Steny Hoyer

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, some of us do not believe that is quite as obvious as the gentleman does. I yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the Leader's observation. I know that, on our side, we had a discussion on that bill this morning. All of us believe the energy bill is a very, very important piece of legislation. All of us are concerned about the gas prices that are confronting all of our constituents. I have a number of employees who commute significant distances. Although they live relatively close by, it is a 45-minute commute in traffic and a lot of gas, and they spend a lot of money on gasoline. In addition to that, energy independence, of course, is part of our national security. So we are hopeful that we will fashion a bill in a bipartisan way that we can see passed and signed by the President. Mr. Speaker, the last item I would ask the Majority Leader about is, as the gentleman knows, the ethics process in the House is essentially at a standstill. The gentleman has made that observation, obviously; and we have made that observation as well. Efforts to move the ethics process forward have failed so far, both in committee and on the floor, when virtually all of the Members on the gentleman's side of the aisle, now twice, have voted to table motions that would have provided for the appointment of a bipartisan task force to make recommendations to restore public confidence in the ethics process. As the gentleman knows, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin), he was sitting to my left here, although he is now to my right; maybe he is running for office and wants to position himself; but the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) and Mr. Livingston performed an outstanding service for this House in coming together and adopting and presenting, proposing a bipartisan ethics process. We had that in place, as the gentleman knows, and it was changed, we believe, in a partisan fashion. We oppose that change, as the gentleman knows, as does the former chairman of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley). He and the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) have a bill, and that bipartisan resolution has now 207 cosponsors, and that would simply return the ethics rules to where they were, adopted bipartisanly, proposed bipartisanly by the Livingston-Cardin Committee, and it would return to a place where we believe the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct would not be at impasse. We are also concerned about, as the gentleman knows, the chairman's proposition that we have a partisan division now of the ethics staff, which heretofore has been a bipartisan, I might even say nonpartisan, staff. I would respectfully inquire, given that background, which the gentleman knows, of course, if and when we might see House Joint Resolution 131 on the floor. As I say, it has 207 cosponsors. It reflects the bipartisan agreement of the Livingston-Cardin committee and the bipartisan vote of this House some years ago in adopting the Livingston-Cardin option. In the alternative, of course, when we might find an opportunity to support a bipartisan commission that could again look at this and try to get us off the dime. I know I have mentioned a number of points, Mr. Leader, but I know that the gentleman believes it is important personally and institutionally. I have worked with the gentleman institutionally. We want to see this institution not mired in ethical questions of our side or of the gentleman's side. I think that either direction might get us there. Mr. Speaker, I ask the Leader respectfully if he thinks that we might proceed in either direction, or perhaps both, and I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the Leader for his thoughtful response. We have a difference of view on the change that was made from the Livingston-Cardin and House-adopted ethics rules which provided for an investigation of any Member to go forward unless a majority of the committee disposed of it. That meant, as the gentleman knows, that it would have to be bipartisan, because the committee is equally divided, so we would have to have at least one other Member, assuming one party was united on either side, one other Member of the other party to join in the disposition of a case. And if that disposition did not occur, an investigation would go forward. Unfortunately, it is our perception, I say to the gentleman, that what the Speaker, because the gentleman said the Speaker wanted to protect the Members, what the Speaker has done from our perspective and, we think, from the perspective of many is created a process where on the inaction of the committee, based upon a tie vote so that a partisan group can stop an investigation, that the investigation will thereby be dismissed. So it turned the process 180 degrees, from having a bipartisan vote to dismiss to now having a partisan vote or a bipartisan vote necessary to proceed. We believe that undermines the protection of the institution. We believe that that was not necessary in order to protect individuals and Members, which we think is an appropriate due-process protection.

