John Linder

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman).

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

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

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time. I urge my colleagues to support the previous question and the rule so that we can move on with debate on this important bill. The amendment previously referred to by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost) is as follows: Strike all after the resolved clause and insert: That upon the adoption of this resolution it shall be in order without intervention of any point of order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 3762) to amend title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide additional protections to participants and beneficiaries in individual account plans from excessive investment in employer securities and to promote the provision of retirement investment advice to workers managing their retirement income assets, and to amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to prohibit insider trades during any suspension of the ability of plan participants or beneficiaries to direct investment away from equity securities of the plan sponsor. The bill shall be considered as read for amendment. In lieu of the amendment recommended by the Committee on Education and the Workforce now printed in the bill, the amendment in the nature of a substitute printed in part A of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution shall be considered as adopted. All points of order against the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any further amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) two hours of debate on the bill, as amended, equally divided among and controlled by the chairmen and ranking minority members of the Committees on Education and the Workforce and Ways and Means; (2) the further amendment specified in section 2, if offered by Representative Conyers of Michigan or his designee, which shall be in order without intervention of any point of order, shall be considered as read, and shall be separately debatable for 30 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent; (3) the further amendment printed in part B of the report of the Committee on Rules, if offered by Representative Miller of California or Representative Rangel of New York or a designee, which shall be in order without intervention of any point of order, shall be considered as read, and shall be separately debatable for one hour equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent; and (4) one motion to recommit with or without instructions. Sec. 2. The amendment offered by Representative Conyers referred to in the first section of this resolution is as follows: Add at the end the following new title (and amend the table of contents accordingly):

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

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we will hear a lot of demagoguery about Enron today. Some may be true. But the one point made that the bill passed by the Republicans on class action suits a few weeks ago would have undercut Enron's ability and its employees' ability to sue is simply wrong. What we said was above a certain threshold, those suits may be removed to Federal court. The Enron suit is in Federal court. It would not have been hampered one wit. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman).

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 386 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, today is the last legislative day before the glorious tax day on Monday when all Americans happily come together for the good of their country. Let me state some facts about the tax system. Americans will collectively spend 6 billion hours complying with the Tax Code, which is not surprising, since the most basic tax form, the 1040 EZ, has 32 pages of instructions. Tax compliance costs estimated at approximately $250 billion a year will be $900 for every man, woman, and child in America. The IRS will receive 100 million phone calls for assistance and the answers that they give when you get through are wrong 47 percent of the time. There are five different definitions of a child in Federal tax law with 200 pages of instructions interpreting those definitions. One dollar's worth of gasoline includes 48 cents in taxes. A $1.14 loaf of bread reflects 35 cents in taxes. Eighteen cents of a 50-cent can of soda goes to taxes. A $153 utility bill consists of approximately $39 in taxes. Mr. Speaker, in a recent poll Americans were more afraid of receiving an IRS audit notice than anthrax. It is time to end the code.

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, Monday is April 15; and the American people will genuflect before the altar of their government and hand over everything they have earned for the past year and, in so doing, pay out of their pockets just to comply with this code. Last year, the American people spent $250 billion just in compliance costs with this complicated code. That is a 15 percent surtax on the tax that we pay. For small business, which creates most of the jobs in this country, they will pay $724 just to comply with the code, collect and remit $100 in taxes. Mr. Speaker, this system is broken and cannot be fixed. To those who think we can have a flat tax on incomes, I say we did that once, 1913, and look what we have got. Mr. Speaker, it is time to throw out this Tax Code, start over, let people keep what they earn and pay on what they spend and let every American become a voluntary taxpayer once and for all.

