Scott Garrett

Mr. GARRETT

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 627, the National Park Service 100th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act, introduced by the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen). Mr. Speaker, this legislation seeks to authorize the minting and sale in 2016 of gold, silver, and clad commemorative coins marking the centenary of the forming of the National Park Service, the great stewards of American history and the American landscape so important to all of us. The idea of federally recognizing and preserving certain sites began in the late 19th century with the official establishment of a select group of national parks, including Yellowstone, Sequoia National Park in California, and Yosemite as well. When Theodore Roosevelt became President in 1901, he continued this effort, speaking out on the importance of preserving the habitats of American wildlife and signing the Antiquities Act of 1906. That act allowed the President to ``declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and pre-historic structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest.'' About a decade later, in 1916, the National Park Service was created to place all of the sites under the care of a single independent agency. Fast forward to today, now, the Park Service manages nearly 400 sites totaling 84 million acres. These parks cover all corners of our Nation, and almost every American State and territory is home to at least one. People from around the globe now are attracted to our national sites because of both their beauty and also their grandeur. Every year, our parks hosts--note this--280 million visitors. The legislation before us today has 307 cosponsors, and a companion Senate bill has 73. The coins will be minted and sold at no cost to the taxpayer. No proceeds from the sale may be used to acquire new lands. So, Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill, honoring a great part of the Federal Government that maintains some of the most spectacular parts of American landscape and history, and I ask for its immediate passage. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, at this time, we are joined by the original sponsor of the legislation. I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen).

Mr. GARRETT. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4167) to amend section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, known as the Volcker Rule, to exclude certain debt securities of collateralized loan obligations from the prohibition against acquiring or retaining an ownership interest in a hedge fund or private equity fund, as amended.

Mr. GARRETT. I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous materials to the Record on H.R. 4167, as amended, currently under consideration.

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, at this point, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 4167, which is the Restoring Proven Financing for American Employers Act. It was introduced by the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr), who we will be hearing from shortly. And I would also like to thank my good friend from New York (Mrs. Maloney), the ranking member of the Capital Markets Subcommittee, for her bipartisan and commonsense work on this important issue as well. Today we have the opportunity to correct, in a strong, bipartisan way, an egregious example of regulatory overreach. For no reason that has been coherently stated by anyone, the banking regulators responsible for implementing the Volcker Rule have included provisions in their final rule that will literally cripple the market for collateralized loan obligations, also called CLOs. See, at the stroke of a pen, the banking regulators are going to wreak havoc on one of the largest and most important sources of financing for literally hundreds of growing companies across this country. If the CLO provisions in the Volcker Rule go forward as planned, there will be a heavy price to pay in failed companies and also lost jobs. So why is the government doing this? Did CLOs do anything to cause the financial crisis? No, they did not. Are CLOs a menace to the stability of our financial system? No, again. Is the small proportion of securities included in some CLO structures a national crisis that requires such a heavy hand by the Federal Government? Of course not. Thankfully, the bill we have today, introduced by my friend from Kentucky (Mr. Barr), fixes this problem of the banking regulators' own making. First, it prevents a disastrous fire sale of suddenly impermissible legacy CLOs. Second, it narrows the Volcker rule's absurdly broad definition of an ``ownership interest'' in a CLO. Last month, the Financial Services Committee passed this bill on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis, with all but three members of the committee voting in favor of it. The Independent Community Bankers of America and the American Bankers Association have all voiced their support as well. I am sorry, though, that it has come to this. You know, time and time again the committee has admonished the banking regulators that the CLO provisions of Volcker were a threat to the economy and to the financial stability that they are supposed to be protecting. Time and again, however, the unwieldy banking regulators chose to do nothing. If they had corrected this problem as we have been urging them to do and which they could do, we would not be here wasting valuable legislative time saving the CLO market from our own public servants. Now, some have suggested that the agencies don't have the legal authority to fix the problems. It is interesting that Federal agencies always seem to have plenty of authority when it comes to doing something, but when they need to fix something that they messed up, well, suddenly they have no authority. Perhaps the real problem is the fact that we have so many different banking regulatory agencies in the first place. If coordinating these agencies to avoid a regulatory train wreck is too difficult, then maybe we need fewer agencies. I have spoken before about the proliferation of government regulators with authority over our financial markets. More regulators mean more wasteful duplication of functions, more regulatory confusion, more empire building, more bureaucratic rivalry, less accountability, and less problem solving. An ever increasing number of agencies with ever increasing authority only makes our financial system more unsustainable and more arbitrary and more unstable, and it makes it all the more likely that the heavy- handed government will fall suddenly on some unlucky corner of the economy. So it is my hope that this body can come together now and support this bipartisan piece of legislation so that we can ensure that the market for collateralized loan obligations, CLOs, is not carelessly and needlessly destroyed. While they may not have a high profile, CLOs provide a valuable function that our recovering economy cannot do without, and I urge my colleagues for that reason to support H.R. 4167. And at this time, I will reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, at this time, we are now joined by the sponsor of the bill, the gentleman from Kentucky, who, as was indicated, worked in a bipartisan manner to get it out of committee, here on the floor. And I assume we are going to see a strong bipartisan vote for it on the floor as well. At this time, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr).

