Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Altmire, let me just take a quick guess, let me throw a hypothesis out there about why folks on the other side of the aisle and those that were talking tonight might be a little angry. Everyone gets passionate down here, but when Mr. Meeks talks, it's kind of like happy passionate. On the other side of the aisle it feels a little different. And listen, I would be too, I guess. And this is my guess, I would be, too, if I had spent decades building up a brand of my political party based around fiscal responsibility, and then, in the course of 1 year, in the course of 1 year the party that you tried to portray as the tax and spenders, the fiscal irresponsibles, that party, after having been in control of the Congress for less than a year, for the first time in 12 years does all of the fiscally responsible things that you couldn't do, passes a rule saying that every single bill that comes before this Congress has to be paid for. You can't pass anything on this floor that expands the deficit. First time that's happened since the Republicans took control of this Congress. That was Democrats that did that. Passes a balanced budget in 5 years, that's Democrats doing it. Leading a Congress that is shrinking, rather than expanding, the annual operating deficit of the Federal Government. That's Democrats; that's not Republicans. So, I guess I would be angry, too, if I was a Republican in this House and I looked at the party that I thought I joined, which was the fiscally responsible party, and found out that that mantle now lay on the other side of the aisle. So, that might explain something, Mr. Ryan. And I guess knowing that, maybe a little bit of it is justifiable.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Tell them.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, the point is to make your case. If you want money for thermal underwear, come down and make your case in front of your colleagues. If you want money for autism, make your case. But the fact is you can't come down here and hold everyone else on one side of the aisle to a standard that you're not willing to hold yourselves to. It's a simple request here, Mr. Ryan, to be consistent. If you're going to be against earmarks, then be against them. But if you are going to make the case that there's waste and pork in the bill, sometimes you've got to look inward.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Fighting for kids with autism, fighting for teenage pregnancy programs, fighting for children's mental health, I mean, that's what's in these earmarks. Why is the so-called pork spending that I'm bringing back to the Fifth District? For a children's mental health program in Danbury, for an after-school program in Torrington, for a teenage pregnancy center New Britain. You know why? Because the Republican Congress, along with this President, for the last 6 years and the last 12 years have gutted every single one of those programs that helps poor kids, helps poor families, helps the disabled, that helps poor, the disadvantaged, the dispossessed, all of those programs that are just trying to give people a little bit of a leg up, trying to give them access to the apparatus of opportunity that all the rest of us have, were stolen out from underneath them. So guess what we're doing with these earmarks. We're going and funding basic social services to try to treat kids with autism, to try to cure children of a mental disease and mental disorder that they have. And we're forced to do that because we have been sitting through a Congress, and Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek have been talking about it for several years, that has made a choice over the last several years, has made a choice to fund a whole bunch of tax cuts for people at the upper, upper echelon of the income scale and at the expense of all the people that we are now putting first again, the folks that are supposed to be helped by government, that is, middle-class, regular folks who, through no fault of their own, might have had a little opportunity stolen from them. We're going to try to help them out again here.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Meek, if you would yield for just a moment. I just wanted, on behalf of Mr. Altmire, who sits in the Speaker's chair today, to just thank you and Mr. Ryan for allowing two new guys into the 30-Something. This has been just a wonderful year for us, made even more wonderful by being able to be closer to the good graces and large brains of both you and Mr. Ryan. So, I mean that sincerely, by the way. You did not have to open up the 30-Something Group to both Mr. Altmire and myself and some of the others that have had the opportunity to come down and be part of these discussions that we've watched on TV for years before we came here. And I would like to extend our thanks to you and Mr. Ryan and Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I'm a new Member of this Chamber, and so I don't know all the history of SCHIP. I don't know all of the reasons why the bill was written, why it was, the history of negotiations, and with all due respect to my friends who were here, I don't really care, because what I know is that right now there are millions of children throughout this country who go to bed each night ill, simply