | Mollohan | Murphy (CT) | Murtha |
| Nadler | Pascrell | Payne | Ryan (OH) | Sherman |
| Skelton | Slaughter | Stark | Sutton | Thompson (CA) |
| Waters | Weiner | Welch (VT) | Wilson (OH) | Woolsey |
| NOT VOTING--13 | ||||
| Arcuri | Conaway | Doyle | Edwards | Faleomavaega |
| Fortuno | Gutierrez | Hastert | Kuhl (NY) | LaTourette |
| Lewis (GA) | Sessions | Westmoreland | ||
The Chairman (during the vote): Members are advised there are 2 minutes remaining in this vote.
So the amendment was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
The Chairman: The unfinished business is the demand for a recorded vote on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn) on which further proceedings were postponed and on which the ayes prevailed by voice vote.
The Clerk will redesignate the amendment.
The Clerk redesignated the amendment.
The Chairman: A recorded vote has been demanded.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The Chairman: This will be a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 381, noes 41, not voting 15, as follows:
| Roll No. 457 - Lamborn of Colorado Amendment | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AYES--381 | ||||
| Abercrombie | Ackerman | Aderholt | Akin | Alexander |
| Allen | Altmire | Andrews | Baca | Bachmann |
| Bachus | Baker | Baldwin | Barrett (SC) | Barrow |
| Bartlett (MD) | Barton (TX) | Bean | Becerra | Berkley |
| Berman | Berry | Biggert | Bilbray | Bilirakis |
| Bishop (GA) | Bishop (NY) | Bishop (UT) | Blackburn | Blumenauer |
| Blunt | Boehner | Bonner | Bono | Boozman |
| Bordallo | Boren | Boswell | Boustany | Boyd (FL) |
| Boyda (KS) | Brady (TX) | Braley (IA) | Brown (SC) | Brown, Corrine |
| Brown-Waite, Ginny | Buchanan | Burgess | Burton (IN) | Butterfield |
| Buyer | Calvert | Camp (MI) | Campbell (CA) | Cannon |
| Cantor | Capito | Capps | Capuano | Cardoza |
| Carnahan | Carney | Carson | Carter | Castle |
| Castor | Chabot | Chandler | Christensen | Clay |
| Cleaver | Clyburn | Coble | Cohen | Cole (OK) |
| Conyers | Cooper | Costa | Courtney | Cramer |
| Crenshaw | Crowley | Cubin | Cuellar | Culberson |
| Cummings | Davis (AL) | Davis (CA) | Davis (IL) | Davis (KY) |
| Davis, David | Davis, Jo Ann | Davis, Lincoln | Davis, Tom | Deal (GA) |
| DeFazio | DeGette | Delahunt | DeLauro | Dent |
| Diaz-Balart, L. | Diaz-Balart, M. | Dicks | Doggett | Donnelly |
| Doolittle | Drake | Dreier | Duncan | Ehlers |
| Ellison | Ellsworth | Emanuel | Emerson | English (PA) |
| Eshoo | Etheridge | Everett | Fallin | Feeney |
| Ferguson | Filner | Flake | Forbes | Fortenberry |
| Fossella | Foxx | Frank (MA) | Franks (AZ) | Frelinghuysen |
| Gallegly | Garrett (NJ) | Gerlach | Giffords | Gilchrest |
| Gillibrand | Gillmor | Gingrey | Gohmert | Gonzalez |
| Goode | Goodlatte | Gordon | Granger | Graves |
| Green, Al | Green, Gene | Hall (NY) | Hall (TX) | Hare |
| Harman | Hastings (FL) | Hastings (WA) | Hayes | Heller |
| Hensarling | Herger | Herseth Sandlin | Higgins | Hill |
| Hinojosa | Hirono | Hobson | Hodes | Hoekstra |
| Holden | Holt | Hooley | Hulshof | Hunter |
| Inglis (SC) | Inslee | Israel | Issa | Jefferson |
| Jindal | Johnson (GA) | Johnson (IL) | Johnson, E. B. | Johnson, Sam |
| Jones (NC) | Jones (OH) | Jordan | Kagen | Kaptur |
| Keller | Kennedy | Kildee | Kilpatrick | Kind |
| King (IA) | King (NY) | Kingston | Kirk | Klein (FL) |
| Kline (MN) | Knollenberg | LaHood | Lamborn | Lampson |
| Langevin | Lantos | Larson (CT) | Latham | LaTourette |
| Levin | Lewis (KY) | Linder | Lipinski | LoBiondo |
| Loebsack | Lofgren, Zoe | Lowey | Lucas | Lungren, Daniel E. |
| Lynch | Mack | Maloney (NY) | Manzullo | Marchant |
| Matheson | McCarthy (CA) | McCarthy (NY) | McCaul (TX) | McCollum (MN) |
| McCotter | McCrery | McDermott | McGovern | McHenry |
| McHugh | McIntyre | McKeon | McMorris Rodgers | Meehan |
| Meek (FL) | Meeks (NY) | Melancon | Mica | Michaud |
| Miller (FL) | Miller (MI) | Miller (NC) | Miller, Gary | Miller, George |
| Mitchell | Moore (KS) | Moore (WI) | Moran (KS) | Moran (VA) |
| Murphy, Patrick | Murphy, Tim | Murtha | Musgrave | Myrick |
| Nadler | Napolitano | Neal (MA) | Neugebauer | Norton |
| Nunes | Obey | Olver | Ortiz | Pallone |
| Pascrell | Pastor | Paul | Payne | Pearce |
| Pence | Perlmutter | Peterson (MN) | Peterson (PA) | Petri |
| Pickering | Pitts | Platts | Poe | Pomeroy |
| Porter | Price (GA) | Price (NC) | Pryce (OH) | Putnam |
| Radanovich | Rahall | Ramstad | Rangel | Regula |
| Rehberg | Reichert | Renzi | Reyes | Reynolds |
| Rodriguez | Rogers (AL) | Rogers (KY) | Rogers (MI) | Rohrabacher |
| Ros-Lehtinen | Roskam | Ross | Rothman | Roybal-Allard |
| Royce | Ruppersberger | Rush | Ryan (WI) | Salazar |
| Sarbanes | Saxton | Schakowsky | Schiff | Schmidt |
| Schwartz | Scott (GA) | Scott (VA) | Sensenbrenner | Serrano |
| Shadegg | Shays | Shea-Porter | Shimkus | Shuler |
| Shuster | Simpson | Sires | Smith (NE) | Smith (NJ) |
| Smith (TX) | Smith (WA) | Snyder | Solis | Souder |
| Space | Spratt | Stearns | Stupak | Sullivan |
| Tancredo | Tanner | Tauscher | Taylor | Terry |
| Thompson (MS) | Thornberry | Tiahrt | Tiberi | Tierney |
| Turner | Udall (CO) | Udall (NM) | Upton | Van Hollen |
| Velazquez | Visclosky | Walberg | Walden (OR) | Walsh (NY) |
| Walz (MN) | Wamp | Wasserman Schultz | Watson | Watt |
| Waxman | Welch (VT) | Weldon (FL) | Weller | Wexler |
| Whitfield | Wicker | Wilson (NM) | Wilson (OH) | Wilson (SC) |
| Wolf | Wu | Wynn | Yarmuth | Young (AK) |
| Young (FL) | ||||
| NOES--41 | ||||
| Baird | Boucher | Brady (PA) | Clarke | Costello |
| Dingell | Engel | Farr | Fattah | Grijalva |
| Hinchey | Honda | Hoyer | Jackson (IL) | Jackson-Lee (TX) |
| Kanjorski | Kucinich | Larsen (WA) | Lee | Mahoney (FL) |
| Markey | Marshall | Matsui | McNerney | McNulty |
| Mollohan | Murphy (CT) | Ryan (OH) | Sanchez, Linda T. | Sanchez, Loretta |
| Sestak | Sherman | Skelton | Slaughter | Stark |
| Sutton | Thompson (CA) | Towns | Waters | Weiner |
| Woolsey | ||||
| NOT VOTING--15 | ||||
| Arcuri | Conaway | Doyle | Edwards | Faleomavaega |
| Fortuno | Gutierrez | Hastert | Kuhl (NY) | Lewis (CA) |
| Lewis (GA) | Oberstar | Sali | Sessions | Westmoreland |
The Chairman (during the vote): Members are advised there are 2 minutes remaining in the vote.