Mr. GARRETT. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have remaining?

Mr. GARRETT. I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr).

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I just want to take a moment to respond as well to the gentleman from Massachusetts. He indicated that he is probably not going to convince anyone who is supporting the bill. I presume I am probably not going to convince him either, as I look over there, because he is now off the floor; but if he is back in his office and tuning us in, let me just make some points where he might be convinced. He spoke about the fire sale that will not occur now under the proposed Volcker Rule. Well, yes, it still will occur, just because you are not saying that the sale has to occur this afternoon, but it is going to occur at a set point in time, either 6 months from now, a year from now, or as they are proposing, 2 years from now. In either case, when you set a date certain for a sale, then everyone else out there knows that this is the day that they might as well wait for; and eventually, they will have to sell, and at that point in time, they will engage in a fire sale. In other words, by setting a date when you have to sell all of your assets or whatever you have, you are basically pushing the price down in that market. Secondly, with regard to sales up, I guess the gentleman from Kentucky already raised that point. Sales were going down until Congress came together in a unique experience for Congress, which was a bipartisan effort, and once the rest of Main Street and Wall Street saw that Congress can actually do things together and work together in a bipartisan manner, they did what the rest of Americans will do and said: good thing. They said: let's get that market going back up again. As the gentleman from Kentucky pointed out, that is exactly what occurred. Thirdly, the gentleman from Massachusetts admitted that the CLO market was not the cause or any cause of the crisis that we had back in 2008, and I have not heard any testimony from anyone on any panel from either end of the spectrum that the CLOs would be a basis for the next crisis that inevitably will come. Next, the gentleman from Massachusetts raised the point that something like 70 percent of all the CLOs out there are captured by something like three large banks or three financial institutions and made it sound as though the smaller and midsized banks are not really playing here. Then you had to listen to the next thing that he said. He said that most of those CLOs held by those would already be protected by the current Volcker proposal out of the administration. Well, that tells you right there that the legislation from the gentleman from Kentucky is not addressing or not trying to solve a problem for the three large banks. The legislation he is trying to put forward in a bipartisan manner is, in fact, doing just as he explained for the smaller banks, for the midsized banks, those are the ones that we are concerned about; and we want to make sure that they are not hurt through fire sales or further restrictions on them. Finally, last--but maybe not least--is the fact that this bill will not end too big to fail. Well, we know that Dodd-Frank, unfortunately, did not end too big to fail. Dodd-Frank did a number of things, but it did not end too big to fail, and the way to solve that is not by nitpicking around the edges on areas such as this that did not cause the crisis in the first place. In fact, the authors and the proponents of Dodd-Frank understood that when they passed Dodd-Frank--because, look, what is the language in Dodd-Frank when it comes to the Volcker Rule and the CLO matter that is before us today? Did they want to have this included in the rule that Volcker would eventually come out with? The answer is no. The language specifically in 619 of Dodd-Frank--voted in favor of, by the way, by the gentleman from Massachusetts--says: Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or restrict the ability of a banking entity or nonbank financial company supervised by the Federal Reserve Board to sell or secure type loans in a manner otherwise permitted by law. What does that sentence mean? That means that the sponsors of--and those like the gentleman from Massachusetts who supported Dodd-Frank-- specifically put into the Dodd-Frank law the direction to the Fed and the other regulators that they should not be doing what they are doing right now. They should not be putting, as it says, limitations on this type of instrument. So for all of those reasons, if the gentleman from Massachusetts is still watching what we are doing on the floor, perhaps we have convinced him that he should join with the majority on both sides of the House and not be part of the three or so who remain opposed to this and support the legislation, H.R. 4167. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on this bill, which is H.R. 1872, which is the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2014.