because they can't afford to see a doctor. And let me tell you why I think it's a good thing that we should wait a couple of weeks in order to take this vote. Because, frankly, I'm a hopeless romantic when it comes to this House, the people's House's ability to impose the will of the vast majority of Americans. Call me crazy, but I think that when 80 percent of Americans, as the CBS News poll told us some weeks ago, support advancing children's health care, then maybe, maybe, this House should do something about it. I'm also unapologetically idealistic about our moral obligation as a society and as a Congress, because I know every single one of us, if we were walking down the road and we saw a sick child on the side, we would stop everything we were doing and try to help that child. And I don't understand why that argument isn't extrapolated to those children throughout this country who are sick only because they can't afford health care. We have a moral obligation to help those kids. And we have a fiscal obligation as well, because that system of universal coverage that extends only to people that go to emergency rooms when they get so sick that that's the only place that they can go, that costs us money. As moral and fiscal custodians of this great Nation, we have an obligation to pass this bill, to override this President's veto and to give all the time in the world to your constituents and our constituents to make that case over the next 4 weeks.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank Chairman Miller and Mr. Watt for their leadership in bringing this bill through the committee. I want to draw attention to one provision of the bill and underscore the importance of the provisions here that prohibit steering of borrowers into higher-cost mortgages than they would otherwise qualify for. This mirrors legislation that I introduced earlier this year, H.R. 3813, the Mortgage Kickback Prevention Act. The bill before us prevents mortgage originators from inappropriately steering consumers into higher-cost loans than they would otherwise qualify for. This is a commonsense measure, and it is made more reasonable by the restriction to apply this only to subprime loans. To me and my constituents, it is pretty simple. Brokers and mortgage originators shouldn't have an incentive to put borrowers into more expensive loans than they would otherwise qualify for. Frankly, as we move forward, I think it is important to understand that disclosure doesn't do the entire trick here. Most borrowers have no idea what it means when their broker discloses that they are going to pay a yield-spread premium amidst the mountains of paperwork that you are required to fill out for a residential mortgage. For these borrowers who have the least amount of leverage in the process, we need to have some clear lines. This bill does that. That is why it makes sense to simply say the brokers and originators cannot inappropriately put borrowers into loans they otherwise would not qualify for. This Congress has responsibility, as we are doing today, to reset the rules.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman for that. He has been very strong on this from the beginning. This prohibition on steering is a small, but very important, piece of the puzzle of solving the problem of the subprime crisis and making sure that it doesn't occur again in the future.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the life and accomplishments of Catherine Roraback of Canaan, Connecticut. Ms. Roraback passed away on Wednesday, October 17 in Salisbury, Connecticut, and will be greatly missed by her family, by her community, and by her country. Ms. Roraback was best known for successfully arguing the landmark case of Griswold v. Connecticut in front of the United States Supreme Court in 1965. This groundbreaking case overturned an 1849 Connecticut law that banned the use of contraception. And this historic decision established the right to privacy that exists to this day as the foundation of many of our most revered constitutional freedoms. Ms. Roraback was the only woman in her graduating class from Yale Law School in 1948, and she quickly established a law practice dedicated to protecting the rights of those that she called the ``dissenters and the dispossessed.'' Her groundbreaking work in the Griswold case was simply an extension of her life's work, which included the founding of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union and serving on innumerable boards and commissions to serve her community and her State. Mr. Speaker, Catherine Roraback was a national figure. But where she shined the brightest was at her desk in her law office in northwestern Connecticut, where she worked out of for almost her entire career. She was always a caring and fiercely intelligent adviser and advocate to her neighbors and her clients, and she was a mentor to generations of community leaders and advocates, including my friend and her cousin, State Senator Andrew Roraback, with whom I had the pleasure of serving in the State Senate for 4 years. I had the pleasure of getting to know Ms. Roraback just a little in the last few years, and though we only got to spend a brief few moments together, I feel so blessed to have had the fleeting chance to get to know one of Connecticut's true heroes. She was an incredible