So the amendment was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
Ms. Foxx: Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Chairman: The Clerk will designate the amendment.
The text of the amendment is as follows:
Amendment No. 33 offered by Ms. Foxx:
In title I, under the heading "Office of the Secretary and Executive Management", after the first dollar amount insert "(reduced by $1,241,000)".
Ms. Foxx: Mr. Chairman, this amendment would reduce the Office of General Counsel in the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management account to the FY 2007 level representing a $1.241 million reduction from $14 million to $12,759,000. The bill's current funding level for this office represents a 10 percent increase over FY 2007, enacted.
There has been at least $105.5 billion in Federal spending over 5 years authorized by the House Democrat leadership this year. The current Federal debt is $8.8 trillion, roughly $29,000 for every U.S. citizen.
This is growing by over $1 billion a day. We know that because every day we walk down the halls of these buildings here, and we see the signs that the Blue Dogs have put out, which remind us what the current Federal debt is and how much it is for every single U.S. citizen.
Spending on the programs, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, is out of control, and within a generation will force either significant cutbacks in services and benefits or massive tax increases. We know that is already happening because the Democratic majority has already recommended the largest tax increase in the history of this country through their budget they adopted earlier this year.
The Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office have been warning Congress that the growth in direct spending, for instance, spending that is on autopilot and outside the annual spending process, is occurring at an unsustainable rate due to well- known demographic trends and other factors. That spending, subject to the annual spending process, has also grown exponentially and must be brought under control.
This amendment is one step of many necessary steps enforcing fiscal discipline and sanity upon the Federal Government and out-of-control Federal deficit spending. We must restore fiscal discipline and find both commonsense and innovative new ways to do more with less. The Federal budget must not grow faster than American families' ability to pay for it.
We have been hearing a lot here tonight about fiscal responsibility and spending, taxes and deficits. There was a lot of talk about these things during the last election. I think there is a lot of confusion and misinformation out there right now, and I want to take a few minutes to give people a heads-up on what's going on.
This debate and all this talk need some context and some simple facts. Speaker Pelosi said on September 12, 2006, "Democrats are committed to ending years of irresponsible budget policies that have produced historic deficits. Instead of piling trillions of dollars of debt onto our children and grandchildren, we will restore pay-as-you-go budget discipline."
If you want to know exactly what's not going to happen to the Federal budget under this Congress, listen to that statement. PAYGO will not touch a cent of the trillions of dollars with which we have saddled our children and grandchildren. Furthermore, new spending will be proposed and taxes raised to pay for it.
That's what we are seeing here, and that's what this debate is all about. The plan is to spend more than ever, repeal tax relief and allow the trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities to go on unreformed, all under the veneer of fiscal responsibility called PAYGO.
I am down here now because I want people to know this, and to know what it means. I want to put this debate in context.
This bill and the others we will debate in the coming weeks mean that the Federal Government is going to cost you more. You are going to pay more than you ever have before in taxes. I think we need to talk about that.
People can deny it and spin it any way they want, but the cost of the Federal Government is going to increase under the current fiscal plan. This is in spite of the fact that Americans already pay a staggering amount of money, but Democrats want more. They always do and they always will, even though the average American worked about 125.6 days in 2005 to pay for Federal, State and local spending.
Guess where the largest part of it went. To the politicians right here in Washington. In 2005, the average American worked about 83 days to pay for Federal spending. Guess what, it's not enough. These numbers are set to increase as far as the eye can see.
Now, let's just put Federal spending into context.
The Chairman: The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Ms. Foxx: Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent, since the House was not in order, for another minute.
The Chairman: The gentlewoman will have another minute, but the Chair will, for the edification of all Members, point out that the very able timekeepers do stop the clock when Members are interrupted.
Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from North Carolina?
There was no objection.
Ms. Foxx: Let's just put Federal spending into context. Do you know that the United States Federal Government is on track to spend more money next year than Germany's entire economy in 2005? Germany is and has been the third largest economy in the world.
There are only two countries in the world with entire economies larger than the U.S. Government budget, the United States itself and Japan. Do you know that next fiscal year, the fiscal year we are considering now, the U.S. Government is on track to spend $700 billion more, $700 billion more. That's more than the entire Chinese economy in 2005.
We are on a spending spree that needs to stop. It's called a tax-and- spend policy. That's the model. It hasn't changed.
So I urge my colleagues to vote "yes" on this amendment and make a very small dent in this unsustainable fiscal policy.
Mr. Price of North Carolina: Mr. Chairman, I rise to accept the amendment, but I want to make clear that we are doing it in the spirit that we accepted earlier amendments. That is, if no one on the other side of the aisle is willing and able to defend the Bush administration and their budget request and their departmental operations, then it's not clear to us why we should take that on. We have had a steady stream of invective tonight, a lot of ideology, a lot of bureaucratic bashing, and not very much attention to the specifics of this very carefully drawn budget.
Now, you wouldn't have known it from the last presentation, but let me tell you what this amendment does. The amendment cuts the funding for the general counsel in the Department $1.2 million below President Bush's request. Now, it's not about earmarks. It's not about the history of the parties and their ideologies. It's about cutting $1.2 billion below President Bush's request for the general counsel in the Department of Homeland Security.
Now, Members can make their own decision about whether that's wise. But as for us, we don't intend to oppose the amendment.
Mr. Campbell of California: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I want to clarify again that the gentleman from North Carolina just said that this amendment proposed by Ms. Foxx cuts $1.24 million from the President's request.
It is true that, in fact, it proposes to spend less on the Office of General Counsel, which is the attorneys, than what the President has proposed. But that does not make it a cut. Because what it proposes to do is leave the spending for the Office of General Counsel, for the attorneys, in the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management at exactly the same level they had last year.
I really have a hard time understanding how it is always a cut when it is less of an increase than you want it to be, or than somebody wants it to be, in this case, I suppose, than the President wants it to be. But we are not looking at this as Republican spending or Democratic spending, we are looking at it as spending.
The reason, I am not sure that it's been made quite as clear as perhaps it ought to be, that in the Democrats' budget that you all passed a month or so ago, where you moved towards a balanced budget, and I take you at your word that it's your intention to, at some point, get to a balanced budget, but you did it by enacting, proposing, I guess it's the second largest tax increase in American history, which means that as you increase spending on things, you intend to then balance the budget by increasing taxes.
That is clearly what you are going to do. That is what your budget does, and you have made it very clear through your PAYGO provisions what you intend to do. When you increase spending, going to balance the budget will increase taxes.
So with this amendment and with every other amendment we are looking at, we are saying here that we are not going to increase spending in the Office of General Counsel by $1.2 million. That is $1.2 million of additional spending that will not occur if this amendment passes.
But that means it is $1.2 million of taxes that you all won't raise if this amendment passes. Now that works on this amendment, it works on various other amendments that will be coming up through the evening. So it's more than just an academic exercise about whether or not a certain department's budget should be increased.
It, in fact, affects, Mr. Chairman, people at home today now watching this. Is this $1.2 million that you want to see your taxes increase to spend? I think not. I think most of the people on this side believe not; and that is really what we're talking about, because if you say, as you did in your budget, that you will increase whatever taxes you need to to get to a balanced budget, then this $1.2 million is $1.2 million of money that you will take out of Americans' pockets that you're not taking now.