Mr. HOYER. I will be glad to yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. HOYER. I certainly will, but let me make one additional point. Every previous change that I know of, and you and I have been here about the same time. I have been here perhaps a couple of years longer than you. Every change that I know of in the ethics rules have been affected by a bipartisan agreement until this one. There were only a few votes, I think we were almost unanimous on our side, which is not unusual, which is why the ethics rules has historically been separate and apart, perhaps in the rules package, but agreed to in a bipartisan fashion. And that is my concern.

Mr. HOYER. And I will be glad to yield my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time.

Mr. HOYER. I want to apologize to the gentleman.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal). That is our pledge. The Democrats are going to work. We are going to work hard, and we will work with the President if the President wants to work, and we will work with the other side of the aisle to make this a fair, simpler, more efficient tax system. We owe that to the American public. We want to be the party of reforming our tax system so that Americans will say, I understand it, nobody likes to pay taxes but I am paying a fair share. I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal). It is now my honor to yield to my good friend, the distinguished gentlewoman from Cleveland, Ohio (Mrs. Jones), who has done such an extraordinary job during her tenure here and is now a member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. I think her reading of the letter is an example of all that we are hearing from Americans: Congressman, this Tax Code I cannot understand. Congressman, this Tax Code costs me a lot of money and a lot of time to comply. And I want to comply and I want to be honest and help my country but, golly day, I am having trouble figuring it out. Will you please make it fair? Will you please make it simpler and just make it work better for me, for my family, and for the country. Mr. Speaker, I yield to someone who is working very hard to do just that for his constituents and all Americans, the newest member of the Committee on Ways and Means, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), who does an extraordinary job.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for his remarks and for his restating the commitment the Democrats have to ensuring that Americans get a fairer, simpler and more efficient tax system that treats them fairly and treats everybody else fairly as well. Now it is my great pleasure, Mr. Speaker, to introduce or to yield to one of the senior members of the House of Representatives, the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts, mayor of his town before he came here, and as a member of the Ways and Means Committee has been in the leadership of opposing complicating the Tax Code, opposing making it less fair and opposing tax legislation which sent jobs overseas. He has been a true giant in the leadership on this effort, and I am pleased to join with him in this effort that we join tonight. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak about tax reform and tax simplification, but one of our newest Members has had the opportunity to have the floor for the previous hour and talk about Social Security. I know that he is very worried about Social Security and, as a result, has been addressing that. But I am constrained to say that he talked about personal accounts with reference to Social Security. Of course, what he did not say is that Social Security has nothing to do with the solvency of Social Security. He talked about a moral responsibility. The President of the United States and his party indicated they were not going to spend any money of Social Security. In fact, in the last 4 years, they have spent and continue to spend every nickel of Social Security. I am sure my young friend will acknowledge that point at some point in time, but that is not the subject tonight of our Special Order. Mr. Speaker, the one thing that millions of Americans will not be saying at the end of this week is, TGIF, thank goodness it is Friday. Friday is the day, of course, April 15, the annual deadline for filing Federal income tax returns, a duty of citizenship that provokes anxiety, confusion, and, yes, even anger in many taxpayers every year. Without question, the Internal Revenue Code has become a maze of complexity that confounds millions of Americans, including, I think, all of us who will speak. It treats many taxpayers unfairly; and it creates an opportunity, some would say an incentive, for those who would exploit its complexity to avoid compliance, thus placing an unfair share on others. As Nina Olson, Mr. Speaker, said, the National Taxpayer Advocate stated in December in her annual report to Congress: ``The most serious problem facing taxpayers and the IRS alike is the complexity of the Internal Revenue Code. The only meaningful way to reduce these compliance