woman with an incredible drive and a never erring sense of right and wrong. I was deeply honored to be her representative for the last 10 months, and I will strive every day to live according to her example. In these very trying days, I think it's incredibly important to remember the lessons that Catherine Roraback leaves with us, the motivation that underlied her entire work as a lawyer and an advocate, because Catherine Roraback taught us that the basic rights that we enjoy every day to live and to speak freely cannot be dependent on one's lot in life. She also taught us that these rights, these precious civil liberties that we enjoy, cannot and should not be taken for granted. We must fight for them, now more than ever. Mr. Speaker, my thoughts and prayers go out to Catherine Roraback's family, her friends, and her beloved community.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I just want to make a point. It is not like we are out on a limb here. We just saw a poll that came out a few days ago from CNN that shows that seven in 10 Americans oppose this war. That is the highest number, 68 percent, 70 percent of Americans oppose this war, the highest number since the war began. We are seeing almost by the week, by the day, new generals, new senior retired American military officials coming out and breaking with this President. We have already seen the Iraq Study Group, we have already seen dozens of foreign policy experts come out and plead with this President. Even many of his best friends, many of his father's advisors have pleaded for a new course. The Democrats are on the side of the American public. The Democrats are on the side of the foreign policy community on Iraq. The Democrats are on the side of an increasing number of retired military generals and officials on this issue. As you said, there is just a very loyal, very recalcitrant block of Republicans who refuse to abide by the growing will of the American public on this issue. There will be a price to be paid for this.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Really, when it comes down to it, the only thing that's different here is the party that's writing the budget. I mean, really, when you look at it over time, what's different about the last six budgets that this Congress passed that over time expanded Federal expenditures by 50 percent and the budget that we've passed, which simply reflects the fact that it costs a little bit more to heat your home if you're a senior, that it costs a little bit more to run a school than it did last year? What's different? I mean, the fact is is that it seems like it's just base partisan politics in the end, that all that really is different is that the Democrats are writing this budget this year and the Republicans were writing the last six budgets. And it is not a coincidence that over the last 6 years we saw nary a veto from this President while his party was in charge of the Congress, and now all of a sudden we have seen a flurry of vetoes on bills that reflect many of the same priorities, we think adjusted to make a little bit more sense for our communities, many of the same priorities that were reflected in the budgets for the last 6 years. And I think to a lot of us that came here to change the culture of this place, as much as we care about resetting our priorities and putting funding back into our communities, we also were sort of hoping that there was a little bit of a message sent in this election to change the partisan rancor that has really enveloped this place, and the President, by vetoing bills very similar to ones that he has signed in the past simply because a different party controls the House, I think does a disservice to the process and a disservice to the mandates that a lot of voters sent us here with, Mr. Altmire.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank my friend from Pennsylvania, and I appreciate his promptness in being here as I share with him today. We trust that the other members of the 30-Somethings will join us here today, but it falls very often on the new members of the 30-Somethings to make sure that we are here to begin the sharing of good news with the American people. And I hope there is good news, Mr. Altmire. I hope that people throughout this country who see the President's veto of this incredibly important bill, and you laid out very clearly and very succinctly what the President has vetoed, what he has said no to. We're talking about health care for kids. We're talking about good schools. We're talking about Head Start, medical research, home heating assistance for the elderly. And these are the basic building blocks of a compassionate society, and the President has said, very firmly and clearly, no to those. And as you said, we're not very far away from having the requisite number of votes here on the House floor to override that veto. And I know that's kind of inside baseball for a lot of people, whether we have two-thirds or three-fourths or whatever the percentage is that we need. But it's important because, as you said, the President has found his veto pen for the first time in his tenure in office. And I think it's important to try to figure out what's different this year than as was the case in the last previous 6 years of his Presidency? And it's kind of funny because, if you look at the