Tom Cole

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to my colleague, the distinguished Member from Texas (Mr. Culberson).

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I am going to differ with my friends, obviously, on a number of important issues. First, I think they, probably, without thinking it through, accused us of wanting to roll back a human sex trafficking bill that passed this body unanimously. Absolutely untrue. Nobody has any intention of doing anything like that. It is the administration that said that legislation--a loophole in it--is what caused this crisis. I would dispute that, quite frankly. I think what has caused it is, first and foremost, the President's sending an unmistakable signal, a signal that may have been misinterpreted that, if you manage to get to the United States, you are going to be able to stay. He did that by unilaterally changing and thwarting whole sections of our own immigration law, by doing things that he, himself, had said a year before were unconstitutional. That signal, I think, has been picked up by criminals and turned into a message that has been directed at naive and vulnerable people, saying, if you give us thousands of dollars, we will take you on this journey, get you to the United States, and then you are going to be able to stay. When the President first addressed this problem--again, he was warned in 2012 and 2013 by his own advisers that this might well happen--he did not prepare for it. He submitted a budget that actually cut border enforcement and that cut security aid to the Central American countries so they could secure their own territory. When he finally dealt with this, he said this 2008 law is part of the reason. What this bill does is tweak it. It simply says we are going to treat children coming from the affected areas, from noncontiguous countries, in the same way we treat Mexican children. It has always been a question as to whether or not we should have that distinction. There is no particular reason why somebody from Central America should automatically be treated differently than somebody from Mexico. In addition, I will point out to my friends there is an easier way. Just go to the American Embassy in the country, and if you have got status that would qualify as refugee status, you can make your case there. You don't have to pay thousands of dollars. You don't have to subject yourself to a dangerous journey in the company of criminals. The President, frankly, has said that this is an immigration issue. I don't think it is. I think it is a border crisis, and I think it needs to be dealt with that way. I think the record is, again, pretty clear on this, and that is exactly what we are trying to do. We have acted on a problem the President has identified. When my friends express concern that the majority of these children will be returned, number one, remember they are going to be returned to the custody of their governments. They are going to be returned to the people who are actually responsible for trying to take care of them within their societies. Second, that is exactly what the President said is going to happen. Those were his words. The overwhelming majority of these young people will be returned. The quicker and the more humanely and the more expeditiously we accomplish that, the fewer of them will undertake this journey, and the fewer of these families will be conned out of their money. You are not doing the next people a favor by not dealing with the problem in front of us. Mr. Speaker, in closing, this legislation continues this House's commitment to govern and deal with crises before they become even worse--the shortfall in the highway trust fund, for instance, in the supplemental request. They are all things the American people expect us to deal with before the August district work period. I would urge my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying legislation.