burdens is to simplify the Tax Code enormously.'' So said Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate. All of us, of course, bear some responsibility for the complexity of our Tax Code, Democrats and Republicans and every American who believes that the tax preferences that he or she utilizes are worthwhile. Considered individually, the tax preferences that clutter the code certainly can be rationalized and explained. Collectively, however, they are a jumble of confusion that have a corrosive effect on our democracy. As Paul O'Neill, the former Secretary of the Treasury said, ``One of the unseen consequences of the Tax Code's complexity is the sense it leaves taxpayers that the system is unfair, and that others pay less tax because of special advantages.'' Almost every American, I think, feels that, including those who take special advantage. A few facts illustrate the scope of the problem, Mr. Speaker. In 1913, the Tax Code was a mere 500 pages in length. Today, the code and regulations total more than 60,000 pages. Four common forms, form 1040 and schedules A, B, and D, take an estimated 28 hours and 30 minutes to prepare. Think of that. They are relatively simple forms. When the IRS started tracking this information in 1988, the average paperwork burden was 17 hours and 7 minutes, about 11 hours less. Even the simplest form in the IRS inventory, a 1040 EZ, perhaps misnamed, now requires 3 hours and 43 minutes for the average taxpayer to prepare, up from 1 hour and 31 minutes in 1988. Complexity costs more than $100 billion. That cost is in accounting fees and the value of taxpayers' time to complete their returns. This is roughly equivalent to what we spend to run the Department of Education, Homeland Security, and State. Think of it: the cost of complexity for our taxpayers, $100 billion more than we spend on the Department of Education, Homeland Security, and the Department of State. Not surprisingly, Mr. Speaker, more Americans than ever rely on tax professionals. I know I do. Nearly 60 percent rely on tax professionals today compared to 48 percent in 1990. If the administrative burden does not convince you that reform is crucial, the crisis in noncompliance should. The IRS has estimated there is a $311 billion annual tax gap due to underreporting, underpayment, and nonfiling. Think of that, $311 billion. The bad news is that the budget deficits we are running up under this administration and the Republican leadership this coming year will be over $400 billion. So even if we collected every nickel of that that was due and owing, we still would not solve our budget deficit, but it would help. Now, leaders in the Republican Party have repeatedly proclaimed their commitment to tax reform and simplification. We have heard that. The party that wants to bring down taxes wants to simplify the code. Both of us can share that objective. However, let us look at the facts. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the House majority leader, stated in April of 2001, ``We are pushing forward with our campaign to reform the Tax Code. We are making it fairer, flatter, simpler, and less burdensome to the American people.'' That is what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) said in 2001, that they were making the Tax Code fairer, flatter, simpler, and less burdensome. But the facts, unfortunately, and no one should glory in these facts, but, unfortunately, the facts say otherwise. Republican tax bills during the last 4 years have added, added more than 10,000 pages to the code and regulations. In fact, during the 108th Congress, the Republicans orchestrated nearly 900 changes in the Tax Code. Now, those of us that have been here as long as the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal) and I will remember passing a tax reform package which was designed to protect the taxpayer. And a report of our colleague, our Republican colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), who is now going to be our trade negotiator, that report said that one of the things that Congress had to stop doing if the IRS was going to be able to efficiently and effectively administer the Tax Code was to stop changing it every year. We have changed it every 4 years of this administration. And, of course, today on the floor of the House of Representatives, we changed it again. We made it more complex. In fact, many of us argued that what we did was really raise the taxes on really thousands of farmers and small business people as a result of the change we made. Just one bill, the Republicans' so-called American Jobs Creation Act, resulted in 561 changes to the Tax Code, requiring more than 250 pages of tax law changes. Is it any wonder why it takes Americans so long to fill out their forms? The Joint Economic Committee notes how this one new law will require more than 10 percent of all small businesses to keep additional records, result in more disputes with the IRS, increase tax preparation costs, and require additional complex calculations. Clearly, our tax system must be