record, as you said, Mr. Altmire, it seems a little odd to be having lectures from this administration on fiscal responsibility because this President and the Republican Congress over the last 6 years have increased Federal spending by 50 percent, 50 percent just over 6 years. We've put $3 trillion on top of the deficit, on top of the debt that this country owes, as we've watched the President and this Congress continue to spend and continue to borrow. We've seen the amount of foreign-held debt, and you know, this is something that Mr. Meek and Mr. Ryan have been talking about for years and years and years. We've seen the amount of foreign-held debt during that time double. This is all under a Republican-controlled Congress, both Houses, and a Republican administration. And during that entire time, the biggest piece of the budget that has exploded has been the funding for this war. Now, those of us who paid attention when the President initially rolled out his plans to invade Iraq, his very rosy and optimistic projections of our success there and the cost of that war, well, remember that he told the American people, his administration told the Congress that he thought that this war wasn't going to cost more than $50 or $60 billion to get the job done? And also, if you remember, that the Iraqis were going to welcome the Americans as conquering heroes. Well, we know that that $50 to $60 billion was a figure of fiction, historical fiction now, Mr. Altmire, because now the estimates are that this war has cost us not $50 billion, not $100 billion, not $500 billion, but $1.3 trillion. And if we look forward to the projections associated with carrying out a war for the next 10 years, as this President has told this country he's planning to do, or that his war planners intend to do, we're talking about a $3.5 trillion commitment before this is all done. Now, that is a number that is almost impossible to get our hands around. I mean, what does $3.5 trillion mean to anybody? Well, what it means is that we're going to borrow more and more and more. We are going to put our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren into hock in this country. And so, when we hear this President sitting down and telling the American people that he's going to get tough on spending, and the way he's going to do that is by denying education to kids and health care to the sick and heat to the elderly, well, during that time he and his Republican Congress have spent like drunken sailors when it comes to a very mismanaged and misguided war in Iraq, you can't help but wonder where his priorities are and where this Congress' priorities were for the last several years. So, it's all got to be, I think, in relation, Mr. Altmire, because we're making choices here, as we have for the last 6 years. We've chosen not to spend on American hospitals and American children. We've chosen not to spend to help our elderly get what they need in order to keep their house heated for the winter. And instead, we've chosen to build Iraqi buildings and Iraqi hospitals. We've chosen to put more and more troops in harm's way in a war that is making this country less safe in the long run rather than more safe. This is all about choices, and it's time that we started making some different ones. And that's why we got sent here, Mr. Altmire. We got sent here to start investing in this country, to start making sure that our priorities look to this country, to the United States of America, first. And that's what the Labor-HHS appropriations bill does. It is the foundation of that compassionate government that we all believe in. It's about medical research. It's about schools. It's about hospitals. And I hope, as you said, that there will be enough Republicans here who will join us, and we only need a handful, so that we can reverse that and bring back some common sense to our spending priorities in this country, Mr. Altmire.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Altmire, if you would yield for a moment.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to applaud my colleagues, Representative Klein, Representative Mahoney and Representative Ginny Brown-Waite, for bringing this measure before us today. The rising premiums in the insurance world, the instability that this recent rash of natural catastrophes have brought to the insurance industry mandate a response from this Congress; and it's time, as Mr. Klein and Mr. Mahoney have said, to stop closing our eyes and pretend that the solution is to just continue to have a policy of crisis reaction, where we put Federal dollars after Federal dollars on top of these disasters. This measure before us, very carefully considered and brought to the floor on a bipartisan basis, is a planful and market-based approach to the issue of crisis mediation, especially on the eastern seaboard. But to the extent that we are setting up a new Federal role, to the extent that we're contemplating potentially committing Federal dollars through loans, frankly as Mr. Klein has said in a much more responsible way than we have done in previous situations, we need to make sure that these dollars are being used wisely. Now, the manager's amendment before us right now goes a very long way towards that goal in making sure that the programs themselves at the State level are fiscally sound or actuarially