Mr. COLE. Reclaiming my time, I thought we were talking about comprehensive immigration reform--safely after an election I might add. But the President of the United States, who ran in 2008, saying he would have a bill on the floor within 100 days, didn't do it. My friends had basically complete control of this Chamber and the other Chamber. They demonstrated that by passing, again, ObamaCare without a single Republican vote, passing Dodd-Frank, and passing the stimulus bill, so they had the ability to do this and chose not to do it. That is their right. They were in the majority. But please don't lecture us on people stopping individual bills. We have 350 bills, by the way, this Chamber has passed, sitting and waiting for the Senate to consider any of them, any of them. So I recognize, again, there is a great deal of passion here, but that is not what this debate is about. This debate is about a border crisis that we both recognize exist. This debate is to give the President additional resources to deal with that, even though he in some measure contributed to creating it. And this debate is to make sure that we send the message unmistakably: if you subject children to this journey and pay criminals thousands of dollars to bring them across, they are not likely to get to stay--a point that the President of the United States has made. He has said a majority of these children are going to go home. If my friends have a quarrel with that, they should direct that to the President, not to us. In this case, we do think if you don't discourage that, you are going to feed criminal behavior. You are going to put these children at risk, and you are going to destroy the society from which they came. I don't think we can in a single bill have an overall solution to this problem of this level. I personally think it is going to take an effort somewhat similar to what we did in Colombia--in a bipartisan sense, I might add--on the drug trade, where we invested considerable resources in Colombia to help them deal with that problem. I am not going to tell you it is perfect there, but it is considerably better than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. So that is where we worked together constructively and did something good for those societies and something good for our own country. That will probably be the model that has to emerge again in Central America. But, again, that is a problem far ahead of us and legislative in scope. This is a response to a crisis. We think it is the appropriate response. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. I certainly will yield to my friend on that.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let's talk for a minute about the additional money to HHS. That is exactly, by the way, what this does. The difference--and I think there is probably some confusion here--is we are doing it for a short period of time, and then we are going to probably continue to do it next year, but do it within the constraints of the Ryan-Murray budget deal. The President, frankly, hot-wires around the congressional agreement that was made to lower the budget by extending these expenditures to the end of the next fiscal year. So just to reassure my friend, nobody is more interested, I think-- actually, let me put it this way. I think we are both interested in making sure that, when anybody is in the custody of the United States, they are treated humanely and that there are sufficient resources there to do the job. So this does it in the short-term. I would expect in the appropriations process--again, within the overall spending caps that we have both agreed to--we would continue to do that by moving resources from less important areas to more important areas. I am going to disagree with my friend on, I think, his point that most of these folks ought to remain inside the United States. Frankly, I agree with the President of the United States: most of them should not. There is a process, by the way, if you want to apply for refugee status. You do that by going to an American Embassy which is actually in the countries there and they make that determination. You don't do it by breaking the laws of Mexico and breaking the laws of the United States by simply arriving here. The President has said that most of these young people will be returned. The longer they are here, the more you are going to encourage other people to come, the more people will be subjected to that journey that we all know is dangerous and deadly, and the more often criminal enterprises will be enriched as people give them money to transport juveniles to what they think will be permanent residence in the United States when the President of the United States himself says it will not be permanent, that most of them will return. Better to act on this now. Now, again, I will be the first to tell you that I don't expect this to be the final piece of legislation. This is an emergency measure. It is timely, it is focused, and it is funded at an appropriate level. We will be back here again in September. We will be back here working on the appropriations process, no doubt, in a lame duck. Frankly, at that time, the appropriate additional resources will undoubtedly be made available, but they will be made available within the budget caps of the Ryan-Murray deal. I think sometimes when we compare this bill to the budget request the President made, the supplemental request, we really are comparing apples to oranges because the timeframes are much different. Remember, the President's bill also includes wildfire funding. That may be appropriate, but we just don't think it is appropriate in this vehicle, in what ought to be a focused approach. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. I would certainly do that for my friend.

Mr. COLE. I do not. I am prepared to close whenever my friend is.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This is a subject on which, obviously, there is considerable passion and considerable emotion. I respect that on all sides. I will remind my friends who are insisting on immigration, they did actually control the Chamber for 4 years and didn't bring up an immigration bill ever, had two different Presidents who would have signed anything that they cared to pass, and never introduced one.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me pull us back from arguing about rules and procedures to what the real essence of the conflict on the transportation bill is: 357 Members, an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, voted to send the transportation bill to the United States Senate. That bill, by the way, ran through, if I recall correctly, May of next year, giving us enough time to actually then come to what I know both sides want, and that is a longer-term highway bill. What the Senate did was send us back something with fewer dollars and a shorter timeframe that actually reaches simply into December, meaning a lame duck Congress would have to deal with the transportation deal. Not likely to happen, particularly when we will also be dealing with the omnibus spending bill since the Senate, in its infinite wisdom, has been unable to pass a single appropriations bill. So I think cluttering the calendar with the transportation fund dispute and problem in a short timeframe simply isn't wise. We think it was a political game on the part of the United States Senate. But regardless, the position of this House as expressed by a bipartisan vote of 357, is overwhelmingly clear. We want to expedite that and get it back to the other side so hopefully they can see that type of gamesmanship doesn't work and they accede to the position that, frankly, both sides of this Chamber adopted in overwhelming numbers. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 696 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