made simpler, fairer, and more efficient for the sake of every American, for every family. Now, there are some people, frankly, who are wealthy and can afford unlimited accounting services to make sure that they take every advantage of the Tax Code, but the overwhelming majority of Americans are not in that position. Because of that, it is incumbent upon the Congress of the United States and each one of us individually to ensure that the Tax Code is fairer, simpler, and more efficient and that Americans can understand it and take much less time to fulfill their obligations to their country. I think President Bush has taken an important first step in this effort by appointing the bipartisan Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. I applaud him for doing that. It is chaired by former Senators Connie Mack, who served in this body as well; and John Breaux, who also served in the House of Representatives. The panel, in my opinion, must present options for reforming the Internal Revenue Code. The requirement to do so is prior to July 31. I am hopeful that Congress can act on this important issue during the 109th Congress. I believe there is an increasing momentum, Mr. Speaker, among taxpayers for real reform; and Democrats intend to join and lead this fight. Democrats want to see reform to the Tax Code. Democrats are committed to a fairer, simpler, more efficient Tax Code. For example, we need to diffuse the middle-class time bomb, the alternative minimum tax. Now, the alternative minimum tax was adopted for people who were making hundreds of millions of dollars, corporations making hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions, but were paying no taxes at all. So what the Congress said some decade and a half ago, was that, look, everybody in our country needs to contribute to its defense and its support. Therefore, we will have an alternative minimum tax. That was never intended to adversely impact middle-income earners, not in the million dollar category, but far less than that. It was not intended for them. But Americans are now finding, two-earner families doing reasonably well, but just making their college tuition payments for their child, paying for their cars so that they can get to and from work, and paying for their mortgage payment because maybe they had to get a new house and housing prices have gone up; they are not having an easy time, and what they are finding now is they are getting caught in the web. We should have fixed this 4 years ago. We should have fixed it 3 years ago. We should have fixed it 2 years ago. We should have fixed it last year. We should fix it this year. We are not going to. The President has not proposed fixing it, and the Republicans do not want to fix it either. Why? Because it is a secret stealth tax increase on middle-income and upper-middle income Americans. That is why we do not fix it, so that the majority party can posture that they are cutting taxes while at the same time raising taxes. The AMT, or the Alternative Minimum Tax, will hit an estimated three million taxpayers this year, requiring them to pay $6,000 or more on average than they would otherwise owe, and which, when this was adopted, was not intended to have any effect on them. And the number of taxpayers subject to this tax will explode. Listen to this, my friends. All of our constituents ought to know this. It will go from the three million who are adversely affected today to 35 million taxpayers. Now let us say, just for the sake of argument, that there are only 15 million families there. So 50 million families, in other words, 35 million taxpayers who have a wife and children, so maybe as many as 50 or 60 million people, 35 million taxpayers will be included in the provisions of the Alternate Minimum Tax by 2010. Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, because the AMT was not indexed for inflation, that is the way we could have protected the middle-income folks, we did not do it. We should be doing it now. We should have done it in 2001, we should have done it in 2002, we should have done it in 2003, we should have done it in 2004, and we should have done it this year. We are not doing it. It ensnares more and more middle-income taxpayers because it was not indexed. We also, Mr. Speaker, need to take a hard look at moving toward a return-free income tax system, a system that would say to most taxpayers, you do not have to get involved in paperwork. Here is the deal. You can file very easily because the tax system will be much simpler and much fairer. Think how much better Americans would feel, not that they are going to feel great about paying their taxes. None of us feel great about paying our taxes. But all of us understand, as a democracy, that it is necessary if we are going to have a national defense and if we are going to have other services in this country. We need to simplify, Mr. Speaker, as well tax rules for small businesses. No reason small businesses ought to be under a mountain of rules and regulations and tax requirements. We ought to stop individuals and corporations, however, from gaming the system, which means that small businesses and individuals have to pay more than their fair share. We need to consider overhauling the corporate income tax and focus on eliminating tax breaks that actually encourage American companies to move jobs overseas. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal) has been very involved in this entire issue, and perhaps he will discuss it when I yield to him. Overseas, rather than giving tax incentives to corporations and businesses, to create and keep jobs here in America for Americans. The American people are acutely aware of the unnecessary complexity and dire need for real tax reform in America today. The Republican party has not led on this issue. And the President can call a commission together, but for 5 years they have taken no action. The American people need and deserve a tax system that is simpler, fairer and efficient. I would like to yield now to some of my colleagues who are here. The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott) has been here for a long time waiting to speak, and I thank him for being here. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I congratulate him for those clinics. I think that is a wonderful idea. I think very frankly we ought to have similar clinics and cooperate with a number of the people in our communities who could help people, particularly the EITC is difficult to understand for Members, much less those who it is designed for, to make sure people at the very poor end of the income scale have enough resources to support their kids. That is what it is all about, and this is what we think ought to be done. So I thank the gentleman. I also want to thank him for the simplification of all the child tax credits that are now available because if we can get that just one item, as you pointed out, down from those 200-plus questions down to 10 or 12 questions, we are going to save a lot of money, a lot of time and a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes. The EITC is complicated, but there are a lot of mistakes made, not by people who want to commit fraud but who simply make mistakes. I am glad that we are joined now by, in my view, one of the real stars of the new class in the Congress. She has been sent to us from south Florida, an area where I used to live, and she is doing an extraordinary job. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman and she left me a beautiful segue into the closing of our action matching our words. That is what ought to happen, and when that does not happen, people get pretty cynical. Let me refer to some words. In 1996, Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of this House and he said, ``The current system is indefensible,'' referring to the tax code. He was right. ``It is riddled with special interest tax breaks. Today's tax code is so complex that many Americans despair that only someone with an advanced degree in rocket science could figure it out. They are wrong. Even a certified genius such as Albert Einstein needed help in figuring out this Form 1040.'' In 1996, 8 years ago, the Republicans were in charge of this House, and Mr. Gingrich was our Speaker. A year later, Mr. Gingrich said this as the Speaker of the House, ``So we want to move towards a simpler tax code that takes less time to fill out, that is easier for the American people,'' 1997. In the last 7 years, the Speaker's party, the Republican party, has made the tax code 25 percent more complicated than it was in 1997, moving in exactly the opposite direction. In 2001, 4 years later, 2001, President Bush said, Americans want our tax code to be reasonable and simple and fair. He was absolutely right. That is what I want. That is what every American wants. These are goals that have shaped my plan. What plan? No plan, no plan here, no plan in the Committee on Ways and Means, no plan from the White House. And then in 2004, fast forward 3 years, just last year: ``The administration has made tax simplification a priority, and we look forward to working with Congress to achieve it. A simpler code is something we owe honest taxpayers, and the worst thing of all for the tax cheat.'' Mr. Speaker, we agree with the President, but what did we do today? This very day, we made the Tax Code more complicated, not to mention costing many small farmers and small businessmen more money than they otherwise would have paid with existing policy. Mr. Speaker, my Republican friends, my Democratic friends, on behalf of the Democratic Party, I pledge that we are going to fight to reform a system that is complicated, that is unfair, and that is inefficient so that Americans will say, as painful as April 15 may be, at least it was easier to fill out, at least I think it was fair, and at least I think it will be handled in an efficient way. Democrats are committed to reforming this Tax Code so it will be simpler, fairer, and more efficient.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I ask my friend, whose debt is it?