sound. The amendment before us, brought to the floor today by myself, Representative Matsui, Representative Bean and Representative Larson, seeks to build on that duty of fiscal responsibility that we have as we potentially commit, in a planful way, Federal dollars through loans to coastal areas. Therefore, this amendment that we're offering today would require that before a State insurance program qualifies to borrow from the Federal Government, the Treasury Department will ensure that the State has taken adequate steps to mitigate future losses. It's a pretty common sense measure. To do this, the amendment simply requires that the Secretary of the Treasury certify that participating States, entities, these State insurance funds, have implemented internationally recognized building codes to ensure that the new homes that are being built in these States can withstand severe natural catastrophes like earthquakes and floods and hurricanes. These State programs have also developed land use plans to further mitigate the risk and losses stemming from natural disasters. This amendment doesn't provide for new Federal building codes. It doesn't provide for new Federal land use requirements or Federal risk mitigation regulations. It just merely seeks to assure that before we are putting Federal tax dollars in State programs that these States have done everything that they can to reduce future risks from natural catastrophe. I would like to thank my colleagues, Mr. Mahoney and Mr. Klein, for working with me and the staffs for working with my staff on this issue. I think it addresses many of the issues that Mr. Roskam and others on the other side of the aisle have and will raise today. I think it assures that this very positive step forward that has been introduced by Mr. Mahoney and Mr. Klein will be made even safer and sounder if it comes to the point of using Federal taxpayer dollars in these programs. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, throughout America, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP, has worked tirelessly to ensure our Nation's creed, ``that all men are created equal,'' rings true. Recently, Connecticut's Greater Danbury Chapter of the NAACP celebrated its 50th anniversary. I rise to honor the efforts and contributions of those who have been instrumental in the development of this local chapter over the years and commend them for their support and dedication to the community. During the height of the civil rights movement, the Danbury chapter of the NAACP was actively involved in numerous local and national events in pursuit of justice and equality. In 1963, approximately 75 members traveled from Danbury to Washington, DC to listen to Dr. Martin Luther King's historic ``I Have a Dream'' speech and participated in the historic March on Washington. In 1979, Danbury's main street was flooded with some 400 people, including the son of President Jimmy Carter, James Earl ``Chip'' Carter, to march from Kenney Park to city hall protesting the distribution of offensive pamphlets by a member of the Klu Klux Klan. And in the 1960s and 1970s, the Danbury NAACP was instrumental in influencing policy changes to encourage the hiring of African-Americans and minorities citywide in response to discriminatory hiring and admission practices at the Henry Abbott Technical School. Today, continuing the tradition of promoting social justice, the Danbury chapter of the NAACP is focused on improving affordable housing, ensuring quality education for children and adults, and encouraging people to vote and participate in the political process. Under the leadership of the Reverend Ivan S. Pitts, the chapter has seen a surge in membership, amplified meeting attendance, and the renewed respect of its leaders within the community. Beyond today's chapter leadership, I would like to formally applaud former presidents of the Danbury NAACP over the past 50 years: Constantine Brandi, the Reverend Leslie G. Lawson, Richard Brown, Dr. Frederick Adam, Samuel Hyman, Sylvester Craig, Ben Andrews, Robert Cherry, Jr., Harold Taylor, Gladys Cooper, the Reverend Aaron Samuels, William J. Knight, Stanford Smith, Sr., Daryle Dennis, Sherrie Neptune, and the Reverend Donald Dolberry. Recent events in Danbury remind us that racism is not just a historical stain in our community--it is ever present. The Danbury chapter of the NAACP is an example and an inspiration to all organizations dedicated to the cause of justice and I am proud to recognize them for their efforts. I ask that all Members of the United States House of Representatives join me in honoring their 50 years of outstanding achievement.