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

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

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to disagree with my friend on a couple of points that he made. First, I would suggest the President actually hasn't taken action or suggested action. A month ago, he told us that the 2008 sex trafficking law was responsible for his inability to return people to their country of origin, unaccompanied minors. We have been waiting for his corrective for 30 days; instead, Mr. Speaker, we get an open-ended supplemental that goes through from this fiscal year to the end of the next fiscal year with a lot of measures-- some of which, by the way, we agree with--to manage the flow, but absolutely nothing to stop and reverse the flow. So we think, in that absence of leadership from the executive branch, we have acted. We have actually done what a month ago at least he was suggesting ought to be done, giving some discretion and giving some ability to try to deal with the loophole in the law. In the meantime, Mr. Speaker, we have looked at what he put in front of us, and we have decided, look, we can actually offset this money. We don't have to spend extra money. This is a higher priority. We will take money from lower priority areas. We will get us through the end of this fiscal year and through the end of this calendar year, and in that interim time, we will have an opportunity to work with the administration to continue to address the problem within the limits of the Ryan-Murray budget agreement that we agreed to on a bipartisan, bicameral basis not that long ago. Now, Mr. Speaker, this issue of the DACA controversy that we have here, I would like to make the following points: first, nothing in this legislation changes the current state of affairs at all. In other words, what the President has done up to this point is left undisturbed. However, we do believe the abuse of prosecutorial discretion is actually one of the things that contributed to the current crisis that we have--not deliberately, but, frankly, I think the President unwittingly or unknowingly sent a signal that if you get here and you get across our border, you are going to be able to stay. So we want to be very careful that doesn't happen again. In addition, Mr. Speaker, the President has said if Congress doesn't do certain things by such and such a date or by the August work period, then I intend during that time to use my pen and my phone to effect some changes that I want. What is interesting to us, by the way, less than 2 years ago, he said these kinds of things were unconstitutional and couldn't be done by the executive branch. Now, he has changed his view on that. So we are going to finally put in place something that will prevent him in our absence from once again abusing prosecutorial discretion to achieve other aims. With that, I would like to reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Just a few correctives, if I may. We are actually putting in additional resources. We haven't cut resources. It is the President's budget that cut resources. It cut detention beds, enforcement, and aid to the countries in Central America that are dealing with this problem. That is the President's budget. Those things were all corrected in the Foreign Operations budget that has not yet reached the floor, but has been passed by the full Appropriations Committee. I am going to disagree with my friends on the other side that this has anything to do with comprehensive immigration reform. Quite frankly, it does not. It is a border crisis. It has nothing to do with this legislation. The root cause of the problem here are criminals who go back and tell people: if you pay money and subject yourself to a dangerous journey and we get you to the United States, you will be able to stay. That is who is at fault here. That is where the focus ought to be. When my friends point to specific cases, I always point out, number one, we have an avenue called the United States Embassy. In the country, you can go and plead refugee status there. You don't have to travel 1,000 or 2,000 miles across very dangerous country. You simply afford yourself of the available opportunities. Finally, in the President's judgment, most of these children will be returned. That is the President's judgment. Frankly, I think he made that judgment, trying to discourage what is happening now. That is precisely what we are trying to do in this piece of legislation. So I think there is a lot of passion, and it is appropriate because there are some heartwrenching cases, but there is also a lot of political theater here. The reality is, again, most of these children, according to the President, will be returned. The quicker that can happen, the less likely it is that other children will follow them and be subjected to a very dangerous journey. That is what we are trying to achieve. We are going to try to do that in this measure today, but we invite our friends to work with us as we go forward, as I suspect that we will. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE

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

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, on Wednesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule for consideration of two measures, H.R. 3393, the Student and Family Tax Simplification Act, and H.R. 4935, the Child Tax Credit Improvement Act of 2014. The resolution provides a closed rule for consideration of these two measures, as is customary with tax legislation. In addition, the resolution provides for 60 minutes of debate equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means for both H.R. 3393 and H.R. 4935. And it provides for a motion to recommit on each bill. Finally, Madam Speaker, the rule combines both H.R. 3393 and H.R. 4935 before sending it to the other body. Madam Speaker, with tuition prices continuing to climb, more Americans are struggling to plan for and afford higher education. Today's broken Tax Code makes it even harder to pay for college, with 15 complicated, overlapping education provisions that take the IRS 90 pages to explain. We need to simplify education tax benefits so families can actually use them, and we need to get our economy back on track so students and families are earning enough to afford a good education. H.R. 3393 takes a good first step. It consolidates four current tax benefits for higher education, the American opportunity tax credit, the Hope Scholarship credit, the lifetime learning credit, and the college tuition deduction into a new, simplified and, most importantly, permanent tax credit. In addition, H.R. 3393 also includes strong antifraud provisions requiring taxpayers to include on their tax return the name and taxpayer identification number of the student and the employer identification number of the applicable higher education institution. In addition, this rule provides for consideration of H.R. 4935, which modernizes and improves the child tax credit. Originally created in 1997 to help ease the financial burden that families incur when they have children, this credit has failed to keep pace with the cost of raising a child. Initially, it provided a maximum credit of $400 per child. However, under the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, this credit was expanded to $1,000 per child, was made partially refundable, and was indexed for inflation. Unfortunately, some of these good changes expired in 2010. I would note for my colleagues that even with these increases, since 1960, the cost of raising a child has increased by approximately 4.4 percent a year. H.R. 4935 would index the child tax credit for inflation, eliminate the marriage penalty, and would require an individual to include their Social Security number on their tax return to claim the refundable portion of the child tax credit. Current estimates suggest that at least $13 billion in improper refundable tax credit payments are made each year. This provision would help to combat that growing problem. Madam Speaker, the cost of raising children increases every year, but the current child tax credit fails to take these increased costs into account. In addition, the current tax credit penalizes married couples. By making these commonsense changes, we can ensure that the credit truly serves its intended purpose. Madam Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying legislation, which continues our targeted approach to updating, improving, and modernizing the Tax Code. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. COLE. I do want to disagree with my friend on a couple of points. Number one, this isn't a symbolic piece of legislation. It is legislation in progress, but it is not feel-good. I know Mr. Camp and his committee are anxious to actually change many aspects of the Tax Code. I know Mr. Camp wants to make at least some of these things permanent. We may succeed or we may not, but it is certainly not meant to be anything other than serious. Also, my friend mentioned and talked at considerable length about the issue of immigration and the border crisis, two issues that I regard as somewhat distinct. We do have a border crisis, and I suspect we will see legislation to deal with that. There is a difference in philosophy. I think the administration just wants resources to manage it. I think we would like to change some of the root causes and address it, and hopefully stop the massive flow and all of the human tragedy that goes with it. There is a huge debate about what do we do with unaccompanied juveniles or minors who arrive, and that is an important debate to have. But we ought to stop and think: Is there something that we are doing that is encouraging that flow? Because, believe me, everything that is coming out of this is bad. It disrupts the societies from which these people are coming. We are treating children from Mexico different than we are treating them from Guatemala. We have people now pouring money into criminal cartels and strengthening them. And finally, the children themselves, the juveniles themselves, are confronted with a thousand-mile long journey where they are breaking not just the laws here but also in Mexico. They are at great risk. They are traveling with criminals. There is a lot of abuse. Some of them are undoubtedly forced into sex trafficking and perhaps others to the drug trade. There are plenty of opportunities for abuse. Nobody should want that to happen. We are going to try to offer some serious proposals. I am very pleased with my colleague on the Appropriations Committee, Kay Granger from Texas, who has put together a working group and some very thoughtful proposals. We have tried to scrub them on the Appropriations Committee. Hopefully we will be able to address that issue. Finally, let me just end with this. In closing, I believe it is important, Mr. Speaker, to continue this deliberative approach towards fundamental tax reform. The child tax credit has existed since 1997, and the reforms contemplated in this legislation are important. In addition, the consolidation of four separate education credits into one simplified credit will result in much less taxpayer confusion. I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying legislation.