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 539, I call up the bill (H.R. 1872) to amend the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 to increase transparency in Federal budgeting, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. GARRETT. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, let me begin by thanking the chairman of the Budget Committee, Chairman Paul Ryan, and the Budget Committee staff as well for their hard work on H.R. 1872, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act. As many have talked about before, our budget process in this country is broken. Simply put, we need to make the budget process more transparent. So the bill before the House today, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act, is, as we like to say, a commonsense attempt to introduce more sunshine and common sense into our budget process. So what would this legislation do? Most importantly, the bill will require that the Federal Government apply something called fair value accounting. Now, that is the same credit accounting standards as the private sector uses when making or guaranteeing loans. So fair value accounting provides a more robust or more complete picture of the cost to the taxpayer of government loan programs or government lending programs. So fair value accounting accomplishes this how? By accounting for an additional market-risk premium. Also, the bill recognizes the budgetary impact of government- sponsored enterprises of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So this bill would then bring these wards of the taxpayer from out of the shadows and onto the budget. So why exactly do we need this specific piece of legislation here today? Well, without getting into the weeds too much, the simplest explanation is that there is no such thing in this country or in the world as a free lunch when it comes to a government program. The costs are always borne by someone, and in this case, it is borne by the American people. The facts indicate that not only is government costly, but also government costs more than we all initially expected. So the burden of government rarely comes in under budget. Nowhere does this ring truer than the Federal Housing Administration program, also called FHA, and their mortgage insurance. See, it defies common sense FHA, according to administration's Federal accounting rules, that they actually make money, they say, for the government. How do they do so? Well, it is only through the alchemy of government accounting can you transform a mortgage portfolio of figurative lead into gold and still remain true to the law. So this free money comes courtesy of what? It comes courtesy of the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990. This is the Federal accounting program and the standard that we operate today. Under FCRA's cooked accounting rules, the cost of Federal mortgage insurance is determined on the basis of a subsidy cost, including the risk that the borrowers default on a mortgage; and by using the Treasury rate, it does not account for market risk or overall systemic risk. So, what does that mean? Unlike fair value accounting, which appropriately incorporates a premium for market risk, the current law fails to reflect the true cost to the American taxpayer of these FHA mortgage-backed insurance. Let me give you an example. In the 2011 report, the nonpartisan CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, compared the cost of the current system of FHA of a single-family mortgage insurance on both the current law and what we have here, which is fair value basis. What did CBO find? Well, CBO estimated that, under the current accounting, FHA would actually raise--raise--$4.4 billion for the government in 2012. Sounds pretty good. But if you actually dug into the numbers and use fair value basis--which, as I said before, is what the private sector would be forced to do--with an appropriate accounting of market risk--and of course, market risk is there--then what did CBO find? CBO then estimated that FHA would not gain $4.4 billion, but that FHA would actually lose $3.5 billion over the exact same period. Why is this? Because CBO believes that fair value provides a fuller picture of a program's budgetary impact. So it now employs fair value basis accounting as a standard procedure for Federal loan programs and Federal loan guarantee programs such as FHA. However, where is the problem? The problem is the Obama administration has strongly resisted the move to fair value accounting, and instead, they cling to the current program instead. Let me give you another example. In 2010, President Obama effectively nationalized the Federal student lending program. The President then immediately spent the savings, if you will--remember, I talked about some of these before--on his signature health care law. What is the problem? The problem is that there is a growing gap now between how much money was borrowed and backed by the U.S. taxpayer-- that means you and I--and how much money is actually being repaid by the graduates. Let me give you some numbers. Based on the Department of Education data, there is a $99 billion gap between what has been borrowed and what has been paid back since only 2010. Remember, the President said these loans would actually make money for the Federal Government. Instead, the actual numbers are coming in that it is costing a $99 billion gap. So, the bill before us today, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act, fixes these shortcomings by requiring that market risk to be explicitly included in estimates of Federal credit programs. What will that do? That will bring Federal budget practice in line with what has long been standard practice in the private sector. Specifically, it requires the executive branch and Congress to use fair value accounting in calculating the cost of Federal credit programs that consider not only the borrowing cost of the Federal Government, but also the cost of the market risk of the Federal Government in incurring or issuing any of these loans or loan guarantee programs. And so, with mounting debt and a lackluster job growth, it is time to force the government to play by the same economic rules as every single American family and business has to. It is not fair to keep putting the American taxpayer on the hook. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and if I can catch him before he leaves, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, I appreciate all of your comments. I won't touch on all of them, but I will touch on one or two. In a sign of bipartisanship, I would like to extend to you, not knowing where this bill may end up in the future of things here in the House and the Senate, but extend to you an invitation to cosponsor with me what you said twice during your remarks that you seemed to be on the same page as I am and as I have been for a long time with regard to the GSEs and have fair value accounting applied to them and on budget. I would extend that invitation to you.