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, today I take great pride in recognizing five extraordinary students from Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village, CT who won this year's International Envirothon competition. They started off their quest last fall by training for Connecticut's Envirothon, sponsored by the State's five conservation districts and the State's Department of Environmental Protection. The Envirothon, started in 1992 by Connecticut's Soil and Water Conservation Districts, now includes teams from 50 schools from around the State. Through this event, both students and teachers have benefited by meeting people working in a broad range of environmental careers and have experienced both professional and academic growth. In preparation for the competition, each team, led by a teacher or advisor, receives curriculum materials and is invited to a series of training workshops. All of this extensive training culminates in a field day competition--this May, it was held in Farmington, CT. The hard-working students from Housatonic Valley Regional were the top- scoring team in four out of the five subject areas and garnered particularly high scores in Clean Renewable Energy, Wildlife, and Soils. Their preparation paid off yet again as they competed in the extremely competitive Canon North American Envirothon, which took place in upstate New York. While competing against teams from over 40 States as well as a few Canadian provinces, Team Connecticut secured another first place victory--making them the Envirothon's international champion. A particularly impressive accomplishment was Team Connecticut's Oral Presentation. With only 10 hours to prepare, in which they responded to a challenge to design and create a clean renewable school building, Team Connecticut scored 156 out of a possible 200 points. Team Connecticut's teamwork and talent shows how truly committed they are to a future founded on clean renewable energy and innovative ideas to keep our environment sustainable. The students, Linnea Palmer Paton of Sharon, Andrew Alquesta of East Canaan, Sunny Kellner of Warren, Arlen Kleinsasser of Falls Village, and Jeremy Kleinsasser of Falls Village, will each be receiving $5,000 in scholarships from the Canon North American Envirothon. I commend the students and their teachers for all of their hard work, as well as the Northwest Conservation District for encouraging their growth. I wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors and ask all the Members of the House of Representatives to join me in congratulating their great accomplishment.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H. Res. 726, to prevent and respond to acts of rape and sexual violence in the Darfur conflict region. This resolution calls on the President and the international community to recognize and respond to the horrific acts of sexual violence that are being committed by the Sudanese armed forces, the associated Janjaweed militia, and other armed combatants with alarming regularity. Women and girls in the crisis-affected region currently lack the medical and psychological services necessary to survive and recover from these personal atrocities. Today, Congress seeks to provide them with these basic services, and states our belief that the U.S. and the international community must continue applying pressure to the government in Khartoum to stop the use of rape and sexual violence as a tool of war. The United Nations has recognized that rape is being used as a systematic weapon of war and that combatants are encouraged to employ it as yet another way to brutally terrorize a population. The impact on the individual, however, must not be forgotten. Rape not only brutalizes the woman, it can also rob her of her dignity and privacy, often leading to her being shunned by her family and community. The international community has thus far been unable to prevent sexual violence from becoming an almost daily event in many conflicts, including the one in Darfur. So when Congress has an opportunity to protect and aid the victims of these attacks, we must do so. This bill calls on the President and international community to develop the Women and Girls of Darfur Initiative that would provide health care services, medical supplies, and psychological counseling to women in the conflict-affected region. The resolution also calls for preventative measures such as ensuring that a hybrid United Nations- African Union peacekeeping force is deployed to protect women and girls from acts of rape and sexual violence. Since the Sudanese Government refuses to provide its own women this protection, the hybrid peacekeeping force must be accorded all the necessary resources, including the $724 million that the U.S. has pledged to fund the U.N.'s mission in Darfur. I sincerely hope my colleagues will join me and over 100 other cosponsors of this bill in fulfilling our moral obligation to protect the basic human rights of the women and girls in Darfur and the surrounding region.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Mr. Ryan. I have to say, Mr. Speaker, it has been an honor to stand in the shoes of Mr. Meek and get to anchor this hour today. I feel like a better person, a better man for it.