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand up on behalf of awarding the Congressional Medal to former President Reagan and his wife, Nancy. I had a long-standing personal relationship with President Reagan, having traveled in his campaign plane going back to the East in 1976. He was a remarkable human being who knew who he was and what he was about, and he left office exactly as he entered it. Uninflated by the trappings of power, he came to do some things, he did them, and then he left. On the night before he announced his candidacy for President in October of 1975, he gave a speech at the 20th anniversary celebration of the National Review. It was a remarkably confident, uplifting, and humorous speech; but toward the end of that speech, he looked at the world as we see it, and it was not all pretty. He quoted something written 40 years earlier, or so, by Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist and popular writer in the 1940s and '50s. He said, ``It is idle to speak of saving western civilization because western civilization is already a wreck from within. That is why we can hope to do little more than snatch a fingernail from a saint on the rack, or a handful of ash from the faggots, and bury them secretly in the flower pot against that day ages hence when a few men will dare to believe that there once was something else, that something else was thinkable; and that there are those who, at the dark moments, took loving care to preserve the tokens of hope and truth.'' Reagan was looking at a very, very dark time in America. He went on to run for President, and he did not win. In some ways, it does not matter that he did not win in that race. The day after President Ford won the nomination in Kansas City, Ronald Reagan assembled the friendly troops that had followed him so ardently for the past year, and he told them that it was just the beginning, and that we would one day reach that shining city on the Hill. Four years later, he ran for President again. It is valuable to remember what kind of circumstances the United States faced in 1980 as he ran for President. We have heard for the last 10 years that I have been here on this floor that the 1980s was a decade of greed and that he ran us into all kinds of debt. But let us lay some facts on the table. Facts, as it has been said, are stubborn things. When Ronald Reagan ran for President, we had interest rates of 21 percent, we had home mortgages at 17 percent, inflation at 14 percent, and double-digit unemployment. He faced these challenges on that January day when he was sworn into office, and he listed them one after the other. Then he told the American people that we can conquer this, because, after all, we are Americans. Over the next 10 years, not Ronald Reagan and not government policy, but the American people, changed the world with a cut in taxes to take the burden of paying for government off the backs of small businesses, the creators of jobs, with a significant reduction in regulations across the board. The American people, over the next 8 or 10 years, created 4 million businesses and nearly 20 million new jobs. The revenues to the Federal Government after reducing taxes doubled from $519 billion in 1980 to $1 trillion 54 billion in 1990. The American people are a generous sort and also increased their contributions to strangers, people they have never met, through charities from $48 billion in 1980 to around $100 billion in 1990. It is now $195 billion. Ronald Reagan would be reluctant to take any credit for any of this. He set a tone. He set a tone for the United States, and they followed it. In the 4 years before he became President, from 1976 to 1980, communist influence had increased in 14 major areas around the world from Afghanistan to Zambia. When Ronald Reagan took office, he was facing probably the largest expansion of communist activity in the history of this past century. As he left office, quietly, without bragging, without talking, communism was collapsing on its own. Shortly thereafter, the Berlin Wall fell, and the whole idea of communism and socialism were both empirically and theoretically discredited. We now face expansions of freedom around the world. He was an unassuming and decent man, and the American people saw that. They saw what he was, and they gave him two huge Presidential victories. But my favorite story about him was told by his friend of many, many years, Mike Deaver, who, while walking with Ronald Reagan on the streets of Manhattan in 1978, I believe it was, after he had run for President, and much of the world knew who he was from that campaign, he was walking down the street in Manhattan and saw someone inching toward him, wanting to get his autograph, thinking he knew who he was, but not sure. Reagan, ever the polite gentleman, turned to him and put his hand out and said hello. The gentleman looked at Ronald Reagan and said, Could I get your autograph, Mr. Milland? Ronald Reagan signed ``Ray Milland'' and moved on. Mike Deaver said, why didn't you tell him who you were? Ronald Reagan said, I know who I am. He wanted to meet Ray Milland. That is the kind of guy he was, the kind of President he was. He and Mrs. Reagan deserve to be honored with a Congressional Medal as a marvelous team in the history of this great country. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons).