And it's really more than that, because if this were to go in, then next year there's a new base, and it's a higher base, and if you increase it another 10 percent beyond that, then it's another $1.22 million; and if you increase it again, it's another $1.44 million. And it goes on and on, and so that over a 5-year period this $1.2 million magically turns into about $6 million or so of people's money that gets spent, and which you will propose, undoubtedly, to increase taxes to cover so that you can balance the budget.
We can balance this budget, and we can balance it without taking any more money out of Americans' pockets. And we can balance it by passing amendments like this and simply asking government to live with the money they have now. This is not a cut, just live with the money you have now.
Can't this General Counsel's Office, can't these attorneys operate for another year on the same amount of money that they got last year? I think they can.
Mr. David Davis of Tennessee: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the gentlelady from North Carolina for offering this amendment. Any time we can save $1.2 million, I think we ought to do it.
We have Americans sitting across our great fruited plain tonight listening to this debate. They've just gotten up from their dinner tables, trying to make decisions on how they can balance their own budgets.
When we first came to Congress, I'm a new Member of Congress. I came out of the Tennessee Legislature. When we came here, we talked about open government and transparency, and we're going to be the most honest government in Congress ever; also talked about gas prices are going to be brought down rather than go up. Those are just some of the things that were promised.
Well, American families are sitting around their dinner tables tonight trying to decide how they're going to balance their own budget, and they're looking to us here in the Congress to make sure that we don't put an extra burden on them by raising their taxes and raising these appropriation requests.
I came to the Congress out of the Tennessee Legislature, as I said, and I was known for open government and transparency. That's one of the ways I was able to win my election. And that's exactly what people want in this Congress. They want a Congress that they can feel good about, that we're going to be honest with them and we're going to spend their tax dollars wisely.
Ronald Reagan once said, we don't have a $1 trillion debt because we don't tax enough. We have a $1 trillion debt because we spend too much. And anything we can do to help control those tax dollars and that spending is exactly what we need to do.
We need that transparency and that accountability as we move forward, and we don't need secret slush funds. We don't need to come in after we pass bills, later on, and then drop in pieces of legislation called earmarks. That was another promise that was made during the last elections, that those would be open and transparent. We don't need to drop those in later, where the American people don't have an understanding.
They understand they've got to make their house payments. They understand they've got to fill up their vehicles and their cars with this gas that was going to have lower gasoline prices. They understand that. But they certainly need to understand, as well, what we're voting on. We need to be open and accountable.
It's interesting to me, just looking back at some of the things that were said by the Democrat leadership. Back on September 14 of 2006, the Speaker of this House said, this is a place where we really need to throw up the shades and pull back the curtains. We have to have the fullest possible disclosure. It has to be on earmarks and appropriations and authorizations and on taxation, and it has to be across the board with no escape hatches.
Well, I stand in support of this amendment, so we can make sure that we throw up the shades and make sure that we're held accountable.
I'd like, again, to thank the gentlelady from North Carolina for her leadership on this amendment.
And with that, I'd like to yield my time to the gentlelady from North Carolina.
Ms. Foxx: Mr. Chairman, I want to say that I thank my colleagues for coming and supporting my amendment tonight. I thank them for the points that they are bringing up.
The gentleman from Tennessee is doing an excellent job in his first year here in the Congress.
I also want to thank my colleague from California who made a really excellent point that is something that needs to be made over and over again. When we try to cut back additional spending, it is always a cut, not raising money. Not raising spending is a cut to Democrats. And I think that's a point that needs to be made over and over again. Not increasing spending is a cut. That's not the way the general public sees it.
I also want to point out the fact that we are working very hard to bring us to the point where we could have a balanced budget.
Americans do have to live with a balanced budget. Individual Americans have to. They have to live with the money they have now. But Congress doesn't do that. And this Congress particularly is looking for every way it possibly can to spend additional money and to tax the American public, which is certainly taxed enough.
This seems like, to the majority party, that this, again, is a cut. But Everett Dirksen, one of my heroes, said, a million here and million there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. That was during the time when they were not billions.
Mr. Terry: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I do appreciate your patience as some of us exercise our frustration and try and make a point or two. And I want to commend the gentlelady from Virginia for offering this amendment to cut $1.241 million from the Office of General Counsel and the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management account from the fiscal year 2008 level that's being proposed here.
It would still be an increase, but there's two areas that I want to highlight with my frustration, and one is, with an overall level of antagonism and kind of vitriolic partisanship that's occurring here, and I think a lot of it's a frustration or results from our frustration.
For example, in the last year or so, as our friends in the now majority, then minority, were bringing up and talking about how we were spending so much and that we were out of control, and I've got to tell you, I voted against some of our appropriation bills because I thought that they were too high.
The interesting part is when people in my district would come up, having bought into this rhetoric, I said, but you don't understand that we're fighting with them every day to keep it as low as it is. I said, if they're in charge, just wait.
Well, here we are with the first bill, and it's a 13.6 percent increase over last year's appropriation. And we had a speaker up here earlier that talked about building that base. You increase it 13.6, and then next year, when you increase it 13.6, just the exponential increases in the budget.
When you look at those that we passed last year, we are barely above the inflation rate in these discretionary accounts, but yet we were criticized by the now majority for being too "spendy."
So I see the irony, and most of it was, you know, we tried to tell people last year that this is just their campaign nasty rhetoric. But it seems odd to me that just their first bill they're going to increase it so dramatically.
Now, I'll tell you another area of my frustration was coupled with the criticism from the now majority last year about earmarks and the process. And we passed a bill last year that altered the process for earmarks, and it was one that I thought was very appropriate because it dealt with earmarks by spreading sunshine on the process. And I really believe that sunshine is always the best disinfectant. So we adopted a process that embraces sunshine. What it means is that somebody had to have ownership for an earmark request, and that the earmark request had to go through what we would deem regular order, which means you submit it to the appropriations subcommittee staff, then I would go and testify in front of that subcommittee on my earmark; we could have give and take and an intellectual conversation about that, and it would be then voted upon by that subcommittee, which would then raise up to the committee level where that earmark or that Member request would then be reviewed again.
The most important part of the process is when you get it out of the appropriations arena and bring it to the House floor where everyone can then see it and determine whether or not there should be an amendment to strike that particular provision from the appropriation bill. This is when everyone then gets to be part of the process of making sure that it's a valid, well, whatever is determined to be valid, but whether it's not, you know, a rainforest in Iowa City or some type of pet project like that.
I remember last year we voted probably almost on every appropriation bill at least a dozen amendments to strip out these type of really pet projects that just really didn't mean much for the Nation, but certainly may have meant something for a neighborhood. Now, most of those failed, although I voted in favor of most of them.
Mr. Neugebauer: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the gentlewoman's amendment. You know, I think sometimes we get a little crass around here and we think, oh, it's just $1 million, it's just $1.2 million. But the people back in the 19th District of Texas still think that $1.2 million is a lot of money. In fact, it's their hard-earned money that we're debating on the floor of this House tonight. I think sometimes we forget that.
One of the things that I am very proud of is the fact that our economy has been growing at a very strong rate for the last few years. We found a novel idea about leaving more of the American taxpayers' money in their pocket, and what happened? The economy started getting better, more jobs.
More people today, Mr. Chairman, own a home than any other time in the history of this country. More people working today than any other time in the history of this country. And why is that? Because we're creating jobs. And who are creating those jobs? Businessmen all over this country.
And one of the things that concerns me about this budget process that we've gone down, and it's been alluded to tonight, is really what we're talking about tonight is tax increases, because we know that this budget is going to be financed with more taxes.
And, quite honestly, the people in the 19th District of Texas believe they are paying enough taxes. In fact, they believe that Congress doesn't have an income problem. It has a spending problem. And it is one that they are looking to our leadership to begin to solve. As was alluded to a while ago, you cannot spend your way out of a deficit.
One of the things that concerns me most about this budget process is, we are also going to be asked to vote on things we can't see right now, but we are going to trust somebody. In other words, what we are going to do is, we are going to be asked to vote on these appropriation bills, and then in August the chairman of the Appropriations Committee is going to tell us what we voted on.