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I was very interested in the last presentation. The bottom line was, he did not pay a tax. All that story, all those facts, and he did not pay a tax. He did pay his accountant some money to go through and make sure that he was doing what was right. He did that because the Tax Code is extraordinarily complicated and has been made 25 percent more complicated by the Republican majority over just the last 48 months. Mr. Speaker, let us be absolutely crystal clear: This Republican proposal is nothing but a tax increase. Hear me, this is a tax increase disguised as a tax cut. ``Who are you, Mr. Hoyer? Lewis Carroll? What is this gibberish that you are talking about?'' It would raise taxes for thousands of families and thousands of family farmers and small businesses. There are no two ways about it. For years, House Republicans have proclaimed that the elimination of the inheritance tax, a tax, now hear me on this side of the aisle, I know you want to hear this, a tax first proposed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. Now for those of you who may not be quite fully cognizant of our history, Theodore Roosevelt, of course, was a Republican President of the United States of America. It was intended to save family farms and small businesses. But, today, not according to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), not according to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy), not according to all the Democrats in this House or in the Senate, according to the Republican Department of Agriculture, I tell my friend from Missouri, the Republican Department of Agriculture says more farm estates would have increased tax liability from the carryover basis rules in this bill than would benefit from repeal of the inheritance tax. In other words, if we pass this bill, family farmers and small businesses are going to pay more taxes. Now, I am for the Pomeroy alternative. First of all, we do not have that complicated look-back to find out what the basis was 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. We do as we do now, what is the basis now when you get it? But we exempt under the substitute offered by the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) $7 million. That means that 99.7 percent of the people in America would never pay an estate tax. I am for that. So this argument, I tell my friend from Missouri, is about the three- tenths of 1 percent of the very largest estates in America. Because if you vote for Pomeroy, 99.7 percent are exempt. So, as we have been doing for the last 4 years, we have been talking about the upper 1 percent. That is who we are talking about. Now we are pretty well off in Congress. The American people do pretty well by us, very frankly. I am doing well enough. I paid a little bit of Alternative Minimum Tax this year. It shocked me, but my accountant pointed out that I did. So we are doing pretty well. But there are a whole lot of people that are not doing nearly as well as we are doing, and we are not helping them at all by simply giving away revenue that we could spend on the education of their kids and the defense of their country, which we are borrowing for, of course, so that their kids will pay the debts. Mr. Speaker, under current law, the Joint Economic Committee estimates that only 7,500 estates, in a Nation of 290 million people where some 3 million people die every year, 7,500 estates out of the 3 million people that die would have any estate tax liability in 2009. However, the permanent switch to carryover basis rules, rules that are used to calculate cap gains, would impact an estimated 71,000 additional estates, and many of those estates would face capital gains tax increases. Now even as this bill increases the capital gains tax on many farm estates and small businesses, I tell my friend, it still adheres to what seems to be the Republican Party's core economic principle: fiscal irresponsibility. The gentleman says this tax, that tax, and he is right. There are a lot of taxes on all of us, and we have a lot of services in this country. And, frankly, for the most part, as the gentleman knows, particularly if you take the industrialized nations, our tax structure at the Federal level is lower. But, still, they are high, and we would like to see them reduced. But the fact of the matter is, I have three children, three daughters, they are wonderful people, and they provided me with three grandchildren. And I am buying stuff. I am buying defense against terrorists, I am buying stabilizing Iraq, I am buying education, I am buying health care, I am buying roads. All of us are buying that. I do not want to have to say to my grandchildren, look, I am going to use it, but you pay for it. That is an immoral policy as well as a fiscally irresponsible one, an unwillingness to pay our bills. Now, this is $290 billion. Just $29 billion a year over 10 years. No sweat. Shoot, we are borrowing all the Social Security money right now that the Republicans said they were not going to spend a nickel of. They are going to spend $170 billion of Social Security money this year alone. How do we do that? We borrowed $118 billion last February, from foreigners mostly, which we are putting our kids deeply in hock to China, to Japan, to Germany. At a time of record budget deficits of nearly half a trillion dollars, this Republican bill would cost nearly $1 trillion over the first 10 years of full repeal. It would irresponsibly drive our Nation even further into debt and immorally force our children to continue to be liable for our bills. In sharp contrast, I tell my friend from Missouri, and I wish there were more people on this floor, but it is only giving away, you know, $250 billion to $1 trillion. What do we care? We have given away trillions of dollars over the last 4 years as we go trillions of dollars into debt. As a matter of fact, $9 trillion into debt. The substitute offered by the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) is excellent. It costs less than one-third of this Republican bill. It would permanently increase the current exclusion amounts to $3.5 million per individual and $7 million for couples. Three-tenths of the estates would be left in 2009 and, as a result, exempt 99.7 percent of all estates from estate tax liability. Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) for this alternative. It solves the problems of small farmers, it solves the problems of small businesses, it solves the problems of pretty significant but nevertheless smaller estates, to make sure that the hard work of mom and dad can be passed along to their daughter and their son and their son's and daughter's families. We agree with the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Hulshof) that that is a good objective, but we also agree that we ought to have fiscally responsible policies.