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 305) permitting the use of the Rotunda of the Capitol for a ceremony to present a gold medal on behalf of Congress to former President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy Reagan, as amended.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to urge all of our colleagues to support this resolution in honor of President and Mrs. Reagan. Mr. Speaker, I said much about President Reagan in the opening of this conversation about his life, and let me close by honoring Mrs. Reagan. President Reagan said for many years that his life started 50 years ago yesterday, that was the day he married Nancy Reagan. She has been a full partner in all of his successes, of which there are many. It is often the partner, the spouse, that does a lot of the work, while the person up front gets a lot of the credit. She was there from day one, 50 years ago yesterday. She deserves this tribute just as does he. I look forward to their coming here on May 16 to receive this tribute. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to my colleague, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Dunn).

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time, and I urge my colleagues to support House Concurrent Resolution 338, this resolution on behalf of the printing of the remarks in honor of Jerry Solomon. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 338) authorizing the printing as a House document of a collection of memorial tributes made in honor of the late Gerald Solomon.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, Jerry Solomon was my friend. He was my leader when I came here. He was the ranking Republican on the Committee on Rules. He was a tough partisan, but he was fair. Jerry served 20 years in this body before retiring and then dying shortly thereafter. He was born in 1930 in Florida and grew up in the northern regions of upstate New York. He attended St. Lawrence University and was a Marine through and through. He spent 8\1/2\ years in active and reserve duty, and was one of the proud recipients of the Iron Mike Award given by Marines to Marines. He was married to Freda, a high school sweetheart and a sweetheart on her own. They have five children and six grandchildren. They had a marvelous relationship, where Jerry got all the credit and Freda did much of the work, much like, I am afraid to say, in my family. She was a marvelous partner for him and the two of them had a great relationship for many years. In 1995, Jerry became the chairman of the Committee on Rules, and I was given the opportunity to serve with him on the Committee on Rules. He was a strong leader for our cause and a fair one. He was tough and fair, and you cannot say much more about a politician than that. You appreciate their toughness, but you expect their fairness. He was outspoken on veterans issues. I recall one day him saying that he was the ranking member, and if he had stayed back on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, he would have been its chairman. And one day he said he would rather, frankly, serve as the Committee on Veterans' Affairs Chair than the Committee on Rules Chair. He thought so much of our veterans, and he fought for them unstintingly through a 20-year career in this body. His proudest moment was in 1988 when President Reagan signed into law ``Solomon's Bill'' to elevate the Veterans Administration to a full cabinet level Department. This work won him wide praise from veterans groups over the years. Jerry was laid to rest with military honors this past year in Saratoga National Cemetery. He was the driving force behind the creation of that cemetery and helped secure the money to buy the land for the cemetery. In 1998, the gentleman from New York (Mr. McNulty) introduced a bill to name the Saratoga National Cemetery in honor of Gerald Solomon. The bill had 88 cosponsors. However, some of the bureaucrats in the Department of Veterans Affairs were concerned because nothing like that had ever been done. After finding out, Jerry asked his colleague from New York to withdraw the bill because he did not want any controversy associated with the cemetery. On December 4, 2001, this House passed a measure that did, in fact, name the national cemetery in Saratoga as the Gerald B.H. Solomon National Cemetery. It was signed into law on January 24, 2002. Those of us who watched him in his work as the chairman of the Committee on Rules recall him standing right at that microphone, with his big expanded file that said Solomon on the front, which held his whole world worth of information and detail on all the issues that he fought for and cared for through all the years. He was the Chair of the National Defense Task Force, he was a congressional adviser to the United Nations Session on Disarmament, he was a representative to the North Atlantic Assembly, Chair of the Political Foreign Affairs Committee, Chair of the House NATO Observer Group and the U.S. Task Force on POWs and MIAs. During the 1980s, Jerry was one of 13 House Members who served on President Reagan's group of congressional advisers and four generals for foreign policy, national defense, and budgetary initiatives. I was privileged to introduce him at a breakfast one day, and those who knew him would appreciate when I said, ``This man has devoted his life to insurance agents, milk producers, and Ronald Reagan, and not necessarily in that order.'' He was a firm and staunch fighter for what he believed in. He could always be counted on. He was a great American, an important and dedicated member of this body, and I urge the passage of this resolution on his behalf. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg).

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 350 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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