You know what? The people in the 19th District of Texas voted to send Randy Neugebauer to the United States Congress to review legislation, review appropriations, determine whether they think that that is in their best interest, and vote on it. And they kind of think that it would be a good idea, before I voted on something, that I knew what was in that piece of legislation. But yet we are going to have appropriation bills where we are going to vote on those, and then earmarks are going to be airdropped into those bills and mysteriously are going to be revealed to all of us.
Can you imagine being in your home district and the paper calls you up and says, "I see what you voted on." And you say, "I'm sorry. I haven't read the paper this morning. I haven't seen what I have voted on," because the earmarks were not disclosed in the bills that we are considering. Now, I don't know about in your home district, but in my home district that doesn't make a lot of sense.
What we need is transparency here. We have a lot of very smart people in Congress, and while the chairman may believe he is a very smart person, and he may be, I don't know, but I believe that I know more about the 19th District and some of the priorities in that community than the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. And the people in the 19th District are relying on Randy Neugebauer to make sure that that interest is represented here.
Now, one of the things that we have to begin to do is to do what we said we were going to do. And this group, when they got the leadership, they ran on a platform of we are going to be more transparent, that people are going to get to see all of the spending bill at one time, that they are not going to be in pieces and parts, and there are not going to be deals cut in conference; that when these spending bills are brought to the floor of the House of Representatives, we are going to know what is in those bills. And that should be the way it is.
But now, as we get into this process, we find out that, no, that is not the way it is going to be; that we have a new rule, and the new rule is that we will let you know when it is time for you to know.
Well, you know what? The people in America think that the time for a United States Congressman to know what is in a bill is not after he has voted or she has voted on that bill, but while and before they voted on that bill.
We said we were going to come down and bring these bills onto the floor. We were going to look at them, peruse them, that we were going to have time to look at them. And we have not kept that promise, and that is a shame. It is a shame that the American taxpayers are getting rooked with this appropriation process.
Mr. Burton of Indiana: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I have been here in this Chamber for a long time, and I was here in the minority back in the early 1980s when my colleagues over there were running this place. They ran this place for 40 years. For 40 years they ran this place, and they ran the budget right into the ground and raised taxes and spent more money.
But they became reformed, like some ladies of the evening are reformed. And they changed their spots and said, we have got to do something about spending in the Congress because the Republicans took over for 12 years, and they didn't like the way we ran this place. They said we were spending too much money, and they went on a tirade time after time, saying that they needed to be back in power because they were going to be fiscally responsible, and they were going to control spending, and they were going to do everything they did not do for 40 years when they had control.
I used to walk past my colleagues' offices when we were in charge, and they had big signs out in front of their offices: Today the national debt went up this much and today spending went up this much, and it is all because of the Republicans, they were implying.
Well, they got control back and what has happened? They have authorized $105.5 billion in new spending over the next 5 years. And they complain because we want to cut $1.241 million out of this bill. Just $1.241 million, not billions but a million. And you don't like that. And we are keeping the spending at last year's level.
My colleagues on this side of the aisle do not want to vote for a balanced budget amendment. They will tell you they want to balance the budget. But when a balanced budget amendment comes to the floor, they almost all vote against it because they know where their power lies, and that is in spending and taxes, spending and taxes; and that is what they are going to do.
The tax cuts that President Bush and this Congress, back in the early part of the Bush administration, put in place, they want those tax cuts to expire. And in Indiana alone, that means that most of the people in my State will have a $2,200 per person tax increase because the tax cuts expire. They want those to expire. They want to spend more money like they are doing right now. They want to extend spending over the next 5 years by $105 billion. And yet they are the fiscally responsible people in this body.
I would just like to say to my colleagues and anybody else who is paying attention that they really ought to look at history. They really ought to look at what the Democrats said before they took power, and then they ought to look very seriously at what they are doing right now. They want more taxes. They want more spending. They want more control. And that is exactly what they did the 40 years they had control before the Republicans took office and the Bush administration.
There is no question that when we were in charge, we spent too much money. But compared to them, we are pikers. And the American people are going to find out once again how much these people spend and what big spenders they are and what big taxers they are. It is going to happen.
Hopefully, the American people will get the message and put the right people back in charge.
Mr. Tiberi: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the gentlewoman from North Carolina's amendment, and I too will echo the words of the gentleman from Indiana that it is disappointing to see what we are doing here tonight; when the American people spoke loud and clear last November for transparency, for more openness in government, and what we have is less transparency and less openness in government.
I think you will see tonight and tomorrow a series of amendments that will try to strike that balance that the American people spoke so loudly about in November.
Tax and spend is back. Today is just the beginning. I believe what we will see in the next 11 appropriation bills is a lot more spending that the American people are going to be very surprised about.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina.
Ms. Foxx: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate my colleague from Ohio's yielding to me, and I appreciate the comments that he made.
I want to also echo how much I appreciate our colleague from Indiana, who has been in the House for several years and came through a time when the Democrats were in the majority. And as he points out, they were in the majority for 40 years, and they did spend this country almost into a situation where we could not get ourselves out of it. And I appreciate his bringing that up again. We need to do it over and over and over again, reminding the American people what they did.
I, frankly, thought that when they took the majority this time that they would act differently as they had promised in the election. But we now have what we know is a house of hypocrisy because they promised a lot to the American people and they have not fulfilled those promises.
I have been particularly disappointed in the Blue Dogs. As somebody has said, there are these charts all over our office buildings, and they tell us over and over and over that the current Federal debt is $8.8 trillion, roughly $29,000 for every United States citizen, and growing by $1 billion a day. But where are those Blue Dogs when we need them? Where are they, calling for fiscal restraint? They are going right along with their leadership, going ahead and increasing the deficit every day and doing all that they can to increase the deficit. I would like to know where they are and why they aren't being responsible, as they promised they would be.
And I want to give us another quote to tie into what my colleagues have been saying. This is from Speaker Pelosi in a floor speech she made on January 7: "After years of historic deficits, this new Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: pay as you go, no new deficit spending. Our new America will provide unlimited opportunity for future generations, not burden them with mountains of debt."
And yet, as has been pointed out over and over and over again, there has been at least $105.5 billion in new Federal spending over 5 years that has been authorized by the House Democrat leadership this year. That doesn't sound to me like we are committed to a higher standard of "pay as you go, no new deficit spending."
I am also concerned about what this is doing to the American public and how cynical it is making the people. They can't count on the Democrats to do what they said they were going to do.
We have also heard tonight that we are trying to slow down the process, and I checked about that in terms of what happened last year on this bill. It took 2 full legislative days to debate this bill last year during this process, and the Democrats offered over 70 amendments to that bill. I find it really ironic that the chairman of the Appropriations Committee now says to us, as the Republicans, that we are trying to slow down the process when we are exercising our responsibility as American citizens to try to slow down this incredible spending that the Democrats want to do, increase the deficit, increase taxes. They are saying to us, you are trying to slow down the process.
They wanted this week to do four complete appropriations bills. They frittered away their time for 3 months, blamed it on the minority, saying they are not in control of what is going on here.
Mr. Pearce: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I rise tonight to talk a little bit about what we as Members of the House owe the American public, what the people who elect this House deserve and expect.
The first thing they deserve and expect is honest conversation. They deserve fiscal responsibility. They deserve openness and transparency. They deserve fairness from us.
Now, the bill in front of us, the appropriation bill in front of us tonight, spends about $4.3 billion more than the same type of bill last year. That is almost a 14 percent increase. If you look at where the increase is, about $4 billion is in first responder grants. Now, that would seem on the surface of it to be adequate and fair. That is something that the American people might like. The first responders do expect and deserve good treatment.
But when we understand from the past appropriation processes that there is almost $5 billion left in this fund for first responders to draw from that they have not yet taken out from past appropriations and we go ahead and add $4 billion on top of it now, it causes the American public to say, Why? What is it that we are getting?