Mr. COLE. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me address a number of remarks my friend made in passing. Let me begin by reminding anybody who happens to be listening or following the debate this isn't an immigration bill. This is actually a tax bill, and it is really about trying to make some things that have had bipartisan support permanent. We all agree that we need to, insofar as we can, help people that are educating themselves or members of their family and provide appropriate tax relief. That is what this bill does. It is simply that simple. Number two, we all think that you shouldn't have a tax penalty for being married, and if we can do things to help you with the cost of raising a family, we ought to try and do those things because it has been tough. That is what this bill does. Now, we can disagree about the merits, but I think the general thrust is something we probably broadly agree on. Making those items permanent within the Tax Code is important so people can actually get used to using the benefits, understand them--sort of internalize them--and make them permanent and predictable for families. So that is our goal with this legislation. Finally, we would like to get, eventually, to a conference with our friends in the Senate who I suspect would share some of my friend from Colorado's concerns that might be in their legislation. He knows how the process works. We will sit down at that point and see if we can find common ground. If the two negotiating teams can, then I suspect we will come back with something that a great number of us on both sides of the aisle can support. What my friend, Mr. Camp, the chairman of Ways and Means, is trying to do is actually make permanent some very good bipartisan ideas that I think we can rally around. Now, my friend also mentioned the deficit, and I want to, again, laud his concern for that. I appreciate that. I genuinely do. I recognize this is a work in progress, not a final product, but I will point out again for the record, when my friends were in the majority, the deficit got worse every single year. It has gotten lower every single year since then. So I think we are serious about dealing with the deficit. I would invite my friend, and I know he would seriously engage in this, let's find some areas on the part of the budget that I think need addressing--the entitlement area--where perhaps we can find some common ground.