Mr. GARRETT. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. GARRETT. Right.

Mr. GARRETT. So, as I say, my staff will talk to your staff on that, and thank you for your other comments. Mr. Speaker, I will insert into the Record a letter dated January 30 from the American Action Forum, which is an organization run by former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin--and I won't go into detail--but he basically wrote to express his complete support of H.R. 3581, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2014, for the very reasons that we have set forth here already. Mr. Speaker, I am not seeing any other speakers at this time. I do see there are several other speakers on the other side, so I reserve the balance of my time. American Action Forum, January 30, 2012. Hon. Paul Ryan, Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Ryan: I am writing to express my support for H.R. 3581, ``The Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2011,'' in particular those provisions that would incorporate fair value accounting (FVA) into the federal budget process. As you are well aware, a core objective in federal budgeting is to accurately display the scale and timing of the expenditure of taxpayer resources. Since sovereign tax and borrowing powers should always be used judiciously, there is a premium on doing so as accurately as possible. In some cases this is straightforward. Consider, for example, a discretionary appropriation. The scale of the overall commitment is clear and in some cases it is straightforward to budget the timing of the ultimate outlays as well. Federal credit programs, however, present particular difficulties. The timing of budgetary cash flows differs dramatically between direct loans and federal loan guarantees--even in cases when the ultimate economic impact is identical. The Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 (FCRA) took an important step forward by equalizing the timing of their budgetary treatment. Direct loans and loan guarantees are both recorded in the budget during the year in which the commitment is incurred, regardless of the duration and timing of the federal assistance. This was an important step in the right direction. However, estimating the scale of required taxpayer resources remains problematic. In particular, the ability of loan recipients to make timely and complete repayments will be influenced by future individual, household, and economy-wide economic conditions. In the same way, the obligation of the federal government to undertake guarantee payments will be driven by similar forces. While such future individual and economic conditions are uncertain, reliable techniques exist to estimate the likely size of the taxpayer obligation. Unfortunately, FCRA needlessly restricts the analyses to credit risk--the probability of failure to fully repay--while ignoring the fact that the timing of those failures matters enormously. As the past few years have starkly reminded every American, the need to tax, borrow and otherwise deprive the private sector of another dollar has far greater implications during the depths of economic distress than during periods of robust economic growth. Adoption of FVA would rectify this oversight I recognize that significant reform to budget procedures should not be undertaken lightly. However, my views are informed by the fact that during my tenure as director, the Congressional Budget Office undertook a number of studies of the implications of accounting fully for economic risks in the budgetary treatment of financial commitments like credit programs. In