The American public will stand for things that seem right and seem justified, but in order to get the $4 billion to put into this fund, our friends on the other side of the aisle are increasing taxes, the second largest tax increase in American history.
Now, how is that important?
I will tell you that the Governor of New Mexico said it best: Lowering taxes creates jobs. The corollary of that is also true; raising taxes depresses jobs. Raising taxes stagnates the economy. It does away with the vitality that any country is looking for.
So, when Ireland wanted to improve its economic state, it began to lower taxes. When it lowered taxes on internal corporations, they had a surge of growth. But when they lowered taxes on external corporations, companies began to move to Ireland and create a grand, booming economy and new jobs in Ireland, and for the first time in the Irish history they have moved their economy tremendously forward because they cut taxes.
Now, what we are doing in order to create the $4 billion in just this one appropriations bill is to raise taxes. We are going to stagnate the American economy. We have created an about 7.7 million jobs in the past 2 or 3 years. It has been an excellent economy, one that started off in a recession, the recession that started at the end of the Clinton years, and that recession then moved forward. And 9/11 shocked us into the recession again; the Global Crossing scandal, the Enron scandal, the WorldCom scandal that shocked us into recession even further. But the Bush administration and this Congress passed two successive tax cuts which began to revitalize the economy, and that revitalization is now at risk because of the way that the Democrats in this Congress are willing to put $4 billion into this one fund that has a surplus of over $5 billion in it.
Now, the lady from North Carolina is taking a small attack on this whole increase. She's saying, quite simply, let's just don't pay the attorneys $1.2 million that they received. A $1.2 million increase is not needed for attorneys. The people in this country need good-paying jobs, they need a good economy, they need a sound economy and a good government, and that good government is being denied in the guise of providing another $4 billion into a fund that still has a surplus of over $5 billion to it.
So, tonight I would recommend that we all look carefully at the lady from North Carolina's amendment, and that we support it as the first increment of many in reducing the cost of this particular bill.
The deficit spending for the government doesn't occur one large lump at a time, it occurs one small piece at a time. And the lady from North Carolina has adequately stated, let's just not do it. Let's level fund. Let's fund at the same amount that we gave last year.
That is a reasonable thing for the American people to want to see. The American people deserve and expect this fiscal responsibility, for us to spend the money as if it were our own because they are trusting us with it. They put us in a position of stewardship over that money, and yet here we are throwing the money into a fund that is not being spent adequately yet. And in order to get more money to put in there, we are raising taxes.
Mr. Carter: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Well, we are right back doing what we said we were going to do because we think it's important. We are talking about cutting back the level of administrative costs that we had last year. And you know, for a whole year, almost 2 years, the now majority, then minority, told us what a lousy job the Department of Homeland Security was doing, and in some ways I agreed with them. Well, I don't give raises to people who do lousy jobs. I don't think that's the way you ought to do it. I don't think you just automatically get a raise in this world, that your department should automatically give an increase if you're not doing the job. And in some areas I think a message needs to be sent that you hold the line and do the job we paid you to do, and you will be doing what we want you to do, and then we will talk about what your needs are for the future.
But I think the present, going back to the 2007 budget numbers, is the proper thing to do. I support the gentlelady's amendment. It is about telling the American people that we are ready to tighten the belt and show fiscal responsibility. We are not willing to push spending levels so high, as this process is doing in the Democratic plan, to where, once again, if you look at their budget, and it has been talked about tonight over and over, if you look at it, it is an inevitable road to a massive tax increase, which, quite frankly, as my friend from New Mexico was saying, is not good for the United States.
So, once again, let's let the sunshine in. As the sun rises over the mountain, let it shine on this appropriation bill. And let this appropriation bill be open to all in the United States. And how do we do that? Well, one thing we've got to do is we've got to talk with the chairman; he has got to be convinced to put some light on the process of earmarks.
And I want to make something very clear, Mr. Chairman, nobody on this side of the aisle is fighting for their earmark. We are asking clearly, whatever the process may be, we want to be able to see it so we can do something about it. The American people told us, do something about earmarks. We wrote a law that would work, the Democrats agreed, and now all of a sudden the whole process is behind closed doors. And somebody, and I am not sure exactly yet who, will be behind those doors to make the decisions of how Member-initiated projects will be funded.
This debate is not about Member-initiated projects. The debate is about letting us see, while we still have a chance to do something about it, and don't airdrop this into committee where it can't be done. I don't think this is hard to figure out. I think this is an easy process, and that is a process that the chairman can work with us on and come up with a solution for.
It is important, Mr. Chairman, that we have sunshine upon the earmark process. And if we get that, I think we will have what the American people asked us for in the last election. It is very critical.
Mr. Serrano: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
You know, I tried listening to this debate and coming to a conclusion that we were discussing something important. But here's my feelings: If I was a highly paid Republican consultant, although that's redundant, but if that's what I was, I would say to you guys you are making a terrible mistake; somebody misinformed you on what bill this is. This is not the Labor-H bill, where you would go after labor unions, which you always do, where you would not care about funding programs for education, which you always do, where you would leave children behind for a long, long time.
I could understand if you did it there. If this was the VA-HUD bill, I could understand all these desires to cut because, what the heck, you send people to war, and then you don't want to fund the Veterans Hospital Administration. I understand that. You don't want to do housing. I understand that. If this was any other bill, I would understand the strategy. But this is the bill that every right-winged radio talk show host says you're the best on, homeland security, protecting the homeland, making sure that there is never another terrorist attack. And this gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price) gives you a well-thought-out bill that takes care of the needs for protecting the homeland, and you spend the last X amount of hours trying to tear it apart because we are spending too much time, and it is driving up the deficit.
Now, I don't know how many people were around when I spoke the last time, and I reminded you that there is a deficit; a deficit created by going into a war that was built on lies and bad information; a deficit created by refusing to bring the troops home now, or soon, like we had suggested, but keeping this war going and spending a lot more money; a deficit created by reducing the taxes of the richest people in the country, while squabbling over giving the little guy a minimum-wage increase.
So, all I want to tell you today, as a friendly person and kind, gentle-hearted person that I am, is that someone has given you some bad information. This is not any of those other bills that you are known for bashing. This is not the one that will leave children behind. This is the one that is supposed to be the hallmark of your existence as a party. This is national security. This is protecting the homeland. How could you cut this bill?
But you know something? Mr. Price is right. If you are not going to protect your administration's programs, then we are certainly not going to waste a lot of time over here trying to debate you on it. So, go ahead and destroy protecting the Homeland Security Department. Go ahead and turn your back on securing the motherland. Go ahead and do it all. We will just stand here and wait it out. It may take days, but there's where you're heading.
Mr. McHenry: Mr. Chairman, I have a point of order.
The Chairman: The gentleman will state his point of order.
Mr. McHenry: Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order that the rules of the House state that all discussions must be directed towards the Chair.
The Chairman: That is true.
Mr. McHenry: And Members should be reminded that discussions of debate on the floor should abide by decorum and direct their comments to the Chair.
The Chairman: The gentleman's point of order is correct. Many Members today have failed to live up to that rule. Members should be reminded that remarks are to be directed to the Chair.
Mr. McHenry: I thank the Chair.
Mr. McCotter: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
I greatly appreciate the compassionate concern of the previous speaker for the well-being of the Grand Old Party. It seems that compassionate conservatism these days is far more contagious than many expected and even I would have hoped. I will also tell you that prolonged exposure to the speeches of Ronald Reagan will quickly cure you of that.
I would also like to point out to the gentleman, through the Chair, that he points out the rich Republican lobbyists that this town is so awash in. Well, I have good news for him and bad news for the rich Republican lobbyists that are more highly paid these days than the Democrats, as they are now in the majority, which is why you will see so many foreign cars driving around with Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers on them in our Nation's Capital, if not in the Motor City where the UAW might find them.