Mr. COLE. I am certainly prepared to close whenever my friend is.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I care to consume. Again, I want to point out, Mr. Speaker, I frankly have no objection to my friends' using the process to bring these ideas up for debate and discussion. I actually think that is helpful and that moves the process forward, and I applaud them for that. I don't disagree necessarily with what they are talking about in terms of tax deductions for jobs that are exported as opposed to jobs that could be imported. I think that is something we ought to consider. But, it is not the subject of the legislation that is in front of us today. Those subjects are, one, what can we do to modernize the Tax Code and give students permanent certainty in terms of tax deductions that are available to educate themselves and give their families the ability to deal a little bit with the mounting cost of college. That is a good idea. Both sides can broadly agree at least in principle. And what can we do to make sure the marriage penalty disappears and that we can target appropriate tax relief to families with children at least up to a certain level of income, I believe $150,000, to give them a little break with the cost of raising children. Those, to me, are modest steps, but they are important programs because they affect the daily lives of American workers. I am not suggesting that what my friends are proposing doesn't do the same thing. I just think this vehicle, we probably ought to work within the bounds of what Ways and Means has sent us. I will say, I sense some of my friend's frustration in terms of moving legislation. We have got 321 bills sitting in the United States Senate that haven't been acted upon that this House has sent over there, so I know a lot about feeling shut out. I think if our friends on our side of the aisle in the upper Chamber were here, they would tell you that they have had fewer amendments this year than Democrats in this Chamber have gotten on any appropriations bill that we have brought forward. We don't have a broken Congress. We have a broken United States Senate, in my view. But, having said that, we have got a chance, I think, here to take a step in the right direction, to thoughtfully consider things that have worked their way through the Ways and Means Committee, to position this Chamber to sit down at a later point and negotiate with our friends-- Republican and Democrat alike--in the other Chamber and perhaps produce, toward the end of this year, some good and permanent changes in the Tax Code that, if an agreement is reached, I suspect we could have overwhelming bipartisan support for. So, we are just at that point in the process where we need to develop and put forward our proposals. We would hope that our counterparts in the United States Senate do the same thing, and that we can sit down and again find common ground in between. We have done that on some occasions before. If we will just operate the way our procedures are set up, I am confident we can do that again. So, with that, Mr. Speaker, I will reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we have opened quite a range of things to talk about with Mr. Woodall's remarks and Mr. Polis' response and my good friend from New Jersey, Mr. Pascrell's proposal. Let me sort of take some of them up in order. My friend from Colorado, who I know is sincere, talked a little bit about the need to reform entitlements, and I couldn't agree with him more, and that is a discussion I think we really, seriously need to engage in as a body. I would invite my friend, if he has an opportunity, to look at a bipartisan bill that the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Delaney)--from his side of the aisle--and I have on Social Security reform. It doesn't really deal with a lot of the reform, but it is a process bill. It would send us down the road to have a bipartisan proposal which, I can assure you, would have things that your side doesn't like and things that my side doesn't like, and then we would have to vote on it up or down. I think it is a thoughtful way to try to begin to deal with some of these, and it is genuinely bipartisan, so I would hope my friend from Colorado would look at that. My friend from New Jersey mentioned the Ex-Im Bank. I couldn't agree with him more. I support it. I have consistently supported it, and I know there is a disagreement on our side of the aisle, I think, largely about that. I hope that it is resolved in regular order--that is, that the committee votes on it and it comes down to the floor. When that happens, I look forward to working with my friend to enact that legislation. I am intrigued by what my friend from New Jersey had to say about his tax proposal because I think, at the minimum, he has certainly put his finger on an important problem which is a real loophole that we ought to consider. Now, I don't consider myself an expert on tax legislation. I am like my friend in the chair. I am an appropriator. That is the world I know. So I would hope that my friend's proposal would get appropriate consideration in our Ways and Means body and move through regular order because I think this is an area that we can cooperate on. Frankly, we have got some bipartisan proposals in terms of stranded profits overseas that I think both sides could work together on, perhaps, and bring some investment back to our shores, but we do have to defend the process whereby we move legislation--that is it needs to come through the appropriate committee, we duly consider it, and it reaches here. Again, while I may oppose the process by which my friend is moving, I am not at all prepared to say I oppose his product. I just simply haven't had a chance to look at it, but I think he is addressing an important issue. The last area I do have to disagree with my friend on a little bit: I do like Walmart. I am a shopper at Walmart, and I am a stockholder at Walmart, and I think they are a great American company, but we live in a great country. My friend can shop where he chooses to, and I can shop where I choose to, and we will get down the road. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my friend. We do agree conceptually on quite a bit in terms of the Tax Code. I think both of us individually, and both sides collectively, honestly want to do things that make it easier for people to pursue a higher education. Certainly, I think we are all interested in eliminating the marriage penalty as well. So I think we are moving broadly in the same direction, even though we have some disagreement. I will point out to my friend that it is not unusual that tax legislation would come to the floor in a closed rule. As a matter of fact, that is almost always the way it is done, simply because you have to be able to score the items, and you have to understand what the real cost of tweaking is. So whether Republicans or Democrats are in control, a closed rule is usually the order of the day on any tax legislation. I appreciate my friend's concern about the deficit, and in that I am quite sincere. Now, I do also always like to point out to my friends that when they were in the majority, for 4 years in a row the deficit got greater each year. And since we have been in the majority the last 4 years the deficit has gotten smaller each year. So I actually think that we not only have a rhetorical concern about the deficit, we have demonstrated over and over again that certainly this current majority is very, very serious about dealing with it and will continue to do that by reining in spending and putting forward thoughtful reform proposals, which I believe we have done. I would also point out to my friend, and I think he would agree with me on this, this is a vehicle. This is not going to be the final product. My friend is exactly correct when he says there will be a negotiation. Our concern has been, watching what has been going on on the other side of the rotunda, so to speak, is that there hasn't been very much serious work. We think they are going to look at the extenders package in terms of tax relief and basically just try and jam that through without any thoughtful pruning and without making elements of it which have been approved over and over and over again, and which are clearly popular on a bipartisan basis, permanent. So that is what we are trying to do. I think we are constructing a platform to go into negotiation with the Senate. And I suspect what emerges will be somewhat different than what either side goes in with. That is pretty normal in the legislative process. But I think the concepts here that we are moving forward on are correct and, I think, have broad popular appeal and bipartisan support. These are provisions--and we have done this over several bills now-- that both parties have approved overwhelmingly, time and time again on a sort of yearly basis. And we want to take those things and make them permanent. I suspect, in that process, some things that are less popular might be jettisoned. But again, that is for the negotiators to decide. We are simply trying to get to that conference. We are marking out what our position is. We recognize the Senate will have to do the same thing, and from there we will move and, perhaps, at a later point in this process we can find ourselves actually on the same side. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to my good friend from the State of Georgia (Mr. Woodall), my fellow Rules Committee Member and RSC president now, rapid ascent, to make whatever remarks he cares to.