Mr. HOYER

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

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), thank him for his leadership on this issue, and thank him for his commitment to firefighters throughout this country. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of our Nation's firefighters. I am proud to have cosponsored this resolution. I am even more proud of my work with the Congressional Fire Services Caucus, which I have been privileged to cochair with the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), who started that caucus, and who is, I think, probably the most ardent spokesperson on behalf of firefighters and firefighting safety in this country. The Fire Services Caucus, Madam Speaker, has long championed initiatives to include the safety and well-being of our Nation's firefighters and to enhance their ability to protect our communities. Specifically, we have worked to establish and fund the assistance to the firefighters grant program, which has provided more than $2 billion in equipment and training grants for career and volunteer fire departments across the country. Madam Speaker, it is appropriate that we recognize the extraordinary contribution to the passage of that act. Indeed, he was the author of that act, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell). I want to thank him for his leadership which is untiring, unflagging and so effective on behalf of our firefighters and the emergency response personnel all over this country. I thank him. Madam Speaker, more recently we have worked to authorize and fund the SAFER program, which the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell) also talked about, and perhaps others have as well, which provides much- needed assistance to allow career and volunteer departments to hire and recruit additional personnel. Understaffing is not only a safety problem for our neighborhoods, but a safety problem for our men and women who risk their lives in our defense. It is appropriate that we work tirelessly on behalf of the 1.1 million men and women serving as our domestic defenders. We send men and women abroad to defend freedom, to defend democracy. We are tragically losing some of those people in Iraq today and perhaps Afghanistan. They do so as volunteers. They do so because they believe in our country, in its ideals and in freedom. Very frankly, here at home we are kept safe by men and women in uniform as well, our police and our firefighters and our emergency responders. We owe them not only a debt of gratitude, but we owe investing in their enterprise to keep them safe and to keep our neighborhoods and communities safe. We ask far too many of them to risk their lives in our defense every day with outdated equipment, Madam Speaker, insufficient training and inadequate staffing, and we have an obligation to provide them the necessary resources to perform their jobs as safely and effectively as possible. By honoring this obligation and supporting programs like the SAFER Act and the fire grants, we not only ensure they will go home to their loved ones at the end of the day, we also enable them to better perform their job by protecting us and our loved ones every day. Madam Speaker, we will all vote for this resolution. It is easy to vote for resolutions. It is appropriate to vote for this resolution, but if we really mean what we say in honoring these firefighters, men and women, volunteers and career, if we really mean that, the gentleman from New Jersey is correct, and I am sure, I have not heard others speak, but I am sure the observation was made as well, we need to invest our resources behind the work that they do. This resolution, while appropriate and while important, it will not be as meaningful as it otherwise would be. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. I would ask the majority leader, he is confident that we will have a conference?

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his information. I would ask the majority leader if he knows which days we will be considering bankruptcy and which day we will be considering the estate tax bill? I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that assurance. As the gentleman knows, we have had some problems, at least from our perspective, in being included in the conferences from time to time. That is an important one. Our citizens are confronting, as my colleague knows, very high gas prices, $2.20, $2.30, $2.50 in some areas of the country. I understand that the committees of jurisdiction are expected to be marking up next week or are in the process of marking up the energy bill. Can the gentleman tell me when that bill might be on the floor?

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, in any event, both bills will be on the calendar next week?

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. HOYER. One additional question. I presume the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) will be invited to the conference at some point in time, along with others?