I was told that we are antilabor. As the grandson and son of union members, whose voting record was better on CAFTA than 13 Members of the new majority, I take umbrage at that statement. As the son of schoolteachers, who has a good voting record on education matters, I take umbrage at that. And in terms of voting to send our troops to war and then not voting to fund our veterans, I would point out that in the new majority there are those who voted to send our troops to war and then voted not to fund our soldiers. So let us be careful with our accusations and how we impugn one's motivations.
Interestingly, we are not content with the war overseas, and now we see a case where we are going to engage in class warfare over here at home at a very time when we should be united.
It is these types of situations that, when I try to explain government and what I do to my wife and I's 10-year-old daughter Amelia, that I spend a lot of time scratching my head, which would explain my balding pate, because I find this place very frustrating.
To the gentleman, I know the majority has tried very hard to work on this bill, and it has been called a "delicate, well-thought-out document." If that were the case, how can $1.2 billion be accepted in such a facile fashion at the drop of a hat to simply pacify a minority and to get them to stop addressing this bill? $1.2 million remains a lot of money. And it would be, I would hope, wrong of people to perceive that $1.2 million could either be taken from or put into a bill simply for reasons of convenience and operations of the floor of the United States House of Representatives.
But these are the problems that tend to come with governing, as my own party found out. We got to sit in power for 12 years, some of us for far less than that, and we watched and we watched and we watched as the spending and the debt continued to mount and our Nation's taxpayers and families and our party was no longer entrusted by the American people to govern. But I remember at the time I would point out that a lot of those appropriation bills that so many people decried throughout that election were vastly bipartisan exercises in governance, and that there were many votes on this side of the aisle for the excessive spending, and many votes on the other side of the aisle for excessive spending.
The rub then came when the majority party at the time, our Republican Party, was accused of spending too much on too many things and for deficit spending.
Today we flash forward, and what do we find? We find a situation where we have just recently passed a budget. I didn't vote for it. None of my Republican colleagues voted for it. But it was duly passed.
What did that budget do? That budget promised billions in new spending in reserve accounts. Billions in new spending. What else did it promise? What else did it promise? It promised the largest tax increase in American history to pay for it.
Now, today, as we go through this appropriation process, we see that some of the promises they are attempting to keep in the new majority. That would be the billions and billions in new spending. Does one not believe that they are going to do everything they can to go through and have the largest tax increase in American history to pay for it, or, in the alternative, they will continue to see the deficit and the debt mount?
Mrs. Bachmann: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for her wonderful amendment this evening.
Mr. Chairman, I am new to this body, and one thing I found is that in Minnesota, we have a little bit different definition of "transparency."
"Transparency" in Minnesota means an individual stands on one side of a divide, and they can look through to see something on the other. Here in the case of this bill, you have the taxpayer and you have Members of Congress trying to look through a divide, and what they see on the other side is a very interesting definition of "transparency."
Mr. Chairman, the first thing that they see is a slush fund for earmarks. And this is something I don't quite understand; the Democrat majority, they are leaving lump sums of money without a specified purpose in legislation being considered by this House and then later authorizing those funds for earmarks in a closed-door conference committee. It is just a real interesting definition of transparency, because the Democrats have created now, Mr. Chairman, a slush fund for earmarks which will be funded by the largest tax increase in American history. This is just so interesting to me, this new definition of "transparency."
Also a part of this definition is that earmarks will no longer be allowed to be challenged here on this House floor because under the Democrats' rules, Members will be prohibited from challenging individual earmarks in bills on the floor or debating their merit as long as there is a list of earmarks in the bill.
But what is interesting, Mr. Chairman, is that it won't matter if this list is flat-out wrong, if it is incomplete, or whether the earmark which is one that a Member would like to debate is missing from the list. It is just a real interesting definition of "transparency."
The "truth in labeling" that we are seeing in this bill is also interesting, Mr. Chairman, because earmark-laden bills can now be certified as earmark-free. Real interesting. I guess it depends on what the meaning of "free" is.
Democrats will be allowing their bills to be certified by the majority as earmark-free even if they contain earmarks. So as long as you take a magic wand, Mr. Chairman, and wave it over the bill, you can just say, "Voila, it is now earmark-free." It is kind of like having fat-free french fries. It is something we would all love to have, but it just isn't possible. As long as any bill is certified by Chairman Obey as earmark-free, then, under the House rules, it is earmark-free.
This rule was exploited earlier in February, Mr. Chairman, by the House Democrats when they passed their continuing resolution that contained hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded, hidden earmarks, kind of like those fat-free french fries.
The largest tax increase in history, Mr. Chairman, is in the budget that was passed by the House Democrats, and that will likely be the story. Even though the majority likes to claim otherwise, they will raise taxes by at least $217 billion, Mr. Chairman, in all likelihood most likely $392 billion, and will raise marginal rates, except for the 10 percent rate, and capital gains rates and dividend rates and prevent a full repeal of the death tax, items the American public have indicated they are not for.
Speaker of the House Pelosi had said earlier that the budget should be "a statement of our National values." Well, not only is this budget, Mr. Chairman, the largest in American history, it will sanction the largest tax increase in history upon more American families, because people in Minnesota, Mr. Chairman, my home State, will be paying an average of more than $3,000 a year more to this town, Washington, D.C. Again, a very interesting definition of "transparency."
The budget is going to trigger more tax hikes, and it will greatly increase domestic spending. It will increase nondefense appropriations by $23 billion above what we spent in 2007. That is in addition, Mr. Chairman, to the $6 billion that the Democrats have already added to the omnibus bill and more than $20 billion in the war supplemental.
The American people, Mr. Chairman, are very concerned as well about the unlimited emergency spending, because the Democrat budget is going to abandon the emergency set-aside that was established in last year's budget resolution and change what Congress can call an emergency, unlimited exemption, exempting the Senate spending bill from any limits.
This is really, Mr. Chairman, putting the next election above the next generation, something that none of us should want to do. The Democrats in this bill, unfortunately, have ignored the warnings of the entitlement crisis. Let's not forget, we have heard from the Comptroller General David Walker.
The Chairman: The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mrs. Bachmann was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.)
Mrs. Bachmann: Mr. Chairman, the Democrat majority has once again ignored the dozens of experts, including Chairman Greenspan, including the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and also the Comptroller David Walker, who have pleaded with us, pleaded, Mr. Chairman, with the Congress and given us repeated warnings about the unsustainable rate of entitlement spending.
This is our upcoming economic tsunami, Mr. Chairman. Their budget has turned a blind eye to the impending crisis that is coming upon this next generation. Who among us can look in the eyes of the next generation, knowing what we know of the bill that will be handed to them for the party that we are all having today? Unfunded net liabilities. And yet we can stand here and do nothing to address the concerns and put off any major reform for at least 5 years?
Now is the time, Mr. Chairman, to have true transparency, and I am sad to say that this bill does none of that.
Mr. Gingrey: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, many of our colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle, and I have been listening to this debate for the last 5 hours, have lamented our efforts to highlight objections to not only this bill, but also the underlying process by which all of the appropriations bills, 11, and then 12 later on, will be brought to the House floor this year.
I believe it is crucial that we take this opportunity to register our strong opposition to the process, while I rise in support of the gentlewoman from North Carolina's amendment to cut $1.2 billion out of this homeland security appropriations bill, and that is not a small chunk of change. But it is a process which we believe is neither fair nor open nor in the best interests of the American taxpayer.
Late last year the new majority in this House assured the American public that it would bring transparency and openness to the appropriations process and specifically to this practice which we and the general public very well know now, as they campaigned on this issue last fall, the practice of earmarking.
At a minimum we believe that this commitment, and I think the American people believe as well, or they wouldn't have gained the majority, that it would equal that of the Republican majority in the last Congress, that the sponsors of earmarks would be identified in the bills themselves, whether they were authorizing bills, appropriations bills, indeed even in narrowly drawn tax bills, so that Members could debate and challenge those earmarks if they were found to be egregious on the House floor. Apparently the Democratic majority has very different definitions of "transparency" and "openness" than we do and than the American people do that elected them to this new majority.