example after example (pension guarantees; deposit insurance; flood insurance; student loans; and assistance for Chrysler and America West Airlines), it becomes clear that an incomplete assessment of risks leads to misleading budget presentations and may engender poor policy decisions. FVA would be a significant step toward improving this informational deficit. My views are echoed by a wide array of budget experts. In March 2010, CBO issued a new report recommending the use of FVA for federal student loan programs on the grounds that budget rules do ``not include the costs to taxpayers that stem from certain risks involved in lending.'' In addition, the Pew-Peterson Commission on Budget Reform proposed ``fair- value accounting'' for credit programs and the President's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform advocated for reform of budget concepts that would more accurately reflect costs. In addition to these research views, there is a track record of success. FVA has already been used successfully for the budgetary treatment of the Temporary Asset Relief Program of 2008 (TARP) and the federal assistance to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Last but not least, H.R. 3581 would also fix another shortcoming of FCRA; namely that the administrative costs associated with federal operations are not included in the budget cost and must be provided for elsewhere. H.R. 3581 would require that administrative costs (called ``essential preservation services'') to be accounted for up-front, thereby balancing the playing field. In sum, I believe that the Congress should adopt fair value accounting and, in particular, pass H.R. 3581 in a timely fashion. I would be happy to discuss any aspect of this issue in greater detail. Sincerely, Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Just two couple of points. Process is important. I guess you could be opposed to process--the gentleman from New Jersey referenced the NCAA. If there were no rules and all the players could just go out and do anything they wanted to, I guess we could say we could rack up a lot of points and scores and do very well. But there is a reason and there is a method to the game, and that is why you do have rules. And that is actually why you do have the refs. Yeah, the coaches on both sides will complain, but the refs, at the end of the day, are the ones that say, hey, these are what the rules are, and let's play within the confines of them. Now the second point I was going to make is, I understand this issue is pretty difficult and pretty complicated. The bill is not that long. But the gentleman from New Jersey has it completely backwards when he says, look, Mr. Garrett, you want to go by the CBO, don't you? You want to apply this to the CBO, and that is what your bill is going to do. No, that is not what I said. I do agree with the CBO. The CBO already does this. It is the CBO that is calling for this. It was the past chairman, the past director of the CBO who says what I just entered into the Record--that we should be doing this. This is already done that way, I inform my colleague from New Jersey. What we are saying is, if he and I agree that the CBO is, as he just said, this nonpartisan entity which has the right way of handling it, they are handling it the right way. We are now simply saying, administration, you should be doing what the gentleman from New Jersey and I both say should be done here, what the CBO is saying should be done here, and apply it to OMB and how the administration does it. So the gentleman has it completely reversed as to what the bill actually says.