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Now that we are starting to shed some light on what's going on out there, the charts that you put up about the amount of imports into this country for unsafe toys and the incredibly quick decline and the amount of people that are charged with inspecting those toys, I mean, that's out there now. You would think that now that we finally shed some sunlight on the issue of unsafe toys and unsafe food and the number of people that are at risk and the problems with our current regulatory processes, that we could all come together and work on this now. But what happens? Yet more obstinacy from this administration, yet more closing of their eyes and their ears to this problem. The Senate and the House are both working on reform pieces of legislation that will give new powers, new duties and new resources to these commissions, in particular to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That same director that we are talking about, the person that runs the Consumer Product Safety Commission, came and testified before Congress that she doesn't want any more powers. She doesn't want any more protection that she can afford the consumers, that she would rather see the status quo, effectively, is what her testimony is. Even now that the American public has awoken to this problem, that this Congress finally is talking about it, we still have an administration that says, I don't want to do anything more. I don't want any more power. I don't want any more resources. I just want things to be as they are. I want to close my eyes and my ears and hope the problem goes away. That can't be how we do things going forward.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It would be pretty tight. With that, Mr. Speaker, we thank Speaker Pelosi for allowing us this time. We can always be found at 30-Something Working Group on the Speaker's Web site, www.speaker.gov.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I really appreciate the analogy Mr. Ryan makes about the choices we're making. We don't want to borrow any money. We want to actually be honest about how you spend. I think it's a great point to make again that this administration and the Congress that used to control this body was making this choice. You sort of put it to the average American living in Ohio or suburban Pennsylvania or Connecticut that if you had a choice to spend money and give an extra $100,000 to that really rich guy who lives up on the hill or you could spend that money to make sure that the Sponge Bob toys that your kid is playing with don't have levels of lead 100 times over the Federal standard, I mean, that's kind of a laughable question, like the premise, you know, you would be laughed out of the room by most parents for that. Of course you should put more testers and more product safety employees in the Federal Government. What we find out, when the head of this organization, when the director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission comes and testifies about what's going on, why do we have 20 million toys manufactured in China that were recalled this summer? Why do we have that long list that Mr. Ryan puts up? Why do we have just recently a press release dated today from the Consumer Product Safety Commission calling for a recall of these fake teeth that kids use, and a lot of them use on Halloween. Well, it turns out that about 43,000 of these fake teeth that kids are using out there have levels of lead that might be as much as 100 times over the Federal standard. I mean, this is dangerous stuff. So Ms. Nord comes before the Congress to be held accountable, first time that's ever happened on this issue, I mean, finally we are bringing these bureaucrats in front of Congress to ask these questions, and she says that she doesn't have the resources to do her job and that there is one, quote, lonely toy tester in her office, one lonely toy tester who is responsible for the flood of millions, probably hundreds of millions of toys coming in from China. When you think of the choices that have been made to give these massive tax breaks to the wealthy, to oil companies, to put our troops in harm's way in Iraq for a policy that's making this country less safe, not more safe, and what we got for all of that was one person who is charged with making sure that our kids don't get poisoned by toys over here, it boggles the mind.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. That was not me. I'm a Giants fan. That's hard to explain.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. We've got to decide how we're going to fix it. Everybody on this side of the aisle and some of our friends in the Senate can sort of live in this. Fantasyland where we're just going to do more of the same; let's fix this alternative minimum tax for middle-class taxpayers, and guess what, let's just do it by borrowing more money. That's the way I think a lot of people in the place would like to do, more of the same, borrow money in order to cut taxes. You can't do that anymore. You can't do that for the next generation is going to end up paying all that money back. You can't do that because you can't exacerbate the existing trend, which has countries like Japan and China and OPEC nations, and Taiwan and Korea and Hong Kong and Germany owning all this American currency. You've got to stop this. You've got to stop the madness of borrowing. So the way you do that is to be honest about how you pay for the alternative minimum tax, and we're going to have to deal with some choices here. The Republican Congress for years made this choice. They could have fixed the alternative minimum tax. Instead, they gave away more and more and more tax breaks to their super, ultrarich friends and their oil companies and drug companies and everybody else who did well here. We're going to make some different choices. We're going to actually balance the Federal budget in 5 years. We're going to give some tax relief, badly needed, to the middle class, and you know what? We're going to stop that policy of giving away tax breaks to folks that don't need it.