The respected chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Wisconsin, how long has he been in this body, 39 years? I think he is going on his 20th term. He has been a former member of and chairman of the Appropriations Committee. He is one of the most respected Members, one of the most knowledgeable Members. He clearly knows what he is doing in regard to not putting these earmarks in the appropriations bill, which he knew would be coming to this floor under an open rule so that we could have a free, a fair, an open debate.
We would accept some earmarks. They are not all bad. Certainly they are not all bad. But the ones that are egregious, that we should have an opportunity to debate on both sides of the aisle and strike.
Now, the chairman has said, well, you know, we are going to go ahead after we finish all these bills, these 11 bills, we are going to publish all of the earmarks that we are considering airdropping in the conference report. They are going to have transparency. They are going to see the light of day, because we are going to put them in the Congressional Record 2 months from now, in August.
But that does not give the Members of this body on either side of the aisle an opportunity. Yes, you can see them, and maybe it will remove the opportunity for the Senate to use a point of order to strike some of these amendments that have been airdropped because all of a sudden they have been published in the Congressional Record. That is not the same as having the opportunity, Mr. Chairman, on the floor to debate and to vote up or down some of these egregious earmarks.
Now, what I want to suggest in my time remaining, I want to suggest to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, why don't you simply then in August bring a bill?
The Chairman: As the Chair held in response to the gentleman from North Carolina previously, Members must address the Chair and not other Members. In the same vein, the Chair must correct the gentleman from Georgia.
Mr. Gingrey: I thank the Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, what I would suggest is that very easily a package of these earmarks, I don't know how many are going to be put in the final conference report; if there are 30,000 earmarks, maybe 15,000 of them in the aggregate in these 11 bills will be published in the Congressional Record and then eventually airdropped in the conference report.
Well, it seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that a bill or resolution through the Appropriations Committee could come to the floor of this House under an open rule, and let us at that point take each one of those earmarks, maybe specified for each of the 11 appropriations bills, and then have our opportunity to vote up or down.
I have been listening to the debate, again, like I said, for a couple or 3 or 4 hours, and nobody has made that suggestion. So I want to try to improve the process, Mr. Chairman, and I want to make that suggestion to the Democratic leadership and to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. It is not too late to do the right thing. We feel like you have done the wrong thing and shut the process down. It is not what the people want, but it is not too late to see the error.
The Chairman: The time of the gentleman has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Gingrey was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.)
Mr. Gingrey: Mr. Chairman, again, the comments that these are dilatory amendments, the subcommittee chairman from North Carolina saying, well, you want to strike a little bit of change here and there, and you are just trying to slow the process down. In some cases, yes. In some cases, like the amendment that we are discussing right now, the gentlewoman from North Carolina, the gentleman from Washington Mr. Reichert, who is a ranking member on the subcommittee, these are not dilatory amendments. These are important policy amendments.
But we are outraged by the policy. And to take my time and make the suggestion of what you can do to correct this, I hope you will take that to heart. I hope the chairman, Mr. Chairman, will take that to heart and give us an opportunity, if not now, at least in August, to vote on these earmarks. That is exactly what you promised the American people, and you need to deliver on that promise.
The Chairman: The Chair wishes to remind Members, as the gentleman from North Carolina pointed out, that remarks are to be addressed to the Chair.
The Chair will admonish Members not to direct remarks to other Members, to the Democratic leadership, or anyone other than the Chair. It is not that the Chair wants all of the attention, but the gentleman from North Carolina has insisted on the rules, and the Committee will abide by them.
Mr. Price of Georgia: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
I appreciate the opportunity to weigh in on this issue, and I commend the gentlewoman from North Carolina for presenting this issue.
The hour is getting late, but I think it is extremely helpful and extremely clarifying for those watching to appreciate that there is a distinction between the different folks rising this evening and drawing attention to the amount of spending.
The gentleman who is presenting this bill said in all sincerity that this bill wasn't about earmarks and it wasn't about ideology. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would beg to differ. It is all about ideology, and it certainly has a lot to do with earmarks.
The ideology we talk about being present in this bill and every other appropriations bill that I have seen that has been filed so far is that there is one side that believes that spending ought to increase to a fare-thee-well. And there is the other side which believes there ought to be responsibility to that spending.
We have already seen the majority party, so far this year, increase authorization for spending by over 50 billion new dollars. We have already seen the new majority adopt a budget which has, depending on who you talk to, the largest tax increase, or the second largest tax increase, in the history of our Nation. That tax increase is to pay for the spending.
So, yes, Mr. Chairman, it is all about ideology. It is also about earmarks because what we have been presented is a new policy by the majority party that allows for a slush fund, a slush fund for earmarks in virtually any appropriations bill that comes to the floor.
So I commend my colleague from Georgia who spoke just before me and offered a solution, an opportunity to bring greater sunshine and greater light to those earmarks. I think that was a well-thought-out proposal.
I suspect there are people watching and saying, what is it that we desire? Why is it that we are drawing attention to what we believe to be an egregious rule? Well, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest what we desire is a decrease in irresponsible spending. It is that irresponsible spending that is causing tax bills for Americans to mount up to unacceptable levels. And, consequently, we believe the slush fund for earmarks ought to be done with, ought to go away. The American people ought to know who is spending their hard-earned tax money, and they ought to be able to hold those folks accountable.
I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the solution to the dilemma in which we currently find ourselves is to have the chairman of Appropriations or somebody in leadership on the majority side say, we won't do that, we won't bring about any earmarks in a conference committee that aren't agreed to by each and every Member of the House individually. Individually, that's what we proposed. In fact, that is what we enacted in our own bill, in our own rules last session.
Mr. Chairman, there is a solution to this. There is an opportunity for us to move onward and make it so the American people are able to have their say, to have each and every one of their Representatives have their say about the kind of spending that is going on here in Washington.
And it is not just our side. If you take the words of the Members of the new majority from the not-too-distant past, after the recent election, when the the majority leader said, "We are going to adopt rules that make the system of legislation transparent so that we don't legislate in the dark of night, and the public and other Members can see what is being done." That is a quote.
Here is another quote. "Words will not do it. I have a good relationship with Representative Roy Blunt. I have a good relationship with Representative John Boehner. We'll work together. We'll include them in decision-making.
"To the extent that we create an atmosphere of mutual respect, the American people will feel more comfortable with Congress."
Mr. Chairman, I suspect you know what I know, and that is that the recent data on the respect with which the American people hold this Congress and this majority is at an all-time low. And I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, that one of the reasons that it is at an all-time low is because of the kind of policies that are being put into place by this majority that make it so that light cannot shine on the amount of spending that is being done in this Congress.
I urge adoption of the amendment. I urge a change to the earmark policy.
Mr. Hensarling: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
First, I want to thank the gentlelady from North Carolina for her amendment. And I want to say, Mr. Chairman, I am very disappointed by some comments I have heard from the other side of the aisle that somehow this is not a worthy debate. I believe one of my colleagues said, I thought I would come to the floor and find us debating something important.
How we spend the people's money, how much money we take from hardworking Americans is a very important matter. How much of the bread we take off of the table of that hardworking teacher in Malakoff, Texas, is a very important matter. How much money we take from the fireman, the fireman in Crandall, Texas, who is working to ensure our safety, and how much of the bread we take off of his table is a very important matter, Mr. Chairman. And not just how much money, but once we take that money, how we spend that money.
We know that the people, the people, decry how the practice of earmarks has been practiced in this House. And I wished when the Republicans were in the majority we would have done a better job. I was often disappointed. I, myself, don't request earmarks, although I know there are many that are worthy.
But at least when this party was in the majority, they woke up and heard the voices of people and said, we need reform. We need accountability. We need transparency. And Members were given that ability to focus sunlight, sunshine, on those earmarks, and they were allowed a process by which to strike them from the bill.