Mr. GARRETT. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. GARRETT. Reclaiming my time, what I was just pointing out is you are saying that both sides' coaches were going to be yelling at the refs and they wanted their side, win or lose. If you want to use your analogy, in a game there has to be rules, and we are saying that the rules that should apply are the rules that--you indicated the CBO is a nonpartisan entity, that they are doing it the right way, and we are saying, exactly. The CBO is nonpartisan. They are calling for this type of application of the rules. And if we agree on that point, and if you dig into the bill and realize that we are saying it is not to make sure that CBO does it, but that the administration does it. So reread the bill. You will understand what we are trying to do. And I think, at the end of the day, you and I may actually agree. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, before I yield to the chairman of the full committee, I want to go back to the gentleman from New Jersey who made the point as to which side of this issue is OMB and CBO on, and it is a process issue. But it is important that, during an appearance before the House Budget Committee, where we considered this legislation, the director of the--and I will stress this point again--the nonpartisan CBO, Congressional Budget Office, stated, ``We believe that the fair value method of accounting''--which is what is in this bill--``for Federal credit transaction programs provides a more comprehensive measure of a program's true cost.'' This is exactly why we bring this bill to the floor. I know the gentleman indicated that a partisan OMB takes a different view, but the nonpartisan CBO takes the view of this legislation, that we should make sure that there is complete transparency. Then all the points that the gentleman makes, as far as making the decision as to how many students we should be able to have in these programs, how large is the housing program, and so on and so forth, then we can more accurately make those final determinations once we have the actual numbers accurately before us, and that is all this legislation really does. With that, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan), who was able to get a budget out of the Budget Committee in record time the other night, the chairman of the Budget Committee.

Mr. GARRETT. I yield myself such time as I may consume Just one point to that. I have sat through that committee now for a number of years, and since this is an issue that I have been somewhat following for that period of time, I knew that your statement saying that we haven't had the time and haven't spent the time on hearings and what have you just did not ring true. So I dug through it, and the fact of the matter is that we have actually had two hearings and two related markups on this legislation, and I think that gives us the information we need now to go forward. Secondly, to the point that you make that the various programs are unique in their nature, absolutely, and that is why this legislation allows fair value accounting to be applied individually and evaluate each program accordingly. We do all that in this legislation. It comes about through the multiple hearings and markups that we have had, and I think now is the time to go forward and give the American public the transparency that they are asking for. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I will be brief, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Just to set the record straight, actually, we did have hearings on this, and we did have markup hearings on this back in June of 2011. We dug into it at that period of time. The legislation, essentially the same, just in a different cycle, is, in essence, what we have before us today, so we have had that opportunity. But I will say this. If we see this legislation continue on the floor today and if we see this bill actually pass today, I extend to the gentleman and the members of the committee--or anyone on the other side of the aisle--that my door is open to try to make changes to it that you see appropriate, to make it have the flexibility that you think is not in the bill, which I think is in this bill, and so on and so forth. So I stand ready to continue to work with you on it. But I think that after the hearings we have had and the importance of this legislation, now is the time to move forward. One last point on this, and I think the chairman of the committee made the point, but let me just reiterate this. At the end of the day, it does not add any additional costs to the American taxpayer. What this bill does is just make transparent the cost that is already there. I am trying to come up with a simple analogy, but fair value accounting is not necessarily one of the simplest things you can find an analogy for, but I guess it might be like this: You would not go to the store and just go through with your credit card swiping it along, buying the things that you need or think that you need not knowing what they actually cost as you leave the store, just putting them on your bill, knowing that at the end of the day, at the end of the month, you may get a statement. Knowing that you are going to have to pay for that bill, you wouldn't go to the store and do that any more than you should right now with the American public, put them, by using the taxpayers' credit card for all these programs, worthwhile as they may, necessary as they may be, you shouldn't just be swiping that credit card not knowing exactly what the bottom line is, not knowing what the actual cost to the American taxpayer is. That is all this bill does is just give us that information. And with that information in hand, then we can come together, Republican and Democrat alike, on those areas that we all agree on are necessary for this country and necessary that we expend funds on, with that information in hand, and do it in a more prudent, efficient, and effective manner than we have been in the past where we have done without the information. With that, then, I urge a ``yes'' vote on this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT

Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I object.