Now I read a number of quotes from our new Democrat majority leadership. The Speaker said, "I would just as soon do away with them," referring to earmarks. She said shortly after becoming Speaker, "We have placed a moratorium on earmarks until a new reform process is in place to ensure the integrity of every earmark that is funded." A new reform process.
So now we discover, Mr. Chairman, that the new reform process is to take it out of the sunshine, hide it in the darkness, take away Members' ability to strike it from the bill, and give that, albeit apparently, to one individual who apparently is all knowing, all seeing, and all powerful when it comes to these earmarks.
I do not believe, Mr. Chairman, that the American people will sit idly by for this practice. Already the Third Estate is letting the people know what is going on. I don't want to personalize the debate, but let me paraphrase from the Wisconsin State Journal. I won't talk about individual Members, but I will talk about the majority.
The Wisconsin State Journal: The Democrats are, and I paraphrase, "now dodging the very reforms they helped to generate." This will "prevent the public and most lawmakers from questioning earmarks until it is too late." Wisconsin State Journal, June 7.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, "Five months after," and again I paraphrase, the Democrat majority, "took control, the promises remain unfulfilled." And what we have, "That's a secretive process, and its final product gets a 'yes' or 'no' vote in each Chamber. This means earmarks will sail through before the press or even most Members of Congress can examine or challenge them." The Cleveland Plain Dealer of June 10.
The Mobile, Alabama, Press Register. "Democrats work ATM," automatic teller machine. "But now that they control the ATM, the Democrats are finding all sorts of excuses to keep the earmark dispenser open for business. Democrats are reneging on their vows of fiscal responsibility just a few months after they won their chance to load the ATM." The Mobile Press Register, June 8.
And the list goes on and on and on.
Mr. Chairman, there ought to be a message loud and clear from the last election. The people want to reform earmarks. This bill, this Democrat majority, this process, takes us in the exact opposite direction, and it is one more reason we need to support the gentlewoman's amendment.
Mr. Flake: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I think at this time of night, it is good to remind those who might have been watching or listening why we are here. First, this bill is $2 billion over the President's request. So it is spending that we simply cannot justify moving forward with.
The second reason we are here debating and still on, I think, the first paragraph of the bill is that the majority has decided to keep earmarks secret until this bill passes and until we get to the conference report when it will be too late to amend or to strike or to challenge those individual earmarks. That is why we are here.
The distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee has said that if this process does not go well, we may just have to get rid of earmarks completely. That would be wonderful. I would gladly sit down for the rest of the appropriations season if we were to do that.
But if we are not going to get rid of earmarks completely, at least we should have a process that even the majority party has said that we need, one that has transparency, one where we actually know what is in the bills, one that has both transparency and accountability.
If you have transparency, if you have Members' names next to earmarks and an indication what entity that earmark is to support, that is a good thing. That is an element of transparency, and it is a good thing that the Democrats put that in their reform bill in January. It was a good move, and I think all of us applaud them for it.
But what good is transparency if you don't have accountability with it? What good is it to know which name is next to an earmark if that request letter is just buried over at the Appropriations Committee? And none of us have seen them; there are some 30,000 earmark request letters sitting over in the Appropriations Committee.
The distinguished chairman said last year that we simply had gotten out of control with earmarks and there is no way, with the staff that we have, to police these earmarks. He was right. He was right. If you don't believe him, you can ask a couple of the Members who are in prison today. We simply haven't policed that process very well.
I would submit it is beyond reason that the Appropriations Committee and its staff can alone police 30,000-some earmark requests. It is simply impossible. So why not release those letters and let the other Members see them? Some 30,000, if you do the math, that amounts to 73 earmarks or so per Member. You can't expect the Appropriations Committee to police those earmarks. It is beyond them.
I think they make a valiant attempt, and that is great, but it is simply beyond reason that you can police that many earmarks. So release them. Let others see them. Let outside groups and others help in that regard instead of keeping those earmark requests secret, and keeping earmarks out of the bills until those bills pass and then drop them in at a time when it is too late to challenge them.
If you want transparency, that's great. Let's have it. Let's also have accountability. That is what we want with this process, and that is why we are here tonight. That is why we are only on the first paragraph of this very large bill.
I would suspect until we reach an agreement that either we will have no earmarks, which would be the best in my view, until we reach that kind of agreement; or we will proceed under a different fashion, we will say we are going to have real accountability, real transparency,
I think we are going to have this same kind of activity.
Because I think that this institution deserves better. Certainly the taxpayers deserve better than the process that they have been given over the past several years.
So I'm pleased that the gentlewoman has offered this amendment. I do support it. There will be many more amendments, I believe, tonight. I plan to offer others myself.
Mr. McHenry: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
We've had a long discussion tonight about my colleague from North Carolina's amendment. I certainly thank her for offering it. I think we've had a healthy debate about the size and scope of government.
I think what the American people understand, Mr. Chairman, is that we should have this debate on the House floor. Mr. Chairman, our colleagues should have this grand debate about whether or not to increase the size and scope of government, even in areas of grave national importance. This is a serious debate. This is a very serious debate, and I think the American people should be proud of the kind of debate we're having today on the House floor.
As a conservative, I can see that there's waste, fraud and abuse in all areas of government, even in the Department of Homeland Security. I think we should be wise with how we spend the taxpayer dollar, even in the Department of Homeland Security.
Even if this President requested tons more money, billions more money, as a conservative I would say, no, Mr. President, we don't need those billions of dollars in new spending. And I must tell you, as a conservative I've been outspoken, trying to hold this President accountable when it comes to spending.
Yet my Democrat colleagues, Mr. Chairman, would say the President requested money, more money for the Department of Homeland Security. I think that was valid in this time of war, in this time of great national security issues.
The President requested more money for intelligence spending; yet this Democrat majority in this House, Mr. Chairman, said no to the President's increase when it came to intelligence spending. Instead, Mr. Chairman, the majority decided to spend intelligence money on this debate about climate change, about global warming. I'm not exactly sure, Mr. Chairman, what this majority was thinking when they allocated intelligence resources, intelligence money to the debate on global warming, but they did. They said that was just.
When the President requested more money for homeland security, a $3 billion increase over last year's funds, the Democrats said that is not enough, and they went $2 billion over that. Mr. Chairman, even in Washington, D.C., $2 billion is a lot of money.
We know that the Department of Homeland Security's well funded, and what we're having a debate on here today, tonight, Mr. Chairman, is whether or not we should lard up the Department of Homeland Security with more bureaucrats at the top level; not people that are screening the airports at the lowest level, not people who are out gathering intelligence at the lowest level, but they're larding it up for the Secretary's budget, for the management's budget. They're not allocating money to get it out on the streets. They're allocating money for more bureaucrats here in Washington, D.C. And as a conservative, even if it's a Republican in the White House and a Republican administration, I will say no to that. We don't need more bureaucrats here in Washington, D.C.
We need more agents out on the streets tracking terrorists. We need more intelligence capabilities out in the streets, catching the bad guy, finding out what they're doing, how they're plotting and planning against us. That's the debate we should have here on this House floor, Mr. Chairman. That's the debate the American people want and deserve.
Mr. Chairman, this is an important debate about how we're going to allocate our homeland security dollars. Should we put it with more bureaucrats sitting in an office in Washington, D.C., or should we spend that money in a better way, to make sure when you go to the airport you have an airport screener, somebody to get you through that line effectively, people that are well-trained to track the bad guys through our intelligence capabilities, that actually have good plans in place if, God forbid, heaven forbid, we have another attack? We don't need more money for bureaucrats in Washington. We need more funding to get the bad guys.
Mr. Chairman, we have a serious debate here tonight, and I think this has been a very worthy debate of this House. My friends and colleague, Mr. Chairman, have all stated their opinions tonight, and I think there's a good consensus from the American people, good consensus from the American people that we need to cut spending to a greater degree.
